'Our Mrs. Reynolds'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
I liked many of Jean Claude Van Damme's action heroes. He saved the day in the end, but sometimes didn't get the girl [snip] and is pointedly emotional in many,
Oh no. You did not just bring Jean Claude's "LOOK AT ME, I'M EMOTING" face into this discussion, did you? Really?
I had to! Honestly, his (in)ability to act aside, his characters were interestingly defined and rewarded (or not).
I'll always be grateful to Van Damme for making Sudden Death, the Stanley Cup final-set action movie complete with a fight where he got his ass kicked by a female terrorist in a Penguin costume, and Luc Robitaille as a guest star.
Jean-Claude. Van Damme. Does not compute. I don't care if he can crack nuts with his buttcheeks; he canna act!!
after one of the nakedest sex scenes ever
Spoken like someone who has never seen a Bernardo Bertolucci picture. Let's just say I had The Dreamers out from Netflix, and saw way, way more of Eva Green than the Bond movie showed.
To see more of Eva Green (or any of the principals) than The Dreamers showed, the filmmaker would need to use a sigmoidoscope.
Hee on the Van Damme comments! I've never seen him except inadvertently while channel surfing, but I will say that his closest counterpart when it comes to lack of acting skills is Steven Seagal. The man almost ruins what is in actuality a damn good action film, Under Seige, simply from his very inability to portray anything other than Seagal-ness.
(most of all as the crazy Russian in Snatch).
YESS!
his characters were interestingly defined and rewarded (or not).
I really, really want to like Timecop in the same way I want to like The Saint. Actually, there's a couple of Jean Claude's I actually even like (such as Bloodsport, despite it being sillier than just about any movie we've mentioned here this morning, and featuring the worst examples of Jean Claude's Acting Face evar).
Well, Sudden Death and Legionnaire !!!
(exclamation marks mine, but they should have been in the title).
It wasn't about the amount of flesh shown. I mean, I've seen porn. This wasn't porn. Okay, it kinda was. The camera was pretty much fondling JC's ass. I even remember seeing his body fuzz backlit by a very sentimental sun.
It wasn't how much. It was how, and how lovingly. There was a chick in the scene too, I guess.
JC does celebrate his physicality in a way Seagal couldn't, but I do give him more credit, because his movies were often fun (Double Team anyone?). He also played effeminate a couple times, and not just for laughs.
Speaking of which, that reminds me of a Dacascos bargain basement flick, Boogie Boy, which has random homosexuality in it. Kinda weird, just there in passing.