It's weird being the youngest people in the theater by at least 20 years, but when TSLF and I went to Red 2 Friday afternoon, that was definitely the case. This was TSLF's choice, as she really enjoyed the first entrant in the series. That isn't to make like I was an unwilling participant. When I gave threw out the option of going to a movie when she got home from work, I did so under the unspoken assumption that, when I let her choose the movie, she'd choose Red 2.
Red 2 is a far cry from a groundbreaking film, but if you saw the first one and liked it, you're probably going to like this one as well. Bruce Willis miraculously isn't in mailing it in mode, something that has occurred with far too much frequency of late. Anthony Hopkins is surprisingly funny. Helen Mirren and especially John Malkovich are rock-solid. Neal McDonough takes to the role of the villain with the flair that anyone who's been paying attention for the past ten years or so has come to expect. Byung-Hun Lee, Mary-Louise Parker, and Catherine Zeta-Jones fill out the rest of the cast sufficiently, if not spectacularly.
Dean Parisot's direction is serviceable, the action sequences are well choreographed. The script, penned by Jon and Erich Hoeber--who also wrote the first one (and the forgettable Battleship)--strikes the right tone for the action-comedy genre. Of course, the film gets by on the audience's ingrained affection for the its stars, and the bulk of the audience isn't going to take the film back home with them, thinking about it for days afterwards, but this is a perfectly passable movie in the same vein as The Losers that you'll likely end up watching part of more than once while it's making its way around the premium movie channel rotation.
After the surprisingly enjoyable fourth installment of the series Live Free or Die Hard, there was actually a bit of hope that the fifth film in the series was going to go the way of the Fast & Furious franchise and kick a whole lot of ass.
That did not happen.
A Good Day to Die Hard was D.O.A. This much should have been expected, I suppose, given that the director (John Moore) this time around was last seen directing Max Payne, but the viability of its predecessor gave false hope. Sadly, the film was a lackluster entry into the canon in nearly every respect. As has been the case far too often lately, Bruce Willis never dialed it in, and his chemistry with his son (played by Jai Courtney) never felt natural. The script was weak. The plot thin. Worst yet, it was completely forgettable, the only film in the series you can say that about.
It makes as much sense to do this one now as any. What does one say about G.I. Joe: Retaliation? For starters, it's another lackluster Dwayne Johnson vehicle that fails to utilize his gifts. Add killing off Channing Tatum (and going back and filming a new open and another scene with Tatum and The Rock at Roadblock's house that pushed the release date back nine months) into the mix, and Bruce Willis's inclusion as an afterthought, and you're looking at a whole lot of charismatic talent not being utilized.
If there was a scene from the trailer that had me somewhat excited that at the very least this might have an interesting action sequence or two, it was the cliff-side suspended ninja scene, but the CG was not quite good enough to keep me engaged. It was sort of cool, I guess, but it wasn't like the scenes on the side of the Burj Khalifa in Ghost Protocol or anything.
The one thing Step Up 2: The Streets and Step Up 3D directorJon M. Chu did correctly is show the audience just how fantastic Adrianne Palicki can look when she got all gussied up to go to a ball in Washington. So thanks for that, Mr. Chu.
It's been a long damn time since I saw this one in the theater, but I can say without pause that The Expendables 2 was every bit the bombastic throw-back action flick it set out to be. Anyone who saw the first one knows what to expect. Stallone, Statham, Lundgren, Couture, Crews, Li, Schwarzenegger, and Willis are back. Jean-Claude Van Damme, Liam Hemsworth, and Chuck Norris are added to the mix. It's just as huge as you are hoping and just as loving an homage to the films in its familial lineage.
Perhaps more importantly, Simon West directs this time around. I love Sylvester Stallone as much as the next guy, and he does have skills as a director. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the chops to really pull off films as bombastic as The Expendables films. His shortcomings were never more clear than in the final battle scene in Vilena in the first film. The intention for a huge finale was there, but much of the action was unintelligible because it takes place at night, in part to presumably cover up for a deficiency in being able to shoot these sequences cleanly. Simon West--who directed, amongst other things, the pinnacle of 1990s action films Con-Air--has these chops. The action sequences in The Expendables 2 are much cleaner and crisper than in its predecessor.
Really, though, you are going to watch The Expendables 2 for its knowing winks and nudges to the pasts of the huge actions stars of yore. You sign up to watch them chew on the charmingly clunky dialogue. You buy the ticket for the train to see all of these guys who you've loved in the past blow shit up and mow down faceless bad guys. And for all of these things, The Expendables 2 gives you what you want. It's not high art, but it's a whole helluva lot more fun than High Art.
Now if only we could get a huge Terry Crews star vehicle.
This past week was a big week for this filmgoer, as not only did I get to see the new Paul Thomas Anderson film--an event for which I typically mark my calendar--but I also got to see the new Rian Johnson film, who for my money is one of the most exciting filmmakers working today. If a gun were pointed at my head, there are probably only four working directors whose work I anticipate with as comparable a fervor as I do Johnson's(for those wondering at home, the aforementioned Anderson, Malick, Cuarón, and my main man, Ben Affleck). Looper justified my anticipation while falling just a bit shy of my enormous expectations.
Any feelings about the film are chiefly informed by how enthralled one is by the world that Rian Johnson creates. Unlike perhaps any working director, Johnson has an ability to create a world around his characters that is informed by multiple genres, typically infusing the film with highly stylized dialogue reminiscent of masters like Chandler, Faulkner, and Wilder. In three times out, the end result has been captivating.
In the form of Looper, he infuses the post-apocalyptic time-travel subgenre with a healthy dose of noir styling, complete with the classic noir anti-hero living in the seamy criminal underworld. It's a winning combination, and with Johnson's panache and skills obscuring of the ride is one filled with enough vim and vigor to distract the viewer from the various minor plot holes and foggy areas that typically lie just beneath the surface of his films.
The whole film works due in large part to the performance of the three leads, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, and Emily Blunt. All are great. Reportedly a risk of late, Willis is fully invested. Gordon-Levitt is great, just as anyone who has been paying attention would expect as he's turned in fantastic performances in role after role. Blunt, who doesn't always seamlessly pull off what is asked of her, ably inhabits the person of the guilty single mother. Jeff Daniels's turn as the temporally displaced mob boss is a stand-out performance, giving him the chance to play the bad guy, albeit an atypical one. Hell, there's even a kid, and he's not horrible.
While I'll refrain from getting into plot, as that's not what I do here, I will say that Johnson smartly avoids the pitfalls of getting too heavily invested in the larger ramifications and technicalities of time travel. Johnson uses time travel simply as a plot device, a way to explore themes while avoiding the often dull scientific exposition and overly convoluted storylines. He makes the conscious decision to go down the route of making an ultimately understandable film, forgoing the potential for massive confusion of a film like Primer, which while brilliant would never play to a large audience befitting the cast and budget at play in Looper. By and large, that decision is a good one, and Looper is the latest in the storied line of fantastic time-travel action flicks that we all know and love. With Johnson's latest film closing in on 150% return on its budget, Looper's success can only mean good things for whatever his next project ends up being.
It's been quite some time since I saw this one, and I'll start things off by saying that my feelings were mixed. At one point, Wes Anderson was probably the working director whose next work I most looked forward to. Unfortunately, the more I grew up, the more he stayed the same. This difference has become increasingly clear as his last two films have been a stop-motion animation flick about an adolescent fox and now a summer camp movie about a 12-year-old orphan in love.
As with The Fantastic Mr. Fox, this film is cute and probably more effective than the last two "adult" films Anderson directed. There is also a certain allowance one must make when walking into the theater to see a Wes Anderson film. It will have a very distinct look and feel; its characters will be emotionally damaged and stunted; and there will be daddy issues. While Moonrise Kingdom does mostly succeed in what it sets out to do, one has to wonder if this is not because Anderson has set the film's protagonists as precocious 12-year-olds who are then called upon to convey the only depth of emotions that the auteur himself is capable of reaching. Their sentiments ring truer, in part, it would seem precisely because the writer/director is largely stuck in that place.
Moonrise Kingdom does suffer from being too precocious and cute. Its unknown stars, Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, are what they are meant to be, and both are atypically outstanding for child actors, but both are used in such a way as to imply a sexuality that is frankly a bit unnerving. While they both remain sexually innocent, there exists within the film a gaze that borders on uncomfortable voyeuristic objectification of minors, as they are both clad in their underwear while on their getaway--an off-putting element of the film to be sure. When found by her father (played by Bill Murray, who reprises the role of neutered man in a loveless marriage that he played in The Royal Tenenbaums), they are donning that attire and sleeping together, innocently as it may have been.
Again, the film does mostly succeed in being what it attempts to be, and it is hard to fault a filmmaker for not being something he is not. It is just sad to see an auteur with such tools fail to realize a greater potential in favor of being a developmentally arrested genius fixated on his junior high years and a strained relationship with his father.
Holy hell, do I have some catching up to do here...
I have been balls deep in a move and am now approaching four consecutive weeks of chaos in my life. As a man who lives a simple, constant life, this is overwhelming and leaves me little time or energy for much of anything else.
That does not mean that I've not been to the movies, however. I still need to do a proper write-up for Inception. I also have a partially written response to Predators waiting to be finished. Then there's The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Piranha 3D, and The Other Guys--and that's just what I still need to on the Man on Film front.
As one might expect if one were even remotely familiar with this blog, The Expendables takes precedence over the rest of those films.
I have seen this film twice.
I wouldn't be surprised if I saw it again in the theater.
When evaluating what The Expendables is, it is imperative to look at how it measures up to what it is setting out to do. If there is one thing that is apparent when looking at Sly the auteur, it is that his goal is to please his crowd. Sylvester Stallone the writer/director is essentially like the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention at the end of primary season. He is there to deliver exactly what his base wants.
In what were presumably the codas for the Rocky and Rambo series, he hit every note perfectly, and any fan of the previous installments were left mouth agape as the films came to an end. Rocky Balboa was a stirring elegy to Adrian and a testament to the heart of a champion that pumps the lifeblood through Rocky's veins. It also happened to be the best film in the series since the first one. Rambo gave us one more look at our cast aside Vietnam vet, and that look just happened to be the most violent film I've ever seen--and I mean that in the best possible way. It also ends with John Rambo perhaps finally putting his inner demons to rest and returning home.
When one looks at the cast of The Expendables and sees the names of Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Eric Roberts, and Steve Austin alongside that of Sylvester Stallone, one's imagination cannot help but run amok. When you see that cast with this man at the helm, I think the obvious conclusion is that this movie is going to be a crazy fucking action flick that hearkens back to the great action films of the '80s which we as a society are so desperately lacking.
So if this is what we are expecting, then the ultimate question is: Does the film meet these expectations?
Fuck yes.
You want shit blowing up? You got it. People getting killed in crazy-awesome ways? It's here. Knives being thrown? Jet Li comic relief? Check. Check.
Did I mention the shit blowing up?
Sure, it may not behigh art, but as I once told Jon Cryer when admitting that I enjoyed Hiding Out after a then-fresh viewing, "It's not like I was expecting Citizen Kane."
Upon leaving the theater both times, I was fucking pumped. Sly knows what his audience wants. He knows how to deliver it. Sure, there are little issues that one could reasonably have with the film*, but it all boils down to whether or not this film addresses the jonesing for a real '80s-style action flick, and it feeds that hunger.
*The action in the final fight scene is sort of hard to piece together as the scene takes place at night, and the CGI fire in the Steve Austin/Randy Couture fight is pretty comical.
I'll certainly grant you that the dialogue isn't the greatest and there are non-actors who depending on your affinity for them going into the film could weigh the film down, but what we've got here is a movie in which the bad guys are bad, the good guys are good, and you want to shout out at more than a handful of the deaths. I'd say that's a recipe for cinematic success that has been sorely lacking from the cineplexi for quite some time.
So, Sly, you did me a solid, and that's all I care about. If you decide you wanna help keep Jason Statham looking badass in The Expendables 2, I'm fucking game.
Randomly having decided to take in a movie Sunday night, we went out to Cop Out with open minds.
Holy shit was it bad.
It's not like I don't get what the Cullen Brothers were trying to do when they wrote the movie. It's clear they were trying to make a buddy cop movie paying homage to the Lethal Weapon and Beverly Hills Cop franchises. What those movies (especially the first in each series) had, though, were solid screenplays. They had plots. They had laughs.
This? Pretty thin on all of that.
Really, with the exception of Seann William Scott, there wasn't anything to like. Bruce Willis seemed like he was mailing it in (and I'm a big fan of Bruce Willis) and had a shit character to start with. Tracy Morgan's schtick wore thin after about 90 seconds. The next 90 minutes were interminable. Kevin Pollack was terrible. Guillermo Diaz was horribly miscast as the Mexican gang boss. Zero gravitas. Also, someone decided that it was a good time to give Harold Faltermeyer work again. Look, I fucking love Fletch and Beverly Hills Cop. I love their scores, too.
But there was a time and a place, and it's not 2010. It didn't work in Kuffs or Tango & Cash. Why would it work now?
But what it all really boils down to is that there are not enough laughs. It's a buddy cop comedy that's supposed to hearken back to a better time in which buddy cop movies delivered both on the action and the laughs and fails on both counts. And I could go on from here, but really, what's the point? If it fails miserably at what it's trying to do, then it's a failure, right?
I had some hope for Kevin Smith after the surprisingly enjoyableZack and Miri Make a Porno, but that goodwill has been spent, even if he wasn't the screenwriter.
The premiere of "Castle" marked the always welcome return of Nathan Fillion to the small screen. Anyone familiar with Fillion's past work ("Firefly", "Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place", season seven of "Buffy") walks in with an appreciation for his winning personality as it permeates his every turn. Fillion can effortlessly convery an boyish charm while playing the part of the incorrigible rascal much in the tradition of a young, free-spirited Bruce Willis or a Lethal Weapon-era Mel Gibson.
As far as pilots are concerned, Flowers for Your Grave was serviceable while not approaching anything life-changing. What it does succeed in is setting the table for a potentially fruitful series with Fillion's Richard Castle using his sway to force his way into the work of Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic, Noah Wyle's love interest in "The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice"--oh, and what I presume is that bullshitty new Bond movie, Quantum of Solace).
As Jack Attack noted, there were times that Katic seems slightly overmatched which was the Little Lady's rationale for why that Ron Livingston negotiator show failed, but Katic never seems as ill-suited to share the screen with Fillion as Rosemarie DeWitt did *edit* opposite Ron Livingston *end edit* in "Standoff".
Even if Katic never gains the swagger to draw our focus from Fillion, the show is titled "Castle" and his talents will certainly be able to shine.
It is obviously early on in the game for "Castle", but aside from initially irritating music cues* the charm and sexual tension of this show should be a welcome change from the bland procedurals inundating the primetime docket.
*Maybe it is just me, but I find that a lot of TV would be better off without adding some pseudo-rock cues that are supposed to strike the viewer as hip in the middle of Thomas Newman knock-off scoring. I get that the Thomas Newman "American Beauty" score was pretty great, but does every quasi-quirky thing that has come out since need to adopt that style?
And in no way is Stana Katic hard on the eyes, so the two are welcome to play off one another for a while as far as I'm concerned.
This is the first in what I anticipate being a very lengthy series on why I am quite frankly irritated by the much-loved Sci-Fi series "Battlestar Galactica". For a show that has been as underwhelming to me as this one, I've seen more episodes that I'd like to have, leaving me with a bad taste that I cannot cleanse from my palette. So, to start this series I'll focus on one word, and one word only, just to get the ball rolling.
Frak
There is something about this word that I find absolutely infuriating. Everytime one of the characters sputters this expletive my blood pressure rises, my temple starts throbbing, and my teeth clench tighter than Cameron's asshole in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
I hate this word.
I hate everything it stands for.
And when I talk about what this stands for, I am referring to the writers having one word that can serve as a curse word. I am a big fan of cursing. There is an art to it. There's an artistry to John McClane's foul-mouthed repartee with Hans Gruber and his henchmen. Try to imagine The Big Lebowski without the 200-some F-bombs. Do you think Kevin Smith ever would have garnered an audience with PG-13 dialogue? It sure as shit didn't work when he tried it. And there's a simple beauty to how Elliott Smith works a gentle "fuck" into a song.
In designating "frak" as the seemingly universal curse word, the writers no longer have to look for creative ways to express anger or convey fear or show camaraderie. It is basically an invention to enable laziness.
Now, I don't want to mislead you into thinking that I'm just pissed because this show doesn't curse like "Deadwood". I don't have the expectation that everyone in every show has to run around calling everyone "fucking cocksuckers" while talking to heads in wooden boxes. There are, however, shows on broadcast television that have managed to be very creative when skirting the censors--a rim job joke on "Veronica Mars" springs to mind immediately, as does the last three seconds of the teaser for "The X-Files" episode Bad Blood. By making up one universal curse word, the pleasure of the writers having pulled one over on the censors is gone, having been replaced by one retarded sounding bastardization of the greatest word in the English language. And that's fucked up.
So now any quasi-nerd who spends his/her time reading up on whatever upcoming project is worthy of creaming one's pants over gets to scour message boards where BSG fans the world over have littered that God damn word all over the place.
The really sad thing is that this invention really just seems to be stealing outright from Joss Whedon and "Firefly" with the Chinese cursing as a way to get around to censorship, which was at least a little inventive and reflective of a Earth that had turned complete melting pot. Adding -ings and -er and -ed to a fake word is just lame.
I don't know that there's a better Christmas movie that's ever been made than Die Hard. The regular cop shooting the hell out of terrorists is everything America and Jesus stood for. Especially when that cop is played by Bruce Willis.
Off the top of my head, the following are the best Christmas movies ever:
1. Die Hard 2. Scrooged 3. Die Hard 2 4. Bad Santa 5. It's a Wonderful Life
Now you may look at number five and think to yourself, "What the hell? Where did that come from?" In my defense, it's a good movie. Also, Donna Reed was really hot. Donna Reed in that film is hotter than just about anyone to grace the silver screen.
Now back to Die Hard... I can suspend just about all disbelief if I'm enthralled, but can anyone really believe the clerk at the convenience store thought that Reginald Vel Johnson's Sgt. Al Powell was buying all that junk food for his wife? I can't. That's really my only sticking point with the whole film. Really, I think the film is flawless. The screenplay is witty and taut. Bruce Willis was brilliantly cast as McClane. Rickman's a great villian. You've got the Chinese guy that was a henchman in every movie in the '80's. There's a Huey Lewis look-alike. The asshole Vice Principal from The Breakfast Club and the quintessential '80's asshole, William Atherton are present. Die Hard has pretty much everything you could want in a movie. Oh, yeah, and tons of violence.
As for Atherton, according to the commentary track for Ghostbusters, people would drive by him in New York years after Ghostbusters came out and yell "dickless" at him. From all accounts, he's a nice guy, and he did make his money from being an actor, but you've got to feel bad for the guy whose three most recognizable roles are that of Walter Peck in Ghostbusters, Professor Jerry Hathaway in Real Genius, and Richard Thornburg in Die Hard.
