John Ryder may have wanted Jim to stop him, but you’re going to have a hard time stopping any fan from picking up the upcoming 4K Blu-ray of The Hitcher. Surprisingly, the movie has never been available on a Region 1 Blu-ray, but thankfully Warner Bros. is gassing up for exactly that.
As per The Digital Bits, Warner Bros. will release The Hitcher – which stars Rutger Hauer, C. Thomas Howell and Jennifer Jason Leigh – on October 22nd.
Here is the official write-up: “In this 1986 cult classic, director Robert Harmon thrills the viewer with the story of young Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell), who stops on the highway to pick up a hitchhiker, not knowing that by doing so, he opens the door to terrible evil. The mysterious hitcher, unforgettably portrayed by Rutger Hauer, is a relentless slaughterer, preying on those who invite him into their lives. Somewhat dismissed at the time of its original release, The Hitcher developed a rabid fan following in the ensuing years, now properly recognized as one of the most memorable and terrifying thrillers of the 1980s.”
As far as special features go, fans of The Hitcher might be disappointed that they’ll only be getting an audio commentary with director Robert Harmon and writer Eric Red, a video interview with Harmon and the theatrical trailer. If you want more content – and we mean a lot more content – you might be better off with Second Sight’s set, which comes out on September 30th and features not only new extras but a 200-page book, a copy of the screenplay and more. OK, all of that is pretty incredible, but at least Warner Bros.’ version has the original artwork! For fans who go way back with the movie, that’s a major get.
Regardless of the lack of special features, this release of The Hitcher will offer the same 4K scan of the original camera negative as the one found on Second Sight’s. On the restoration itself, director Harmon said, “Stunned by how great it looks… beautiful work!! Really, this movie has no business looking this good considering how ancient the elements are.”
The Hitcher is beloved by a wealth of genre fans, myself included, so this is no doubt a pre-order. I would also pick Rutger Hauer’s performance as one of the best in any horror movie.
Will you be picking up this 4K release of The Hitcher? What are your memories of first seeing it?
He feels the need – the need to please! Tom Cruise pulled another all-star stunt over the weekend, making a surprise appearance at a screening of Top Gun: Maverick. As if that wasn’t cool enough, the showing itself was backed by a live orchestra performing the movie’s score.
With nearly 3,000 people in attendance, Tom Cruise’s surprise spot was an insanely huge hit within the famed Royal Albert Hall in London. During his introduction, Cruise expressed excitement at the rarity and history that the live music added to Top Gun: Maverick, noting its usage during the silent era.
While live musical accompaniments to modern films (that’s talkies, ya see) have become more popular over the years and it’s not uncommon to find them during special occasions (many theaters, for example, do Harry Potter films around Christmas), Cruise said that this particular screening of the Top Gun sequel would allow him to fulfill a lifelong desire. “I’ve always wanted to experience a film like this with a live full symphony orchestra, synchronized picture, in front of a packed audience in the grandeur of a classic movie palace. Thank you all for being here, and thank you for making this dream come true.” He even sat at the theater’s pipe organ, no doubt taking cues from his old pal Nick Nightingale.
Cruise, ever the champion of cinema, also expressed his thanks to those behind the scenes of Top Gun: Maverick – both the film and the special screening. “The power of music and its use in cinema to deepen our experience of the story and our connection to the characters is absolutely magical. And the music you’re about to hear live tonight, I want to personally thank the extraordinary talents of Harold Faltermeyer, Hans Zimmer, Lady Gaga, OneRepublic, and the gentleman who’s here this evening who also produced the score, Lorne Balfe. I also want to thank tonight’s orchestra and all of your exceptional talents.”
Physical media seems to be making a comeback. A few years ago, studios were about ready to throw in the towel on DVD/ Blu-ray, with many companies no longer releasing all their movies in that format, preferring no fuss digital releases and streaming. But, movies on disc are making a comeback, with 4K Blu-ray leading the way, and companies like Arrow Video, Criterion, Shout Factory and more gaining a lot of fans among cinephiles for their amazing releases. Here at JoBlo, we’d like to know, from our readers, if physical media, particularly movies on 4K discs, are something they care about and invest a lot of their time and money in. Let us know by taking the poll below!
For years Samara Weaving has been one of the most fascinating actors in the horror genre. Every time she shows up, there’s an infectious energy that makes her pop off the screen. And she has a knack for picking cool projects. I love it when a movie has a gimmick that it takes through its entire running time. Weaving’s latest venture, Azrael, follows a society post-Rapture, where it’s been deemed a sin to speak. So the film is almost entirely barren of dialogue and really hinges on its performance from lead, Samara Weaving. I loved the film and you can check out my review. The story is a little stereotypical but its the execution that really impresses. The world-building is fantastic and is a great playground for Weaving’s Azrael to exist in.
I was lucky enough to talk to Samara about her role as Azrael, and what it was like to play an entirely mute character:
“It was weird, man. It was a real [weird]. That’s why I did it. You know, I read the script and I was like, “Oh, this is a challenge that’s not going to come around again. I really want to push myself because I’m psycho. Yes, I will go to Estonia in the cold, in the rain, in the snow, and do five weeks of night shoots. Great… But yeah, it was a trip, I think. Having your voice kind of stripped from you and just having to lean on physicality and facial expressions and really listening and looking at other actors and getting real weird with it. It was cool. It was great.”
And as someone who interviews a lot of actors, two things they tend to avoid are Night Shoots and Outdoor Filming. With Azrael taking place almost entirely outdoors and the majority happening at night, this was a nightmare for some actors. Yet Samara took it on like the champ she is, welcoming the challenge.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but that seems to be all [I’m doing] recently. It’s just “Ohh, is it all nice? And it’s all on location. Sign me up. That’s great.” I don’t know. Yes. It’s like brutal and it’s uncomfortable and peoples emotions are really high because people are tired, but there’s something…there’s like a sense of camaraderie. And you get the things that you’ve really been planning . You’re all there, cause you really love it and you care about it. You can’t be anything other than super humble and super willing. And you know, like you’re gonna be upside down on a tree for three days. Great. Let’s go, you know.”
Without any lines of dialogue, Samara’s prepwork was unlike any other film she’d done as she didn’t have to do any line memorization. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t plenty else to prepare for, as the role was plenty physical. But without dialogue, meant the character’s background wouldn’t be handled in a typical way:
“A lot of the story was in the script, but there was a lot of like back story that I just kind of wanted to have, for my own sake. Because the challenge for me going into it was like: how do we keep audiences invested in this character? We need to find these emotional beats and make them really pivotal. Really poignant. Or else you’re just watching someone fight people for a long time, which is great. Also, if that’s what you’re into. But just to try and make it the audience being curious about what is happening and having the ambiguity of it all be like “of service to the story” and not a bad thing. So that was what I was concerned about. And the prep really for me…it was like doing stunt training and learning those fight sequences, but also just sitting with: OK, what is this characters arc and journey? Like I would any kind of script and just get weird and pretentious with it. But then it was kind of scary.”
Finally, I had to make sure to ask her about her new film Carolina Caroline with Kyle Gallner which just wrapped filming.
“Ohh it’s gonna be magical. It’s gonna be…he’s awesome. I’ve been wanting to work with him for ages and I’m so glad we got to find this and it’s going to be such we both come from. You know horror, but this is the total departure from that, but I.”
And if you’ve been around the site you’ll know we’re big fans of Strange Darling (I may or may not have seen it 5x), so I had to ask Samara about her experience with the film, and she responded, “Isn’t it good?” Hilariously enough, I was supposed to interview Kyle on the day of the premiere, but he had to drop out for undisclosed reasons (turns out, he was filming this film). Thankfully, Samara was able to give a little insight into that with a fun story about Kyle missing the premiere:
“Well, we were working in Kentucky [on Carolina Caroline] and he couldn’t make his premiere. And so we got the whole crew to go and see it at a local Kentucky theatre. And then we rented out like a little dive bar and we all just, like, had a mini premiere for him there. It was really fun.”
I had an absolute blast talking with Samara and wish you guys could see the actual video as she’s so charismatic and likable. And make sure to check out Azrael when it comes to theaters this Friday. And for you folks who avoid the theater, it will release to Shudder latest this year.
AZRAEL IS PLAYING EXCLUSIVELY IN THEATERS ON SEPTEMBER 27TH, 2024.
In the age of social media, it’s easy to imagine what would happen with the teenage targets if the horror movie took a more realistic approach. No doubt one would stop to snap a pic of the killer and turn them into the poop emoji in real time while another would take a selfie right before the killer pops up for that final scare. There, too, would be tweets along the lines of, “1,000,000 likes and i’ll remove this dude’s mask!” But how would the most iconic of slasher favorites fare with so much social media around? For Freddy Krueger, it’s all about the memes.
Sitting down for a joint interview with ComicBook.com, Heather Langenkamp – who played final girl Nancy Thompson in A Nightmare on Elm Street – said Freddy Krueger would lose a lot of his boiler room steam thanks to social media. “I mean, I almost think it’s impossible to have a scary character with social media because by the time you’ve already put out the scary side, there’s like 100 memes of you being ridiculous and they’ve figured out a way to humiliate you, so I don’t know if Freddy could even exist today…I see those memes the minute you’re trying to scare me, it’s like there’s a meme about something else.”
Robert Englund – who of course played Freddy Krueger across eight different films – confirmed, “Freddy texts. I wonder if I could get my tongue in a smartphone,” referring to the scene where a phone Nancy is holding turns into Freddy’s mouth.
It doesn’t take much to get Freddy Krueger to want to slice and dice, but we can totally see him getting frustrated when a tweet drops of him mid-blink, the caption reading: “My boy Freddy caught nappin’!”
For his part, Englund doesn’t see social media or the internet playing a role in any aspect of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, although it does have its place in modern horror. “I love the idea of technology being used as a tool in a horror narrative, I think I’m a sucker for that. I just think there’s probably better ways to do that than with the mythology of Nightmare on Elm Street.”
So much for the seashells…1993’s sci-fi actioner and cult favoriteDemolition Man will be getting the 4K treatment courtesy of Arrow Video, as revealed in the lineup of their December slate. Arrow isn’t skimping, either – we just hope the future is big enough for the entire set.
This Demolition Man release boasts a brand new 4K restoration from the original camera negative, which has been approved by director Marco Brambilla. It, too, has Dolby Vision/HDR. Outside of the technical specs, the Demolition Man 4K will offers two new audio commentaries: one with Brambilla and screenwriter Daniel Waters, and another with film historian Mike White (of the Projection Booth podcast). There is also an archival commentary with Brambilla and producer Joel Silver. Also included are new interviews with the likes of production designer David L. Snyder, stunt coordinator Charles Percini, special makeup effects artist Chris Biggs and body effects set coordinator Jeff Farley.
Outside of the new special features, a draw for buyers will be the “seamless branching” of the domestic Taco Bell and international Pizza Hut versions. As fans know, Pizza Hut stood in as Taco Bell in foreign versions of Demolition Man as the winner of the franchise wars because it was more well-known internationally.
But that’s not all! In addition to those extras, Demolition Man fans get plenty of physical goodies as well: a 60-page bound collector’s book with a wealth of essays, a double-sided fold-out poster (with new artwork), six art cards, and a pair of stickers.
Here is Arrow’s write-up accompanying the box art: “In 2032, arch criminal Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) awakens from a 35-year deep freeze in CryoPrison to find a world where crime is almost non-existent – a serene utopia ripe for the taking. With the police no longer equipped to deal with his 90s-style brutality, they revive Demolition Man Sgt. John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone), the no-holds-barred police officer unjustly sentenced to CryoPrison who originally took Phoenix down. Old-school cop against old-school criminal, settling their scores on the streets of San Angeles? The future won’t know what’s hit it.”
Demolition Man will hit 4K on December 10th and is currently listed at just $45.
Are you a fan of Demolition Man? Will you be picking up this 4K release?
An adaptation of the classic Mary Shelley novel Frankenstein has long been a dream project for Guillermo del Toro, the filmmaker with such credits as Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, Hellboy, and Blade II. He’s been talking about it for at least 17 years – and now he’s actually making it! After previous attempts to get the project going fell through, Netflix stepped up to let del Toro make the Frankenstein movie he’s been dreaming of. They haven’t announced a release date for the film yet, but while we wait for that news to come along, here’s Everything We Know About Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein:
LONG ROAD TO PRODUCTION
Del Toro has named Frankenstein as his favorite novel, and in 2007, he told us that the project he “would kill to make” is a faithful “Miltonian tragedy” version of Frankenstein. He said that he had read the script Frank Darabont wrote for the 1994 film Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and it was “pretty much perfect,” but that Darabont’s perfection didn’t make it to the screen in the Kenneth Branagh-directed movie. Given that del Toro was feeling so passionate about the material in ’07, it’s surprising that that was also the year when he turned down Universal’s offer to take over their classic Monster properties for an early iteration of what became the failed attempt to create a Dark Universe with 2017’s The Mummy. Speaking with TimesTalks in 2017, del Toro revealed, “I’ve said no to things that are enormous and I’ve never looked back. The only time I repent I didn’t do something was in 2007 when Universal, in an incredibly gentle and beautiful manner said, ‘Do you want to take over the Monster Universe?’ And they gave me the reins of several properties, and I didn’t do it. That I repent. So this is a confessional moment, I repent. That’s the only thing.” His longtime producing partner J. Miles Dale later confirmed, “At one time, (del Toro) was going to do the Monster Universe with Universal — Frankenstein’s Bride, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Invisible Man, The Wolf Man — and he didn’t. We feel like Shape of Water was kind of a version of a creature. So now, here he is doing his own Monster Universe.“
Del Toro didn’t want to run the Dark Universe, but in 2008 he started putting together script notes and concept art for his Frankenstein adaptation. He told Empire, “What I’m trying to do is take the myth and do something with it, but combining elements of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein without making it just a classical myth of the monster. The best moments in my mind of Frankenstein, of the novel, are yet to be filmed … The only guy that has ever nailed for me the emptiness, not the tragic, not the Miltonian dimension of the monster, but the emptiness is Christopher Lee in the Hammer films, where he really looks like something obscenely alive. Boris Karloff has the tragedy element nailed down but there are so many versions, including that great screenplay by Frank Darabont that was ultimately not really filmed.” There were times when del Toro said the adaptation might need to cover two or three films, due to the complexity of the book and its shifting perspectives.
His first choice to play Frankenstein’s Monster was frequent collaborator Doug Jones, who has delivered creature performances in most of the director’s films. At one point, the project made it deep enough into pre-production that Jones was able to see a bust of the monster design, which was inspired by Bernie Wrightson’s artwork in an illustrated adaptation of Shelley’s novel that Wrightson spent seven years working on. Jones told Collider, “My first thought is that I’m not the big, broad, big-boned lumbering Frankenstein that you have in mind. But it was told to me, Guillermo is a big fan of Bernie Wrightson, and a friend of Bernie Wrightson, and Bernie had illustrated a version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and all of the images of Frankenstein’s Monster in that, that’s what he was going to pattern my look after. Which was more emaciated, little skinnier, little more pathetic looking. And yet, had an unnatural physical prowess, an unnatural athleticness to him. He was sewn together with spare parts of a couple different bodies. Very bony face, long, stringy, drawn hair. I never went through a makeup test myself for it. But I did go to the creature shop, Spectral Motion, who was developing the look for him at the time… I was there for something else, and Mike Elizalde, the owner of the shop, said ‘I gotta show you something’. Then he unveiled a head and shoulders bust of me with this monster makeup built on it. It was like, honestly, my eyes welled up. It was so hauntingly beautiful, and it did pay reverence to Bernie Wrightson’s artwork and gave you a different-looking Frankenstein’s monster than what you’re used to.“
By 2013, del Toro was considering casting Benedict Cumberbatch (who was nearly in the director’s film Crimson Peak, but had to drop out and was replaced by Tom Hiddleston) as the monster. Cumberbatch had already played both the monster and Dr. Victor Frankenstein in Danny Boyle’s stage version of Frankenstein – but his casting in the del Toro version wasn’t to be. In 2014, del Toro admitted that Universal had talked to him about making Frankenstein (plus Bride of Frankenstein) for them “several times,” but he was hesitant because making his dream project was such a daunting task.
Then, in 2023, Netflix offered del Toro the chance to make Frankenstein for them. Having previously worked with the streaming service on his 2022 stop-motion adaptation of Pinocchio and the horror anthology Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, he decided to go ahead and team with Netflix to make his Frankenstein dream come true. Del Toro said, “It’s a movie I have been wanting to do for 50 years since I saw the first Frankenstein. I had an epiphany, and it’s basically a movie that required a lot of growth and a lot of tools that I couldn’t have done 10-20 years ago. Now I’m brave or crazy enough or something, and we’re gonna tackle it.“
J. Miles Dale said, “Nothing’s easy, and that one’s not going to be easy — it’s a big movie with a ship stuck in the ice and a ton of other things — but we’ve got a little bit of lead time on it, and we’re excited to get going.” Dale also said that del Toro and Frankenstein are a perfect match of filmmaker and subject matter, and suggested the film could be as deeply emotional as the book is. “In the last couple of films, certainly with Nightmare Alley and then with Pinocchio, we’ve dealt with the whole father-son relationship. And Guillermo and I both lost our fathers in the last few years. When you have a strong father figure, it’s a big part of our lives. This version of Frankenstein very much goes down that thematic road. So, I feel like this is the third film in Guillermo’s father trilogy. That’s exciting, and when you read the script, it’s very emotional and, of course, very iconic.” The film is even said to be going by the codename Prodigal Father.
STORY
We know that Mary Shelley’s novel told the story of the young student of science Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque but sentient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. As mentioned, del Toro has described his approach to the material as a “Miltonian tragedy,” and he has said that he would like to deal with the complexities of the novel and its shifting viewpoints while blending elements of Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein. He has also said that his movie wouldn’t be a direct adaptation of the novel, but rather “an adventure story that involves the creature.” At another point in the development process, he was quoted as saying, “The only quality you can claim is faithfulness… It’s a very difficult, tricky slope. Because then anytime that you deviate from that, you’re betraying the very goal you submitted. I’m being very faithful to trying to encompass the whole narrative of the novel. I’m being very faithful in that I’m trying to capture the spirit of the novel, when I read it as a kid, and how it impacted me. I recognize that it’s both biography and prophecy about my life. It’s a very personal film. In many ways it’s the most personal film I’ll ever make, because my connection with the creature is very profound and deep and I don’t think there’s any other monster that has affected me as much.” So it sounds like he has considered different options over the years.
The version that made it into production might have the following logline: Set in Eastern Europe in the 19th Century, the story of Dr. Pretorius, who needs to track down Frankenstein’s monster- who is believed to have died in a fire forty years before–in order to continue the experiments of Dr. Frankenstein.
CAST
The cast del Toro has assembled for the film includes Oscar Isaac (Moon Knight), Mia Goth (Pearl), Jacob Elordi (Saltburn), Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds), and Charles Dance (Game of Thrones), with Ralph Ineson (The Witch) showing up for a pivotal cameo. At one point, Andrew Garfield (The Amazing Spider-Man) was in the cast, but he had to drop out and was replaced by Elordi… and it has been said that the role Garfield had passed over to Elordi was the Monster. The cast and character matchings haven’t been confirmed, but it’s believed that Isaac is playing Dr. Frankenstein, with Goth as his love interest, and Waltz most likely playing Dr. Pretorius.
Whatever Goth’s role is, she had to get a digital body scan done for it. Goth has had to get plaster life casts / head molds done multiple times in her career, but a digital body scan was a first for her. In a video breakdown of the life cast scene she did for the movie MaXXXine, Goth said, “I just had to do another (life cast) for Frankenstein, but rather than the mold, it was a scan! It’s changing, isn’t it? And it’s a little bittersweet. I think I prefer (the mold).” Goth told Total Film that the experience of working on the film has “been amazing. It’s everything I wanted it to be and more. I love Guillermo. I love working with him, he’s an incredible director, everyone knows that, but he’s also just like such a wonderful person and, yeah, I’m very excited.” Goth has also revealed that she has taken to shadowing the director on her off days to watch him work.
Jacob Elordi has simply teased that Frankenstein will be “one hell of a movie.”
PRODUCTION
Frankenstein is a massive production. One believed to have a filming schedule of five months, production has turned out to have a schedule of at least seven months; the five month stretch was just the first block of filming, which took place in Ontario, Canada. Filming began on February 12th – but before cameras started rolling, del Toro took cast members Oscar Isaac, Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz, and Charles Dance to eat at a Toronto restaurant, where they posed for a picture with the staff. You can take a look at the picture right here:
A good portion of the Canada shoot appeared to involve snowbound locations and, as Dale mentioned, a ship stuck in the ice. An image of the ship can be seen below, and more can be found at THIS LINK.
From Canada, the production moved on to Scotland, where del Toro took the chance to stay in a haunted hotel room. For the shooting of exterior scenes, parts of Edinburgh, Scotland, were made to look like Victorian England. Images of the city’s transformation can be seen HERE. Oscar Isaac was spotted on the Edinburgh set, and images of him in his character’s wardrobe made their way online:
Jean-Claude Van Damme. The Muscles from Brussels. If you grew up in the early nineties, this handsome Belgian was everywhere. With his unique accent, good looks, and a butt he was all but too happy to show off at least once a film, he was the rare action star that was just as popular with the ladies as the dudes. Changing tastes in the mid-nineties meant that his career as a viable lead in theatrical films started to dry up, which wasn’t helped by some off-screen issues he had with drugs (a Hollywood tale as old as time). But, while his contemporary, Steven Seagal, became something of a parody of himself, JCVD got clean and doubled down on his craft, emerging as a surprisingly potent actor in some DTV movies that are way better than anyone gives them credit for.
While his days as an A-list lead might be behind him, JCVD remains a guy you can’t help but love, and his legacy has been assured by the fact that he never stopped delivering decent movies (even if the budgets are lower) and has a good sense of humour about himself. And, oh yeah, he’s known to be a pretty nice guy to boot (and is the subject of one of our biggest What Happened to this Celebrity episodes of all time). But what are the best JCVD movies? Here are five (in chronological order).
Bloodsport (1988):
The fact is, you can’t do a Jean-Claude Van Damme best movies list without Bloodsport at the top of said list. The ironic thing is that Cannon Pictures, the film’s distributor, thought it was a disaster and it spent months on the shelf, with it coming very close to going straight to video. What saved the movie was the fact that the company badly overextended itself with a few big-budget duds in 1987, so in 1988, they needed product they could push. Bloodsport is probably the most profitable movie they ever made. Its theatrical gross was modest, but on home video, this cult movie became a monster, and it was an important stepping stone for Van Damme, who plays a real-life (and very controversial) martial artist named Frank Dux, who fights in the deadly underground Kumite. Everything about this movie is iconic at this point, from the power ballad-heavy soundtrack to Bolo Yeung as the villain and the many, many hard-as-nails fight sequences.
Kickboxer (1989):
While I don’t think Kickboxer is quite as slick or as well made as Bloodsport, it’s just as iconic in its way. In this one, JCVD avenges the maiming of his brother at the hands (and feet) of a brutal (and iconic) Muay Thai master, Tong Po. Van Damme has a great fight in this one at the end with Tong Po, where the fighters have to dip their hands in oil and broken glass to make the hand-to-hand fight all the more brutal (I loved in Hot Shots: Part Deux where they made fun of this by having the fighters dip their hands in hot fudge and candy). Plus, this is the one where Van Damme dances.
Double Impact (1991):
Double the Van Dammage! That was the tagline my friends and I used to scream at each other at recess around when this movie was coming out. The fact that JCVD was playing twins in this one was a BIG deal at the time. My gym teacher was so enamoured with Van Damme that the door to his office prominently displayed this movie’s poster for most of the first half of the nineties. It’s an extremely rewatchable action movie, with Van Damme playing the wimpy ladies man, Chad, and the tough-as-nails anti-hero, Alex. Of course, in the end, Chad, who starts off as a wimp, becomes a total badass, while the hard Alex learns to embrace his softer side. They both learn something! The line readings in this one crack me up, such as the way JCVD says, “Hong Kong? Uncle Frankie – we have a business to run!” or, “I’d never wear silk underwear!” I also love that the producers were so desperate to squeeze a sex scene into this movie that they did it as a fantasy sequence. Then again, Jean Claude and his co-star Alonna Shaw looked good, so why not?
Universal Soldier (1992):
This one is slightly controversial. I considered putting Peter Hyams’s Timecop on the list, but our Director of Operations here at JoBlo, John Fallon, is a JCVD superfan and convinced me that Timecop nowhere near as good as Universal Soldier. Given his bonafides (check out his pic with JCVD at the bottom of the article), I defer to his wisdom. Universal Soldier is pretty iconic, with JCVD and Dolph Lundgren playing reanimated Vietnam War veterans on a rampage. Lundgren steals this one with his necklace of ears and his whole “the war is out there, man” grocery store monologue. That said, JCVD would have his revenge years later when they both appeared in Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning, which might be the greatest DTV B-action movie ever. Van Damme KILLS in that one.
Hard Target (1993):
For me, Jean-Claude Van Damme’s best all-around movie is still Hard Target (in fact, it ended up on our 25 best action movies of all time list). John Woo is probably the greatest action movie director of all time, and it figures that he would deliver JCVD’s most impeccably assembled flick, with him playing a Cajun sailor named Chance Boudreau sporting one of the most glorious mullets since Patrick Swayze cleaned up the Double Deuce in Road House. However, it can’t be denied that the movie gets stolen by the amazing supporting cast, in particular Lance Henriksen, but also Arnold Vosloo, Yancy Butler, and Wilford Brimley, who, just like Christopher Lloyd many years later in Nobody, proves he was born to do action even if no one gave him the chance before he hit senior citizen status.
What do you think are the five most essential Van Damme movies? Which ones should we add when we make this one into a top 10? Let us know in the comments!
Our Director of Operations, John Fallon, with JCVD himself!
In a surprising twist of fate at the often fickle box office, the exceedingly well-reviewed The Wild Robot is opening way ahead of expectations. Deadline has the film now opening at about $35 million, which is about $10 million more than even the most optimistic industry estimates and $20 million or so ahead of my own predictions. Good for Dreamworks, as this really is one of the best movies they’ve ever made (check out Steve Seigh’s rave review right here). In the meantime, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is moving down to second place, with $15.5 million, which will easily put it past the $250 million domestic mark.
Sadly, Transformers One, despite excellent word-of-mouth, is crashing and burning at the box office, posting a huge 59% decline in week two for a $10 million weekend. With a $39 million domestic total, this one will be lucky to cross the $55 million mark by the end of its run, which is disastrous for the franchise. That’s too bad, as it’s actually a good movie! It seems this is one franchise that has maybe run its course, even if Paramount is still planning that crossover movie with G.I Joe.
Meanwhile, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is already being dubbed Megaflopulous online after being beaten Friday night by the Indian Telugu-language flick, Devara Part 1 (which stars RRR’s N.T. Rama Rao Jr.), with Deadline having a hard time pegging the final number. They say it may total anywhere between $3.2-5 million, but either way, that’s a disastrous start for Coppola’s passion project. Truth be told, while I didn’t like the movie (at all – and you can see from my review) it makes me sad that the movie is collapsing so completely at the box office, as even if I didn’t like it – I still kinda think people should see it.
Some cliche somewhere said that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ This has proven to be the case for me and especially when it comes to fan art. I have always sought out great fan art and have wanted to share it with as many people as possible. “Awesome Art We’ve Found Around The Net” is the outlet for that passion. In this column, I will showcase the kick-ass artwork of some great artists, with the hopes that these artists get the attention they deserve. That’s the aim. If you have any questions or comments, or even suggestions of art or other great artists, feel free to contact me at any time at theodorebond@joblo.com.
(@conductorben) 
