A career slump is often impossible to escape from but sometimes, just sometimes, a performer gets a shot and delivers a comeback performance that puts them back in the spotlight… Hollywood is a fickle place. One minute you can be hot and the next not. Whether it’s a run-of-flops or the wrong kind of infamy, […]
Maximum Van Dammage: The Definitive Top 10 Jean-Claude Van Damme Movies!
It’s time for the undisputed, inarguable, and definitive Top 10 Jean-Claude Van Damme movies… The Muscles from Brussels turned 62 this year. He’s had a stellar career filled with majestic, high-kicking action. The most iconic image of Van Damme, aside from his infamous bicep pose, is the glorious sight of him leaping in the air […]
Cage as Cage, Van Damme as Van Damme: Two Icons Play Their Ultimate Role
Tom Jolliffe looks at Nic Cage in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and compares with Jean-Claude Van Damme’s temporarily redefining role as himself in JCVD… April 2022 included a special day for me. It was something of an event. I got to see Nicolas Cage strut his stuff on the big screen. Maybe 10-15 […]
10 Essential Heist Movies
Tom Jolliffe offers up ten essential heist movies… The heist. All that intricate planning before the moment of truth and the job has to be pulled off. Through cinema we’ve seen re-enactments of true life heists, as well as plenty of fictional bank jobs, jewellery heists, from snatch and grabs to tales of elaborate planning […]
Can The Last Mercenary kick off a renaissance for Jean-Claude Van Damme?
Tom Jolliffe looks at the upcoming Jean-Claude Van Damme Netflix vehicle, The Last Mercenary. Can we call it a comeback? In 2008, Jean-Claude Van Damme was some years deep into straight to DVD land, where mainstream interest has all but gone, leaving only the aficionados behind. For a number of years after his last theatrically […]
Jean-Claude Van Damme at 60
As Jean-Claude Van Damme celebrates a milestone birthday, Tom Jolliffe looks back at a career that has seen box office success, and flirtation with a comeback as a critically acclaimed actor… If you even have a passing appreciation of late 20th century action cinema, you’ll know very well who Jean-Claude Van Damme is. You’ll probably […]
Good Concept, Bad Delivery
Tom Jolliffe takes a look at when good concepts are badly executed… Occasionally you’ll see a film or a TV show and you wonder why they bothered at all. Everything goes wrong. Sometimes it starts from the very concept. In the case of remakes for example, you know right off the bat that some films […]
