Tag: Ronda Rousey

Fuck. Yes. Entourage.

When the TV Show ended four years ago with its shorter season there were rumors aplenty that the gang would all come back for a movie. We thought it would happen sooner than four years, but hey, whatever.

Did the TV Show need more? Honestly, I don’t remember. The show is extremely easy to binge watch due to both season length and show length. I remember doing the first four seasons in only 2-3 days when I decided to start the show. I remember actually very little about the show in terms of where any of the characters are at the end. I remember Matt Damon was there, and Toto too!

Well, let’s just say that if this movie ends up being any amount of good, I will have to rewatch the show.

This is their last hurrah to make me think Piven can actually act again.

The boys are back, as this movie takes place literally 9 or so days after the end of the TV show. So hope you remember what is going on.

Vince (Adrian Grenier) is already divorced, Johnny Drama’s (Kevin Dillon) show is cancelled, Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) made some ungodly amounts of money from his tequila business, and E (Kevin Connolly) is still…an agent or whatever.

But not everything is the same. Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) did what everyone expected of him. He came out of retirement and took the job. And he has a new movie for Vince. The only issue is, Vince wants his next project to be something special. He wants a part in it for his brother of course. But he also wants to direct it.

So now, months later, Vince is directing and starring in a very expensive futuristic movie. It is Ari’s first potential groundbreaking moment as a head of a company. It is Drama’s chance at an…Oscar? Only way anything good happens is if they can actually finish the dang thing with budget and time constraints. But you know the gang. They got this, just like they got Medellin.

But it isn’t just about them. We have new comers! Like Billy Bob Thornton playing a Texan financier of movies and his young asshole son played by Haley Joel Osment. And and we have Ronda Rousey and Emily Ratajkowski, both playing themselves. So this is probably an improvement for Ronda’s past roles.

Of course we have a slew of returning cast members. Rhys Coiro, Alan Dale, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Perrey Reeves, Debi Mazar, and of course, Rex Lee. And more! But half the fun is finding out, isn’t it?

First Tusk, now this? Call the Facial Hair Police, we got a repeat offender!

The Entourage movie feels like it is an extension of the TV show. Same level of quality, same style of jokes, same characters. If I had to describe it differently, because you asked, I would say it is like a 4 episode mini season, smashed together so you don’t have to wait 3 weeks to watch it all. And frankly, that can be considered a good and a bad. Because if it doesn’t feel like a movie, why make it a movie? Why not actually just give us a new season? Because it is already a pretty raunchy HBO show, it isn’t like there is more they can do in a movie that they couldn’t do in the TV show. I doubt the budget was that different for this movie either.

So, why the movie? I don’t know. Probably because why not.

All of the characters are the same, including the mostly useless Turtle, whose arc in this film is pretty significant. No, this is about the other 3 members of the Entourage and Ari Gold. And also about how amusing Haley Joel Osment is playing a Texan with an accent and an attitude. He made me giggle like a school girl.

Basically, I would say this movie is worth it just so you can get even more Ari Gold time, clearly one of the greatest television characters ever made. And maybe a little bit of Johnny Drama redemption.

Overall, this has been a lot of words about something you already figured out. If you liked the TV show, you are going to like the movie and probably like that too. If you watched the TV show and didn’t like it, you probably won’t like the movie. And if you never watched the TV show, you have no reason to watch the movie.

Anyways. Fuck. I think I have to go rewatch the show now.

FAST FAST FAST.

Nope. Too slow. Now you are just Furious 7. Look down. Look up again. You are Vin Diesel upset that Chuck Norris stole all of your internet jokes. Look at my hand. It is full of movies. THINK AGAIN. Just odd numbered Fast and Furious movies!

Blah blah blah. I have said before. I think the even numbered movies are either shit (2 and 4) or just okay (Fast and Furious 6). Some are well known to be bad, I went against the grain for the last one. Tokyo Drift has a good story though, which is why I like it and the first and fifth are entertaining. I was super stoked to watch Furious 7, before the death of Paul Walker, because I wanted the continuation from Tokyo Drift! I was ready for it all. And you know, 7 is an odd number.

And hey, Vin said this movie was amazing. Tears would flow and it should win Best picture awards. In that case I expect also hard hitting dialogue, some true events maybe, a new look at a modern topic, and maybe some death.

I don’t expect too much butt though.

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT ALL OF OUR FRIENDS COULD RETIRE AND JUST ENJOY LIFE. Just right then. Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) shows up and starts killin’ people. He is the brother of the Shaw dude from the last movie and he wants revenge. Deadly revenge.

Well that is great, they have to deal with this asshole who has money, power, and explosives, and he will follow them around the world just to get his sweet deadly revenge.

Thankfully (?), a covert ops team lead by Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) wants to use Dom’s (Diesel) team to track down a computer program(er) (Nathalie Emmanuel) and a terrorist (Djimon Hounsou). If he stops the terrorist, they can use the special facilities to take out Deckard as well. Deckard of course will continually interfere with each step of that operation before he can be fully dealt with. Dom wants his crew though for the job. So he gets the leftover parts of the crew (Walker, Tyrese Gibson, Michelle Rodriguez, Ludacris).

Action, cars, people being mad. Dwayne Johnson is back in his role, Jordana Brewster is still Walker’s wife, Lucas Black reprises his role kind of, and Ronda Rousey is in this movie because modern action films secretly hate us.

Furious 7 is making shit tons of money. It is also is breaking records while doing it. Why? Is it because of its extremely diverse cast? (which is by the way, ridiculously diverse. Look at that group shot and tons more not featured). No, probably not.

The thing is, this franchise always made a lot of money. Six made almost 800 million, so the fact that this one already hit a billion isn’t a surprise. Because let’s face it, regardless of how good or bad it is, people wanted to go see it because of Paul Walker’s death. Just like The Dark Knight.

Now, sure, I might have had a tear near the end. My emotions are easy to manipulate in a movie. But I am still disappointed with their choice. I think a much stronger movie could have been made if they went real crazy and intense with it. I even knew I wouldn’t get the more intense and tear inducing finale to Walker’s character, because they announced what would happen to his character months ago. A literal ride into the sunset. Kind of disappointing, but I get it. I do.

Either way, some of the stunts in this film were insane. Most of them just involve literally the cars flying through the air and surviving big crashes. They are thankfully in vehicles a lot, so it keeps up with the theme, despite only one (and a half maybe) street races. And it didn’t feature an incredibly stupid ending like the last film. And the characters, all of which were still decently over the top, didn’t feel like superheroes which was another complaint I had.

But also, this one featured The Rock in a great scene involving a cast. That scene made the movie for me. I just really hope they don’t make another one. End up on top. Please no more. Don’t piss off Paul Walker’s ghost.

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.