Category: 1990s

  • Round About Midnight (1999)

    Round About Midnight (1999)

    Hiroyuki Sanada is a recognisable Japanese actor from Hollywood productions like The Last Samurai and John Wick 4, always giving a sense of dignity and substance to even mainstream action cinema clearly beneath his talents (Bullet Train, Mortal Kombat remake). In previous decades, there were leading roles in Japanese cinemas throughout the 1980s onwards. Round… Read.

  • Mean Guns (1997)

    Mean Guns (1997)

    “The original Mambo king… makes you want to dance…” On video store shelves, I confused the cover of Mean Guns (1997) with another direct-to-video Christopher Lambert action movie, Gun Men, though the former would have been released during the transition to DVD. Becoming more and more part of the auteurist following to director Albert Pyun,… Read.

  • Hologram Man (1995)

    Hologram Man (1995)

    Slash Gallagher. That’s the name of the bad guy in Hologram Man (1995), a sci-fi action techno-thriller from PM Entertainment Group. No doubt direct-to-video upon its release, watching it on a YouTube rip now, the film looks like television, yet has enough budget for multiple explosions and equipment to launch stunt people into the air… Read.

  • Rats In The Ranks (1996)

    Rats In The Ranks (1996)

    “You know what politics is? It’s not if you’re a bum, but if you’re a smaller bum than someone else.” I remember seeing Rats In The Ranks (1996) reviewed glowingly by Margaret and David on The Movie Show when it was on SBS, and then eventually this Australian documentary was screened on ABC. Revisiting it through a YouTube upload (it’s… Read.

  • The Silencers (1996)

    The Silencers (1996)

    PM Entertainment had some spare fedoras and trenchcoats, and a HR Giger jumpsuit, and decided to make a sci-fi action movie called The Silencers (1996), which feels like a 90 minute X Files episode where every 20 minutes Mulder and Scully leap in slow motion from a massive explosion, the type that turns the background… Read.