Killshot

Interesting history to this movie.

My place of employment got in a couple dozen copies of the book, all with Diane Lane on the cover. I read the back, thought "Hurm, similarities to The Brave One and Death Sentence" and went online looking for info. Supposedly it was going to be released to theaters, but I never heard that it made it there. That was a year ago, maybe 2.

Released to DVD a few weeks ago, and I just rented it last night. Spectacularly average, but some good writing. The dissolving marriage that is featured in the movie seems by turns natural and forced. Mickey Rourke plays a terrifyingly cool and collected hitman. Tom Jane is as likeable as always.

And finally, it's good to see a positive portrayal of civilian firearms ownership in film. Very rare thing these days.

The Contract

Terrible movie. I don't know who wrote the dialogue, but it was a mix of unreality and cliches.

I can only imagine that real, professional hitmen would not behave like the ones in the movie.

Terminator: Salvation

Like Star Trek, a good scifi movie, but not the best Terminator. Honestly, the TV show was better, and I bet they had about 1/9000th the budget.

Christian Bale was awesome as always. Sam Worthington stole the show though, it was his movie, and he was the best part. The symmetry of his part of the movie, while obvious, is still striking.

I wish it had carried a little more emotional heft, and a few less whizz-bang over-the-top action sequences. Maybe I'm spoiled by the show - they put their whole heart and soul into creating an action sequence and filled the rest of the time with good acting and powerful emotion to compensate for the lack of budget. This movie, while good, just seemed like lazy film-making.

Star Trek

I'm not sure how I feel about the new movie. It's a good sci-fi movie to be sure. But I'm not sure it's good Star Trek.

They rewrote Kirk's history, and a very important part of the Star Trek present/future. They wrote in a certain romance that was never even implied in any series. And Nero was not a compelling villain, though that's the least of the problems with the film.

Despite this, it was a fun movie. Great acting, lots of humor, lots of action, very intelligent. It's almost like I watched a great sci-fi movie that just happened to borrow the names of the original series crew.

Here's hoping someday soon J.J. Abrams finishes watching Firefly, calls up Joss Whedon and says "Hey, did you hear I rebooted Star Trek?"

Star Wars

My brother was home from school and work yesterday, so we watched Star Wars:Revenge Of The Sith.

How do you assemble a cast that includes Ewan McGregor, Sam Jackson, and Natalie Portman, and then end up with the Special Olympics of bad acting. It's terrible, absolutely painful to watch. Nevermind that the dialogue is so amazingly bad it seems like it was written for the Power Rangers. Everything is "More power!" this and "dark side!" that. Every third line, I swear. The only thing they didn't do was name their lightsabers and shout out the color when they drew them.

And now I watch A New Hope, and it's nearly as bad.

I respect Star Wars as important cinema landmarks, but how on earth did it achieve that status?

Fast And Furious

Someday, movie reviewers will look back and say that the Fast And Furious movies were too our generation what Don Johnson's Miami Vice was to the last: Good, dumb entertainment. Beautiful women, fast cars, explosions, gun play, and a pointless plot to tie it all together.

Vin Diesel, unfortunately, is not the unknown he was in the original movie. He doesn't play Dominic Toretto in FAF, he plays Vin Diesel in FAF. He was the shining star of the classic TFATF, and he just can't pull it off in the new one. He's still good, but he's not his character.

It's worth watching, just for that dumb, over-the-top fun factor.

Watchmen

Good movie. Not great, but good. The characters are all quite unlikeable in some way, even the greatest anti-hero of all, the finger-breaking Rorschach.

Good comic book adaptation too. Sometimes they duplicate panels out of the book, which is an impressive feat.

And no, the blue nudity does not ruin the movie.

Max Payne

Went to go see this the very first night it was out.

Solid 7.5 out of 10, but the trailer for Watchmen beforehand was even better. Not a slam against the movie, but the Watchmen trailer was fantastic.

Mark Walhberg did a decent job as Max, Mila Kunis did passing quality as Mona Sax, but she had very little to do. The script was a hackjob compilation of Max Payne 1 and 2. Lots of stuff that wasn't in either game, and poorly tied off plot points from both.

The first 2/3s is really a mess. Disjointed, disconnected, doesn't really make sense. The last third is awesome. The movie is way, way better when he's on drugs. Everything after he pulls himself out of the river is epic. Beautiful. One long hero moment.

Movie Marathon

As is my tradition, I purchased a large quantity of rifle ammunition and some magazines, and got some movies for my fall movie marathon. Every year, when the local high school has their homecoming dance (and in the spring, Prom), I stay up late with movies and GI 30cal ammo cans and stockpile ammunition. Yeah it's weird, I know. It's what I do. Never was much for group participation in school, and now that I'm out it's like a...celebration of the difference.

I had 2600 rounds of rifle ammunition to pack round by round into boxes, so obviously I had to spread it out over two nights. Usually the theme is "War movies" but as I've kind of exhausted that field of decent entries, this time around I switched to cop movies. Movie reviews below:

Night 1:
Dark Blue: Like a made-for-TV-movie with more swearing and brief nudity. Kurt Russell is like Steven Seagal, but with a little more self-respect. Decent plot of corrupt police officers coming clean during the Rodney King riots, but it was made ho-hum by weak acting, a couple of lame storylines, and a lack of action. 5 stars out of 10.

Narc: Jason Patric is a disgraced police officer teamed with Ray Liotta to solve the murder of Ray Liotta's partner. Patric's looking for the murderers, Liotta's looking for...something else. This is the most depressing movie I've ever seen, bar none. White, black, and pale blue are really the only colors used. The settings are authentically run down, and the movie paints Detroit as a horrible looking ghetto. The characters are tragic or corrupt, no exceptions. The profanity is blinding in intensity, eclipsed only by The Boondock Saints. Very gritty and authentic. Ray Liotta is terrifying. Again, not an action movie, though billed as such. Worth watching. Despite the seriousness of the scene, I laughed at the two rounds fired from a 1911 with the hammer forward. I'd be willing to be a technical consultant for free in Hollywood, just to make sure they didn't make mistakes like that. 7 stars out of 10.

Night 2:
Harsh Times:Again, Christian Bale gives a fantastic performance, though this time he succeeds in making the audience hate him. He's a wacked out ex-soldier out to make sure everyone around him has a terrible day. By the time he dies in the end of the movie, you say "FINALLY!" He combines the worst traits of all the soldiers I've ever known, and reminds me in his physique and mannerisms of at least one. Decently filmed, but lacking in any real depth of plot. Not worth watching, and it seems to drag on forever, making you hate Bale that much more. 3 stars out of 10.

Assault On Precinct 13: Decent opening scene, promises a lot for the rest of the movie. Can't really say much about this one, it was solid but unremarkable. Fishburne once more plays the elegant criminal. Ethan Hawke seems like a low-rent Tom Cruise, even down to his voice, which is not a bad thing. He does a good job, but his character's psychological issues could've been dealt with much better than the glossing over they got. The movie gets points for unexpectedly killing major characters, lending an air of realism and danger. The movie loses points for a lack of magazine changes during battle scenes, though I can forgive the +8 rounds fired through a 1911, because in one of the final scenes we see it's a Para double-stack. Worth watching. 7 stars out of 10.

I stayed up until 3am both nights, watching movies and packing away ammo, round by round. As always, I wondered as I placed the boxes on the stack next to their brethren, who will I be when I open those boxes again, and why will I be opening them. It's sobering to think such things.

Felon

An family man named Ben (I think) kills a home-invader in what he thinks is self-defense. Since it happens on his lawn, and he has the misfortune of living in the People's Republic of California, he goes to jail.

The movie is about the Ben's survival in prison, as he adapts to the rules of the new society, attempting to survive both the sadistic race wars between the prison gangs and the sadistic guards who bet on gladiator-style games between the prisoners.

Ben shares a cell with John Smith played by Val Kilmer. Smith's family was killed by two thugs, and he cut down their family trees in an attempt to give them the same madness they gave him. He's an unruly warrior/philosopher, and takes in Ben, shows him the ropes.

The movie builds towards a showdown with the (very) evil guards, and by the end of the movie, the worst of humanity has shown traits seen in the best of humanity, heroes have shown themselves, and people have died in ways that simultaneously make you really happy and wishing they'd suffered more for what they'd done.

Excellent movie. 2/3s of it is an unrelentingly abyssal slog of depression. Despite this, it seems realistic and well made. Well worth watching, but I can't imagine wanting to own it.

Rambo 4

THIS is a movie.

Starts with a horribly visceral scene of Karen refugees being shot and blown up by commies. No explanation for it, just "hey, this is what commies do." Worse, the commies seem to be apathetic or happy about it.

Rambo is hired to take a bunch of missionary violence-solves-nothing weiner types up river to a Karen refugee camp. Great line "If you're not taking weapons, you're not gonna change anything."

Predictably, the missionaries are kidnapped by the commies. Rambo is hired again to take a bunch of mercenaries to rescue them. Rambo interrupts another refugee torture session with a bow and a bunch of well-placed arrows, and as soon as you see an arrow come flying through someone's face, you just know this movie is going to set a new record for gore.

Rambo and the mercs infiltrate the commie camp, where the commies are doing all sorts of vile, typically commie things. Rambo rips the throat out of one - awesome scene.

The mercs rescue all but one of the missionaries, and Rambo, the last missionary, and one merc are left to trek back through the jungle. Soon, all of them are being followed by commies, and Rambo dispatches a bunch of them with a claymore and 60yo British Tallboy bomb.

Everybody but Rambo ends up captured, and right before their execution, Rambo decapitates the commie lieutenant, commandeers a truck-mounted .50, and shreds a guy in the front seat. Probably the single most violent scene in all of movie-dom.

The next "5 minutes of .50" are nothing but exploding bodies, gunfire, and death. Fortunately, the majority of the people exploding are commies, so you don't feel bad about cheering.

At the end, just when it seems the head commie is about to get away, Rambo steps out from behind a tree and disembowels him, nearly cutting him in half. Lovely scene.

Yes, this is a simplified, and humorous review. What's important to note is the message behind the movie: There are bad people doing bad things, and the only way to stop them is to kill them. No trying to understand them, no trying to reason with them, trying to civilize the uncivilized (or uncivilizeable), no "we made them this way," no America hating, bashing or blaming. Rambo recognizes evil, and makes it stop in the only way possible.

Col. Cooper has a quote that sums up this movie: An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing.

Now we need to see the next Rambo moved to Pakistan/Iran/Syria/Afghanistan/Iraq where he disembowels and decapitates the thousands of people who do stuff like string up blind boys and beat them to death for failing to learn the Koran.

Event Horizon

This is the most terrifying movie I've ever seen.

I saw 25 minutes of it on UPN when I was 8 or so. Shut it off and had nightmares for the next week. Finally worked up the courage to rent it 10 or 11 years later, and it still scared the crap out of me.

I just bought it this afternoon, $10 at Best Buy. Still terrifying. Whoever came up with the "hell montages" needs serious professional help.

This movie is a small part of my overall plan.

Jericho

Watched the end of Jericho this week. There is not a big enough container to hold the amount of awesome that was this show.

First we start with the episode title: Patriots And Tyrants. An allusion to Thomas Jefferson's declaration that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants, it's natural fertilizer. ie a little revolution is good from time to time.

The episode itself starts with the most amazing declaration ever heard on TV, even more amazing than the line from Jake that I have on my bulletin board ("Every able-bodied person needs a gun. Sixteen years of age or older. Line up.").

Gray Anderson's aid:"X amount of time, a thousand person vote, and boom, the Second Amendment's gone."
Gray Anderson:"Yeah, it's a lot easier to pacify a country when its citizens can't shoot back."
Aid:"This isn't a stero manual, this is my country we're talking about"

Or something very similar.

Jake and Hawkins sneak into Cheyenne (the home of the new government) and steal a nuclear bomb, which they smuggle to the embassy of the Independent Republic Of Texas. From there, they fly it to Texas, where the Texas Air National Guard shoots down two fighter jets bent on making sure the bomb doesn't make it out of ASA airspace.

The episode ends (for Jake and Hawkins) with the promise of a Third American Revolution. The only thing that could've possibly been cooler would've been meeting the Texas President on the ground and finding out he's played by Fred Thompson. I think I would've had a heart attack if that had happened.

Meanwhile in Jericho, Major Beck disobeys his orders, releases the revolutionaries, and declares war on Cheyenne. The episode ends (for Jericho) with all the main characters looking up at the Gadsden flag and wondering about the coming war.

Scifi has already picked up the first season, and will probably get the second. If they order a third, I WILL buy all the tiers of cable necessary to get the Scifi channel. This show's worth $50 a month to me.

I can't imagine a more awesome show.

seaQuest DSV

I'm most of the way through Season 2. So far we've had aliens, time travel, giant alligators, Atlantean ghosts, aliens again, evil psychics, Greek gods, vampire demons...coming up we'll have more psychics, and aliens yet again.

This TV show is killing my braincells, and yet I can't look away. I REMEMBER this stuff! I watch it and I smile.

So cool.

The Brave One

This movie has it all. It joins such greats as Red Dawn, The Patriot, Shooter, and Uprising in the category of movies that should be shown, four times a year, to every child in public school, so long as we allow public schools to continue their malicious and unconstitutional existence.

Jodie Foster plays Erica Bain, who's engaged to Sayid from Lost. She's beaten near to death and he's killed in a spurt of random violence while walking their dog in central park.

Upon waking up, she's shaken. DUH. On impulse she goes to a gun store to buy a gun. This being the high-crime, gun-free utopia of The People's Republic of New York, the harried gun shop owner tells her to apply for a license and come back in thirty days. When she says "I won't live thirty days" he tells her "That's the law."

You have no idea how hard I clapped for that part. All the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

She's eventually sold a Kahr K9 by a guy who overheard the conversation, and she starts carrying it.

The second time she's the victim of random violence, she's a little better prepared. She terminates the man who kills the convenience store clerk who's store she's shopping in, moments before he could attack here.

Let's just think about this for a minute. We've got a woman, who was denied a gun by the government of New York, buying a gun AND carrying it illegally, defending her life successfully.

How DID this movie get made? Seriously. What bed-wetting liberal Hollywood producer was smoking crack when he greenlit this movie, and how can I send him some more crack to smoke? I want to see more of these types of movies.

Erica Bain then starts haunting the bad parts of the city, killing the people who try to take advantage of a petite, middle aged female, who's walking through the bad parts of New York alone.

Eventually she finds the scum who murdered Sayid and took her dog, and after some really, really good one-liners, kills all three of them, with the assistance of the cop who's been hunting the "vigilante" who's been stalking the city.

Along the way we have some soft girl-rock introspective moments, and a whole lot of Dennis LeHane style grit and angst as Erica goes from average Jane to someone who's not incredibly bother by taking out the trash, figuratively. One of the cool things that this movie doesn't delve into is her motives. Yes, she's hunting the city. Why? She obvious is distraught over the handful of notches on her gun's grip, why does she keep going back.

No easy answers, just lots of good old-fashioned American justice, and a couple really touching scenes with a dog.

Last year it was Shooter, which featured Mark Wahlberg beating up cops and shooting U.S. senators with the incredibly manly 1911. This year it's Jodie Foster illegally carrying a concealed weapon and being applauded for it. At long last, there's a part of this country that I don't fear for quite as much. Maybe Hollywood is finally pulling their head out of their nethers and taking a peek around.

Death Sentence

It's the movie The Punisher should've been.

Very simple plot too. Happy family man Kevin Bacon's son is brutally murdered in a gang initiation rite. Kevin Bacon then commences kicking @$$.

Actually a little more complex than that. He kills the first of the gang somewhat accidentally. They come looking for him, and he kills the next one very intentionally, in a rather terrific brawl that involves seatbelts, a car door, and a hockey stick.

They come looking for him again and kill the rest of his family.

Kevin Bacon says "Screw this law and order crap," loads up on rather mediocre weapons, and whacks the remaining 9 gangbangers in an abandoned mental institution.

Why you'd go into that situation with a revolver, a 1911 (OK, maybe if you were a diehard 1911 fan), and a SIDE BY SIDE SHOTGUN is completely beyond me. Bacon handles the guns fairly well, and it's rather educational to watch someone who's obviously not well trained blunder his way through a fight against a bunch of guys who hold their guns sideways. Shotguns are employed on both sides to great effect - but blowing people 12 feet backwards...completely unrealistic.

The best part of the movie is watching Kevin Bacon morph from an ordinary guy into someone who really doesn't care. About anything. Law, right, wrong...there's a point at the end where we expect much hand-wringing and liberal-lesson-imparting to occur, and it just...doesn't. It's an emotionally AND physically brutal movie, and I like that. I'm putting it on my must own list.

3:10 To Yuma

Christian Bale once again shows why he's the best actor around. The last scene he has with his wife, where he explains why he's going is perfect. I'd love to see him do a movie with Michael Mann.

It's basically a reverse of The Fugitive, set in the Olde West. Outlaw is being escorted to jail, his crew tries to break him out.

Russell Crowe plays the main baddie, a man of few words who seems to see to the heart of everyone around him. He has a strange purity - he knows he's evil, and he's content with that.

Christian Bale plays a one-legged farmer who hires on to help escort Crowe to the 3:10 to Yuma train, which will take him away to be hanged. The "reveal" for why he joins up with the posse comes later in the movie, and is rather...wrenching.

Violent and appropriately bloody, with a dragged out gunfight at the end that wants to be Open Range but just isn't.

I Am Legend

Saw it recently. Decent movie. I like how they portrayed Will Smith as slowly going crazy. The atmosphere was well done, giving the impression that he really was the last man on earth...and the tension of night kept viewers on their toes.

The ending felt like a cop-out though.

And I take much pride in the fact that I'm fairly better armed than Robert Neville.

Jericho

Forget for a moment that it's produced by the Commie Broadcasting System, and that many of the situations the characters find themselves in are completely unrealistic, and that the end of the world would look much bleaker and the people much less well-coiffed than they appear.

This is dang good TV.

This show contains everything that is good about America.

~Resisting the trampling of civil liberties
~Self-reliance
~Good people pitching in to help one another
~A community led by strong men
~Preparedness
~The positive portrayal of firearms ownership

Hawkins's daughter asked him what he had a competition 1911 for and his reply was "Shooting." He then told her that it was high time she learned. She asked why, and he said "So you can defend yourself." Then there's the line I have written on my white board, about 2 feet away from where I sit right now "Every able-bodied person needs a gun. Sixteen years of age or older. Line up."

The fact that they portray the heads of the community as strong, human men is incredible as well. I thought males had been reduced to bumbling, out-of-touch, insensitive, lecherous lugs or out-of-control grown-up adolescents on TV. Gray Anderson, Johnston Green, Stanley, Jake Green...they think and act logically, and with a strong sense of character.

It's no wonder this show was canceled. This was anathema to everything offered on TV at the time. For all it's flaws, this is dang good programming.

The Kingdom

Got this movie for Christmas. I'd seen it twice in 2 days beforehand.

This may be one of the most important movies of the past five years. It opens with an absolutely stomach churning scene of Jihadists gunning down and blowing up innocent civilians in rather graphic fashion. Stuff like this needs to be thrown in people's faces on a daily basis - all we hear is the "it's OUR fault" chorus.

The scenes of the actual investigation are pretty boring, but again, what stands out is the repeated slamming home of the point that the Islamic culture, and especially the culture of the Islamofascists is as different from ours as night and day.

It "ends" on kind of a downer...they get a small cell, .gov calls it a victory and recalls them...and then on the way to the airport they're attacked. More bashing people over the head that Islamofascists are evil pigs - in the middle of a gunfight they take time out to try and behead Jason Bateman on film.

The real ending is much better. Jamie Foxx kicking some Islamofascist behind with a G3. And then an underfolding AK. Jennifer Garner greasing a guy with a folding knife. Everything a good movie needs, except perhaps a ten minute monologue on the evils of Communism and Hillary Clinton.