Wasting time with movies and such

I have been watching a lot of movies on my downtime lately. I should be painting, gaming or possibly home improvements. Instead I have been vegging out and watching stuff I never thought to watch and most of it was recommended by acquaintances.

Lockout

A bit of not so distant future that is a bit of Die Hard and Escape from New York. This was sold to me as a pretty good action movie. What I got was a bad mash-up of Die Hard and Escape from New York. Take one Guy Pearce (a man known simply as Snow) with an attitude, a space station prison, the visiting Presidents daughter, an inevitable riot, a deal to clear one Guy Pearce, some one-liners, gun play, punching and you can guess the rest. I didn’t hate the smarmy wise crackin’ Snow and his dialogue, it might was the only redeeming quality of the film. If you want to watch this movie, then stop yourself. Then grab Die Hard, Escape from New York, The Last Boy Scout or something along those lines. You’ll have a much better time.

Goon

Sean William Scott, or as I have only known his as Stifler from that pie humpin’ movie, plays a very dimwitted bouncer who gets pulled into the world of amateur hockey. Now here is a film I did enjoy! I am a fan of hockey and have only had Slap Shot as my go to hockey film. Goon is a descent, yet pretty unbelievable underdog story. Take a lowly schlub, make him play hockey as an enforcer, have him show the team that they can win, add some motivation to the washed-up star player and then have a showdown with the premier league thug. Speaking of which, the villain is played by Leiv Schreiber and he is a great villain. Seriously, this guy needs more work because he has great bad guy potential. The hockey stuff and especially the fights are a bit over the top, but that is what makes it great! The story is predictable, but most of them are now a days. I dug it and now have a second hockey film to watch.

Looper

This was passed on to me as a “good” time travel movie. As far as I’m concerned there are three good time travel movies and they are Back to the Future I, II and III. Still I sat down and gave Looper a chance. I will admit for about 30-40 minutes there was a descent story that dealt with time travel. Then the movie takes this weird turn and just keeps on going….right off a cliff. This started as the future mob sends people to the past to be whacked. This is a nice take on the mob hit and very effective. The hit men are called Loopers and they get paid for all the guys they kill. Eventually, things turn when a Looper has to kill his future self and doesn’t. After this, the film becomes a real mess and never recovers. It does try at the end and that is about the time really tuned back in simply because it was ending how I was hoping it would. Sadly, that didn’t save the film. It was almost a good movie and then, for some reason, they changed it into a real mess of psi-powers, weird serial killings, some quasi-love story and Jeff Daniels was there too.

The Expendables II

After the magnum opus that was The Expendables I wanted to beat to death the guy who talked me into watching it. This same guy mentioned that the second part was better than the first. HOLY SHIT WAS IT EVER! No it was not! I sat down two times to get through this movie. Why? I have no damn idea. See what happens when there is no football on TV! Now, 6^th grade Ian would love these movies, just like all the Arnold, Stallone and Van Damn films of that time. However, 2013 Ian did not enjoy this. I didn’t expect Shakespeare, but in here there is some of the worst dialogue in the history of film. The action was also pretty lame for what should be a colossal blow ‘em up film. Why did I watch this when I knew it would be awful? I guess for the same reason I’ve seen those Fast movies and numerous repetitive horror films…..I have problems.

BBC’s first series of Sherlock

This a good show! This is yet another take on Holmes and Watson and it is done very well. This is a semi-typical crime drama with a modern take on the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle characters. If you can handle: British stuff, don’t mind crime drama, can handle a semi-unlikable but good Sherlock Holmes, and Bilbo/ Arthur as Watson, then give this a look. It should not disappoint. The only problem I have is the amount of Sherlock Holmes out there right now. It seems he is the new hotness for some reason and the over saturation might be the downfall.