Saturday, August 21, 2010

Cop Out? Come On Man, Seriously?

Yeah sure this is late; this movies been out for nearly four months, but let me tell you, I'm really fucking glad I didn't pay to see this movie in the theater. Let me start out by saying this is a really terrible movie. I mean horrible. Does that mean I didn't enjoy myself, well not really. This movie is goofy, it's immature and it makes about as much sense as Bobcat Gothwait banging Nikki Cox, but it's all true.

Tracy Morgan really gives it his all in this movie. He's too over the top and it really detracts from the "funny" by trying too hard. Everything he says is forced and poorly written. There were literally ten moments in this movie when I looked over at Ryan and we both went, "What the fuck is that about?" This movie looks like it was edited by a sixty year old with turrets, but it was just edited by Kevin Smith himself. Now I LOVE Kevin Smith and I really wanted to love this movie, but all I can say is that I enjoyed myself, but this was NOT a good movie.

The editing was so bad it looked like things were missed while filming. One moment in particular really sticks out for me. Bruce Willis/Jimmy is on the roof of this house and he has to climb a fence to jump down to the ground and normally you would show him do the whole thing, but Kevin just assumed we would know he climbed the fence, swung over it and dropped to the ground. But all we see is Jimmy advance on the fence and then land on the ground. Something was missed and it left a gaping hole in what I was watching.

There were funny moments in this movie for sure. I laughed many times and laughed pretty hard. If you rate this movie on laughs alone, at least as far as I am concerned, I would say 7 or 8 out of 10. But if you rate this on it just being a good movie to watch, it gets a 3 perhaps a 4 out of 10. If you have to pay more than a $1 to see this, take a pass. It'll be on TV in about three months.

I think the problem is that Kevin Smith is not comfortable directing something he hasn't written. It's a vision thing. When someone is writing a movie or thinking of a storyline for a movie, they can see how it should be filmed. Kevin has always worked with things he's written. He knows the "movie" he's making like the back of his hand. He could direct that in his sleep. This movie was written by some moron with terrible dialog skills and Kevin Smith had to make something funny out of horseshit. I give him credit for trying, but it just fails well short of being a good or even decent movie.

Ryan said it best, "There's a good movie in there someplace, we just didn't get to see it." That clears things up for me. You can tell the movie could have been decent, but the mix of Kevin Smith and a script he didn't write, just didn't work for me. I had a good time, but for those of you whole are not gluttons for punishment, don't watch this movie, it's 90 minutes you will never get back.

-Michael

Friday, August 20, 2010

Is Sly Stallone Expendable?

Last night I went to see the new action packed, never before seen, over the top adventure flick from Sylvester Stallone. Now I'm like the next guy, I love a good Sly Stallone movie. I loved Rocky, I thought Rambo was cool in the eighties, but it's been a while since he made a movie that I really liked. This movie was pretty fucking cool. It's not going to change cinema with acting and or script writing and honestly if you thought it would, you're a fucking idiot. This is a shoot 'em up action movie with little to no plot and lots of shit blowing the fuck up. And did I mention there might be some action in this movie? Well there was.

Thursday night, two friends and I took my new truck up to the theater to see The Expendables. I went in with low expectations on acting and script and high expectations on actions and 'splosions. I wasn't surprised or let down in any way. This movie has plenty of stars in it. We all know that Rocky is in this movie, but there are plenty more action stars filling out the rest of the cast. Terry Crews, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Eric Roberts, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yeah Arnold is only in it for like twelve seconds and Bruce is in it for forty seconds, but their both there. It's really too bad that Chuck Norris and Steven Segal had to be such douche bags, but I guess it's their loss.

This movie has action, LOTS OF FUCKING ACTION. It's pretty much non-stop from the beginning to the end. I went to a theater with a sound system that could make you shit your pants with bass and volume, so this movie was going to be a test of my man diapers. I wore a plastic shield to keep my shorts from getting a bacon strip and that was a good thing. This movie was turned up REALLY LOUD!!! I have never heard a movie this loud before. The gunshots were as loud as real gunshots. The explosions turned my stomach to jelly and it was awesome. I loved it.

The movie is fairly basic in nature, hell who am I kidding, it's fucking juvenile as far as script, but you know what, who cares. It's an action movie with explosions, muscles and fight sequences. It's not "The English Patient" and it never claims to be. The Expendables are a geriatric group of mercenaries that do what needs to be done for the right price. Sly is the leader and he's approached by a man who calls himself "Mr. Church", Bruce Willis and is asked to kill the leader of a drug cartel on some fake island in some jungle infested area of the planet. Yeah we've heard this before, about twelve million times, but again I say, who the fuck cares.

Sly decides to recon the island with Stathom and after investigating they decide not to take the job. However Stallone meets this really hot chick and gets a boner for her. Why he doesn't just take most doctors advice and seek a doctor after a boner lasting more than four hours is beyond me, but again it's not a logical movie, just a action flick. The hot chick, who really cares what her name is, gets stranded on the island as they leave in a flourish of action and bullet casings so when Sly goes home, he feels guilty for leaving her in such danger. At this point he decides to go back to rescue her. I'm leaving out a tiny plot twist here for good reason, it's really the only thing that might surprise you at this point, but one of the group members that Sly fires comes back in a big way.

After having a heart to boxers face discussion with Rourke, Sly decides he loves this chick and wants to dive into her pink umbrella, but if she dies on the island, he won't be able to do that. He plans to go back by himself and fix that problem. Meanwhile his group is so loyal to him that they all volunteer to go with him. It's one those choke up moments where you pretend it's not emotional, but those kind of moments in movies give me the tinglies. So they all go back and kill the fuck out of everyone. They destroy things that don't even need destroying, but hell they make great explosions, so they blow them the fuck up. Eric Roberts, who shockingly is playing a bad guy, gets a knife the size of harp shoved through his chest and the movie ends. I think I mentioned it before, but by this point in the movie, I have crapped myself at least three times from the sheer volume of the movie, but during the last twelve minutes of action, the volume somehow seems to get even louder and now my bowels are just leaking out of control. Do I really care, well not really, because the action is damn good.

This movie suffers from a lack of script, but it makes up for it with tons of kick ass action. There is also a small part in the movie that reminds me of "True Lies" which focuses on Stathom and the always ugly Charisma Carpenter. For some reason she left Stathom and he wants her big breasts back and finds out she's dating someone else. This other guy ends up hitting her which ends up being a bad decision on his part. During a basketball game Stathom finds the guy, along with like five of his friends and really messes those fuckers up. I mean it's really bad, something you would surely get arrested for, but Stathom just rides away on his motorcycle and leaves them broken on the court. It's really awesome.

Overall this movie scores a strong B for me. It is what is it and never claims to be more than that. It's a fun movie, with incredible sound and action. Did I also mention the gore in this movie, it's approaching "Rambo" in the amount of blood that comes out of people. Is the blood almost completely CGI, well yeah, but I can look past that. If you like action films and don't expect much substance to plot, this movie is fucking awesome. If you want "The Pianist", then don't see this movie. I think this movie is better than the A-Team though, which I know isn't saying much, but that movie really bombed in my mind. -Michael

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

A New Device To Help Cull The Herd

I think we all know this, but lasers are fucking awesome. From the little ones that we use to entertain our cats, to the large ones that James Bond has to stop from destroying the world; they all rock. The coolest thing about this one is that it's shaped like a fucking lightsaber, how cool is that? Yeah it might be able to burn your skin and cause cancer, but that's a small price to pay for a fucking beam that you can see from space.

Most industrial lasers, the kind that you can really impress your friends with, produce about 10 Mw of power. This one produces nearly 1w. That's approximately 1,000 times more powerful than the most kick ass one you have held in your hand before. Unless of course you work for SPECTRE, then this is about the same as you guys have. This thing is bright. I mean super bright. Check out this video.



The while laser is like the strongest you could get on the market before this one was produced. It's pretty fucking bright and you can almost see the beam as it shines on the wall, but man the lightsaber laser is intense.

Now we get to the question of "should this thing be legal to buy?" Well of course it should be. This is 'Merica. The land of the free and the land of super dangerous toys that we can own and operate in our backyards. Just because it can blow us up, pierce our skin, slice our legs off or give us cancer, doesn't mean our government is going to stop us from having a good 'ol time with it. Yee Haw!

Seriously, people think this laser should be illegal to own and to that I say, "order me one". If I can go buy a shotgun at Walmart with just my license, then this laser should be sold in a vending machine. Sure we don't need this fucking laser, that's a given, but we didn't NEED to go the moon either and yet we did. This thing could cause cancer, well so can car exhaust, cigarettes and breathing in some areas of the country and yet we do all that stuff. I can buy a razor sharp Katana online with no age check and get it home and attack my kids with it, but yet I can do that with my iPhone while waiting in line at the DMV if I want. It's all good in the neighborhood people.

I look at the Walmart shotguns, Katanas and Super fucking cool lasers as more devices to cull the herd. The people that will shoot themselves, slice themselves or burn their fucking skin to look like George Hamilton are not buying this shit to rob or hurt me. They are getting illegal, non-regulated firearms and knives, not cool ass fucking Lucas inspired lasers. I love this fucking thing. Should it be sold in the isle with Tampons and Condoms, probably not. Should I be able to pick one of them up at my local 24 hour gas station, not really, but I should be able to walk into Bills Gun Shop, Cabellas or Fleet Farm and pick up a laser that I can shave with. That seems reasonable. Let the idiots get their hands on things like this, either they will learn some respect and smarten up, or they'll kill themselves with it. It's not like someone can't go to the gas station and get a can of gas to pour on themselves and get the same sort of skin disorder. It's called Culling The Herd and at times like this, we need more ways of that to happen naturally.

-Michael