In the world of The Expendables it’s not enough to simply kill the enemy. In their boomtastic alternate reality every kill must be overkill and accompanied by a quip to punctuate the death.
“Expend4bles,” the all-star shoot ‘em up now playing in theatres, delivers quips and kills galore, but to paraphrase Tony Jaa’s character Decha, “The more people you kill, the less joy you have.”
In the new film, CIA agent Max Drummer (Andy García) rounds up the team of elite mercenaries—wizened warriors Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone), Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), sniper Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), demolitions expert Toll Road (Randy Couture) and new recruits Easy Day (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson), and Galan (Jacob Scipio)—to prevent terrorist Suarto Rahmat (Iko Uwais) from stealing nuclear bomb detonators from Muammar Gaddafi’s former old chemical weapons plant in Libya.
When things go sideways, Christmas becomes the expendable Expendable, kicked out of the group and replaced by his mercenary girlfriend Gina (Megan Fox) and her deadly colleague Lash (Levy Tran). As the new band of soldiers set off to curtail a conflict that could ignite World War III, Christmas does his part to bring peace on earth.
This 103-minute ode to murder, mayhem and manliness doesn’t waste any time getting to the money shot. The first blast of action in “Expend4bles” lights up the screen roughly one minute in, followed by lots of talky bits that come between the boomy bits.
The talky bits are mostly lines of dialogue that sound lifted from the “Action Movies for Dummies” guidebook—generic stuff like “This is gonna be fun,” as the bullets start to fly—with the odd nod to something deeper, like a settling of accounts for one’s past. When we first meet Decha, for instance, he’s a former warrior, a reformed man of violence. But his peaceful ways don’t last long, because in “The Expendables” if you’re not a killer, you’re just filler.
If you’ve seen the other movies in the franchise, you already know what to expect; lots of R-rated violence, some dodgy CGI and a body count that would make John Wick blush. But this instalment feels different, less an homage to the days when Stallone and Schwarzenegger (who sat out this chapter) were blockbuster action stars and more a collection of familiar faces cut loose in a Jason “man-on-a-mission” Statham video game. It’s the Statham Show, which dissipates the camaraderie that gave the first movies a cohesive vibe.
By the time the end credits roll the thrill is gone. Despite its all-star cast, action sequences and kill ratio, “Expend4bles” proves Decha’s, “The more people you kill, the less joy you have” philosophy correct. On their fourth time out, the Expendables seems more expendable than ever.
“Big Gold Brick,” a new absurdist comedy starring Andy Garcia and Oscar Isaac, is the kind of movie you don’t see much anymore, a Midnight Madness flick.
“I don’t remember much about the night I met Floyd,” Samuel Liston (Emory Cohen) wrote about the night that changed his life. On the night in question, in a meet-not-so-cute, the broke despondent Samuel, drunkenly wanders into the path of Floyd’s car and is struck and almost killed.
As he recovers, Floyd, an eccentric father of two, waits bedside at the hospital. Samuel is in bad shape but lucid. “He will recover,” his doctor says, “but I should tell you there will be some hurdles in the near term. Mood swings. Agitation. Confusion. Truth be told, he may never be that Samuel again.”
Samuel is still bedridden when Floyd makes a request. “Would you consider writing my biography?” The young writer declines. He prefers to write short stories, poems, the occasional essay but Floyd is persuasive. I challenge you to at least try, for once, something different. When opportunity knocks on your door, you should answer. Even if she is wearing a goofy hat.”
He offers a place to stay with his family, a salary with no time limit or restrictions. “All you have to do is heal up and write, at your own pace.”
Samuel, having no other options, agrees to the deal. “I have this funny feeling,” says Floyd, “this was meant to be.”
He meets the family, troubled daughter Lily (Lucy Hale), creepy kid son Edward (Leonidas Castrounis) and Floyd’s much younger wife, Jacqueline (Megan Fox). Thus begins a long, strange journey, colored by his subject’s extravagant life and his own hallucinations. “We all live multi-colored lives,” says Floyd, “and have a range of experiences.”
“Big Gold Brick” is an off-kilter movie, like real life but twisted by 180 degrees.
“Big Gold Brick” is an odd movie, like real life but twisted by 180 degrees to form a ready-made cult style movie. Told in flashbacks from Samuel’s point of view, the story feels episodic in the retelling of the writer’s life with Floyd.
There is a lot in play, from Floyd’s implausible backstory, to a haunted house angle and even the possibility that Samuel has some sort of magical powers. The pieces aren’t a snug fit and often feel unintelligibly strange for the sake of being strange but there is something refreshing in seeing new filmmaker Brian Petsos swing for the fences, even if he falls short.
“Till Death,” the new thriller from Megan Fox, now on VOD, sees an unhappily married woman wake up one morning, handcuffed to her soon-to-be-dead husband Mark (Eoin Macken). Like an unholy mix of “Sleeping with the Enemy,” “Weekend at Bernie’s” and “Saw,” it’s a study in the toll emotional abuse takes, and the resilience required to rise above it.
Before the handcuffs and the literal interpretation of the “Till death do us part,” wedding vow, Emma (Fox) feels trapped by a loveless marriage. But as her eleventh wedding anniversary looms, she calls off the relationship she’s been having behind her lawyer husband’s back with his associate Tom (Aml Ameen) and accepts Mark’s invitation for a weekend away to work on their relationship. “Things have been bad between us,” he says, “and I’m sorry.”
At first the weekend seems to be heading toward healing the scars that mar their marriage. But things take a dark twist when Emma wakes up, hungover and handcuffed to Mark as he then shoots himself in the head. Connected to his corpse, Emma finds herself a pawn in a dangerous game of survival. “I have been chained to this nightmare all day!”
“Till Death,” just one of the five films Fox has scheduled for release in the 2021/22 season, begins like a hundred other thrillers. A bad marriage, a vague sense of unease and a remote location. And so what if Fox appears to be on autopilot in the film’s opening minutes? There’s a hint of some neo-noir action in the air.
It takes about twenty-five minutes, but by the time Mark blows his head off, filling the air with a bloody mist, the movie finally distinguishes itself as the nasty piece of work it is. It also gives Fox the opportunity to branch out from disinterested to engaged as director S.K. Dale allows her to shed the story’s dead weight (literally) and shine. She hands in a fun performance that is more subtle than the movie’s main metaphor of a late, toxic husband as a literal anchor or ball-and-chain.
“Till Death” is a simple movie of survival. When two abusers (Callan Mulvey and Jack Roth) from Emma’s past arrive as part of Mark’s master scheme to terrorize her, she must muster all the courage she has from years of pent-up frustration to stay alive. There aren’t many twists and turns you won’t see coming, but slick direction, a tense score, a self-depreciating tone and Fox’s study in resilience should earn the movie a look from fans of survival horror.
In the cold-blooded world of turtles, Yertle, Gamera, Koopa Troopa and Fastback are hot names. But the most famous testudines of all time have to be the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Stars of movies, comic books, television and video games, the four anthropomorphic turtle brothers even had action figures and breakfast cereals as part of their reptilian empire.
They were 20th-century pop-culture icons, which ain’t too bad for four hard-shelled crime fighters named after Renaissance artists.
Stephen Amell, who plays hockey-mask wearing hero Casey Jones in this weekend’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows, says he grew up with Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello.
“The live-action films did it for me,” says the actor, who was just nine when the turtles hit the big screen for the first time. “I’ve always ingested superheroes, especially comic book superheroes, via feature films. Like Superman, Batman, Christopher Reeve, Michael Keaton, all that stuff. When they did the live-action turtle movie I remember my brain not being able to fully comprehend how they were going to do this. Those were seminal moments from my childhood.”
The story of four pet turtles transformed by radioactive ooze into sewer-dwelling, crime-fighting ninja warriors appealed to kids, but the original 1984 black-and-white comics were dark, gritty and violent, a subversive homage to popular books like Daredevil, Cerebus and Ronin. Sharp-eyed readers of the second issue of TMNT will notice old issues of Cerebus and Ronin discarded on the floor of the Turtles’ sewer home.
They sliced and diced bad guys and even uttered the odd PG-13 word.
Turtlemania really began in 1987 with an animated series aimed at younger viewers. They quickly became something of a sensation, but with popularity came an erosion of the rebellious aspects of the story. In short, they became the thing they once poked fun at.
The turtles went mainstream, and soon there were arcade games, action figures, clothing, movies and more.
Kids were taken with the turtle soup of gags, colourful characters and pizza obsession, but Amell says there is more than that to their appeal.
“At the baseline of this entire experience, we are talking about the relationship of four brothers — the relationship as they struggle through adolescence,” he says. “I feel like whether you have brothers, sisters, close friends, any type of family, everyone can relate to that.
“It’s this unique idea. It’s so unique it tends to be universal. I don’t know what the secret sauce is, otherwise I would create my own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and just sit back and collect the royalties.”
For many, including the crowds that will no doubt flock to Out Of The Shadows this week, the allure of the turtles is at least partly nostalgic, a return to a simpler time.
I get the feeling that for the Toronto-born Amell, the appeal is partly sentimental, partly professional.
“It’s pretty cool,” he says. “It’s a really great franchise to be part of. It’s amazing to play a character like Casey Jones. I was just at Yonge and Dundas Square [in Toronto] and it is overrun with Turtles’ posters. It’s a dream come true.”
I never thought I would miss the first wave of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies. The foam rubber-suited lead characters and tongue-in-cheek humour were very much of their time, almost a time capsule of 1990s genre cheese. Just as “The Secret of the Ooze” et al are emblematic of their day, the CGI fest “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows” is symbolic of its time. Trouble is, I have no nostalgia for pixels and bytes no matter how artfully arranged on the screen.
The action begins one year after the events of the last film. The turtles—leader Leonardo (Pete Ploszek), the rebellious Raphael (Alan Ritchson), good-time turtle Michelangelo (Noel Fisher) and the brains of the outfit, Donatello (Jeremy Howard)—saved the world by bringing super duper bad guy Shredder (Brian Tee) to justice. News cameraman Vernon Fenwick (Will Arnett) got all the credit, and is now a media darling. The turtles, however, are content to stay in the shadows, afraid that people won’t accept them because they are all turtlely. And ninja-esque.
Now trouble has come back to town as Shredder escapes police custody and forms an alliance with inventor Dr. Baxter Stockman (Tyler Perry), two mutants named Bebop (Gary Anthony Williams) and Rocksteady (WWE Superstar Stephen “Sheamus” Farrelly) and Kraang (Fred Armisen), a slimy alien octopus with a robotic shell. “Together we can bring the people of your planet to their knees,” crows the mucus covered ET.
The heroes on the half shell, along with their old sidekicks April O’Neil (Megan Fox), Splinter (Tony Shalhoub) and hockey stick wielding newcomer Casey Jones (Stephen Amell), spring into action to prevent—what else?—the end of the world as we know it.
Ladled into this turtle soup of action, comedy and crazy science—“Inside every human there is a gene that connects us to our animal ancestors!”—are good messages of T’N’T—tolerance ‘n teamwork—but despite the explosive nature of the movie there are no real fireworks here. Maybe it’s because our eyes are so accustomed to CGI spectacle. Turtles can literally fly, but who cares? In a film where anything is possible, nothing is terribly exciting. The computer-generated images bring the turtles, rhinos and warthogs to vivid life but the artificial nature of the main characters do nothing to breathe life into this story.
I’m not saying I expect anything approaching realism in a movie about talking turtles. I’m suggesting that the quirky appeal of Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello isn’t well suited by CGI that looks interchangeable with every other superhero flick. It’s as if the very things that made the turtles unique—there’s only one “Cowabunga!” in the whole film and it isn’t even Michelangelo who says it—have been downplayed in the hopes of turning them into generic, franchise building heroes. I say let their freak flags fly. We liked them because they were subversive. We liked them because, like Godzilla, they were more fun when you could see the zipper on the back of their rubber suits. Smoothing out their edges sands off the stuff that made them unique.
Kraang, the sadly underused villain, is as over-the-top as you might hope and a nice counterpart to the bland Tee as Shredder. As cool as Kraang is, though, this is really the turtle show. They are given more screen time than anyone else, and other than Bebop and Rocksteady, who morph into a rhino and warthog, dominate the proceedings. In the background are Laura Linney and Perry. Linney steps out of the art-house to do a forgettable turn as a justice department honcho and Perry adds little to the flick other than name value.
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows” is a CGI orgy that left me (half) shell shocked and nostalgic for a time when four wisecracking, world-saving turtles were something unique and not simply another entry in the superhero sweepstakes.
According to wikipedia the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were a “parody of four of the most popular comics of the early 1980s: Marvel Comics’ ‘Daredevil’ and ‘New Mutants,’ Dave Sim’s ‘Cerebus’ and Frank Miller’s ‘Ronin.’” They quickly became something of a sensation, but with popularity came an erosion of the subversive aspects of the story. In short, they became the thing they once poked fun at. That self-unaware tradition continues with the release of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” a Michael Bay produced big screen reboot.
The plot of the new film can be summed up by one line from obnoxious cameraman Vernon Fenwick (Will Arnett). “Four turtles, one’s fighting a robot samurai. Why not?”
If that doesn’t whet your appetite for this turtle soup, here’s more detail:
Megan Fox stars as April O’Neil, a television lifestyle reporter with pastel blue nail polish who wants to be taken seriously. When she follows a lead on a stolen chemical plot to a dark and rainy dock she discovers the biggest story of her life, the existence of seemingly indestructible vigilantes. Trouble is, no one believes her, least of all her colleagues at the station. “I think you found Superman,” mocks one reporter. Risking her career and her life, she follows the story only to discover the vigilantes are actually sewer dwelling super turtles fighting against the evil Shredder and his Foot Gang minions. As strange as the story is, she soon discovers she may have a personal connection to these Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
When people say they hate CGI movies “TMNT” is the kind of movie they’re referring to. A microcosm of what’s wrong with summer spectaculars, it’s a soulless exercise in generation X brand nostalgia that creates an elaborate backstory—one that throws away the original origin story—as an excuse for the TMNT to spout one liners.
But no matter how quippy Leonardo (voice of Johnny Knoxville), Michelangelo (Noel Fisher), Raphael (Alan Ritchson) and Donatello (Jeremy Howard) may be, it’s near impossible to get on side with this noisy, cluttered movie because it’s simply a frantically shot—director Jonathan Liebesman never met a zoom or dolly shot he didn’t love—collection of pixels with very little organic matter on display—other than Megan Fox’s teen dream face; all pouty lips and tousled hair—and when everything is fake, nothing feels real or emotionally connected.
Perhaps I’m overthinking a movie about Ninja turtles, but the film wants you to underthink and that’s the problem. Unlike “Guardians of the Galaxy,” which mixed humor, action and self-awareness, “TMNT” feels more like an exercise in brand revitalization than a movie.
There was a time when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were everywhere.
Stars of movies, comic books, television and video games, they even had action figures and breakfast cereals as part of their reptilian empire. They were 20th Century pop culture icons, which ain’t too bad for four hard-shelled crime fighters named after Renaissance artists.
But, like all pop culture fads, eventually Turtle mania played itself out, and the action figures, the TMNT PJs and coloring books became passé. This weekend producer Michael Bay is hoping to give Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello a new lease on life at the movies.
The release of the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is timed to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first TMNT comic book.
Megan Fox plays April O’Neill, reporter and friend-of-the-turtles, who help the fearless four protect New York City from its greatest threat, Shredder and his evil Foot Clan. “Together,” says Turtles’ mentor Splinter, “you are stronger than he could ever be!”
Turtle groupies have been following the development of the reboot with great interest. They spoke up when it was announced that Bay wanted to streamline the title to Ninja Turtles but an even bigger controversy struck in 2012.
“These turtles are from an alien race,” said Bay, “and they are going to be tough, edgy, funny, and completely lovable.” Seems benign enough, but fans were incensed that the Transformers producer would take liberties with the origin story. Tough and lovable are OK, but alien? Not so much. According to the canon the heroes on the half shell where transformed when they came into contact with toxic ooze.
One internet firestorm later—Robbie Rist, who voiced Michelangelo in the original movies, went so far as to accuse Bay of “sodomizing” the franchise—Bay amended the statement, reassuring fans he would stick to the official origin story. They even poke fun at the controversy in the movie.
“So,” says Vernon (Will Arnett), “they’re aliens?”
“No,” replies reporter O’Neil, “that’s stupid.”
No spoilers here. Whether the Turtles rise from the ooze or not Bay (and director Jonathan Liebesman) have a cinematic legacy to live up to. The TMNT first came to the big screen in 1990, followed quickly by TMNT II: The Secret of the Ooze, 1991 and TMNT III, 1993.
Then, after a decade break the green fighting machines came back in the computer animated TMNT, but was written off as feeling “as stale as one of Mikey’s half-eaten pizzas,” by the New York Daily News.
Can Bay top all the other films? Writer Sean Patrick said, “I can see no good reason why Bay can’t make by far the best Ninja Turtles movie ever. The bar hasn’t exactly been set high.”
In my review for the recent remake of Oldboy I wrote, “There is no more manly-man actor in the mold of Lee Marvin or Lee Van Cleef working today.”
I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise given that he was named after the rough-and-tumble character Josh Randall played by Steve McQueen in TV’s Wanted: Dead or Alive.
In Oldboy he’s so tough he’s a practically indestructible force of nature; able to withstand physical punishment that would make Grigori Rasputin look like a wimp.
The tough guy angle is one Brolin plays in a number of films, including his latest Labor Day. He plays an escaped convict who hides out in the home of a depressed, widowed agoraphobic, played by Kate Winslet. Over the course of one long holiday weekend she learns of his dangerous past and before you can say the words Stockholm Syndrome has fallen for the ruggedly handsome stranger.
It’s the kind of role that Brolin has mastered; the multi-layered tough guy but according to him, he doesn’t seek out those roles.
He says he wracks his “brain like crazy trying to figure out which films I wanted to be in.”
Some of those films include No Country for Old Men and Jonah Hex.
In the Oscar nominated No Country he plays down-on-his-luck Llewelyn Moss, who stumbles across the site of a drug deal gone wrong. Bullet-ridden dead men litter the landscape along with several kilos of heroin and a suitcase stuffed with two million dollars in cash. When he makes off with the money his life and the lives of those around him are changed forever.
Jonah Hex didn’t earn any Oscar nods, but did get some Razzie attention in the form of nominations for Worst Screen Couple for Brolin and co-star Megan Fox. The story of a supernatural bounty hunter set on revenge against the man who killed his family is as disfigured as its main character’s face but Brolin brings his real-life swagger to the role and has fun with some of the tongue-in-what’s-left-of-his-cheek lines.
One tough guy role got away from him however. On-line speculation had it that he would be cast as the Caped Crusader in the upcoming Batman vs. Superman. Although he would have been perfect for the part he lost out to Ben Affleck. Contrary to his bruiser persona he was gracious in defeat. “I’m happy for Ben,” he said.
