The Movie Everyone Expects

The Basics

• Official Site: TheExpendables2Film.com
• Release Date: August 17, 2012
• Director: Simon West
• Main Actors: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Arnold Schwarzenegger

77 - Take

The Avengers isn’t the only all-star team-up at the movies this summer. Picking up where the first film left off, The Expendables 2 ups the ante and its roster of aging action heroes for a second round of testosterone-heavy summer entertainment, with a cast straight out of an action fan’s dream. In it, the title team of mercenaries is once again recruited by their old friend Church (Bruce Willis) to take on a seemingly simple job (aren’t they all?). But when things unexpectedly go south, that easy paycheck gets a lot harder, and they’ll need all hands on deck to stop a new adversary (Jean-Claude Van Damme, in vintage form) from getting his hands on five tons of weapons-grade plutonium.

And while guys are sure to enjoy The Expendables 2 more than critics, it certainly doesn’t lack in firepower, as the ageless summer franchise moves one step closer to its goal of assembling the ultimate action movie Dream Team.

63 Critical Appeal

Stallone stays in front of the camera this go-around, handing off directing duties to another action movie vet, Con Air’s Simon West. And though The Expendables 2 isn’t much more polished than its all-brawn-and-few-brains predecessor, West does an admirable job of keeping the action blockbuster from collapsing under the weight of its various big names, ensuring there’s enough screen time to go around. The script, once again cowritten by Sly, predictably suffers from the usual cheesy dialogue and is about as subtle as a rocket launcher -- an early movie twist couldn’t be more obviously telegraphed than if they sent it up with a signal flare.

But this is a movie that knows exactly what it is -- an old-school, action-packed guilty pleasure -- and doesn’t attempt to be anything more. Shamelessly self-aware, its big guns take turns spouting one another's catchphrases and winking at the camera. As to be expected, The Expendables 2 is saved by its roster of '80s action heroes, and Van Damme makes a serious upgrade as the movie’s main villain, the “creatively”-named Jean Vilain. Ultimately, the idea behind The Expendables 2 is simple: Pack in as many big names as you can and don’t let up on the action until the credits roll. Everything else, from plot to character development, is expendable.

91 Guy Appeal

If there was ever a movie that exemplified the sometimes wide divide between critics and fans, it’s The Expendables 2. Because for all its imperfections, the action hero reunion tour is tailor-made for guys, delivering exactly what fans of the first movie want: Another hard-hitting action throwback that they just don’t seem to make anymore, and one that takes the promise of the first Expendables and kicks everything up to 11. And while the movie runs the risk of becoming a sideshow thanks to its Dream Team approach to casting, it’s hard to deny the appeal of watching Arnold Schwarzenegger’s triumphant return to action, Stallone and Van Damme squaring off, or one-time box office competitors like Chuck Norris and Bruce Willis fighting side by side.

Ditching the first movie’s one-on-one throwdowns in favor of more teamwork, the action starts off strong with an opening set piece that most other action movies would save for the final battle. But when it comes to The Expendables 2, there are always more planes to crash, buildings to blow up, henchmen to mow down and big-name action heroes to join the fight. And while Stallone and his fellow legends may not move as quickly as they used to, this is one franchise that looks like it still has a lot more left in the tank. Sometimes you just can’t beat a classic.

Read more: http://www.askmen.com/entertainment/movie/the-expendables-2.html#ixzz25EF4yuv4

Tweet

Read More

Social Networking For College Students

At the end of my first two weeks as a freshman in college, I had exactly 38 friends. At least half of those were hot girls, because that’s how I rolled. I saw them almost every night, staying up into the late hours and reacting to their jokes with energetic laughter and flirtatious nudges. I had never been more popular in my life, and I gave myself little fist pumps, like, four times a day. Really, the only issue at this point was that I hadn’t actually met any of my friends yet.

Facebook was perfect for a guy like me because I could meet my new classmates without actually talking to them. I wasn’t shy or anything; I just had tendencies of nervousness and timidity in the company of others. “But that’s the exact definition of 'shy,'" you might argue. To which I say, stop talking like such a nerd. I would also say that I wasn’t being shy. I was being smart. My plan was to wait out the beginning of school and keep my reputation alive while everyone else got slaughtered by their own social awkwardness. It was like social Hunger Games, and I knew that if I were patient, I would eventually climb down from my tree, let out a colossal sigh for the wickedness of humanity and start making out with chicks. Or something like that.
          
The thing is, that strategy only half worked. There was a lot of sighing and not so much making out, or any social interaction for that matter. While I stood on the sidelines, many of my fellow freshmen began forming meaningful bonds spawned from mutual feelings of “I have no idea what the hell’s going on and neither do you.” They joined clubs and shared interests, career aspirations and beers. They began to really know each other. Because of my exclusive devotion to Facebook, all I really knew about my friends was that Dan Jacobs thought Anchorman was “pretty tight yo” and that Jen Wesker liked dogs, Dave Matthews Band and wearing string bikinis during “SPrinG BReaK 2003.” I also knew that Christina Babson told you to please stop after four pokes.

I further rationalized my muted social efforts by concentrating my stress on my academic performance. This was pretty easy, not because of any personal intellectual vigor but because of an achievement-oriented anxiety that gets firmly implanted in every teenager during the “college process” in high school. I had spent the previous few years being told by frowny adults that, when it comes to getting into college, it would be wise to inflate my GPA and make sweet love to my SAT prep books.

Now that I was in college, the stakes of my classroom performance felt even higher. The carrot at the end of the academic stick was no longer college admissions; it was now a much more vague (and therefore significantly more terrifying) incentive. Looming after college was the infinite void of adulthood, and there was the unnerving sense that my college GPA would dictate my future career, wealth and whether or not I had ugly children. It was like the college process all over again, except this time I was applying for life.

Read more: http://www.askmen.com/entertainment/austin/social-networking-for-college-students.html#ixzz25EEMWH1a

Tweet

Read More

Shia LaBeouf: Hollywood's Last Bad Boy

The 25-year-old Transformers star has thrown as many punches as he has parties, he has a rap sheet as long as his filmography, and when he's not pissing off studio heads, he's messing around with another guy's girlfriend. But Shia LaBeouf may also be the most honest—and complex—actor alive. More than meets the eye? Damn right.

august 2011 Issue

The way Shia LaBeouf tells it, he was just stepping out for a smoke.

"I'm at a bar, trying to be with my friends," he begins, still a little peeved several months after the night in question, "and a dude comes up to me and says he wants a photograph, and I say no." The actor is folded into a bronze vinyl booth at the Brite Spot Family Restaurant, a kitschy diner on West Sunset, talking about the widely reported incident at Mad Bull's Tavern in Sherman Oaks in February that ended with one of Hollywood's most bankable stars chilling on the curb in handcuffs.

"Then he comes up with his girlfriend and says it's for her, and I say, 'Actually, I'm a little topsy-turvy, man. Can I not?'"

LaBeouf wishes he could handle such situations with more finesse. But then again, he doesn't. "I would like to be George Clooney diplomatic," the 25-year-old star concedes. "I just don't have the wherewithal yet or the inner serenity. My bullshit meter is tuned very sensitive. The minute it starts kicking up, I get back to truth, and sometimes that involves, you know, 'I don't want to take a picture.' And if that's the case, am I an asshole for being honest? Or am I an asshole for being dishonest, smiling in your picture and I fucking hate being there? Which one is worse? These are the questions I ask myself that George Clooney doesn't ask."

Apparently, the guy in the bar wasn't the type to ponder such issues either. He just wanted the photograph. "Then you go out to have a cigarette, and somebody comes at you," LaBeouf says. "Hey, I'm a human being also." That's his problem right there. LaBeouf's humanness, and his pigheaded if touching determination to hang on to it—no matter how insane the scene they throw up on the green screen behind him, or how outlandishly beautiful the women they pair him with, or how many zeros they cram onto his paychecks (see Transformers: Dark of the Moon, in theaters June 29)—keep getting him into trouble. That and the moonshine.

"I was actually researching," he says of his hooch-drinking session several hours before the bar fight, as the waitress places a cheeseburger before him. "As crazy as that sounds, to blame it on the acting thing, I was getting ready to make a movie about dudes who live on moonshine every single day."

Reaching for his iPhone, LaBeouf loads the 12-minute "sizzle reel" of footage from The Wettest County in the World, which was sold to the Weinstein Company after a hard-fought bidding war the previous day at Cannes. Directed by John Hillcoat from a screenplay by the rocker-poet Nick Cave, the film stars Tom Hardy, Jason Clarke, and LaBeouf as bootlegging brothers in Prohibition-era Appalachia.

Anyway, LaBeouf and his costars had been drinking moonshine at dinner after their table reading. "I went to this bar, and I don't know. You sort of root for certain behavior." He's wearing a T-shirt with a teddy bear on it, black jeans, and hiking boots. He's bulked up considerably since he first achieved notoriety as the dandelion-headed wisenheimer Louis Stevens on the Disney Channel series Even Stevens—though he's not quite as jacked up as he was when he was working out twice a day and gulping down creatine and protein shakes to prepare for Wettest County. "Dude, I was 185 and ripped," he says.

LaBeouf is good company, garrulous and intense, with an appealing touch of the angry young man about him. He spits constantly when he's outside ("I have a wet mouth") and is given to reciting poetry, reading me Charles Bukowski's "Bluebird" and "B as in Bullshit" off his iPhone. He drives an enormous black Silverado pickup and a Thruxton Triumph 900 motorcycle, carries a folding Kershaw knife, and displays a Holden Caulfield—esque allergy to phoniness that makes one wonder how he can stand Hollywood at all.

Tweet

Read More

Horrible Bosses

85 HowToDoEverything1 Rating

•  
•  
•  
•  

© New Line Cinema

The Basics

• Official Site: HorribleBossesMovie.com
• Release Date: July 8, 2011
• Director: Seth Gordon
• Main Actors: Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston

79 The HowToDoEverything1 Take

A foul-mouthed, mean-spirited and, above all, solidly funny movie, Horrible Bosses offers guys some welcome relief from the lackluster comedy lineup so far this summer. Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis star as three friends whose hostile work environments have pushed them to their limits, while Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston and Colin Farrell’s combover play those aforementioned horrible bosses with varying degrees of outward contempt.

Over drinks one night, the three disgruntled employees come to the conclusion that their lives would be significantly better off if their bosses’ lives were ended, and out of that, a scheme is born. With an ex-con (Jamie Foxx) as their “murder consultant,” the friends devise a convoluted solution to their shared problem, but, fortunately, the movie turns out much better than their plan.

75 Critical Appeal

Horrible Bosses follows the Hangover model when it comes to casting, with leading men who fit their parts rather than the movie poster. Instead, the awful bosses provide the requisite star power and name recognition, and all three seem to relish going against type and playing the villain (especially Aniston). But if there’s any justice, Charlie Day will become a household name after Horrible Bosses. The It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star shows the same great chemistry with SNL’s Jason Sudeikis as they did in 2010’s Going the Distance; only, in this case, the rest of the movie is actually watchable, too. Jason Bateman, meanwhile, balances out the group as the designated straight man in their Three Stooges act, making good use of his talent for exasperation and excellent timing.

Director Seth Gordon officially exonerates himself for following up his promising feature debut, the acclaimed documentary The King of Kong, with the paint-by-numbers studio comedy Four Christmases. He smartly plays to his cast’s strengths, ensuring that even as the caper grows increasingly ridiculous, it remains relatively grounded in character-driven humor. Horrible Bosses may take a little while getting through the hard-to-buy premise of average Joes committing premeditated murder, but once we’re on the other side, it’s a lot of fun.

Read more

83 Guy Appeal

F-bombs fly faster than one-liners in this R-rated film that reverses the recent trend of disappointing guy-oriented comedies, and there's enough good lines to warrant a second viewing. Its easily relatable concept of workplace dissatisfaction should hit home with any guy who’s ever held down a job in a less-than-ideal work environment. But despite the dark premise and often outrageous nasty streak (at one point, the guys bicker over who’s more “rape-able”), Horrible Bosses remains relatively light as the hapless would-be killers falter. After all, this is a comedy, not a thriller. Moving along at a rapid clip, the movie can also get a little messy at times, but the chemistry of its three leads carries it through. And even as the plot’s twists and hijinks veer into predictably goofy and outlandish territory towards the end, the strong performances up and down the cast generate enough laughs to smooth over any rough edges.

Tweet

Read More