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Tag: movie reviews

The Gunman
Entertainment

The Gunman Review

William McPherson

This is strictly a matter of personal taste, but I prefer my shoot em’ up style action flicks to be light on the preachy politics and heavy on the ass kicking suspense. Now, I realize any movie starring Sean Penn is going to be heavy on the former. I found I could mostly ignore that though. Penn here plays a government assassin who has been put out to pasture after a big job down in the Congo. In the years since that job he has had to cut off all contact with his fiancée, who is now married…

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Uncle Buck
Entertainment

Uncle Buck Review

William McPherson

This is an overlooked movie in John Hughes series of Chicago based comedies, but one that is near and dear to yours truly’s cantankerous old ticker. Macaulay Culkin had a remarkable childhood film career, and by all accounts, a disastrous childhood. Aside from his two very successful featured roles in the Home Alone movies, I believe this movie to be his best work. Much of that can be credited to the late John Candy with whom Culkin displayed tremendous chemistry here. This is one of my favorite…

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50 Shades of Grey
Entertainment

50 Shades of Grey Review

William McPherson

The young impressionable English lit major (note: only female authors who type with one hand down their pants normally have the audacity to make their heroine an English lit major) Anastasia Steele begins a tortured romance with reclusive millionaire Christian Grey in a movie bad enough to make me reconsider my stance on eugenics. In order to hold on to my man card I must first admit my seeing this movie was strictly the result of my wife renting it and my being an awesome husband and agreeing…

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Revenge 1990
Entertainment

Revenge Review

William McPherson

I was up late the other night and caught this movie on TV and was surprised I had not heard of it before. Then while watching it, it occurred to me just how easy a movie this would have been to forget. 1990 was a very important year in Kevin Costner’s career for reasons that have nothing to do with this film. This was the year, as you will recall, that he released Dances with Wolves. This movie is certainly not on that level. For starters, it looks like they took the working or filming title of…

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John Wick
Entertainment

John Wick Review

William McPherson

John Wick is a retired mafia hitman living the dream, until one sad day his wife dies of cancer. Before she does though she gifts him with a farewell puppy. Of course, because this is an action movie, you know this puppy is doomed, and also the people who bring doom upon the puppy are equally doomed. It really isn’t rocket science sometimes. All you need is a sympathetic “dangerous” leading good guy, some dumb bad guys working for a higher up bad guy, a ton of bullets, and there’s your movie…

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Crazy Heart
Entertainment

Crazy Heart Review

William McPherson

Crazy Heart features one of the best Jeff Bridges performances I’ve ever seen. That is definitely saying something as he has made a career of low key but brilliant performances. I admit my bias here. He is my favorite actor, as far as dramatic movies go. The story here is also something that is very much in my wheelhouse again, as it is a music movie, telling the story of past his prime country star Bad Blake. Blake used to pack in the big arenas, but is now relegated to playing his old…

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Death Sentence
Entertainment

Death Sentence Review

William McPherson

I include this movie as the final entry in the Death Wish review series because in a sense it is kind of a reboot of said series. Once again a white collar business man witnesses an unspeakable tragedy with his family, and fed up with how the law fails to act, decides to take matters into his own hands. There were a few things I definitely felt were strengths with this movie compared to the old Bronson movies. For one thing, Kevin Bacon is certainly no Charles Bronson, which helps as far as…

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Death Wish V
Entertainment

Death Wish V: The Face of Fear Review

William McPherson1 Comment

Paul Kersey had the worst damn luck of perhaps any movie character in history. I would say tied with John McLane, but all McLane had to worry about was getting trapped in the occasional building. Kersey repeatedly has loved ones mowed down in gruesome life scarring ways. At the time of this movie he is officially a grandpa aged gentleman looking, once again to settle down with his girlfriend, but of course said girlfriend winds up getting attacked, this time by local mobsters and left with…

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Death Wish 4
Entertainment

Death Wish 4: The Crackdown Review

William McPherson

Paul Kersey is headed west, again for the fourth installment of the Death Wish series. This time around there is a bit more plot, but still just as much action including what is admittedly a pretty awesome finale involving a bazooka. That said, Bronson really started looking to old and worn out for the part by this time and obviously could not have given a shit about this movie. This movie tries to be like a 1980s version of “Fistful of Dollars” (or Yojimbo). Kersey (Charles Bronson), now a well…

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Death Wish 3
Entertainment

Death Wish 3 Review

William McPherson

Death Wish 3 is as perfect a bad movie as I can imagine. It is completely over the top and makes absolutely no pretenses as to what it is about. Paul Kersey is far removed from the meek and mild architect from the first movie and has now become a professional “neighborhood population control expert”. Armed with a hand cannon (.475 Wildey Magnum for those interested) that makes Dirty Harry’s 44 Magnum look like a pop gun. The basic story here is that a New York City has been overrun with crime…

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Death Wish 2
Entertainment

Death Wish 2 Review

William McPherson

Death Wish goes west is probably a more appropriate title to this sequel. As a kid in love with macho badasses Charles Bronson was, of course, one of my heroes. And in retrospect it is Bronson’s presence alone that saves this one from being a nearly complete dud, that and cheesy lines every now and then such as “Do you believe in Jesus? (Punk says yeah) Well, you’re gonna meet him (pow pow pow). The story is a direct ripoff of the original, which now living in a time when this genre has been…

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Death Wish
Entertainment

Death Wish Review

William McPherson

This is unapologetic male revenge fantasy, made all the more powerful and terrifying by how gritty and realistic it is portrayed. The character of Paul Kersey is not the sort of man you expect to see played by Charles Bronson, at first that is. He’s a quiet architect whose politics definitely lean toward the anti-gun side of the fence, but that all changes when he is befriended by an Arizona “gun nut” who gifts him with his first revolver. That gift would have been much more innocuous had…

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The Terminal
Entertainment

The Terminal Review

William McPherson

Tom Hanks is one of the biggest box office stars of all time, so it is usually worth taking note of which of his movies don’t become huge smash hits. A month or so back I reviewed such a movie with Larry Crowne, and here today we have another in The Terminal. This movie has Hanks playing a man from the fictional nation of Krakozhia who becomes stuck in an airport indefinitely when his home nation falls in a military coup. With him being a citizen of nowhere, he becomes basically a prisoner in…

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Key Largo
Entertainment

Key Largo Review

William McPherson

This was the last movie that John Huston made with Humphrey Bogart, and one of the more overlooked ones as well. World War II veteran Frank McCloud visits a sleepy little bed and breakfast in Key Largo to give his respects to the family of an old war pal who has passed on. Along the way he meets his buddy’s widow (Lauren Bacall), his father (Lionel Barrymore) and last but not least, the infamous Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) who is staying at the hotel with a few other hoodlums, and plotting…

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Rocky Balboa
Entertainment

Rocky Balboa Review

William McPherson

This movie packs the feels. Like I said with the last review of Rocky 5, I find it works best if you skip the third and fourth installments of this series to keep things on an even keel, and for this movie, perhaps just skipping straight from the first movie this one is best for continuity’s sake. This movie is just one big sentimental moment after another, to the point you could basically call it a male chick flick, which sounds bad, but works perfectly. There are many nice nods to the original…

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Rocky 5
Entertainment

Rocky 5 Review

William McPherson

It is not exactly breaking news, that out of all the Rocky movies, this one gets the most flack. In reality, I think with a different release date it might have been much more favorably regarded. This movie attempts the impossible though, as far as bringing a series that had shot into the stratosphere in terms of comic book level mania back into some semblance of the real down and dirty world in which the original movie had existed. At this point in time, there was just no getting that…

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Rocky IV
Entertainment

Rocky IV Review

William McPherson

Rocky IV is the culmination of the 1980s Ronald Reagan vision of corporate America in all its gaudy excess, and is by far, the most ridiculous of all the Rocky movies, which is quite the accomplishment. It was a big enough stretch that a club fighter on his last legs could go the distance with an Ali like heavyweight champ, let alone defeat him, let alone have ten successful championship defenses, defeat a Mike Tyson like young contender; now he’s going to single handedly end the cold war a good…

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Rocky 3
Entertainment

Rocky III Review

William McPherson

This may be the guiltiest of all the big budget guilty pleasure sports movies made in the 1980s. In the 1980s the Rocky movies became pretty much an extended music video. This time around the hit song of the “album” was Eye of the Tiger by Survivor, a song that has become the universal anthem for boxing training, tied perhaps only with the original Rocky theme itself. Compared to the first two movies this is a complete comic book cartoon level romp. Now that said, as many real boxers have…

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Rocky 2
Entertainment

Rocky II Review

William McPherson

I reviewed the original Rocky movie a few months back here on QDR and now wished I had waited a bit for the sake of continuity, but, perhaps it is for the best for the original movie to kind of exist on its own in a world where the sequels don’t have to exist as cannon. That said, if you’re looking for a blue print on how to produce a sequel this is it in my mind. As most will recall the end of the first Rocky film saw beloved Italian Stallion Rocky Balboa lose a gut wrenching 15 round decision…

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Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey
Entertainment

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey Review

William McPherson

In the first Bill and Ted movie, the two teenagers upon whose shoulders the fate of humanity rests passed a school history report contest to ensure the future of their band, which will be the driving force to the future utopia in which as George Carlin tells us at the beginning “even the dirt is clean…” Now it’s the sequel, and instead of traveling through time collecting various historical figures to pad out their presentation roster they find themselves dancing with the reaper himself. Early…

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