Posts Tagged ‘Bruce Willis’

Movie Review- Olympus Has Fallen

Monday, March 18th, 2013

Olympus Has Fallen is so terrible I don’t even know where to begin. I suppose I’ll start with the title. Making a sequel to Air Force One is problematic for the obvious reason- If you call it Air Force One II, people might read it as Air Force 12. Of course, if you call it Olympus Has Fallen, then people won’t even know its a sequel to Air Force One. That predicament alone is good enough reason not to make the movie, but it only gets worse from there. I’m not usually one to say something is in poor taster, but I definitely think there is something wrong with putting Harrison Ford in black face and making him up to look like Morgan Freeman. Unless, wait…is this supposed to be a sequel to Deep Impact? OK, that makes more sense, and it explains some of the other parts of the plot that I didn’t get.

The movie starts out with an asteroid crashing in to the White House and taking Morgan Freeman hostage. As you might guess, this asteroid is the great-grandson of the asteroid Morgan Freeman blew up in Deep Impact. After that, the movie pretty much follows the plot of  Die Hard III: Die Hard With A Vengeance, with the Jeremy Irons part being played by Ashley Judd in an asteroid costume, Gerard Butler in the Bruce Willis role and Aaron Eckhart as the Samuel L. Jackson character. I have no problem spoiling this movie for you, but unfortunately, I’m too lazy to tell you more of the story or how it ends. Lets just say President Morgan Freeman and the asteroid talk out their differences and become friends just before the asteroids’ henchmen show up to finish the job by blowing up the earth. The movie is totally boring.

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Movie Review; G.I. Joe: Retaliation

Friday, March 8th, 2013

I wish this was a review about a movie I made up, but unfortunately G.I.Joe: Retaliation actually exists. True story: a couple of years ago, I was contracted by Hasbro through Kaiju Big Battel to act in a demo film by one of the G.I. Joe toy developers. Apparently, he wanted his latest action figure to appear in the sequel, and that’s how I learned there would be a follow-up to the horrible G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra. I doubt that the designer’s toy ever saw the light of day, and I hope nobody but his immediate boss saw the silly movie we made. Luckily I was wearing a ski mask the whole time, so nobody will recognize me if it ever shows up on Youtube. There are some “fat kid with a light sabre” moments in there that aren’t quite absurd enough to be entertaining. Luckily, it was an easy shoot, I got a free lunch, and was eventually paid $200 for my efforts. I’m quite sure The Rock, Bruce Willis, Channing Tatum and the rest of the cast of Retaliation were paid a lot more than that, which is why they should all be more embarrassed of their movie than I am of the work I did at Hasbro.

I’ll be honest, I have to give props to the writers of Retaliation for their unconventional plot. The film begins with the immediate slaughter of all the annoying Joes from the first movie. After 5 minutes of screen time, we’re only left with Roadblock (The Rock), Snake Eyes (Ray Parker Jr.), and Jinx (attractive, but not famous half-Asian girl). However, just when you are glad to see no more Wayans Brothers, something preposterous happens. The director decides that, after the success of Magic Mike, Channing Tatum is too popular to kill off. The movie is then sent back into production for another 10 months, and the entire story is re-written. The most notable change is that Duke’s uniform is now nothing more than a camouflage speedo. Where does Channing keep is sidearms and ammo? That is a question this film never answers, although you can probably figure it out if you saw Magic Mike. Anyway, after NOT dying, the crew eventually meets up with Bruce Willis and they all “retaliate” against the evil forces of Cobra. There is another pretty good fight between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow, and Jinx does some things that are somewhat sexy and cool.  The Rock says some witty one-liners, but a major disappointment is that he does NOT rhyme his dialogue. Anyone hoping to cling to just a tiny bit of nostalgia about the 80’s G.I.Joe cartoon should stay at home and not waste money on this. Overall the movie is as you’d expect: totally awful. A few good jokes by a washed-up wrestler, and some karate chops by the guy who wrote the Ghostbusters theme song is not enough to make up for all the other shit that happens.

One regret I have is that after my Hasbro stint, I could have warned you all that G.I. Joe: Retaliation was coming. I’m not sure why I didn’t. Maybe I was in in denial, or maybe I just hoped the producers would come to their senses and it would get shit-canned. Really, it’s all YOUR fault. If you guys hadn’t all shown up in droves to see Magic Mike, maybe this movie would have suffered the pre-death it deserved.

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Review: The Expendables

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

In making The Expendables, Sly Stallone had a mission: To assemble the world’s greatest action stars and make the world forget that these men can barely walk up a flight of stairs anymore, let alone jump from a rooftop into the back of a flaming pick-up truck full of zombie soldiers with Uzis. He accomplished this goal by leaving out the truck, the undead monsters and the fire-arms. As a result, the pace of this film is somewhat slower than one might expect.

Stallone and Jason Statham star as a couple of insurance salesmen who long to throw off the shackles of corporate life and open up a Chinese restaurant. They know how to run a business and they have the capital to get it off the ground, but neither man is Chinese. That’s where Jet Li comes in. Stallone and Statham find Li in an alley feeding rancid tuna to stray cats. When they notice that Li is Chinese, they decide to hire him as their head chef. The only problem? Li can’t cook to save his life. When he was was a small child, he accidentally dropped a huge pot of boiling water on his head while trying to make breakfast for his mom. Since then, Li has been too terrified of stoves to even set foot in a kitchen. Still optimistic, Stallone and Statham decide that all Li needs is a little therapy and some culinary lessons. Bruce Willis makes a cameo as Li’s psychiatrist, and Dolph Lundgren plays the uptight master chef who teaches Li how to cook. In one hilarious scene, Willis confronts Lundgren with a wooden spoon because he feels the grizzled chef is being too hard on Li. For the most part, though, this movie is very serious.

Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a health inspector sent to evaluate the new restaurant. Anyone who thinks Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn’t have the acting chops for drama needs to see the scene where he realizes he has been poisoned and is about to die after Li accidentally serves him rancid tuna. There was not a dry eye in the theater when, with his dying breath, Arnie forgives Li and tells him to never give up his dream of being a chef. All those other actors that you’ve heard are in the movie play customers who are also accidentally poisoned by Li. It’s pretty anti-climactic, actually. Still, if they’re not going to get Van Damme or Steven Seagal, who really cares what happens to Eric Roberts or Mickey Rourke or Randy Couture. I don’t even know who Randy Couture is, actually. Did I even spell his name right? I’m too lazy to check. Anyway, I think this is a pretty good movie. Especially if, like me, you’ve always wanted to open up a restaurant but were too afraid that you might accidentally kill people with your cooking. Inspiring stuff.

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