******TURBINIUM-RICH SPOILERS!****** It was on a June day in 1990 when my sister and I attended a matinee screening of “Total Recall” on opening weekend at yet another in a long line of multiplexes that no longer exist. As fans of director Paul Verhoeven‘s “Robocop,” we looked forward to the Dutch filmmaker’s latest American opus….
Tag: Arnold Schwarzenegger
“True Lies” (1994) finally comes to 4K/Blu-Ray, but “it’s nothing that you’d call rock hard”…
******SPY SPOILERS!****** I’ve already taken a look at “True Lies” (and its short-lived 2023 Paramount+ reboot series) in a prior column, so I’m going to begin by reposting my earlier synopsis of the story, along with notes I made about the film then (and which I stand by now). However, this column is not going…
“Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” (2003) is a middling sequel with a surprisingly bold ending…
*****LIQUID METAL SPOILERS!***** It’s been 20 years since the release of “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” which came a good dozen years after 1991’s mega-hit “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” T2 would’ve been a perfectly fine place to end the franchise; however, with Arnold Schwarzenegger still in fighting shape at age 56 (he was as…
CBS/Paramount+’s “True Lies” reboot fails to reach critical mass…
*****TRUE SPOILERS!***** “La Totale!” (1991) Written by Simon Michaël, Didier Kaminka and director Claude Zidi, “La Totale!” was a French action-comedy involving a seemingly dull telecommunications employee, named François Voisin (Thierry Lhermitte) who misses a surprise 40th birthday party from his bored wife Hélène (Miou-Miou), while planting a surveillance device during a dangerous mission. François,…
A meta-movie remembered; “Last Action Hero” 30 years later…
*****EXPLOSIVE SPOILERS!***** In the 1980s and 1990s, the action movie had evolved (or devolved) into expensive, overwrought, testosterone-soaked chunks of cinematic product. Producers like Joel Silver, Michael Bay, Jerry Bruckheimer, et al, made their fortunes creating over-the-top police fantasies where rogue cops packing semiautomatic heat set right all the world’s wrongs in a couple of…
Hulu’s “Prey” (2022) is worth pursuing…
*****SAVAGE SPOILERS!***** “Predator” (1987) Couple of things. First, I’m not a huge fan of the “Predator” movies. I enjoyed the first film well enough, and I own it on DVD, but its sequels and offshoots are a textbook case of diminishing returns, with each new entry feeling increasingly repetitive, and too often trotting out the…