Saturday, June 26, 2021
Hard to Kill (1990)
Steven Seagal is immortal and omnipresent. This actually goes along with Shintoism, which he picked up as an aikido instructor in Japan before he got into movies. However, when he talks himself up in English (or rather sings himself up, if you listen to his Songs From the Crystal Cave album) it’s almost insulting. He’s a chocolate fiend who can’t hold back, and all those candy bars caught up with him in recent years. I’m sure he’s sensitive about that. Sorry.
Saturday, June 12, 2021
Without Remorse (2021)
“”"Tom Clancy’s”"” Without Remorse is a mindless action movie that manages to be simultaneously politically correct and frustrating to watch. There are no bad guys and no real enemies, the whole movie is an anticlimax, and the producers had the gall to leave it open for a sequel.
My favorite part of the movie was the gunshot sounds. The silencers sounded realistic, and the M16s and Russian rifles sounded distinct. For some reason the silencers were louder than the non-silenced weapons, and sometimes the gunfire was muted entirely in favor of dramatic music. Those three sound effects were pretty decent. There were also punching and exploding sounds. If you like noise, you’re in for a treat.
Saturday, May 29, 2021
Trancers 4: Jack of Swords (1994)
The first three Trancers show a fall from greatness as legendary hero Jack Deth moves into retirement. Trancers 4 and 5 were shot back-to-back and pick up where the trilogy left off. I divide the series like so because of the radical shift the latter films represent, not just in Trancers but in moving pictures on the whole.
The whole outsourcing situation with lower budgets and broken dreams is par for the course with Chuck Band’s later work. This was the start of that. With Trancers 4, the audience got an interesting medieval experience. Whether or not it was good for business, I don’t know.
Saturday, April 24, 2021
Trancers (1984)
Enter a better time: a vision of the future from the past. 1980s grunge meets pseudo-cyberpunk. It is the future foretold by video games, whose sensibilities are industrial brutalism of metal and stone, a world where might makes right and even Klingon weaponry cannot compete with the ultimate weapon from the great halls of science: time. Yes, time, the final frontier.
Trancers is an interesting artifact. It comes from Empire Pictures (Full Moon Video’s theatrical predecessor), which Chuck Band sold to MGM in 2020. This means MGM owns Trancers. All business aside, the chemistry between stars Tim Thomerson and Helen Hunt is so beautiful that even the questionable sequels have sublime moments. No matter how stupid the scripts got, the above-average cast always gave it their all. The series as a whole is highly recommended.