D-Tox (aka 'eye see you') (2002)

Cops in a snowed-in detox facility are being picked off one-by-bloody-one in this movie, more mindless slasher than intelligent whodunnit despite the classic Agatha Christie set-up, with Sylvester Stallone playing a cop undergoing treatment for trauma after his own wife fell victim to an eye-poking serial drill killer with a ridiculous sprawling, poorly defined modus operandi, naturally still on the loose.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Cobra (1986)

Switch the roman numeral for another and 'Cobra'' is an anagram of Rambo', my mind discovered, desperate for something to think about during this especially vacant action thriller from the 80s about a cop so slick, so smooth, so self-assured, so nonchalant in his delivery of zero-tolerance violent justice, he's an unmitigated wanker, working on a case to product-place as much as possible while he takes down a murderous cult called New Order; fortunately for Cobra and the witness he is protecting (played by Brigitte Nielsen), the so-bad-it's-good action ends everyone up at a murderous-cult-member-dispatching factory replete with lava baths, furnaces and hooks.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Rocky III

The presence early on of Hulk Hogan as Thunderlips heightens the feeling that with this third Rocky movie you are merely watching a World Wrestling Federation-style soap opera in which alliances switch and change simply to continue the melodrama, and so Rocky aligns himself with former rival Apollo Creed, takes on new rival-in-the-ring, boxing up-and-comer Clubber Lang (Mr T), and poor Adrian begins her demise, turning into the sad onlooker she becomes in Rocky movies evermore...but then "Gonna Fly Now" starts, there's some slow-mo muscle montages, Apollo Creed appears in a crop-top, and at least for the last half hour the appeal of the original Rocky returns.

★★★☆☆

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Rambo: First Blood

The first half offers up terrific action as a Green Beret keeps a step ahead of a redneck sheriff and his team out for blood, but once things leave the forest and media scrums, Trautman, and multiple response agencies still can't bring the situation under control, still can't prevent it crescendoeing into the total annihilation of a small town, things seem, even to fans of unrestrained action, a bit out of hand.

★★★☆☆

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Rocky IV (1985)

Trading in his scantily clad beach runs alongside Apollo Creed in Rocky III for runs through Soviet snowfields with his new-look goatee, Balboa heads to Russia to fight a drug-enhanced Russian giant, Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) in this more-rudimentary-than-ever Rocky episode that is nine-tenths rock video training montage and only one-tenth boxing scenes cut with shots of what are quite possibly just cardboard cutouts of poor Adrian and her brother Paulie, both with nothing better to do than sadly watch on as the series inexorably worsens.

★☆☆☆☆

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Rocky (1976)

Written by and starring Sylvester Stallone, this feelgood schmaltz delivered with a grubby working class credibility introduces Rocky Balboa, a boxer with a heart of gold who would feature in seven subsequent movies, who wanders Philadelphia being called a 'creepo' and being yelled at by his trainer, best friend and the heavies who employ him until he finds Adrian, a timid pet shop store owner whom Rocky brings out of her shell and in return is boosted with a self-respect that enables him to give boxing champion Apollo Creed - and Life - a long overdue uppercut.

★★★★☆

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Cliffhanger (1993)

1988s Die Hard is transported to the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains in this 1993 action that tells the rollicking good story of mountain rescuers who find that their rescuees are in fact a gang of violent criminals seeking to recover money lost in a plane crash, and the only unfortunate thing is that the movie scatterguns the treacheries of the mountains (bats, glaciers, avalanches, rockfalls, dizzying heights, stalactites) and doesn't instead make use of longer Spielberg-style set-ups designed to heighten the thrills beyond the merely episodic.

★★★★☆

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Tango and Cash (1989)

Rascist (at one stage, Kurt Russell's Cash impatiently screams at a Chinese man to speak English) and sexist (sisters need chaperoning, and an on-duty policeman asks two women on the street for a threeway), but somehow this vacuous 80s buddy cop story is tolerable - nostalgia for children of the 80s like me and a means of marvelling at how much more politically correct the world now is.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS