There are sufficient amounts of imagination and energy here to fuel a brisk improvisational sketch. But the material -- broad indictments of American hero worship, car cultism, and bloodthirst, plus broad impressions of TV personalities -- is stretched to cover a feature-length, coast-to-coast car race (the territory crossed all looks …
Garishly dark comedy, if that's imaginable, set in the cutthroat world of children's television. KidNet's star attraction, Rainbow Randolph, is exposed as a "degenerate scumbag," forcing the network to replace him with foursquare Smoochy the Rhino: "He's a bottle of pancake syrup with legs." Danny DeVito directs him to death, …
Comedy-thriller in the Sleuth mold, similar to the aforesaid down to having a writer of thrillers as its devious protagonist, and to having its origins undisguisably on the stage. It would be difficult to foresee every tricksy plot twist, and yet it would be difficult to be truly surprised by …
The title might raise hopes that the director of the underrated Culpepper Cattle Company had returned to the Western genre. Any such hopes would quickly be dashed, although a certain amount of Western flavor creeps in through the Frontier Town tourist trap, the late show on the motel TV, and …
Three years after the death of Yam, Yak still relentlessly hunts the Black Spirit that took his sister’s life. Despite his family’s efforts to convince him to stop seeking revenge on the Black Spirit, Yak remains stubborn, determined to track it down, fearing that the ghost will return to harm …
A nightmare of New York City streets swarmed over by hopped-up hooligans who flit and slither like rejects from a West Side Story audition. In effect, this Michael Winner exercise picks up from the baleful curtain line of his previous movie, Stone Killer: "You've got five more minutes, Christians!" Winner …
For those looking to score a front row seat in a shooting gallery comes a remake of the unthinkable. The original vigilante fable was directed by rape connoisseur Michael Winner and if there’s one good thing to be said for this otherwise undesired remake, it’s director Eli Roth’s decision to …
The Roman numeral of the prior sequel has been dropped in preference for Arabic, and if the reason were simple forgetfulness it would not be surprising. Also forgotten, or unmentioned, is the fact that the hero was ever anything so mundane as an architect. He has settled instead into the …
Bronson, p.o.'d this time because his ladyfriend's daughter o.d.'d on coke, is given a handy membership list of the two major drug gangs in L.A. From there, it's all business and no fun. He has a different director from that of his first three WISHES -- J. Lee Thompson instead …
Charles Bronson continues to run in bad luck. Now resettled in Los Angeles (perhaps he would have done better to select Minot, North Dakota), he has his pocket picked, his home invaded, his housekeeper gang-raped and murdered, and his daughter, still in shock from her earlier mugger encounter, abducted, raped, …
A low-tech, low-budget, low-profile Charlie's Angels, with an uncloseted lesbian agenda. The top student at an all-girl spy school is writing her thesis on the elusive criminal mastermind, Lucy Diamond, when she gets to meet her subject face to face: "You're so not what I expected." The feeling is reciprocated: …
A 2007 Israeli film inspired this fretful thriller about Israeli agents sent to Cold War East Berlin to abduct a notorious Nazi (acted with evil charisma by Jesper Christensen). Two acting teams play the flawed heroes (Sam Worthington, Marton Csokas, Jessica Chastain when young; Tom Wilkinson, Helen Mirren, Ciarán Hinds …