Sandra Bullock

Miss Congeniality

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Miss Congeniality
  • IMDb: link

Wayback Wednesday takes us back to the year 2000 and Sandra Bullock starring role as FBI Agent Gracie Hart who goes undercover at the Miss United States Beauty Pageant to prevent a terrorist attack. The joke of the film is that the gruff feminist is far from a dream contest. Enter coach Victor Melling (Michael Caine), and his team, who helps Gracie fake it until she makes it (including the obligatory makeover montage) while the experience, and the friendship she makes along the way while searching for a terrorist, change Gracie’s opinions on pageants and those who enter them.

…

Miss CongenialityRead More »

Miss Congeniality Read More »

Demolition Man

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Demolition Man
  • IMDb: link

Let’s get this out of the way first, Demolition Man is a somewhat fun, if incredibly stupid, movie. Set in a dystopian future of a seemingly innocuous utopia (but with its own troubles bubbling under the surface), the film gives us super-cop John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone) and psychopath Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) both being released from cryogenic prison where their battles in the late 90s left them (thanks to Phoenix framing Spartan in a way so obvious it could only be missed by 90s rule of law).

…

Demolition ManRead More »

Demolition Man Read More »

Speed

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Speed
  • IMDb: link

Wayback Wednesday takes us back to 1994 and a bus that couldn’t drop below 50 MPH or everyone onboard would die. There are action films that are so big they spawn imitators of every stripe for the next several years. An immediate critical and box office success, like Die Hard before it, where every pitch became “Die Hard on a ____,” so too was the case for Speed as countless studios attempted to recreate the formula.

…

SpeedRead More »

Speed Read More »

Bullet Train

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Bullet Train
  • IMDb: link

Brad Pitt is having fun. I wish I could say the same in watching his latest film. Sure, he’s great, but sadly Bullet Train is neither as smart or fun as needs to be. There’s plenty of talent here starting with Pitt as the unluckiest bad guy ever, and the setting allows for all kinds of crazy antics, but somehow it just never quite clicks. Rather than the film oozing cool, like Ocean’s Eleven, you can feel the desperation of wanting to be cool from nearly every frame of the uneven story of a bunch of killers trapped together on a bullet train in Japan. 

…

Bullet TrainRead More »

Bullet Train Read More »

The Lost City

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Lost City
  • IMDb: link

There’s a scene in The Lost City where romance cover model Alan (Channing Tatum), his hired mercenary (Brad Pitt), and captured romance novelist Loretta (Sandra Bullock), who is tied to a chair inside a wheelbarrow, are all racing from the background explosions of the jungle encampment of a rich madman (Daniel Radcliffe) while pop music plays. That scene perfectly incapsulates the kind of dumb fun The Lost City provides.

The setup involves archeologist turned romance novelist whose novels are all based somewhat on historical locations and treasures. She’s kidnapped by a rich billionaire from a book signing (wearing a ridiculous costume she’ll be forced to keep for nearly the entire film) who believes she may hold the key to finding the real treasure she has written about in her schlocky romance series for years.

…

The Lost CityRead More »

The Lost City Read More »