Rob Roy (1995)
DIRECTOR: Michael Caton-Jones
CAST:
Liam Neeson, Jessica Lange, Tim Roth, John Hurt, Brian Cox, Eric Stoltz, Brian McCardie, Andrew Keir
REVIEW:
There actually was a Robert Roy MacGregor, a Scottish cattleman whose battles against wealthy landowners made him a folk hero in 1700s Scotland, but the film by Michael Caton-Jones is only inspired by MacGregor’s story, and ultimately how much or little of it is based on fact is irrelevant to one’s enjoyment of the movie. Continue reading
The Quick and the Dead (1995)
DIRECTOR: Sam Raimi
CAST: Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lance Henriksen, Keith David
REVIEW:
The Quick and the Dead is Sam Raimi switching gears from campy horror movie (his Evil Dead movies) to campy Western. To this end, Raimi proves he’s intimately familiar with Western tropes and cliches which he both gleefully satirizes and pays affectionate homage to. The result is a movie that’s style over substance, often feeling like little more than a vehicle using a flimsy narrative skeleton to move from one gunfight to the next, but it’s still often a lot of campy fun until never really seeming to amount to very much and eventually running out of gas with an underwhelming conclusion.
Continue readingTrue Lies (1994)
DIRECTOR: James Cameron
CAST: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold, Bill Paxton, Art Malik, Tia Carrere, Grant Heslov, Charlton Heston
REVIEW:
True Lies, the third collaboration between James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger, continues to showcase Cameron as a skillful filmmaker, but this time he’s done something a little different, blending grandiose action with comedy without feeling tonally schizophrenic. The injection of a high comedy quotient means True Lies‘ over-the-top action sequences don’t reach the edge-of-your seat tension of some in both Terminator installments, but it’s still a rollicking good time that both serves up plenty of action and makes us laugh.
Continue readingJurassic Park (1993)
DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg
CAST: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Ariana Richards, Joseph Mazzello, Martin Ferrero, Bob Peck, Wayne Knight, Samuel L. Jackson
REVIEW:
Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, adapted from the book by Michael Crichton, is a tremendous special effects landmark, throwing up dinosaurs onscreen that are so realistic that at times it’s hard to believe they’re special effects creations. In fact, so impressive is the film on a technical level that it’s easy to forgive the serviceable but unspectacular narrative and thinly-drawn characters. At the bottom line, the story is just a vehicle to string dinosaur scenes together, and does an effective job of serving its purpose. Jurassic Park succeeds because it promises dinosaurs, and it delivers dinosaurs beyond anything ever before seen onscreen.
Continue readingThe Last of the Mohicans (1992)
DIRECTOR: Michael Mann
CAST:
Daniel Day-Lewis, Madeleine Stowe, Russell Means, Wes Studi, Eric Schweig, Jodhi May, Steven Waddington, Maurice Roëves, Patrice Chéreau
REVIEW:
Based loosely on James Fenimore Cooper’s novel, Michael Mann’s (Manhunter, Heat, Public Enemies) The Last of the Mohicans is a sumptuous and stirring adventure, an enthralling viewing experience that should appeal to anyone who enjoys Braveheart or Rob Roy. By every conceivable standard, The Last of the Mohicans is in the same league, and it’s a grand, passionate, rousing adventure on its own merits. Continue reading
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
DIRECTOR: Nicholas Meyer
CAST:
William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, Kim Cattrall, Christopher Plummer, David Warner, Iman, Kurtwood Smith, Rene Auberjonois
REVIEW:
WARNING: This review discusses elements of the film’s plot
The end of an era came in 1991, when Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country hit theaters, featuring the adventures of the Enterprise with her original crew for the last time. Continue reading
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg
CAST:
Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Allison Doody, Denholm Elliott, John Rhys-Davies, Julian Glover, Michael Byrne, River Phoenix
REVIEW:
After the general disappointment over Temple of Doom —and the film’s occasional weirdness — Last Crusade, as if deciding to play it safe, takes us back into familiar territory: Indy revisits the deserts of the Middle East in search of an ancient legendary religious artifact, the Nazis are once again the bad guys, Denholm Elliott’s Marcus Brody and John Rhys-Davies’ Sallah return, and the most exciting and extended action sequence is a duel between Indy and the Nazis in the desert. To help avoid making Last Crusade seem like too much of a retread of Raiders of the Lost Ark , we have Sean Connery thrown into the mix as Indy’s never-before-seen father. To this end, while it’s neither as original nor as fresh as Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Last Crusade is a marked improvement over Temple of Doom with a higher energy level, and the father-son relationship opens the door to some fresh material that adds a welcome spark.
Masters of the Universe (1987)
DIRECTOR: Gary Goddard
CAST: Dolph Lundgren, Frank Langella, Courteney Cox, Meg Foster, Billy Barty, James Tolkan, Robert Duncan McNeill, Jon Cypher, Chelsea Field, Christina Pickles
REVIEW:
It’s possible that a successful movie adaptation could have been wrung out of the Mattel toy line and accompanying comic books and animated movies telling the fantasy adventure tales of the Conan-esque He-Man and his merry band, but it hasn’t been this movie. Its studio Cannon Group touted it as “the Star Wars of the eighties”, a rather hilarious overstatement (and also ill-fitting, considering there were two actual Star Wars movies in the eighties), but there is a (small) grain of truth in that statement, as this wannabe franchise owes, in thinly-veiled fashion, as much or more to being a cheap Star Wars knock-off as it does to its own source material.
Continue readingAliens (1986)
DIRECTOR: James Cameron
CAST:
Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein, William Hope, Mark Rolston, Al Matthews
REVIEW:
Aliens, along with James Cameron’s sci-fi hit five years later, 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day , is both among the best sci-fi action thrillers ever made, and a rare example of a sequel surpassing the original. Continue reading
Silverado (1985)
DIRECTOR: Lawrence Kasdan
CAST: Scott Glenn, Kevin Kline, Danny Glover, Kevin Costner, Brian Dennehy, Linda Hunt, Jeff Goldblum, Rosanna Arquette, John Cleese, Ray Baker, Lynn Whitfield, Jeff Fahey, James Gammon
REVIEW:
Silverado is director and co-writer Lawrence Kasdan’s homage to the classic Western, doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel—-it’s not a “revisionist Western”—-but serves up a high-spirited, joyous adventure clearly made with love for a genre that’s an increasingly hard sell these days. If you’re not a fan of the Western genre, it’s unlikely to appeal to you, but those who are may find much to appreciate.
Continue reading