Reprisal (2018)

As far as DTV action/crime thrillers go, this one is pretty good. Anything with Frank Grillo gets the benefit of the doubt, and they threw in Bruce Willis too, because they all go DTV eventually.

Jacob (Frank Grillo) is a family-man banker who gets traumatized after a heist. Should he have tried harder to stop the robber? What could his sorry ass do anyway? Enter James (Bruce Willis), ex-cop neighbor with the resources to help Jacob's unofficial investigation into the whereabouts of this dickhead villain.

So Grillo doesn't play his usual bad-ass action hero self, and Willis plays a pretty reserved character (for the most part) who says a few things and stands around for most of his scenes. I'm not sure when his mental decline began, but I suspect it was around this time. For what it's worth, it's actually not a bad performance out of him. I'm sure the DTV action crap he did after this was far worse.

See it. Or don't. I don't give a shit.

#Review

Halloween: 25 Years of Terror doc

It's been about 15 years since I watched it, and since my stupid obsessive brain never stops thinking about these movies AND it is a documentary challenge, I revisited this. What's so interesting is to see how different the franchise was at that point. The series is now about twice as old as it was when that "comprehensive" retrospective was at the time. You had interviews with Rob Zombie about his thoughts on the franchise, and this was before he made his two movies.

One part I find particularly hilarious is the case of contest winner Heather Bowen for a walk-on appearance in the next Halloween film. With her involvement in the Halloween convention depicted in this doc, some theorize the contest was rigged. Maybe she sucked someone's dick, because she wasn't shy. She flashes dem titties unprovoked and even someone out of place in an otherwise straight-forward documentary, but whatever. Halloween 9 never happened, but she did have a cameo in Rob Zombie's 2007 movie... in a cut scene. 😄


Danielle Harris was only in her twenties at the time of this doc. She talks about how she doesn't do many of these conventions on account of her stalker, but time sure have changed. As much as I hate RZ's Halloween, it did reignite her B-horror scream queen status, so I thank it for that. And for getting her topless in it. Such a charming and romantic scene it was...

I'm happy to see that the doc portrayed H6 as a failure, because it was. Karen Strode actress Marianne Hagan had harsh words about director Joe Chappelle, and deservedly so. He doesn't care about the franchise and is never interviewed. Don't you just hate when people are like that? H6 is too flashy and the P-cut is much more tonally appropriate.

They mention halloweenmovies.com on there a few times. I used to go to that site all the time, as well as the official halloween message board (just lurking). I used to browse all those hundreds of fan sites back in the day, and all that internet activity is what led to Halloween 8 being web-centric and reality/fandom based.

And for that, I am SO sorry, folks.

Blackberry (2023)

A biopic of the guys who created the first smartphone. Jay Baruchel is the nerd who comes up with the idea, and Glenn Howerton is the bald businessman who makes it happen. There's still a lot of Dennis in his character, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

The era is late 90s to late 2000s, which is when I was completely in the dark about cell phones. I didn't get my first phone till around 2014, so this movie was informative on how phone evolved throughout that era. And then how the blackberry empire collapsed.


Anybody ever have a blackberry device? Keyboard on the front, taking away all that screen space?

#Review

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

First of all, this is a book, not a movie. It's by the late great Philip K. Dick. Of course, sooner or later it could BECOME a movie, as so many of his stories have. We shall see.

I am reading it right now. I'm about two thirds of the way through it. I just wanted to check in here and mention that I am wondering if it could have been, in some demented way, the inspiration for Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne character...?

I probably had that idea partly because the main character's name is Jason. But, the story really does have a lot of common ground with the Jason Bourne stories.

The idea is that, in a futuristic world (it is set in 1988 but was published in 1974, so, yah), this dude Jason Taverner gets in a strange accident, and suddenly wakes up in a world where... his identity is in question. In the Jason Bourne stories, of course, the Jason character wakes up with no memory of who he is, and he promptly gets into all kinds of trouble with the authorities. In this book, the Jason character wakes up and NO ONE ELSE remembers who he is, and he promptly gets into all kinds of trouble with the authorities. There is the added complication that he had been very, very famous in the world he remembers living in. He had been the host of a late night show, who was also a singer. A white guy in his forties singing... sort of like, maybe Tom Jones, Dean Martin, or Bing Crosby at the height of their fame, if they also had their own talk shows? Something like that. He had this very popular TV show at 9:00 PM on Tuesday nights, and remember, this story was imagined in a world in which even Philip K. Dick could not have imagined there being more then three or four television networks operating.

So, EVERYONE should have remembered and recognized him. But no one does. In fact, there is no record of him ever even having existed at all. This presents a lot of problems for him, because the 1988 that PKD envisioned was a heavily fascist police state in which normal people were expected to present lots of documents and identification at various police checkpoints, several times a day, just to get through a typical day in their normal lives.

So, there could be a few things going on, considering that this is a PKD story. Drugs are a possibility. Either his current predicament, or all his memories of his "real" life, could be some kind of drug induced hallucination. There is also the possibility of some kind of similar biochemical thing happening to him related to an alien lifeform that he interacts with, at a key moment very early in the story. There is also the possibility that there is something religious or metaphysical going on, something to do with a cruel, insane, or evil God figure that just wanted to fuck with Jason's head. PKD writes stories like that sometimes.

Also, the Jason character in this book is also supposed to be an enhanced superhuman in some way... he is called a "six," meaning that he is the result of the sixth round of some kind of scientific experiments that took place in the mid-1940s. It has something to do with some kind of eugenics experiment... I'm wondering if it is supposed to make readers think of some kind of unholy Joseph Mengele Nazi shit.

Anyway, there is no danger of my spoiling the ending, because I have not read it yet. PKD could still have some kind of total surprise up his sleeve, and make the ending into something that he hasn't even given any clues about, up to the point I'm at.

My point in this post was just originally supposed to be that I wonder if this story inspired the Jason Bourne character. Just the idea of a somehow-superior human waking up and having massive memory and identity problems of some kind. I wonder if Robert Ludlum could have read this book and liked it, and decided to un-PhilipKDick-ify it, and turn it into a spy/thriller story.

So. Anyway. Interesting stuff. Had to share.

Unlawful Entry (1992)

Michael (Kurt Russell) and Karen (Madeleine Stowe) live in a nice suburban home in LA, until an encounter with an intruder gets them all hot and bothered about home security. Enter Pete (Ray Liotta), the helpful police officer answering the call. He's so helpful, he gets a team to install security on the whole house. Yeah, there's not much he wouldn't do for Karen. Now, if only that asshole Michael wasn't in the picture...

A pretty good 90s thriller. You can't hate this movie because of the cast alone. I'm surprised I've never even heard of this movie until now. I'm so out of touch, it makes me sick.

#Review

Hard Candy (2005)

Hayley (Ellen Page) lures suspected pedo Jeff (Patrick Wilson) into a trap. She wants to make him confess, but she also wants to fuck with him emotionally and ruin his life.

Sounds like a cool movie, right? However, I still ended up hating Hayley more than Jeff. I wish the bad guy got away in this one. Well, I guess he did.

#Review

Dumb casting Choices

I'm watching The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It and seeing this guy there who looks like the main guy, So I go hmmm are they related in real life so look on IMDB oh yes they are brothers.
The thing is in the film they are not related, I suspect IRL the guy is like brother can you get me a job to help pay the bills.
FFS yes sure help your brother out and get him a role, but make it a film where he plays a relation of some sort, not some stranger, otherwise you have idiots like me going, hmm why do these cunts look the same

IRL The warrens are weird IIRC the guy actually believed the shit his wife spouted. I actually find that hard to believe, but then again the world is full of morons.

Another miscast film I remember is one where the bundy kid from married with children played the boston strangler, if you havent seen it hes still the same size as in the tv show, like a 1.6m tall 45kg. Ppl talk about tom cruise playing the reacher, well I know what film inspired that casting choice.
Ha I googled David Faustino and he is 1.60 meters tall IRL

Other miscast films?

Other miscast films?

Beatles vs BTS

As theres a lot of debate all around the world, Which band is bigger

Accident Man

This is part of the recent wave of assassin-sploitation movies where everyone is an expert hitman. Based on a UK comic. Accident Man is one who makes his kills look like accidents. You can't blame someone if a tub falls on the guy, right?

Scott Adkins is a name I've been hearing more of lately. He's one of those physical actors notable for fight choreography, and as one might have guessed... these are some pretty good fight scenes. I mean, that's what we're watching these movies for, right? And is that movies, plural?


Accident Man (2018)

There's a lot of typical hitman tropes here, but we also get a pretty decent backstory of how he got into the business. His mentor is played by the late great Ray Stevenson, giving our protagonist some sort of family connection to affect his decisions throughout the movie. Basically a revenge mystery movie where our guy beats his way to the truth.

Accident Man: Hitman's Holiday (2022)

Whereas our first film is more action/crime/drama, the sequel veers into comedy. It's not distractingly different, but it is pretty funny, and it is quite trashy. Our hero is blackmailed to protect a imbecilic mark, and the assassin is someone he has a strong history with. Give it a guess who that might be.

It got a few good laughs out of me. There's also a psycho killer clown, but there are no Maltesers in Malta.


Flamingo.

#Review

Kevin VanHentenryck's Still Mad AF at Trump



This thread is dedicated to my delusional, far left Facebook friend, Kevin Vanhentenryck, and his intense hatred towards our President, as well as his constant hypocrisy and spreading of obvious lies in an attempt to convince anyone who will listen that right ALWAYS = wrong. The amount of memes this guy posts, and his apparent quest to change the world through Facebook, makes me laugh. So, I'm going to share just a small fraction of it on this thread. If you don't find it funny, and if you even agree with this fuckhead, you are still 100% welcomed on Trash Epics. If this thread is what's stopping you from posting here, you should consider growing the fuck up. It's not a big deal.