Tag: Arnold Schwarzenegger

André the Giant is a man who lived up to his stage name. A giant was he, his disease for us to enjoy.

He wasn’t always giant. He grew up normally, but it was discovered in his later teen years. He grew up in a small French village, but once he became large, he got into smaller wrestling leagues around the world. Like Japan, where he was big in Japan. Eventually, he made it to the USA, and the rest is history.

Andre the Giant is a documentary that not only tells of the career and life until his death of Mr. The Giant, but also the rise of wrestling in the United States, the rise of the McMahons, and the rise of cable TV.

All of these stories intersect and tell a complete picture of America and wrestling over the decades.

And they all loved him for his big shoes.

It still yet tells an even bigger picture than all of that. This documentary questions what it means to be a legendary entity, to be a real life tall tale, still before everything was shared across the world. All we have now about Andre are his clips and the stories his friends have told about him.

Featuring commentary from some of his friends and coworkers, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Billy Crystal, Cary Elwes, Hulk Hogan, Rob Reiner, Robin Wright, and Vince McMahon.

Overall, I don’t think this is a documentary that you will only enjoy if you like wrestling. I haven’t liked wrestling in a long time, but the stories make it worth it.

Andre had a big heart. He touched a lot of lives. And shit, there is not a lot you can say in analysis about this documentary.

Fun fact about my brother: Maggie was his most anticipated movie of the summer of 2015. Not Avengers: Age of Ultron. Not Jurassic World. Not Mad Max: Fury Road. No, he wanted to see Maggie. I found that extremely interesting, but none of you should, because most of you won’t know my brother.

Maggie didn’t have a huge release and didn’t have any screenings for critics. However, it did come out on Video on Demand at the same time as its theatrical release, so hey, look at me now, getting to watch it in the restfulness of my own home, where I can cry if I want to. Where I can leave my friends behind. Because if they don’t cry, and if you cry, well, they might leave you behind.

Or maybe they just don’t have fully functional eyes.

That’s right. Zombies. But this is a slower zombie movie. So get your drink ahead of time, because you have to pay attention. I think overall, maybe only five or so zombies get killed the whole movie. There is a Necroambulist virus that has spread throughout the world. It might spread throughout food and regular contamination things. Also if you get bit by one, of course. Well, the movie starts with Maggie (Abigail Breslin) calling home as she is in the city after curfew and she wants to be alone. Well, her dad, Wade (Arnold Schwarzenegger) didn’t care about that. No, he is getting his daughter.

You see, Maggie has been bitten and she will slowly (very slowly) turn into a zombie. She doesn’t have to be placed into quarantine yet. She can go home to the farm and live a peaceful few days before her disease makes her too deadheaded. She can say goodbye to her friends, family, maybe get some good last meal in, who knows.

And that is about it! Life sucks when you know you are going to die. It also sucks when you know you will turn into a creature that looks kind of like you that will eat the flesh of your friends and family, potentially.

There you have it. A zombie tale about the slow decay of a person into madness. But with Arnold! And, sure, Raeden Greer, Bryce Romero, and Joely Richardson too.

“That skin condition is not a tumahh.”

So, I am not going to say I cried because I actually didn’t. But man, did I feel some emotion throughout it.

The movie felt a bit weird at first, kind of quick, lot going on with very little explanation. The movie makes you pay attention or else you might just get lost and ignore the rest of the plot.

Schwarzenegger and Breslin are actually really great in this film. The former is not known for his drama, but he played the part of a concerned father really well. And of course it wasn’t balls to the wall with action like his normal films. Breslin played the part of a frantic teenager, again, really well. But she just had to do with her arm decaying and losing vision and her mind.

The reason I am giving it this rating is that despite all of that, it still feels a bit too slow for me. I enjoyed the acting, just I know I don’t think I’d want to watch it again. Maybe a shorter cut would fix the issues. I don’t think the slow movement helps build up the tense situations later on, I think they just delay the best parts.

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.

Yay! Finally, we are getting a movie version of the Beastie Boy’s song Sabotage. I am also immediately killing that joke before it gets too stupid. I don’t even like that song. Too hard for me, I guess.

The actual movie Sabotage is the next attempt for Arnold Schwarzenegger to get back into action. I think I saw the trailer once before a month or two ago, so going into it, I really didn’t remember at all what I was about to watch. That was a good feeling. I did learn right before that the director also directed and wrote End Of Watch, which I loved so I did get all sorts of excited. A great underrated movie from two years ago.

Aw shit. Here is them with presumably the bad guy. I guess they all win, spoilers!

The story is about a special operations DEA team who are really good at getting the job done. They are lead by Breacher (Schwarzenegger) and they all get snazzy nicknames too, because they are cool. They also have Tripod (Kevin Vance), Monster (Sam Worthington), Grinder (Joe Manganiello), Neck (Josh Holloway), Sugar (Terrence Howard), Pyro (Max Martini) and Lizzie (Mireille Enos). She doesn’t get a nickname presumably because she is a woman.

Oh, they might be a little bit dirty too. Not The Shield levels of dirty, but a little bit dirty. The story begins with them taking down a huge drug lord, but also stealing a measly ten million from the pile and stashing it to split amongst the team later. Well, someone dies during their operation, and later the money is gone as well, so it the drug bust was a bust. Especially when they all go under the microscope, with the ten million reported missing.

Well, eventually they all survive and since no one trusts Breacher in the department that much, they just let him have his team back for special missions. Then, one of their own dies.

Shit. Then another. Turns out someone is trying to take them out. But why? They have tons of enemies, it could be anyone. But local cop people (Olivia Williams, Harold Perrineau) are on the case, so I am sure they will stop the bad guys.

Many guns. Both the actual weapons and these gentleman arms.

Pew pew pew! Action and death. This film really earns that R rating with the amount of graphic violence (extreme deaths), language, and nudity in it. Some of it was indeed really gross too.

On the same note, the story itself was interesting. Yeah, I said it. I liked the plot of this movie. It wasn’t a simple story, it had some layers, and characters had motivations. At the same time, some characters had absolutely no motivations and even by the end, I am not sure why they did what they did.

In fact, the climactic ending complete with a chase scene and finding out who the bad guys are was very disappointing. It doesn’t match the tone of the rest of the movie. It was drawn out and suddenly no one knew how to aim, despite being tactical and military elites.

So that is that. It has some cool stuff. But the ending is pretty lame. There ya go.

Arnold Schwarzenegger must be living a good life. Look at how he has aged, fantastically. He is a fit guy, he was Governor (of a now failing state), and now he has all this free time for chilling, making movies, and spending loads of cash.

Because of that, I have decided to talk about Escape Plan from the point of view of Arnold, not the actual main guy in the movie. That’s right. Fuck the police.

I am mostly doing this because I love his beard in this movie.

Rottmayer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is current locked up in a beyond illegal prison somewhere in the world. He really doesn’t know. But the prison is not your standard prison. They live in glass boxes, and they are suspended along stair cases, not in a normal rows and columns. There are a plethora of armed guards, who all wear masks so that they are not identifiable. Their isolation rooms are tiny boxes with bright hot lights, not dark rooms like the normal. No, just a little bit in that room will teach you to fuck around again.

But then, this Porthos (Sylvester Stallone) character comes waltzing into his prison. He notices him instantly, always looking at the guards, inspecting shit. Rottmayer considers himself a favor guy, so he offers to help Porthos out, see why he is being weird. According to Porthos, he gets paid to get put into prisons, look for weaknesses, and break out of them. But something is wrong this time, all of his normal criteria is off, things have changed, his evacuation code isn’t working. Someone has set him up to fail and get locked away for ever.

Looks like these two masterminds, one a criminal, the other not, have to work together to beat the system. But can they really trust each other?

Jim Caviezal plays the warden, and you may remember him as Jesus from The Passion of the Christ. Amy Ryan, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, and Vincent D’Onofrio play members of Stallone’s team (member, tech guy, accountant, respectively), Sam Neill plays another doctor, Vinnie Jones is head of security, and Faran Tahir as another prisoner.

Note the bar code on their shirts. They…really didn’t explain any of that.

Wait, 50 Cent?! Yesss, another movie where I have him in it. This one was purely an accident! Note to self, review more 50 Cent movies. He should be the highest tagged actor on this site, damn it.

Sorry, I keep getting distracted by the actors in this movie.

Well, strangely enough, I had fun with this movie. It wasn’t meant as a comedy, but having Stallone/Schwarzenegger in a situation where we have to assume they are smart comes with a few laughs. Especially when they both deliver their normally cheesy lines. The difference between the two is that in this film, Stallone says it all with a serious face, like he is the BAMFest BAMF, while Arnold is willing to grin more with his character and enjoy the moment.

I am saying Arnold was the better of this two in the film. His distraction scene in German in the film is almost worth it for the chaos it produced alone.

In terms of twists, some of them are obvious, and I think the film even makes fun of how obvious they are, but not everything is obvious. This is more of a thriller action movie, with most of the violence comes near the end when they actually attempt their escape. Accidentally hilarious moments like sudden waves of armed guards, more than should be at the prison, getting mowed down with a machine gun make this movie worked.

I am not sure if I really liked this movie, or if I just liked it more than Carrie and The Fifth Estate, which also came out this weekend. Even if that is the case, fuck it, it was more enjoyable than Stallone’s recent work.

So, Generation Iron came to town, so I had to watch it in theaters. My first question was, what in the fuck is Generation Iron? Basically, it is a sequel to Pumping Iron, a documentary that came out in the late 70s to introduce the world more to the idea of bodybuilding and Mr. Olympia.

The purpose of this one? I guess to remind us that Mr. Olympia and bodybuilding are still a thing, and they want attention, damn it.

Unless they are dressing up like ninjas, then they do not want to be seen.

The year, 2011, and Phil Heath has just won the Mr. Olympia contest, his first ever. In fact, he won with a perfect score. Could he be the next big deal?

Well, he thinks so, he is a cocky son of a bitch, who talks about perfection, and just trying to beat himself at this point.

This film details the lives of several current big name body builders who hope to take the title, and who are going through many different paths to achieve that goal. A lot of names, could list them all, but I just want to note Kai Greene, who looks way too friendly to be a body builder, and Dennis Wolf, who is the real life incarnation of Rainier Wolfcastle.

The film talks about it all. Science, training regiments, heart, why they get so bronzed up before a competition, and steroids. Yes, even steroids. They don’t avoid the subject, they talk about it straight on…just…uneasily.

Also a lot of guest stars. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno, Busta Rhymes, Michael Jai White, and awkwardly narrated by Mickey Rourke. Why awkward? Well, because he didn’t really add much to to it. Just said some stuff, usually poetic, every once in awhile. Kind of creeped me out.

Then it of course goes into the 2012 Mr. Olympia contest, showing us how its all done, and yeah. Movie! Woo weights!

If they knew how to fight, they could kick all of our asses.

Again, documentaries are kind of strange to review, but here is my attempt. This movie gave a really good view of bodybuilding from what felt a neutral stand point. Despite Phil being the winner, they didn’t attempt to show him in a positive light, they let him be himself (and he is apparently an egotistical asshole. Alright, maybe they hate him and it was cut that way?). We got to see the good and bad of lots of contenders, who come from many different backgrounds and abilities. I loved its neutrality on all the issues, and the fact that they even brought up steroids. Made me happy.

I am not a fan of these competitions, because they are just so damn biased, they don’t make much sense to me. Why do all the champions win so many times in a row? Probably because the judges are just making shit up and basing it off of who has won before and who should win now. That is my guess. Kind of hard to ignore. No real way to do a blind taste test.

In general, the Mr. Olympia show looks like shit. Especially in 2012, when there is no suspense as to who will win. Why? Because they will call certain competitors back out to get second look, but only if they are the top overall people. If they suck, they don’t want to see you again. They just give extra time to the people who they like, so again, no real suspense, seems pointless to me. They should give everyone equal time, more fair.

But eh. It is an okay movie. I think it was too long, had some boring stretches, and I forgot the difference between a few people. Phil wins 2012, which is not a spoiler, because the 2013 competition has already happened when this came out in theaters. That is three in a row for Phil. They should really get this out quicker, its already old and awkward. Can’t be too hard to polish up a documentary.

The Arnold is back!

Alright, maybe he hasn’t really gone anywhere. The Govenator was still taking part in The Expendables franchise at least, but with The Last Stand he is officially back in the lead role. Just don’t confuse it with the X-Men movie of the same name.

Although Phoenix could solve this problem in an instant.

Sommerton Junction is a small town in Arizona by the border of Mexico. That border is a giant canyon, so there aren’t too many problems associated with it. The high school has a big road football game, so most of the town has left for the weekend to cheer them on, but not Sheriff Ray Owens (Arnold). He is happy to have a weekend off, but he gets a strange feeling about a trucker (Peter Stormare),who comes up clean when his plates are run.

Oh well, it is not like he is secretly a member of the Mexican Cartel, working on busting out Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) from FBI Custody (Forest Whitaker), and then racing him to Mexico across the canyon. That would be ludicrous!

Ray decides that no Mexican Drug lord is going to come into his town and kill its citizens, not on his watch. Nope. He wants to make a stand. With his crew by his side (Luis Guzman, Jaimie Alexander, Zach Gilford) and the deputized citizens of an alcoholic who wants to redeem himself (Rodrigo Santoro) and a weapons museum owner (Johnny Knoxville), they decide to go all out to show that they are not just stupid farmers and rednecks.

“GET TO THE DINNAH”

Sometimes it can be hard to figure out if you are supposed to take a movie seriously or not. I like to apply the LG test. That is, if the movie includes Luis Guzman, do not take it seriously, and I don’t think it has failed me yet.

I do love that The Last Stand provides an action movie without an overabundance of special effects, and being set in rural Arizona helps add to the grittiness. I liked the resolution to the plot, even if the plot was one of the more ridiculous things I’ve heard of. It also wasn’t just a silly shoot em up movie where the good guys use Home Alone-esque traps to take out the bad guys. I actually feared that any character could die.

But, the acting still is pretty bad, and the dialogue probably over did its “one liner” quota. I think the beginning was also a bit too slow, but it picked up when they discovered the bridge being built. An interesting movie, but not sure if it is one I will ever try to watch again.

Good news everyone. There are only 13 tagged actors for this movie, and one of them is actually a woman. Crazy, right? Obviously, The Expendables 2 is a sequel to The Expendables, which I forever have disliked because it came out the same day as Scott Pilgrim.

Insert dead horse joke.

The crew is basically the same before. Lead by Stallone, second in command Statham, but also still with Couture, Lundgren, Crews, and Li. Too bad Jet Li leaves in the beginning of the movie, to come back later. Yes, he is pointless.

But they do have a young guy, Bill the Kid (Liam Hemsworth) who is former military sniper, and good at what he does.

Bruce Willis is mad because of events from the first film, but he is willing to forgive the team, if they go and retrieve some data from a downed plane far away. Easy enough. He is making them bring along a woman too, Maggie (Nan Yu) who definitely won’t be there as a romantic interest either.

But turns out the simple mission isn’t very simple. Shit hits the fan, and people might die. A different military group, lead by Vilain(Jean-Claude Van Damme…and yes Vilain? What?) and his lackey Hector (Scott Adkins) decides to steal the package and get away pretty cleanly. But what they stole, for their secretive reason, can actually put an end to the world as we know it.

The Expendables crew will have navigate unfamiliar territory, versus basically an army, and a pretty short clock to do it in. For those disappointed with Bruce and Arnold from the last movie, don’t worry, they do more shit. But also, Chuck Norris, because the internet loves him. Before you ask, basically, Chuck Norris was a walking Chuck Norris joke in is 2ish scenes he was in.

The triumvirate of power, right in front of your eyes folks.

I think it is acceptable enough to compare this to the first one right? Well I thought the first one was boring. It had a lot of action, but I don’t think I really understood everything going on, in between explosions and fisticuffs.

The second one? Well, I understood the plot! There is that. I also found the action scenes to be a bit better overall. I would say the first scene of the movie, a compound break in was a bit confusing due to the vehicles. The airport scene was a bit over the top, because it made no sense to have a basic flood of enemies continuously appear for them to mow down from all angles.

Interesting action movie? That is a rarity in my case. When the death happened, I actually felt upset. The final fight scene that you know exists between JCVD and Stallone was pretty epic.

But at the same time, a lot of features ended up annoying me. Having Jet Li in for one scene felt like a waste. Couture, Crews, and Lundren were all underused as well. The girl love story was a nice pointless addition, that felt forced. And basically anything involving planes, really.

So I am sure they are planning another one, which I will watch, but won’t really need to see the previous ones again.

It has taken me a long time to watch The Expendables, mostly because it and Eat, Pray, Love came out on the same day as Scott Pilgrim vs The World in theaters. Both of which did better in the box office, despite my fanboyism declaring that SP was clearly the best movie. So, in order to make up for it, I had to do the SP review before at least one of those movies. Hooray!

Well, I know ONE cast member who is excited.

The Expendables are a mercenary group for higher, and has quite a few of the names mentioned in them. Lead by Sylvester Stallone, and Jason Statham, it also features Jet Li, Terry Crews, Dolph Lundgren, and Randy Couture. Each having their own specializations of course, because that’s how elite teams works.

They are sent to (somewhere in South America), to take down a dictator played by David Zayas. Eventually Mickey Rourke joins their team as well. Steve Austin is a hired muscle bad guy too! But where do Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger come in?

Arnold is the leader of a rival group, who already has a mission lined up, so he lets the Expendables take this one. Willis is the man hiring them. So there is one scene with those two and Stallone, and that is all you will get of those two. So, if that is your draw? Well, ignore the movie.

So yeah. Plot is basically that. Lot of action, lot of killing, and the heroes win out at the end of the day. I think what makes a better story is who didn’t make the film!

John-Claude Van Damme was supposed to play a major role, but didn’t want to. But he regrets it now and will be in the sequel. Terry Crews role went through 3 people before him (Wesley Snipes, Forest Whitaker, and 50 Cent). And the role that Willis landed was first given to Arnold, and then offered to Kurt Russell, but I guess he was too cool to do one scene in a movie.

Really, all that does is make me wish original people got their roles. There’d be more bigger famous names, less new guys (who the hell is Randy Couture??).

Some guy who loves puppies?

In terms of plot, its is pretty weak. In terms of tons of action, and throw backs to the “classics” in the 80s and 90s, it does well. This is one of those films where you will know if you will enjoy it before going to see it. Really not much else to say about that.