Lawless

Lawless

Rating 5 out of 10

I had very high hopes for this movie.  The trailer looks like an action packed movie of the moonshiners in the Prohibition Era.  Bad cops against the guys getting rich making moonshine.

I will say the acting is very good.  I like Tom Hardy (from one of my all time favorite movies Warrior- if you haven't seen it you need to rent it!)  and he does a good job as the elder Bondurant brother-Forrest and one of the baddest dudes in the land.  He oversees the family moonshine organization in back woods Virginia where the local police not only look the other way but are one of their good customers.  Shia LaBeouf plays the younger brother who never really measured up.  The lovely Jessica Chastain is thrown in as the hot ex-stripper now working in their country cafe.

When the corrupt Feds come in and shake down the moonshiners- they either pay up or they will use the law to shut them down- Forrest tells them he doesn't bow down to anyone.  The main bad guy for the Feds in Guy Pearce with one of the goofiest haircuts I have ever seen.  The battle begins.

The problem for me is the battle isn't much of a battle.  It is very slow paced and doesn't flow very well.  They do battle then nothing for a long time.  This to me seemed more like a documentary of the old days than an action packed movie.

This will make a good rental.

Premium Rush

Premium Rush

Rating 6.5 out of 10

I'm not sure on the timing of the release of this movie.  It seems more like an early summer movie.  When I saw the trailer for Premium Rush I had a mild interest in seeing it.  Saw some pretty good reviews on it.  Had some time to kill so I gave it a shot.

This movie won't win any awards and yes has a few plot holes.  Still I found it entertaining and worth the price of the ticket.  Acting was good.  Action was good.  It was a fun way to kill a couple hours.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (maybe the next Robin for Batman?) plays our superstar NYC bike messenger Wilee (as in coyote).  He is a burned out law student that can't stand being trapped in an office.  He rides thru the city on an old school bike with no breaks taking chances no human should take.  When it absolutely has to get there they call Wilee.

On this day Wilee picks up a package from a law student he knows and is told it was very important.  Yep and dangerous too.  A very bad dirty cop played by great character actor Michael Shannon wants the package and will do anything to get it.

There are a several twists and turns.  Nothing earth shattering but as I said fun to watch.  I enjoyed it.

Expendables 2

Expendables 2

Rating 8.5 out of 10

This is a movie I have been waiting for.  I liked the first Expendables movie while admitting it was lacking.  These movies have testosterone  by the train car full.  Virtually every bad ass action star in the last twenty years was in Expendables.  Anyone they forgot they picked up for Expendables 2.

Returning from the first movie was Sylvester Stalone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Randy Couture.  Expanding their cameo roles was Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis.  To add some female kick ass they brought in newbie Nan Yu. For some young blood in comes heart throb Liam Hemsworth.  Playing a great bad guy we get Jean-Claude Van Damme.

The movie actually has a complicated and intricate plot... Oh, who am I kidding.  The basic plot was probably written on a cocktail napkin at a Stalone party.  Good guys go into China to recover a secret file that was in a safe when a plane went down.  The file shows where the makings for nuclear bombs were buried by the Russians.  Why would these be in a plane flying over China?  Who cares.  Did I tell you Chuck Norris is in the movie too.  When Van Damme makes the mistake of killing one of the crew he opens the whole can of whoop ass.  Now it's time for the Expendables to hunt him down and make him pay.

How do you know who the good guys are?  They of course are the ones standing in the middle of everything killing bad guys by the dozens (literally) without hardly a scratch.  The best thing Expendables 2 does is poke fun at itself.  It doesn't take itself too seriously which could easily turn into boring hokum. Several laugh out loud moments.  My biggest complaint was at just under two hours the movie wasn't long enough.  With so many action stars there scenes had to be cut to less than I'd like to see.  I guess they are saving something for Expendables 3 which will probably be out next Summer.  They will have to knock these out quickly before Stalone or one of the other aging stars breaks a hip or something.

I show a little age with this one when Chuck Norris pops out to help the good guys and my 15 year old wonders who that is.  Seriously?

If you watch this trailer and think it looks like a fun time at the movie then you should make your way to the theater.  Lots of blood and things that go boom so it's not for everyone.  The wife won't bother seeing this one.  I think I'll go see it again.

Hope Springs

Hope Springs

Rating 5 out of 10

Had a date with the lovely bride.  Riding motorcycles to breakfast and then a movie.  With it being a date movie you can be assured nothing will blow up and most likely no one will get shot.  She picked Hope Springs and with the laughs in the trailer it looked like a good choice.  It had a top notch cast including Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones and Steve Carell.  It's a decent enough movie.  It's just not a comedy.  There are a few funny parts, but mostly this is a wrenching drama about an aging couple stuck in a loveless marriage.

Kay (Streep) and Arnold (leather faced Jones showing his age) have been married for 31 years.  Never a hot and heavy type of marriage it has gone stale in the past five years when the kids left the house.  They are sleeping in separate bedrooms and hardly touch.  Kay decides she is ready for things to change.  Arnold likes the slow boring life and just wants to watch the golf channel before he falls asleep at night.  Kay finds Dr. Feld (Carell) who specializes in marriage counseling in the small Maine town of Hope Springs.

The acting is so good it's painful to watch this couple try to work things out.  Carell is very good as he tries to help them work through things.  Sadly for me things get harder to watch when they start working things out.  Both lead actors are in their late 60's and even at my age it's like watching my parents make out or worse.  While nothing too graphic is shown it still goes a little farther than I was comfortable seeing.

Not a bad movie if you are in the mood for a relationship movie and not expecting a comedy.  I'd say wait and rent it.

Bourne Legacy

The Bourne Legacy

Rating 7 out of 10

I was never a big fan of the Bourne movies with Matt Damon.  I like Damon enough and felt he did a good job.  I just never felt the story was that great or believable and mostly the stupid shaky cam the director used.  Drove me nuts!  I am glad to say the new Bourne movie shy's away from most of the shaky cam.

The trio of Bourne movies either ran it's course or Matt Damon decided to move on.  This movie actually has very little to do with Bourne and just milks the name.  It does milk the name fairly well.  It seems Jason Bourne's success in averting the government agencies that were looking for him causes a domino effect in closing down all the other secret programs in progress.  Those evil CIA people along with another group so secret I can't remember the name has come up with a drug that turns spies into SUPER spies.  They think better, jump higher, shoot straighter, ect.  When they shut this program down it means killing all of these super spies to hide all the evidence.

This is where Aaron Cross comes in.  He is harder to kill than the others.  In the hands of a lesser actor this could have been a campy rip off movie.  Jeremy Renner does an exceptional job as the super spy.  He makes the movie.  When Cross realizes he has been targeted he goes on the search for the little blue pill.  Not THAT blue pill.  The one that he has to take every 24 hours to keep up his super strength.  That leads him to Dr Marta Shearing played by the lovely Rachel Weisz. Dr. Shearing was to be eliminated too so she and Aaron Cross are off to the races with the really bad guys not far behind.

As I said Renner and Weisz are very good.  There are enough action scenes to satisfy the Bourne fans.  My problem is it becomes obvious when you leave the theater it isn't so much a movie with a beginning, middle and end as it is a reboot setting you up for the next Bourne movie.

I enjoyed it even though I didn't care for the ending.  Slightly better than rental only because of the good action scenes.

My daughter when I told her what I thought of the movie pointed out that I had not liked that many movies this year.  I said I noticed that too.  Luckily I haven't hated many either.  Plenty of movies like this one that I enjoyed watching but can't highly recommend to my friends.  I'll keep hoping...

Total Recall

Total Recall

Rating 6.5 out of 10

I saw the original Total Recall back in 1990 staring Arnold Schwarzenegger.  I barely remembered it.  I remember it not being that good and wondering why they'd remake it.  I looked up my mini-review (yes I have been doing these since 1985) and found I gave the original a 5 rating.  I thought the plot was kinda stupid but the effects were good.

I would say the new version of Total Recall is much the same yet better.

In the future (not sure how far in the future) nuclear wars have left much of the world unlivable.  There are two areas left where big domes have been built.  The rich live in one dome and the poor workers live in the other.  The rich are the bad guys of course and they have an evil plot that centers around our star Doug Quaid (Colin Farrell).  In the future you can take a vacation just by sitting in a chair and letting your mind go places your body can't.  When Doug tries this things go bad wrong.  Turns out Doug was a super spy that had his mind wiped and a new life put in place.  Those evil bastards have put him in a small apartment with Kate Beckinsale as the loving affectionate wife.  How do I sign up for this??

Some of the plot makes sense.  Some does not.  The action is very good.  Colin Ferrell is in his top form hunky self.  Kate is always the price of the movie ticket.  If you want a good action movie and don't want to bother much with plot line you could do worse than this.  It's not much more than that.