We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
THE ROCK (1996)
I haven't seen all of the films Michael Bay has directed, and some of them I have seen I found to be off-putting, but if there's one Bay movie I'm a fan of it's The Rock. Bay's second feature, The Rock is basically "Die Hard on Alcatraz" - and along with the likes of Speed and Under Siege it stands out as one of the best Die Hard-esque movies of the 1990s. This despite the fact that the script was cobbled together by multiple writers - including quick passes by Quentin Tarantino and Aaron Sorkin, with Die Hard with a Vengeance's Jonathan Hensleigh being the primary writer as far as Bay was concerned, even though he didn't receive credit.
David Weisberg and Douglas Cook came up with the initial concept, which has a group of Marines led by General Francis X. Hummel (Ed Harris) stealing rockets armed with poison gas, taking over the old prison on Alcatraz Island, and aiming those rockets at San Francisco. They're demanding a hundred million dollars and justice for Marines that have been killed in combat during secret missions - so secret that their families were lied to and they didn't receive military burials. It's a noble cause being pursued in a terrible way, so a team is set in to neutralize the situation. This team consists of Navy SEALs led by Commander Anderson (Michael Biehn), the FBI's best chemical expert Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage), and the one man to escape from Alcatraz alive back in its days of being a prison, John Patrick Mason (Sean Connery). A British Intelligence agent who was captured in 1962 and has been locked up, his existence basically wiped out, ever since... except for the times when he briefly escaped.
Unfortunately, the SEALs are wiped out right away, leaving Mason and Goodspeed - a desk jockey who has no experience and no interest in being out in the field - to handle over a dozen rogue Marines on their own while dismantling the rockets filled with poison that causes a gruesome death for anyone who comes near it.
The Rock is a blast to watch, with frenetic action sequences and a terrific cast. This movie is packed with great character actors like Tony Todd, William Forsythe, John C. McGinley, and more. And the leads are great. Connery, Cage, and Harris each had a large amount of input into the development and re-development of their characters - the result being that there are some great characters in the middle of all the mayhem. Cage in particular built his character from the ground up, turning the enthusiastic action hero Bill Goodspeed from the script into the reluctant, awkward Stanley Goodspeed. Who is awesome. This was Cage's first action movie. He had been told he could never be an action star because he was too quirky, his acting choices were too weird. He proved the naysayers wrong, becoming an action hero while remaining quirky and continuing to make weird acting choices. Meanwhile, the movie also gave Connery the chance to be a badass again, decades after Bond and even years after Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade had turned him into the elderly, comedic sidekick.
I took a deep dive into The Rock for an episode of the Revisiting series on the JoBlo Originals YouTube channel, so check that out.
ZOMBIES VS. STRIPPERS (2012)
Ted Nicolaou got started out as the location sound recordist on the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and has since worked as a writer, director, and/or editor on such films as The Day Time Ended; Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker; Trancers; Ghoulies; Robot Jox; Trancers II; Bad Channels; Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys; and the Subspecies franchise, among others. He has a working relationship with Full Moon founder Charles Band that goes back more than forty years, and the pair are both credited on more than forty different titles. In 2012, Nicolaou's son Alex Nicolaou followed him into the Full Moon business, directing the movie Zombies vs. Strippers.
Written by Alex Nicolaou, Nick Francomano, and Kent Roudebush, and of course produced by Band, Zombies vs. Strippers is... well, it's exactly what it sounds like it is. A movie that takes place inside a strip club while the zombie apocalypse breaks out. If you're a Full Moon fan, you probably won't be surprised to hear that the strip club is dealing with some serious financial issues and doesn't have much in the way of clientele - because you can't have many cast members or extras on a Full Moon budget. The club is called the Tough Titty, and owner Spider (Circus-Szalewski) is in danger of losing the place due to the lack of cash flow. It's also not surprising that the zombie action is low-key. The cheapest thing to film is people talking to each other inside one location, so much of Zombies vs. Strippers' 74 minute running time consists of Spider interacting with employees like the stoner DJ, the dopey bartender, the inept bouncer, the rare client, and strippers like Sugar Hill (Eve Mauro). But yes, there are occasionally zombies and the strippers have to fight them off, so the movie does live up to the title Zombies vs. Strippers.
The budgetary limitations are obvious, but Zombies vs. Strippers is a quick and entertaining watch. There were choices made to accommodate the lack of money, but there are also unexpected elements to the film that make it unique. Like the fact that Spider is a huge fan of an odd kids' show host called Hambo (Chance A. Rearden) and the presence of a trio of bikers led by a guy called Red Wings (Brad Potts, turning in a strong comedic performance). There are amusing lines and some surprises, including when it comes to the fates of some characters. There are bare breasts as well, for viewers who are into that. If you like Full Moon and zombies, this isn't a bad way to spend 74 minutes (and it's more like 67 when you discount the opening titles and end credits).
THE JEWEL OF THE NILE (1985)
20th Century Fox didn't have much faith in Romancing the Stone in the build-up to the film's release, but it proved to be so successful that they put a sequel on the fast track immediately. The problem was, Romancing the Stone had done too well for Fox to be able to get the creative team back together. Screenwriter Diane Thomas was working on projects with Steven Spielberg, director Robert Zemeckis was off making Back to the Future. Stars Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito were locked in, though. They were contractually obligated to come back for a sequel. And once the sequel The Jewel of the Nile started rolling, they started regretting that they had signed that sequel clause.
Directed by Lewis Teague from a screenplay by Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner, The Jewel of the Nile does have an interesting idea at its core. The first movie had told the story of Joan Wilder (Turner), author of romantic adventure novels, getting caught up a situation just like she would have written about and falling in love with gruff world traveler Jack T. Colton (Douglas) along the way. Just like a heroine in one of her books, Joan sailed off into the sunset with her new love. And now Joan is finding out what happens after the adventure has ended and the novel is over. Life goes on. It's not always great. She and Jack have been sailing around the world for six months now, and she's getting tired of it. She wants to go back home so she can focus on finishing her new novel, which is months past its deadline. That's an interesting place for the sequel start at. But the story that follows just doesn't work very well.
Now that Joan is disenchanted with the concept of romance novels, she jumps at the chance to write the biography of Omar Khalifa (Spiros Focás), a man who tells her he's about to unite the tribes of the Nile and become an Emperor. She and Jack part company in France; Jack wants to go to Greece, and Joan is accompanying Omar to Africa. But pretty much as soon as Joan and Omar are out of sight, Danny DeVito's criminal character Ralph shows up hoping to get revenge for Jack foiling his plans and getting him arrested in the previous film. Omar also blows up Jack's boat. And a stranger arrives to tell him that he needs to retrieve "the Jewel of the Nile" from Omar. When Ralph hears there's a jewel involved, he decides he wants to join Jack on this mission.
So we quickly find out that Omar is the villain of this film and his acquisition of power is not the peaceful move he made it sound like. The Jewel of the Nile is also not what anyone is expecting it to be. And this story isn't nearly as interesting as those involved was hoping it would be. This sequel did have a budget that was significantly larger than Romancing the Stone's ($25 million vs. $10 million), and you can tell when you have sequences like a tank blasting at a fighter jet while it rolls through the streets of a village, but nothing here is thrilling or engaging.
The Jewel of the Nile was a rush job, arriving in theatres a year and a half after Romancing the Stone. They should have taken more time with it, because this script was not ready to go in front of cameras.
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