Tag: Will Yun Lee

Like a lot of people, I am beginning to mistrust Paul Feig and Melissa McCarthy.

Paul Feig did give us Bridesmaids, sure, but The Heat didn’t feel right with me. He also has his strange obsession with McCarthy, so when it was announced he would do a Ghostbusters reboot, it was obvious he would be casting her in it. McCarthy has had a few terrible movies, namely Identity Thief and Tammy, where it seemed through all her work she could really only play one type of character.

So of course when you see a trailer for a badly named movie like Spy, you assume it is going to be one long running fat joke. Where it is absurd that she should be in the position she is in and you know, more fat jokes. It isn’t an absurd assumption, given that is what Tammy was, a movie McCarthy even wrote for herself, unable to get herself out of her own type casting.

If this was a gif, you all would hate me.

Being a spy is a tough job, but thankfully you have a handler back at HQ who helps you out on each and every mission. Bradley Fine (Jude Law) is a spy, and a damn good one at that. But he wouldn’t be anywhere without his handler, Susan Cooper (McCarthy). She helps protect him from surprising bad guys, helps him escape, and just keeps him aware of all of his surroundings! Things can still go wrong, sure, like when Bradley accidentally kills Tihomir Boyanov (Raad Rawi), who is supposed to be the only one alive who knows about some tiny nukes that he wants to sell. Whoops. Oh well, other than that, they are a great team!

Until he dies. She wasn’t too helpful then. He was killed by Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne), daughter of that other dead dude. Looks like she knows where the nukes are! She also knows every single spy that we have on record, names and what they look like, so it is incredibly unlikely of any of them being able to get close to her. Now Elaine Crocker (Allison Janney) has no idea what to do, so she agrees to let Susan go undercover to find out more information, with her best friend Nancy (Miranda Hart) serving as her handler. She is supposed to avoid Rayna and instead follow Sergio De Luca (Bobby Cannavale), but, you know, shit happens.

On top of the whole, being a spy thing, she also has to deal with the fact that some of the agents have quit. Namely, Rick Ford (Jason Statham), one of their best, and he wants revenge on Rayna since knows all about him. Too bad she also is the only one who knows about the nukes! Can’t let her be killed as well. Oh golly gumdrops.

Also, hey! We have Will Yun Lee and Zach Woods.

I normally only comment on facial hair, but come on, this is astounding.

Good news, everyone! Spy is not just one long fat joke. Sure, independently, on your own, you could giggle when a larger person does something athletic, but that is on you buddy. No, these jokes come from a deeper level. A lot more of them are based on how she has the body of a middle aged cat lady and the like. Way better than fat jokes.

In all honesty, Spy ended up being a pretty funny movie. Byrne still seems to have come out of nowhere in the comedy world, but she is still knocking it out of the park. Statham was in this movie and he was able to play a very Statham character. And yes, McCarthy of course carried it very, very well.

The action was also pretty decent. I didn’t know how it would end either, because they set it up pretty early that anyone could be killed, not to mention them wanting to earn the R rating.

One thing the film lacks is rewatchability, as in, I don’t ever see myself buying the film because I know I will never be in the mood again. But our female leads are fantastic, even Hart, and Statham provides some nice laughs as well.

3 out of 4.

Get out of the way, motherfuckers. We got a GEOLOGY MOVIE to talk about. YEAHHH.

Sure, as a professional (in the case that I make fat stacks of cash), geo-scientists, I could use these movies to bemoan the lack of good science in film and to talk about everything that they got wrong. But in reality, Geologists don’t give a fuck and love the shitty geoscience movies. (Honestly, this could be true for most scientists, but I am not them so I don’t know). We haven’t had a decent CGI science fest in awhile though, mostly stuck with crappy intentionally bad movies which aren’t as fun.

BUT EARTHQUAKES ARE CLEARLY MUCH COOLER. So in San Andreas we should get shit breaking apart, people freaking out, presumably parts of California drifting off to sea. I can only hope. This is a geo-nightmare! One I am fully ready to embrace.

And if you came in here expecting a GTA movie, then get the fuck out of here right now.

We don’t have time for any more wise cracks.

In California, if your life is in danger, there is only one man you want to save your life. Ray (Dwayne Johnson) and his helicopter crew met and flew together in Afghanistan and now work for the LA Fire Department and rescue people everywhere all the time like the polished rocks they are.

But not everything is smooth in his life. No, cracks are forming in his personal life. His wife, Emma (Carla Gugino) wants a divorce. Their lives haven’t been the same since they lost a daughter in a drowning accident. At least they still have one more, their family bubble not completely eroded, in Blake (Alexandra Daddario). Emma is about to move in with Daniel (Ioan Gruffudd) who has a much more solid foundation. A famous architecht, rich.

But fuck all that. Earthquakes. The team at CalTech, lead by of course seismologist Dr. Lawrence (Paul Giamatti) and Dr. Kim Park (Will Yun Lee) have been testing out a hypothesis that will allow them to predict earthquakes. Thankfully in Nevada there has been a series of miniquakes to hopefully test their theory out and hey, it works! Just in time, or not just in time, because it looks like all of their recent work stress is about to be tested when the earth’s stress gets released. All along the San Anreas fault. Through small towns, close to LA and right smack dab through San Francisco .

Also featuring a few British folks from up the river. Namely, Hugo Johnstone-Burt as an engineer looking for a job, Art Parkinson his younger brother, and KYLIE MINOGUE as a small role that totally wouldn’t normally be noted but it is Kylie Minogue people.

Hide! Kylie doesn’t like it when you call her roles small!

It has been awhile since there has been an earthquake movie released. The last two I can remember are Aftershock and Aftershock. And when I compare all three, I would put this a step below Aftershock, but one step above Aftershock.

That’s right. I liked a disaster movie. And I will only briefly talk about the science.

From my knowledge, the whole magnetic pulse to predict earthquakes thing is a solid hypothesis running around the community and relatively new. So that is fine. I think they made up a big fault that doesn’t exist as part of the main San Andreas fault having it go through Nevada, but honestly, I don’t know. But my biggest complaint science wise is the Tsunami. Part of the climax involves a tsunami post all the big earthquakes hitting the city. Buuuuuut, that seems silly. Do giant ass earthquakes cause giant ass Tsunamis? Sure! But not at the same place the earthquake hit. See, the giant displacement event would cause the water to shift away from the epicenter, not towards. A giant ass tsunami would totally head towards Asia/Australia, but it didn’t make sense for it to hit San Francisco.

Back to the earthquakes! I cried. I legit cried near the end of this movie. Because overall, this is a story about a man trying to save his family. A man who tries to save everyone but couldn’t save his daughter those years ago. A man who is a rock in real life, facing a force that literally breaks rocks.

I was surprised at the amount of action this movie provided. They went high with their Earhtquake and aftershock count and had the damage affect at least 3 cities separately, plus tsunami, so there was tons of near death (and death?!) scenarios. Shit, the body count on this movie is so incredibly high. Millions and millions of people die thanks to tall buildings falling over and streets ripping apart. It’d be a bloodbath if it was just rated R and we could show all the bodies in the flood.

There was also disappointment when douche looking Ioan Gruffudd ended up being exactly that, a douche. I was really hoping he would be a good guy, despite being the “new rich man” in their lives, and make it a bit more complicated of a love dynamic. But alas, if it looks like a douche…

San Andreas has everything I’d want in a disaster movie. Some extremely ridiculous scenes of survival. Some crazy deaths. Trillions of dollars of damage done to infrastructure. Ample cleavage because you have to have that in movies about geology for pun reasons. Not completely terrible CGI. Some actual factual science. Some extreme cringe worthy dialogue (including the most obvious ending dialogue to end the movie. Much cliche). And of course, last but not least, Paul Giamatti’s face representing my literal profession.

3 out of 4.

Buy it now from Amazon now on Blu-Ray or DVD.

Whoops.

Sometimes you watch a movie and then forget about it an hour later. And then sometimes you don’t remember that you watched the movie or that it existed until another two and a half weeks after that.

I am not saying that is something that happens a lot. But it definitely happened with Make Your Move. I watched it randomly of course. I went to RedBox and just went far back into its archive of movies in the box, looking for something unknown. One of those free rentals, means I can get anything and not feel like I wasted money.

And of course, it is a dance movie, and despite the general low scores I give dance movies, I know they could be something special, just most of them are filled with crap. So the search for the great dance movie is one that is haunting me. My great white buffalo.

Speaking of time machines, this club looks very 90s.

Donny (Derek Hough) is your typical dancing asshole. He lives in New Orleans, the city in a lake, and he also is recently out of prison. He got involved in some bad stuff, but he is clean now. Totally. But dancing on a street corner, that ain’t a real profession. Nope, so the cops don’t it.

BUT DONNY JUST WANTS TO DANCE!

So his scheme is to fly to NYC, breaking parole, to get a job, to not be in trouble for parole. Yeah. He has a friend, Nick (Wesley Jonathan) who has the hottest underground club there, and if he can become a dancer, he will make enough to do anything!

Hah. It turns out that Kaz (Will Yun Lee), Nick’s old partner, abandoned him after some advice to start his own rival club. Now they are in a battle. One with illegal shenanigans, one with weird investments. Kaz has a sister too, Aya (BoA), who also likes to dru.

And then these two meet and fall in love. Despite being on opposite sides of warring families.

What’s that? What’s that you say. Yep. WE GOT ANOTHER ROMEO AND JULIET MOVIE.

But with more Izabella Miko, more dancing, and a lot more shit.

Is that…is that the hand jive from Grease?

Can we just assume that if a film is so unmemorable a few hours after watching it, that you forget you watched it, then it probably isn’t too great? That should really be all I have to say about this movie right there. It is forgettable, so it is lame.

Sure, some of the dances may have been interesting, but to take an already shitty plot in Romeo and Juliet, and then make a worse version of it with only adequate dancing and shitty acting? Just, get out of my house with that weak sauce.

What is even worse is the plot at times felt a little bit confusing. How can they do that with so little material?

It is the type of movie that is using a lot of slang from a few years ago to try and sound hip and cool, but instead sounds like a creepy old grandpa.

TL;DR – Make Your Move is like a creepy old grandpa.

1 out of 4.

I went in to see The Wolverine with one thing on my mind. It couldn’t be worse than X-Men Origins: Wolverine. What a terrible movie. Maybe the worst big comic movie since Superman Returns.

Basically, the bar is set pretty low. So as long as the plot makes sense and there are some decent action scenes, I will probably find it okay

There are gratuitous amounts of shirtless scenes as well. Dem veins.

This story takes place after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand, with some flashbacks before half of the events in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) is still dead, she just happens to be haunting the dreams of Logan / Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). Logan has now escaped to the Canadian wilderness to be left alone.

Enter Yukio (Rila Fukushima), a spunky young Asian woman who can see how people will die (not a mutant) and will not leave Logan alone. In Nagasaki, right before we dropped that big bomb, Logan saved a young general’s life from the blast and radiation. Mr. Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi) became one of the richest people in Japan after that incident! Now, he is about to die, and he wants Logan to come to Japan to say goodbye to the man who saved his life.

Of course, Mr. Yashida wants more than a goodbye. He still wants to live and he believes he can offer Logan a way to finally die by transferring his healing powers. Interesting proposition. Logan also stepped deep into a company power struggle. Yashida’s son Shingen (Hiroyuki Sanada) thinks he is gaining control of the company, but it is actually going to the granddaughter, Mariko (Tao Okamoto). To make matters worse, the Yakuza and a ninja clan (including Will Yun Lee) are also involved!

At the same time, Wolverine gets poisoned by Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova), the only other mutant in the movie, causing him to lose most of his healing ability. Oh no! He has to fix all the kidnappings, act as a bodyguard, figure out who is the biggest asshole in the room, and try to not die. Typical Tuesday.

Adamantium on Adamantium porn. To reiterate, I had only two criteria that I needed met: a plot that makes sense, and interesting action scenes.

First let’s look at the plot. This film was far too long. They focused a lot on plot and character development, but it wasn’t good plot or character development. Especially in the middle, it dragged on a lot, made more relevant by the lack of action.

The plot is actually a bit confusing. Apparently everyone is a bad guy! The ending attempts to wrap up the multiple plot lines with a big reveal, but instead a few of the plot lines no longer make any sense. Those plot lines remain unanswered the rest of the movie, swept under the rug, hoping no one would notice.

Alright, so the plot is a mess. (Nerd Quandary: In X2 we found out that Logan’s memories after his Adamantium surgery had been wiped. It was explained in X-Men Origins: Wolverine that those memories were lost thanks to adamantium bullets to the head. He only regains a few memories thanks to Xavier’s help, yet he is supposed to remember World War II? Hmm…)

The next thing I have to look at is the action. There is a really interesting train scene that is visually pleasing. The arrow/ninja scene had a great take down. But outside of those two moments, everything was lackluster. The final scene felt really cheap, and a lot of that has to do with Viper as a villain. She is a mutant and has powers, but they are never really explained. She just does more and more snake like things throughout the film, but it all just feels fake. She is also incredibly pointless in the long run.

Crap, I didn’t know what my rating would be until I got to this part of my review. Turns out I disliked it more than I thought. STILL better than X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Far better. The story at least tries to be interesting, and gives some entertainment value. Unfortunately, relooking over the experience, it was overall less than stellar.

We can all feel good at the fact that X-Men: Days Of Future Past comes out next year. It happens to be one of the most ambitious film ideas I’ve ever heard of, and the subject of the scene in the credits.

1 out of 4.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You know. Or die trying.

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

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

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

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

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

3 out of 4.