The Expendables 2 (2012)

I’m Not Gonna Hurt You.  I’m Gonna Take Your Life.

The reason for watching today’s movie was clear.  Why did I watch it?  Because fuckin’ man-tits-balls-ass-‘splosions Mountain Dew!  That’s why!!  Also, I reviewed the first one and the second one just came out in RedBox.  These two movies were very popular with men far more manly than I am, and the first one didn’t do much for me, but it wasn’t bad and had good action.  When they came out with a sequel, I wasn’t really inspired enough to see it in theaters even though Rotten Tomatoes told me it was better than the first.  I knew its time would come eventually.  And that time is now, so let’s get into my review of The Expendables 2, written (allegedly) by Richard Wenk and Sylvester Stallone, directed by Simon West, and starring Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren, Liam Hemsworth, Yu Nan, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Scott Adkins, Jet Li, and Charisma Carpenter.

Though it has nothing to do with the story proper, The Expendables – leader Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone), knife-thrower (and brother of Lloyd Christmas from Dumb and Dumber) Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), martial artist Yin Yang (Jet Li), heavy-weapons specialist Hale Caesar (Terry Crews), demolitionist Toll Road (Randy Couture), crazy dude Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), and the new guy sniper Billy the Kid (Liam Hemsworth) – go to Nepal to rescue some doctor and the captured mercenary Trench (Arnold Schwarzenegger).  Yang inexplicably leaves the group and doesn’t return.  CIA operative Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) replaces one Asian for another – a technical expert named Maggie Chan (Yu Nan) – and sends him on a mission to retrieve something out of a safe.  While they go, Billy goes through a checklist of all the things he can say that means he’s going to get killed soon.  The team then encounter Jean Vilain (Jean-Claude Van Damme), who shockingly kills Billy.  After they recover, the Expendables set out for revenge.

I find that I am not nearly manly enough to forgive the problems of a movie like this.  The action is good, but the story is really predictable and the dialogue is painfully bad in parts.  The most predictable thing in this movie by far is the death of Liam “Handsome McSnipey” Hemsworth.  Generally I would expect movie makers to try to avoid clichés, especially if they’re going to want something to have some emotional impact in a little while.  But they did the whole checklist.  It was like the scene near the end of Black Dynamite, except this movie wasn’t a parody.  It was like, “I know I’m the new guy on the team that the audience would be less attached to – and I’m also the least famous person in this jet right now – but I’m so happy we’ve all gotten so attached so quickly that you guys will take it really hard if I die.  Not that I’m going to, though.  I have so much to live for.  This is my last mission until I retire and return to my girlfriend who loves me.  I can’t wait to not have a knife kicked into my chest by Jean-Claude Van Damme!”  After that, the rest of the movie could be summed up with “Revenge.”  I guess technically the entire story of the movie could just be summed up with, “New guy gets killed.  Team sad.  Revenge.”  A predictable action movie story is … well … predictable to me.  I guess bad dialogue is as well, but this movie still caught me off guard with how bad the dialogue was.  The cheesy “Chill out” from Batman & Robin lines are one thing, but they really hit us hard with the bad jokes about these action stars past careers.  You get “I’m back” and “You’ve been back enough” for Schwarzenegger, someone says “Yippee Kay Yay” to Willis, and they even drop a Chuck Norris fact or two for the be-bearded one.  I do appreciate having their careers referenced, but I would rather they do so with funny lines, not ones that may have given me an ulcer.  I don’t know if it’s an ulcer, I just know I’m shitting blood after watching it.  Perhaps I’ve disclosed too much …  I did get a minor smirk out of the Chuck Norris fact they used, but there’s also a very good chance it was just on the website and they just took it.  It was, “I was bitten by a King Cobra once but, after 5 days of agonizing pain, the Cobra finally died.”

One thing about this movie that I would not argue with would be that the action is interesting.  I know Stallone didn’t direct this movie, but the way action is done in his movies ever since the newest Rambo movie seems to be at his influence and I really appreciate how it looks.  It’s some strange mixture of realistic and gruesome while simultaneously being over the top and bombastic.  Shooting an enemy turns them into a bag of blood and gore and they get knocked back 20 feet by a single bullet or a hand-thrown knife hitting them in the chest.  The gunplay – and even the knife-play – was interesting to watch.  Some of the hand-to-hand stuff was interesting, but strangely it was worse when it involved the two best fighters: Randy Couture and Jet Li.  I don’t think Stallone knows how to set up martial arts, but he puts someone like Jet Li in a movie anyway.  In the first movie, I recall finding Jet Li’s fight scene disappointing, and I don’t even recall Randy Couture having one.  In this movie, Jet Li starts off with a decent fight in the beginning, but never again.  And the only thing I remember Couture doing that was vaguely in his ballpark was pinning a guy against a wall and throwing an elbow at his head.  Kind of underwhelming for the shit I’ve seen those two guys do in the past.  I would say that I appreciated most of the fight between Stallone and Van Damme.  It was pretty well done.  There were also some cars that were totally Mad Maxed out in the beginning, and there was also a part where they seemed to steal a scene from another movie.  It was when Stallone was surrounded and out of ammo and he acted like his finger was a gun, only to have his fake shooting backed up by a real sniper killing the guys.  I’m pretty sure that was something Chris Evans did in Losers.

The performances were what you’d expect.  Maybe a little better.  Not great, but I could imagine going into this movie thinking that these guys couldn’t even string words together.  But this movie is so gangnamed dripping with testosterone that I failed a random drug test after watching it.  I WOULD’VE WON THE TOUR DE FRANCE!  But everything in this movie is Orange County Choppers and Ed Hardy shit with skulls all over them.  Stallone even uses a pen in this movie that looked like he soldered trinkets from Hot Topic all over it.  Of course, the biggest thing to say about the cast of this movie is that it’s slathered with big name action stars.  The problem with that is that most of them are really showing their age.  Most of them still look ripped physically, but Stallone’s face looks like he got mauled by bees and Van Damme has alien eyes when he takes the sunglasses off.  I was also confused by Yu Nan.  She did a fine job in the movie, but I was confused about why he didn’t go for some JCVD version of an Asian actress for the role.  There are much bigger Asian actresses he might have been able to get!  He could’ve gotten Zhang Ziyi, Maggie Q, Michelle Yeoh, or any number of Asian actresses that were already known to Americans.  She just seemed out of place.

The Expendables 2 was roughly what I expected out of it.  Good action, soaked in testosterone and explosions on one hand, and the other hand is filled by blunt writing and dialogue so bad it gave me an aneurism.  And there’s really nothing to say about the performances in this movie; everyone in the world should have seen at least one movie with most of these guys featured.  And if you haven’t, then you’re probably not going to see this movie no matter what I say.  Otherwise, it’s fine enough for a watch.  Especially to make fun of.  The Expendables 2 gets “By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you man … and knife” out of “Who’s next, Rambo?”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook and Twitter.  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Ghosts of Mars (2001)

Maybe I’ll Sleep With You if You’re the Last Man on Earth. But We’re Not on Earth.

My inspiration for watching this movie was pure randomness. I saw it in my instant queue and thus I watched it. I really should get to some of those review requests I have building up, but I decided at random to watch this movie. This will be a short introduction indeed. I have no idea how this movie got added to my queue, I don’t know why I picked it to watch today, and I know nothing about it beyond a few people that star in it. And most of those people aren’t even reasons to watch a movie! It doesn’t really matter. I watched it and now I reviews it. This movie is Ghosts of Mars, written by John Carpenter and Larry Sulkis, directed by John Carpenter, and starring Natasha Henstridge, Ice Cube, Pam Grier, Jason Statham, Clea DuVall, Liam Waite, Joanna Cassidy, Duane Davis, and Richard Cetrone.

In the 22^nd century, on a mostly terraformed Mars, a team including Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge), Helena Braddock (Pam Grier), Nathan Jericho (Jason Statham), Bashira Kincaid (Clea DuVall), and Michael Descanso (Liam Waite) are sent to a small mining town to transport a murderer named “Desolation” Williams (Ice Cube) to prison. When they arrive, the town is virtually deserted. They find a few survivors and one of them named Whitlock (Joanna Cassidy) explains that they found a hidden doorway that was opened, releasing “ghosts” into the air that inhabited the miners, turning them crazed and violent. They form an uneasy alliance with Williams to hold out against the threat long enough for their train to return.

Was I mistaken, or is John Carpenter generally regarded as a good filmmaker? ‘Cause the movie I just watched was typical, poorly-conceived shoot-‘em-up bullshit. It’s mostly just a collection of better movies put together in a way that was as interesting as it was easy to follow … which is to say “not”. The bad guys looked like they were from the Mad Max movies, though they mostly acted like zombies, and the main bad guy looked like the Kurgan from Highlander, but he only spoke in gibberish. The sets in the movie looked like they were stolen straight out of either Total Recall or Judge Dredd. And the story was pulled straight out of the toilet behind a Mexican restaurant. A good bit of the dialogue was just trying very hard to sound official. I could just imagine them sitting in the office and yelling out the door, “I need a book of military terms. STAT! Okay, I definitely want to use ‘clicks’ for distance, ‘marks’ for targets, and I probably only want to refer to time in hundreds. And, by God, cock your damned guns instead of punctuating!” Of course they would do this to make their police team seem more qualified, forgetting the fact that everything else they wrote made them look like the worst team of police officers that’s ever existed. They were decent enough in a fight, but every 10 minutes or so they’d get in a position where they were being held at gunpoint and everyone had to slowly lower their weapons to the floor. Also, after everything they go through, they don’t accomplish any one of their missions, but they do lose the greater majority of their team. To try to make their team a little stronger, they add in some of the prisoners and murderers that they’ve encountered without bringing the collective IQ of the group into triple digits. Hell, one of them cuts his thumb off trying to open a can of food with a machete. They were only able to succeed because the enemies were even stupider. The closest thing they could come up with for motivation for these guys is destruction. Living creatures aren’t supposed to want to destroy the planet. They live there too! All they ever did was try to destroy things and, when they didn’t have things to destroy, they all stood around and either yelled gibberish at each other or stuck pieces of metal into their faces. If they weren’t these guys, they were a red/purple smoke that would take control of the camera and smack into people’s face, though it seems that was to indicate that they were being inhaled. All I could see was that it looked like I was wearing old school 3D glasses when I was supposed to be seeing from their point of view. What I could also see is that this movie sends the worst kind of message ever. When Melanie inhales the crazy smoke, they give her some of the drugs out of her stash, which allows her to overcome her possession. That is not a joke! Drugs saved her life! I don’t know why the movie didn’t just end with the good guys wrapping the town in cellophane and hotboxing all of the bad guys until they came out of it.

The performances didn’t impress but, in their defense, most of them didn’t seem like they were trying either. They all probably just agreed to be in this movie based on John Carpenter’s involvement, thinking they would be in one of his good ones. But they had already signed the contracts by the time they read the script, so they just had to ride it out. Natasha Henstridge did a good enough job. She played badass pretty well on occasion, I suppose. In the beginning, she does get needlessly defensive at her debriefing, but I think that was probably the piss-poor writing. She walks in to the room with a committee, they tell her to have a seat, and she starts demanding a lawyer. We haven’t even asked you anything yet! Jason Statham did a decent enough job, but he was never really likeable. The only concern he had was to try to fuck Natasha Henstridge through the entire movie, paying little mind to the weirdos trying to kill them all. Speaking of which, the crazy people never did a good job. They came off more goofy than scary.

I had no reason to watch Ghosts of Mars, and I probably should have taken that as a sign. The story was stupid and pointless, and mainly just tried to steal from so many better movies. The action is decent, but not decent enough to be a reason to watch this when you have to sit through the story to get to it. The performances seemed phoned in, but I couldn’t really blame them for it. Altogether, I see no reason why you would watch this movie. You COULD stream it, but I wouldn’t bother unless you need to write a review for the day as well. Ghosts of Mars gets “The ass end of the universe” out of “Come on, you mindless mother fuckers!”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people. Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense. Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated. You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle). Don’t forget to leave me some comments. Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Gnomeo and Juliet (2011)

The Story You Are About to See Has Been Told Before.  A Lot.

You know what we all need?  We all need to take some of the best tragedy stories of our time and turn them into kids movies with garden gnomes.  I think we can all agree that this needs to happen.  I had exactly zero percent interest in this movie when I first heard about it, the same amount when it came out on DVD, and the same amount when I saw it on Netflix streaming.  I chose to watch it because I like to make fun of movies that are awful.  Was this movie awful, or was I surprised by it?  Let’s find out in my review of Gnomeo and Juliet, directed by Kelly Asbury, and starring the voice talents of James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Michael Caine, Maggie Smith, Jason Statham, Matt Lucas, Ozzy Osbourne, Stephen Merchant, Julie Walters, Dolly Parton, Hulk Hogan, and Patrick Stewart.  I mean, come on!  Look at that cast!

You know that story William Shakespeare wrote that was later turned into a Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes joint called Romeo & Juliet?  This time they’re lawn gnomes.  …  …Okay it’s a little different.  Two feuding neighbors, Mrs. Montague (Julie Walters) and Mr. Capulet (Richard Wilson), have adjoining gardens populated with garden gnomes that also hate each other.  The Montague garden filled with blue gnomes, the Capulet garden with red gnomes.  A red gnome named Tybalt (Jason Statham) and a blue gnome named Gnomeo (James McAvoy), son of the matriarch of the blue gnomes Lady Bluebury (Maggie Smith), challenge each other to a lawnmower race where Tybalt wins by cheating.  In retaliation, Gnomeo and his friend Benny (Matt Lucas) decide to vandalize the red lawn.  Simultaneously, Juliet (Emily Blunt), the daughter of Lord Redbrick (Michael Caine), decides she needs to escape the clutches of her over-protective father and retrieve a flower from a vacant neighboring yard.  Here, Gnomeo and Juliet meet and fall in love almost instantly.  Something tells me it won’t end well for these two star-crossed lovers.  But, then again, it’s a kids movie version…

Strangely enough, this movie is not that bad.  I know, I was as surprised as you!  It’s a cute kid’s movie that’s well-animated and pretty and, of course, has a good story because it’s based on a story by William Shakespeare.  I think the biggest problem with this movie is that it doesn’t really have an audience.  People that love Romeo & Juliet won’t see this movie because it “ruins” a classic tragedy.  People that aren’t familiar with Romeo & Juliet probably won’t be into the movie because it’s a kid’s movie.  And kid’s might like the movie because they’re goofy gnomes, and their parents may want them to see it as an introduction to Romeo & Juliet, but it’s really not gonna learn ’em anything about Romeo & Juliet.  Romeo & Juliet was a great play, but I think the huge tragedy at the end is what made it so famous.  This being a kid’s movie, Gnomeo & Juliet had a happy ending.  This movie probably would’ve been well-received if they hadn’t named it after Romeo & Juliet and taken the names from it.  Plenty of story’s have done the whole “star-crossed lovers” thing so it wouldn’t have been so bad if it just had similarities to R&J (I am so sick of typing the whole name).  But to take so heavily from R&J, but then to change the ending of a piece of classic literature, is not usually well received.  Once we ignore the fact that it’s based on R&J, we can enjoy the movie a little more.  The comedy in the movie relies heavily on puns – as you may gather from the title of the movie – and they’re hit and miss.  “Let’s kick some grass” and “Who’s your gnomey?” (which I still don’t get) were dead on arrival, but when the frog says to the mushroom “You look like a fun guy (fungi)” made me laugh.  Cheesiness is entirely acceptable in a kid’s movie.  The commercial with Hulk Hogan’s voice over for the lawnmower called the Terrafirminator was pretty funny, mainly because it reminded me of the Power Thirst commercials from YouTube.  I did find one part of this movie a little unbelievable.  I mean, lawn gnomes coming to life I’m totally on board with, but an English Bulldog being vicious?  You lost me.

The vocal cast of this movie is amazing.  I would’ve expected most of these acclaimed British actors would have a problem with a movie fucking with the ending of a Shakespeare play, but they came in and did a pretty excellent job.  James McAvoy and Emily Blunt did fine jobs here.  Michael Caine and Maggie Smith are the two actors I especially would’ve thought would’ve refused to do this movie, and probably Patrick Stewart as well.  But Stewart probably agreed because he got to play Shakespeare, albeit in statue form.  I especially liked Ashley Jensen as Nanette the frog.  The frog was halfway in between crazy and stupid and was probably the most consistently entertaining character.  Sadly, I think the only voice acting that didn’t really shine was one of my favorite musicians: Ozzy Osbourne.  Contrary to any impression of the man, he was very understandable.  Being not an actor, most of his lines fell flat.  But, again, he’s not an actor, and most people should consider it an accomplishment that you can actually understand what he’s saying.

As surprised as I am to write these words, here it goes … this movie’s kind of cute.  It’s got a good story going for it with a couple of solid laughs, but don’t go in thinking it’ll be like Romeo & Juliet.  Just think it’s a kid’s movie and you’ll probably think it’s cute.  If you have them, your kids will probably enjoy it.  The cast of the movie is amazing and they all perform admirably.  Give it a shot, you may enjoy it.  I give Gnomeo & Juliet “Not good, not bad, it’s FAIR Verona” out of “That was my joke!”

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The Expendables (2010)

Welcome to the third installment in my “Prove I’m Not Gay” movies, following the back to back reviews of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Sex and the City.  This particular movie could be argued as being the anti-chick flick.  Make a movie that includes almost every action star you could think of, add lots of explosions, forget to write a story, and even throw in a little love story for no reason and you have this movie.  This movie is The Expendables, starring … well … think of an action movie star and input their name here.  And, just to be helpful, it stars Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke, Terry Crews, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, David Zayas, Steve Austin, Charisma Carpenter, Eric Roberts, Giselle Itie, and have Arnold Schwarzenegger (yeah, I copied it off of a website.  Who wouldn’t?), Bruce Willis, and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira.  Any action stars you thought of that weren’t here will probably be in the sequel.

This story should be easy enough.  Stallone, Statham, Crews, Li, Lundgren, and Couture are the Expendables, an elite group of mercenaries.  In the beginning, they get onto a boat and kill a bunch of pirates holding hostages.  Lundgren goes a little nuts and tries to “break” someone, and if he dies, he dies.  Rambo has to kick him out of the group.  Then the Transporter’s girlfriend dumps him for a douche.  Black Mask wants more money.  Couture is sad about his ear.  Crews makes his tittie muscles dance.  So McClane gives Rocky a mission to kill a general somewhere and John Matrix turns down the mission.  So Judge Dredd and Chev Chelios go there and find out Eric Roberts, with his bodyguard Stone Cold Steve Austin, are really bad, and Cobretti falls in love with the general’s daughter.  Then they go back and kill everybody.

This movie is exactly what everyone expects it to be.  Dumb but exciting.  There is kind of a story to this movie, but it’s very typical and entirely predictable.  Surprising as it may be, Stallone actually has the ability to write some good dialogue from time to time.  He didn’t do that here.  It’s either really cliched or very confusing.  There were times that I was wondering “Why are they talking about this right now?”  And there’s a black guy that’s one of the pirates in the very beginning that both cannot act and cannot be understood.  I think that was a wise choice.

The cast is probably the biggest draw of this movie.  As I said, practically every living action star is in this movie at one point, and the ones that weren’t probably just couldn’t find the time to get in there.  They should’ve just had Van Damme walk by in the background at one point.  Sly looks really weird to me in this movie.  I know the man’s getting old, but he’s still ripped to shreds in this movie.  There are so many veins in this man’s arm that I would argue he had to have some surgically implanted.  But his face looks like he’s had Cher-esque work done.  The rest of the cast is exactly what you expect from them.  Except, maybe, for Jet Li.  For some reason, Jet Li gets his ass kicked in this movie by most people.  If you ask me, I bet Li could beat down everyone on this cast save for maybe Randy Couture.  The other person here is Mickey Rourke, who actually puts on a pretty good, emotion charged performance at one point, regardless to how shitty the dialogue he’s delivering is.  You should give the man an Oscar just for that.

The action is the other draw to this movie.  The fight scenes are pretty good, though I’d actually expect better from such a cast.  But they go more for gun play than for fights.  The other nice thing about this movie is that Sly wanted as many of the explosions and action scenes to be practical as they could manage.  So the shit that blows up into gigantic fireballs actually happened, and looks like it.  Also, I don’t know how he managed, and I believe it started with the newest Rambo, but Sly’s movies pull off some really brutal deaths.  I’ve seen it in things since but I don’t remember it before Rambo where it started to look uncomfortably realistic at times.  I’m cool with it though.  Good work.

So that’s that.  As I said, this movie is exactly what you expect of it.  It’s kind of worth seeing, but you probably won’t be impacted that much by it.  It’s explosions and deaths are cool, but everything else kind of sucks.  I give this movie “Rent it once, and then again in a few months when you’ve forgotten everything about it” out of 786.

And, as always, please rate, comment, and/or like this post and others.  It may help me get better.