Under Siege 2: Dark Territory In the desperate race by action movie producers to find the next interesting locale for terrorists to take over for their nefarious activities, it seemed that every time a new location was used for a terrorist themed action film, the other producers would just cross that one off the list. […]
Underworld: Director’s Cut Attempting to create a new mythology in a film franchise is always tough (especially if there’s any resemblance to other people’s creations), but here Len Wiseman does a pretty good job of starting said franchise, even if it borrows at times from earlier works like Dark City, Blade, and others. Perhaps the […]
Undisputed Taking its cue from the real-life trumped up rape charges against Mike Tyson that effectively ended his career as a titan in the sport of boxing, director Walter Hill does it again with an ultra-masculine epic that hypothetically asks, what if the incarcerated World Heavyweight Champ entered into a rivalry with the undefeated prison […]
Unforgiven Violence in movies, whether it be action, horror, western, or any other genre, is almost always shown as being something with the most minimum of consequences and in many ways, a glorious method of preventing the viewer from falling into sleep induced boredom. Whereas in real life, violence along with the literal taking of […]
United 93 Paul Greengrass’ faithful reenactment of the events of September 11, 2001 that led to the crash of the hijacked United 93 plane will certainly stand forever as a living monument to those who willingly gave their lives to prevent the final, awful stage of the attacks being carried out. Greengrass smartly starts the […]
Universal Soldier In the glory days of the 80s action heroes, one thing that became quite evident was in the way that each one (including Arnold, Sly Stallone, Steven Seagal and others) had basically staked out their own cinematic territory, usually bringing along their own stunt crew, makeup artists, etc., and most importantly (until the […]
Untouchables Epic, ornate, beautifully shot, written, and acted, would be just some of the apt descriptions of Brian DePalma’s Grand Masterpiece from 1987, depicting the era of Prohibition-era Chicago as it was controlled by the notorious gangster Al Capone and the small, hand-picked team of Federal Agents led by Eliot Ness who succeeded in bringing […]
Up In Smoke The one thing that all the great movie comedy teams always shared was having seamless, flawless onscreen chemistry. Whether it was Abbott and Costello (who were not friends offscreen and barely spoke off camera) or The Three Stooges (in essence two brothers and their best friend since childhood), when it came to […]
Urban Cowboy A cinematic exploration of the American subculture of country music, trailer homes, and mechanical bulls, this was a noble attempt by Travolta to branch out after hitting superstardom with Saturday Night Fever and Grease. The often uneventful, slice-of-life style of drama seen here may put some viewers off, and indeed, the first 30 […]
Urban Legend There can be no doubt that the success and influence of Scream changed the landscape of horror forever, as seen by this 1998 release that followed the tradition of having photogenic performers bussed in from popular tween soap operas, along with a hip soundtrack and a self-awareness by the characters, usually of the […]