Some quick hits!
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter: This was directed by Timur Bekmambetov who also did Wanted, so crazy action scenes are a known quantity. Abe Lincoln: VA is a fun ‘what if’ idea where Abe Lincoln’s mother is killed by a vampire when he’s a boy and that inspires him to eliminate every single one he can find. Politics become his ‘backup plan’ and the plot weaves together history with vampire lore. It works pretty well, Benjamin Walker is pretty convincing as Abe and he’s really handy with an axe. Action is super over the top comic book style. Lots of style and slow mo. Fun movie, makes a good rental I think.
The Expendables 2: The Action Movie Star supergroup film is back and it’s better than the first. So that helps. The group is brought into a retrieval mission where one of their own is killed. That starts the mission for revenge and the halt of a nuclear threat. So that’s the set up for some good action scenes with action stars from he last 30 years. Problem one: the CG blood is terrible in the opening scene. It looks so bad it’s distracting. It’s toned down and gets better later on, but it’s worth mentioning. Second, there are a ton of stars here, the big get being Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s enough to have these huge hollywood action stars in one movie, but they had to shoe horn in every catchphrase they could. It doesn’t fit, it’s super obnoxious and just pointless. Everyone knows who these guys are and what they’ve done. Let them me these new characters in this universe. Any worse and Arnold and Bruce Willis would have high fived and looked right at the camera while slinging Terminator and Die Hard lines at the audience.
Men in Black 3: This turned out way better than I thought it would. The second movie was pretty terrible (I think everyone likes the first) and it’s been a long time since Agent J and K have been seen. Here we see one of the meanest aliens (Jemaine Clement!}that K puts into jail breaks out, manages to travel back in time and kill K so that his alien race can invade Earth. It works really well. There is a mix of fantastic special effects (both practical and CG) and terrible blue screen that needed some more time to be lit correctly. Solid cast, Will Smith does his thing, Tommy Lee Jones holds it down the way he does. Josh Brolin is the real star, he plays the young Agent K and he nails a Tommy Lee Jones impression. Check it out, it’s a great sequel.