Expendables 2
The
Expendables films (though I’ve not seen the 3rd yet) seem to exist
in a weird parallel universe where crappy action films don’t exist, despite the
fact that this series only came about because said films launched and sustained
the careers of a number of the cast.
If
you like seeing pumped up old men shooting CGI blood out of vaguely Eastern
European thugs (and East Asian in the opening sequence) then this is for you.
However,
there’s little flair and finesse despite the decades of effort trying to depict
men hitting and shooting at each other in new and interesting ways – there
don’t seem to be any lessons learned from any stand out action moments, whether
80s Hong Kong Action cinema or the shake-up that was the Bourne series.
Instead
you get tired nods to the likes of Chuck Norris and Arnold Schwarzenegger as
they are literally shoehorned into the film with the main characters themselves
saying “Where did they come from?”.
The
jokey-jokey tone of most of it renders attempts at drama very flat –Liam
Hemsworth plays a young new addition to the team who is promptly captured and
murdered by the baddies (they’re sort of Satanists in case you wanted their
badness glaringly signposted). His murder is the spur for the Expendables to go
and get revenge, so essentially a plot point but they do try and get Stallone
to be a bit mopey about it so he can get angry when he faces off against Jean
Claude Van Damme!
JCVD
plays the head of the Satanist baddies and is mister ruthless. He wears shades
most of the time, because his eyes are so old they remind you of the Emperor
from Star Wars. Still, he enjoys the chance to play a ridiculously silly bad
guy, so he’s fun to watch.
Equally
fun is Dolph Lundgren, back again to play a weird adolescent suddenly grown
into an aging, lethal mountain.
Ultimately
the Expendables 2 is less satisfying than most of the work the cast did to get
famous decades ago – the action is a little pedestrian, the jokes aren’t funny
and obviously the acting is minimal, so there’s no strong element to hold the
others up.
Miss
Bala
Brilliantly
shot composing of a lot of static cameras panning with the action, tightly
focused tracking shots and still moments where the camera remains trained on
our heroine as events (usually violent) unfold off screen. The only music used
is ambient, and these techniques along with fantastic performance by the lead
make this film all the more harrowing.
Laura
Guerrero wants to enter the local beauty pageant, but after going to a club to find
her friend a group of cartel soldiers turns up to attack the police partying at
the club. She escapes and the next day tries to find out what happened to
her friend by asking a cop, but he's paid by the cartel, and a nightmare begins
where she finds herself embroiled in Mexico's drug war.
From the
point of view of a civilian, where we only see and hear what she does, a lot of
the events are left for the audience to deduce, a refreshing change from the
usual films involving the drug trade that tend to spend a lot of time setting
the scene.
Impressive.
Halo
4: Forward Unto Dawn
Boring,
pointless exercise, cashing in on a very successful game franchise which has a
deep, if generic, back story.
The
acting is perfunctory, the focus on the trials of cadets regurgitates many
tropes of the military training scenes found in countless lumps of movies and
TV shows and the glimpses of the alien threat of the Covenant, whilst suitably
menacing from a human perspective, somehow doesn’t have the heft of Neil
Blokampf’s short based in the same franchise.
Whilst
the film feels like an extended pilot to a TV show that never was, it’s
actually comprised of 15 minute segments stitched together with a little extra
footage added to paper the cracks. It’s not surprising that Microsoft soon gave
up on any studio ambitions.
Not
good enough to keep fans of the franchise attentive let alone sci-fi fans
drifting in blind.
Starship
Troopers: Invasion
Shinji
Aramaki’s animated entry into the ailing franchise which has suffered since the
first sequel appeared.
This
take on the universe uses well worn sci-fi tropes of marines sent to a base
that has mysteriously gone quiet, an alien intelligence taking over computer
systems, betrayal from secretive and/or high levels of authority, a grizzled
soldier know for his survival and killing abilities but haunted etc. etc.
The
animation is just poor.
Captain
Harlock Space Pirate
Korean-produced
anime saga about an immortal space pirate who aims to return to a forbidden
Earth, cut off from a future space-faring humanity after it burns through the
colony planets and promptly starts a war with itself on its return home.
The
plot is forgettable, as are the CGI visuals despite their improvement in the years
since Shinji Aramaki directed the 2004 adaptation of Appleseed.
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