Tag: Bruce WIllis

If you wanna have a good time, every time you say Looper, you should pronounce it as “Loopah”. Reminds me of Zelda a bit.

It is a good idea to laugh. Especially when you see Looper, and feel all sorts of weird feelings during it.

The year, 2044. The setting, Kansas, because why the fuck not? Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a Looper. Probably want to know about that, eh? Well, in the future, time travel is invented and immediately banned. Naturally then, only criminals have time travel at that point. So they sent a representative back to 2044 (Jeff Daniels) to set up a system to their advantage. Bodies are hard to dispose of in the future, so they send back the people they kill at predetermined times and locations! The loopers job is to kill them right when they appear. They get paid with silver bars strapped to the back.

They work until their loop is closed. How does a loop close? That is when the mob sends back the future version of yourself. They are always bagged, so you don’t realize it until you see that you received gold bars instead of silver. Then they know they have 30 years left of their life, and to take their huge wealth and enjoy it. But things start to hit the fan for the Loopers. Loops start closing quickly. Joe’s good friend, Seth (Paul Dano) ends up letting his future self go, causing problems! Apparently the future is scary. Some new guy is taking over and closing up shop.

But what happens when Future Joe (Bruce Willis) gets sent back. Will Joe do his job, kill his future self? Or will he help him figure out how to change the future for the better, with every action they take changing it in some way? And what does the future have to do with a local single mom (Emily Blunt) and her kid (Pierce Gagnon)?

Tell me I am not the only one who immediately thinks of Bangkok Dangerous when I see this?

Shocked. Shocked is basically how I felt after watching that movie. Not at the ending. No, I could see it coming, just still didn’t expect it. Hell, there was many options the ending could have chose. The film did a nice job of keeping you guessing, and leaving you with a feeling of wonder.

I know what you want to know. Time travel? Does that mean this movie will be confusing? Does their time travel make sense? Hard to say really. I’d say there is some confusing elements. Comes with the territory. Is their time travel without paradoxes? No, not really. Especially when dealing with loops and stuff. I would say their metaphysics isn’t perfect, but it is good enough for the movie.

The science in the movie isn’t the main feature though. It is the characters involved. Lot of serious questions get asked when dealing with your future self and the implications of it, of which I think the film handled wonderfully. Everyone acted pretty amazingly, and I was on the edge of my seat wondering what was next. They also did great job with the makeup work to have Levitt look like a younger Willis.

Finally the movie does a few things that few films outside of horror ever do. Have the potential death of multiple children, and the use silence in the music and action to convey feelings of isolation/being alone. I love it when a film steps out of a normal comfort zone. It is great when a film makes you think too, and focuses a lot of energy into character development in arguably a short time. Just don’t go in expecting some action heavy flick, and you will be set.

I saw probably two trailers for Moonrise Kingdom, with neither of them answering really anything at all. I did know that it was a Wes Anderson movie, of which I have only liked one. But to be fair, I have only seen two…

I am sure someone is reading this review because they heard I disliked Bill Murray and heard I only like him in cameos. Well. I won’t let any perceived actor hatred from giving this movie its full attention and chance to wow me. No fear good sirs.

Uh oh, famous people alert.

Honestly, I have a hard time trying to explain just what this movie is about. The easiest way is to just explain some of the characters and location.

The setting is in 1965 at a fictional New England island of New Penzance. Pretty small. Nearby is a few other islands too. But small, has a ferry system, and no paved roads.

The first family introduced is the Bishops, Walt (Murray) and Laura (Frances McDormand). They have three young boys, and an older daughter at twelve named Suzy (Kara Hayward). She may be dysfunctional, and likes binoculars.

There is only one police officer for the whole island, Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis) and not the smartest man out there. There is a local camp set up for some Khaki Scouts, lead by Scout Master Ward (Edward Norton), who is a math teacher normally. He runs his camp with authority, and makes sure not too many shenanigans occur. But when it is found out that Sam (Jared Gilman), an orphan kid who no one likes has retired from the Scouts, run away and stolen a canoe, it drives the Island into panic!

Mostly indifference, but still, he can’t have gone that far.

This leads to a grand adventure of love, and longing. Where adults act childish, and children act like adults. Where books are read, and where coves are named. Jason Schwartzman also appears as “Cousin Ben” and Harvey Keitel as Commander Pierce, head of the Khaki Scouts and working on the local Hullabaloo.

Still don’t know what this movie is about? Bitch, she’s a raven!

Fucking Wes Anderson! How dare he do an amazing movie like this.

Everything felt top notch about this movie. Everything was so weird and I love weird. The music? It was both in your face, and felt appropriate. But the real level of amazing would be the camera work here. Lot of longer scenes where the camera would just move from left to right as people walked, and things happened in the background, and the movie carried on. The color schemes between the scenes, they were noticeable and overpowering, but yet it also added so much to the island of New Penzance.

I can’t even tell if the acting was that good? The main kid performances was full of “awwww”, and I love movies that give me stuff like that. You know, like Flipped.

The movie is really hard to explain, but I really loved it. Was on the edge of my seat for a while. I did find it odd that I was pretty much the only one laughing in my theater of 12-15~ people for most of the jokes. But those guys are just jerks I guess.

Why would someone watch a movie called Assassination of a High School President? You mean besides the title? I don’t know. But you sound like a troll for still asking that question.

It’s. Called. Assassination. Of a. High School. President.

How is that not reason enough to watch the movie, right? Right?

There is probably at least one other reason. I just cannot put my finger on it.

The story is about Bobby Funke (Reece Thompson) and wanting to get into a Journalism program for the summer, and he is mostly a sophomore loser. Despite claiming to be a great writer, he has never finished an article for the school newspaper. He gets his “big break” when he gets to do a story on the high school president (Patrick Taylor), because for some reason the editor (Melonie Diaz) thinks it will be a good idea.

Well, he can’t even get an interview. He is bullied by the student council and the VP, Marlon Piazza (Luke Grimes). But when the HSP gets injured in a basketball game, he finally figures he can get an interview! But also that same night all of the SAT tests were stolen from the principals locked safe (Bruce Willis), bringing up an even bigger problem. Francesca (Mischa Barton), the step sister of Marlon, and girlfriend of the HSP begs Bobby to find the culprit and bring him down, because she was feeling “Really good” about her scores.

But when all the clues point to the HSP being the culprit (including a locker full of SATs), Bobby has to find out if there is a deeper problem at the school. Maybe one involving drugs and gambling, and if the HSP is just being set up.

Or is it all simply just a game of beer pong that he has to infiltrate?

This is my first “noir” tag of a review. Celebrate everyone!

Because this film is not your ordinary comedy. Most of it includes a lot of voice overs, and other classic mystery references in order to give it a way different feel. It is some sort of catholic school, with uniforms and all, where everything I guess is just super intense.

I thought the acting was great, and also that Bruce Willis wasn’t just a small role, but all up in this movie. I only expected about two cameos, but his role is huge and hilarious.

But the story didn’t appeal to me that great. I think I want to watch it again, but not for awhile. Definitely interesting enough for a one and done viewing, for sure. New movie experiences are always a plus. Just, didn’t love it as much as I thought I would.

Fast Food Nation is a movie based on a book. Have I read the book? Of course not, reading is for squares.

But clearly with a title like that, it is a movie that you KNOW has a message. The book is just a simple book talking about why fast food is bad, and giving examples and facts. This is a fictionalized story telling tales of individuals involved in the industry, from lowly cashier, to vp, to illegal immigrant workers in the cow killing plants.

And Fes!

Easiest way to describe the movie is a quick sentence on all the plots I guess.

We have a story of illegal immigrants coming from Mexico (and elsewhere), featuring Wilmer Valderrama and Catalina Sandino Moreno as a married couple going up to Colorado. They both go to the meat factory, Wilmer cleaning up the stuff at night with pressure hoses, and Catalina cutting beef, but quickly switching to hotel work.

Greg Kinnear works for the head guys and introduced The Big One, a new item to the fictional food company. It is doing well, but for some reason, the meat has higher fecal counts than other meats in the fast food market, so he has to go to Colorado to find out why. He also deals with Bruce Willis, a high up guy who brought his company and the meat company together. Oh, and Kris Kristofferson as the owner of the cattle ranch where they get the cows, and knows the truth about the factory.

There is also Ashley Johnson, a cashier at the restaurant. She learns about doing something important with her life, from her uncle, and is also kind of smart. She wants to quit her job, thinking it is bad, and become an activist. And also, Avril Lavigne has a small role as hippy lover too! Whats up Avril!?

“Well right now I am miserable, because it is such a damn cold night.”

Sooo, parts of the movie were interesting, sure. The problem? The last half hour.

First off, Greg’s plot line ends with a good 35 minutes to go, but doesn’t really end. They stop showing what happens with him, and he doesn’t really make a decision with what he finds out. Which is annoying.

The eco-terrorism route fails as well, and ends pointlessly. What do they learn? That they probably can’t do jack shit to help cows out. I guess.

About Fes? They had the best story, I guess. I hated what happened, but it also felt like it just didn’t end. The girl does get a job on their kill zone, and they do that more just to show companies killing cows (head things) and slicing their necks post death, blood and guts falling out. I DON’T NEED TO SEE THAT SHIT.

It is gross. I can understand that an animal died (hopefully at least) to enjoy my burger/steak, but I don’t have to watch the butcher work. We are civilized now. I don’t have to hunt myself. They aren’t even implying the cows live in bad conditions necessarily, just seems like the plants for the processing are lame overall.

So it was a movie with a message, and it failed horribly in my mind. Plots that started and went no where (talk about robbing the store? Where’d that go?), and then just a mess at the end. But hey, if there is graphic scenes it will work right?

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.

Catch .44 is obviously going for some clever title, where instead of 22, there is instead a gun reference. That way you know “Hey! There be guns in dem dare movie!” It also flashes Bruce Willis on the cover, but his role is definitely not as some of the others in the movie.

Dude couldn’t even be bothered to put on some pants!

This film is a harder one to go over the plot for. The director/writer has only done like, one other movie before, and in this one he CLEARLY wants to be Quentin Tarantino. The movie is told out of order, has a Mexican standoff, some uncomfortably long scenes, cursin’ and talkin’ about pop culture, and kind of spoils the ending near the beginning. But hey, people like that sort of thing. So here is an attempt.

Three ladies, Tes, Dawn, and and Kara (played by Malin Akerman, Deborah Ann Woll, and Nikki Reed respectfully). If you are keeping track of names, that is Silk Spectre II from Watchmen, and a girl from True Blood, and one from Twilight. Way to capture the demographics right there.

Anyways, they are part of a drug syndicate lead by Bruce Willis. Their mission is to get to a location where a drug hand off is going down, stop it, and recover the drugs. Hopefully without taking on any casulties. There is also “mysterious” Forest Whitaker, who may be following them, killing some people, and sounding super Cajun. Also, Shea Whigham has an important role as well. He also works in the organization.

Because every movie Tarantino-ish needs a “conversation” at a diner, or cafe, or whatever.

Its hard to say what I like about the movie. It is an obvious rip off like thing. But I thought the acting for what it was, was decent. Camera work was nice. Parts in the beginning annoyed me, mostly due to confusion on when things took place, but eventually my questions were answered. Whitaker was super creepy to me the whole movie, could never tell just what was up with his character. But after all of that, it was surprisingly decent.

Red. Another graphic novel turned movie. Or at least loosely based on the graphic novel. I have never read it, but I knew there was major nerdrage when it came out, comparing to the source (“They are nothing alike!! rawrrawrrage!” – Nerd). But eh, whatever. Loosely is fine. Wouldn’t want the story I just read to be identical to what is on screen. Consider it another chapter, and we are good to go.

Fun fact! This is the first “DC” movie to not be made via Warner Brros in anyway.

However, it definitely keeps its “comic” feel to it.

Red seems to stand for “Retired: Extremely Dangerous”, or at least it does in the movie. It is a classification given to a CIA/whatever operative after they are done, if they are supposed to be disposed of. A situation which Bruce Willis finds himself in. He just wanted to enjoy life, and chat with case worker assigned to him on the phone, Mary-Louise Parker. BUT ASSASSINS! Bruce realizes their formation makes them USA trained, so he has to figure out whats going on.

He tries to get his team back together, exceptionally crazy John Malkovich, more calm yet sexual Morgan Freeman, and deadly with a gun Helen Mirren. I came up with those descriptions myself, you’re welcome.

But that is not all the old people involved. Richard Dreyfuss is some sort of bad guy, I guess. And Karl Urban is a young gun at the CIA in charge of bring Bruce and his friends down.

Mary-Louise Parker just gets to run around, being bait, confused, and pretty.

The driving point for this movie is obviously an “older” group of people kicking ass, instead of some young muscled dude. We get to accept that all these people have been in their fair share of spy missions, so they are all clever and hopefully good at kicking ass. Which they are. The action scenes are very interesting. Some of which is just people shooting at each other (read: normal action movie action) but they raise the bar a lot.

John Malkovich is also fucking crazy.

Don’t worry, he shares some crazy with Morgan Freeman.

Almost every scene with Malkovich you will find yourself laughing or, you know, yelling “holy shit!” at something cool they had him do. The “roof scene” early on with him is one of my favorites in terms of action.

This movie thankfully picked up the slack from the rest of the movies I have seen this week. Even if it is nothing like the comic.

Hey look, a sci-fi action film! I will admit, when I saw the trailer I thought that this movie would be stupid. Some weird future where everyone sits at home, and they have much more prettier versions of themselves walking around doing shit, yet the user gets to experience the feelings so it is okay? These Surrogates probably just represent our dependence on technology/better video games, gone to an extreme.

Surrogates! They have become cheap enough so that everyone can have them! There was no real hobos to speak of (maybe, I will get to that). With the perfect robot body, everyone looks sexy despite their actual appearance, all they have to do is sit in a chair and take it. The rise of surrogates brought accidental deaths down to very low, and crime to an all time low. After all, With a world full of beautiful people, what could go wrong?

Oh yeah. Honestly, this shit still creeps me out.

BUT WAIT. Not everyone has conformed. There are colonies around the US (I am not sure if other countries are really talked about here) who think it is unnatural and want to just be humans. These may just be hobos too. They live together, have no other jobs. Follow a prophet who will help end the robot scum. Speaking of ending robot scum, one guy dies from some crazy gun. His surrogate explodes, and the user is killed (first time ever). That guy is the son of creator of Surrogates.

I wonder if I have to explain this picture?

Thankfully, Bruce Willis is on the case. He has to investigate this threat, and crazy enough, he has to do it without a Surrogate. Being a real person in a robot world is crazy. Crazy!

So while the story should have been good, it just…fails. Most of the things that happen are pretty obvious. The ending you may be already to guess, even. Action scenes seemed to be better described as chasing scenes. Some helicopters got destroyed, but you know, barely any people got capped. Given the surrogates. The surrogates are also creepy of course, as they all look too perfect, but that is what they were going for.

Despite being an interesting concept, the execution of the concept left me bored. I didn’t care what happened to anyone by the end. Not even the fat dude.

Damn it. WHY DAMN IT. I TRUSTED YOU BRUCE WILLIS.

Well. 95% Trust.

This is a pretty misleading movie, in my opinion. Heist like movie, something goes wrong, and people die. People may be Setup, even. (Okay, so yes a Heist goes wrong early on. They are setup. 50 cent gets mad and kills a bunch of people. Plot).

I am going to blame this all on 50 Cent. Because seriously. Bruce Willis was top billed in this movie, but he was barely in it. Ryan Phillippe, played a major roll. It just also sucked in this movie.

But damn it, Ryan was just in The Lincoln Lawyer. The pedo from Cruel Intentions. And he brought little to the movie. But I was excited because I thought that this may be a great movie with 50 cent in it, unlike the many before. 50 cents character I didn’t find exciting. They tried to bring in some sort of moral or religious dilemma, but I didn’t feel it. And a lot of people died. Just got tired of it though, nothing was that surprising.

This isn’t Ryan Phillipe being a pedophile, just awkward kinky sister stuff.

1 out of 4.