Guilty Pleasures

Guilty Pleasure – Hard to Kill

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  • Title: Hard to Kill
  • IMDb: link

Hard to Kill movie reviewToday’s Throwback Tuesday post takes us back to 1990 and the ouvere of action star Steven Seagal. For me, Hard to Kill fits firmly into the category of a guilty pleasure. Objectively it’s hard to argue that Hard to Kill is anywhere near a great movie, but damn if I haven’t had a great time with every viewing.

Easily my favorite of Seagal’s career, the actor stars as cop whose family is attacked in their home after he stumbles onto a conspiracy involving a politician and local mob boss. After being in a coma for seven years, with his reputation shredded and wife dead, Mason Storm returns to the land of the living to clear his name and seek vengeance for his family.

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Guilty Pleasure – Teen Wolf

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  • Title: Teen Wolf
  • IMDb: link

Teen Wolf Blu-ray reviewAlthough it’s hard by any objective standard to classify 1985’s Teen Wolf as a “good movie,” the star vehicle for a young Michael J. Fox written by Jeph Loeb and Matthew Weisman is undeniably entertaining.

The story centers around average high school student Scott Howard (Fox) who discovers he’s a werewolf. Rather than hiding this fact, which gives him speed, agility, and power for the first time, Scott brings out the wolf on the basketball court making the sorry team instantly better, and turning himself into a celebrity – something his best friend Stiles (Jerry Levine) is only too happy to exploit for profit.

If you remove the werewolf, Teen Wolf is a pretty generic high school film. We get a good kid, the hot girl he lusts for (Lorie Griffin), her evil boyfriend (Mark Arnold), and the girl (Susan Ursitti) who likes him. Between scenes of the werewolf surfing on top of a van and playing basketball, there’s also Scott learning a life lesson about accepting himself for who he is.

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Guilty Pleasure – Seventh Son

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  • Title: Seventh Son
  • IMDb: link

Seventh SonSadly in no way related to the (much better) first book in Orson Scott Card‘s The Tales of Alvin Maker, director Sergey Bodrov‘s Seventh Son bombed with critics and audiences alike. With a tired script, plenty of plot holes, and inconsistent special effects it’s impossible to call Seventh Son a good movie, but as a C-List guilty pleasure with a cast too good for its story the movie isn’t without some charm.

Based on The Wardstone Chronicles by Joseph Delaney, the movie stars Ben Barnes as the newest apprentice of monster hunter extraordinaire Master Gregory (Jeff Bridges) who only has a week to learn the craft before going to war with the hated enemies of Gregory’s all but extinct order.

Julianne Moore stars as the leader of a coven of witches who recently escaped the prison Gregory (who has a long history with the woman) put her in years before, and Alicia Vikander is a young witch and potential love interest for the young hero.

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Guilty Pleasure – How to Beat the High Cost of Living

/ / Home Video
  • Title: How to Beat the High Cost of Living
  • IMDb: link

how-to-beat-the-high-cost-of-living-blu-rayReleased in 1980, How to Beat the High Cost of Living starred Susan Saint James, Jane Curtin, and Jessica Lange as an unlikely trio of friends who turn to crime to pay for the high cost of inflation slowly strangling each of their lives when Jane’s (Curtin) husband drains their bank account to run off with his secretary, Louise (Lange) is being sued by her husband (Richard Benjamin) fighting off an IRS audit, and the divorced Jane (Saint James) with a homeless father (Eddie Albert) and three kids is struggling to make ends meet with another baby on the way.

The goofy screenplay by Robert Kaufman involving the three women working to rob a giant glass ball full of money in the local mall during its anniversary sale isn’t exactly high concept, but the three leads, and a supporting cast that includes Benjamin, Albert, Dabney Coleman, and Fred Willard, somehow makes (most of) it work as a guilty pleasure heist flick most memorable for Jane Curtain’s striptease during the middle of the mall robbery.

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2004 – Walking Tall

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  • Title: Walking Tall (2004)
  • IMDB: link

Walking TallOn this date ten years ago Dwayne “It’s Okay to Call Me The Rock Again” Johnson‘s remake of 1973’s Walking Tall hit theaters. Loosely based on real events, the simple premise finds war hero Chris Vaughn (The Rock) return home to find his home town at the mercy of an unscrupulous businessman (Neal McDonough) and old high school rival who keeps a stranglehold on the small Washington town with a shady business dealings and rigged casino.

Discovering the man’s total disrespect for the law, and after being assaulted and almost killed by the man’s hired thugs, Vaughn finds no help from the local police which causes the former Army Special Forces ass-kicker to bust-up the casino with only his fists and a two-by-four before running for office on the platform of cleaning up the town.

Along for the ride the film casts Johnny Knoxville in the role of comic relief as Vaughn’s idiot best-friend and Ashley Scott as a childhood friend turned stripper turned love interest.

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