Prime Cut: Road House…Back to the 80s

_{Image courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios}

Cheesy one liners, nonsensical plots, and impossibly indestructible good guys. God, I miss the 80s and 90s.

The original Road House (1988), bolstered by Patrick Swayze’s steely glare and chiseled jaw line, is quintessential 80s & 90s action. Doug Liman’s remake manages to check off all the boxes that make the original a classic and then some. This new version is a great tongue-in-cheek homage that knows exactly what is expected and delivers…same day with the delivery confirmation sent straight to your phone.

The plot is more or less the same as the original: The owner of a bar that could be doing much better enlists the assistance of the BMF of the day to keep the seedy element out. It turns out the seedy element has a vested interest in ensuring this bar goes out of business and so on and so on. You get it. You’ve heard this story before. However, with this version we get a few updates.

Let’s begin with what remains the same. We’ve got a no nonsense B-movie actioner led by a good looking lead who happens to be an A-list actor, yet he leaves the A-list stuff at the door. Gyllenhaal is totally aware that we just want to see him whip somebody’s ass with a few one liners mixed in and he doesn’t disappoint (albeit hipsterish one liners, but, hey, it works).

Connor MacGregor shows up as a legitimately menacing and colorful villain who comes off as almost too over-the-top until you remember just what kind of movie you’re watching. Then you realize his performance is perfect, nude scene and all. Everyone else is there pretty much just to move the story along and they get just enough screen time to do so without taking you away from the action.

Now, where this movie really gives us something new and noteworthy is the cinematography. Wait, wait, wait…I already hear you…”cinematography?” Yes! The cinematography is awesome and I’ll argue that point until the day I die. Each of the fight scenes manages to put the viewer right in the middle of the action and I really mean IN the action. At one point there’s a POV shot of Gyllenhaal’s Dalton getting punched repeatedly in the face. But it’s not just that POV shot that makes it amazing. In most of the fight scenes the camera follows the combatants and quickly dips in and out, allowing us to get views of the brawls we don’t typically see even in the most well choreographed films. As a matter of fact, Keanu Reaves actually developed a new camera system for his film Man of Tai Chi (2015) in order to get this effect. That film doesn’t quite hit the mark (sorry, Keanu), but Road House knocks it out of the park.

Is it worth your time? Most definitely.

You don’t even have to stay tuned in the entire time. Turn your brain off. Have a get together with your friends, a case of Coors (Yes, I said Coors. There’s an argument for the merit of American Lager, but that’s a conversation for a different day), some Little Caesar’s and enjoy a wade in the waters of the 80s and early 90s; a time when B-movie action was pushed by the likes of Van Damme, Seagal, Lorenzo Lamas, Cynthia Rothrock, Billy Blanks, and a whole host of BMFs who didn’t smile and solved all the worlds problems with punches, kicks, and beer bottles upside the head. Jake Gyllenhaal is a welcome addition to that exclusive club.

Road House (2024) may not be the best movie, and it’s clearly not trying to be. But it is a fun time, and, at the end of the day, it doesn’t exactly what a movie is meant to do. It entertains you.

Caught Up: The detective story you didn’t know you needed to see

“I ain’t going out like no punk!”  Oh, those words will live in infamy, and by infamy I mean between my dad and I because we may be the only two people who remember this movie.  1998’s Caught Up did not, unfortunately, make a splash in the world of cinema, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth watching…or does it?

Wonder Woman 2015: Mad Max: Fury Road

I remember the first few weeks after the fourth installment in the Mad Max series was released and the world (or at least Hollywood) was atwitter about how great the movie was because it was a great display of practical special effects and because it embraced feminism.  In fact, Mad Max: Fury Road could have just as easily been called Furiosa or even Charlize Breaks Her Foot off in the Asses of Many Men (probably what happened to that left hand–um, yeah, the pic is reversed).  When I finally got around to seeing it, the movie didn’t disappoint on either front.

Shot Caller

Yeah, that’s the King Slayer

Shot Caller (2017) was on my radar simply because I liked Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Jaime Lannister in Game of Thrones (2011).  I figure an actor who can begin as such a despicable character and then gradually morph into one of the most likable people in the whole series…well, that’s an actor worth watching.  I came across Headhunters (2011), which you should check out if you haven’t.  Then Shot Caller popped up.  I put it on, I got bored, I turned it off and that was it…so I thought.  One day I was watching prison vids on YouTube.  Wait, wait…don’t judge.  I like to hear good stories, and it turns out former prisoners have good stories and are often good story tellers (shout out to Big Herc and Prison Talk).  As I’m watching the guys in the vid bring up Shot Caller and say it’s the most realistic prison movie (considering it is fiction).  So, I thought, “Okay.  Let’s give this another shot.”

Wonder Woman 1995: Strange Days Indeed

Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days came out in 1995.  ’95 was an interesting year for movies.  Jurassic Park (1993) had just shown us a couple of years earlier that visual effects had finally caught up to the ideas found in the more creative screenplays and ’95 dazzled us with some of the first movies to come through the door opened by Spielberg’s T-Rex and velociraptors: Jumanji, Casper, Babe, and Toy Story (yeah, it’s been that long).  ’95 also saw the entry of a few classics: Seven, Braveheart, Casino, and Heat.  It’s no wonder that Strange Days slipped through the cracks.  I don’t even think it was on the floor or in the same house.  It was outside on the side of the curb waiting to be taken away with the trash and forever forgotten.  That’s too bad because it is a really good movie. 

Wonder Woman 2017: Molly’s Game

I’m going to be very candid for a moment.  Will it be offensive?  Probably, but I’m going to say it anyway.  I was interested in seeing Molly’s Game (2017), but I have zero interest in watching an over privileged white girl born with every opportunity at her feet complain about how tough her life is.  I encounter that almost every day while living in Los Angeles.  I certainly don’t want to spend my free time seeing more of that.  However, I really like Jessica Chastain as an actress and Idris Elba can do no wrong in my eyes, so I was interested in Molly’s Game.  What I got was not what I expected. 

Halloween or How Two Bro’s and an Older Lady Made Wonder Woman 2018

Wonder Woman will return to the big screen in 2020 in Wonder Woman 1984 and I am not excited…not in the least bit.  I seem to be a part of the minority who was disappointed by the first movie.  I had high expectations going in and was just disappointed (because underwhelmed is not a word) with what I saw.  I’ll get into that later when I revisit the film, but, long story short, I decided to check out a few movies which I thought presented great examples of what a strong female protagonist should be. 

Up first is 2018’s Halloween.  It’s not quite a reboot (even though it is) nor is it a remake.  It’s something better and ballsier:  It’s a sequel that says, “Forget about the other umpteen movies in the series.  This is the sequel you deserve.”  It delivers. 

No Rings, No Hobbits…Just a hell of a lot of bullets

Blood, torture, and sexual innuendo abound, Wizards (1977) is a far cry from the Disney classics we’re used to seeing.  I saw this for the first time years ago (dare I say over two decades ago).  I think it was back when you could catch B-movies and weird animated films on TNT or TBS late at night.  I didn’t think much of it at the time other than it was good, but after rewatching one of the movies in the unnecessarily long Hobbit trilogy, I decided Wizards might be worth another watch.   

Let me begin by saying this shit is really freaking out there.  There are the eponymous wizards battling it out alongside mutants, fairies, elves, and a talking Lizard named Larry.  It doesn’t shy away from violence and shows us quite a bit of blood.  The themes have historical context and primarily deal with the horrors of war.  To top it all off…these princesses have nipples.  And that’s the normal stuff.  

Prime Cut: Blade Runner 2049

A friend just texted me to tell me the new Blade Runner film was a flop because it only grossed $39 million at the box office (the experts had it set to pull in $50 million on opening weekend).  My response was, “Are you really surprised?”  We had seen it together Friday night and afterwards she answered my what’d you think with half a smirk and a what the hell was that shrug.

Interestingly, I’m pretty sure that’s the same reaction the original received way back in ’82.  Hell, that’s the same reaction I had the first 4 times I watched the original

Prime Cut: Bridge of Spies…The Experimental Spielberg

Bridge of Spies is the latest and greatest from Steven Spielberg and, no big surprise, it’s pretty damn good, but what else would you expect from a man whose career has shaped the cinematic landscape as much as Spielberg’s?  Even his bad movies are considered classics—I’m looking at you, Close Encounters of the Third Kind—so it doesn’t come as a shock that Bridge of Spies is such a good film.  

I have to admit I was a bit giddy going into this movie.  Waves of nostalgia kept hitting me, making me think back to the 90s when Tom Hanks was nominated for an Academy Award every five minutes and Steven Spielberg’s name alone made a movie a blockbuster.  Movies may have been very formulaic and sanitized back then, but they were guaranteed to take you on an exciting adventure.  

On the surface Bridge of Spies feels very much like a throwback to that time, but when no one was looking Spielberg snuck some unique elements into the movie.  For some reason I imagine him wearing his trademark baseball cap and round rimmed glasses and looking at his DP to say, “Fuck it, I’m Steven-damn-Spielberg—I’ll do what I want!”