Insipid take on an Ellison classic. MEMO FROM PURGATORY is a slice-of-life tale (from the 1961 Harlan Ellison novel Memos From Purgatory) about running with a savage Brooklyn street gang. Memos was written after Ellison actually infiltrated a gang called The Barons when he was 19 – for the research! – adopting the alias Phil Beldone, surviving their initiation, taking … Read More
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT
People Shooting Other People from Offscreen. (ALTERNATE TITLE: Adventures Of The World’s Most Expensive Stuntman.) Tom Cruise skydives. Tom Cruise fights in a toilet. Tom Cruise rides a motorbike through Paris. Tom Cruise jumps across rooftops. Tom Cruise climbs a rope to a flying helicopter. Tom Cruise flies a helicopter while fighting. Tom Cruise dangles from a cliff… Y’know, I … Read More
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE
Cruisin’ for a Contusion. Tom Cruise is espionage agent Ethan Hunt, in the big screen reboot of the 1966 television series, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, who has to go rogue against his own agency to weed out a mole. But the agency thinks it’s him! (I don’t blame them – with that insufferable smirk and that mole-ish snout of his.) Nonetheless, man-toy … Read More
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION
Mission TomCruise-able. You know what the real Mission: Impossible is? Trying to get insurance for Tom Cruise. Oh, there is eventually a signature in blood on the dotted line, or this film would not be greenlit, but can any layman truly speculate what devil’s percentage of the box office these insurance companies are demanding in return – to insure a … Read More
SUDDEN IMPACT
Dirty Sondra. A vigilante tracks a group of rapists, one by one mercilessly killing them in cold blood. But this time, it’s not “Dirty” Harry Callahan doing the killing – it’s his chick! Sondra Locke (Clint Eastwood’s real life living-in-sin partner) gets Dirty in SUDDEN IMPACT, as a rape victim on a vendetta against her rapists, who were not convicted … Read More
THE BEGUILED
…like a woman scorned. And another… and another… and another… Estrogen overload! Clint Eastwood fights for his life behind enemy lines! Yes, he’s trapped in a school full of women! BEGUILED finds wounded Union soldier John McBurney (Eastwood) seeking refuge at a Confederate home for girls, led by spinster Martha (Geraldine Page), who, against her better judgment, tends to his … Read More
KELLY’S HEROES
From Zeroes to Heroes. World War II. A small troop of American soldiers surrounds the German-occupied French village of Claremont, closing in slowly over the rooftops and through the ruins. Thirty miles behind enemy lines, isolated from their own army, one Sherman tank their only armored support against three superior German Tiger tanks, they’re not here to fight a battle. … Read More