Tag Archives: LL Cool J

The Right To Remain Silent (1996, directed by Hubert de La Bouillerie)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

It’s one very busy night at a police station.  Everyone who is brought in from off the streets has the right to remain silent but no one exercises it.  Rookie cop Lea Thompson listens to everyone’s stories.  LL Cool J is the documentarian who thought it would be smart to put on Klan robes and a hood and try to infiltrate a demonstration undercover.  Patrick Dempsey is the drunk who killed a kid.  Carl Reiner comes in and confesses to mercy killing his wife.  Christopher Lloyd is homeless.  Fisher Stevens is a trans streetwalker.  Judge Reinhold, I don’t even know what he was supposed to be.  Reinhold actually plays two characters in this film and he’s miscast in both roles.  Amanda Plummer is a pizza delivery person who shoots someone in self-defense.  No one asks for a lawyer.  No one lies about what they did.  Instead, they just talk and talk and talk and talk some more.  Thompson listens while Robert Loggia, as the chief, growls about donuts.

The Right To Remain Silent is based on a play and that is its downfall.  Instead of being a story about a rookie cop and her first night on the job, it’s just a collection of rambling stage monologues.  Some of the actors, like Carl Reiner and Christopher Lloyd, do okay.  Most of them still seem to be acting for the folks sitting in the back row.  It ultimately doesn’t add up too much because the stories are too predictable to make much of an impression.  Everyone in this film had the right to remain silent and I wish they had exercised it.

#MondayMuggers – Why LAST HOLIDAY?

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Every Monday night at 9:00 Central Time, my wife Sierra and I host a “Live Movie Tweet” event on X using the hashtag #MondayMuggers. We rotate movie picks each week, and our tastes are quite different. Tonight, Monday December 9th, we’re watching LAST HOLIDAY starring Queen Latifah, LL Cool J, Timothy Hutton, Giancarlo Esposito, Alicia Witt, Michael Nouri, and Gerard Depardieu.

So why did Sierra pick LAST HOLIDAY, you might ask? It’s very simple. She loves the movie, and over time I’ve grown to enjoy it myself. I even wrote about it here:

https://unobtainium13.com/2024/12/09/last-holiday-a-genuine-feel-good-movie/

So join us tonight to for #MondayMuggers and watch LAST HOLIDAY, a movie we really enjoy! It’s on Amazon Prime, Tubi, and Paramount+.

LAST HOLIDAY – a genuine feel good movie! 

Posted on by Bradley Crain

My wife and I often have very different tastes in movies, but every now and then she’ll introduce a movie to me that I really enjoy despite my own cynical reservations. LAST HOLIDAY is such a movie. 

Queen Latifah plays Georgia, a clerk in a department store in New Orleans. She works hard, lives according to her means, secretly loves one of her fellow employees Sean (LL Cool J), and dreams. She dreams of being a great chef and falling in love and having a family… someday. This all seems small and unimportant though when she’s given the news that she has brain cancer and will be dead in a few weeks. Armed with this news, she cashes in her savings and heads off on a trip of a lifetime, determined to enjoy the last moments of her life. 

There are several things that I really appreciate about LAST HOLIDAY. First, Queen Latifah’s character Georgia is just a quality person. She treats people right, she works hard, she’s kind. This isn’t played as weakness either. She has a quiet dignity in a world where so many others are only worried about themselves. I wish there were more characters like this in cinema. Second, she has the opportunity to “live like you were dying.” I don’t know how many of y’all are familiar with the Tim McGraw song of the same name, but how different would we live our lives if we knew just how limited our time really is? We all worry so much about little things that don’t really matter in the big picture. It’s very satisfying as we watch Georgia enjoy herself with a freedom she has denied herself up to this point in her life. Third, we’re able to see how Georgia’s decency and honesty affects the other characters in the film. Once Georgia stops hiding her true thoughts and feelings, she begins to have an amazing impact on those around her. I think we’re all looking for connections with people where we can share who we really are. Whether it be Chef Didier (Gerard Depardieu), Gunther (Susan Kellerman) or Ms. Burns (Alicia Witt), Georgia affects others by being genuine. She doesn’t do anything spectacular, either. She’s just herself and that’s enough. There’s something powerful about that.

At the end of the day, LAST HOLIDAY is a feel good holiday film that aims to send us home with a smile on our face. It accomplishes that goal and a little more. Thanks to my wife, I gave LAST HOLIDAY a chance, and now I heartily recommend it. 

Music Video of the Day: 6 Minutes of Pleasure by LL Cool J (1991, directed by Marcus Nispel)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Today is LL Cool J’s birthday and our music video of the day comes from his fourth studio album, Mama Said Knock You Out.

This video was directed by Marcus Nispel, who would later go on to redirect reboots of several classic films, including Friday the 13th and Conan The Barbarian.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Mama Said Knock You Out by LL Cool J (1990, directed by Paris Barclay)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This song was written at a time when some critics were saying that LL Cool J’s popularity and creativity was waning. The “mama” of the title was LL Cool J’s grandmother, who told LL Cool J to keep doing what he was doing and “knock his critics out.” Don’t call it a comeback because LL Cool J never left and this song and music video proved it.

The video was directed by Paris Barclay, who would go on to become one of the busiest and most respect television directors in the industry. A winner of multiple Emmys and a two-time president of the DGA, Barclay has directed episodes of NYPD Blue, Lost, Sons of Anarchy, ER, The West Wing, CSI, The Shield, House, and a countless number of other shows.

Enjoy!

Any Given Sunday (1999, directed by Oliver Stone)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

With Any Given Sunday, Oliver Stone set out to make the ultimate football movie and he succeeded.

Any Given Sunday is not just the story of aging coach Tony D’Amato (Al Pacino).  It’s also the story of how third-string quarterback Willie Beamon (Jamie Foxx) allows celebrity to go to his head while the injured starter, Cap Rooney (Dennis Quaid), deals with his own mortality and how, at 38, he is now over-the-hill.  It’s also about how the team doctors (represented by James Woods and Matthew Modine) are complicit in pushing the players beyond their limits and how the owners (Cameron Diaz) view those players as a commodity to be traded and toyed with.  It’s about how the Sharks represent their home city of Miami and how cynical columnists (John C. McGinley plays a character that is obviously meant to be Jim Rome) deliberately set out to inflame the anger of the team’s fans.  It’s about how politicians (Clifton Davis plays Miami’s mayor and asks everyone to “give me some love”) use professional sports to further their own corrupt careers while the often immature men who play the game are elevated into role models by the press.  It’s a film that compares football players to ancient gladiators while also showing how the game has become big business.  In typical Oliver Stone fashion, it tries to take on every aspect of football while also saying something about America as well.

In the role on Tony D, Pacino famously describes football as being “a game of inches” but you wouldn’t always know it from the way that Oliver Stone directs Any Given Sunday.  As a director, Stone has never been one to only gain an inch when he could instead grab an entire mile.  (Stone is probably the type of Madden player who attempts to have his quarterback go back and throw a hail mary on every single play.)  Tony tells his players to be methodical but Stone directs in a fashion that is sloppy, self-indulgent, and always entertaining to watch.  One minute, Al Pacino and Jim Brown are talking about how much the game has changed and the next minute, LL Cool J is doing cocaine off of a groupie’s breast while images of turn-of-the-century football players flash on the screen.  No sooner has Jamie Foxx delivered an impassioned speech about the lack of black coaches in the league then he’s suddenly starring in his own music video and singing about how “Steamin’ Willie Beamon” leaves all the ladies “creamin’.”  (It rhymes, that’s the important thing.)  When Tony invites Willie over to his house, scenes of Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur are on TV.  Later in the movie, Heston shows up as the Commissioner and says, about Cameron Diaz, “she would eat her young.”

Any Given Sunday is Oliver Stone at both his best and his worst.  The script is overwritten and overstuffed with every possible sports cliché  but the football scenes are some of the most exciting that have ever been filmed.  Only Oliver Stone could get away with both opening the film with a quote from Vince Lombardi and then having a player literally lose an eye during the big game.  Stone himself appears in the commentator’s both, saying, “I think he may have hurt his eye,” while the doctor’s in the end zone scoop up the the torn out eyeball and put it into a plastic bag.  Only Stone could get away with Jamie Foxx vomiting on the field during every game and then making amazing plays while a combination of rap, heavy metal, and techno roars in the background.  Stone regulars like James Woods and John C. McGinely make valuable appearances and while Woods may be playing a villain, he’s the only person in the film willing to call out the coaches, the players, the owners, and the fans at home as being a bunch of hypocrites.  Stone’s direction is as hyper-kinetic as always but he still has no fear of stopping the action so that Foxx can see sepia-toned images of football’s past staring at him from the stands.  Stone directs like defensive lineman on steroids, barreling his way through every obstacle to take down his target.  No matter what, the game goes on.

Any Given Sunday is the ultimate football movie and more fun than the last ten super bowls combined.

The Hard Way (1991, directed by John Badham)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Lt. John Moss (James Woods) is a cop with a problem.  A serial killer who calls himself the Party Crasher (Stephen Lang) is killing people all across New York and he has decided that he will be coming for Moss next.  However, Moss’s captain (Delroy Lindo) says that Moss is off of the Party Crasher case and, instead, he’s supposed to babysit a big time movie star named Nick Lang (Michael J. Fox)!

Nick is famous for playing “Smoking” Joe Gunn in a series of Indiana Jones-style action films.  However, Nick wants to be taken seriously.  He wants to play Hamlet, just like his rival Mel Gibson!  (That Hard Way came out a year after Mel Gibson played the melancholy Dame in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1990 adaptation of Shakespeare’s play.)  Nick thinks that if he can land the lead role in a hard-boiled detective film, it will give him a chance to show that he actually can act.  To prepare for his audition, he’s asked to spend some time following Moss on the job.  Mayor David Dinkins, always eager to improve New York’s reputation, agrees.  (David Dinkins does not actually appear in The Hard Way, though his name is often mentioned with a derision that will be familiar to anyone who spent any time in New York in the 90s.)  Of course, Moss isn’t going to stop investigating the Party Crasher murders and, of course, Nick isn’t going to follow Moss’s orders to just stay in his apartment and not get in his way.

The Hard Way is a predictable mix of action and comedy but it’s also entertaining in its own sloppy way.  Director John Badham brings the same grit that he brought to his other action films but he also proves himself to have a deft comedic touch.  Most of the laughs come from the contrast between James Woods playing one of his typically hyperactive, edgy roles and Michael J. Fox doing an extended and surprisingly convincing impersonation of Tom Cruise.  Woods and Fox prove to be an unexpectedly effective comedic team.  One of the best running jokes in the film is Woods’s exasperation as he discovers that everyone, from his girlfriend (Annabella Sciorra) to his no-nonsense boss, are huge fans of Nick Lang.  Even with a serial killer running loose in the city, Moss’s captain is more concerned with getting Nick’s autograph.

Woods and Fox are the main attractions here but Stephen Lang is a good, unhinged villain and Annabella Sciorra brings some verve to her underwritten role as Moss’s girlfriend.  Viewers will also want to keep an eye out for familiar faces like Penny Marshall as Nick’s agent, a very young Christina Ricci as Sciorra’s daughter, and Luis Guzman as Moss’s partner.

With its references to David Dinkins, Mel Gibson’s superstardom, and Premiere Magazine, its LL Cool J-filled soundtrack, and a plot that was obviously influenced by Lethal Weapon, The Hard Way is very much a period piece but it’s an entertaining one.

Film Review: Deep Blue Sea (1999, dir by Renny Harlin)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Since I’m going to be watching Deep Blue Sea 2 on the SyFy network later tonight, I figured that I should rewatch the first Deep Blue Sea beforehand.

This 1999 shark attack film takes place on a laboratory that’s floating out in the middle of the ocean.  It’s the weekend so the majority of the people who work at the lab are gone.  Only a skeleton crew, made up of recognizable actors, remains.  There’s Susan McAlester (Saffron Burrows) and Jim Whitlock (Stellan Skarsgard), two brilliant scientists.  (Susan is passionate and committed.  Jim is drunk and cynical.)  There’s a marine biologist named Jan (Jacqueline McKenzie), who is such a positive presence that, from the minute she first shows up, you know that there’s no way she’s going to be alive at the end of the movie.  Tom (Michael Rapaport) is an engineer.  Brenda (Aida Turturro) is in charge of communicating with the outside world.  Preacher (LL Cool J) is a chef who acts a lot like LL Cool J.  And then there’s Carter Blake (Thomas Jane), the shark wrangler with a past.  Carter is obviously going to be our hero because, with a name like Carter Blake, there’s no way that he couldn’t be.

Finally, there’s Russell Franklin (Samuel L. Jackson).  Russell is the businessman who has been funding all of the research at the lab.  Even though he doesn’t quite understand what Susan and Jim are doing, he’s been very generous.  However, after a shark escapes and nearly eats four generic teens, Russell decides that he better find out what exactly is being done with his money.

Jim and Susan are trying to develop a cure for Alzheimer’s.  Susan says that, if their experiments are successful, one pill will be able to reverse the disease.  They’ve been running tests on sharks and … well, let’s just say that Susan and Jim haven’t exactly been honest or ethical about their experiments.  (Movie scientists always cut corners, don’t they?)  Basically, they’ve been genetically engineering the sharks to increase the size of their brain.

The end result?

SUPER SHARKS!

To paraphrase the film’s poster, these sharks are big, fast, smart, and mean!  And needless to say, they’re sick of being held captive.  Soon, the lab is besieged by angry sharks and no one is safe!

That includes Samuel L. Jackson.  Deep Blue Sea is best known for the scene where Samuel L. Jackson gives a rousing speech, in which he exhorts everyone to keep fighting and not give up, right before a shark jumps out of the water and eats him.  It’s a great scene, one that makes brilliant use of Samuel L. Jackson.  I mean, let’s be honest.  You don’t expect Samuel L. Jackson to get eaten by a shark and, as soon as he’s gone, you look at the survivors and you think to yourself, “So, now you’re depending on LL Cool J and Thomas Jane to save you?  Y’all are so screwed…”

And yet, it’s also significant that the only scene from Deep Blue Sea that people really remember is that shark eating Samuel L. Jackson.  With the exception of the one moment, Deep Blue Sea is an incredibly predictable movie.  From the minute you see that Jim is played by Stellan Skarsgard, you know that he’s doing something wrong with the sharks.  The dialogue is often cringe-worthy and the characters are all thinly drawn.  The sharks are occasionally impressive but the movie doesn’t really do enough with the idea of them of being super smart.  Was I hoping for scenes of the sharks talking to each other?  I guess I was.

That said, as I watched Deep Blue Sea, I was surprised to discover that I had forgotten just how likable and efficient the movie was.  Director Renny Harlin doesn’t waste any time trying to convince us that we’re watching anything more than just a slightly silly shark movie.  Wisely, Harlin unapologetically embraces Deep Blue Sea’s B-movie roots and, with the help of a game cast, the end result is a film that is enjoyably unpretentious and straight forward.  Samuel L. Jackson was not devoured in vain.

Halloween H20; ALT Title: They Stab Baby Boomers, Don’t They?

Posted on by casewright

h20

Gentle Readers, Is it time for Michael Myers? Oh yeah.  Is it time for Halloween H20? Oh Yeah! You bet your ass it is!

Halloween H20 is a lot of fun and had a deep bench of talent.  Robert Zappia and Matt Greenberg wrote the film and Veteran Horror Director Steve Miner helmed it. Robert Zappia went on to write for Children’s Television and Graphic Novels. Matt Greenberg later wrote “Reign of Fire” and “1408” – both films had good moments of suspense.  I wrote to Robert Zappia and he informed me that the rest stop scene, which I will discuss later was written by Matt Greenberg.  He and director Steve Miner knew what they were doing to jolt us without any jumpscares.  The casting was very well done and, it was, in fact a who’s who of soon to be Stars.  Here we go!!!

Langdon, Illinois.  October 28, 1998.  I just needed to smell the clove cigarettes,  see the flannel, and not see any cell phones to know it.  A simpler time.  For the uninitiated,  the 90s were a time when you met someone that you had attraction for in person. A Nurse is concerned that her office was broken into by a person unknown. We see younger Joseph Gordon Levitt (Pre-Looper).  He was not manly in any way, but a real heart throb in his “3rd Rock” days.  Of course, they have him playing Hockey … somehow.  Nurse asks Levitt to search her home.  He goofs around and steals some beers.  The Nurse realizes that her files were stolen.  Which files? Wait for it…. Laurie Strode’s.  She looks around for Levitt and his friend.  They were not so creatively killed with Hockey Skates to the face.  He kills her too and steals her car.  There is also a bit of continuity trouble with the daylight turning to night abruptly.  Let’s take a moment and think about this: Michael Myers is really good at intelligence gathering, stealing, and killing.  If only we could harness his skills for Uncle Sugar…..

We’re goin back to Haddonfield to Haddonfield to Haddonfield …. Nah, I don’t think so! [sung]

Random California Town:  We see Jamie Lee Curtis fresh off from “True Lies”and the Headmistress of an elite boarding school.   She has a grown son- Josh Hartnett (Josh) who really really wants to go camping in Yosemite.  She won’t let him go.  Sorry Josh, you’re just gonna have to stay home and make out with Michelle Williams.  How will he possibly manage?!  Speaking of the 90s, we’ve got Michelle Williams (MW), Chicago Hope Guy (CHG), Jodi Lynn O’Keefe (Jodi), LL Cool J (LL Cool J), and Ally McBeal (jk on this last one…probably).  Through some not bad showing not telling, we learn:  LL Cool J is an aspiring trashy romance novel writer AKA as a Paaaaaperback Wriiiiiiter, Jamie Lee and CHG are k-i-s-s-i-n-g, Jodi is dating a guy way below her level of hotness, and we can tell Michelle Williams is on financial aid because she works in the kitchen and uses a dumbwaiter.

CUT TO: A Mom pulls into a rest stop.  We see the stolen car in the BG. This scene is pretty goddamn suspenseful! Well done, Robert Zappia.  MM isn’t there to kill, just steal the mom’s car.  Damn, MM is a great car thief!

Josh is all in lurve with Michelle Williams, sending her flowers in the dumbwaiter.  JLC and CHG make out again. These are the horniest baby boomers ever! Josh wants to go into town.  JLC says no. He convinces LL Cool J to let him sneak out. LL, I get it – Josh is dreamy, but you have a job responsibilities.  Plus, I don’t think he’s the supermarket romance novel kind of guy; Josh’s more of the porking Michelle Williams kind of guy. JLC is out with CHG and snakes a drink when he goes to the bathroom.  Good showing! She catches Josh off the compound…I mean school grounds.  He lets her have it.

Back to the school:  JLC releases the kids to Yosemite and her son so she believes so that the victims ….I mean residents….can be a …killable number.  JLC gets home and boozes up.  Josh has totally Dawson’s Creeked the make out basement area.  I’m with Josh on this one. I’ve been to Yosemite and Yellowstone and thye’ve got Old Faithful, but if Michelle Williams is your other option …I don’t even want to write choice because Old Faithful could get its feelings hurt.  I’m not saying that Josh isn’t planning on some regularly scheduled eruptions coupled with amateur photography, but it’s likely not at a national park.

JLC and CHG are making out … again. She tells him all about her brother being a murdering sociopath to set the mood and give herself an excuse to polish off more vodka.

This story has been pretty compelling, but it’s stabbing time.  MM finds the way too ugly to date Jodi O’Keefe guy, cuts his throat, and puts him in the dumbwaiter.  MM really likes things in their place; it makes you wonder if psychopathic murderers are OCD people gone to a terrible extreme. I knew a girl in college who would check her car doors to see if they were locked over and over.  Maybe she murdered people too?   Jodi looks for her BF and gets stalked by MM.  She flees to the dumbwaiter and is next to her dead BF.  She gets to the basement, but as she exits, MM cuts the dumbwaiter cord, the dumbwaiter lands on her leg, and her leg breaks horribly.  Josh and Michelle find their friends all dead.   They run to JLC.  She sees her brother – Yikes.  They must have the most awkward Thanksgivings! Seriously, it must be much worse than the year my girls and I wore Bernie Sanders shirts and my mom started quoting Ayn Rand over stuffing.  

They all run and CHG accidentally shoots LL J.  Bummer.  CHG gets stabbed for his trouble.  JLC ,MW, and Josh run, but he gets wounded and MW hits MM with a rock.  Michelle Williams might be perfect: smart, can cook, gorgeous, can fight … Call Me.  JLC badasses and sends MW and Josh off to safety as she gets an axe to deal with her brother. You go girl!   They confront each other in the dining hall.  It’s a pretty amazingly suspenseful scene.  Seriously, the writer and director really kicked ass with this and many other scenes.  Well done.  JLC gets the upper hand and stabs MM.  She’s ready to cut him up into bits when LL shows up, telling her he’s dead.  Word?  If only LL had been reading our reviews, he would know that this is not the end.

The Coroners show up, but JLC isn’t having it! She grabs the van and proceeds to drive MM out to the woods and chop his head off.  Pretty awesome ending! I have to be honest this film is not really dated, it has terrific suspense, great writing, edgy directing.  I would recommend making this a staple of Halloween season viewing.

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Back to School Part II #54: Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (dir by Nicholas Stoller)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(For the past three weeks, Lisa Marie has been in the process of reviewing 56 back to school films!  She’s promised the rest of the TSL staff that this project will finally wrap up by the end of today, so that she can devote her time to helping to prepare the site for its annual October horrorthon!  Will she make it or will she fail, lose her administrator privileges, and end up writing listicles for Buzzfeed?  Keep reading the site to find out!)

neighbors2-sorority-rising

How many times can the same thing keep happening to the same people?

That’s a question that you may be tempted to ask yourself while watching Neighbors 2.  Neighbors 2 is, of course, a sequel to the original Neighbors.  In the first film, Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne played Mac and Kelly Radner, a married couple who are struggling to deal with the fact that, as new parents, they are now officially adults.  When a crazy and wild fraternity moves in next door to them and refuses to tone down their partying ways, Mac and Kelly are forced to take matters into their own hands.  Occasionally hilarious mayhem ensues.

In Neighbors 2, Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne again play Mac and Kelly Radner, a married couple who are struggling to deal with the fact that, as parents who are awaiting the arrival of their 2nd child, they are now officially adults and may have to finally move into a more family friendly house in the suburbs.  When a crazy and wild fraternity sorority moves in next door to them and refuses to tone down their partying ways, Mac and Kelly are forced to take matters into their own hands.  Occasionally hilarious mayhem ensues.

Yeah, it’s all pretty familiar.  Not only are many of the same jokes from the first film repeated but they’re often repeated at that exact same spot in which they originally appeared.  To the film’s credit, it does occasionally acknowledge that it’s repeating itself, though it never quite reaches the self-aware heights of something like 22 Jump Street.  Even Zac Efron returns and, again, he is initially the Radner’s enemy before eventually becoming their ally.

That said, the familiarity is not necessarily a bad thing.  Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne both know how to get laughs, even when they’re telling the same joke that they told a year ago.  Zac Efron tends to try too hard whenever he has a dramatic role (like in The Paperboy, for instance) but he’s got a real talent for comedy.

Ultimately, though, the best thing that saves Neighbors 2 from just being a forgettable comedy sequel is the sorority.  As opposed to the first film’s creepy fraternity, the sorority in Neighbors 2 is partying for a cause greater than just hedonism.  Shelby (Chloe Grace Moretz, finally getting to have fun in a movie) starts her independent sorority in response to being told that official sororities are not allowed to throw parties and, instead, can only attend misogynistic frat parties.  When Shelby and her sorority buy the house, it’s not just to make trouble.  It’s because they need a place where they can have a good time without feeling that they’re in constant danger from drunk and perverted frat boys.  A subtext of empowerment through partying runs through Neighbors 2 and it elevates the entire film.

Neighbors 2 is an entertaining film, even if it never leaves as much of an impression as you may hope.  (I have to admit that, whenever I try to list all the films that I’ve seen this year, Neighbors 2 is one of those that I often have to struggle to remember.)  That said, it’s not a terrible way to spend 97 minutes and it’ll make you laugh.  And, ultimately, that really is the most important thing when it comes to comedy.

As for the question of how often can the same thing happen to the same person…

Well, I guess we’ll have to wait for Neighbors 3 to get our answer!