Tag: Antonio Banderas

Wait, Uncharted is finally out!? The first Uncharted video game came out in 2007, and almost immediately was there talk of turning it into a movie. Like, people writing a script and all of that. Heck, in 2009, the second Uncharted game came out. One of my favorite video game commercials of all time was during a series of Sony commercials where people would give questions and concerns to Sony executives. It is more hilarious now with how the graphics stand out in today’s terms, but hey, they were pushing that movie angle hard.

So, fifteen years later, the movie is now released. So many script re-writes, producers, and directors were put onto the picture. Various people asked to star in it or with an interest to star in it, the most famous example being Nathan Fillion, who ended up being in a fan made short film for Uncharted. Even Mark Wahlberg was attached to be the main character. Personally, I wish it got made in time for the Bruce Campbell as Sully rumors were out, but that is because I generally want Bruce Campbell in most of my movies.

In the latest iterations of the film, that was supposed to come out in 2020 (but director dropping again and pandemic), Tom Holland was supposed to play “Young Nathan Drake” and it be a prequel to the game series. Based on the movie we got, that is sort of how this movie does play out. But honestly, it just feels like mostly regular aged Nathan Drake, not even young Drake anymore.

My own experience with the game franchise is I did finally play the first one after the third game was finally out. I maybe played it for two hours. I thought I was getting a Tomb Raider like game with a lot of puzzles and sure, some bad guys. I didn’t realize that honestly, it was about 95% a shooting game, with ammo scarcity issues, and people hiding behind crates and barrels, sprinkled throughout dungeon crawling with treasure and explosions. Damn shooting games, not at all my idea of entertainment.

Aw yeah, gun holsters, I bet he will shoot everyone, just like the games.
[Editor’s Note: This statement unfortunately isn’t accurate.]

The actual film opens up in the middle of action, then we get a flashback of the actual start, until we get back to the action. Oh okay.

But Nate (Tom Holland) used to be an orphan (I guess he still is?), with his older brother Sam (Rudy Pankow), but Sam got into more trouble than Nate, so he had to go on the run from the LAW. And since then they have been apart, but Sam still sends Nate post cards. They did thievery, they loved history, and apparently that is all that we really need. They wanted to be treasure hunters, and discover things from the past that were long forgotten or long hidden.

But now, we got some asshole coming up into his place of work, acting like he knows him. Victor Sullivan aka Sully (Mark Wahlberg), who wants to hire Nate for an upcoming job of his. Specifically to locate the gold that Magellan allegedly found when his team was the first to sail around the world in the 1500’s. It is rumored they found it and never gave it to the family who financed their voyage. Oh, and what is this? Sully apparently knows Sam, with picture proof, and that Sam is missing. That is the real way to get Nate involved.

Along the way they are going to have to break some crimes though. And discover ancient tombs and catacombs to find hopefully ancient treasure. The Moncada family, led by Santiago (Antonio Banderas) is also involved on this chase for treasure, as they hope to finally get what was long promised to them.

Also starring Sophia Ali, Tati Gabrielle, Steven Waddington, Pingi Moli, and Tiernan Jones. Also with a small yet obvious cameo from Nolan North, the original voice of Nathan Drake.

Almost all of the nice promo shots are of them on a damn boat. 

Uncharted as a film seems to pretty dang charted, so to speak.

It feels like Tomb Raider, and Dora, but with more dead people than normal I guess. Dead by stabbings, and crushings, and fallings. Did you know that Nathan Drake only fires a gun in one scene, and he misses every bullet? I guess they were trying to capture my personal experience as I was a bad shot in that game. But I didn’t have alternate ways to deal with the enemies, unfortunately. It is beyond strange to me to make a game that anyone would classify as a shooting game, and then not have a lot of shooting. That is one of the top three main components. The other two being Sully jokes, and treasure hunting.

I will point out that Holland is definitely doing some acting in this movie. I was afraid he would just feel like Spiderman. But his voice is a little different, less high pitched. His character still fights a bit more agile than one would expect. Unfortunately, the very first scene, which features physics only used before in video games and that one Hobbit scene. It felt like I was intentionally being trolled into watching a Spiderman without the costume film.

Overall, I think the ACTION scenes were the worst part of the movie. I am sure the crates and the ships on planes were probably parts of the video game. But both of those scenes felt so CGI heavy. The crates became additionally boring to watch for the same reason. Having it start the film didn’t help either, as it became broken up and unbelievable. The ship scenes were…fine, but they made those same ships endure a lot of damage without miraculously falling apart despite the 500 years of decay.

Another negative takeaway would be the puzzles themselves. There are clues, and hints to do all these things. And when the characters figure them out, I don’t feel a big sense of pride in them because they don’t feel like well crafted riddles or hints. “Oh that is the answer? Oh okay…” that is my constant feeling.

And honestly, I don’t like that they made Banderas’ character out to be a bad guy. He did do a bad thing in the movie, within his family, but his family wanting the treasure that they were promised? I mean, not the worst motivation.  If the treasure can be traced back to a specific country the top option is return it to them, obviously, but if not, then why not their family?

None of this is coming from bitterness of not getting to see Bruce Campbell either. It is just another generic action film that is based on a video game that disappoints. This seems like a bit of a shocker since how much the games “felt like movies” at the time.

I barely played the games, so I can’t tell how accurate it is, minus the lack of guns. I can tell that it was a good bit boring, it tried to have too much set up for future films, and I did fall asleep leading up to the auction scene.

I cannot stand Terrence Malick films. No I haven’t seen a lot of them. I haven’t even seen The Thin Red Line.

But I have seen The Tree of Life and To The Wonder. The former I couldn’t get behind at all, despite some lovely visuals, and the latter was just a complete train wreck from my point of view.

Some people call him pompous, some just refer to him as art house, and I just cannot stand his movies as of right now. So sure, I will give Knight of Cups a chance. But I am going in with a huge bias on my shoulders that I cannot shake. I will never get the time I lost from To The Wonder. Never.

Given the director, you have to assume every shot, no matter what, is actually a metaphor.

Also given the director, describing the plot of the film can be a bit tricky. So let’s run to IMDB for some help:

A writer indulging in all that Los Angeles and Las Vegas has to offer undertakes a search for love and self via a series of adventures with six different women.

Our writer is of course Rick (Christian Bale), whom is apparently good at his job and sought over, but he cares not about his job that much. He cares about his past and who he is going to fuck next. And that means he has more than six relationships in the film, as there are a lot of unnamed girls without speaking roles.

The six women include: Nancy (Cate Blanchett), his ex-wife, Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), a museum enthusiast, Helen (Freida Pinto), a model, Della (Imogen Poots), a free spirit, Karen (Teresa Palmer), a stripper from down under, and Isabel (Isabel Lucas), who, I dunno, likes beaches I guess. They all like beaches though. Beaches are kind of a big thing here.

Oh and he has family! Wes Bently plays his brother, Brian Dennehy his dad. Antonio Banderas has some role of significance, if you can call it that. But I don’t know what or why. Some rich guy.

There has never been a more metaphor-y beach.

I tried, I really did, to understand this movie from a different light. To think about the bigger themes that he might be getting at. To imagine the scenery as its own character. This was all advice people gave to me about Malick movies. Despite my hatred for the last two movies, I knew I had to watch this one do my best to review it fairly, because only watching movies I will probably like does not make me a great film critic.

But this movie just felt like a waste of time. It is two hours long and it felt like it was over three hours. The film felt like it was about to end three separate times before it finally showed the credits. The story that was told could have ended at any moment, because it is hard to say that there really was an actual ending they had in mind. It was all very spiritual and airy. Rarely do you see any character actually talking. Most of the dialogue is spoken over scenes of characters living and interacting with each other. And of course other dialogue is made by never seen characters, some talking poetically, or telling random stories, or…just who the hell knows.

Knight Of Cups is a confusing film. It is broken down into sections named after Tarot cards, which is also where the title comes from. And if you try hard, you might figure out why a section with the characters in it is called The Moon, or Freedom, or Death. Knight of Cups is presumably made so that you can derive your own opinions on the film based on what you get out of it.

And what I get out of it is a big waste of time. Sure, there are some well shot scenes. A whole lot of beaches, and some Californian mountains and death valley. But if I cared about well shot pictures of nature, I’d be watching Planet Earth, not a film that should have a basic story.

The 2010 Chilean mining accident is a wonderful topic for a movie. I am surprised it took them five years in fact.

It was a national event, it lasted months, it involved dozens of people (33 to be exact), and it had a happy ending.

Imagine if they opened the hole and it was a few guys surrounded by corpses. That’d be terrifying. That would be a different sort of movie, not at all uplifting.

So I am going into The 33 with optimism. I hope they get buried within like, the first 10 minutes too. Let them build up that scare factor just a bit.

Besides, the last movie I saw set in Chile that involved a huge disaster and trying to survive was Aftershock. That wasn’t uplifting, well, besides the tectonic plates.

Seeing all those sweaty food deprived bodies could also be considered uplifting.

12,000 miners die every year. That is a big number. But, at least 9 million kids under 5 die every year, and that is only one portion of minors. So it is much more dangerous to be a minor than a miner. I assume.

Well, in this case, the miners were going down on a normal day, just to get the copper and gold. They use relatively small crews, I guess to not upset the mountain too much with the drills and other equipment. This particular mountain has been mined heavily and they are very deep into it. Mario Sepúlveda (Antonio Banderas) needs some extra money, so he is working too, despite not originally on the schedule. And guess what? Not long after they are down there and working, the mountain begins to move. Now, a super rock is blocking their only exit and they are trapped in a relatively small area. They have a hall way or two, and thankfully they are in The Refuge, a room with some food and supplies. But still, it is quite dangerous and scary down there.

The food supplies are not plentiful. The company lied about a few safety measures as well, making escape impossible. And the company isn’t even going to do anything about it! They are a private company, so they are doing the bare minimum, but they aren’t even letting the friends and family members enter the area, as they are blocked off by gates and people with guns.

Thankfully, María Segovia (Juliette Binoche) is not having any of their shit. She is the sister of one of the miners and she basically helps frenzy them into a riot, creating pressure on the government and company to attempt the rescue mission. This brings the Minister of Mining, Laurence Golborne (Rodrigo Santoro) down to the scene. He is moved by everyone’s committment and he promises to do everything he can to rescue the miners, no matter the cost.

Sure they only have 3 days of food for 3 people and it would take at least a week to get a small hole somewhere into their area. And they also have no idea how to get to the right spot, due to the density of the stone being unknown and their drills will curve. But damn it, they gotta try, right?

Obviously with so many minors, we have a huge cast. But most of the minors have no talking roles. But the people they do showcase have families worried about them or other unusual characteristics. And a lot of people helping, including Bob Gunton playing President Piñera. These people are played by Mario Casas, Juan Pablo Raba, Oscar Nuñez, Tenoch Huerta, Marco Treviño, Jacob Vargas, Lou Diamond Phillips, James Brolin, Adriana Barraza, Kate del Castillo, Elizabeth De Razzo, Cote de Pablo, and Gabriel Byrne.

Count them. They don’t even try to make the number of characters accurate.

Did I cry? Of course I cried. They had beautiful tense moments of rescue. They had people who hadn’t seen each other for 69 days, who had assumed their loved ones died, reconnecting. Someone had a baby girl, and you know how they affect me. But just because I cried doesn’t mean it is an excellent film.

First of all, when your title is The 33 and it is a well known fact that there are 33 people, you should probably have all the many extras around who don’t talk when the whole group is together. That dinner scene is unacceptable. Didn’t even have people standing to the side having their own conversation.

Second of all, there is geology in this movie. Not a lot, technically. But there was the big “eureka” moment with how they would get the drill to the correct area. And it was terrible. I cannot believe that is how it really happened, because it would mean all of the drilling crews were inept.

But there were some nice moments of course. Banderas gives an excellent speech or two that really get me going. The scene where they imagined food was super weird. And they really felt like coworkers and a family by the end.

Slightly inspirational without shoving it in your face, and a nice tail. Just those inaccuracies.

Ah, a third movie. The Expendables 3 was rocked with “controversy” a few weeks before its release by having an actual good copy of it released on the internet. DVD or better scan, all the effects in, everything. Not a shitty cam copy. Well, in a day it had over 100,000 downloads, and by now over a million I am certain. They say that the video was stolen or whatever and you know what? I don’t believe it.

There was a lot of negative press on this film because now that there are even more stars in it than before, it is now rated PG-13. The other two films (1 and 2 here) were rated R! That is how an action movie should be! But this one was certain to fail because no one wanted to see a big action movie with lots of stars with toned down action.

So yeah, I think they leaked it themselves and will now blame that leak on bad ticket sales, and only like one person will lose their job.

But at least they are classing it up for this third installment.

The Expendables. Lead by Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone) still, they are making their current mission to free Doctor Death (Wesley Snipes) from confinement. He was an original expendable, but they eventually locked him up for tax evasion. That is a real life joke right there. But after the mission they use him to do another mission and that is where they find out that Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson) is free and out to kill.

Conrad was another original Expendables, but he is a lot crazier and lot more mad at the former members of the groups. So he wants to kill em all. Simple as that. After injuring one of the current crew, Barney vows that he will get him back and make him pay. So he sends away his crew (Jason Statham, Randy Couture, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews) because he doesn’t want them to get hurt. Instead he decides to get a bunch of fresh new guys and get them hurt instead!

So he gets his guy who knows guys, Kelsey Grammer, gets his team of noobies (Glen Powell, Victor Ortiz, Ronda Rousey, Kellan Lutz) to get Conrad! Yeah!

Also starring Harrison Ford as the CIA guy who also wants to take down Conrad, and Antonio Banderas as a former special ops type guy, but is getting older and no one likes him. Also of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jet Li are just hanging around too.

Mel Gibson? Playing a bad guy? That doesn’t fit in with my world view at all.

By far, The Expendables trilogy has to be the most mediocre trilogy I have reviewed on my website. 2 out of 4’s across the board. They don’t even hold equal 2 out of 4s either. The second one is the best, the first one is the worst, and this one is somewhere in between. A lot of the action early on felt shitty, so let’s blame that on the rating.

The first one didn’t know how to be entertaining. This one really didn’t have huge entertaining moments either, outside of the fact that Antonio Banderas was a-freaking-mazing. His character was hilarious and brought a lot of fun to the movie. Without him, it would seriously be a 1 out of 4 dud.

Because lets look at the new guys? Who the fuck are these people? Two of them are just MMA fighters, not action stars. Lutz is the only one who actually has been in technically action movies.

Isn’t that the point of these movies? To bring in action stars together? Gibson was great as a villain. Snipes was underused. Crews, normally the best part, was even more underused, so that was disappointing.

The action was whatever too.

Easily a passable movie, and technically a passable franchise.

Machete started out as a fake trailer in front of the Grindhouse movies, Death Proof and Planet Terror. Robert Rodriguez decided that the fake trailer needed to be made into a real movie and Machete was born! A movie that was made on purpose to be bad, it had plenty of potential, but to me just felt boring. I wasn’t impressed.

I basically forgot about the franchise until they announced both a sequel and a third film coming down the pipelines. The sequel, Machete Kills just hit theaters, but the third film really caught my eye thanks to its title of  Machete Kills Again…In Space. With a name like that, this franchise can’t be that bad!

Yeah, it looks like he is about to kill it here.

After the death of his partner (Jessica Alba), Machete (Danny Trejo) finds himself at the wrong end of the law, blamed again for a murder he did not commit. To get out of the jam, the President of the United States (Charlie Sheen / Carlos Estivez) has asked him to go on a suicide mission into Mexico. His mission? To stop revolutionary/mad man Mendez (Academy Award Nominated Demian Bichir) from sending a nuke straight to Washington DC.

Sure, a simple enough mission, but there are a lot of factors that stand in his way. Million dollar bounties, crazed heart monitors, multiple personality disorders, priests seeking redemption, a hitman called El Camaleon, brothels, space scientists that know the future, a madam with a grudge, former friends, and clones stand between him and his goal.

There are so many celebrities, trying to list them all would be insane, but I will do it anyways. Telling you their role in the film almost seems like a disservice, and plus, you probably wouldn’t believe me. The movie includes Mel Gibson, Amber Heard, Michelle Rodriguez, Sofia Vergara, Lady Gaga, Antonio Banderas, Walton Goggins, Cuba Gooding Jr., Alexa Vega, and Vanessa Hudgens!

One of the best “jokes” in this movie is having Alexa Vega in close to nothing. Since he worked with her on Spy Kids 12 years ago.

As I mentioned before, Machete was trying to make a good/entertaining “bad movie,” in honor of all the poor quality B-movies of the 70s/80s. It is pretty hard film type to make correctly, the last one I really enjoyed being Black Dynamite. The first film had a lot of appropriate jokes for genre, but the overall plot and tone bored the crap out of me.

Machete Kills corrects these mistakes and more. First off, it was actually entertaining. Over the top action from start to finish and nonsensical plot lines that will cause you to stare at the screen in confusion. Normally that would sound terrible, unless terrible was the goal, in which case it sounds great! Machete Kills put a lot more detail into purposefully editing the film in a sloppy way to increase its humor potential. The film has a rampant disrespect for obeying the natural laws of our reality: where a broken car can drift 500 miles in mere hours, and where several days can pass in only 20 minutes.

Most of the jokes are smaller references or in the background, outside of the absurd characters themselves. Despite how outrageous everything is, the characters themselves for the most part are incredibly serious. After all, their lives are on the line. The movie sports a lot of death and violence, which is all packaged in creative ways.

Machete Kills improved a lot from the first film, but I think it still has a lot of untapped potential that it just hasn’t reached yet. Assuming the third film actually gets made, it might finally cross into the “So Bad, It’s Amazing!” territory that the series is striving for. As for now, it is not a must watch, but more of a watch eventually (maybe) type of movie.

I often find that when all you do is talk about movies, people tend to suggest them. Of course I will watch a movie if someone suggests it to me, but with Ruby Sparks something even stranger happened. TWO people recommended this movie to me, potentially within a few weeks apart. Well, of course I have to see it now.

I also realized why I didn’t watch it right away. Sparks? That title is too close to the title Sparkle. I hated that movie.

I could write a better movie than Sparkle for sure. It would be about some sort of mythical creature that Sparkled under strange circumstances. I am sure that’s an original concept.

Calvin (Paul Dano) is a genius. Alright, he doesn’t like that word. But he dropped out of high school once he wrote what many consider to be the next great American novel, and he quickly rose to fame and success. But now, almost ten years later, he is in his late 20s and he still has one novel under his belt. He has released a few short stories and novellas, but nothing of any real length or magnitude.

Some genius indeed. It must all be getting to his head. In fact, he has to see a psychiatrist now just to sort through his feelings of loneliness.

But then one magical night, he has a dream. A dream of a girl, with red hair, and a quirky attitude. She is perfect to him. So he writes about his dreams and turns it into its own new story. Yes, this is the one, his next great novel! Who cares if his brother (Chris Messina) thinks the story is dumb.

Calvin really is a genius. His brain is so powerful, that one morning he woke up and found the literal girl of his dreams in his kitchen. Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan). In the flesh. Based on everything he wrote about. How can that be? People can’t just be created! Or can they? Truly only a genius (or geniuses, in some cases) could create a person without even trying. It gets weirder when he realizes it is not in his head. It gets creepier when he realizes that whatever he types comes true. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about.

Annette Bening and Antonio Banderas play his mom and step-dad, while Steve Coogan has a small role as “other older writer dude.”

Anyone else find it funny how Ruby is always wearing red? And how she and Superman are never in the same room?

Yeah, so I really fucking love strange quirky movies like this. Pretty easy to learn that given my rating record. Watching this movie made me want to watch Stranger Than Fiction right after it. Another well acted quirky movie about the truth being determined by what someone rights. Who knew there was a whole drama about this!?

I found myself flailing while I watched this movie. My mind raced ahead of itself, so once I was given new information, I always assumed the worse. Having complete and utter power over someone? That can lead to many dark dark places, and I assumed each one would be touched upon. Thankfully, each one wasn’t touched upon, because I didn’t feel like crying that night. But the scene where the power finally got to the head? Shit scared me, and it did it in away without having to go the hard R rating that most of us are probably imagining. Which is great, when I rewatch this movie, I can not flip out as much and STILL enjoy the process they go through.

Besides, this type of stuff is every (male?) fantasy. Since Frankenstein, the idea of creating a person has always been intriguing. So why not?

I think this film is excellent on all cylinders, and exactly the type of thing I’d watch again and again.

“We’re going to watch the female Bourne Identity movie.”

“Err what?”

Apparently that is how some people are referring to Haywire. Not sure why, not like she is a secret weapon or anything. I think it is more based on the realistic fighting than anything. What I’m trying to say is, I had no idea what this movie was about.

Sexy fighting maybe?

Gina Carano is just hanging out in a diner, when Channing Tatum comes in, and eventually they fight! He wants her to leave, for some reason. This looks like legitimate fighting too, not what normally happens when a woman is involved. She gets punched in the face! A random diner patron, Michael Angarano, intervenes, allowing her to break Tatum’s arm and escape. With Michael, in his car. Woot!

She goes over the last week of events. Turns out Tatum and her used to work for a private covert firm. The firm is run by Ewan McGregor (also her former boyfriend?)! They get a job from an agent in DC, Michael Douglas, to rescue and Asian guy in Barcelona, who is being held hostage. Their Spanish contact is Antonio Banderas. Don’t worry, I am not done name dropping yet.

Well, despite it being hard, they succeed! Back in the US, she gets a second secret mission, that is also meant to be easy. She just has to pose as the wife of a British agent, Michael Fassbender, in Ireland. No sweat! But during the mission she finds out that the Asian guy they saved…has been killed! And made to look like she did it. Set up by her own firm! But why?

The rest of the film is her trying to figure that out, on the run with that random stranger. A lot of scenes involve her kicking peoples asses too, so that is fun. Also her dad is played by Bill Paxton! So many famous (men) in this movie.

Gina’s claim to fame is MMA fighting and being “Crush” on the American Gladiators reboot.

In terms of fighting, I tended to like those scenes a lot. The most, compared to the rest of the scenes. Definitely important for an action movie with a lame plot. I am surprised by how many famous actors are in this movie, despite how I barely even heard about it coming out in theaters.

Obviously I thought the acting was a bit weak, especially from Gina, who…hasn’t really acted in anything before. But thankfully they have a lot of the other people do most of the talking. Scenes in her flashback were kind of weird, like randomly switching to a slow motion black and white adventure when they were in Barcelona. Disrupted the flow for me and felt cheesy.

Although the plot isn’t too interesting, it is fun to see her kick a lot of peoples asses. Especially Ewan. I have no idea why that is so rewarding.

Hooray, CGI movies about cats and swords!

As you probably already know, Puss In Boots is a prequel to the Shrek tales, but has nothing to do with Shrek. Just…Puss In Boots and how he got those boots.

And you know, uhh…Other tales.

Antonio Banderas reprises his role as the sword swinging feline. He is wanted for petty crimes, but bitches can’t catch him. He wants to steal a big prize, but not from old people or children or anything. That is when they let him know about…the magic beans.

Jack and Jill (Billy Bob Thornton and Amy Sedaris) have found the beans and plan to plant them. Why? Because beanstalks, that’s fucking why! They want to go to the land of the giants, who are long dead, and get some of that golden goose/egg stuff.

But when he is about to steal them…another cat! Who I want to call Batcat but is apparently Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek). They have to fight over getting to the beans and both fail. Lots of fighting / dancing later, we also get to find Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis) an old character from [I don’t know how to grammatically say this right, and it feels awkward] Pusses past. He wont have any of it and storm off.

But eventually forgiveness happen, and the three set off to get the magic beans, go up the beanstalk, and become rich and help the poor!

This also tells the tale of creatures addicted to ‘Leche’

There are some other fairy tale things in here, but I don’t want to give them away. Overall, I could say it was a very decent movie. But I had some problems with it.

Flashbacks. Part of that word is flash, making me think at least it shouldn’t be a long thing. Well the flashbacks in the movie were incredibly long. We hear the whole story of his birth, meeting Humpty, becoming friends, and eventually not being friends. All in one ridiculously long flashback. Bah. It is already a prequel. Might as well tell that shit in a better order. Because that long portion was boring as crap.

I also felt a bit disappointed by the main story. I think they could have done something more epic than the search for magic beans / golden geese. Maybe the large desert portions also took away a bit from the nice CGI that went into the movie. When you have excellent CGI, you don’t want it to be a sexy desert.

Overall I thought it was decent, but man. A rollercoaster in terms of interesting plots.

The Big Bang! Huh. Okay, but are they talking about guns? Or are they talking about the creation of the universe?

MAYBE. Just maybe! A gun that can create universes when it shoots. That’d be wicked, if not super sci-fi.

But Antonio Banderas is normally more subtle than a universe creating gun.

So AB is an LA PI. He is hired to find a missing stripper girlfriend (Sienna Guillory) of a russian boxer (Robert Maillet). She is missing, obviously. But she also has about 30 million dollars in diamonds. But this turns into a zany adventure that might involve the destruction of the world!

And the plot is hard to describe. Lets just say it involves people actually trying to recreate the big bang under New Mexico (inspired by a True story?), and the Feds trying to find out where and stop them, you know. But first AB has to explain is story to the cops! Sam Elliot plays the madman, with Jimmi Simpson as his Physicist. We also have William Fichtner playing an FBI guy, and the Dawson playing another guy.

Oh yeah, and Autumn Reeser plays a waitress in a small town, who gets turned on by particle physics, and is part of probably one of the hotter sex scenes in a movie that came out in 2011, probably. Just so you know. And it is super, super nerdtastic.

Maybe the only reason to watch the movie. Maybe not.

I am torn on my opinions on this movie, which is why I am giving it the 2 out of 4. It reminded me of The Spirit, in terms of CGI cheesyness, mostly involving backgrounds and stuff. Seemed like they were just having fun with it all. But also the first bits were more confusing and made me un interested. But the plot, it was actually pretty smart, in its terminology, and in what ended up happening. It involves a lot of physics, obviously. But also it was super weird? I think it might need to watch it again to understand it all.

I don’t even know how understandable that last paragraph is! This movie is either incredibly great, or incredible stupid, and I just do not know. Try it out? Let me know.

Damn it, Liam Neeson.

“What?” – Liam Neeson.

My original review of this movie was just the first four words. But I asked three people and one wanted me to elaborate.

Neeson’s wife (Laura Linney), a shoe designer, died. He finds out she may have been sleeping with anOther Man. He finds out it is Antonio Banderas in Milan. He goes to Milan. He stalks him, talks to him, finds out the truth. And that is about it.

Spoilers???

The movie is slow. I don’t care about any of the characters. Liam Neeson is just raging, but it leads to nothing. Eventual closer, that is it. It is super boring. 90 minutes was far too long for about 15 minutes of actual activity it seems. Just don’t watch this movie, because the emotion you will feel is anger.