Last Man Standing (1996)

Last Man Standing (1996), Walter Hill’s remake of Yojimbo (already remade as A Fistful Of Dollars), is almost mythical yet reductively basic. Set in a ghost town named Jericho that nobody else lives in except for two gangs fighting over the same turf, a state of purgatory only destabilised by the arrival of a gun-for-hire […]

Castle Keep (1969)

While the posters might make Castle Keep (1969) look like a World War II action movie, it’s actually a very strange, oddball experience. Right from the opening sequence where a jeep of tired soldiers travelling through a forest is cross-cut in the editing with two stately people – a Count (Jean-Pierre Aumont) and a Countess […]

Wheels On Meals (1984)

I knew SBS Cult Movies screened Wheels On Meals (1984) occasionally on a Saturday night, much as they would any Jackie Chan Hong Kong martial arts flick from the 1980s, and all I recalled was that Jackie rode around on rollerblades. Turns out that was a false memory implant and that it’s a skateboard you […]

Hard Target (1993)

Retroactive Academy Award to Jan Alexander, credited Hair Stylist for Jean-Claude Van Damme on Hard Target (1993) and crafting one of the finest mullets to ever grace an action movie. Even though the theatrical release version of Hard Target, which I have watched countless times, is not John Woo’s director’s cut (apparently he was overruled […]

Hard Times (1975)

On a Walter Hill kick, I revisited his directorial debut, Hard Times (1975; aka The Streetfighter), which I remember as being very decent and on rewatch, remains very decent. Set in Depression-era New Orleans, Chainey (Charles Bronson) steps off the train looking for work. Coming across a bare-knuckled boxing match in a warehouse, Chainey throws […]