Showing posts with label D.J Qualls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label D.J Qualls. Show all posts

Movie Review: Comic Book Villains

Comic Book Villains (2002) 

Directed by James Robinson

Written by James Robinson 

Starring Donal Logue, D.J Qualls, Cary Elwes, Natasha Lyonne, Michael Rappaport 

Release Date September 3rd, 2002 

Published September 9th, 2002 

The comic book fanboy culture is ripe for satire. Such was shown in Kevin Smith's brilliant Chasing Amy. Comics aren't the center of that film but the scenes involving comics and the comic convention are comedic gold. Comic Book Villains aspires to tell the story of some serious fanboys but in reality it's a ridiculous farce with not one likeable character.

DJ Qualls stars as Archie, a comic fanboy who is beginning to grow out of his former obsession. Though he would never tell that to Raymond, his best friend and the owner of the most snobbish comic store in town, and proud of it. Raymond, played by Donal Logue, is the ultimate fanboy who won't speak to anyone who doesn't the names of the Fantastic Four, their alter egos, how they got their powers, which issue introduced what character and various other pieces of minutia someone with no friends and especially no dates would know.

Raymond's rivals in the comic biz are Norman (Michael Rappoport) and his wife Judy (Natascha Lyonne). Though they aren't comic book fans they know a quick buck when they see it.

The rivalry comes to a head when a 40-something collector kicks the bucket, leaving behind the ultimate comic collection. Raymond and Norman are each quick to pounce on the guy's clueless mom who never understood her son's obsession with those funny books. The mom is played by the venerable Eileen Brennen, and as she puts up with Raymond and Norman's incessant begging and pleading, she strikes up a real friendship with Archie who has been dragged into the mess by Raymond.

As the comic book war heats up both, sides begin to lose their grip on reality as they each plot a break-in of the old woman's house to steal the comics. Raymond goes as far as attempting to hire a hitman to kill the old lady and steal the comics.

The hitman is played by Cary Elwes and at the beginning, his character is the only sympathetic character in the film. He's a guy who's fresh from prison and looking to rebuild his life. Director James Robinson makes the hitman character both sympathetic and menacing which is supposed to prepare us for the film's climax. Sadly this fails as Elwes gets sucked into the plot's stupidity and is then crushed underneath it like all of the other characters.

Every character in the film is a complete moron, with the possible exception of DJ Qualls'sArchie who isn't as stupid as the other characters. Still, his character is just utterly useless. Archie narrates the story but is not really involved in it. He should consider himself lucky! Elwes, Logue, Rappaport and Lyonne probably wish their characters weren't involved in this ridiculousness but they are and they suffer greatly for it.

Writer-Director James Robinson has crafted a thoroughly unlikable film. Incoherent, ridiculous and endlessly stupid. The film is marketed as a comedy and you would think since it's about comic books, it would be, but it's not. In fact I'm not sure James Robinson intended to make a comedy. It seemed to me he was trying for drama and suspense. He failed miserably.

Movie Review: Chasing Holden

Chasing Holden (2001) 

Directed by Malcolm Clarke

Written by Sean Kanan

Starring D.J Qualls, Rachel Blanchard

Release Date October 11th, 2001 

Published June 3rd, 2002 

I have never read "The Catcher In the Rye". When I was a kid I thought it was about Yankee's catcher Yogi Berra, because I thought it was set in the 50's and Yogi was a catcher in the 50's. I still don't know the story fully though from seeing the straight-to-video feature Chasing Holden starring DJ Qualls I now have a good sense for the story and I may check it out. Maybe, if I find the time.

Holden is the story of Neil (Qualls), the son of the Governor of New York. Neil has just been released from a mental hospital after his father suspected he was contemplating suicide. Neil is troubled by his father’s distance that is covered by his father’s high-profile job but has more to do with a brother we never see.

Neil is enrolled at a private school where he meets the equally messed up T.J (Rachel Blanchard). They bond over Neil's dog-eared copy of “Catcher in the Rye” and their coupling in drama class. After following her home and having dinner with her parents, Neil is convinced she is a kindred spirit and invites her on his spiritual journey to meet the author of “Catcher in The Rye”, JD Salinger.

As Neil hides his past from TJ, she too has a secret health problem that she doesn't want to reveal in fear of scaring him off. As the journey goes on we begin to see that Neil's obsession with Salinger may not be a healthy one. An obsession that is well documented in a rather creepy scene where Neil explains to TJ why Mark Chapman killed John Lennon and how Chapman's motivation was linked to Salinger's book.



Qualls is a very unlikely romantic lead, but then with his gawky frame and goofy manner he is an unlikely actor. In Chasing Holden, Qualls's strange look works, giving the character an edginess that is unsettling from beginning to end. Blanchard on the other and isn't as successful. Her TJ isn't quirky enough to match Qualls's weirdness and her character's motivations are a little thin. In the end she seems more like a plot device in service of Qualls' Neil and his journey, rather than being a character in her own right.

Director Malcolm Clarke gives the feeling of a director still feeling his way around a camera. He has an idea of what he wants to do with each shot but isn't entirely sure how to make it work. In the end, Clarke's Chasing Holden is an interesting film. A little dull at times, but saved moderately by Qualls’ interesting performance.

Movie Review The Core

The Core (2003) 

Directed by Jon Amiel 

Written by John Rogers 

Starring Aaron Eckhardt, Hilary Swank, Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci, D.J Qualls, Richard Jenkins

Release Date March 28th, 2003 

Published March 27th, 2003 

It's not often when screenwriters make the news. When John Rogers, the co-writer of The Core, wrote in to Aint It Cool News to dispute a review that questioned the film’s science, more than a few of us took notice and had a little laugh at his expense. Granted, no one wants their work made fun of, but when you make a movie as unabashedly out there as The Core, you can't expect it to be welcomed as if it were written by Carl Sagan. 

Sci-fi films have a horrible track record of including actual science in them and the aspiration to put real science in a movie like The Core is like asking Beverly Hills Cop to include real police procedures. No one goes to disaster movies for a science lesson, they go to watch landmarks explode. The Core blows up Rome and San Francisco, mission accomplished.

Aaron Eckhart heads up an ensemble cast as Dr. Josh Keyes, a physics professor at some anonymous college. In the midst of a lecture on the layers of the Earth, Dr. Keyes is called out of class by a pair of humorless G-men. Taken on a jet to Washington D.C, he reunites with a fellow scientist and friend Sergei Levesque (Tcheky Karyo, in a rare non-villain role). The two are asked by an army General (Six Feet Under dead guy, Richard Jenkins) to theorize what environmental factors could cause a group of people with pacemakers to simply drop dead without warning.

The answer, after much lucky guessing by Dr. Keyes, is that the Earth's core has stopped spinning causing it's electromagnetic field to go haywire. Not only has it caused pacemakers to stop, but also birds have lost navigating ability and are falling from the sky. Also falling is the space shuttle which has flown off course and nearly crashes in L.A, saved only by the wits of it's plucky navigator Major Rebecca Childs.

So now that we know what's wrong, there are two questions remaining. Number one, how did this happen? And number two, how do we stop it? Thankfully, the film’s trailer has already told us both of those things. A weapon that causes earthquakes has gone too far thanks to the miscalculations of it's inventor Dr. Zimsky (Stanley Tucci). Conversely, crazy scientist Dr. "Braz" Brazzleton has a vehicle with the ability to tunnel all the way to the core. Once there, nuclear weapons can be dropped to kickstart the core. Apparently, no one had jumper cables.

To the science issue, I have no idea and really don't care if the science is real. What matters is if the film is any good. Some geologist writing somewhere said that the film has as many accurate notions as inaccuracies and that the inaccuracies are those that are necessary for dramatic purposes. WHATEVER!

Let's get to the important stuff, how cool are the explosions. Well let me tell you in the words of the late John Candy in an old SCTV sketch, stuff blow'd up, blow'd up real good. The special effects aren't spectacular but they are entertaining in a modern day Ed Wood sort of way. The Golden Gate Bridge explosion is a cheesy treat and when Rome blows up, watching the reactions of the extras running from the Coliseum is priceless.

The Core is a bad movie but in the camp sense it's genius. Whether intentional or not The Core is full of laughs from the effects to the characters. I especially liked Stanley Tucci who seemed to be channeling Dr. Smith from Lost In Space with his whiny smugness. And kudos to Delroy Lindo for assuaging his usual calm cool persona for a geekier frazzled genius demeanor that you don't expect from him.

The Core is just plain goofy and in that sense it's a lot of fun. Though it needs to be greatly pared down from it's two-hour plus runtime, it nevertheless delivers a fun little distraction.

The Cave (2005) – A Soggy, Sinking Creature Feature

     By Sean Patrick Originally Published: August 27, 2005 | Updated for Blog: June 2025 🎬 Movie Information Title:   The Cave Release Dat...