Movie Review – A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)
A Good Day to Die Hard is akin to watching a former World Heavyweight boxing champion enter the ring for one last kick at the can only to have his opponent pulverize him into submission in no time flat. Make no mistake, not only is A Good Day to Die Hard, the worst installment in the franchise but it is also one of the lamest and totally irrelevant action adventures to come out of Hollywood in years. This is the type of movie that ends careers and this time I am not talking about Bruce Willis but his on-screen alter-ego, John McClane.
Movie Review – Chinese Zodiac (2012)
Supposedly Jackie Chan’s “last full-length action spectacle” Chinese Zodiac certainly marks the end of an era yet does Chan go out on a high note or does he embarrass himself silly? For the most part, Chinese Zodiac is a return to form that exemplified Chan’s Chinese movie output circa the 1980s and early 1990s before Rumble in the Bronx propelled him to make a slew of average Hollywood movies. This basically means that Chan has returned to making a lighthearted hokey film where the focus is clearly on innovative physical action sequences featuring Chan doing all his own stunts at the expense of plot, characterization and pace. At the same time Chinese Zodiac features one horrendous misfire by including a totally pompous and preachy morality angle where characters often lurch into long patriotic diatribes that have as much subtlety as a giant mallet to the face.
Movie Review – The Guillotines (2012)
A modern reworking only very loosely based on the 1975 Shaw Brothers film this new installment of The Guillotines (2012) by director Andrew Lau is completely D.O.A. with a completely impenetrable patch-work plot, cardboard characters and a lack of guillotine-inspired action. Lau is no stranger to the action genre having helmed some of the biggest Hong Kong films of the past few decades including Young and Dangerous, The Storm Riders, A Man Called Hero and the entire Infernal Affairs trilogy making The Guillotines’ total lack of action acumen a mystery on the level of the location of the Lost Ark of the Covenant.
Trailer #1 – The Wolverine (2013)
After a decidedly long wait 20th Century Fox has finally released the first trailer for The Wolverine, the direct sequel to X-Men Origins: Wolverine and essentially continuing the timeline set from the X-Men trilogy. Once again Hugh Jackman reprises his career-making role as the title character this time joined by other actors such as Will Yun Lee, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tao Okamoto and Svetlana Khodchenkova.
Trailer #1 – White House Down (2013)
With Olympus Has Fallen being a larger than expected hit racking up roughly $33 million against a $70 million budget in its first four days it seems Sony/Columbia pictures has decided to remind everyone out there that there is another similar movie coming out this summer. Therefore, here is the first trailer to White House Down directed by disaster movie maestro Roland Emmerich the man who brought you Independence Day, 2012, The Day After Tomorrow and 10,000 BC.
Trailer #2 – World War Z (2013)
Here is the second trailer for Brad Pitt’s upcoming zombie flick World War Z which adds quite a bit of new footage not seen previously. The action certainly seems solid enough as does the obvious end of world angle although it remains to be seen if director Marc Forster can rebound after the lamentable Quantum of Solace and the underperforming Machine Gun Preacher.
Movie Review – The Treasure Hunter (2009)
Treasure Hunter is a film so inept that it defies explanation and begs the eternal question, “What were they thinking?” It is almost as if the entire cast and crew got together at the start of production with one goal in mind to make a movie so abysmal that it would give eternal whipping boy Battlefield Earth a run for its money as one of, if not the worse, movie of all time. This is one of those films that leave a foul odour in its wake and all involved should be supremely embarrassed by the end product so shockingly dire that they should count themselves lucky if they ever are employed in the industry again.
Movie Trailer – The Colony (2013)
It is very rare that a film pops up and surprises me in any way as I usually stay abreast of what is going on in the movie world yet here is one example of a title that completely flew under the radar until the trailer popped up today. The Colony is sure to make one of my friends giddy with delight just because it stars Laurence Fishburne and good old Bill “Game over man!” Paxton in what looks like yet another post-apocalyptic science fiction yarn that obviously borrows heavily from past genre heavyweights. Seriously, the plot looks like a complete mishmash of titles from Day After Tomorrow to The Thing to Aliens.
