Okay, I apologize for posting about a TV commercial for a sequel to a(n enjoyably) shitty movie based on a toy. But I saw this new commercial for GI JOE: RETALIATION and I had to watch it a bunch of times in a row. I really think STEP UP 2-3’s Jon M. Chu is gonna pan out as a director of silly action movies, and that gives me some hope for the future of action filmatism.
Posts Tagged ‘The Rock’
99 Problems but the Super Bowl ad for GI JOE RETALIATION ain’t one
Thursday, February 2nd, 2012
The Mummy Returns
Thursday, June 9th, 2011
chapter 3
released May 4th, 2001
Okay, now the summer is really starting. Crocodile Dundee, Stallone in a car, those were appetizers. This is the first bonafide Big Ass Summer Movie of ‘01, with the advertising and the toys and what not. It opened huge, and eventually made more than $433 million worldwide. I don’t think I know anybody that likes it, though.
THE MUMMY RETURNS is the second one, the one where the mummy returns for a while, then leaves again. Like the first MUMMY it begins with a narrated prologue that’s better than the movie proper because it doesn’t have Brendan Fraser or a bunch of talking in it. This one tells a little bit about the legend of The Scorpion King (The Rock), a guy who led a bunch of warriors in trying to conquer the world, but they all died of heat stroke so he was bit by a scorpion or whatever, and magic. His part is less than 5 minutes, he speaks one line and it’s not in English, and his narrative purpose is to return as a shitty CGI bug monster at the end. Also to set up a prequel spin-off that’s way more entertaining than the mummy movies, in my opinion.
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Fast Five
Saturday, April 30th, 2011
First of all, let’s take a moment to pause and reflect on the miracle of the THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS series. It started in 2000, a studio b-movie, a dumb subculture exploiter with hot up-and-coming stars, quite good for a Rob Cohen movie and with a star-making performance by Mr. Vin Diesel, but undeniably corny. I don’t think anybody could predict that 11 years later it would be Universal’s most valued franchise/trademark/anti-intellectualproperty or that a part 5 would be bigger and better than the previous ones. Especially when you consider that Diesel ditched out on part 2 and Paul Walker bailed before part 3 and that even the naming of the movies poses a challenge. You don’t see I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER still coming out with new chapters but they keep doing FASTs and FURIOUSes even after running out of sensible combinations of those words.
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Faster
Wednesday, April 27th, 2011
God DAMN I’m excited for FAST FIVE. It’s only April and that’s my most anticipated movie of the summer by far. But I gotta wait a couple more days, so in honor of Dwayne “The Rock is a registered trademark of World Wrestling Entertainment Inc.” Johnson’s addition to the series I decided to finally catch up with his last movie, which I never saw because when I went to see it the showing that I chose turned out to be an “open captions” deal, and I decided to bail. (Ironically there’s so much mumbling in the movie I had to turn the subtitles on a couple times anyway. But at least it was my choice. It’s about freedom.) (more…)
The Scorpion King
Saturday, August 16th, 2008Well, I gave up on Stephen Sommers after the rhythmless THE MUMMY so I never watched THE MUMMY RETURNS. But I have since learned to enjoy The Rock so today I finally got around to watching the prequel/spin-off THE SCORPION KING. It’s directed by Charles NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3 Russell, so I didn’t have to break my Sommers boycott. And I’m glad I finally watched it. This is probaly the best riff on the CONAN THE BARBARIAN type of movie I’ve seen. Not as stylish or violent as 300 but a little more fun. And a hell of alot better than KULL THE CONQUEROR.
The movie got me from the opening scene where Tyler Mane and a horde of barbarians have some hapless dude who they call “an Akkadian” tied up. They are very proud of all the races and nationalities they’ve murdered but they never bagged them an Akkadian before, so this is a big day. But the Akadian says, “May the gods have mercy on you, because my brother won’t.”
His brother, is, of course, The Rock (registered trademark of World Wrestling Entertainment) as Mathayis, a long-haired, giant-muscled, bow and arrow toting, sword slinging, rope swinging, cuthroat motherfucker who storms in for a Rock vs. Mane Smackdown, and fires an arrow into Mane so hard he flies out the side of the building and lands five years later in the remake of HALLOWEEN. (more…)
Southland Tales
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008Poor The Rock. With his outsized charisma, cartoonish build and air of sincerity I’m still convinced he has the potential to make great movies. The problem is he doesn’t seem to hook up with any good directors. THE RUNDOWN is still his best movie and it’s a fun time but, come on, it’s no PREDATOR, or even COMMANDO. I believe we, as a society, can offer The Rock more than THE RUNDOWN. So I was excited when I found out the Rock would be one of the stars of this weird new movie from the director of DONNIE DARKO. “Should at least be interesting,” I thought, not bothering to knock on wood.
Trouble is I had writer/director Richard Kelly pegged all wrong. I liked DONNIE DARKO well enough, thought it was pretty original and enjoyable. Saw it once on video and once as the director’s cut at the Seattle Internation Film Festival, which is when I learned that some youths worship this guy. They traveled across the country dressed in DARKO-themed costumes to nervously stammer to him that he changed their lives. That’s weird, I thought.
Then he wrote DOMINO, one of my most hated movies of the last several years. But I blamed Tony Scott. I figured there could’ve been a good script in there, Tony Scott just ax murdered it to unrecognizable bits with his Guiness Book of World Records All Time Worst Editing Ever In the History of Cinema. But after seeing SOUTHLAND TALES I’m not so sure Kelly is clean on that one. In fact I bet he specified alot of that shit in the script.
SOUTHLAND TALES takes place in Los Angeles, in the near future, after a nuclear attack on Texas. It involves intrigue between an amnesiac action star, a senator, a porn star/talk show hostess, left wing radicals, a Homeland Security type Big Brother department of the US government, twin brother racist cops, the inventor of an alternative fuel, some dwarves, and a weapons dealer in an ice cream truck played by Christopher Lambert. The plot also hits on time travel, dimensional travel, the human soul, psychedelic drugs, kidnapping, blackmail, staged murders, slam poetry, and a zepellin piloted by Kevin Smith wearing old man makeup but talking exactly like he did in LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD. The cast also includes Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, Justin Timberlake, Nora Dunn, John Larroquette, Bai Ling, Jon Lovitz, Cheri Oteri, Amy Poehler, Miranda Richardson, Wallace Shawn, Curtis “Booger” Armstrong, Zelda Rubinstein, Janeane Garafolo in one shot of a crowd scene, and the guy who apparently played Seagal on MAD TV. Also your mom is probaly in there somewhere. (more…)
Gridiron Gang
Friday, September 15th, 2006GRIDIRON GANG is the latest in this year’s new wave of inspirational high concept true story football movies. This one is THE LONGEST YARD meets STAND AND DELIVER: Dwayne T.R. Johnson plays an officer at a juvenile detention center who decides to start a football team to instill self esteem, discipline and teamwork in young criminals. I didn’t see INVINCIBLE and McG’s WE ARE MARSHALL hasn’t come out yet, but I’m guessing this one is the most generic of the bunch. There’s almost no point in me describing the movie. Try this: close your eyes. Now read that premise I just described, and picture a movie about that. There it is, what you just pictured is exactly what the movie is.
Holy shit, how are you reading this with your eyes closed? I didn’t say you could open them. This is weird. Well, I’m not sure exactly what to say about these amazing powers of yours, so instead I will ignore them and just go ahead and review the movie. Even if you don’t close your eyes, if you make a list of everything you expect to happen in a movie like this, you’d probaly get to cross off everything on the list.
You got the visionary coach who talks The Man into supporting his program. The higher-ups who don’t believe in him at first but are ultimately won over. The disastrous first game where they lose and want to give up. The lovable fat kid who needs to learn to believe in himself. The guy who is too much of a fuckup so they don’t let him on the team but he shows up anyway and proves himself. The part where the coach is too much of an asshole and disillusions the team. The parts where the program gets shut down and the coach has to figure out how to bring it back from the dead. The fights with loved ones who at the end silently show that they’ve changed their minds by showing up to watch the game. And it goes without saying that you have the tense clock-beating come-from-behind-at-the-last-possible-second victory against a bitter rival. And the explanations at the end of what happened to each character (although in this case The Rock narrates it instead of it being written on the screen). And there’s an insipid score that redundantly tells you how triumphant and heartwarming this all is. Now THIS is a movie that could’ve used a soundtrack by RZA. (more…)
Doom
Sunday, April 2nd, 2006There are three very clever sequences in this movie. First, it opens with narration over a starfield, and then pans over to show Mars. Suddenly the familiar UNIVERSAL logo letters spin around Mars. So it’s just like the usual studio logo except the red planet instead of the globe. Then the letters go off screen and the camera zooms into Mars and into a space colony where the movie takes place. It’s like there’s not even time to bother with a studio logo, our only option is to work it into the plot. That is how urgent it is to get to the motherfucking DOOM.
Yeah yeah, I know my movie history, so you don’t have to flood me with emails pointing out that the great visionary McG already connected the first shot of C’S As 1 to whichever studio logo it was. But this is a different thing because the movie has already started, and then we get the logo within the movie. If we are to follow our understanding of standard cinematical language, there may really be giant letters orbiting around Mars within the reality of DOOM. It all takes place indoors, so there’s no way to know if there are giant UNIVERSAL shaped shadows dripping across the landscape.
The number two clever sequence is the one you maybe already heard about, the climax of the movie. It’s a five and a half minute sequence that is a continuous shot from the point of view of the hero (Karl Urban), running through space colony corridors shooting monsters that pop out like it’s a Halloween haunted house. Alot of his opponents are just dumb zombie dudes but there’s also a variety of monsters from rubber costumes to computer animation, and weapons including guns, grenades and a chainsaw. (Apparently the video game the movie is based on is famous for being first person like this, so that’s where the idea comes from. they sure have come a long way since Pac-Man in my opinion, although the stupid thing about the POV concept is that you can never do a MS. DOOM, because how are you gonna know if you’re wearing a bow and lipstick?) (more…)
Be Cool
Tuesday, March 8th, 2005This is the sequel to GET SHORTY. Based on another book by Elmore Leonard, but this book was made after the GET SHORTY movie and with the idea that it would become a movie too. So this is a movie about sequels based on a book that was a sequel to a movie based on a book. Which means there’s all kinds of metapostmodernistical type business running around calling attention to itself. Hey, look at me, I’m a character in a sequel talking about how sequels are bad. Now I’m a character in a PG-13 movie talking about how if you say fuck twice you get an R.
(John Travolta, as badass loanshark turned movie producer Chili Palmer points this out and says, “You know what I have to say about that? Fuck that.” And if only he had repeated “fuck that” again for emphasis I guess he would’ve gotten the R and I could’ve seen this movie in a quiet theater full of adults and not a fuckin high school cafeteria. But that’s a subject for a separate rant.)
Anyway that’s kind of how GET SHORTY was though and most of it works here, it’s fun if not exactly a fresh new idea. There are a couple of fuck ups though where they got celebrities playing fictional characters who make references to trademarks of the actual celebrities, and that shit just doesn’t fly. The Rock for example keeps doing his famous eyebrow movement (oh jesus, I can’t believe there is even such a phrase as “famous eyebrow movement”), and that’s just not funny. That belongs in the scrap pile with the part in SCREAM 3 where some asshole tells Carrie Fisher she looks like Princess Leah. That’s not a joke, that’s a reference. Stop it kids.
Also, they got a scene where John Travolta and Uma Thurman dance together, and you’re supposed to be excited because remember, they danced together in PULP FICTION. But in PULP FICTION you were supposed to be excited because remember, he danced in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. I mean how many fuckin times we gonna get excited because the man dances? At some point it’s gonna occur to America that John Travolta’s a dancer. So by definition he ends up dancing at some point. It’s not really that big a fuckin deal, in my opinion. (more…)
Beyond the Mat
Saturday, January 1st, 2005Now to be honest I am not usually the type of dude to go to the documentarian type pictures. In fact, I never even seen one before in my life unless you count watching the news on TV. But this Beyond the Mat was playing at one of the multiplexes in my area so I decided to broaden my horizons and what not. Turns out there were a few others trying to broaden their horizons, because this was the type of crowd that yells “YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!” when the Freddy claws pop out of the guy in the X-Man preview, and who randomly yell out little jokes from the south park cartoons, you know, to be funny.
This is a documentary about the real lives of professional wrestlers, and I will tell you straight off the bat this movie is great even for those of us who don’t watch wrestling or south park. I mean I like the Roddy Piper pictures as much as the next guy, I’ve watched a little grapple here and there, but I don’t know what the fuck a mankind is or the rock or whatever. I mean who knows. It doesn’t matter.
Right at the beginning the movie explains yes, wrestling is fake, no, wrestling fans don’t think it’s real. But then it goes on to show just how devastating this “fake” sport is on a man’s body and in some cases his soul. It is a business that even more than football or prostitution chews up your body and when you’re old spits you out like a loogie never to think about you again. Because I mean think about it, how long do you think about a loogie after you spit it out, not very long.
There are about four major storylines in this movie. One is about Mick Foley who I guess wrestles as Mankind, Dude Love and Cactus Jack. But in this movie he’s a normal chubby guy who lives with his wife and adorable daughter and son. He is very nice and even normal and he always dreamed of being a wrestler. But it scares his family to always see him drenched from head to toe in his own blood after a match, saying, “Daddy’s okay, daddy’s okay, don’t worry about daddy.” (more…)
