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The problem with The Expendables is its initial hype. Before the movie came out we were told that Stallone, Willis, Arnold, Chuck Norris, hell everyone but Jackie Chan was going to be in a kick-ass action movie together raising the level of sexagenarian kickassery to levels never before imagined. Unfortunately, Chuck Norris was too busy being an internet meme and spouting off racist nonsense (and let’s not even pretend that the whole birther movement isn’t racist to its core, did any of the White Presidents have to constantly prove they were citizens?) and Jen-Claude VanDamme was too busy playing, uh, Jean-Claude VanDamme to be involved.  So what we ended up with is Stallone and Jason Statham running around chasing after (spoiler) Dolph Lundgren and making fun of Jet Lee.  Basically, what I’m saying is that no matter what The Expendables was, it could never live up to its own hype. (I’d also like to take one of my famous parenthetical asides right now to point out that Joe Rich is not “the ultimate male,” I don’t give a damn what BMXers think, Dolph Lundgren is the ultimate male. Masters degree in Chemical Engineering? check.  Fullbright scholarship to MIT? check. Olympic athlete? check. Olympic coach? check. Kicked Rocky’s ass? um hmm. Impregnated Grace Jones. Twice. And lived. Fuck yeah. Ultimate. Male.).

You may be wondering what The Expendables has to do with Three The Hard Way.  Well, they are, in many ways, the same movie. TTHW was to feature the biggest (Black) action stars of the day in a movie full of extreme kick assery.  Unlike The Expendables Three The Hard Way’s hype didn’t write a check its ass couldn’t cash, it is exactly what it says it is.  Slaughter, Kung Fu Jones and The Hammer banded together to kick the ass of The Man and keep society free for all the Soul Brothas and Sistas out there.

Say what?

And directed by the guy who brought you Superfly.

The excuse for poorly choreographed fight scenes plot involves the evil Mr. Feather (Jay Robinson) and his henchman, Dr. Fortrero (Richard Angarola) developing a chemical which kills Black people, but is harmless to Whites.  Now, we won’t get into details about how it determines what “Black” is.  I mean, I myself am a bit Creek and at least a little Irish and a tad Welsh.  What about the mulatto kids out there?  Would Tiger Woods just get stomach cramps?  There are a lot of unanswered questions here.  Anyway, in order to keep his plan a secret he had to kill the one man who knew, this man happened to be a close personal friend of noted music producer/vigilante Jimmy Lait (Jim “Black Gunn”"I Promise To Stop Beating Women” Brown).  For some reason Mr. Feather thinks that kidnapping Jimmy’s hot, braless girlfriend (Sheila Frazier) would stop him from getting killed.

(Spoiler)

He is wrong.

Instead, Jimmy grabs his friends Jagger Daniels (Fred “Boss Nigger” Williamson) and Mister Keyes (Jim “Black Samurai” Kelly) and proceed to rain down hell onto Mister Feather’s operation. Stopping Mister Feather from “testing” his poison in DC, Detroit and LA (see, each of the three has to take on an army of racist Whites, the hard way) our heroes embark on a combination of Blaxploitation tropes and unbelievable happenings including but not limited to:

• Alex Rocco as an honest, but obviously ineffectual, cop who will either completely disappear before the end of the movie or get killed by his racist fellow cops.
• A car driving off the top of a parking garage and exploding.  Not when it hits the ground, but when it hits the air.
• A White man outrunning three Black men in a foot race.
• A truck exploding when it drives through a billboard. This billboard is 36″ off the ground.
• One of our heroes taking time out from saving the world to get some sweet lovin’ from his main mama.  You know what I’m talkin’ ’bout. Bow chika bow wow…
• Women who work topless for no apparent reason. As interrogators/torturers.
• A shootout, in Chicago, in the middle of the day in an arcade.
• Cars changing make/model/year (but not color) mid scene.
• A mansion blowing up because it could.
• A young Corbin Bernsen.

As you can see there’s a lot going on in this movie.  A lot of AWESOME.  See the below fight scene where Jim “I Was in Enter the Dragon” Kelly takes out some racist cops.  Note also how at the beginning of the fight he’s wearing stylish boots, during the fight he’s wearing adidas and at the end of the fight…stylish boots.  He’s so kick ass that he can change shoes and kick ass (as an aside I do, in fact, know someone who’s first name is “Mr” because you legally have to have at least two names).

Truly this movie is worth it for the fight choreography alone.

Someone had at one point posted this entire movie to YouTube, but it’s been removed.  Fear not, though, you can get it the same way that I did.  Fry’s has the “Urban Action Collection” available for $10 that’ll net you not only Three The Hard Way, but Black Samson, Kung-Fu Jones and Hot Potato. Seriously, pick this up.  It’s good for you.

With all the debate raging over Inception (which, apparently, you either love completely or you’re an infidel) I thought it was time to put into words my feelings on Christopher Nolan’s last film which everyone loved.  And why it’s ok, but not great.

Let’s start this off with, I haven’t seen Inception.  I probably won’t see Inception.  I’ve seen four Christopher Nolan films.  I think that’s enough.  I think he may be the most overrated director ever.  Not that he’s bad, but I don’t get the genius that everyone else throws out at him.  I mean, Memento – once you got passed the hook of it being a movie running backwards – was boring, rote and full of holes and The Prestige.  That one just hurt (although, casting David Bowie as Nicola Tesla was genius, I mean, it wouldn’t surprise me if Bowie was conducting mad scientist experiments in his own basement for real).

Then there’s Batman Begins.  To understand what’s wrong with The Dark Knight you have to go back to the beginning.  For Batman Begins Nolan’s stated plan was to remove everything that didn’t make sense about Batman operating in the real world.  So, we don’t get a lot of iconic Batman shots, like Batman swinging from roof to roof as his primary form of transportation.  But we do get a lot of stuff that makes sense like a 10 ton armored assault vehicle driving on roofs with no respect to building codes or physics, Katie Holmes and a guy dressed like a giant, rubber bat…with a cape.

Robble robble robble

See, that was the problem, he wanted to make something that doesn’t make sense, that can’t make sense, make sense. Things only got worse with The Dark Knight.  It is a serious movie.  A very serious movie.  Watching this movie, I feel, was like staring into the same black hole of despair that a 13 year old, suburban goth girls stare into the first time they hear Fascination Street.  There was absolutely no joy to be had here.  At almost no point there was nothing to smile about, nothing to be delighted about.  It’s a funny book movie without an ounce of funny, without a second of relief.

There’s an anime series called Full Metal Alchemist.  The first thing that happens in the series is the heroes’ mother dies when they are 10 and 14 years old.  That is the least depressing thing in the entire series.

The Dark Knight was Christopher Nolan watching FMA, going, “Fuck that, why are there these moments of joy and happiness in it?” then ripping all of those out.  The movie was physically oppressive.  Which is true mostly because.

Christopher Nolan doesn’t understand the Joker.

To be fair this complaint is comic book geeky, but I think it’s valid.  The Joker, aka the Clown Prince of Crime, believes that he is funny.  That’s been a consistent part of his characterization for as far as I can remember.  Not only does the Joker think he’s funny, but he wants everyone else to think he’s funny.  But The Dark Knight’s Joker can’t be bothered with being funny, he’s busy being an “agent of chaos.”  Right, yeah.  It didn’t have to be that way, “the pencil trick,” set up a Joker who, you know, joked, but it was a throw away gag and the last bit of humor to be found.

Oh yeah, also:

Wait 'til they get a loada me.

Plus

Don't do it...not even once

Equals

Why so serious?

My wife actually pointed that out.  I spent and entire movie trying to figure out why Ledger’s Joker was so familiar to me.  Because he wasn’t playing The Joker.  He was playing Jack Nicholson playing The Joker.  The difference is, Tim Burton got the characterization right.

But even all of that I’d have forgiven.  Yes, yes I would have.  Until this.

Dear Christopher Nolan,

I made my way through the vast majority of The Dark Knight (which I paid extra to see in IMAX) without ending my own life due to its complete lack of anything resembling joy and its apparent desire to out “grim n’ gritty” the entire comics output of the 90s.  But then I got to the one scene. You know the one, where Harvey Dent is laying in his hospital bed, suffering injuries that would have killed a mortal normal sensical real man wondering why he was played by Billy Dee Williams in the first two films, but replaced by Tommy Lee Jones the second the role became a major one and out of nowhere the man who killed the woman he loves shows up.

and hands him a gun

and convinces him that he should seek revenge/take out his rage on people who had nothing to do with killing his girlfriend, especially the ones who tried to save her life.  But he should, in no way kill the man who not only actually killed his girlfriend, but prevented everyone else from saving her by using l33t supervillan skillz.

THIS MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE.

Can you please explain it to me?

Thank You,
G. Edward Jones, Jr.

A salve'll take care of that

Dear G. Edward,

Thank you for paying extra to see The Dark Knight in IMAX.  I’m sure you can agree that, like all of my movies, it has an internal logic that doesn’t hold up under the most rudimentary scrutiny, but on IMAX it looks orgasmicly amazing.  Also, enough people handed over the extra sheckles to buy me a brand new Phantom Drophead.

To answer your question. BECAUSE FUCK YOU, THAT’S WHY! I’m CHRISTOPHER FUCKING NOLAN!

I do, however, apologize deeply for The Prestige, that was just doo doo.

Sincerely,
Christopher Nolan

Yup, exactly what I thought.

There are movies that are so bad they’re good and there are movies that are so bad they’re bad.  You’d think a movie called Mega Shark v. Giant Octopus would be the former.

Idiot.

No, no, I was fooled, too.

In Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus Debbieorah Gibson plays a cougar who drives a submarine around and has sex with an Asian guy.  Lorenzo Lamas plays a bad ass who’s in charge of the military.  We know he’s a bad ass because he wears all black instead of a uniform and has a pony tail.  We’re never actually told what it is he does, but it’s bad ass.  The story revolves around Deborahbie Gibson falling in love with a geeky, Japanese scientist.

No, no, really.

OK, here we go.  Debbie Gibson and a friend steal a research submarine and find a megalodon and a giant octopus trapped in ice.

These two giants of the deep go on to do crazy shit like, eat an airliner from the sky (see, Great Whites jump from the ocean to eat birds, so obviously a giant Great White could eat a cruising jumbo jet) destroy an oil rig off the coast of Asia (I think it was Japan, but does it really matter?  I think a member of the government apologized to the octopus for causing an ecological disaster) and, oh yeah, eating the golden gate bridge.

The last interesting thing that happens in the whole, damn movie

Debbie Gibson then lets the Japanese scientist put his electric youth in her and they decide that phermones will cause the Mega Shark to versus the Giant Octopus…which it does…for four minutes (I know I timed it). Then the movie ends.

I know you’re like “George, this synopsis sucks, it doesn’t tell us anything and is confusing.” Yes, it makes more sense than the movie and has imparted pretty much the entirety of it.  MSvGO is the kind of movie where they couldn’t be bothered to film the stock footage of a hand on a joystick steering left, right, up and down, therefore it looks like the protagonist got a manicure 7 times in 2 minutes in a submarine.  You can just imagine an actor asking the director, “If Debbie Gibson is trying to sneak into a secure, government research area on a beach, why would she wear 4″ heels and a mini skirt?” and the director looking back at him and with all seriousness replying, “Why? BECAUSE FUCK YOU, THAT’S WHY!!!!!!!!!!” It’s a movie called Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus that’s two hours long and has the title battle end in less than five minutes.  It may be the worst movie ever.

Really, no, really.  The synopsis on IMDB pretty much sums it all up.

I just don’t understand why this movie was ever made..May be the producer was itching to let some(Few million) money slip out of his fingers, just like that. Apart from the title of the movie, there is nothing else that is worthy of attention….

This movie was Dead dull from beginning to end and bear with me as i unfold its mysteries(as if there were any!!!)

(AGAIN SPOILERS AHEAD SO SAVE YOURSELF SOME TIME AND CONSIDER THE ABOVE MESSAGE AS A WARNING AND CARRY ON WITH YOUR BUSINESS!!!!) …………………… ………………………. …………………………….. …………………………….. ……………………………………. ………………………………………… …………………………………………. ……………………………………………..

So you decided to read anyway. Never mind, let’s begin: It all begins when two scientists accidentally discover a mega shark and giant octopus buried in ice under sea.Now the ice obviously breaks due to a whale collapsing incident which our doctors were in right time to witness by the way on an experimental submarine which they had stolen for exploration( probably written in script to give the BADASS side to the otherwise nerdy protagonist i.e, Deborah Gibson the woman playing Emma)

Anyway, soon after these prehistoric creatures are at loose once again, they start hunting for food and bizarre incidents start happening all around the globe like tearing up of an oil rig by our friend octopus and disappearance of an airplane flying at 15000 feet in air at around 200 nautical miles per hour: Courtesy Mega shark(Now Come on, enough is enough!! I could digest the oil rig bit, but this is too much! The shark actually jumps i don’t know 15000 feet in the air grabs the plane by its wings and plumbs it down under the ocean,Jesus!)

Anyhoo, soon the world turns to our protagonists Emma, Her retired or i don’t know retarded professor and her would be lover Dr. Seiji Shimada for solution to this menace….So after a lot of of shots devoted to what can only be described as a high school chemistry laboratory our fellow doctors come up with a solution heromones – To lure them as bait(only after having an intense session of love making in the so called research lab storage room: this is where it strikes them!!! What a lame excuse to put a Sex Scene in the movie!!)

The creatures however are too smart for us humans and although they get lured by pheromones(now who wouldn’t!)they eventually escape, These are troubled times as our Governments are now thinking of deploying nukes to stop these beasts and by governments i mean a guy with a ponytail A.K.A Allan Baxter played by Lorenzo Lamas, now i still couldn’t figure out which agency was he working for and honestly speaking i have no stamina or will to watch this movie again, just for that!

Ultimately Our genius doctors/ Scientist Decide that since the pheromone thing worked a little bit, they are gonna give it another try, but this time they ‘ll lure the beasts to a single location far from civilization under the abyss of ocean, so that they can kill each other off and finally finish off what they started millions of of years ago…. The rest my friends, as they say, is History….

P.S- The special effects were not so “special”…

P.P.S- If these creatures were so hungry all the time why didn’t they destroyed the submarine(which had EMMA AND VINCE on board)and ate them, when it was meters away from them when they first got loose??(My guess:Otherwise the movie would not have been made!!)

Watch it at your own risk!!!

Yup, that’s about it.  That being said, I’m still so watching Mega Python vs. Gatoroid.

*The GSS posits that Godzilla is always the perfect size for causing maximum damage.  that is, if Godzilla will cause more damage by running ON buildings he will be several thousand feet tall, if he will cause more damage by running THROUGH buildings he will be the “30 stories high” he’s described as in the theme song to the cartoon