This is something I’m starting and hopefully will keep up on a monthly basis. I watch a lot of movies and I’m astounded at how much garbage Hollywood puts out. This is nothing new to most of us and yet someone, somewhere, paid to see Paul Blart: Mall Cop or Dance Flick Wayans extravaganza 32. Meanwhile, absolutely amazing movies go relatively unnoticed by the public and only get retroactive publicity if they earn that rare Oscar nod or equally rare cult DVD status. My goal is to suggest a few amazing movies that you may have missed and a few that you should look for soon.

Already Released

JCVD

2008 | Jean-Claude Van Damme

Jean-Claude Van Damme plays Jean-Claude Van Damme in JCVD. I know, it’s a bit repetitive, but this meta-movie is one of the best I have seen in a while. Van Damme plays himself in “real-life” which obviously isn’t real, but mirrors his own to some degree. He is a 47 year old action movie star who is starting to lose roles to others, including the botox indian Steven Seagal, and fighting for custody of his daughter after a divorce. He’s on his way to get money for lawyer fees, while being hassled by fans and doing the best he can to oblige them, when his life turns into a “real-life” action movie… in this movie. Following all of the meta?

I was honestly surprised as hell by this movie. Either through neglect or stereotyping, I’ve never really thought of Jean-Claude Van Damme as an amazing “actor.” He’s always been one of the best action stars to me, but this movie proved overwhelmingly that he can act on a major level and still kick ass. He is perfectly on point in a single shot, five minute long fake action movie sequence, which is to be expected. But, he also gives one of the more interesting monologues I’ve ever seen. Over five minutes long, on one continuous shot, and every second is believable. He pokes fun and parodies his real life in his on screen “real-life” so well that it honestly feels like a documentary at times. Seriously, the guy already brought us fucking Bloodsport, one of the most intense fighting movies you’ll ever see. Watch JCVD and you’ll be amazed that he can kick like the day he came to Hollywood and he’s stepped up his acting enormously.

Rocknrolla

2008 | Gerard Butler, Thandie Newton, Guy Ritchie

If you’ve never seen a Guy Ritchie movie before, well I’m sorry for you. Guy Ritchie is the quintessential British Gangster movie director. Nobody else can mix gritty, fast-paced, hilarious, and intense as stylishly or seamlessly as Ritchie. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels was his breakthrough movie, Snatch is “his movie” and the funniest you’ll ever see Brad Pitt, and Rocknrolla is his latest. It is definitely on par with Snatch, but didn’t fare as well in the American market because it lacked a known American lead. Even so, it is packed with talent. Gerard Butler from “300,” Thandie Newton from my dreams and “Crash,” Jeremy Pivens from “Entourage,” Ludacris aka Chris Bridges, Idris Elba who plays Charles on “The Office,” and many others.

The movie has no clear cut center, as most Guy Ritchie movies don’t, but circles around a few key stories that intertwine. A couple of members from a gang called the Wild Bunch are looking to buy property. They have criminal records, so they go to a criminal head, Lenny Cole, who works in real estate. He screws them and at the same time is working on a deal with a Russian billionaire. The Russian billionaire loans Lenny his lucky painting, which is promptly robbed and starts off a chain of people stealing money, stealing the painting, and shooting people in the process. Through all of that intensity the movie still manages to be absolutely hilarious in that quick-witted Guy Ritchie British way. Where else will you get a proper lesson on slapping that involves no less than five slaps to the same henchman’s face? This movie is funny, fast-paced, and utterly unpredictable.

In Theaters

The Hurt Locker

2009 | Jeremy Renner

Playing in select cities now and a few more cities soon, The Hurt Locker is a movie that revolves around a bomb squad unit in Iraq that goes out into the field to disarm deadly bombs planted around the city. Look at the poster to the left. Those things in a circle around him attached to the wires he’s holding, those are fucking bombs.

This movie looks intense and finally different from all of the other war movies that have come out documenting Iraq and either kissing military ass or bathing in the “we shouldn’t be here” message while not showing anything new, save for Jarhead which was amazing. I can’t imagine how stressful it has to be to do what these guys do and this film looks like it is going to do no less than put you in their bomb-proof suits and walk you into hostile territory to disarm bombs. Watch the rust peel off of a car in the trailer as a bomb goes off and tell me you aren’t hooked.

Coming Soon

Moon

2009 | Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey

This is far and away the movie that I most want to see of the ones that I haven’t yet. Sam Bell is an astronaut on a moon mission to mine Helium-3, the precious gas that will help power the earth by becoming its new energy supply. Sam has been alone on the moon for almost three years mining with only his helpful HAL-esque computer GERTY to talk to. Two weeks before his time on the moon is over he starts feeling weird, seeing things, and encounters a hurt astronaut that is eerily similar to himself. It might even be him. Kevin Spacey voices GERTY, talking to Sam in a soothingly scary voice and conveying emotion using emoticons, which at first sounds absolutely pointless, but is every bit as creepy and compelling as his voice.

This movie is being called the first truly independent science fiction film. It’s directed by Duncan Jones in his first ever feature film and looks like an amazing throwback to the 70s and 80s sci-fi movies. Also, did I mention Sam Rockwell is the lead and makes up most of the movie? That alone makes this worthwhile.

Daybreakers

2009 | Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe

I’ll say this right from the start, vampire movies almost always blow (if I had said suck it would have been an unintended pun) and are as overdone and terrible as zombie movies. Twilight, yes you can suck it. I was told the wrong theater one time when Twilight was out and took a date into what I thought was not-Twilight. I brought up Twilight and we made fun of it for fifteen minutes, all through the previews, and right into the start of… Twilight. I laughed ridiculously hard and we walked out and found the not-Twilight theater for a much better movie, while I’m assuming about 100 girls and moms stared in anger as we left the Twilight theater.

Anyways, on to Daybreakers. In most vampire movies, the awesome vampire killing machines of death are taken down by pretty much average people that should stand no chance against an immortal, flying, vanishing, impervious to bullets creature. Fuck you Hollywood, if those things were real they would conquer us in days. Daybreakers assumes just that. Vampires have taken over and account for the majority of people on the earth. They run society much like humans did and they hunt down and farm the remaining humans for blood. The problem arises when so many humans have either become vampires or been killed that the supply of blood is running out. When that happens, all of the vampires lose any bit of humanity that they had and become hellish monsters. The vampires are searching for a blood substitute before its all gone. At the same time, some of the last remaining humans, including Willem Dafoe, recruit Ethan Hawke’s vampire character to help them rebuild the human race by circulating a cure that can hopefully change everyone back into humans.

This is a bold and interesting take on the overpopulated vampire genre and actually looks really good. Willem Dafoe and Ethan Hawke always turn in amazing performances and make me think that, for once in the past couple of years, a vampire movie will come out that doesn’t involve sexually repressed mormon fantasies. I am definitely going to see this when it comes out and I hope that this review and the others have turned you onto a new movie or two that you may have overlooked or hadn’t even heard were coming out. Check out the trailers for all of them below.

Trailers

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Filed under: Movies by Cory