June Movies - Week 3

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

Another busy week... but great Farmers Market & we have family flying in for next weekend so... yeah!!! Here are some movies...

June 13 – Simon Sez (1999)
 
Okay… I have a soft spot for the utter stupidity that is the JCVD-Dennis Rodman classic “Double Team” and this… is the other Dennis Rodman movie made shortly after. He plays an Interpol agent who gets sucked into a silly plot involving arms dealers, a girl who doesn’t know that she’s kidnapped, cybermonks, plenty of mumbling, unintellible accents, horribly shot action scenes & the comedic stylings of Dane Cook. Does this movie work out?
 
Rating – 3/10 – This movie was genuinely rough to watch… and somehow even worse than I remember… coming soon to the podcast
 
June 15 – Eraser (1996)
 
The last time we watched this movie was about 8 years ago for Episode #24 of our podcast (Everything I Learned From Movies… obviously), but yes it’s about a man (if you can call Arnold Schwarzenegger merely a man) who specializes in witness protection (at a superhero level) but then he’s assigned to a woman (Miss America & Playboy playmate Vanessa Williams) who’s blowing the whistle on a weapons company that she works for… and hijinx ensue when three Jameses show up that they may not be able to trust (Caan, Coburn & Cromwell in a cameo). This movie is… popcorn action flick. The plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The CGI for the alligators is laughable (though the practical stuff isn’t horrible) but yeah… it’s Arnold shooting dudes & being unstoppable.
 
Rating – 8/10 – Dumb fun action… and that’s what I like sometimes…
 
June 17 – Monkey Man (2024)
 
Yes, I finally watched the directorial debut of Dev Patel where he’s basically a man on a vengeance spree through India! That’s… basically the plot of the movie. An evil man working for an evil religious figure… killed this Monkey Man’s mother when he was a child… so now 20 years later during an election where evil may prevail, he’s ready to exact his revenge. The movie is gritty, bloody, violent… and yet somehow very interesting, even when the character’s choices seem a little different from the viewer’s own… and it’s pretty intense for most of the movie… though probably not quite enough for a full two hour movie.
 
Rating – 9/10 – I really enjoyed it… but it’s definitely not for everybody
 
June 19 – Day of the Panther (1988)
 
Friend of the podcast Brian Trenchard-Smith has directed over 60 projects during his illustrious career (along with countless other TV shows, trailers, commercials, etc.) and about a year ago, Vinegar Syndrome had a special going on this dual pack of this movie… and its simultaneously shot sequel “Strike of the Panther” about a secret agent martial arts master (or something like that) who goes from Hong Kong to Perth to find the man who killed his partner (blond chick). However, oddly enough, the movie doesn’t really go the vengeance route… and it becomes more about getting drugs off the streets of Perth… and then… well, spoilers… they let the bad guys go at the end of the movie so that there’s a sequel? Ballsy! Silly, but ballsy!
 
Rating – ???/10 – Find out what we rated it on Everything I Learned from Movies on ALL the major podcatchers…

Happy Juneteenth!!!