The A-Team Mini-Review and Other Things I've Watched Lately

This one's going to be a bit of a quickie...well, I say that NOW but you know my tendency to ramble on about nothing in particular.  But I figured I'd get this one out of the way right away and real quick while it's still fresh on my mind. 

Anyway, I decided to check out The A-Team last night with a few friends and it was quite fun.  But as much as I liked it, there's not really a lot to talk about, which is another reason why this blog entry may run a bit short.  The A-Team is very much a "What You See Is What You Get"-type of movie.  If you've seen the trailers, you can pretty much tell whether or not you want to see it.  If you want to see it, you'll know exactly what you're in for.  And if you don't, there's nothing that's going to make you change your mind.  Simply put, if you think people shooting airplanes out of the sky from a parachuting tank is awesome, then you'll love the movie.  If you think it's dumb, then you'll hate it.  Simple as that. 


It's not really a matter of whether or not you like the original A-Team series or not but, truth be told, the casting is about as spot-on as you can get.  Liam Neeson makes a great Hannibal and the same goes for Bradley Cooper as Face.  Honestly, I would've preferred that Quentin "Rampage" Jackson as B.A. Baracus be a little more closer to his own crazy personality and a little less of an obvious Mr. T impersonation but he still does quite well.  Plus, he still gets to beat a couple fools' asses so it's all good.  But Sharlto Copley steals the show as Murdock.  Considering I've never seen the guy in anything before (yup, I still haven't seen District 9), I was kinda worried if he'd be good or not but he was hilarious and I considered him the "Crazy" glue that held the group together instead of being just a random assemblage of archetypes.  To put it in "Always Sunny" terms, he is The Wildcard to Hannibal's Brains, Face's Looks and B.A.'s Muscle.  So does that leave Jessica Biel as "The Useless Chick"?  Well...kinda.  She was a bit generic as the strong female lead/romantic interest but she looks damn good in business attire so I'm willing to give her a pass.  But the villains, once you figure out who they are (yeah, it's one of THOSE kind of action movie plots) have great personalities...even if they aren't particularly threatening.  With much of the focus of The A-Team being on "the plan coming together", you never really get a sense that they're ever going to fail at it but the fun is in seeing how their plans unfold, whether it happens the way they want it to or not.

In my running list of movies I've seen this year, I'd probably place The A-Team behind Kick-Ass and Iron Man 2, but that doesn't mean it's not any good.  In fact, I think The A-Team has nailed down a particular science in movie making that Hollywood tends to fail at miserably: Mindless action WITHOUT insulting your intelligence.  Sure, I know a parachuting tank is pretty damn ludicrous, but I'd still like to see it happen and not think I'm retarded for doing so.  I think Hannibal says it best just before the a'splosion-packed finale: "Overkill is underrated."

Unfortunately, it looks as if the American public DOES want to be treated like stupid children, as The A-Team has apparently bombed in the box office, pulling in about half of what The Not-Karate Kid made this weekend.  *sigh*  Fuck you, America.

In other movie news, I found another Movie Gallery closing near me.  Unfortunately, my haul from this one wasn't quite as good as the one I got from a few months back, but it was still decent.  Here's all what I picked up (@ $5 a pop):

The Comedians of Comedy - A behind-the-scenes documentary of a comedy tour featuring Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn, Maria Bamford and Zach Galifainakis.  I love behind-the-scenes footage, especially of stuff like this because you can always go see a comedy show live or watch one on TV but people like these are always funny and I tend to find more humor in reacting to things that happen in real-life as opposed to a rehearsed routine.  My only real bummer with this one was Posehn's material pretty much being word-for-word from his Live In: Nerd Rage album.  Of course, that only seemed to heighten Patton Oswalt in my eyes, showing that he can do his standard routine but pepper it with different lines or audience reactions and such.

American Hardcore: The History of American Punk Rock 1980-1986 - An awesome documentary about one of the most turbulent times in musical history (in my opinion), in which the general disdain for politics and popular music helped form a new style of music known as "Hardcore".  Featuring interviews and live footage from the likes of Black Flag (1/3rd of my personal "Holy Trinity of Punk"), Minor Threat, Bad Brains, The Adolescents, Circle Jerks, Cro-Mags, DOA and many other bands in the scene, this is one of the best and most energetic musical documentaries I've seen thus far.

Outpost - I was pretty much sold on the DVD cover, where Ray Stevenson (Punisher: War Zone) is a soldier standing amongst a bunch of zombies.  But as you watch the movie, you learn they're not really zombies but the ghosts of Nazi test subjects which haunt an abandoned outpost that a group of mercenaries have scouted out so that a scientist can work on the abandoned project which the Nazi's built to pick up where Albert Einstein left off when he abandoned his plans after the first A-Bomb test.  But the "ghosts" can be shot so I guess they can choose whether or not to turn corporeal...I guess?  That pretty much symbolizes my main beef with the movie as a whole: It seems to want to get by on concept alone.  It's not scary enough to be a horror movie, not action-packed enough to be an action movie, not quite awesome enough to be a just plain awesome movie.  It has a cool concept and it's decent for a rental, I just wish more could've been done with it.

Timecrimes - I haven't watched this yet but I keep hearing about how it's one of the best and most inventive thrillers in recent years.  I do kinda regret not picking this up when during the Blockbuster Video closing though as the Blockbuster version apparently includes a chronologically correct version of the movie, as the story of Timecrimes is told out of sequence.

Iron Monkey - The modern martial arts classic which, surprisingly enough, I haven't seen yet.  And thanks to the ineptitude of the Movie Gallery staff (though to be fair, they are now currently unemployed), I might not be able to watch it as they left the anti-theft device on and I can't remove it, so the disc remains in the case.  Grrr...  Though I have seen the horrible, horrible sequel.  I think I might still have it somewhere.  Maybe I'll review it someday...or maybe I'll do something good and worthwhile with my life instead.

Also, I decided to fire up the Wii again and check out Netflix after about a month or so of forgetting about it.  I haven't watched a whole lot on it, though.  First, I checked out Some Folks Call It A Sling Blade, which is apparently the low-budget short-film that inspired the feature film Sling Blade.  At first, I wasn't all that impressed with it as it seemed like your typical pretentious black-and-white casting-a-former-'80s-teen-star-for-no-real-reason indie flick.  But when Billy Bob Thornton goes into his monologue as the mentally challenged murderer that he broke out with in Sling Blade, you begin understand why this was made into a full-length film.  However, I still haven't seen Sling Blade for myself so I can't exactly compare the two and determine which one was better.

Then I watched Return of the Living Dead Part II, after a recommendation saying that it's a nice change of pace from the typical horror movie.  But I didn't like it at all, even if I don't compare it to the MUCH-superior Return of the Living Dead.  The main reasoning behind the recommendation was that it was a decent blend of horror and comedy...but the original Return already took care of that.  But in Part II, the horror isn't scary and the comedy isn't funny.  The zombies are made to look like stumbling idiots instead of the decomposing flesh-hungering fiends that they are.  And the human characters are even dumber, spending the movie running around and screaming, not to mention the main character having the typical sarcastic witticisms...despite being no older than 8 years old.  How am I supposed to believe what he's saying when I'm not even sure if he knows what he's saying?  Plus, it seemed like ALL of the dialogue was done with ADR instead of recorded on set as everyone sounded like they were talking in a recording booth instead of in the actual movie, which took me out of the whole experience.  Between all the running and screaming and falling and gibbering like dumbasses, it reminded me of what would happen if a zombie outbreak took place during a filming of Benny Hill.  If that's your idea of blending horror and comedy, then more power to you.  You're going to need it when the REAL zombie apocalypse happens.  I couldn't finish it, not because I got sick of it and turned it off, but because I fell asleep.  When I woke up, I saw there were only 9 minutes left to go.  THEN I turned it off, feeling it wasn't worth it to try to watch it again.

Finally, I watched Man Bites Dog, which I almost bought during a Criterion Collection sale at a Barnes and Noble a few months back (knocking down the prices of some of the uber-expensive Criterion sets to the price of a new regular DVD, what a sale!) but didn't.  Basically, it a French mockumentary where a group of college filmmakers follow around a serial killer during his exploits.  Yeah, I know I ragged on Some Folks Call It A Switch Blade for being black and white where Man Bites Dog is too, but it worked a lot better in this movie.  Anyway, many people consider Man Bites Dog to be "dark humor" but I'm not sure if it was the language barrier or the acting or what, but the "humor" fell flat with me.  I maybe chuckled once or twice.  Other than that, I was kinda depressed.  And honestly, the only times I really laughed where during some scenes where they show quick-cut montages of people getting murdered but sometimes they'd hang on too long on a particular shot and it ends up looking really fake, like someone cast their grandma to be the victim of a horror movie.  I'm not sure but I DON'T think that was the intended response.  There are many parallels that can be drawn between Man Bites Dog and one of my favorite recent horror movies Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon.  They both have the same premise but Behind The Mask pretty much pays tribute to horror tropes while Man Bites Dog is steeped more in reality and tends to be a bit artsy.  So you'd understand why I'd prefer Behind The Mask but Man Bites Dog is good too...if you're into that sort of thing.

Anyway, that's all for me right now.  I am working on a decent-sized article right now, but it's wrestling-related so I'm sure 90% of you don't really care.  Other than that, I don't really have that much to write about.  So if you have any ideas for articles to write, movies to review/rip apart, random things to ramble on about, then feel free to leave a comment.

Until next time, I leave you with this...Paul Rudd kicking ass: