'Furious 7' Movie Review: Over The Top And Entertaining As Hell

Watching Furious 7, the latest installment of the adrenaline-fueled Fast & Furious franchise, you get the distinct impression that, when faced with a creative choice, the filmmakers paused to ask themselves, “What’s the most insane, over the top thing we can do here?” And then they went ahead and did that. For a series of films that, especially over the last few chapters, has been a continual escalation in physics-defying stunts, Furious 7 takes it to an entirely new level, and the result is a damn lot of fun.

'Jupiter Ascending' Movie Review: The Wachowskis' Latest Is Big, Beautiful, And Bland

The Wachowski’s don’t make small, quiet films. They go big, they go ambitious, and they desperately need a hit, like how a crack head needs a hit. Their last two, Cloud Atlas and Speed Racer, did not exactly light up the box office. Unfortunately, their latest, Jupiter Ascending, is not likely to be that movie, as there isn’t much that truly works. This is a mishmash of crazy ideas thrown into a blender with a damsel-in-distress movie, full of what is best described as heroic space rollerblading. What makes this so unusual for the Wachowskis is how, despite fits of madness like what appears to be a race entirely comprised of a flying lizard biker gang, utterly bland this movie is.

'Lucy' Movie Review

Abandon all logic ye who enter here, because we are about to start talking Lucy. You might want to leave reason and science by the door while you're at it, you won’t have much call to use either of those for the next 90 minutes or so. French action auteur Luc Besson has made his version of 2001, or at least his Tree of Life, and it is a wild, wild time. People are going to walk into what they think is a Scarlett Johansson-fronted action movie and have their minds broken. This is very much not the movie you were led to expect, but goddamn if it isn’t a total freaking blast. There will be those who laud this as the most fun movie of the summer, while others will condemn it as complete and utter nonsense, and somehow they’ll both be right.

'Spring Breakers' Movie Review

Admittedly I’m having a difficult time sorting through my feelings about “Spring Breakers.” To call it half incredible and half annoying sounds hyperbolic and doesn’t tell you anything real about the film, but walking out of the theater, that sums up my reaction. If it feels like indie auteur Harmony Korine (“Kids,” “Gummo,” “Trash Humpers”) made a modern sexploitation movie about bikini girls with machine guns in the vein of a Monte Hellman flick, then you’d be right, because that’s precisely what this is. The film alternately screams and whispers “Spring Break,” in both a literal and metaphorical sense, for the entire run time.

'Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning' Movie Review

When John’s (Scott Adkins) family is murdered in front of him, he sets out on a quest for to find the man who pulled the trigger, Luc Deveraux (Jean-Claude Van Damme). His journey takes him to some dark, unexpected places. That’s the basic plot to Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, the latest installment in a franchise that began in 1992. The film, however, takes that simple premise, and buries it beneath a big ol’ pile of crazy. Like Van Damme looking like psychotic clown crazy.

'The FP' Movie Review

“The FP” is like watching the hyper active, sugar fueled bastard child of “The Warriors”, Japanese pop culture, and a hillbilly bounce all over the screen. Let me clarify that. “The FP” is one of the loudest, most ridiculous, entertaining movies I’ve seen in a long, long time. Because you know what movies like “The Warriors” always lacked, the only real thing they needed? Dance fighting, that’s what, clam chowder. The Trost Brothers, writers and directors of “The FP”, have rectified that situation.

'Final Destination 5' Movie Review

There were a lot of things I didn’t expect from “Final Destination 5”. First off, I didn’t really expect it to happen, but it did, so right out of the gate it defied my expectations. Was there really such a big audience just clamoring for a fifth chapter that they had to make this film? The second thing I didn’t expect was that I would enjoy “Final Destination 5”, but I sure as hell did. I guess that’s what I get for making assumptions—I made an ass out of u, me, and umption. “Final Destination 5” is not a good movie by any means, in fact in many ways it is barely competent, but goddamn it is a lot of fun.

'Attack the Block' Movie Review

What would happen if aliens invaded a tough London neighborhood populated by rough and tumble street kids who are used to scrapping and fighting for everything they have? The answer, at least in Joe Cornish’s badass feature film debut “Attack the Block”, is that these trespassers would be in for one hell of brawl. In my mind “Attack the Block” is in the running for my favorite movie this year. It works as a straight-up genre film, and those of you looking for your monster fix will get all that you can handle. But it is also tightly executed in almost every capacity. The pacing is spot on, it is tense as hell, you can feel the energy on screen, and though it isn’t an overtly political story, there is an underlying social commentary that you find in the best science fiction.

DVD Review: 'Things'

“Things” makes it feel like you’ve been magically transported back to your youth. It’s a crisp Friday night in fall, and you’re sleeping over at your buddy’s place. Your buddy who just so happens to have cable. The plan is to drink a two-liter of cherry soda, each, and stay up all night watching scary movies. There’ll be plenty of time to sleep all day Saturday, especially since your parents won’t let you play football like you wanted to. So you down your soda, much on some red vines, and hunker down on the couch, promising your pal’s mom that you, “won’t stay up too late.” Somewhere around two or three in the morning, later than your adolescent self has ever stayed awake before, “Things”, or a movie like it, would come on an obscure channel, and it was like Christmas morning for your sugar-addled, sleep-deprived little mind. Like it or not, that film was seared into your consciousness forever.

DVD Review: 'Bloody Birthday', 'Nightmares', and 'The Baby'

Severin Films kicks this summer season off right, releasing a trio of obscure, little-seen horror films from the 1970s and early 80s, or as I like to call them, three more reasons not to go out in the sun. We get two entries into the slasher movie sweepstakes, “Bloody Birthday” and “Nightmares”, and one, what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-people flick, “The Baby”.

'The Catechism Cataclysm' Movie Review

When a movie starts with flames and blackmetal, you know you’re onto something. That’s exactly how “The Catechism Cataclysm”, the latest, crazy-ass indie comedy from director Todd Rohal, starts out, and it only builds from there. The film is kind of a road trip, kind of a voyage of self-discovery, and kind of an “Apocalypse Now” style journey into a chaotic, surreal hell. It is a tribute to Rohal, who also wrote the script, that despite being absurd, irrational, and at first glance, unsound, that “Catechism” is ultimately an entertaining, surprisingly watchable movie.

'The Yellow Sea' Movie Review

After his debut film, 2008’s “The Chaser”, Korean director Na Hong-jin was definitely on a lot of people’s radars, mine included, and many of us have eagerly been waiting for his newest crime thriller, “The Yellow Sea”. Fresh from Cannes, “The Yellow Sea” just made its North American premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival. Be warned, there is an absurd amount of hatchet fighting and stabbing, not to mention people getting beaten to death with a large bone. If that sounds like a good time to you, it certainly does to me, then this movie is right up your alley.

'Red Eagle' Movie Review

If movies like “RoboCop” are to be believed, the near future is going to be a festering cesspool of violence and corruption. It must be true, because no matter what era “near future” we’re talking about, the prediction is roughly the same. So, you should probably be on the look out in the next few years and be prepared. Thai director Wisit Sasanatieng’s (“Tears of the Black Tiger”) new superhero film, “Red Eagle”, a remake/homage to a 1960s action series, holds to this bleak vision. When the world is going to hell, and in desperate need of a savior, up steps Red Eagle.

'Fast Five' Movie Review

There’s a running theory in my house that The Rock, also known as Dwayne Johnson (sorry buddy, but you’ll always be The Rock to me), and Vin Diesel are actually the same being. Like they’re different versions of the same dude from parallel dimensions, or some sci-fi trope like that. They make similar movies. Couldn’t you imagine Diesel playing the protagonist in “Faster”, or The Rock with silly looking sunglasses bouncing around space in the “Riddick” movies. Even the children’s films they do, like “The Pacifier” (Diesel) and “The Toothfairy” (Rock), could have gone either way. Now before you get your panties in all twisted in a fit of rage and start bombarding the comment section with snarky notes about how I’m obviously a dumbass who has never seen a movie before, I’m just trying to say that I imagine that there are a lot of casting lists in Hollywood with these guys in spots one and two, that’s all.

'Fubar: Balls to the Wall' Movie Review

If you haven’t seen “Fubar” I only have one question for you. What the hell, man, are you serious? I’m not kidding around when I say these words, drop whatever you’re doing (and lets be honest, if you’re reading this, whatever you were doing wasn’t very important to begin with) and go rent it immediately. It’s one of those movies that as soon as I saw it for the first time I sat down everyone I encountered for the next week and forced them to watch it. And then they made everyone watch it, and they made everyone watch it, and it was like a giant pyramid scheme, only so, so good. One friend spent the entire movie gawking at the screen, giggling like a simple-minded idiot-boy, which in my book counts as glowing praise.

'Tron: Legacy' Movie Review

“Tron: Legacy”, Joseph Kosinski’s sequel to the 1982 cult fave “Tron”, starts out promisingly enough. Okay, that’s not entirely true, it starts out idiotic, but idiotic in a way you can cope with. Sam Flynn (Garett Hedlund) is an orphan. His father, cyber-visionary/digital freedom fighter Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), disappeared in 1989 immediately after telling his young son about a “miracle” he experienced. In 2010, the elder Flynn’s videogame company, Encom, has transformed into a global technology juggernaut. While Sam has controlling interest in Encom, he prefers to the board of directors run the company, choosing instead to live the life of a bored, motorcycle riding twenty-something that has never worked a day in his life. And he plays yearly pranks his own company, like putting their new operating system on the internet for free, then base jumping off of the Encom Tower.

'2012' Movie Review

How has it taken me so long to watch “2012”? It’s like Roland Emmerich made a movie out of what constantly plays in my head when I close my eyes. This is the most amazing movie I’ve ever seen, and that statement is only partial hyperbole.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

As an actor, what do you say when your agent tells you that you’re up for a part, but that the part involves your face being attached to another actor’s ass for most of the movie? That probably doesn’t come up often, but it must have when writer/director Tom Six was casting his horror film “The Human Centipede (First Sequence)”.

Spartacus: Blood and Sand

So much screaming and stabbing. That is the basic premise behind the first season of “Spartacus: Blood and Sand”. The parts that involve neither stabbing nor screaming are built around naked breasts, beheadings, eruptions of blood, and intrigue.

Machete

I’m on a pretty good roll lately as far as movies being exactly what I want them to be. “The Expendables” was a solid attempt to recreate a 1980s style action flick driven by a big name, or many big names in this particular case. “Piranha 3D” was completely over the top fun, full of tens of thousands of gallons of fake blood, and equally fake naked breasts. Both did exactly what I wanted them to do, and I enjoyed them thoroughly. Robert Rodriguez’s “Machete” fits nicely alongside those two films.