This is one that you hate to love. Death Wish III is stupid, violent, crass, ugly, cruel... and fun. The premise should be well-known by now: Charles Bronson is Kearsey, a former pacifist whose wife and daughter were attacked and killed by human slime in NYC. He went on the warpath. He killed tons of thugs and gang members. The whole community cheered him on - even the cops.
This movie is a few years later. Bronson goes to visit a friend, arrives just in time to see the friend murdered by local tribal gang members. The cops make him a deal - if you wipe out the gang menace for us, we'll look the other way. The rest of the movie is Bronson befriending the neighborhood and systematically murdering awful people.
You hate to condone this kind of behavior, especially these days, but the movie is also so fake that it's really just a transparent power trip for the viewer, which excuses some of the worst of it. Death Wish III is exactly what you'd expect - no better, no worse.
This is an odd one - totally reversed my expectations. I thought Voight would be the Big Actor and Eric Roberts would be a joke. The opposite is true! Voight is AWFUL as a bank robber who has escaped a max security prison in Alaska twice, and is gunning for number three. Eric Roberts is GREAT as the prison boxer who tags along as a kind of really unintelligent but loyal and hopeful sidekick. They escape prison (but not before we see the first movie appearances of Danny Trejo and Tiny Lister!!), and after crossing some rough terrain they hop on a freight train.
Well, they have bad luck. The engineer has a heart attack and falls off the train, dead. The train is now Out Of Control. It keeps accelerating, and they two escapees have to figure out what to do - which is complicated when they meet Rebecca De Mornay (!) who works for the train company, and was sleeping when things went awry.
It's not the best movie, mostly because of Voight (what on earth accent is he trying for? Why does he mutter and mumble so many lines? What is he DOING?). Roberts, on the other hand, goes deep into his role, and reminded me very much of Matthew McConoughy. I respected him from beginning to end. And De Mornay, despite little screen time, makes a big impression.
Overall, it's worth seeing - the cast is fantastic, for one thing, and the premise generates some legitimate high tension. But don't expect The Fugitive or anything of that level.
It was only a matter of time until I ran across a movie about the 1980s Team USA volleyball squad. The movie is a little too long, and focuses too heavily on the private dramas of about four of the team members, but is actually fairly entertaining. I think I would have liked this more as a kid than I did as an adult. The coach (Michael Parks) does a particularly good job transitioning slowly from hatable to relatable. Not a lot to say about this one - not one of the deeper 80s sports dramas - but it's worth a watch, especially if volleyball moves you in any way.
God, this was bad. The Terror Within is a cheap, braindead, Z-grade Alien clone except with a horrible twist: the alien reproduces via rape. Lovely. Avoid this one at all costs, totally worthless.
Raiders of the Lost Ark / Temple of Doom knockoff, with a female protagonist named Jane who comes from mildly erotic British comics. The movie is... OK. Bland. Some forced semi-nudity for the sake of the main character. The plot is nonsense. Hard to recommend.
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