The Direct to Video Connoisseur

I'm a huge fan of action, horror, sci-fi, and comedy, especially of the Direct to Video variety. In this blog I review some of my favorites and not so favorites, and encourage people to comment and add to the discussion. For announcements and updates, don't forget to Follow us on Bluesky and Like our Facebook page. If you're the director, producer, distributor, etc. of a low-budget feature length film and you'd like to send me a copy to review, you can contact me at dtvconnoisseur[at]yahoo.com. I'd love to check out what you got. And check out my newest book, Mark in Sales, over on Amazon.
Showing posts with label John Travolta. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Travolta. Show all posts

Sunday, January 5, 2025

Cash Out (2024)

Back in October Ty and I covered this on episode 180 of the podcast. It had a lot going for it as far as a movie we cover, from the Travolta, to the other guest stars, to the fact that it was directed by Randall "Scandal" Emmett, to its availability on Hulu. Even if it was bad, it would be a good amount of material, right?

Cash Out has Travolta as this world-renown thief/bank robber, who finds out his girlfriend, Kristin Davis, was an undercover FBI agent, and she almost busts him on one of his jobs. He escapes to a nice place out in the woods to retire, but his younger brother, Lukas Haas, has a big bank score he wants Travolta in on. Even though he says no, he finds out Haas is still going through with it, and shows up to the bank just in time for things to go south, leading to an Inside Man-esque scenario. Luckily Kristin Davis is the negotiator--or unluckily for the hostages who were just planning to go to work that day or make a bank transaction, and now have Noel Gugliemi sticking a gun in their face and swearing at them. Hey, what's a little PTSD between friends, right? Will there be enough convoluted hackiness in the plot to get Travolta out of this situation?


You know it baby. Convoluted hackiness all day long. We got names, which helps, and a short runtime, which also helps; but the paint-by-numbers plot is actually too little for even this runtime--think more 45-minute episode of a syndicated TV show. There's also the matter of the fact that I'm supposed to be rooting for people who are treating innocent people this poorly. Usually in a film like this I can turn my brain off, but it was really off-putting, not any kind of Robin Hood or anything like that. And then there's Travolta. He's not like a De Niro or a Cage, where there's an Oscar in there; but also not Mel Gibson, where he's a next-level star who is only in this DTV schlock because he's a horrible racist/misogynist/anti-Semite; or Willis, who was a next-level star but had health issues. The movie needed Travolta to be like one of those four, but he's never really been that, which renders the whole thing unremarkable, unfortunately, even for free with a shorter runtime.

This is now five films for Travolta on the site, but only his third DTV flick--the others were Wild Card posts for Battlefield Earth and The Punisher--and in those other two DTV ones, we can see the phenomenon I spoke of above. The first of those was Killing Season with Robert De Niro, who, even though he was mailing it in so bad he couldn't even be bothered to put a stamp on the envelope, was De Niro enough that Travolta wanted to act opposite him, and created enough of a novelty effect; and then the second of those, Paradise City, where Willis was solid enough, plus we had a Stephen Dorff that we didn't have here helping to prop up the proceedings so Travolta could just relax and chew scenery. That's the Travolta we need, put him opposite someone slightly better than him, and let him dominate that space just below. What we need is a Face/Off 2 with him and Cage, directed by John Woo, throw it on one of the streamers like Hulu or Netflix, and let it rack up the views. Unfortunately we don't have that, but we have a lot more Travolta DTV stuff out there, so we'll see if we end up getting around to it.


Many people know Kristin Davis from Sex and the City, which I get, or her great appearance on Seinfeld, but for me it'll always be her run on Melrose Place. Our site doesn't have quite the same number of alumni from Melrose as we do from 90210--probably the one we've seen the most is Patrick Muldoon, who was great in Rage and Honor 2, but we also had Courtney Thorne-Smith in Side Out and Heather Locklear in Return of Swamp Thing, so we're not complete bereft of Melrose on here. After Melrose and the Seinfeld appearance, I think my next two favorites from Davis are the TV movies The Ultimate Lie, where she plays a call girl who mistakenly gets her dad as a client (Jay Harangue does a fantastic job giving it his treatment on his YouTube channel); and A Deadly Vision, where she plays a server ("waitress" back then) with psychic visions of a killer. This unfortunately doesn't reach those heights, but it could have, because she was great at the beginning as Travolta's girlfriend who ends up turning on him. From there it's blah negotiator stuff, that they try to dress up with banter between her and Travolta that falls flat too. I saw she had a film called Deadly Illusions with Dermot Mulroney and Greer Grammer that's on Netflix and looks like it has potential, but it also had a buck-54 runtime, which just sounds too onerous. Just give me a 90-minute remake of The Ultimate Lie with her playing the mom and Dermot Mulroney as the dad, and then any actress born in 1998 as the daughter. You'll have gold.

Getting back to the whole PTSD thing, it may sound like I'm being too sensitive, but this wasn't a fun robbery, we had Noel Gugliemi, who's made a career out of being scary, pointing a gun at people and yelling and swearing at them. There was nothing fun or nice about that, certainly not lovable rogue or anything like that. I think Emmett recognized that somewhat, because at the end they tacked on that Travolta wired a million dollars into each of their bank accounts for their trouble. It's an interesting conundrum, because it's easy to say "hell, I'd go through all that for a million dollars," but for the hostages, they don't know they're getting a million dollars, they're in a situation where they're being held at gunpoint by some angry, aggressive individuals. It's why when we have lovable roguish heroes who break the law, they don't do shit like that. They're nice, even fun, and the people being inconvenienced don't mind it because the roguish heroes are so charming. It's just more of the slap-dashery/convoluted hackiness we've grown to love and expect from these Randall Scandals, and to be fair, I think I would've forgiven it if the movie had been more exciting. That was the bigger offense, that they tried to stretch 45 minutes of material into 90 minutes of movie.


Finally, between this site, and my old "Matt, Movie Guy" Tumblr (which still exists, I just haven't updated it in forever), I've become obsessed with shot composition over the years for all my screen grabs. Recently I was on the LAMBcast to discuss the new Nosferatu, where I said some of the shot composition was so great, Wes Anderson would've had to leave the theater to have a cigarette, but that was probably more projection on my part, because I was marveling at all Tumblr post material Eggers was giving us. With that in mind, I present to you the lost opportunity above. You have this beautiful shot of Travolta looking at something--dog urinating on his outdoor potted plants? Bad Tik Tok video that makes no sense to him? Another script to a Randall Scandal movie? Either way, it looks great, especially centered in the frame like that with the wall in the background, except what the hell is that thing on the left there? It just borks up the whole thing! Come Randall Scandal, you're killing my perfect screen grab... or giving me material for a seventh paragraph, which I was really struggling for, so maybe it's not all bad.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Hulu, which isn't bad, but this isn't exactly great either, which is too bad. What's good is the podcast episode Ty and I did on this one, number 180 in the archives. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt24131288

And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Saturday, April 13, 2024

Paradise City (2022)

Back on episode 128 of the podcast Ty and I covered this in our continuing effort to watch all of Bruce Willis's 2020s and late 2010s DTV films, and I'm finally getting around reviewing it. I'm not really sure why that is, because as far as I know it's been on Hulu this whole time. Anyway, we're getting after it now.

Paradise City has a guy named Ryan Swan (Blake Jenner, no relation to the Jenner family) who is in Hawai'i to find out how his father (Bruce Willis) died. Signs point to John Travolta, who is sponsoring senate candidate Branscombe Richmond, but just has the vibe of a creepy bad guy. First Swan enlists the help of his father's old partner (Stephen Dorff), and then when he goes missing, he teams up with a local police detective (Praya Lundberg). After she dons a bikini to find Blake's father's phone in a lagoon, she then takes Blake to Paradise City, this community hidden from away from the White Man, which Travolta wants to get his grubby hands on so he can ruin it. Is Blake able to find what he's looking for at Paradise City?

 
This is about what you'd expect from one of these films, but the names help, especially Travolta, who gives us a bit of his Battlefield Earth baddie in his performance. There's also a lot of goofiness, like when Stephen Dorff is captured by Travolta's baddies, first he and Travolta have a funny back and forth, and then when his goons beat up Dorff, they're like straight-punching him from off screen. It's hilarious, and does what you need. Another was when Travolta threw a village elder from a helicopter into an active volcano. Still, Blake Jenner, as your young man doing the heavy lifting, doesn't quite bring it the way a Johnny Drama would've done, and I think our lead needed that kind of energy. I think they also tried to prop up the scenes between Jenner and Lundberg by having her in skimpy outfits like a bikini, as a way to hide the fact that they didn't have great chemistry, and the scenes themselves looked like they were one take and done. This is also the first time Travolta and Willis were in a film together since Pulp Fiction, so for people my age, that was a fun element of this that pushed it above your usual 2020s DTV Willis fare. Oh, and as an aside, this film has nothing to do with the Guns N' Roses hit.

We're now at 15 for Willis on the site, and with the number of films I've covered on the podcast with Ty, I think we have another 10 ready to review. He's not horrible here, but he's not in this much either, which is par for the course with these later Willis films--Paradise City was 4th from the last for him. Seeing him with Travolta was a reminder of how far we were from the days of Pulp Fiction, and how amazing they both were in it--"Zed's dead baby, Zed's dead." This October will be 30 years since Pulp Fiction came out, and Ty made the point that this film in 1997 would've been huge. Stephen Dorff would've had to have been the Blake Jenner part, and we also would've gotten more Willis. The one point I made though is that in a 1997 version, they may not have given the role of the senate candidate to Branscombe Richmond, which would've been too bad.


Travolta on the other hand is just moving into the DTV world. While this is his fourth tag on the site, it's only his second DTV film, after The Killing Season--the other two were Wild Card posts for The Punisher and Battlefield Earth. And speaking of Battlefield Earth, there was a bit of the old "Man Animal" in his performance as a baddie here, which really stole the show. In looking at his bio, he's had quite a few DTV flicks, or ones that did like in the tens of thousands in the theater, that we could cover here--not to the level of Willis, but he's had about ten years since The Killing Season, and it looks like he's made 14 DTV flicks in that time, which is still pretty prolific. Based on how much fun this performance this was here, I think it'll be worth checking some of these other ones out in the near future.

In addition to Willis and Travolta, we had a bunch of other names. Like Willis, this is Branscombe Richmond's 15th film on the site. We're used to seeing him in small parts in 90s DTV actioners, so to see him here was a lot of fun. Speaking of fun, Eva from Hot Seat was back in this one. If you listen to the episode Ty and I did on Hot Seat, 118, we extolled the virtues of Eva, played by Kate Katzman, who's in this as a madame--at least I think she was a madame--maybe strip club owner? I mentioned Stephen Dorff above, who we could've used more of, but he's great in any case. We also had a small cameo from DTV character actor mainstay, Noel Gugliemi, who played another gangster looking to make a deal with Travolta. Finally, you may have noticed Johnny Messner was tagged. That's because he was a producer on this, but he's not in the film at all as an actor.


Finally, as I mentioned in the podcast episode, at the end of the film when our heroes infiltrate Travolta's big dinner, Jenner's character goes disguised as Gavin DeGraw while acting as the chauffeur driving the women there. Every time I see this I hear I'm in looove with a giiirl... or IIIIII don't wannbe... What amazed me was how far we were from when Gavin DeGraw was making Mom Rock hits that were used for the theme songs to CW teen dramas, that the character could go into Travolta's compound dressed like DeGraw, and no one would say "hey, aren't you the guy that did that 'I Don't Wannabe' song?" "Sorry, I don't know what you're talking about." "No way, you're him! This is so cool!" "I mean it man, I'm really not him, I'm just a chauffeur." "What kind of chauffeur dresses like Gavin DeGraw? Fine man, you wanna be like that, whatever. I didn't like your music anyway." God, brings you back to the late 2000s though, doesn't it?

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on Hulu, which I think isn't a bad bet. The names are what sell it, and Travolta in particular does a great job, which makes this worth a look. On the other hand as a warning, it was still made on the cheap, and all the names are supporting characters, so more of the film centers on Jenner and Lundberg. And if you haven't yet, you can check out episode 128 in the podcast archives for the conversation Ty and I had on this.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14656632

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Monday, January 5, 2015

Killing Season (2013)

Back in July of 2014, Jamie and I looked at this one for the DTVC Podcast. The fact that it had Robert De Niro and John Travolta made it high on my priority list, and with the DTVC Podcast still new and trying to find its voice, I figured it would be an easy one for Jamie and I to fill an hour of conversation with. Unfortunately the written blog post got lost in the shuffle between work and the holidays, but here it is now.

Killing Season stars De Niro as a former veteran of the Bosnian War who is hunted down by another veteran, John Travolta, in the Appalachian woods where De Niro lives a secluded life. The catch: Travolta is a Serb, complete with the accent. As these two bitter rivals face off in a deadly game of cat and cat, who will come out victorious?


Jamie and I both came to the same conclusion here: a fun movie, and fun to watch De Niro and Travolta in a small scale DTV flick. It's not perfect by any means, and the cat and cat game starts to run its course around the hour mark, but what's great is we're treated to about 10 minutes of credits, so as things wind down around the 65 minutes in, we only need to slog through 15 more, and that slog is helped along by the fact that it's Travolta and De Niro--plus that amazing Appalachian scenery, which is what we're treated to for the ten-minute credit sequence. For 80 minutes on Instant with De Niro and Travolta, you could do much worse.

I watched this with my wife, and she's someone who has loved seeing De Niro over the years in films like Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, and Cape Fear. It was the last film of that list that especially made her take notice, considering the degree to which De Niro mailed in his Southern accent in Killing Season, because we'd seen him do it so much better before in Cape Fear and we know he's capable of it. There is a definite feel of mailing it in here with De Niro, and I guess if anyone has earned the right to mail it in with DTV flicks at the end of his career, it's him. His rap sheet is pretty prodigious: two Oscar wins, five more nominations, plus five of his films were among AFI's 100 films 100 years list; he's created some of the most iconic characters in film history, and is maybe the best actor of his generation. When he acts opposite the guy playing his son, even as he's mailing it in, you can see just how much better he is, and I guess maybe as fans we can't expect him to give us Travis Bickle or Vito Corelone every time--but we can still joke about it when watching the newer stuff.


Let's get all the Travolta affecting a Serbian accent jokes out of the way right now. Also the beard. It's as silly as you like, though I will say he does pretty well with the accent. In fact, overall I think he brings it more than De Niro does, but also this is his first time acting opposite De Niro, so I think he was excited for the opportunity. Maybe it wasn't the film or the time in his career he expected, but when the moment came he took it, and I think you have to applaud him for that. It'll be interesting to see where his career goes from here, because, unlike De Niro, this is his first dip into the DTV pool (almost DTV: the film did gross $27,000 in the theater), and the sense is he only did it to act opposite De Niro. Will he join his fellow big screen acting brethren like Cage, Cusack, and Willis? Only time will tell.

At the DTVC we've seen many of these Dangerous Game type/humans hunting humans kind of deals, and this one, like all the others, suffers the same fate of trying to keep up the momentum. This is especially true of one like this where you only have two players, and they take turns being the hunter and hunted (which is why I called it "cat and cat" instead of "cat and mouse"). How many times can one get the upper hand on the other, only to have the other turn the tables? As much as filmmakers like to think they can keep the suspense up, when we're only 30 minutes in, we know the story isn't going to end when one guy catches the other. This film seemed to mitigate this problem the best way that I've seen, and that was by rolling the credits early over a backdrop of the Appalachian wilderness. The reality is, unless you do a film like The Warriors where there are many hunters and each are unique, or you do like The Running Man and you make it more of a real game, this kind of story is only good for a 42-minute episode of a drama, and it will always lose momentum.


Speaking of stories, I thought I'd post a little book porn for you. As far as best cameo of a Hemingway book in a film, this doesn't touch A Farewell to Arms in Evil Dead 2, but it's still nice to see. While none of the books I own and have read are in perfect condition, I have to admit I cringed a bit seeing De Niro dog-ear the corner instead of use a bookmark. It made me wonder though: was that his decision or was it in the script? Because De Niro's character was definitely a dog-ear the corners kind of guy, and if it was his idea, it was another example of how great an actor he is, even if he felt like maybe he was mailing in the rest of the role.

Overall, this isn't a bad time, and again, with its availability on Instant and short runtime, it's a great time killer. Travolta definitely wants to take advantage of his opportunity to work opposite De Niro, and De Niro, while not Vito Corelone, does well enough to make the film fun. You can always check out the pod by subscribing on your favorite podcatchers, or clicking the link in the sidebar.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1480295/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/


Friday, April 30, 2010

Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (2000)

It is possible for a movie to be traumatic, even if it's not inherently disturbing like a Captivity or Saw 33 and 1/3. I didn't know this until five minutes ago, when I finished watching Battlefield Earth. Every five minutes the characters say "leverage", and while I was capturing images of the film for the blog I turned on the NBA playoffs on TNT (just saw a nice shot of the Riverwalk in San Antonio), and they were advertising the new season of their show Leverage, and each mention of it made me cringe. It was like having a hangover, and seeing a beer commercial.

Battlefield Earth is based on a novel by L. Ron Hubbard about some aliens called Psyclos, from the planet Psyclo, who conquer Earth and subject its humans to slavery. 1000 years later, the remaining humans live in little tribes, but one, Barry Pepper, is a little smarter than most, and he's captured by the Psyclos at a very opportune moment: Mr. Travolta was just told he'll be stuck on Earth for another 50 whatevers, and he's pissed. He decides he wants to mine some gold Psyclos can't get to, so he teaches Pepper how to use all the mining stuff and sends him and some humans in there. In the process of teaching him how to mine, he also teaches him astrophysics, molecular biology, and whatever else the plot requires he'll need to vanquish the Psyclos and free our planet.


Every time I start to type, I stop and go "no, not there." This film is like a very messy room, and it's hard to know where to start tackling it. How about the annoying device used to jump to the next scene, where the picture would split down the middle, revealing the next one under it? Yeah, that wasn't stupid enough. Or just the direction as a whole. At times it felt more like a music video with the bad slow motion and over dramatic acting. Then there was the music itself, meant to tell us how amazing certain scenes were, when they were pretty bad and nowhere near amazing. That's just the movie from a technical standpoint. Want me to get into the story?

Well I won't. Making fun of cavemen learning to fly fighter jets in 7 days is just too easy. All I have to say is Man Animal. The film makes fun of itself. What irks me isn't how dumb it was, it's how smart the people who made it thought they were. You could see them patting themselves on the back (or patting L. Ron Hubbard's back posthumously) for the thing about the Psyclos thinking dogs were of a higher status in society than humans. And I loved how the writers didn't have a very extensive vocabulary, so they had to be as wordy as possible to make the characters sound intelligent. Again, it's just too easy.


John Travolta is the face most associated with this frightening ordeal. When I was looking it up on IMDb, it said the film won 10 awards, and I was like "what?," but I saw those were all Razzies and whatnot, and Mr. Travolta got one for it too. Battlefield Earth even got one for worst film of the decade, which is huge, considering everyone else had ten years to catch up. I get that Travolta is a devoted Scientologist, and he wanted to make this for his hero, L. Ron Hubbard, but he had to see how much this was sautéed in wrong sauce; and he, more than anyone else involved, had the power to fix it. Instead, I remember him in all the press junkets telling us how amazing it is. Man Animal! Again, it just drives home the point that Tarentino made a great Travolta in Pulp Fiction, and we've been sold him as an A list movie star ever since, when he really has C list talent.

Someone who it turned out had A list talent was Forest Whitaker. Can you believe that six years after this he won an Oscar? I've heard that the US is the land of second chances, but the fact that he and everyone else involved in this pain fest were even allowed to make another film again, let alone be trusted for a role good enough for Whitaker to win an Oscar in, is astounding. Good for you, Mr. Whitaker, you took your second chance and made the most with it. A real American success story.


A while back I went to Barnes and Noble to buy Anna Karenina, and found their $9 version, and the $15 Oprah Book Club version. I was telling everyone I knew that story, and one friend said "why don't we make our own book club and read silly things, like Tek War and Battlefield Earth?" I loved the idea... until I found out Battlefield Earth is over 1000 pages. What? As you can imagine, that was out. I thought to myself, who would've read that? Then I went to the Modern Library Top 100 Books of the 20th Century site, and saw not only their list, but their reader voted list. Guess what number three on the reader list was? You guessed it. Some things are just better not commented on.

If you haven't seen this, right now it's on Watch Instantly, so maybe you and your buddies should check it out. Don't do it alone like I just did, it's just too depressing. With the kinds of movies I review, we often hear the classification "so bad it's good," as in it's a fun time to make fun of, etc. I don't know that that applies here. Sometimes there's "so bad it's ridiculous and not worth my time" or "so bad it hurts my soul," and I think this one might be in those latter two.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185183/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

Thursday, March 11, 2010

The Punisher (2004)

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I first saw this when it came out in the theater. I thought it was pretty good, until I found out its mere existence meant the Dolph Lundgren version, which is far superior, was put out of print. That made me hate this movie. I don't know that I still hate it, but I also don't like it as much as when I first saw it either.

The Punisher, though it has Frank Castle (played by Thomas Jane) as its lead character, the story is loosely based on the original, with this one taking place in Tampa, FL, with not only Castle's wife and kids being killed, but his whole extended family, and with him being an FBI agent instead of NYC cop. Anyway, after John Travolta's gang kills his family, he survives, comes back, rents an apartment that looks like a high school shop class, and exacts his revenge on Travolta in a fairly bloody way.

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At the time it came out, I kind of dug this, and watching it again last night with my friends I could understand why. It's not so much the Punisher, as much as a bad action film with a character that's loosely based on the comic book character. Thomas Jane, though, doesn't work in the lead role. Most of the time his facial expressions make no sense. He kind of looks like Christopher Lambert, so imagine Lambert as the Punisher, only with more of a Southern accent than how Lambert talks. Also, I have no idea why the story was altered. Having his wife and kids murdered wasn't enough? And why did it take place in Tampa? That would be like Spiderman taking place in San Diego or something. I just got the sense that the film makers took liberties because they didn't get what the Punisher was all about. They figured they could just take an action movie, make it darker, and boom: there you go.

One of the fascinating things about the DVD is a featurette about the origin of the Punisher, where the people who created him talk about him as a comic book character. There was something similar in Catwoman, but in that one, they linked the history so it would eventually get to them discussing what they wanted to do with their version of her. Not so here. It's like they knew just how much their Punisher wasn't the comic book one, that they didn't even bother. Also, a lot of what they discussed about the Punisher that made him so great, this film didn't have. They put in weird things like a dude having his piercings ripped out and called them Dark. The conflict that made him so great was explained in one phrase in the featurette: "He'd go in and save a baby in a burning building without hesitation, but if he thinks you deserve to die, he'd kill you without hesitation as well." See, they had the burning building part down, but the conflict wasn't there, because all he was doing was avenging his family's death.

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Travolta as a villain was hilarious. We just kept saying "Man Animal" whenever he spoke. I just don't know what we were buying with that. Casting of a villain is just as important as casting the lead, and when all you have is an older version of Vinnie Barbarino that kills people, it's impossible to take the film seriously. It's amazing how much Tarentino made Travolta into an A-List celebrity. Looking at his bio, in 1993 he did Look Who's Talking Now. Could you see him being cast as the villain here if he didn't have that career revival? I don't see the star of Look Who's Talking Now getting a role like that. But he's essentially that guy. One Tarentino role does not a great actor make, yet it's what Hollywood has been trying to give us in Travolta since 1994.

I had planned on discussing Rebecca Romijn here as a continuation on our look at who is the hottest female lead in a comic book movie. Laura Herring as Travolta's wife would make a great entry as well. Anyway, I decided I'm focusing too much on the hot babes, and figured some of my gay male and straight female readers would like me to dedicate a little time to who might be the hottest male comic book movie lead. Well, if Hugh Jackman was allowed to use his Australian accent, there'd be no contest, right? I do think Jane would have to be considered though. I mean, he's right at home in the Romantic Comedy lead. Does that make him a great Punisher? Probably not. I'd have to say, for me, number one best male lead in a comic book movie, if you're going on pure dreaminess, would be George Clooney as Batman. (By the way, I'd put Rebecca Romijn here as a tie for second with Eve Mendes in Ghost Rider, both behind Jennifer Connelly in Hulk as hottest female comic book movie leads).

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I'm a huge John Pinette fan. His stand-up is hilarious. This is the second film of his here we've reviewed, the other being Dennis Rodman's Simon Sez. The problem with his role here was he was relegated to playing the part of Donkey Lips from Salute Your Shorts. What a waste. Let him improvise some scenes, let him do some rants about people browsing in line ahead of him, or how the people at the Chinese buffet tell him "You go now!" As an aside, I'm pretty sure I saw Pinette at Disney World like fifteen years ago. My mom was trying to get me to video tape my younger siblings talking to Mary Poppins, and I was like "But that's John Pinette!"

There's one The Punisher out there, and it's got Dolph Lundgren as the lead role. This is is the film that should be out of print. This is the film that was sautéed in wrong sauce. This is the film that didn't get the point of the Punisher. Yet, because it's constantly aired on FX, this is the film people think of when someone says The Punisher's on, which is a shame.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0330793/