G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)

  Oh my God, this movie was so dumb.  And not just "it's a summer popcorn flick!" dumb or "it's based on a line of toys!" dumb.  It's "dropped on its head as an infant" dumb.  It makes Rise of Cobra look like Citizen Kane.  

You guys know the deal with this film, right?  How it got pushed back from summer 2012 to March because it didn't test well?  Apparently, the test audiences were disappointed with how few scenes Channing Tatum had so they went back and shot some completely superfluous ones that could be added in to the finished film.  It didn't change the plot in any way, and served only to bog down the opening of the movie.  Without those scenes, the movie zips along from one action piece to another.  That's all that's really expected of it. 

The Joes, led by Duke (Channing Tatum) are sent into Pakistan to retrieve a couple of nukes after their president gets assassinated.  They get the nukes no problem but are betrayed by their government when it comes to extraction.  Only four Joes survive:  Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson), Lady Jaye (Adrianne Palicki), and Flint (D.J. Cotrona) by jumping into a well, and Snake Eyes (Ray Park) by not being anywhere near Pakistan.

The first three Joes manage to get from Pakistan all the way to Washington, D.C. where they learn that the President of the United States (Jonathan Pryce) has declared them a terrorist organization and is claiming Snake Eyes killed the Pakistani president and was captured.  But, surprise, surprise, it's not Snake Eyes, it's actually Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) who just wanted to get into the super-secret prison where Destro and Cobra Commander (Luke Bracey) were being held.  After being freed, Cobra Commander joins up with his buddy Zartan, Master of Disguise (Arnold Vosloo, but mostly Jonathon Pryce) to take the world hostage by forcing everyone to fire and then self-destruct all their nuclear weapons.

The Joes, operating out of an abandoned gym, manage to put all of this together and, with the help of Original Joe Colton (Bruce Willis), save the day.

I will go ahead and admit, I thought the first movie was at least fun, while being completely ridiculous.  This movie is just ridiculous.  They re-use the same trope they did with the Baroness by having Storm Shadow suddenly realize he had been manipulated since childhood and decide to team up with the Joes.  There was also an undercurrent of blatant sexism that I did not enjoy at all.

Ok, so Duke is the Captain, right?  He dies and the mantle of leadership gets passed to the next highest rank, in this case, it would be Lady Jaye, a lieutenant.  Instead, she makes a point of saying to Roadblock, a sergeant major, that he is in charge now.  She also had her hair down for 80% of the runtime, even in uniform which made my eye twitch, and the one moment of character-building was her sob story about how she joined the military because Daddy always wanted a boy and didn't think women should serve in combat.  He died before she could rub it in his face.  Boo hoo.  Then, what do you know, a surrogate father-figure shows up and treats her just like dear old dad did, refusing to learn her name and according her only the most basic interest.  But, hey, at least she fared better than poor Flint, who barely had any lines at all.

I was pleased to see Christopher Eccleston and Joseph Gordon-Levitt both had the good sense to stay away from this turkey.  I don't know what Jonathan Pryce was thinking.  The real winner here is Arnold Vosloo, who had approximately 2 seconds of face time and still got decent billing.

The Lone Ranger (2013)

Nominated for:  Best Makeup and Hairstyles and Best Visual Effects    People have been trashing this movie left and right. Currently, it is sitting at 25% on rottentomatoes.com and is on track to show a $50 million loss.  Disney is probably burning all their Lone Ranger 2 script ideas as I type.

And that is a damn shame, because this movie doesn't deserve to be consigned to the bottom of the heap.  It has its problems, true, but it's not nearly as bad as critics have been making out.

John Reid (Armie Hammer) is a bright, shiny new prosecutor come home to Colby, Texas.  He happens to be traveling on a train also being used to transport known outlaw and suspected cannibal Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner), as well as a crazy Indian with a dead bird on his head.  Reid tries to stop the inevitable escape but winds up shackled to Tonto (Johnny Depp) and crashing the train.  His brother, Dan (James Badge Dale), who is better in every way, deputizes him as a Ranger anyway and they head off into the canyons to track Cavendish and his men. 

Everybody gets shot.

While digging their graves, Tonto is confronted with a pure white spirit horse pawing at John Reid's feet.  After trying to convince the horse he really wants to bring Dan back, Tonto gives up and accepts that he is stuck with John as his spiritwalker, the only one who can help him get vengeance for his slaughtered tribe.

This movie was a riot.  It was one of the funniest movies I have seen all year. I was so pleased to see William Fichtner getting a major part like this.  His villain is superbly creepy.  Barry Pepper is almost unrecognizable as the Army cavalry officer behind all that blonde hair, but you'll know Tom Wilkinson's voice immediately.  I haven't seen Luther, so I can't really say that Ruth Wilson was amazing but I wouldn't have known she was British if I hadn't looked it up.  Also, apparently, she was Princess Betsy in Anna Karenina.

Which brings me to....Armie Hammer.  God love that boy.  They have been trying like hell to make him as squeaky clean as possible.  We get it.  He's good-looking, likeable, and has the world's whitest teeth.  Between this and Mirror, Mirror, he's so sweet it gives me cavities.  I want to see him get down and dirty in a role, not this pretty-boy bullshit.  There is just something missing about him, and I think that's it.  Ugly him up if you have to, Hollywood, but give me some R-rated Hammer.

Dead Man on Campus (1998)

  This is not a movie I ever imagined I would watch.  I don't regard the 90's as a great decade and this movie practically bleeds grunge.  There was so much plaid I thought I was at a Canadian family reunion.  This was also the time period where Hollywood tried to convince us that Tom Everett Scott was a "thing".  

Strait-laced Josh (Tom Everett Scott) is at college on an academic scholarship, which means he has to keep at least a B+ average.  This proves difficult when his hard-partying roommate Cooper (Mark Paul Gosselaar) moves in.  With Josh about to lose his scholarship and the girl of his dreams (Poppy Montgomery) and Cooper facing work in his father's janitorial business, they decide their only course of action is an obscure college rule that says if your roommate commits suicide, you automatically get an A.  The unscrupulous pair scour the campus for the most depressed, suicidal sucker they can find.

Despite some very cute opening credits, I found the humor in this movie aimed more at silly than dark.  Better Off Dead it is not, but enjoyable enough if you like that sort of thing.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

  I know, I know, it's practically a violation of the Geneva Conventions to have never seen this movie.  Sue me.  The way people talk about this thing, you'd think it was the start of a new religion.  Maybe it is.  The Church of Tarantino.  Hail, motherfuckers!

The movie is told as a series of interconnected non-linear vignettes basically revolving around a crime boss named Mr. Wallace (Ving Rhames).  Two of his henchmen, Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent (John Travolta) are sent to retrieve a briefcase, but run into some difficulty.  Later, Vincent is called upon to take Mr. Wallace's wife Mia (Uma Thurman) out for a night, with some terrible consequences, while Butch (Bruce Willis), a low-level boxer, takes Wallace's money for a rigged fight, then runs.

It plays out just as luridly as the old serials it's named for, saturated with color and sleaze.  Initially, I was nonplussed but it grew on me over the course of the running time.  I thought it was better than Reservoir Dogs but not as good as Kill Bill. 

Darkman 3: Die Darkman Die (1996)

Happy 4th of July, everyone!  Celebrate with your favorite hero.  Or your hero's second sequel, whatever.

  Once again, Arnold Vosloo can't get top billing in a movie where he's the hero.  What's up with that? 

I wish I could say this recaptured the sense of fun and potential of the first Darkman movie, but it looks like it was filmed pretty much concurrently with Darkman II. 

Darkman (Arnold Vosloo) is still trying to get his skin formula to work, buying medical equipment with the money he gets from ripping off bad guys.  But when he blatantly robs Peter Rooker's (Jeff Fahey) drug dealing, he draws some very unwanted attention.  Rooker is looking for something to juice up his henchmen and he is very impressed with Darkman's ability to not feel pain.  And he's not the only one.  Dr. Bridget Thorn (Darlanne Fluegel) was one of the original doctors that worked on Darkman when he first got blown up.  She was the one who severed his nerves in the first place and she tracks him down in order to fix her mistake.  Excited at the prospect of being able to feel again, Darkman allows a woman he doesn't know to perform major surgery on him.  This turns out to be a stupid idea, as she is working for Rooker all along and plans to use Darkman's adrenaline samples to create a super-steroid.

This movie is pure cheese.  On the plus side, it makes Jeff Fahey's involvement in Machete make a lot more sense.

   Additionally, I watched the mini-series Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome this weekend as well.  It's not as in-depth as Caprica but it's okay.

Young William Adama (Luke Pasqualino) is a hotshot ensign fresh out of the Academy and assigned to the Galactica during the First Cylon War.  He is looking forward to making a name for himself but his commander (Brian Markinson) thinks a more staid mission will cool him down.  Adama is assigned to a "milk run" with co-pilot Coker (Ben Cotton), who is finishing up his mandatory second tour, on a four-day mission to transport goods and pick up spare parts.  The goods in question turn out to be software engineer Dr. Becca Kelly (Lili Bordan), out on a super-secret mission. 

The Crying Game (1992)

  Penis.

That's the big reveal here, folks.  I spoiled it for you.  My bad.  Now we can move on.

Jody (Forest Whitaker) is a British soldier who gets captured by the IRA at a carnival.  They plan to use him to trade for one of their imprisoned compatriots.  Until the deadline, Fergus (Stephen Rea) is assigned to guard Jody.  Being a hospitable sort, Fergus soon befriends the man, leading to a conflict of interest when his superior, Maguire (Adrian Dunbar), orders him to shoot Jody.  Things go badly and Fergus soon finds it's in his best interest to disappear for a while.  Feeling guilty, he heads to Jody's hometown to look in on his girlfriend Dil (Jaye Davidson).  Fergus finds himself drawn in, despite his misgivings.  But the IRA has not forgotten about him and sends his old girlfriend Jude (Miranda Richardson) to bring him in for one more job. 

Pretty much the only reason anyone talks about this movie is because of Dil and the aforementioned penis but I would like to think that we've all moved beyond that now, 20 years later.  I would like to think that it's more than a simple shock, that it has a greater message like "Love can open your mind to things you never imagined" but maybe not.

Penis.

Darkman II: The Return of Durant (1995)

  Hey, remember when I watched Darkman?  That Sam Raimi-directed comic book movie with Liam Neeson as a dude with no face?  They made two sequels to that.  Except that by 1995, Liam Neeson was too good to do a no-budget B-movie (or he read the script, which is legitimately terrible) so they recast him with Arnold Vosloo.  Yeah, Imhotep from The Mummy played the good guy.

Dr. Peyton Westlake (Arnold Vosloo) is still knocking over criminals to fund his research into a stable skin solution when he gets word that another scientist, Dr. Daniel Brinkman (Jesse Collins) may have broken the 99-minute UV barrier.  Unfortunately, Brinkman is holed up in his family's old electrical plant (what, your family doesn't have one?) that just so happens to be exactly what crime lord Robert G. Durant (Larry Drake) needs to power his new super-weapons.  Yeah, see, he survived the massive helicopter crash from the first movie and was just in a coma this whole time.  You can tell because he has a scar on his face now.  Anyway, he's a bad guy and he does bad things.  Westlake is a good guy and does slightly less bad things.

This went straight to video, unsurprisingly, and has all but disappeared.  It's watchable, if you can enjoy extremely low-budget offerings.