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Showing posts with label Sylvester Stallone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sylvester Stallone. Show all posts

Saturday, March 13, 2021

The Words Behind the Pictures

I don't know exactly how Letterboxd defines a writing credit for the purposes of their database, but I suspect it's broader than just screenplays, judging by some of the names on my list of most-seen films written by these people. 

Having seen all the films that Charlie Chaplin has directed, I suppose it's no surprise that he's also my most-seen writer, too, given the amount of control and involvement Chaplin had in his films. 

The next three names in the list--Maltese, Foster, and Pierce--all wrote a bunch of Looney Tunes shorts. 

Ben Hecht, next on the list, has a fascinating filmography, writing superb films like Notorious, Spellbound, Scarface, Design for Living, Stagecoach, The Thing, and Strangers on a Train, but also z-grade stuff like Queen of Outer Space, the 1967 version of Casino Royale, and Switching Channels. 

Felix Adler wrote Three Stooges shorts. 

Ian Fleming makes the list thanks to James Bond and Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. 

David Lynch, of course, writes or co-writes most of the material he directs.

Clyde Bruckman is another writer of Three Stooges shorts, but also features from comedy greats such as Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. 

Woody Allen, like Chaplin and Lynch, writes much of his own material. 

Stephen King makes the list, I suspect, because of "story by..." credits for the many adaptations of his novels and short stories. 

Laurent Bouzereau produces short documentary "making-of" subjects that appear as special features on many of my discs. 

Orson Welles, again, is another film polymath. 

George Lucas makes the list thanks to Star Wars, Indiana Jones, American Graffiti, etc. 

Sylvester Stallone, I suspect, is here thanks to the Rocky and Rambo franchises. 

Elwood Ullman is another Three Stooges writer. What a fun job that would have been...

Richard Matheson is a well-regarded prose fantasist, SF author, and contributor of teleplays to The Twilight Zone, among other shows. Here for adaptations, much like King, I suspect. 

Ethan Coen is of course one-half of the famous Coen Brothers writing-directing team.

And finally, David Cronenberg is another director who writes much of his own material. 


 

Saturday, February 27, 2021

Ruminations on Rambo: Last Blood

There is so much blood in Rambo: Last Blood (Adrian Grunberg, 2019). Viewers will also enjoy plentiful entrails and brains splattered all over the screen in an orgy of violence unseen since . . . well, Rambo (Sylvester Stallone, 2008). This time around, Rambo lives on an isolated farm somewhere close to Mexico. He resides with a kindly matronly woman and college-aged Carmen, who Rambo has taken under his wing after her real father abandoned her. 

Alas, Carmen goes to Mexico, depicted as a seething pit of drug dealers, murderers, rapists, and human traffickers, to find her biological father. Find him she does, and in a tragically hilarious scene, she asks him why he abandoned his family. Bio-dad uses just a few words to say, essentially, "I didn't care about either one of you, so I left. You can go now." And then he slams the door in her face. Distraught, Carmen goes out for a drink only to be sold into prostitution. 

And so begins the real plot, such as it is - Rambo's rescue mission. Surprisingly, though Rambo does rescue Carmen by killing a whole bunch of goons with nothing but a claw hammer, she doesn't survive the ordeal (why she dies after being rescued is left somewhat ambiguous). So Rambo holes up at his ranch, knowing the human traffickers are going to come after him. He sets up a bunch of comical booby traps straight out of Home Alone, and pretty much murders 40 or 50 people. He sets some on fire, pokes a spike into one's skull, watches other fall into pit traps (spikes exit their unfortunate bodies in some very uncomfortable places), twice blows a head in half, etc. etc. 

If you're in the mood for amazingly silly, over-the-top violence and you're willing to overlook or ignore the fundamentally xenophobic premise, then, well, the blood lasts and lasts until you might feel as though there's none left to spill.

I really feel like Sylvester Stallone's career is building to a Rambo/Rocky team-up movie. He'll play both parts and get another Oscar nomination.

Rocky/Rambo: Blood, Sweat, & Fears

Saturday, July 13, 2019

Stallone-a-Thon

Over the course of the last few days, I have screened twelve films starring Sylvester Stallone: Escape Plan 2: Hades, all eight Rocky/Creed films, and today, Over the Top, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, and The Expendables 3. Over the Top is hot garbage that will convince you civilization is unworthy of salvation. Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot hurts the brain, but somehow manages to be (somewhat insufferably) endearing. The Expendables 3 is just sad, because it features a great cast of action stars of the past forced into a by-the-numbers revenge story. I can't help but feel The Expendables films would have worked far better back in the 1980s.

This experiment is not recommended. 

Sunday, July 07, 2019

A Rocky Weekend

This weekend, I screened the Rocky films from Rocky to Rocky Balboa. My quick impressions:

Rocky: Just as good as I remember.
Rocky II: Better than I expected.
Rocky III: Better than I remember.
Rocky IV: As bad as I remember.
Rocky V: Not quite as disappointing as I expected.
Rocky Balboa: Far better than I expected.

Were I to rank these, I'd say Rocky, Rocky Balboa, Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky V, Rocky IV (which is to Rocky movies as Rambo III is to Rambo movies; hilarious but embarrassing Cold War propaganda).

Having watched these pretty much back-to-back, I find it amazing how Stallone and his co-creators managed to milk a very specific formula to create four good-to-great films out of six. I look forward to Creed and Creed 2. 

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Escape Plan: Better Late Than Never


Like any guy who grew up on a steady diet of cheesy 80s action films, I've long regretted that Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger never teamed up for one big testosterone-fuelled epic of mayhem and machismo. (The disappointing The Expendables doesn't count.) Escape Plan might be good or it might be terrible, but at the very least this new trailer sets up a workmanlike, efficient premise that puts Arnie and Sly together as allies at last. Their combined charisma will be worth watching even if the rest of the movie is dreck - but as a bonus, the movie features some of my favourite character actors from The Wire, The Office, Person of Interest and other television shows.

Plus the line "You hit like a vegetarian" is exactly the sort of cheesy dialogue I so adored back in the 80s. That alone will get me to the theatre when this is released.