August Movies - Week 2

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

We have a dog now... his name is Sushi and he's a Supermutt of everything (like 1/4 Australian cattle dog, 1/4 Pit Bull Terrier, 1/4 Husky, 10% Coonhound, 10% Bulldog & the rest literally says Supermutt on his DNA research). We're still going through the basic "getting him used to things" part of the relationship... but he's sweet & nice... and the cats are starting to come out to see him when they're on the same floor. BUT that's now why you're here right...

August 5 – The Ultimate Weapon (1998)
 
So over the weekend, our internet provider basically shut our city down unannounced… and basically said it’s for a reason we can’t go into & we have no idea how long it’ll take (ended up being 48 hours). Thank goodness we have physical media & we went into this Action Movie Pack that we had talked about with a few Brian Bosworth movies before… but we figured we’d just watch the rest of them from the pack. First up, Hulk Hogan is a mercenary who suddenly grows a conscience & fights a bunch of Russians… oh & he has a long lost stripper daughter who develops feelings for his mercenary buddy… and yeah, hijinx ensue. It’s as ridiculous as you would expect… but hey, there’s stunts & explosions!
 
Rating – 7/10 – I’ve seen a lot worse…
 
August 6 – The Collectors (1999)
 
There was a time in the 90s when everybody wanted to be Quentin Tarantino & make the next Pulp Fiction… and this is an attempt at that, but instead of John Travolta & Sam Jackson as the quirky hitmen… you have Casper Van Dien of Starship Troopers & basketball player Rick Fox. Needless to say, the drop in performance was pretty substantial. So yeah, two hitmen are in New York being pursued by the New Orleans Police Department as they go around hitting marks… until hijinx ensue. Oddly enough, this is from the director of both “Ipcress File”, “Iron Eagle” AND “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace” (Sidney J. Furie) but… it’s just a weirdly paced, nonsensical movie where I kept expecting the two leads to just drop the pretenses and kiss. Not sure why… and there’s also weird talk about the N-word in the middle for a scene and… yeah, it’s a weird one.
 
Rating – 5/10 – This whole action pack probably deserves a month or two on the podcast…
 
August 7 – High Voltage (1998)
 
Besides the Boz movies I mentioned a few months ago, if there’s a gem in this pack, I’ve got to go with this movie. It’s about a crew led by Antonio Sabato Jr. (including Amy Smart & Lochlyn Munro as well as the writer Mike Mains) who rob a bank… but then find out that it’s ran by the Vietnamese gang in Chinatown (?) and of course… hijinx ensue. Now… the bank teller who falls in love with ASJ & vice versa… is Shannon Lee, the daughter of Bruce Lee… and honestly, she wasn’t that bad in the role… even if it’s a pretty damn ridiculous role… and you get some decent action (though 90’s slo-mo diving abounds) and some great cameos from the likes of ANTONIO SABATO SR, Donald Gibb & William Zabka… I’d say check it out if you like 90s action stuff.
 
Rating – 9/10 – I’d watch it again…
 
August 8 – Coyote Run (1996)
 
Alright guys, let’s slow it down a bit… a small town deputy (Michael Pare) goes to some town in the Midwest where a kingpin (Peter Greene from cameos in “Usual Suspects” & “Pulp Fiction”) runs things… and he’s going through & trying to avenge… something. It’s not really delved into until the end… and then you just scratch your head a bit when it all plays out. This whole movie felt like it was originally a Western or something… but then to save on money they just set it during modern day… but didn’t change anything else. The third act of the movie is a cavalcade of WTF with regards to shootouts, plane flights, motivations, all kinds of stuff… but again, I’ve seen worse.
 
Rating – 5/10 – It’s just not that gripping… and the ending lost me a bit.
 
August 9 – Musketeers Forever (1998)
 
Okay, this one is about a group of aged ex-secret service guys (led by Lee Majors) who open a “jazz” club on a Native “American” reservation in “Las Vegas” (it’s actually just a f**king bar that mostly plays 90s music in the vein of Four Non-Blondes in MONTREAL because there’s snow on the f**king ground the entire movie… which is NEVER Las Vegas for more than an hour) called the Musketeer Club… and their old buddy’s son (Michael Dudikoff) comes to join them… and hijinx ensue when the local boss (played by Martin Neufeld who I know as that irritating worst cop ever in Highlander III) tries to shut them down… and yeah… it’s not great. There’s definitely some fun parts that in good hands could be a Steven Seagal vehicle around this time but… yeah, it was just bad.
 
Rating – 5/10 – Again a few nice things & I’m sure the budget was a year’s wages to you or me… but yeah…
 
August 10 – In Too Deep (1999)
 
After finishing off one action pack, we went to the next one… and I wanted to start with something that I’d seen before & remembered really liking… that’s right, the movie where an undercover cop (Omar Epps) may be getting too deep into the streets of Cincinnati when he tries to take down the drug kingpin GOD (LL Cool J). Now, what I remembered about this movie… was thinking that LL Cool J’s performance was really good (it is) and that as with most gangster / hood movies, the female characters always get in the way because otherwise it’d just be a bro-mance with business as usual (it does) but on rewatch… … … I still love this movie. Is it the greatest story? Of course not… it’s a hood movie though… and I love the genre. Throw in Stanley Tucci as the chief of the undercover unit, some Nia Long & a few out-of-nowhere torture scenes and BAM!!!
 
Rating – 10/10 – Hood classic… though not quite 10+ because the ending seems to just… happen… conveniently. Another trait of the genre.
 
August 11 – Shakedown (1988)
 
You may not know this about me… but I love 80’s & 90’s action movies… especially with odd pairings both in actors portrayal & archetypes… and if you want a movie where a lawyer (Peter Weller fresh off Robocop) and a… I guess, like a homeless detective (Sam Elliott fresh from Road House) pair up help a crack dealer who’s wrongly imprisoned for killing a cop (though he admits about a dozen times to selling crack all the time) from some corrupt Manhattan cops in a James Glickenhaus directed film (like “The Exterminator”, “The Soldier”, Jackie Chan’s “The Protector” & “McBain”) then you are in for a treat. I’ll admit… the first two acts are a little “get on with it” where it focuses mostly on Peter Weller banging his ex-fiancee & new superrich fiancée with no intentions of breaking it off until the third act when… absolute craziness ensues with the way he breaks off the relationship, how he obtains a key piece of evidence, the final courtroom scene & then one of the most ridiculously amazing action scenes in movie history (involving an airplane and various NYC landmarks… hint hint). This movie is a great bad movie.
 
Rating – 10/10 – Watch it if you like action movies!

Alright, back to cleaning up dog poop... have a great weekend everybody!!!

​Steve