Cool Runnings/Miracle Review: The Olympics For Peeps Who Don’t Watch The Olympics
More drama on ice than you can handle!
With the passing of the recent Summer Olympics in London, I feel like I missed a huge party that everyone else was invited to. The big reason behind that, really, is that I couldn’t care less. I’m partial to the winter-ized sports, where people have to try harder, bundle up tighter, and tolerate much more because they’re no longer in an optimal fitness environment. But don’t take that as too much of an endorsement: I don’t watch the Winter Olympics, either. I am, however, more than happy to watch movies based on them.
The Expendables 2 Review: Delivers on the Promise of the Original
Sly Stallone and his merry band of grizzled ‘80s icons return for another round of fist fights, shoot outs, and explosions in The Expendables 2. I didn’t particularly care for the first movie in this franchise despite being a huge fan of the concept of that movie. The Expendables promised fantastically cheesy ‘80s action delivered by some of Hollywood’s greatest washed-up stars, but failed to deliver. The Expendables 2 finally delivers on that promise.
The Bourne Legacy Review: A Worthy Entry
If The Bourne Identity is really a movie about a man trying to discover who he really is, The Bourne Legacy is a movie about a man trying to escape who he really is. Jeremy Renner stars as Aaron Cross, a government agent who derives his nearly superhuman abilities from popping special, government-issued pills. Thanks to Jason Bourne’s antics from the previous movies, however, higher ups in the federal government have decided to destroy their experimental spy programs in anticipation of the coming media backlash. This causes the well of wonderful, gene-altering drugs to run dry, and leaves Cross running from shadowy government operatives who want him dead.
The Campaign Review: “It’s a mess.”
Over the past thirteen years, the American political stage has been so completely fucked up that I’m not sure if what I’ve witnessed is real life or the horrible manifestation of one of the late Bill Hicks’ fever dreams. Anyone attempting to craft a clever comedy lampooning our electoral process should find a wealth of material to draw upon, and this political cycle is particularly ripe for a film containing some biting satire. The Campaign, a lazy, witless movie from the director of Meet the Fockers, is not that movie.
The Ocean’s 11/12/13 Trilogy Review – Some Clever Heists In A Pinch
They sure did bring in a ton of people, didn’t they?
One cool part about using the Nexus 7 to consume content, as it was intended to, is its easy access to super cheap video rentals almost every night. I took the opportunity to brush up on the Ocean’s 11 trilogy, which for the past decade had been Soderbergh’s “commercial” movies sandwiched between his quirky experiments like Bubble and The Good German. The Ocean’s films often received a brow-beating for their lavish use of their ensemble cast, including George Clooney and Brad Pitt as the ringleaders of the operation, as the cinematic equivalent of a celebrity circle-jerk, never minding that the original film featured Sinatra and the Rat Pack in virtually the same function. Thankfully, Soderbergh’s films were a bit more substantial than that.
Patrick Stewart Boldy Goes On Facebook
See what I did there with the title? I made a Star Trek joke that clearly has never been played out. Interestingly enough though, Sir Patrick Stewart appeared on Facebook without any fanfare during the Olympics. He must have teleported. Read the rest of this article…
LOL Review – Miley Cyrus’s Magnum Opus
Sometimes life is just, y’know?
It’s tough to be Lola, who is Miley Cyrus, a realistic representation of an American teenager. She’s a powerful feminist and sexually independent, just like Miley Cyrus. It’s tough to have relationships and ‘go with the flow’ when the world is changing and your life is so complicated and boys are all… Well, LOL isn’t about Laughing Out Loud, like you think you’d do to this movie. No, it’s about Living Out Loud, and Miley shows us how life really is.
NBC’s Olympic Coverage Frustrates Cord-Cutters
Watch the Olympics now, LIVE on tape delay!
NBC is living in the past. When NBC forked over $1.3 billion for the broadcasting rights to the London Olympic Games, the company apparently decided that the best way to recoup their costs was through the same old-school tape delay that networks were using decades ago. And the fact that it’s called “tape” delay tells you how old school it really is.
Oh, sure, every Olympic event is available to live stream on NBC’s website or via their NBC Olympics Live Extra app (provided you are a satellite or cable subscriber), but what NBC really wants you to do tune in at primetime to watch delayed coverage of the games. The better to rack up advertising dollars.
But in a world of Twitter, On Demand TV, and 24-hour news, NBC’s dated model is an Olympic-sized joke.
Total Recall Review: Completely Forgettable
The second adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s We Can Remember It for You Wholesale hit theaters this weekend sporting a larger production budget, boatloads of CGI, and a family friendly PG-13 rating. Len Wiseman’s Total Recall is a better looking, better acted version of Paul Verhoeven’s original Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, but, in the end, it is soulless and unmemorable.
Moonrise Kingdom Review: Everything You’re Expecting And Maybe A Little More
With Moonrise Kingdom we get to see Wes Anderson at his Wes-Anderson-iest (I’m sticking with that horribly unimaginative adjective until someone shows me a better way to describe his work), which is to say, this film is a lot like the rest of his films. That means Moonrise Kingdom is chock full of gorgeous cinematography, obscure ‘60s music, deadpan performances, dry comedy, and Bill Murray. Wes Anderson fans will praise it; Wes Anderson haters will despise it. Regardless, this movie contained everything I’ve come to expect from the auteur.
