Jackie Chan has secured a cult following for himself in the United States. Since the US opening of Rumble in the Bronx in 1996, Chan’s films have pulled half-decent, if not spectacular, box-office numbers and spawned a number of his earlier Hong Kong films to be re-released in US theatersContinue Reading
In The Professional, Jean Reno plays Leon, a professional hitman, or “cleaner,” who takes in his 12-year-old next door neighbor and teaches her his trade. Mathilda (Natalie Portman) has narrowly escaped getting murdered — unlike the rest of her family — by corrupt DEA agent Stansfield, played with violent gleeContinue Reading
Comic book adaptations are one of my love/hate relationships when it comes to movie genres. Last year brought the rather good Spawn and the rather bad Batman & Robin. I had said in my review of Spawn that it was a good comic book movie because it gave more screenContinue Reading
Jackie Chan is a full-on action hero of a different kind. By doing his own stunts and not making overly violent films, Chan made pseudo-action stars like Steven Seagal and Sylvester Stallone seem obsolete. I think the U.S. success of his 1996 Rumble in the Bronx signaled an end to the wise-cracking,Continue Reading
Harrison Ford makes for an unusual action hero. He’s getting a little long in the tooth to be playing action heroes, but in Air Force One, he pulls it off, probably for the last time. Well, that’s probably a little unfair, seeing that Sean Connery was playing James Bond evenContinue Reading
A top-secret surgical procedure allows anyone to wear the face of anyone else temporarily for whatever reason. When FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) needs to interrogate Pollux Troy (Allesandro Nivola), brother of supercriminal Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage), he realizes that the only way that he can retrieve information isContinue Reading
When this movie was originally released in theaters, I could only wonder what was going through the minds of those in charge at Paramount Pictures. The Phantom, as a comic book character, is relatively obscure. He doesn’t have the immediate recognition of, say, Superman, Batman or even, for that matter,Continue Reading