Review: ‘Red 2’

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I need to write this stuff down now because it will all be forgotten very soon, even though I walked out of this movie just a few hours ago. As “Red 2” started and we get thrust back into the life of retired CIA operative Frank Moses (Bruce Willis, A Good Day to Die Hard), I quickly realized that I couldn’t remember a single thing about the first movie and what that story was about or why anyone did anything or why the characters acted the way they did. It was all a distant blur of a memory of a movie, and it is obvious now that “Red 2,” while entertaining enough, will go down the same path of temporal lobe obscurity.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Pacific Rim’

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This is how it is done, at least when it comes to the big budget summer blockbusters that come out weekly every year, the new bloated staples of modern American entertainment. Just as big and loud and sometimes even just as dumb, “Pacific Rim” still manages to stand tall over most other big budget movies of this ilk. It’s fun, playful, and takes old ideas and makes them seem new and wonderful, and while this thing won’t be for everyone, it will still delight many people who take pleasure in watching giant monsters fighting giant human-operated robots in magnificent battles both above and below the ocean.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Lone Ranger’

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Man did this thing go pretty awry. Disney’s “The Lone Ranger” was surely made with the idea that they could make a whole new billion-dollar-a-picture franchise with this old school property (because that’s how Disney and companies of their ilk sees stuff like this anyway, not as art or craft, but as property and franchises, like fast-food), and their reasoning behind giving the project to the group of guys behind the successful “Pirates of the Caribbean” films  made sense on paper. After all, if Gore Verbinski could turn a theme park ride into a well-liked movie, then imagine what he could do with something with a rich history in radio, television, movies and comic books, going all the way back to 1933. What could go wrong with this set up?Continue Reading …

Documentarama – Politico Non-Fic Pic a Go Go!

Watch out now, here comes the documentarama, and for the first time out we got that political shit going. We’re going from the small Texas town that President George W. Bush famously called home all the way around the world with the political activists and pranksters the Yes Men, we’re gonna look back through U.S. political history with Robert McNamara, and you’re going to want to know what really went down in Abu Ghraib, trust me on this one. But first, let’s follow Philip Seymour Hoffman around as he pokes and prods his way through the 2000 Republican and Democratic National Conventions.

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Talking Trailers: ‘Escape Plan’ is coming, but is it 20 years too late?

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“Escape Plan” is a movie that’s right in my wheelhouse, featuring two of my most favorite actors from my most favorite genre (Action!), and backed by a crazy concept and lots of fighting and action! action!! action!!! If this is not the greatest movie ever made, I have no idea what would be, and it is blowing my mind to think that this will actually be coming out soon. This is what I would be thinking anyway, if I were still twelve-years old. Ohhhhh to be twelve again.

Alas, it is 2013, and my favorite actors have grown old and have been replaced by other favorite actors with just a bit more range. And the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone have gotten so old (which was inevitable, by the way) could be detrimental to them because they still make primarily Action! movies, which also happens to be a genre that is no longer my favorite, as I am no longer a stupid child.

No, now I am a semi-stupid adult who likes a wee bit of story and character in my movies. Action is still cool and all…but it has to have a point. And THAT is when you know you are becoming an old fogey – when a high concept movie featuring the Terminator and Rambo doesn’t really you excited, when pure spectacle and blood letting and body counts and spent cartridges just don’t do it for you anymore without you know WHO exactly is getting killed or doing the killing, then THAT  is the time to check in your youth card and go sit on a rocking chair in an old folks’ home and just wait for death to warm over you like a comfortable blanket.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Heat’

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So “The Heat” is supposed to be Paul Feig’s big follow up to the hugely successful “Bridesmaids” and for a while there we were all interested in this movie as if Mr. Feig (creator of television’s Freaks & Geeks) was the next Judd Apatow or Dennis Dugan (look him up and weep), and it’s as if we all forgot that the very funny Kristen Wiig actually wrote “Bridesmaids” and that could be a big reason for the movie’s success, and not so much because it was directed by the guy that made “Unaccompanied Minors.”

Looks like maybe “The Heat” screenplay could have used a pass from Ms. Wiig, because it’s just an okay movie, a half-smart update on the 1980s buddy-cop action comedy genre (see: 48 Hrs., Lethal Weapon). See, instead of the mismatched buddies being a couple of dudes (done to death!) or a dude and his dog (this has been done a few times actually) or a dude and a precocious kid (“Cop and a Half,” we’re looking at you, you piece of shit), we got a couple of mismatched ladies. Oh snap, take that, gender bias!Continue Reading …

Review: ‘White House Down’

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Well here is “White House Down,” the third “John McClane” movie of 2013, and they already got beat to the punch by both “Olympus Has Fallen” (a movie for which I remembered so little that I actually had to re-read my own review there as a recap) and an actual John McClane movie in “A Good Day to Die Hard” (which is just about one of the worst movies of the year), and if you really like your “lone guy taking out a team of thieves/mercs in a singular location” movies, this is going to be your best bet.

John McClane stand-in John Cale (Channing Tatum, This is the End, Side Effects) applies for a job at the U.S. Secret Service department, and he brings along his estranged daughter Emily (Joey King, The Dark Knight Rises) to the White House for his interview, scoring her some passes because he knows she is some sort of nut for the White House and its history and he needs to bribe his way back into her life because she’s pissed at him for being a shitty father who put work before parenting (very John McClane-ish of him, by the way, Emily could easily be Lucy McClane, and there’s even the estranged wife so that completes the package).Continue Reading …

Review: ‘World War Z’

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Have you ever wanted to see a family friendly movie about a world wide zombie outbreak? Because “World War Z” is here and this is the movie for you (and your whole family). If you aren’t into zombie movies that have all that yucky, disgusting gore and blood and viscera and just general horror, yet you always wanted to see a movie featuring Brad Pitt and a bunch of undead ghouls (but you’ve already seen “Interview With a Vampire” and “Thelma & Louise“), then here you go, this movie was made just for you.

“World War Z” centers on ex-United Nations something or other Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt, Megamind) in Philadelphia, starting another typical day with his family, making breakfast for his wife and two young daughters, so on and so forth, and while sitting in traffic on their way into the city, oh yeah, zombie apocalypse happens. It’s not like it comes completely out of nowhere, as the movie does start with Gerry watching a news broadcast about strange and violent events popping up all around the world, but there was no reason to think that this strange mysterious thing would come to their doorstep so quickly, whatever it was (it was zombies).

So the movie starts with Gerry navigating his family safely during the first hours of a zombie apocalypse, and then hooking up with an old UN buddy who gets him to investigate the source of the outbreak so they could isolate it and find a vaccine. And off Gerry goes, traversing around the world, chasing little clues and rumors, trying to find a way to save the world. Sounds epic, doesn’t it?Continue Reading …

Review: ‘This is the End’

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Well if you ever wanted to see a meta horror-comedy set during a biblical apocalypse, have I got a treat for you. “This is the End” is from writer/director duo Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (Superbad) and features a bevy of young actors and comedians playing themselves, and yes it is as weird as it sounds, but does it work?

The movie starts with Seth Rogen picking up Jay Baruchel (Cosmopolis) from the airport so they can spend a weekend hanging out together in Los Angeles, what with them being old Canadian friends and all, but while Jay wants to hang back at Seth’s place and just shoot the shit with his buddy, Seth wants to go to a house warming party thrown by James Franco (Oz The Great and Powerful, Pineapple Express). Jay gives in and they head over to a wild party at Franco’s, which really gets crazy when some insane shit starts going down, resulting in massive amounts of deaths, fires, brimstone and other just wild shit.

None of said wild insane and wild shit will be disclosed here because you might as well just see this thing for yourself. Suffice to say, the cast gets whittled down to Seth, Jay and Franco along with Jonah Hill (21 Jump Street), Danny McBride (Pineapple Express) and Craig Robinson (Pineapple Express), and really the story is all about how Seth and Jay have grown apart and need to man up and confront this issue between them lest their friendship die. And what better time to question one’s friendship with a dude than during the apocalypse?Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Man of Steel’

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In what now appears to be something of a “love it or hate it” scenario, the first Superman movie in seven years has arrived to much buzz and fanfare, and it has divided the critics right down the middle, while delighting the majority of audiences who have seen it so far. It’s an origin story all over again, the same one we’ve known since the Big Blue Boy Scout debuted in 1938, an origin that was pulled from the same old messianic stories that have been told for centuries and centuries, just with different twists and spins and new flavors. So how was the spin on this one? How does “Man of Steel” separate itself from not only other Superman movies, but from comic book movies and origin stories in general?Continue Reading …