The original Expendables movie had a very simple premise, get a bunch of 80s action heroes, throw them into a simple meat-grinder action plot, then sit back and enjoy. It worked rather well. Now the first film contained more than just eighties action stars as it included the likes of Terry Crews and Randy Couture but they…
Author: Mike Brooks
Film grad who spends most his time trying to catch up on his "To Watch" pile of movies.
Bugsy Malone (1976) – Review
Everyone loves gangster films, James Cagney, Paul Muni, and Humphrey Bogart lit up the silver screen for years portraying some of the toughest mugs in cinema, but director Alan Parker took a decidedly different angle with Bugsy Malone, the entire cast consists of children averaging twelve years of age and also it’s a musical, and…
Time Travel and The Terminator Movies
Time travel in The Terminator films isn’t a clever scientific playground so much as a brutal narrative trap, where the past and future are locked in a relentless feedback loop. The series turns the idea of changing history into a grim paradox, suggesting that every attempt to escape fate may be the very thing that…
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) – Review
And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon and his name was Michael Bay. Okay, maybe I’m being a bit hyperbolic here, Michael Bay is not the Anti-Christ, but he did cause Armageddon. It’s easy to take cheap shots…
Phantom of the Paradise (1974) – Review
Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise is a hard movie to classify, it’s not really a musical but it is chock full of music, it’s not a straight horror film because who the actual monster turns out to be is not who you’d expect and it’s darkly satiric, but what Phantom of the Paradise is…