As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasion ally Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We snark our way through it.
Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 2008’s Broken Path!
It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, pull up Broken Path on YouTube, start the movie at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag!
HOOSIERS is based on the true story of a small high school winning the Indiana state basketball championship in 1954. Gene Hackman plays Coach Norman Dale, the once successful college coach who gets a second chance when he’s hired to coach high school basketball in the tiny town of Hickory, Indiana. It takes some time for Coach Dale to whip the talented, but undisciplined young men into a team, and it also takes a little time for local legend Jimmy Chitwood to decide that he will play basketball again. Chitwood had stopped playing prior to the arrival of Coach Dale, but after watching the way the coach goes about his business, he decides he’ll give it another go. After a rough start, the team starts playing good basketball and starts piling up wins as they make their way towards a potential state championship.
HOOSIERS was released when I was 13 years old, and it has been one of my favorite movies for almost 40 years. Why, you might ask? I’ll start by giving you a little Bradley Crain family history. First, basketball was my life growing up. My dad was a teacher and high school basketball coach. From the earliest days I can remember, my dad was teaching me how to play basketball. He taught me the proper techniques for shooting, and through lots of practice I became very good at it. I’m one of those people who could be referred to as a “gym rat.” The only things I wanted to do growing up were play basketball and go fishing. I have a brother who is one year and 5 days older than me, and he loved basketball too. The competition between the two of us made it difficult at times at home, but it also pushed us to get better. Second, I grew up in a small rural community in Arkansas known as Toad Suck, and I went to school in the small town of Bigelow, Arkansas. Bigelow was classified as a “Class B” school for sports purposes. This was the smallest classification that you could be in, and my class consisted of approximately 40 students. Finally, when HOOSIERS came out I was in junior high and my dream was to win a high school state basketball championship. Our teams were good, and I was still young and naïve enough to believe anything was possible. We even won the district championship my 9th grade year, which was the year after HOOSIERS was released. Alas, the chips didn’t fall our way, and even though we won a lot of basketball games over the next few years, there were no state championships. Now back to the movie!
One of my favorite things about HOOSIERS is the cast of young men hired to play the members of the team. So often in movies, the actors that are supposed to be good at basketball are clearly not. That’s not the case in HOOSIERS. These guys can act and are talented basketball players as well. And what can I say about the cast that includes a marvelous Gene Hackman as the coach, and Dennis Hopper as the friendly, but alcoholic dad of one of the players who “knows everything there is to know about the greatest game ever invented.” Hopper is phenomenal, and his work was recognized with an Oscar nomination. Finally, as the team is making its way towards the championship, each player is given a moment to shine and do their part to help the team. I liked that. It all makes for an exciting and heartwarming true story that pretty much anyone can enjoy. I still love the movie now just thinking about it!
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. I decided early on that I would only program movies that have meant something to me over the years. Tonight, Monday November 18th, we’re watching THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS starring Chow Yun-fat, Mira Sorvino and Michael Rooker.
So why does THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS mean something to me, you might ask?! The main reason is a matter of timing and its star, Chow Yun-fat. I personally discovered Hong Kong actor Chow Yun-fat in the late spring of 1997 and was in full obsession mode when I read that he was making his American film debut with THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS in early 1998. To say I was pumped about this movie would be quite the understatement, and I was at a theater in Conway, Arkansas the very day of its wide release on February 6, 1998. Director Antoine Fuqua, making his directorial debut, tried to make a stylish film that would appeal to fans of John Woo, who served as Executive Producer on THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS. It worked on me, and over the next few years I purchased the movie in every format imaginable. I’ve owned it on bootleg VHS, regular VHS, DVD, and special edition blu ray. Looking back on the film now, I realize that it’s an exercise in style over substance, but that’s certainly okay. It doesn’t take away the fact that it came out at a time in my life when I was primed for maximum movie impact. You can never go back and replicate those times in your life, but you can celebrate them. Sierra and I will be doing just that tonight on #MondayMuggers at 9:00 CST. THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS is available for streaming on Amazon Prime. Join us if you’d like!
Since Sunday is a day of rest for a lot of people, I’m introducing #SundayShorts, a weekly mini review about a movie I’ve recently watched.
In BLIND FURY, Rutger Hauer does his best Zatoichi impersonation in a loose remake of a 1967 Japanese film called ZATOICHI CHALLENGED. The movie’s strongest quality is its ability to be both a kickass action film and a comic action film. That’s a fine line to walk and BLIND FURY does it exceedingly well.
Fast Facts:
Star Rutger Hauer is probably the greatest Dutch actor of all time where he often starred in the films of director Paul Verhoeven. My favorite of Hauer’s foreign movies is SOLDIER OF ORANGE.
ZATOICHI CHALLENGED, the inspiration for BLIND FURY, stars legendary Japanese actor Shintaro Katsu as a blind masseuse named Zatoichi. Katsu would play this amazing character in 26 films and 100 TV episodes between 1962 and 1989. You owe it to yourself to search out these films.
Former heavyweight boxer Randall “Tex” Cobb plays a heavy in BLIND FURY. In his time, he beat Leon Spinx and went the distance with Larry Holmes.
Australian director Phillip Noyce directed BLIND FURY. He’s an underrated director whose other credits include DEAD CALM, PATRIOT GAMES, and THE BONE COLLECTOR.
This weekend our family has been celebrating my Mom’s birthday together at our family cabin. One thing about hanging out with Mom in November is you know you’re going to be watching Christmas movies. It may be on the Hallmark channel or it may be one of her countless DVD’s or Blu rays of Christmas classics, but you’re going to be getting in the Christmas spirit. Last night we watched HOME ALONE.
The story is well known. A family is going on a Christmas vacation in Paris. In all the craziness created by a fluke power outage, 8 year old Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) is accidentally left home alone while the rest of the family gets on a plane to France. Meanwhile, a pair of house robbers (Joe Pesci & Daniel Stern) plan on hitting homes in the neighborhood on Christmas Eve. Kevin not only survives with his parents gone, he thrives, and he makes the robbers wish they’d never stumbled into his neighborhood. With that said, he does learn some valuable lessons along the way, and he realizes that he does love and miss his family.
What can you say about Macaulay Culkin in HOME ALONE?!! He owns the movie. It’s one of the great child performances in the movies. Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern are funny as the robbers, with young Kevin putting them through hell. I still cringe in pain at times as the two step on ornaments, get burned and are physically assaulted, all thanks to Kevin’s assorted collection of tricks & booby traps. There’s also a plot line with Kevin’s scary neighbor that leads to a touching conclusion. And finally, as we celebrate Mom’s birthday, I can’t help but be touched by the reunion at the end between Kevin and his mom (Catherine O’Hara). No matter how much they can get on each other’s nerves, the truth is that they both love each other with all of their hearts. It’s a special feeling when you have a mom who loves you. That’s one thing Kevin and I have in common. And we love them back.
It was 1997 and I was in an outlet mall in Branson, MO. Being a film buff, I found myself looking for entertainment related books and noticed a book with Jackie Chan on the cover called “Hong Kong Babylon.” Jackie was enjoying some popularity in the United States at the time due to the financial success of RUMBLE IN THE BRONX. I opened up the book and started browsing through the various chapters. I saw blurbs about a bunch of movies I had never heard of and blurbs about a bunch of people I had never heard of. Jackie Chan was the only person I knew anything about. I put the book down because I saw another book about Hong Kong movies. This one was called “Sex & Zen and A Bullet in the Head.” I opened it up and saw some of the same people and movies mentioned in the other book. I liked this book better because it had more pictures. I remember this second book opening with a chapter called “10 that Rip.” It was their listing of 10 movies that would determine if you were a potential Hong Kong movie fan or not. Watching these movies would either open up that part of your mind that got excited about Hong Kong movies, or you would be hopelessly lost and not a candidate for Hong Kong movie fandom. As I looked closer, I noticed this same man in both books. He was usually holding a gun and looking extremely cool. That man’s name was Chow Yun-fat, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought I remembered seeing him years earlier on a VHS box at our local Hastings Entertainment Superstore. Not really being a fan of foreign movies at the time of the Hastings notice, I didn’t pay much attention, but now I really took notice. Chow caught my attention, but I also found it interesting that there were so many other movies that I’d never heard of, and I thought I knew a lot about movies. I bought both books and took them home with me. It’s no exaggeration to say that these books changed my life, and I was soon lost in a world of Hong Kong films.
No film exemplified my newfound love for Hong Kong movies more than THE KILLER, which was directed by John Woo and starred my new obsession, Chow Yun-fat. I was happy to find that it was readily available on VHS. I watched it on repeat. I had not seen anything that I thought was so awesome. The story is simple. It’s about a hitman, the killer of the title (Chow Yun-fat), accidentally blinding a nightclub singer (Sally Yeh) when he’s performing a job. Feeling devastated that he hurt this beautiful woman, he spends the next few months hanging around the nightclub hoping to have a chance to help her. He finally gets a chance one night when a group of young hooligans attack her on her way home. Chow steps in and beats the crap out of the guys and sends them on their way. This starts a beautiful relationship and the two fall in love. The killer has to perform one more job to get the money needed for a surgery that will hopefully restore her eyesight. When performing that last job, a tough cop (Danny Lee) finds himself on the trail of the killer and will do anything to get his man. John Woo has somehow crafted a story where Chow Yun-fat is an honorable “killer” on a noble mission to protect this young woman, and who is now the target of the Chinese triads trying to eliminate him. While trying to bring down the killer, the tough cop finds himself caught in the crossfire between the killer and the triads. When Chow goes out of his way to take a hurt young girl to the hospital, our tough cop realizes the hitman isn’t that bad after all, and the two men begin to have a respect for each other. There’s no time to rest though, as they find themselves having to team up to take on an army of triad soldiers armed to the teeth and out for blood.
I had never seen anything like THE KILLER up to that point in my life. The action had a style and flare that aroused everything I love about movies. I soon learned it fit into a subgenre of Hong Kong films labelled “heroic bloodshed,” a genre that I would go deep, deep, deep, into! The opening action sequence features the impossibly charismatic Chow Yun-fat dressed impeccably, taking on an underworld boss and his henchman, with two guns blazing in stylish slow motion. John Woo’s work has been endlessly copied by this point, but that does not take away how I felt watching this movie for the first time. I also loved the shameless sentimentality in the film, first between the killer and the singer, and then later between the killer and the cop. For a movie that’s balls to walls action, it has a huge heart. I was hooked.
I immediately began searching out all of John Woo’s films including A BETTER TOMORROW, BULLET IN THE HEAD and HARD-BOILED. After I watched those movies, I started trying to find every Chow Yun-fat film I could. I’ll never forget how I felt when I saw GOD OF GAMBLERS for the first time. I realized that Chow could do anything, not just cool heroic bloodshed films. I will tell anyone who’ll listen that Chow Yun-fat is my favorite living actor. After being a fan for 27 years, I still search the internet for any news I can find about a movie he may be working on.
And it all started at an outlet mall in Branson, MO, and when I first got my hands on THE KILLER.
Bay of Blood (1971, dir by Mario Bava, DP: Mario Bava)
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood!
If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime and Tubi! I’ll be there co-hosting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on Twitter and Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, at 10 pm et, #FridayNightFlix presents 1995’s Empire Records!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Empire Records is available on Prime! See you there!
HARD TIMES is probably the best movie that features Charles Bronson in the lead, and it’s my personal favorite movie of all time as of the date of this review. I reserve the right to change this opinion at any time!
Charles Bronson is Chaney, a drifter who’s riding the rails in the south during the great depression. Soon after getting off the train in some unnamed southern town, Chaney comes across an underground “fight” where we first meet Speed, played by the great James Coburn. It seems Speed is the money man for this big lug of a fighter who gets his butt kicked in front of God, the local underground fighting world, a man with horrible teeth, and Chaney. After witnessing this fiasco, Chaney follows Speed to a local restaurant where he apparently waits in the shadows until Speed goes up to the counter to get a refill of oysters and a couple of lemons. I say this because when Speed turns from the counter with his newly filled tray, Chaney is sitting at Speed’s table. I’m surprised that Speed even talks to him because the first thing Chaney does is help himself to an oyster, WITHOUT EVEN ASKING! Even with this breach of etiquette, Speed discusses the fight from earlier in the evening with Chaney, who offers his fighting services to Speed since the “big lug” is clearly not a good investment into the future and who is probably in a hospital overnight dealing with a concussion. Speed is hesitant to accept this offer since Chaney appears to be fairly old (Bronson was 53 when he made the film), but he changes his mind when Chaney offers his last $6 bucks to Speed to bet on him. Cut to Chaney getting his chance to fight. This is a fun scene because his opponent is the same fighter from earlier who kicked the big lug’s butt. The guy even taunts Chaney for being too old. The fight starts and it consists of two hits, Chaney hits the smartass, the smartass hits the ground. Somewhat amazed, Speed takes Chaney to New Orleans, and the two embark on an odyssey together to win fights and make thick wads of cash. The remainder of the film documents that odyssey, although it does take time out for a few “in-betweens.”
HARD TIMES is one of Bronson’s best films, and one of the main reasons why is that it provides a boatload of audience satisfaction. There are many examples of this. First is the scene mentioned above where Chaney takes out the smirking, dismissive fighter who sees our hero as too old. Too old my ass! In another scene, a bunch of unrefined Cajuns out in the boondocks refuse to pay up after Chaney kicks their fighter’s butt. Rather than pay up, the slimy Cajuns pull out a gun and dare Speed and Chaney to come take the money. Our heroes leave at that time, but Chaney convinces them to hang around out in the country for awhile so they can surprise the Cajuns under the cover of darkness at the local honkytonk, which happens to be owned by the head slimy Cajun. Chaney takes the gun, takes the money, and then shoots up the place with the gun, grinning as he saves the last bullet to shoot a mirror he’s looking directly into. It’s a fun scene that ends with Chaney, Speed and the gang speeding off into the night laughing like hyenas! In another scene, Chaney takes on the big, bald-headed, unbeatable fighter Jim Henry (Robert Tessier) in an awesome cage match. Let’s just say Jim Henry thought he was unbeatable and leave it at that. And finally, a competing New Orleans money man (Jim Henry’s guy) just can’t stand that he no longer has the top fighter in town, so he brings in a fighter from Chicago to take on Chaney. I won’t tell you what happens, but it’s some really fun stuff!
The cast of HARD TIMES also elevates the film to top tier status. I’ve already discussed Bronson and Coburn, but Strother Martin and Jill Ireland also add to the joy. Martin plays Poe, Chaney’s drug addict cut man, who dresses up like he could grow up to be Colonel Sanders in his older age. It’s a fun performance that adds a lot to the film. Jill Ireland plays Chaney’s love interest. She’s quite beautiful, but she seems to always be giving Chaney a hard time about what he does for a living. His response is usually to simply leave when she starts that BS. I thinks that’s kind of fun too.
And finally, this was the directorial debut of Walter Hill, the man behind THE WARRIORS, THE DRIVER, THE LONG RIDERS, SOUTHERN COMFORT, 48 HOURS, and RED HEAT. His movie is lean and mean, without a wasted moment that isn’t moving the film along. Hill has crafted a fun movie, filled with great performances. I think it’s one of the most underrated films of the 1970’s!
The previous Mission Impossible film was one of the best movies of 2023 and the upcoming sequel is one of the films that I can’t wait to see in 2025. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how the franchise wraps things up. If nothing else, the Mission Impossible films stand as a reminder of what the Bond films were like before they all got whiny and somber.
Here’s the teaser for Mission Impossible — The Final Reckoning!
Through the Shattered Lens 