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THE EXPENDABLES 2 - REVIEW

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Putting such a crazy-epic cast together should really be enough to make a good movie. And yet the past has shown that no matter how many famous faces you cram into a flick, it's just not sufficient. Remember the original Casino Royale ? Yeah, that had Peter Sellers, Woody Allen and Orson Welles: terrible. Mars Attacks! had a crazy-big cast but that was a good, fun movie. The Expendables , however, was not. The first movie really was a missed opportunity to say the least. You had a cast that included Stallone, Statham, Rourke, Lundgren, Jet friggin' Li and yet what we got was an instantly forgettable mess. Now with The Expendables 2 we've got more Arnie, more Bruce Willis, a good bunch of newcomers (Van Damme, Norris), how could that movie be anything BUT awesomeness itself? Well, frankly I have no idea but this sequel certainly isn't "awesomeness itself". That said, I gotta admit it is better than the first film in that it at least gives us a dece

STARSHIP TROOPERS 2 - REVIEW

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How do you follow a film like Starship Troopers ? I mean, Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi flick was something of a rare gem. The kind of genial, silly, wonderfully entertaining, crazy project that comes around once every blue moon and proudly shows that a sci-fi creature feature can and should be done right! After RoboCop and Total Recall , who knew that the director had one more ace up his sleeve? Especially after the likes of Basic Instinct and *shudder* Showgirls ! Yes, Starship Troopers was great. But I'm avoiding reality. I'm not here to review that movie. I'm here to review its sequel. A sequel so awful it was turned down by Casper Van Dien AND Denise Richards. :O At first I was like "Whaaaat? Surely it couldn't be as b..." but soon enough, my friends, soon enough I knew that a bug had crawled up my ass and would not leave my rectum for the next hour and 20 minutes. That bug was Starship Troopers 2 . Man, what a cheap follow-up. From the off

THE EXPENDABLES 2 - NEW POSTER

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lol Pretty great.

STREET FIGHTER - REVIEW

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A film adaptation of the classic video game seemed pretty straightforward on paper: a bunch of freaks from all around the world get together and fight in the streets of wherever. All the film had to do was to find lookalikes and a reason for all the characters to get together. Instead, we got Van Damme... The casting of the colourful bunch is more miss than hit with some looking nothing like who they're based on (Ken, Blanca, Guile), some barely existing (Dhalsim, Vega) and others looking the part but so Americanized they might as well all be called John Smith. Raul Julia is hammier than he's ever been and looks ridiculous but delivers some of the silliest lines ever with style and gusto. Van Damme is as grating as ever and his childish, airhead Guile is impossible to relate to or take seriously for a second. Especially with Kylie "Spinning Around" Minogue as his sidekick. This is about as misguided as a game-to-film adaptation can get and Mortal Ko

PSYCHO (1998) - REVIEW

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Remaking classic horror films is now, of course, a common Hollywood trend. But back in 1998 such a thing was still regarded as sacrilege. And rightly so. As talented as a director Gus Van Sant may be, he is no Alfred Hitchcock. And remaking one of the latter's most beloved films almost shot for shot is not so much a hommage as it is an insult. Watching this remake is like watching someone butcher a classic. Not that it's a bad film, overall this new Psycho is pretty stylish and entertaining. But it just feels completely pointless and Vince Vaughn, as amusing as he may occasionally be, is not Anthony Perkins and he most certainly isn't Norman Bates. His Norman is bland, barely threatening and unconvincing. The rest of the cast does reasonably well but one could argue that there's very little challenge there when their jobs were essentially done 38 years ago...better. Van Sant's Psycho is worth seeing if you're a fan of the original and you feel

HIGHLANDER III: THE SORCERER - REVIEW

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Making a worse sequel than Highlander 2 was always going to be a challenge and although they do try very hard here to indeed achieve this nirvana of cinematic assness, it just falls short and ends up being mostly dull. The film starts off pretty much exactly like Conan The Barbarian : bad guys on horses with silly helmets burning down a village, Mako, montages...literally all that's missing is Basil Poledouris's score. Then the nonsense inevitably begins as a statue inexplicably turns its head and opens its eyes, we cut to the present then back to 18th century France for some reason, we're given an odd, super long gratuitous sex scene and the list goes on. That said, the film at the very least acknowledges the shortcomings of its predecessor as it doesn't even attempt to fix anything and just never mentions it. We are shown bits from the first film so we can only assume either the action is taking place in between 1 and 2 or they're just pretending like The Qu