Demolition Man (1993, directed by Marco Brambilla)

Posted on July 6, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

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In the near future, law-breakers and other destructive types are not put in prison but are instead cryogenically frozen and left in suspended animation until they’ve served out their sentences. The most fearsome criminal in the world, Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) has been frozen but so has his nemesis, Detective John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone).

In the far future, Los Angeles is a part of a megalopolis named San Angeles. Envisioned and watched over by a seemingly benign dictator named Cocteau (Nigel Hawthorne), San Angeles is a wannabe utopia where cursing leads to an automatic fine and all of the restaurants are Taco Bell. When he’s thawed out for a parole hearing, the suddenly super-powered Phoenix makes his escape. The police, no longer knowing how to deal with violence, make the reluctant decision to thaw out John Spartan. Assigned to work with the enthusiastic Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock), Spartan must navigate this strange future to defeat Phoenix.

For some reason, Demolition Man never seems to get the respect that it deserves. Made at a time when both the Rambo and the Rocky franchises appeared to be over, Demolition Man features one of Stallone’s most appealing performances as he deals with a society where just saying a bad word can cause a scandal. Just as Spartan proves that his brand of destructive police work still has its place in the future, Stallone proved that he could still carry an action movie in 1993. There’s a lot of knowing humor to Stallone’s performance. After a series of failed comedies in the 80s, Demolition Man was the movie that proved that Stallone could be intentionally funny. Stallone is also surrounded by one of his strongest supporting casts. Wesley Snipes attacks his villainous role with gusto while Denis Leary breaks out his stand-up routine as Edgar Friendly, the leader of San Angeles’s rebels. This is also the film that led to Sandra Bullock getting cast in Speed and she’s so incredibly adorable here that even Stallone breaks out into a smile while acting opposite her

(In 1993, you couldn’t turn on television without seeing Sandra Bullock saying, “All restaurants are Taco Bell.”)

Demolition Man is an action film and it lives up to its name, with all the demolition that a viewer could want. Even more so, It’s also a satire, of both Stallone’s previous films and what was then known as “political correctness.” Demolition Man’s portrayal of a sterile society where everyone had been programmed to be docile and inoffensive wasn’t that far off from what a lot of politicians were then promoting for America at large. Luckily, John Spartan was around to put an end to that. The end result is one of Sylvester Stallone’s most memorable films.

Down Periscope (1996, directed by David S. Ward)

Posted on January 21, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

After being passed over twice as a result of both a “brushing incident” with a Russian submarine and an embarrassing tattoo, Lt. Commander Thomas Dodge (Kelsey Grammer, playing Dodge as being the laid back opposite of Frasier Crane) has finally been promoted and given his own submarine to command. The catch is that the submarine is a rusty piece of junk from World War II and he’s been assigned a crew of misfits. Captain Dodge is to take part in a war game. Admiral Winslow (Rip Torn) wants Dodge to prove that even an out-of-commission submarine can be dangerous by infiltrating Charleston Harbor undetected and then blowing up a dummy warship in Norfolk Harbor. If Dodge is successful, he’ll get a nuclear submarine to command. If he fails, he’ll be assigned of desk job and probably leave the Navy. While the sympathetic Winslow encourages Dodge to “think like a pirate,” the antagonistic Admiral Graham (Bruce Dern) pulls out all the stops to make sure Dodge fails.

I imagine that Down Periscope was probably pitched as Police Academy In The Navy and it follows the general rules of the Police Academy films, right down to casting Lauren Holly as the one woman on the submarine who has to overcome her own insecurities and prove herself to all the men. Unfortunately, none of the misfits on the crew are as memorable as the cadets from Police Academy and the movie’s attempts to mix juvenile humor with suspenseful naval action are not at all successful. Having Rob Schneider go totally over the top as Dodge’s second-in-command while having William H. Macy give a serious performance as the captain assigned to prevent Dodge from reaching the harbor indicates that Down Periscope has a definite identity problem.

Harry Dean Stanton plays Howard, who is the submarine’s chief engineer and who uses whiskey as a fuel to keep the submarine moving. Toby Huss has a few amusing moments as the electrician who keeps electrocuting himself. Grammer, Dern, and Macy have more than proven their talents in other projects and Rip Torn will always be remembered for bringing Artie to profane life on The Larry Sanders Show. Director David Ward also directed Major League and wrote The Sting. A lot of talent went into making Down Periscope so it’s a shame the film wasn’t more memorable.

Horror(-ish) Film Review: Hubie Halloween (dir by Steven Brill)

Posted on October 20, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Oh my God!” I said as I looked at what was new on Netflix, “A Halloween movie starring the guy from Uncut Gems!? THIS IS GOING TO BE INTENSE!”

Of course, as I’m sure you already guessed, Hubie Halloween might as well be taking place in a totally different universe from Uncut Gems. Uncut Gems was an intense drama that starred Adam Sandler as a man so self-destructive that he literally seems to spend the entire movie just daring death to reach out and take him. Hubie Halloween, on the other hand, is fairly laid back comedy featuring Adam Sandler playing yet another well-meaning manchild. The film features supporting performances from all the usual Happy Madison suspects, like Kevin James, Rob Schneider, Steve Buscemi, Tim Meadows, Ben Stiller, Maya Rudolph, Keenan Thompson, and Colin Quinn. It’s sentimental and it’s about thirty minute too long and the humor is often juvenile but also frequently funny.

Adam Sandler plays Hubie, who lives in Salem, Massachusetts with his mother (June Squibb). Hubie is the town eccentric, the type of guy who thinks that he’s protecting the entire town but who mostly just gets on everyone’s nerves. A lot of people make fun of Hubie (who they call Pubie). Pete Landolfa (Ray Liotta) may be mourning the recent death of his father but he still finds time to toss Hubie into an open grave. Not even Father Dave (Michael Chiklis) has much sympathy for Hubie. Hubie is the type of guy who goes down to the local school to give a speech on Halloween safety, just for the students (and teachers) to respond by throwing all of their food at him.

One of the few people who is nice to Hubie is his new neighbor, Walter Lambert (Steve Buscemi). However, Hubie suspects that Walter might be a werewolf and when people start to disappear over the course of Halloween, Hubie suspects that Walter’s responsible. Meanwhile, the police (represented by a heavily bearded Kevin James) thinks that it might be Hubie, seeing as how everyone who has disappeared is also someone who has bullied him.

Then again, Richie Hartman (Rob Schneider) has just escaped from the local mental institution. Could he possibly have something to do with the mysterious happenings in Salem!?

When Adam Sandler won his Indie Spirit Award for Uncut Gems, he infamously announced that, if he didn’t get an Oscar nomination, he would get back at the Academy by making the worst film of all time. Well, Sandler was snubbed the Academy. (Though Sandler deserved that nomination — and probably nominations for The Meyerowtiz Stories, Funny People, and Punch-Drunk Love as well — it’s pretty obvious that the Academy is never going to nominate the star of That’s My Boy and Jack and Jill.) However, Hubie Halloween is certainly not the worst film ever made. It’s actually a rather likable and sweet-natured comedy, one in which the humor is definitely juvenile but, in contrast to some of the other Happy Madison comedies, never really mean-spirited. In many ways, it’s a perfect Netflix film. It’s good enough to keep you entertained while, at the same time, you don’t necessarily have to really pay attention to every minute of the film to get it. It’s the epitome of the type of film that you can watch while doing something else.

One of the main complaints that’s always lodged against Sandler is that he primarily just makes movies so that he can hang out with his friends and get paid for it. There’s a certain amount of truth to that statement and that, more than anything, explains why Sandler’s filmography tends to be so frustratingly uneven. The cast of Hubie Halloween looks like they had a lot of fun making it. Fortunately, in this case, that sense of fun actually translates onto the screen. Steve Buscemi, June Squibb, and particularly Ray Liotta all seem to be having a ball getting to parody their own dramatic images.

Admittedly, Hubie Halloween is not a film that sticks with you. It won’t make you laugh as much as Happy Gilmore and it won’t leave you stunned like Uncut Gems. But, for what it is, it’s just likable enough to be entertaining.