Tag: Adrianne Palicki

Due to the way my website works, I am now missing a lot more movies when they are in theaters. I have to decide every week what I want to watch, as I only let myself go to one pre-screening per week except for special circumstances. So some movies fall by the wayside. What did I see instead of John Wick? I don’t even remember. I know I didn’t see Nightcrawler to see Birdman, which was technically the right choice, but Nightcrawler ended up being pretty sexy on its own right.

But everyone already has over-hyped this movie for me. Is it cool to like Keanu again? Sweet! Because I actually liked his last two projects, Man of Tai Chi and 47 Ronin. But if everyone likes this one, then I might love it. Yay Keanu! Yay good publicity! Yay generic as fuck sounding action movies!

How bad ass could his character be, needing to use a sight and all?

John “Leave Me Alone” Wick (Keanu Reeves) has a mysterious past, like most movie characters that are new properties that aren’t based on real live people. But we know he used to be happy. He had a wife. A lover. A soul mate. But now she is gone. No foul play or anything, just a normal bitchy disease that took her life. They knew it was coming. It still hurts though.

And then John gets a package in the mail. A puppy. A fucking puppy?! Yes, a fucking puppy. This puppy, Daisy, was actually arranged to be sent to him from his now dead wife. She wanted to leave him something to help him cope and what better way to cope than A FUCKING PUPPY NAMED DAISY. Seriously guys.

Well, thanks to a small altercation, he ends up pissing up some Russian street thugs. Namely, Iosef (Alfie Allen) really liked his car and wanted to buy it. John tells him no and responds in Russian angering him. So they follow him home, break into his house, KILL HIS NEW PUPPY FROM HIS DEAD WIFE and steal his car. What in the fuck, Russia? What in the fuck?

Unfortunately for the Russians, literally everyone kind of recognizes his car in the car shops, including Iosef’s dad, Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist). Why? Oh, because John Fucking Wick used to be a hitman for them. Their own Boogieman, who could kill anyone or anything that they wanted. But he retired and got out of the business to be with his woman, promising never to kill again basically.

But then, you know. Dude’s Daisy is dead. So a revenge flick like any other, Wick has to take down the whole organization to feel at peace. Or will it really help?

Also featuring Willem Dafoe, Dean Winters, Adrianne Palicki, John Leguizamo, Ian McShane, and Lance Reddick.

“Iosef, Iosef, rhymes with …fuck, I dunno”

Action packed AND I actually feel sympathy for the main character. This is a great change in my mindset. I am used to getting shitty action movies with un-sympathetic anti-heroes, or just tough guys who have bullets bouncing off their chest, or just action movies without a plot. BUT THIS HAS PLOT AND ACTION. I was freaking out. Because the plot was pretty good, despite being something one could break down into “guy gets revenge on the mob” type of flick. I felt some fear for his life.

On TOP of that (more caps is better right?), the action was also interesting to watch. Some work went into the choreography. Work definitely went into the cinematography. Someone cared behind the helm of this movie and didn’t want just another forgettable movie. My mind is blown. When I first saw a picture for the movie, it was so generic and boring. Well, there might have been a turtle neck, which would have been the only odd thing (outside of Archer).

Keanu was a great man to carry this film. I don’t know if it is due to his own really sad life, or the sad Keanu meme, but his angst was apparent the whole movie. It looked like he carried the weight of the world on his manly shoulders.

John Wick is easily a nice recommendable action movie from 2014. I know it sounds like I am describing a 4 out of 4 movies, but I feel like The Raid 2‘s existence kind of makes it hard for me to elevate any other action movie up to its level. I bet John Wick had faults or things I disliked, I just can’t remember them right now. Shhh.

For Legion, it is one the last of the main entries into Apocalypse Week.

I remember the trailers for this movie, and thought nothing of it. Random horror. I almost bought it cheap on Black Friday two years ago, but my brother said it was dumb, so I never bothered. But now, finally, I can see it. I love catching up on things I missed.

“…So then the bartender goes, why the long face?!”

The story begins with Michael (Paul Bettany) fighting off some demon looking mother fuckers, and being quite vague. Oh yeah, he totally had angel wings too, but has apparently got rid of them. Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.

Now we find ourselves at a diner in the middle of nowhere. We have quite a few people there, including: Bob Hanson (Dennis Quaid), the owner, his son, Jeep (Lucas Black), their cook (Charles S. Dutton), and a pregnant waitress, Charlie (Adrianne Palicki).

Well, they have some customers too, but who cares. We care about Kyle (Tyrese Gibson) a dangerous looking man who is going to LA. Yes, dangerous because of his skin color maybe. Either way, eventually, some old ass lady walks in and starts causing a fuss, turns into a demon, and tries to get her kill on. Kyle saves the day!

Mass confusion, then enters Michael. Oh, yeah, he seems crazy. He also has a lot of guns. Just because a small army of people who turn into demons attack the diner doesn’t mean he isn’t crazy still. You see, apparently God has lost all hope with the human race. He wants to smite them down, so has sent creatures to take out the Earth. Michael didn’t like that so he abandoned the Angel status to save the human race. How does he do that? By protecting the pregnant lady, whose child is apparently the key to humans winning out.

Great! One against many! Let’s do it. Kevin Durand is Archangel Gabriel too? Heck yeah. I am pumped.

Keamy from Lost has never looked more “cool.”

The plot of this movie actually excited me. Shoot out at a diner in the middle of nowhere, protect the girl at all costs, Angels are the bad guys, also demon things? Why not?

Well, the old lady demon was pretty dang silly. They used the climb on the ceiling tactic multiple times, one as an old lady, the other with a young little boy. Apparently that is all they had going. All the other demons had nothing special going on with them, besides awkward jaunts and large mouths. But still, cool fights and guns right?

Well, I wish. It seemed like post Michael arrival and the mini army, which was promptly dealt with, the movie went into a long lull of boredom before the next wave or anything really happened. Sure, things did happen. But I wanted more guns and demons, damn it. It felt like hours waiting for more things to attack. We are also left with a lot of silly different deaths, that bug me more than anything. Sure they are diverse, but they don’t feel creative, they feel lazy. Don’t take out my favorite character by having him be a hero for no reason, kay?

Just saying. Could have had a lot more cooler deaths and shootouts, and not a lot of downtime in between cool scenes. Really loved the Angel fight too, for some reason.

G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra came out in 2009 and was a shit storm, just a big shit storm. I wasn’t reviewing movies four years ago, but if I was, I would have lampooned it so hard, in every orifice it had. It had some amusing parts, that red head was hot, but whatever. Not even Joseph Gordon-Levitt, right before his big claims to fame could save it.

So why did we get G.I. Joe: Retribution? Who knows. Can’t say it interested me at all to say it. What is with the cast overhaul? There is like, 2-3 characters the same in this movie. No Dennis Quaid, or Marlon Wayans, or Mr. Eko. All big parts of the first. I guess if you want to distance yourself from a bad movie, you should just replace basically everyone? I guess.

But no JGL to return as the Cobra Commander really irritates me. Hopefully they didn’t just try to fanservice this movie up with random shit.

NOW WITH EVEN MORE NINJAS! Fuck.

Hah, Duke (Channing Tatum) is still here! Now he leads his unit, along with his (clearly always been there) buddies of Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson), Lady Jane (Adrianne Palicki), and Flint (D.J. Cotrona).

Well, they decide to save the day again, but for some reason they get ambushed and most of their unit (a bunch of nameless people) die! What, how could this be!

Oh that rascally President (Jonathan Pryce) did it! But why would he? Must be some sort of nanobot doppelganger! How crappy.

Well, they are assumed dead now, and must go undercover, finding the original G.I. Joe (Bruce Willis) to help them. BUT LETS NOT FORGET ABOUT Snake Eyes (Ray Park). Ninjas are cool, and he is a Joe as well. But now he is with Jinx (Elodie Yung), the sister of Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) (What, you thought he died in the first film? Pfft!). They have to bring Storm Shadow to justice, because the “Blind Master” (RZA. Yep) said so. Something about family honor.

But oh yeah, President is not really the President! The Cobra Commander must behind this. Hopefully he doesn’t threaten to destroy every major world power and successfully take out London. What? He takes out all of London? Holy shit! That should have huge repercussions that they will definitely deal with in the movie or the sequel. Ugh.

The Joes better figure out how to stop this, and get themselves back into good grace, before they make a trilogy and kill off the one or two links left to the first film! Also featuring Walton Goggins as a hilarious warden, and Ray Stevenson as a not so funny bad guy named Firefly.

Channing is just wondering why The Rock and Bruce Willis are in every dang action movie now (and how can he get that honor).

To answer that above question, the Rock is actually a decent actor. It is just getting overkill.

Woo! I found this movie at least entertaining. Strange huh? Some of the action scenes were fantastic, and nicely spread out enough to be enjoyable. There was a lot that I disliked of course. Only one main woman (not including the other ninja), and they had to use her looks I think three times to advance the plot. How convenient. Flint was a useless character, and Jane’s background was pointless. The Storm Shadow backstory didn’t make any dang sense when you look at how time works. Too many ninjas just might spoil the bunch. (In the film, they go to a ninja factory basically).

Not to mention no Joseph Gordon-Levitt! Boo!

Really, a problem I was confused with is that the movie felt like it went entirely too quick. One of those films that takes a long time to build up and climax, and once it gets great, it is solved quickly and over. I hate feeling unfulfilled, but it was already 110 minutes long. I think it could have added an additional half hour to it (if they changed the movie around for an extra assault) to really enhance it overall. But if they added more time, they might have added even more bad plotlines. That would be the real shame in the end.

Okay action movie, definitely better than the first. But still has a long way to go!

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Nothing I love more than patriotism, except maybe blind patriotism. So give me a war movie involving America, and I will probably love it. Red Dawn is of course a remake of the 1980s movie of the same name. The original film was not really a work that most people would describe as great, but maybe entertaining. In that film it was the end of the Cold War, and the USSR along with Cuba invaded the US. Clearly, the enemy has to be updated as well.

Let’s face it, the invading country is fucked when Thor is on our side.

In this distant future, the USA has become involved with more conflicts than they can handle. They have troops all over the world, and some would say that leaves their coast lines defenseless. But who would attack the US? Well, apparently North Korea would! That will teach us to over extend ourselves. Set in Spokane, Washington, Jed Eckert (Chris Hemsworth) has returned home for a visit while being an active duty marine. Jed left home after their mother died six years ago and hasn’t kept in touch. His father (Brett Cullen), a police chief, and brother Matt (Josh Peck), a high school quarterback are reluctant to have him back without a warning.

Then, you know, North Koreans start falling out of the sky in parachutes, and corralling up people in the streets! Hell no. Jed and his brother run away to their father’s cabin, picking up some other high school friends along the way (nerds, played by Josh Hutchenson and Connor Cruise, the latter being the mayor’s son!). Toni (Adrianne Palicki), a female friend is able to find them, but not Erica (Isabel Lucas), Matt’s girlfriend! She is captured! Oh no!

You know the rest of the story, the band of misfits begin to train in the woods and try to slowly take back their town. The Wolverines gain more recruits, more guns, and are quickly able to put a dent in their takeovers side, Captain Cho (Will Yun Lee) doesn’t like being messed with and is determined to fight back. They also find themselves joined by three marines (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kenneth Choi, Matt Gerard), looking to join up with the local guerrilla force to acquire the communication device of the enemy. That way, they can hear their transmissions and hopefully start taking out larger groups around the country.

You know. Or die trying.

The fate of the future of America may be in these men’s hands.

In the original Red Dawn, the threat of invasion probably felt a bit more real than it does today. However, I also felt that the previous movie was a bit campy in its actions, kind of making it a action/comedy by today’s standards. Just watch this famous scene again, and try not to laugh.

The remake does a much better job of creating a more serious film, even going so far as to kill off a lot of the characters you might expect to make it to the end. After all, it is a mini war and people die in wars. The audience has come to expect it now.

I think it is interesting how they ended it, leaving it open for potential sequels, and reminding us that there would be no easy fix to having another army invade our borders. But I can also see how it would piss people off. I think they did the right thing, giving us their training in a speech montage, instead of wasting more time before their counter attacks. I actually liked most of the action sequences too, which in turn made me feel pretty patriotic.

This film could have focused more on a lot of the pressing issues of our time, how different citizens react, and how one man can make all the difference, but really they instead went more for the fun action flick. Which is fine, I don’t mind action if its entertaining. Just remember the film seems to be focused more on entertainment, instead of a film focused on changing our attitudes towards war and society.