Entrapment (1999)

The Long Connery

Despite its use of the impending millennium as a plot point, Entrapment’s filmmaking sensibility feels much older.  The foundations on which it is built – the chemistry of its stars, the emphasis on glamor, its escapist sense of adventure – all feel sadly old-fashioned in the current filmmaking landscape.  Though it certainly brings specific movies to mind, Mission: Impossible and the Pierce Brosnan James Bond entries among them, what Entrapment really echoes is more ineffable: an old-Hollywood mood of light entertainment.

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Kiss the Girls (1997)

Lock Up Your Daughters

From the moment its opening credits start to roll, an oh-so-’90s montage of helpless women accompanied by the voiceover of their captor, Kiss the Girls tells you exactly the kind of movie it is.  Part of its moment’s spate of serial killer thrillers looking to capitalize on the success of The Silence of the Lambs, the movie’s differing story, as well as its preexisting source novel, do (just) enough to prevent it from being a rip-off.    

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Double Team (1997)

Bad as I Wanna Be

If nothing else, one can admire the fact that Double Team represents an era of film when studios weren’t afraid to take big risks.  Today, the idea of spending 30 million dollars on an R-rated movie starring a past-his-prime action star and a famous athlete would never get past the pitching stage, let alone greenlit.  And though Double Team’s gamble didn’t pay off, neither in quality nor box-office receipts; I, for one, am happy that this turkey exists.

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Deep Blue Sea (1999)

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Shark-Witted

Jaws is the best shark movie; this is not up for debate.  What is up for debate is the still-prestigious mantle of the second-best shark movie.  While the oft-cited Open Water and The Shallows are formidable contenders, my pick for the true heir to the post-Jaws throne is 1999’s Deep Blue Sea. Continue reading

The Edge (1997)

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Claws of Death

The Edge, much to my pleasure, is a hard movie to classify.  It’s a survival adventure but not a survival adventure, a killer-animal flick and not a killer-animal flick, a two-hander yet not a two-hander.  It skirts that rare line of mass entertainment and highbrow drama, chiefly thanks to David Mamet’s sly script, which never sacrifices smarts for action – or vice versa. Continue reading

Anaconda (1997)

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Snake Charmer

As an avid fan of killer-animal movies, one thing I’ve learned is that they are shockingly easy to fuck up.  For every Deep Blue Sea there are a dozen Shark Nights, for every Alligator countless Primevals.  But within the pantheon of trashy creature features, my favorite has to be Anaconda.  The movie has never enjoyed the warmest of receptions – its critical response was mixed at best, and it’s often used as a bad-movie punchline – and it’s not hard to see why.  It’s unapologetically cheesy, old-fashioned, and lowbrow.  But I believe that Anaconda’s true intended audience is the die-hard fans of its genre, and for those of us in that group it’s an absolute corker. Continue reading

No Escape (1994)

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Lord of the Sighs

No Escape begins with a text crawl which informs us that in the then-distant future of 2022, all prisons are controlled by corporations.  It’s a promising enough – though hardly original – basis for a movie, but it turns out to have little bearing on No Escape’s actual narrative, which turns out to be more Mad Max-light than the futuristic prison break movie it initially promises. Continue reading

Fright Fest 2017 Review #15 – Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990)

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This film’s subject matter might make it a hard cell for some

Subgenre:  Anthology

Summary:  A boy tells three spooky tales to stall the witch who wants to eat him. Continue reading