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CHIPS - REVIEW

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Along with Baywatch , another dated TV series that got the movie remake treatment in 2017 was CHiPs , starring Michael Peña and Dax Shepard as two California Highway Patrol cops who take on a mysterious gang of thieves and corrupt police officers. When FBI Agent Castillo (Peña) is sent undercover to help solve the aforementioned case, he finds that getting along with his partner Jon Baker (Shepard) might prove to be the real challenge. The latter is a down-and-out ex-motocross champion with a crumbling marriage and metal plates keeping most of his limbs in place and Castillo is a playboy with little patience so they obviously can't stand each other initially but eventually learn to work together and make a great team. This is pretty standard cop story stuff complete with the obligatory yelling chief, epic car chases and obvious bad guys so don't expect anything ground-breaking or completely unpredictable. The film was universally trashed by critics who seemed to be disappo

POLICE ACADEMY - REVIEW

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Released in 1984, Police Academy was a huge success at the box-office, hence the multiple sequels the film later spawned. Those may have gotten increasingly cartoonish but this first movie was not only funny and charming but it introduced us to one of the catchiest cinematic theme songs ever. The film, about a group of goofy cadets trying to graduate from the Police Academy, getting up to all sorts of shenanigans along the way, was an ensemble joke-a-minute comedy, sort of like a cross between Animal House and The Naked Gun . Steve Guttenberg is Mahoney, the cocky guy threatened with jail and forced to join the Academy after he is arrested for parking an obnoxious customer's car sideways. He decides to instantly become a nuisance in order to guarantee that he is thrown out but G.W. Bailey's slimy Captain Harris has other plans. The main characters include the tall, super-strong Hightower (Bubba Smith), Michael Winslow's sound-effects maestro Larvell Jones, gun nut Eu

TURNER & HOOCH - REVIEW

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Some time before the Beethoven movies took the whole slobbering dog movie concept to mindless levels while, at the same time, making an immortal musical icon synonymous with drool, we got both K-9 and Turner & Hooch  the same year. Produced by Disney, the 1989 film starred Tom Hanks as a neat police investigator stuck with taking care of rambunctious dog Hooch after its owner is suddenly murdered. Turner (Hanks) sets off on a search for the culprits but, first, he has to turn his life upside-down looking after his new slobbering pet. Of course, this leads to several scenes in which the dog destroys every inch of Turner's house much to the cop's horror. Hanks is reliably good as Turner and he elevates a role that, in lesser hands, could have easily fallen flat. Hooch (real name Beasley) is every bit as destructive and messy as you'd expect but the titular characters still bond and the movie makes that relationship convincing. In fact, we spend probably a bit too mu

OUTLAND - REVIEW

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Sean Connery doesn't f*** around. Even in space, he gets the job done. In this Jupiter moon mining colony-set sci-fi flick, Connery plays a police marshal who shows up there and starts investigating a drug-smuggling conspiracy. The people there don't help him at all, leaving him on his own to sort everything out but tension mounts when he is marked for death and murders start occurring around him. Yes, Outland is essentially The French Connection ... IN SPACE. Take a 70's cop movie, set it on Jupiter's moon, add Sean Connery and you've got yourself Outland. The movie doesn't really need to be set in space or to be sci-fi at all but the fact that the people involved in the plot have literally nowhere to run does add tension and a sense of isolation to the proceedings. It's a slow-burning movie that demands for you to be immersed in that atmosphere, in that world. This isn't the typical slick, overtly futuristic science fiction movie you'd exp