Liam Neeson (Schindler’s List, Taken) continues his one great movie, one terrible movie, one great movie, one terrible movie streak with the intense Non-Stop, perhaps the second most exciting airplane movie ever made (and no, I’m not ranking it behind Snakes on a Plane). I think Air Force One set the standard back in 1997, but Non-Stop is precisely that…nonstop. It’ll keep you glued to the screen for its 1 hour 47 minute running time. Is this movie plausible? Absolutely not. Does that deter from the experience? Only if you’ll let it. Are the coincidences totally out of control? Of course, they are. But if you want to be entertained with an action-oriented whodunit, you could do much worse. I wish I had seen this movie on the big screen. So far, 2014 has been terrible for film, but Non-Stop is the best movie of the year’s first half.
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Category Archives: Action
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
I’m not the biggest fan of reboots. I often think, “Why?” or “What’s the point?” or, “Can Hollywood not come up with an original idea?”. However, at the same time, I’m a big fan of origin stories. Usually, if the first movie in a franchise is good, I’ll keep watching the sequels until they start to stink. Once you lose me, though, you lose me, and I’m not coming back. So each subsequent movie in a franchise doesn’t necessarily need to be better than the starting movie (in fact, I don’t expect it to be), but it still better be pretty darn good. My favorite movies in the last decade include Batman Begins, Iron Man, and The Hangover. These three movies illustrate my point perfectly. The Dark Knight, unquestionably, and The Dark Knight Rises, probably, were both better than Batman Begins. In the Iron Man franchise, Iron Man was the best, Iron Man 2 was very good, but not great, and Iron Man 3 was still decent. With The Hangover, the first one was brilliant, The Hangover 2 one had me asking, “Why are they doing this again?” and the third one was so terrible that I will not pay another dollar if these franchises continue and has made me much less interested in ever watching the original one again.
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G.I.Joe: Retaliation (2013)
G.I. Joe: Retaliation, the sequel to 2009’s cash cow G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, is one of those “so bad that it’s good” movies. However, I’ll take it even a step forward. This movie was so awful that it was awesome. It won’t get reflected in my rating, and this is the type of movie that I usually would rip to shreds (aka White House Down, The Day After Tomorrow, and numerous others), but this was a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed while, at the same, chastising it throughout my entire viewing. Perhaps I was kinder to this film because of how much G.I. Joe was part of my childhood. At the same time, that should also be the reason I should be ripping it the most. If I’m willing to give another franchise a chance to ruin some of my childhood memories, then I would hope that the movie is a success at the box office and with critics so that the franchise will continue. Before getting into the specifics of what I liked and didn’t like about this movie, I will say first that they probably had hundreds, if not thousands, of potential scripts that they could have pulled for both this movie and The Rise of Cobra. I don’t remember The Rise of Cobra enough to comment on it right now, but the script for Retaliation was utterly insane. Continue reading G.I.Joe: Retaliation (2013)
Rush (2013)
Rush is a movie that I thought would be dumb based on the trailer. If produced n the early 80s, I would have been all about it. But with so many sports movies created since then, I honestly feel like there isn’t much that is able to make it feel original. So many sports movies have the “been there/done that” approach. They retell Rocky over and over and over again. On top of that, it’s a car racing movie, which is generally something that doesn’t interest me. Also, it is Formula 1 racing, which I find far less exciting than NASCAR. I’ve never seen a Formula 1 race live, and the experience certainly doesn’t translate on the screen for me…especially the road races. Finally, the name of the movie bothered me. There is already a fantastic movie called Rush that came out in 1991 and starred Jason Patric (he was born to play the roles of troubled police detectives) and Jennifer Jason Leigh. It’s a small thing, but something that I thought Ron Howard would respect. Despite these factors going against it before the opening titles even rolled, I found the movie to be a great story, quite enjoyable, and well directed.
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2 Guns (2013)
2 Guns is not my type of movie because it isn’t sure what it wants to be. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it contains relationships between the characters that seem meaningful. At times, it’s a terrible drama. At times, it’s a comedy that isn’t funny. At times, it’s a lame attempt at a shoot ’em up in Quentin Tarantino style. Its lead actors are all over the place. In short, it’s a movie that doesn’t know what it wants to be. It’s also a movie that wastes the talents of two great actors, Denzel Washington (Training Day, American Gangster) and Mark Wahlberg (Shooter, The Italian Job). It’s a little ironic because this was Washington’s first movie since his outstanding performance in Flight and the last movie Wahlberg shot before his outstanding performance in Lone Survivor. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a movie that either of these actors wishes they had not done, but it is a movie that I wish they hadn’t done.
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