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The Meg (2018)
The Meg (2018)
2018 | Action, Horror, Sci-Fi
Fins ain’t what they used to be.
OK, OK, so I must be about the last person in the country – at least, those who want to see this at the cinema – who actually has! Maybe its something about the summer slipping into autumn that made me crave for one last summer blockbuster hoorah! In any case, I feel like a bit of a traitor, since I was very scathing about this film’s trailer when it came out. But – do you know – as a brainless piece of popcorn entertainment, I quite enjoyed it!

Jason Statham – the unthinking man’s Dwayne Johnson – plays our hero Jonas Taylor. (Jonas? Surely some sly joke?). Jonas is drinking his life away in Thailand after being traumatised by an underwater rescue mission in which he was 90% successful. (Yeah, I know. Bloody perfectionists. Hate ’em). But he is needed again, since his cute ex-wife Lori (Jessica McNamee) is stuck at the bottom of the sea being terrorised by a terrifying creature: no, not Spongebob Square Pants… the titular prehistoric shark.

Lori is working at an undersea research station – Mana One – off the coast of China, funded by the annoyingly brash billionaire Morris (Rainn Wilson, from “The Office”), who you just HOPE HOPE HOPE will get munched at some point!

Running the station (in the most shameless Hollywood/Chinese market crossover since “The Great Wall“) is Zhang (Winston Chao) assisted by his cute daughter Suyin (played by the gloriously named and very talented Bingbing Li) and his even cuter granddaughter Meiying (Sophia Cai). The race is on to use their brains and Taylor’s brawn to stop the monster from reaching the seaside resort of Sanya Bay for lunch.

The action is, of course, absurd with so many near misses for Jonas from gnashing teeth that he could be The Meg’s registered dentist. There is a really nice dynamic though built up between Jonas, his potential cross-cultural love interest Suyin and young Meiying. Suyin is a classic TimesUp heroine for 2018, with an assertive f***-you attitude and not remotely giving an inch to Statham’s hero.

But it’s young Sophia as Meying who really steals lines and steals hearts with a truly charming performance, and would get my ‘man of the match’ were it not for…

…research assistant Jaxx (Australian model, Ruby Rose). She has an absolutely extraordinary look in this film. Chiselled and tattooed, she literally looks like she has stepped out of a Final Fantasy video game… and acts well too: the complete package.

As referenced above, the Hollywood/Chinese crossover is quite striking in this film, with the Chinese beach location looking like Amity Island on crack! (Cue the overweight Chinese kid as the Jaws “Alex” replacement… who knew China had a child obesity issue too… and that they also have ‘Zoom’ ice lollies!) Unusually for a mainstream Western film, a significant number of lines in the film are in Chinese with English subtitles.

In the league table of shark movies, it is far nearer to “Deep Blue Sea” than it is to “Jaws”, the reigning league champion, and all are far in excess of the ridiculous “Sharknado”. But compared to “Deep Blue Sea”, and even compared to “Jaws” – now, astonishingly, 43 years old! – it’s a curiously bloodless concoction, presumably to guarantee it’s 12A certificate. I have seen far bloodier and more violent 12A’s, and if anything I think director Jon Turteltaub (“National Treasure”) rather overdid the sanitisation.

It’s not going to win many gongs at the Oscars, but it is a slice of movie fun nonetheless.
  
Humanoids from the Deep (1980)
Humanoids from the Deep (1980)
1980 | Horror, Sci-Fi
6
5.7 (6 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Roger Corman-produced mash-up of Jaws and Creature from the Black Lagoon aims for maximum schlock and succeeds; ends up with a vague resemblance to The Shadow Over Innsmouth which it really doesn't deserve. A chemical accident produces a race of fish-men in cheap-ass monster suits who have the hots for anything in a bikini. The disreputable godfather of any number of dodgy Sci-Fi channel movies, and the kind of thing Hannibal used to appear in between episodes of The A-Team.

The odd thing is that credited director Peeters seems to have been trying to make a relatively serious movie; much of the more explicit fem jeop stuff was edited in by Corman having been filmed separately by Jimmy Murakami. The rather primitive production values and slightly stodgy plot means this would never have been a particularly great film, but the brazen tackiness of the fish-want-girls plotline makes it feel that bit more trashy. Doug McClure, to his credit, looks vaguely embarrassed to be participating. These days, much of it leaves an unpleasant aftertaste; certainly less enjoyable than it sounds.
  
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Matthew Krueger (10051 KP) rated Deep Blue Sea (1999) in Movies

Feb 20, 2020 (Updated Feb 20, 2020)  
Deep Blue Sea (1999)
Deep Blue Sea (1999)
1999 | Action, Drama, Horror
Sharks On A Plane
Deep Blue Sea- think of "Jaws", meets "Jurassic Park". What a great cast that is mostly wasted expect for Samuel L. Jackson he is the best in this film. Him and the shark that eats him, oh did i spoil it, its 11 years old at this point. 11 years since it came out in 1999. Thomas Jane, LL Cool J and Stellan Skarsgård are good actors just i think their were wasted in this film. Samuel L. Jackson was the best part of this film, he kills it by a shark.

The Plot: On an island research facility, Dr. Susan McAlester (Saffron Burrows) is harvesting the brain tissue of DNA-altered sharks as a possible cure for Alzheimer's disease. When the facility's backers send an executive (Samuel L. Jackson) to investigate the experiments, a routine procedure goes awry and a shark starts attacking the researchers. Now, with sharks outnumbering their human captors, McAlester and her team must figure out a way to stop them from escaping to the ocean and breeding.

Dont forger the main theme song "Deepest Bluest" by LL Cool J and you got a film.
  
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
1959 | Classics, Drama, Mystery
6.3 (3 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"My number two movie is Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of Murder starring Jimmy Stewart — one of my favorite James Stewart performances. He’s the country lawyer, so all those folksy tricks that Jimmy Stewart uses just really come into play here– ’cause he’s also so bright, you know? He’s the brilliant, folksy country lawyer. And Lee Remick is in it, in the flower of her youth. Bra-less and in Ray-Bans — you know, who doesn’t want [to see] that? And gosh, Ben Gazzara in a really neurotic, strange performance. I think it’s the screen debut of George C. Scott as the young lawyer from Lansing, MI, who takes on this case; and he’s — it’s just brilliant courtroom stuff. Murray Hamilton — who plays the mayor in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws — he’s the bartender, and he’s wonderful; it’s a great turn. And the music: Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, so it’s a great jazz score. The Jimmy Stewart character tinkles on the ivories and he plays a little bit of jazz sometimes as a kind of hobby, so that justifies the score. But that’s a great film — black and white, beautifully shot, underrated. Almost a perfect film."

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M. Night Shyamalan recommended Jaws (1975) in Movies (curated)

 
Jaws (1975)
Jaws (1975)
1975 | Thriller

"Jaws is the next poster on my wall, I’m staring at it right now. You are about to be introduced to, in my opinion, the greatest craftsman storyteller the cinema has ever seen and with a vehicle that had literally the perfect balance — and he brought that. It was [Steven Spielberg’s] balance of humor and artistry and the genre. It was the culminating of that balance. I screened that movie for my crew — I forgot which movie, two or three movies ago, and it’s just incredible to watch the balancing act of the humor. Roy Schieder’s trying to understand about what’s going on in the town about the shark and there’s this lady complaining to him about the kids that are karate chopping the fence. It’s genius because life moves on, and this is like real life. It’s the collision of a perfect story from the book with great sensibilities for entertainment and humor. Spielberg gets the precision of the craft and thinking about the shot with the me lieu of the time, and does in that docu-1970s style, which is my favorite time period in cinema ever."

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The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
1962 | Classics, Drama, Thriller

"In high school, I worked at The Video Room in Oakland, California. It had the largest selection of laser discs in the Bay Area. One guy owned all of them. I was smugly aware that most people were watching movies entirely wrong, and would tell them so. I’d explain aspect ratios and assure my friends they’ve never even really seen Jaws until they’d seen it at my house on the Pioneer, hooked up to my dad’s concert amplifier and massive stadium speakers, my own rig. I watched more movies during that time than I did in film school. The Manchurian Candidate was one of them, and it was just [on a] different level. I went in thinking it would be a masterfully directed political conspiracy thriller, which it was, but was also completely bananas. I couldn’t believe some of the choices made. That film gave me permission to get a little bit weird in my storytelling. Once you’ve seen an old lady execute a Korean POW while Frank Sinatra looks on in complacency, you know you can go to crazytown and the audience will stay with you. It’s not easy, but it’s possible."

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The Grudge (2004)
The Grudge (2004)
2004 | Drama, Horror, Mystery
Takes too long to finally get on its feet, though like something such as 𝘍𝘶𝘯𝘯𝘺 𝘎𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘴 I'd argue that retaining the same director as the original film was ultimately the right move here. Because even though this is nothing more than a grimy slideshow of hilariously over-creepy imagery, it is also very successful at that (very pleased with the amount of jaws comically ripped off in this). The rest of it is practically a 60-75% finished story that suffices well enough but that you also *really* want to know more about (i.e. the entire Bill Pullman arc) - but that's because it takes hearty asides to have 5+ minute scenes of people slowly walking through haunting apartment complexes a la 𝘍𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘋𝘰𝘵𝘊𝘰𝘮, which I'm often a sucker for when it's done well - and it is done so here. I also credit this for really exacerbating that mid-2000s dingy slime-green film that thickly coated the sizeable majority of horror films from this era that I also cop to digging (which, despite its metric fuckton of other flaws, at least Rings tried to bring back). Silly and spooky, decently pleased with it.