Director Russell Mulcahy may be responsible for bringing the “Highlander” franchise to the big screen, but he’s fallen pretty far since working with the likes of Sean Connery. After a long stint in the music video business and some terrible sequels to other film franchises like “Resident Evil” and “The Scorpion King,” Mulcahy’s career doesn’t show any signs of improving with his latest B-movie, “Give ‘Em Hell Malone.” Thomas Jane stars as the title character, a hardboiled detective type who finds himself in hot water with the local mob boss after he fails to turn over the case he was hired to retrieve. What’s inside the case, you ask? You don’t want to know, but it’s pretty stupid considering all the crap that Malone has to go through to keep it safe. At the top of that list are the bad guys hired to take him down. Ving Rhames looks annoyed he agreed to even appear in the film, while Doug Hutchison goes a little too far over the top as a sadistic arsonist who calls himself – wait for it – Matchstick. (Did they just use a random villain name generator for that one?) Not even Jane seems completely up for it, and he’s starred in movies far worse than this, because although it’s a fun nod to the pulp noir genre, “Give ‘Em Hell Malone” is every bit deserving of being dumped direct to DVD.
Category: Action Movies (Page 75 of 165)
There’s some sadness hanging over the American film world this morning due to the tragic and disturbing death of highly respected 39 year-old editor Karen Schmeer, best known for her work on Errol Morris projects as “Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control,” “Mr. Death,” and “The Fog of War.” (Shawn Levy of The Oregonian has much about piece her shockingly random death in a crime-related automotive accident, her work, and her early start in the documentary film business.)
Nevertheless, the awards beat goes on and today, as Nikki Finke points out, we can chalk up a big victory for female directors as Kathryn Bigelow of “The Hurt Locker” defeated a boys club of directors that included such ultimate mega-males as Quentin Tarantino and her one-time husband, James Cameron. Bigelow, of course, has been a noted director since her early features, 1982’s “The Loveless,” which introduced Willem Dafoe, and 1987’s ahead-of-its-time vampire drama, “Near Dark” attracted the attention of genre friendly critics. Her best known film, ironically enough, is probably the silly action flick, “Point Break,” which has emerged as a culty guilty pleasure after its 1991 release.
“The Hurt Locker” is the first time Bigelow has been associated a project to get this kind of near-universal acclaim. It’s a major departure stylistically from her often slick and superficial past work, looking at an unexploded bomb team with the same kind of dispassionate intensity as “The French Connection” examined police work. This award definitely makes Bigelow the apparent favorite for the Best Director Oscar. It also doesn’t hurt it’s chances at the Best Picture award either.
“Hurt Locker” also swept the Producers Guild award earlier this week. Similar to the DGA, that award is widely seen as a harbinger for the “Best Picture” category, in which the producer is the one who actually receives the award. Still, as Dave Karger reminds us, the DGA doesn’t make the award inevitable. Also with the nominees this year doubled to ten and a more complex voting system for “Best Picture” that category, at least, remains open to any of the four or five most frequently nominated films in my opinion.
In other awards, “The Cove” got a boost in the nevertheless very hard-to-predict documentary Oscar category with an award for its director, Louie Psihoyos. I usually don’t cover TV, but it is worth a mention that the winner of the award for direction in a TV drama series was also won by a woman. Lesli Linka Glatter was awarded for her work on the action-packed “Guy Walks Into An Advertising Agency” episode of “Mad Men.” Not a bad choice.
Meanwhile, over in Park City, Utah, the Sundance Film Festival presented its awards, which offer a fairly significant peak into what are likely to be some of the most acclaimed and potentially award-winning films of the next year or so. Young people with family ties to crime seemed to be a winning theme in the dramatic categories: “Winter’s Bone,” about a young girl in search of her crystal meth manufacturing father, won the U.S. Prize; the Australian crime drama “Animal Kingdom,” about a teen boy born into a crime family in 1980s Melbourne, took the international award.
The documentary award went to one of the festival’s most high profile entries, “Restrepo.” From two-first first-time directors, journalist/author Sebastian Junger (the book, The Perfect Storm) and documentary cinematographer Tim Hetherington. The film is follows a U.S. Army platoon in Afghanistan for a year. As the offical Sundance description has it, it depicts a “surreal combination of back breaking labor, deadly firefights, and camaraderie….” Indiewire’s Eugene Hernandez has a complete rundown.
If anyone out there has noticed my absence over the last few few days, suffice it to say I’ve been dealing with a family emergency and posting by me may remain a bit sporadic over the next several days. However, I’m hoping to keep things close to normal as, fortunately, things seem to be stabilizing somewhat.
Of course, it just so happens that I’ve been pretty seriously distracted just as Sundance was underway and there’s undoubtedly much I’ve missed. Here are just a few items that have caught my attention.
* Our very own Will Harris has been very much on top of story behind an upcoming television adaptation of work by highly regarded comic book writer Brian Michael Bendis. Now, add to that this revelation from Mike Fleming that another Bendis piece will be one of two vehicles that Zac Efron hopes will help him in his quest to perform a Johnny Depp-like -transition from Tiger Beat-style teen fave to respected A-list actor.
* There’s nothing like a bit of controversy to liven things up at a film festival, and this year Sundance is getting a shot of that from, of all things, an adaptation of a classic fifty-eight year old pulp novel. Michael Winterbottom’s reportedly very faithful version of grimness specialist Jim Thompson’s “The Killer Inside Me” was reportedly all too faithful for some. The film apparently features some very brutal beatings of the women in the life of the sociopathic title character played by Casey Affleck. It probably adds to the shock factor that the victims are played by Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson. The Auteurs and Anne Thompson summarize the issues.
* On a much lighter note, I take a personal interest in the film “Cyrus” because — back before it even had a name — co-director Mark Duplass discussed it with me right here, when I interviewed him behind his co-starring role in the very funny “Humpday.” The film stars Jonah Hill in what is being touted as something of a breakthrough performance, alongside Marisa Tomei and John C. Reilly. Once again, Anne Thompson is on top of things and has an interview with Mark and his brother Jay, which I promise to watch when I get a moment. (Hey, I haven’t even watched the State of the Union speech yet.)
* I’ve got a solution to this whole question of whether or not we should forgive Mel Gibson. I say everyone who is offended by Mel Gibson’s past statements, etc., should see his movies if they want to, but they should refer to him only as “Sugar Tits.” Indeed, For long as I remember to do it, in these posts, from this point forward, he’ll be Mel “Sugar Tits” Gibson or MSTG, for short. Seems fair to me.
For much of the last few weeks I’ve been steeped in cinematic depictions of Paris for an upcoming Bullz-Eye feature that will, just coincidentally, be seen about the time Pierre Morel’s upcoming action flick, named above, makes its way into theaters. Taking a look at these trailers (one redbanded for cursing a big of hard-edged gun violence), I can safely say that none of the movies we covered is quite in the same category.
Also, while I’m still somewhat unsold that Morel is the guy to take on “Dune,” and I’m a bit curious about the politics here, for what it’s worth, he does have a nice way with an action scene, and he’s studied his John Woo a bit. That’s a good thing for an action director to do.
Okay, so that last line wasn’t on a par with “Tuco’s advice,” but still, some reasonably effective mayhem there.
Do I even need to tell you that “Avatar” once again topped the weekend box office? Well, I’m telling you anyway. I’m also adding that, as per the good people at Box Office Mojo, it suffered only a very modest 15.9% drop from last week and made a healthy estimated $36 million over this weekend, topping the box office for the sixth time running. Moreover, Jolly Carl DiOrio reports that, barring worldwide calamity of some sort, as of tomorrow, James Cameron‘s science fiction adventure looks to beat the record of his “Titanic” and be the number one worldwide moneymaker of all time.
Meanwhile, Nikki Finke, never anyone’s cheerleader, is quick to remind us that the film is actually only the 26th most popular film of all time when you adjust for inflated ticket prices, and I’m wondering if it’s possible to adjust for population growth over the century or so history of the movie business. Still, a buck’s a buck and there’s no taking away from James Cameron’s achievement in connecting in an intense and emotional way to the masses and getting them to part with not too small sums of money in fairly hard economic times.
We do have a bit of a surprise in the #2 spot. If you were here for the weekend preview, you’ll perhaps guess that I am slightly surprised that the killer-angels movie, “Legion,” managed an estimated $18.2 million for Screen Gems with a very good per-screen average of $7,351 (it was on about a thousand fewer screens than most of the other top pictures). It managed this despite about zero buzz and some withering early responses. I guess young men just wanted to see a movie about buffed angels killing people and each other.
I just wonder if any religious types will take notice of it now. I simply have a hard time imaging a movie about kick-ass emissaries of God fighting each other and slaughtering people not offending someone, but that’s just me. On the other hand, Paul Bettany’s career as well as that of its first-time feature director Scott Stewart would seem to be newly blessed.
Following Warner Brothers’ “The Book of Eli,” which endured a fairly typical drop of 48.2% percent in its second week for an estimated $17 million, was the movie I pretty much expected to be in the #2 spot, “The Tooth Fairy.” The family-factor failed to come to the rescue for the PG-rated Dwayne Johnson comedy vehicle, which managed a fairly soft estimated $14.5 million. Considering it’s budget was $48 million as opposed to the $22 million for “Legion,” it has to be something of a disappointment for Fox.
Still, that’s nothing compared to the drubbing the newly formed CBS Films took for the Brendan Fraser/Harrison Ford medical drama, “Extraordinary Measures.” A topical subject matter couldn’t erase the fuzziness pervading the film’s profile and came in at the #7 spot and made a matching $7 million in its first week. And here comes my obligatory medical metaphor….At this point, the prognosis for CBS’s movie foray might be a little shaky.
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