Paul Walker

Takers lacks Heat

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Takers
  • IMDB: link

I love heist flicks and I’m usually willing to cut them an awful lot of slack. On my DVD shelf alongside of Heist, To Catch a Thief, and Sneakers, I own copies of The Newton Boys, How to Beat the High Co$t of Living and After the Sunset. When a new heist flick comes along I’m willing to give it several chances to prove itself. After seeing Takers I might have to reevaluate that position.

It took four writers to put Takers together, and it shows. The film is a mediocre mess of both shots and storylines best left of the cutting room floor. I’m sure the attempt here was to merge the coolness of the Ocean’s Eleven franchise (without Clooney, Pitt, and Cheadle) with the feel of Michael Mann’s Heat (without DeNiro, Pacino, and Kilmer). Not surprising, it’s a disaster in every sense of the word.

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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – Football Flicks

/ / Essays

Are you ready for some Football?  With the recent release of football films in theaters and on DVD today we give you some of the best and the worst ever made.  Now anybody can make a list with only the best known football flicks but our eclectic mix of 10 films (plus a few recommendations) includes some you’d expect and a few which might surprise you.  Check out the full list inside.

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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – Football Flicks Read More »

Be Very Afraid

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Running Scared
  • IMDb: link

Running Scared

I wonder how some films get made; I really do.  Running Scared is one of the worst movies to be dropped on an unsuspecting public in years.  I know I told you Freedomland was awful (and it was) but Scared digs deep down into the same pile of sludge and manages without much effort to be even worse.  The film uses issues – child abuse, murder. children shooting guns, torture, inappropriate sex, children being beaten and threatened with guns and knives, child molestation and child pornography, and the total legitimacy of blowing away the bad guys as the right thing to do – as empty plot devices to keep the “action” rolling right along.  Much like Freedomland the film doesn’t deal with any of these issues only exploits them for cheap thrills, but Scared does it over and over and over again with joyfully perverse glee. 

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Into the Blue

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Into the Blue
  • IMDb: link

Into the BlueWhat can you say about a movie that strives to meet your low expectations? Into the Blue is not really a bad film, just a mediocre one. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, a group of mostly honest people find something valuable, but to get it they will have to bend or break the law.  As the pressure mounts the group begins to fracture with distrust, but in the end everything will turn out swell and we’ll have all learned a moral lesson.  If you haven’t seen that movie, I dunno, like a hundred zillion times then you’re in luck, because here’s your film. And hey, Jessica Alba spends almost twenty minutes in a bikini.

Sam (Jessica Alba) and her beach-bum boy-toy Jared (Paul Walker) live somewhere on beautiful beaches of what appears to be the Bahamas making a living in various tourist attractions while hoping that one day they might find some buried treasure in the deep of the ocean. Old friend Bryce (Scott Caan ) shows up with his new lady Amanda (Ashley Scott) and they go out for a boat ride and low and behold they stumble onto something.

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