LET’S GET PHYSICAL: NOWHERE TO RUN (1993) **

FORMAT:  DVD

Jean-Claude Van Damme tried to showcase his acting range with this one as it’s more serious and grounded than his previous outings.  However, he just wasn’t quite up to the challenge as he still had a long way to go as an actor.  He did, however, mature nicely as a thespian later in his career with memorable turns in Expendables 2, Pound of Flesh, and Enemies Closer.  It’s just at this stage in his career he needed a gimmick like Cyborgs or Timecops or twin brothers to make his vehicles work. 

Nowhere to Run is essentially an action movie reworking of Shane.  (There’s a scene where cops chase Van Damme on horseback just in case you didn’t catch on that this is supposed to be a modern day western.)  Greedy land developers try to run Rosanna Arquette off her land.  She won’t budge.  JCVD is a drifter who makes amends for past misdeeds by helping her take a stand against the company and defend her property. 

Directed by The Hitcher’s Robert Harmon with a slick but empty style, the pacing is a little staid and the action a bit lackluster compared to other VD action flicks of the era.  Van Damme tries, but he’s in over his head with a more dramatic role than usual.  It doesn’t help that his one-liners are kinda weak.  (“Au revoir, fucker!”)

You know you’re in trouble when a dead guy gets a story credit.  (In this case, it’s Return of the Jedi’s Richard Marquand).  That usually means the script has been kicking around Hollywood forever.  Even with names like Joe (Basic Instinct) Eszterhas, Leslie (Nightmare on Elm Street 5) Bohem, and Randy (Tango and Cash) Feldman listed as the other screenwriters, it all seems rather generic and derivative.  The villains (Lethal Weapon 2’s Joss Ackland and The Silence of the Lamb’s Ted Levine) are good though, and Arquette’s nude scenes are more or less worth the price of admission.  (It must’ve been the Eszterhas influence.) 

SEQUEL CATCH-UP: MEG 2: THE TRENCH (2023) ** ½

Jason Statham and his research team continue to explore the depths of “the trench” where potentially thousands of prehistoric aquatic creatures dwell.  They find a baby Megalodon and keep it as a pet/test subject/mascot.  While in the trench, they uncover an illegal mining operation.  Double crossed by their corporate benefactor (who naturally, is the brains behind the secret mining outfit), they narrowly escape with their lives and once they get to land, they must stop giant prehistoric escapees from devouring vacationers at an island resort. 

Directed by indie favorite Ben Wheatley (although you’d never guess it from the looks of things), Meg 2 kicks off with a fun sequence set during the Cretaceous period where a Megalodon chomps down on a T-Rex.  Too bad the first two acts are rather dull.  The scenes where Statham and his team are forced to wander around the ocean floor really bog things down and feel like an Asylum version of The Abyss.  The good news is the movie really comes to life in the third act where not one, but three Megs (and a squid and some assorted prehistoric beasties) turn an island full of tourists into an all you can eat buffet.  I just wish this same sense of fun was prevalent throughout the rest of the film. 

Most of the time, Statham looks like he’s only there out of a contractual obligation, but like the movie itself, he shows some flair once he starts single-handedly taking out Megs while armed with homemade exploding harpoons and riding around on a jet ski.   The inclusion of Wolf Warrior’s Jing Wu, on the other hand, feels more like a mandate from the Chinese co-production company than an inspired touch from the casting department.  The rest of the team are pretty much walking cliches (nerdy dude, sexy helicopter pilot, and annoying precocious kid), which I guess doesn’t matter since most of them become Meg Chow anyway. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: RAMPAGE: PRESIDENT DOWN (2016) ½ *

FORMAT:  DVD

“The President of the United States has been assassinated.”  That line is spoken by a newscaster in the movie.  I’m not even sure if the President is even given a name.  I do know the budget was so low they couldn’t even afford to show the assassination.  Instead, we are just told that the mass-shooting antihero Bill (co-writer and co-producer Brendan Fletcher) has done the deed (and killed the Vice President and Secretary of State while he was at it).  Now hiding in a hole in the woods, Bill makes YouTube videos where he rambles on and on incoherently about his political philosophy or lack thereof. 

Yes, Uwe Boll is back on his bollshit with the third and hopefully final installment in the Rampage trilogy. 

When the movie isn’t focusing on Bill in his hole, we follow two bland Feds trying to find the assassin.  These scenes feel like the cheapest cop show you’ve ever seen.  Somehow, the news broadcast scenes look even cheaper.  It’s also unnecessarily padded with scenes from the other two movies in the franchise. 

While Boll doesn’t show the “President Down” portion of the title, the “Rampage” that is glimpsed leaves something to be desired.  The action is mostly limited to the third act when Bill ambushes the Feds who try to bust him in his compound.  While the first two films were by no means good, they at least offered the sight of Bill running around the city and killing people.  (You know… an actual rampage.)  This one can only muster lots of slow-motion shots of SWAT team members flying through the air in the middle of the goddamned woods.  What’s worse is that when the movie SHOULD be over, it continues with shots of Bill’s “disciples” picking up where he left off.  They even execute Britney Spears!  (Off screen, of course.  If Boll won’t show the President being killed, he certainly won’t show Britney getting offed.)  His teary-eyed videotaped message to his son is especially hard to take. 

I’m not sure if this is Boll’s worst, but it’s gotta be damned near the bottom of the Boll barrel. 

Boll retired after this shit show (the stinger at the end features Uwe tipping his cap to the camera and walking off into the sunset), but unfortunately, it turned out to be more of an extended hiatus. 

Oh, and the dialogue?  Absolutely atrocious.  In one scene, a news anchor says, “Sadly, these stories are occurring at an all-too common occurrence.”  Man, that’s some Ed Wood shit right there.  

SEQUEL CATCH-UP: AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER (2022) *** ½

They say every movie is a miracle.  Just to get financed, shot, edited, and released, a film needs some kind of an angel on its shoulder to reach an audience.  Well, every shot of Avatar:  The Way of Water is a miracle.  It’s brimming with invention and eye-popping imagery.  I’m sure director James Cameron and his team had to work overtime to fill the screen with such an array of technical wizardry.  You can almost forgive them for not giving the script at least one more pass. 

The Way of Water finds Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) living among Na’vi and raising a family on the world of Pandora.  Naturally, those pesky humans return to the planet hoping to colonize it, and basically declaring war on the natives in the process.  To make matters worse, the evil Quaritch (Stephen Lang) has been resurrected in Na’vi form in a younger, hungrier version, and he’s looking to avenge his former human self.  He chases Jake and his family from their forest home, and they seek refuge in an isolated fishing village where they must become accustomed to a new underwater way of life.  When Quaritch takes Jake’s kids hostage, the tribe comes together to make their final stand. 

There are plenty of unique touches here.  I loved the fact they brought Sigourney Weaver back and had her play her own teenage alien daughter.  (It makes sense when you see it.)  I dug the robo-crab soldier guys too.  Visually, it’s a knockout, but it’s lacking a little something in the character development department.  Maybe I need to give it a second viewing as the initial watch is a rather overstimulating experience.  Still, at well over three hours, I can’t see that happening anytime soon (especially when I have tons of movies on my shelf that need to be watched this month). 

The underwater scenes look especially breathtaking, even if some of the characters resemble Sea Monkeys on steroids.  Sure, there are some cheesy moments here and there (like when the movie becomes Free Willy 3000).  The goofiest scene is when a space whale has a flashback.  I kid you not.  Not since the dog flashback in The Hills Have Eyes 2 have we seen something this goofy.  I kinda loved it.  

I also thought it was thematically interesting in that both the villain and heroes have family that aren’t wholly of their own species.  The message is that it’s not so much what a family looks like, it’s how they stick together that counts.  While even that’s a little on the nose, it still works. 

Did it need to be over three hours long?  Hell no!  Then again, YOU try telling the King of the World to trim his movie's running time back, especially when he’s been futzing with it for over a decade. 

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: ROLLING VENGEANCE (1987) ***

FORMAT:  DVD

Don Michael Paul stars as a young trucker who goes into the trucking business with his old man (Lawrence Dane).  To put food on the table, they are forced to deliver to a slimeball (Ned Beatty) who owns what’s practically the only bar in town.  He also has a gaggle of hothead redneck sons who regularly cruise around town and torment the townsfolk with impunity.  When they cause Paul’s mother and sisters to die in a car accident, the law refuses to punish the guilty.  After the gang hospitalizes his dad, Paul does what any good son would do:  Turn his truck into a flame-shooting monster truck of vengeance.  Then they rape his girlfriend (Lisa Howard), and he gets REAL mad. 

Rolling Vengeance is kind of like a late ‘80s Canadian version of a late ‘70s Good Ol’ Boy movie mixed with a Cannon revenge picture.  That is to say, I had a pretty good time with it.  It was obviously trading in on the Bigfoot monster truck craze of the time as there are plenty of scenes of monster trucks running over rows of cars.  Bigfoot may be cool and all, but did he have a phallic-shaped drill that impaled evading vehicles?  I don’t think so. 

Paul Kersey had a Wildey.  The Exterminator had a flamethrower.  This guy has a drill-dick Bigfoot. 

Oh, and the sight of Ned Beatty dressed up like a greaser from a ‘50s juvenile delinquent movie is really… something. 

Director Steven H. Stern was mostly known for his TV work (most notably, Mazes and Monsters).  He handles things in a workmanlike manner, and wisely doesn’t oversell the potentially silly premise.  He maybe uses a little bit too much slow motion, but your mileage (no pun intended) may vary.  Paul later went on to direct a slew of DTV sequels and wrote the immortal Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man. 

AKA:  Monster Truck.

SEQUEL CATCH-UP: CREED III (2023) ****

I didn’t get around to seeing Creed III in theaters.  This was the first film in the series without Rocky, and if I’m being honest, I wasn’t completely convinced they could pull it off without Stallone.  I’ll be damned if first-time director Michael B. Jordan didn’t knock it out of the park.  The first two Creed movies built the foundation for the character of Adonis “Donnie” Creed.  This one establishes that he can stand on his own two feet without the baggage of Rocky’s legacy hanging over him. 

This time we find Creed (Jordan) spending more time promoting other fighters than actually boxing in the ring.  When his former friend Damian Anderson (Jonathan Majors) comes back from a long prison stretch, Creed tries to lend him a helping hand out of a sense of misplaced loyalty.  It doesn’t take long for Anderson to show his true colors and reveal he has a sinister agenda all his own. 

Yes, the boxing sequences are great, but I really loved the quiet scenes of Creed’s home life.  The scenes where he has tea parties with his daughter and secretly training her to box are really sweet without being schmaltzy.  Jordan’s domestic scenes with Tessa Thompson have a lot of heart too, and the subplot with Wood Harris as Donnie’s faithful trainer who knows Anderson’s up to no good is strong too.  Majors gives an intimidating performance and makes a good foil for Jordan, who once again carries the movie effortlessly.  I liked too that Anderson was basically a villain from a ‘90s “From Hell” thriller mixed with your typical boxing adversary. 

With Creed III, Jordan announces himself as a director to watch.  He proves he can film training montages and boxing sequences with the best of them.  I especially liked how he slowed some of the fights way down (I guess you could call it “Creed Time”) as he picks out his opponents’ weaknesses and exploits them.  The awesomely over-stylized final match where it becomes so personal between the combatants that the crowd completely disappears, and we see just two guys fighting for their lives was particularly effective.  This sequence alone has me chomping at the bit to see what Jordan will do next as a director.  There are also some nice cameos from the previous Creed movies, which shows that his past opponents are still in his sphere and that they’ve almost… but maybe not quite… buried the hatchet. 

I also liked the new locale, Los Angeles, which helped untether this entry from the previous Philly-set films.  The final fight takes place at Dodger Stadium and there’s a wonderful tweak on the typical Rocky running-up-the-steps motif that I wouldn’t dream of spoiling.  In short, this is a knockout.  The Rocky/Creed series remains undefeated and undisputed.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971) ****

FORMAT:  4K UHD

Wow, I can’t believe I’ve been reviewing movies online for seventeen years and haven’t reviewed one of my all-time favorites, A Clockwork Orange.  Then again, what can you say about it that hasn’t already been said?  I mean, you don’t need me to tell you how great it is.  It’s without a doubt one of the best films ever made, and arguably Stanley Kubrick’s best.  (Although I might give The Shining the edge.)  

Rarely, if ever, do films hold the power to shock five decades after their release, but A Clockwork Orange is one such film.  Even today, the film remains outrageous, ballsy, hilarious, and invigorating.  Kubrick somehow was able to top 2001:  A Space Odyssey with a totally unique and wonderfully warped vision of the future. 

Malcolm McDowell amazing as Alex, the psycho gang leader with a penchant for Beethoven.  He plays it to the hilt with a nearly operatic sense of performance.  What’s so amazing is that he actually makes you care about him, even when he's doing completely despicable things.  When he experiences “the tortures of the damned”, you can’t help but feel for the bugger. 

Even after all these years, the film remains visually stunning.  Kubrick was some kind of mad genius alchemist to blend an absurd sense of pop art futurism with jet-bleak nihilism.  The Ludovico treatment scenes still have a kick them and still have the power to make any jaded movie fan squirm in their seat (especially if you have an aversion to eye trauma like me). 

4K UHD NOTES:

As for 4K transfer, it looks gorgeous.  The primary colors of the title sequence really pop, and the darks run a deep, deep black throughout, providing a nice contrast during the scenes of Alex and his Droogs engaging in a bit of the old ultraviolence.  One small background detail I did pick on this viewing occurred during Alex’s arrest.  If you look closely, you can see a police recruitment flyer in the police station, which foreshadows Georgie and Dim’s appearance as policemen later in the film.  Now I’m not sure whether that was due to the sharpness of the 4K transfer and the crispness of the backgrounds or if it was just because Kubrick’s films are naturally filled with tiny details that lend themselves to rewatches.  Either way, if you were sitting on the fence about picking it up, I’d say it’s definitely worth the upgrade.