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2009 Summer Video Roundup, Vol. II

7/19/09

"The Foreigner"

As shitty and ridiculous as this recent entry in the Steven Seagal canon is, even I have to give it up--director Michael Oblowitz clearly was trying to make this movie look like an actual movie.  This is a distinct change for the standard Seagal straight-to-DVD movies that I have been running through since May.  I mean, the cinematography is actually decent, the hammy bad guys really give it their all, and Seagal speaks almost all of his own lines.  Even the fight scenes only suck, as opposed to being a freakin' nightmare.  Now when I watch Seagal flicks, I just wonder how it must be to be an actor in one of his films, because the other actors just know how bad the movie is going to be, but I guess a paycheck IS a paycheck...

Rating:  Rental

"Executive Decision"

Seagal famously dies early in this one, so I was left with this--even though I have skipped this film for years, I had to admit that as a thriller with a limited scope (the "Die Hard" model again, this time on a hijacked passenger plane), "Executive Decision" really isn't that bad since it turns itself on its head by killing off its most capable good guy in the film's first 30 minutes.  Even Joe Morton, playing a bomb expert on Seagal's team, gets incapacitated soon after U.S. military men storm the jet.  But, the action here is so-so, Halle Berry and Marla Maples Trump are AMAZING as women in peril (hehehe), lots of innocent people get shot, and I actually liked the end sequence when star Kurt Russell--as a think tank foreign relations expert...yikes--applies his pilot training to try and save the hostages.  Seriously...this wasn't bad!

Rating: $9.50 Show

"A Fistful of Dollars"

Badly dubbed, terrible action, hammy soundtrack.  In other words...a 1960s classic Western, the first of the big Sergio Leone westerns that feature Clint Eastwood as the classic man-with-no-name who shows up to make money off of two feuding families in a border town somewhere a long time ago.  Clint, as Joe, and a guy named Ramón (Gian Maria Volonté, one of many Italians playing Mexicans), have aim so movie-perfect they can shoot the ends off of cigarettes at will...who would have guessed that Old West guns were so inaccurate just watching these films?  A guilty pleasure, but the stretches are too long between Clint Moments in this film.

Rating:  Matinee

"For a Few Dollars More"

Literally the next year, Leone made another movie starring Clint as a guy with no name (but a profession--"bounty killer"), with Volonté as the main bad guy ("El Indio"), in another Western with a bad soundtrack and scenes where good guys get captured, tortured, then mysteriously released to kill the main bad guy at the end of the film.  However, the addition of Lee Van Cleef as a rival bounty killer made "For a Few Dollars More" more watchable; the film's first 20 minutes are justifiably great.  Again, by today's standards, the dubbing, hilarious death animations and soundtrack make this a bit of an insult to anyone educated, but for kick-back entertainment, this is a winner.

Rating:  $9.50 Show

"The Detonator"

Wesley Snipes has profited nicely in his second career as a straight-to-DVD action star; strangely, in this 2006 effort, he actually spends some time acting in-between gun battles.  The former "New Jack City" star has fallen precipitously and it shows in movies that feature a plot by a Ukrainian soccer club team owner to carry out a terrorist act (uhh...yeah).  But, he gets to have scenes with at least a couple of hot women.  Look, as you get older and your star fades, there are a LOT worse activities for a man than to shoot bad movies for four weeks in foreign countries and make a decent salary.

Rating:  Rental

"Into the Sun"

This movie's highlight comes early--Eddie George, former running back for the Tennessee Titans, plays a token black soldier who gets shot thanks to a character played by My Man Seagal, who channels a bad-looking John Lennon in an early flashback sequence.  Then, William Atherton (he plays the dirty reporter from the first two "Die Hard" films) shows up to cash a check as a CIA boss.  Then, Seagal comes in to flash his trademark bad fighting scenes as a American-born expert on Japanese yakuza relations...did I mention that he has a background in weapons handling and swordsmanship?

Rating:  Hard Vice

"Lolita" (1962)

Reaching back into the Stanley Kubrick archive, I realized that I had never seen "Lolita" even though I knew the rough framework for the book-turned-film regarding the obsession of French poetry professor Humbert Humbert (James Mason) over a 12-year-old girl named Lolita (Sue Lyon).  I was skeptical that this could be entertaining over a 152-minute running time--I mean, isn't the story here just about the old guy and a little girl?--but Kubrick's work here is magnificent, thanks to the awkwardly sick performance by Mason and supporting work by mastermind Peter Sellers, who plays three or four different characters in "Lolita" all with aplomb.  Shelley Winters also does the cloying female partner bit well here...strong stuff.

Rating:  Opening Weekend

"7 Seconds"

Foolishly, I went back to the hole with Wesley Snipes for this straight-to-DVD actioner set in Romania featuring not only a art-dealing maniac with Tourette as the bad guy, but Snipes as a former Special Forces guy who left the service to steal high-end artwork.  Almost as terrible?  The look on my man Wesley's face each time he runs through his career as a B+ action star and then realizes that THIS is how far he's fallen.  So sad..."Drop Zone" was a hundred years ago!

Rating:  Hard Vice

 

Comments?  Drop me a line at justin@bellviewmovies.com.

 

Bellview Rating System:

"Opening Weekend":  This is the highest rating a movie can receive.  Reserved for movies that exhibit the highest level of acting, plot, character development, setting...or Salma Hayek.  Not necessarily in that order. 

"$X.XX Show":  This price changes each year due to the inflation of movie prices; currently, it is the $9.50 Show.  While not technically perfect, this is a movie that will still entertain you at a very high level.  "Undercover Brother" falls into this category; it's no "Casablanca", but you'll have a great time watching.  The $9.50 Show won't win any Oscars, but you'll be quoting lines from the thing for ages (see "Office Space"). 

"Matinee":  An average movie that merits no more than a $6.50 viewing at your local theater.  Seeing it for less than $9.50 will make you feel a lot better about yourself.  A movie like "Blue Crush" fits this category; you leave the theater saying "That wasn't too bad...man, did you see that Lakers game last night?" 

"Rental":  This rating indicates a movie that you see in the previews and say to your friend, "I'll be sure to miss that one."  Mostly forgettable, you couldn't lose too much by going to Hollywood Video and paying $3 to watch it with your sig other, but you would only do that if the video store was out of copies of "Ronin."  If you can, see this movie for free.  This is what your TV Guide would give "one and a half stars." 

"Hard Vice":  This rating is the bottom of the barrel.  A movie that only six other human beings have witnessed, this is the worst movie I have ever seen.  A Shannon Tweed "thriller," it is so bad as to be funny during almost every one of its 84 minutes, and includes the worst ending ever put into a movie.  Marginally worse than "Cabin Boy", "The Avengers" or "Leonard, Part 6", this rating means that you should avoid this movie at all costs, or no costs, EVEN IF YOU CAN SEE IT FOR FREE!  (Warning:  strong profanity will be used in all reviews of "Hard Vice"-rated movies.)