Hey, where has the time gone? Into the summer of terrible movies! What have I been watching?
Yesterday: Dredd
Not Stallone’s Poorly regarded Judge Dredd, but this year’s Dredd 3d. It currently holds a 77% fresh rating, and the first comment Katie and I had afterwards was “why is that rating so high?”
Dredd is like one of those shitty European action movies that some guy you work with is always trying to get you to watch. It all takes place in one huge tenement block, the violence is exquisite, and it doesn’t leave you feeling good. Definitely worth a look if you’re into super-slo-mo bullet penetration and brief cutaways to people being skinned alive, but since that doesn’t actually increase the buoyancy of my own personal watercraft, my personal recommendation is going to be don’t bother.
Last Week – Resident Evil: Retribution
Resident Evil is a series of movies based on a series of video games, and this year’s installment is… like… a zero player video game. It isn’t even really like a movie. The characters appear, they look at a map and discuss the sequence of levels they’ll have to progress through, every level is an action set piece, and then it’s over. I guess you get to see a nipple. Does anyone care about that in a world where Game of Thrones exists?
The best and worst part of the experience was when a neckbeard came over after the movie and started patiently explaining to Katie alllllll about the games, and which characters were hard to fight and which ones were easy, and I think he said something about a player piano, but I was getting one of those weird blood rages that I think alpha males usually get, and fingering the large pocketknife I was carrying.
Anyway: don’t bother.
Before that sometime – Expendables II
Of the three movies I’m reviewing here, this was the best. It was still mediocre, but from talking to people, I think I’m actually on the rare side of the issue. I thought this was worse than the first one, everyone else seems to have liked it better.
Anyway, the dead guy from the scary movie sends Rambo and his team of illiterates after a tiny computer, and Guile shows up to stop them. He kills the handsome rookie and the Transporter and Rocky sort of look at each other and nod and then it’s fucking ON! The flying boat has a howitzer in it now and it crashes in a mine and they shoot and shoot and shoot and then everybody makes thinly veiled references to the other movies everyone else was in which must be pretty uncomfortable for the UFC guy who’s only ever been in Expendables I. Walker, Texas Ranger, is very soft spoken.
In the end, the Muscles from Brussels takes off his sunglasses and looks like a Planet of the Apes extra, and the team gets into the Spirit of St. Louis and fucks off back to America.
Judgement: Actually the best of these three movies.