Archive for the ‘Mickey Rourke’ Category

The Orphans Of 2013: Let’s Get Excited About The Year’s Strangest Movies.

Posted: May 8, 2013 in Awesomeness, Awfulness, Cars, Explosions, Guns, Insanity, Lions, Mickey Rourke, Monsters, Sci-Fi, Skeletons., Snowmen, Stop-Motion, Stupidity, Trailers., Westerns, Zombies
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Pacific Rim Elysium (2013) Anchorman 2

There are some potentially great movies coming out this year. Go anywhere else on the internet and you will read about movies like PACIFIC RIM and ANCHORMAN 2 and THE WORLD’S END and ELYSIUM. I’m excited about those too. There’s also all the obvious nerd bait like STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS and HUNGER GAMES 2 and THOR THE DARK WORLD. Not really my thing, but it’s certainly understandable if those are the kind of titles that make your heart do a happy dance.

But step off the beaten path with me. Let’s take a moment to give some attention to the real weirdos out there. Let’s look at some of the movies of 2013 which no one in their right mind is looking forward to. I’m not talking about intentional cult items like MACHETE KILLS or ESCAPE PLAN. Those movies are that guy or girl at the party who’s trying too hard to be sexy and therefore failing big for exactly that reason. I’m talking about the ugly guys or girls who just don’t give a fuck what you think they look like. They just wandered in off the street because they got a whiff of the guacamole dip.

This isn’t about schadenfreude.  Well, I’m no saint. There are a couple movies I wouldn’t mind watching crash and burn. In that category are ENDER’S GAME — written by a bigot, directed by the guy who made X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE; sure, no way that pairing could go wrong — and a pair of Vince Vaughn movies, one where he hangs out at Google for an entire movie and another movie where he plays a sperm donor, because no one learned anything from THE SWITCH and holy Lord do I ever not want to see or ever be asked to think about Vince Vaughn donating sperm.

But generally, my natural good nature wins out and I am a sweetheart who only wishes the best for everyone. Still, there are some movies coming up in 2013 whose very existence perplexes me. And that in turn makes me curious. Call me a a jerk, a creep, a kook, a contrarian, a nihilist, an anarchist — I’ve been called all of those things before and that was only this morning at the nunnery — but I like really bizarre movies that make no rational sense, and I like it even better when those movies turn out to be entertaining.  So the following bunch is a group I’ve got my eye on in 2013 (some are getting real close now!):

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Assault on Wall Street (2013)

ASSAULT ON WALL STREET (May 10)

Why It Could Be Cool:

It’s ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 meets WALL STREET!

Why It Probably Won’t Be:

It’s ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 meets WALL STREET!

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Java Heat (2013)

JAVA HEAT (May 10)

Why It Could Be Cool:

It’s the caveman version of HEAT!

Why It Probably Won’t Be:

Mickey Rourke may actually be an Al Pacino, but Kellan Lutz is no Robert De Niro. I mean, maybe he is. I’ve only seen him in ARENA. He did not come off too brightly there. Also, his name is Kellan Lutz.

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Robosapien

CODY THE ROBOSAPIEN (May 28)

Why It Could Be Cool: “From the producer of SPIDER-MAN, X-MEN, and IRON MAN…”

Why It Probably Won’t Be: …And the director of SOUL SURFER!

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Sinbad The Fifth Voyage (2010)

SINBAD THE FIFTH VOYAGE (May 31)

Why It Could Be Cool:

Pseudo-stop-motion-animated skeletons!

Why It Probably Won’t Be:

Skeletons aside, this looks impressively bad. Like ten dollars worth of stolen garbage. I bet you Sinbad doesn’t even do his MacDonald’s milkshake routine!

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After Earth (2013)

AFTER EARTH (May 31)

Why It Could Be Cool:  Will Smith! A clone of Will Smith! Space! Volcanoes! Monkeys!

Why It Probably Won’t Be: M. Night Shyamalan.

But that also means it could be as funny as THE HAPPENING. At this point, Shammy is probably done for as a serious director. But as a director of hilariously-solemn unintentional-comedies, he’s got a better shot than most.

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Hammer of the Gods (2013)

HAMMER OF THE GODS (July 5)

 

Why It Could Be Cool: It’s a movie about Vikings!

Why It Probably Won’t Be: Vikings that say “Kiss my axe.”

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R.I.P.D. (2013)

R.I.P.D. (July 31)

Why It Could Be Cool: I’ll never not have hope for a movie that has Jeff Bridges and James Hong in it,

Why It Probably Won’t Be: It’s trying way, way hard to be both GHOSTBUSTERS and MEN IN BLACK at the same time. See if you can spot the big, gaping difference.

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Bob the Butler (2005)

THE BUTLER (October 18)

The Butler (2013)

(no poster yet, but here’s a picture of Terrence Howard, Oprah Winfrey, and her lovely, ‘volumptuous’ tig ol’ bitties)

Why It Could Be Cool: There are a lot of good actors in this movie.

Why It Probably Won’t Be: Watch the trailer. Listen to and look at all the shit those good actors are made to do, say, and wear. Listen to that music. Have you done all three? Great! Now your incontinence is cured!

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Gallowwalkers

GALLOWWALKER(S) (release date unknown, may actually have already been out for two years)

Why It Could Be Cool:

It’s exactly BLADE, but then also a Western!

Why It Probably Won’t Be:

I mean let’s be reasonable with our expectations here.

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Bookmark this page because I will be updating it as I discover more beautiful treasures!

@jonnyabomb

The Mickey Rourke Archive: KILLSHOT (2008).

Posted: September 28, 2011 in Action., Badass Old Guys, Cars, Crime, Mickey Rourke, Monkeys, Movies (K), Pretty Girls, The Mickey Rourke Archive
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Originally posted on 6-15-2009, this is a column I hope to resurrect one day soon.

 
 
 

By the time The Wrestler was released last year, my Netflix queue became scattered with random Mickey Rourke films of yesteryear.  I’ve always liked Mickey Rourke, and his filmography is a pretty damn interesting place to wander around.  The early, critically acclaimed pretty-boy stage is not short on underrated films with great Rourke performances (The Pope Of Greenwich Village, etc.), and between you and me, the trainwreck years were frequently insanely entertaining as well (Double Team, Bullet*, etc.)  Then you get into Sin City, where Rourke made a huge impression, and Domino, where he was the best thing about a tough movie, which leads us to The Wrestler and the full-on critical redemption.

 

Before The Wrestler though, Rourke starred in a movie that surely at one point had critical raves in mind – a film adaptation of a 1989 novel by the legendary crime master Elmore Leonard, directed by John Madden, the man who bested (or robbed, depending on who you ask) Saving Private Ryan at the 1998 Oscars for Best Picture with Shakespeare In Love.

 

Killshot is the story of a career criminal (Rourke) looking to make one last score, aided by an unruly young apprentice (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), but through an unfortunate wrong-place/wrong-time scenario, he becomes fixated on killing a couple who are in the process of separation (Diane Lane & Thomas Jane.)  Killshot was shot and intended for release in 2006, but didn’t make it to daylight until this year, when it stealthily snuck onto the DVD shelves. Silent but deadly. What happened?

 

Killshot opens with a terrific song by the band Low and crystal cinematography by veteran DP Caleb Deschanel (yes, Zooey’s dad), both of which indicate more energy than the rest of the movie ultimately brings.  That’s really the problem – Killshot is just dour.  It’s the kind of movie that makes you appreciate what other movies do right, in this case the fellow Elmore Leonard adaptations Out Of Sight and Jackie Brown.  What Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino, respectively, brought to the table was an attention to character and a firmer grasp of tone than Killshot director John Madden ultimately achieves.  Killshot is hardly unwatchable, but it doesn’t have the spark that we look for when Elmore Leonard’s name is involved.

 

Killshot might get the stone-faced killer angle down, but maybe that’s also what sinks it.  The movie carries very little of Elmore Leonard’s sly sense of humor, and that filters down to the usually-great cast.  Mickey Rourke can do badass in his sleep; he’s good enough here that you wish he’d have a similar role in a more light-hearted movie.  He does, however, have to labor under the burden of playing both Native-American and Canadian, an acting demand which no one can probably do in their sleep.  Gordon-Levitt is a good actor, but he plays his part at such heightened energy that it doesn’t fit the rest of the movie – he comes off as more annoying than not, which makes his character’s fate not a question of IF but of WHEN, if you catch my drift.  Lane and Jane are solid actors who have been given very little to work with here:  Scared and angry, respectively.  Pretty thankless.  (Although “Lane & Jane: Scared & Angry” is a good tagline for the poster.)  Rosario Dawson, as a prison guard with a Graceland obsession, is the only actor in the cast who seems to be fully aware that she’s in an Elmore Leonard adaptation.  I like Rosario a lot – no matter what quality the movie she’s appearing in, she’s always canny enough to strike the right tone.  Unfortunately, she only gets about two scenes in Killshot.

 

I don’t really understand why Killshot was doomed to such an invisible release – I see worse movies released nationwide every other week.  It may be a somewhat disappointing viewing experience, because you can see how all of the elements could have added up to a much snappier movie, but still, it’s very far from awful.  It’s surely worth watching if you’re enough of a Mickey Rourke fan, and for one other reason at least:  This movie gives you the vision of Diane Lane reaching for a shotgun, wearing a white tank top and panties on a cold night, and that’s really all you need to know to decide whether it’s worth risking your time on.

 

 

 

 

Got thoughts?  Share ‘em:  @jonnyabomb

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cult Classics: CHARLEY VARRICK (1973).

Posted: January 23, 2011 in Badass Old Guys, Crime, Cult Classics, Mickey Rourke, Movies (C), Norman Fell
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There are many worse things a man could do for himself than concoct a Walter Matthau film festival.  Here is what Matthau was up to in the 1970s:  The Bad News Bears, The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three, and today’s highlight, Charley Varrick.  Commonalities among those roles include Matthau’s characters favoring behavior that allows him to give everyone else shit, and to take none from them.

The key to Matthau’s appeal is an uncommon directness.  That way, even when acting abrasive, he was always accessible.  It’s what made him an unconventional leading man for a while there – unconventional by traditional Hollywood standards, and unconventional even by the upstart standards of the 1970s, where guys like Pacino, Nicholson, De Niro, Hackman, and Hoffman, guys with character actor faces, somehow became stars.  Matthau’s face was different than the rest, in that it was so much less prone to a smile, and on the rare occasions that one broke, it was always sly.  Matthau’s face defined the term “hangdog;” it literally resembled a well-worn catcher’s mitt.

A word about the “catcher’s mitt” thing:  This is a freequently-deployed critical cliché that had its most recent outbreak during the release of The Wrestler, but Mickey Rourke’s face doesn’t look like a catcher’s mitt.  Mickey Rourke’s face looks like Buffalo Bill wearing a Mickey Rourke mask.  Of all the actors to whom this cliché is applied, only Walter Matthau’s face truly looks like a catcher’s mitt, and his films were all the more refreshing for it.

Charley Varrick is a collaboration between Matthau and the great, eternally underrated director Don Siegel.  Siegel is best known for his work with Clint Eastwood, most notably on Dirty Harry, but he had a long career before and after Clint, which encompassed such disparate work as Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, The Shootist, and the Lee Marvin version of The Killers.  Screenplay is by Howard Rodman and Dean Riesner, who wrote on Dirty Harry and High Plains Drifter.  Cinematography is by Michael Butler who also shot Jaws 2 and real man’s classic Cannonball Run.  Score is by Lalo Schifrin, who needs no introduction if you’re serious.

It’s simple and straightforward as far as the set-up goes.  Charley Varrick and his crew pull off a small-time bank robbery that turns out to have a shockingly heavy yield – they’ve accidentally ripped off the mob and now they’re on mob radar.  Are they gonna get away or end up dismembered, is the question, and the movie’s answer is at least a little surprising.  The getting there is the rest of the fun.  I’m not revealing much else because this one is a strong recommend.

Charley Varrick was also apparently released under the amazingly cool title Kill Charley Varrick! but not under Siegel’s preferred title, Last Of The Independents (Charley Varrick’s front company), and it features a remarkable unpretty tough-guy ensemble, including:

Andy Robinson, Scorpio from Dirty Harry, who here plays Charley’s hophead sidekick whose boozing unpredictability edges closer and closer to blowing the whole getaway.

Norman Fell, best known as the only landlord who mattered, Mr. Roper on Three’s Company, but had a lesser-known side career as a tough guy in movies like The Killers and Bullitt.

John Vernon, forever Dean Wormer from Animal House, who here plays a relatively similar heel role to his part in Point Blank, the shady fixer who fucks up (and eventually gets fucked up for the error).

Most memorably, there’s the cool cowboy mob enforcer on the trail of the missing money, Joe Don Baker as Molly, a shit-kicking killer who calmly murders for money but refuses to fuck whores even when presented free of charge.  Man’s got his principles.

Charley Varrick can be seen or rented on Netflix, but it’d be worth watching next time it comes through your town on one of the many revival screenings set up by savvy crime flick aficionados.