Thighs Wide Shut

Red
Spies Like Rust
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Look, it’s old famous people shooting guns!!!!  Sweeeeet  …for all of about 10 minutes!!!!!!  A bit more fun than The Expendables, and a lot lot lot less fun than The Losers, Robert Schwentke‘s movie adaptation of the Red comic mini-series is nothing more than an incredible collection of incredible actors sitting around twiddling their thumbs/guns, as the flick goes from zero to one in 111 minutes.  That ‘one’ is a killer lil shoot-out bit toward the beginning of the film [watch it here], and after being treated to that kind of tongue-in-cheek redonkey-donkness, we’re denied anything else equally as yummy the rest of the way.  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

There’s some sort of plot about a plot against some former CIA and military peoples, like Bruce Willis (he keeps getting more dashing with age, and skinnier too?), Morgan Freeman (somebody free this man from schlock like this!), John Malkovich (the movie’s lone bright spot, but there’s not nearly enuff time dedicated to his character) and Helen Mirren (why isn’t she a ‘Dame’ yet?).  And while the plot and the plot never truly thicken or make sense or amount to something worth caring about, we have to watch them get ‘chased’ around America by Karl Urban (love this guy) and his superior Rebecca Pidgeon (wait, is this a Mamet movie?).  Throw in a civilian love interest for Willis in the cuteness form of Mary-Louise Parker (strutting her smile, which is something she never does on Weeds), some help from the always boisterous Brian Cox and hindrance from the always annoying Richard Dreyfuss, and Red sounds like it should glow bright… red, but it doesn’t, cause it’s more like pink, and therefore needs sum mo cooking before it could be considered well done instead of well dumb, and not dumb in a fun or good way

Getting Graphic: enuff with comics and especially graphic novels getting turned into live-action snoozers.  why not keep the graphic stuffs graphical?  worked like a charm and then some for Persepolis.  might we suggest that Art Spiegelman’s Maus go that route?  Holocaust + comics = Oscar gold, right?

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Red blushes today at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Expendables
Not Nearly Over The Top Enuff
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

As expected, The Expendables has big ass beloved action stars of yesteryear involved in some big ass explosions, while expounding big assed corny dialog.  So why does all the big-assedness feel so small?  And why is Charisma Carpenter in this movie?  And why isn’t she nekkid?  Writer/director/actor Sylvester Stallone‘s heart and mind, and pals, are all in the right place here, but when all is daid and sone, The Expendables is a missed opportunity at exploding exploitation.  Perhaps in the hands of someone more ironic like Robert Rodriguez, this could worked out a lot better instead of being what it is, which is not much, but not totally nothing, so it’s sorta something… we guess

So who are The Expendables?  Do you really care?  They’re a multi-ethnic paramilitary group for hire that are hired to take down other multi-ethnic paramilitary groups and collect cash and a bunch of battle scares at the end of the job.  In this adventure, they’re hired by Bruce Willis(!!!!, but only in it for one scene, which he also shares with Schwarzenegger.  boy, do we miss him and his eeuauaughhhuauaahhing) to take down a Central American island dictator (David Zayas, another Dexter player Stallone has drafted, after he enlisted Julie Benz for Rambo), who’s really juss a puppet for a shady ex-CIAer played by Eric Roberts (who’s a better actor than her sister, duh!!) and his right hand henchman Steve Austin, and they are all evil or something and so they muss be taken down or else or something!  OK!  So our team springs into action.  And what a team! Jason Statham! Jet Li! Dolph Lundgren (who knew he was so awesome???  seriously!!!)! Randy Couture! Terry Crews! and Mickey Rourke, as a sorta Q character!

And guess what happens next???  Shoot!  Knife!  Boom!  Death!  Zzzzzz!!  Nothing special!! WE DON’T EVEN REMEMBER ANYMORE!?!?  Is it too late to request even MORE CORNY DIALOG????  And why no mention of the characters’ full names????  Czech these babies out: Lee Christmas, Ying Yang, Gunner Jensen, James Munroe, Toll Road, Tool and our personal fav, Hale Caesar!!!  Wish this movie was something we could hail.  Yes, we were moist happy to see these worthy actors put back into action, but we juss wish the action was more jacksony.  Speaking of, where was Apollo Creed?  Or Mr T? Or Chuck Norris of Van Damme? or CGI Andre The Giant?  HE ONLY DUCK PADDLES!!!

Planet Best: ah, the early 90s, where hath you gone?

Verdictgo:Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Expendables dulls bulls todat at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Cop Out
Chasing Lame-y
Official Website | Trailer & Mo

Anyone who was involved in the making of Cop Out should not only be embarrassed, but they should personally surrender their paycheck to any audience member who makes the giant mistake of seeing this ‘throwback’ of an 80s buddy cop flick. It’s more of a throw-up than a throwback and all prints of this movie should be burned and have their ashes scattered in the Chernobyl reactor so no one would dare to try and retrieve them. We kinda wonder how Cop Out woulda turned out had it moved forward with its original name, A Couple of Dicks, and original duo, Robin Williams and James Gandolfini! But wonder(ing) is for crappy white bread, so what we’re forced to deal with is Kevin Smith‘s directed take on Robb and Mark Cullen‘s script, although we do wonder how much more awfuler it might have been had Kevin Smith written the script himself

How did this fail more than fail itself? Yes, Kevin Smith’s name doesn’t scream comedy gold or anything remotely good, but pairing Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan does, and yet the end result is Willis looking like a dumbfounded babysitter, as Morgan unbelievably has more screen chemistry with Seann William Scott than he did with Willis. And how could this script ever be considered a 2008 Black Listee, since it seems like there’s a ton of good reasons why it was never produced back then. The plot is this: Willis is suspended w/o pay for a month, which sucks since he has need duckets for his daughter’s wedding, so he decides to sell his Andy Pafko Topps #1 card (a card that hactually has more meaning to us and My Man Markvus, since we used to write Beckett Baseball Card Monthly monthly, during our middle school daze, pleading with them to raise the value of that card since it was Topps’ very very first one!!), but as the sale is about to go down, it gets STOLEN, and then Willis and Morgan have to jump thru hoops (including the likes of Stifler, Susie Essman, Fred Armisen, Guillermo Díaz, Kevin Pollak and his partner Adam Brody?) to get it back! OH NO!!!!! How will it end????? All we’ll say is that the card gets destroyed, his daughter gets married, and every joke found in between, save for a few of Morgan’s improvisations, falls flatter than your 5th grade crush’s chest (we’re gonna keep using this joke for as long as horrid comedies eggist)

OK, there was one redeeming thang about the whole affair: the return of longtime moth-balled synth composer Harold Faltermeyer (Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun & The Running Man). And the only reason why he was called in was cause Smith wanted him, which is no real sirprize since Faltermeyer scored Fletch and Smith was to make a third Fletch movie, but that spankfully never happened, which restored our faith in a higher being, and if Cop Out is any indication of his Smith’s ability to handle a funny-actioner, lettuce hope that it cements his non-involvement in any future Fletch endeavors, or anything for that matter that has an IQ over the lowest common denominator. For more on Faltermeyer, prick up yer ears to this solid interview with him

De La Soul To Her Hole : we never reviewed Nacho Libre, so butter late than never when dropping love to Ana de la Reguera

Verdictgo: Slit Yer Eyes Out Repoopulous

Cop Out strikes out today at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…