Machete is a lot of things, it is a kickback to the original Grindhouse project helmed by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, it is fan service to all of the guys who wanted more cheesy gore and flesh and it is a cynical, brown middle finger to anti-immigration laws and the people behind them.

When we saw the trailer to Machete during the introduction of Planet Terror, many of us laughed our ass off and pondered at how epic that pretend movie would have been were it real. Robert Rodriguez heard our wishes and provided Danny Trejo a platform on which to wield his masterful blade to a concert of blood. Steven Seagal delivers one of his best performances in years, playing a Mexican drug lord and samurai sword master (oh ya it’s hilarious) and Robert De Niro was brilliant as the Texas Ant-Immigration yahoo Senator McLaughlin. There were so many recognizable faces that I could go down the line listing their names and how wonderful they were but I will save you the yawns by mentioning the two hawtes that had my eye: Jessica Alba and Michelle Rodriguez. Oh yes boys these ladies came to play and they brought Lindsay Lohan with them… it was hot.

The story will not win any awards as the trailer says it all in “they pissed off the wrong Mexican”. It is a revenge story coupled with a superhero caliber good guy and a whole lot of snide reflection on present day events dealing with illegal immigrants. Jessica Alba is hot in this movie, and if she lost you by vanishing for a bit to have a baby, you will be back onboard team Jessica after this. Michelle Rodriguez, one of our premier badass femme fatales actresses has apparently been in the gym and running a whole lot for this role. Her abs are ripped, her arms toned and her body flawless as Luz, the taco vendor/revolutionary. Cheech Marin makes a cameo as a shotgun wielding priest and Don Johnson (yup the Miami Vice guy) plays a hardened anti-immigrant redneck by the name of Lt. Stillman.

They pissed off the wrong Mexican!

Machete is a crowd-pleaser, very much like the Grindhouse double feature was but I fear that the timing (school is back in session) and niche audience will hold it to low numbers just like it’s predecessors. Still the people who showed up to see the big Mexican were in hog heaven by the time the final credits rolled. It is the kind of movie that parodies not only the genre, but the actors within it themselves and real life situations that affect everyone. Directors Ethan Maniquis and Robert Rodriguez have hit a homerun and the only thing I want to see more than the shapely ladies of this movie is more of Machete himself.

Flaws? There could have been a bit more of our main guy in the film, but balancing the amount of good guy front and center with the development of bad guys and supporting cast is not an easy challenge to meet. I can also bemoan the sacrifice of all out action in lieu of story development, even though the story wasn’t all that but that would be me taking something that isn’t meant to be taken seriously… seriously. No Machete was great, campy and an awesome follow-up to Planet Terror for Robert Rodriguez. It is the type of movie that I will buy and watch over, and over, and over again – and not for the Jessica Alba shower scene, or the girl on girl pool scene with Lindsay Lohan but for the movie itself.

If you have any misgivings on going out and watching Danny Trejo chop the bad guys down, then consider this a reassurance of its epic grandeur. Go out and see Machete.

  STAR RATING: (10/10)   ★★★★★★★★★★

The 2010 version of Piranha 3D combines nostalgic themes of horror with a bit of Girls Gone Wild and gore. For viewers of the original 1978 version of the film you may be turned off by the emphasis of breasts and ass over the piranhas but for what its worth it still worked.

If you are younger than myself (child of the 80’s) you may have missed out on the cheesy movies that USA would show late night like The Toxic Avenger, Rats and many other D-Rated horror classics. If you did then you may misunderstand the intent of a movie like Piranha 3D which was frame for frame a near perfect homage to the type of cheese that was made back then.

Piranha 3D is very raunchy; I am surprised that R was a sufficient rating for it with the abundance of vag shots and woman on woman action going on. The gore was over the top in an Ichi the Killer sort of way and the plot was typical. It’s spring break so you get your fair share of asshole teenagers that movies like this are good for. These same teenagers are spared no mercy when the piranha’s find them and about an hour into the movie we witness a feast unlike no other from the wicked fish. As a remake that isn’t advertised as such, Piranha will probably confuse a ton of folks who will think it a sad, cheesy movie with terrible special effects. Having it in 3D was no bonus for me as nothing stood out enough to warrant the extra ticket cost.

While the 3D was worthlessly non-existent to me, there was always something to grab my attention in every scene of Piranha. From the perfectly shaped, double D breasts of adult starlet Gianna Michaels on a para-sail, to the piranha’s chewing through a man’s midsection and sawing him in half. The gore was plentiful but so was the amount of naked female body parts (top and bottom) along with Jerry O’Connell acting like the worst kind of woman pimping, horn dog. The acting was rightfully inconsistent, the main boy Jake (Steven R. McQueen) and his girl crush were not likable but his mom Julie Forester (Elisabeth Shue) was hot in that “woman in uniform” sort of way.

My final thoughts on Piranha 3D is that it may end up being a sleeper hit for gore and classic horror fans. Not sure on it’s intended audience yet but if you do go out to see it please remember that it is meant to be a fun remake. Fans of adult film will be pleasantly surprised at a few faces that liberally show off every inch of their bodies on the big screen. Piranha 3D is extremely gory, sexist, disgusting, perverted, wet, offensive and fun. Watch it at your own risk!

  STAR RATING: (6/10)   ★★★★★★★★★★

Tekken marks yet another movie in an extremely long line of badly portrayed video game adaptations. You would think that with all the blaring examples of what not to do when making a video game movie, these newer titles would get it right. Tekken annoyed me, from the ugly character actors, to the cheesy Tekken City and the choice of characters to lead the story.

I hate to keep bringing up Mortal Kombat as a positive example, but when you have movies like Tekken that serve as a slap to the face of fans, you cannot help but reminisce on the one time that it was done right. While everything outside of Jon Foo’s portrayal of Jin Kazama was terrible, you would think that at least the fighting would be interesting. Tony Jaa’s The Protector showcased the fighting prowess of Foo and Lateef Crowder, which excited fans like myself into thinking that the pair returning in Tekken would guarantee some great action. WRONG! Lateef (Eddie Gordo) is onscreen for about 2 minutes getting his ass kicked by a sloppy version of Raven being played by Darrin Dewitt Henson.

The fighting is terrible, and whoever thought it a good idea to use the palette swap of Eddie Gordo from the game – Christie Monteiro (Kelly Overton) as one of the main leads apparently knows nothing of the game. The movie’s version of Christie is not the saucy Brazilian hottie that we know and love but a sexy white version utilizing a sloppily slow fighting style that was painful to watch in action. Christie showed a lot of crack… her outfit being made more as a way to get Jin some easy access to the cookie rather than being a comfortable fighting uniform for a martial artist. Oh and she doesn’t do Capoeira, I am not sure what style this girl was doing but her fight against Nina Williams (Candice Hillebrand) was laughable.

Speaking of Nina… as I know many of you are fans of the blond La Femme Nikita clone. Nina and Anna Williams (Marian Zapico) are now whores for a goateed Kazuya (Ian Anthony Dale) as he gets it on with them via ménage (sister on sister isn’t taboo in this odd little movie). We don’t get to see Anna fight much but Nina’s skills are suspect unlike her deadly demeanor within the game. Jon Foo as Jin was laughably bad acting but ultimately he was very likeable. His mother Jun Kazama (Tamlyn Tomita) taught him how to fight at a young age and he grew up within “Tekken City” wishing to have an out from the slums.

Enough is Enough!

Listen, I won’t even bother to go into the plot being that the Director himself didn’t seem to take it seriously. The fact of the matter is, the movie was not made for a mainstream audience – who could have been wowed by the action and storyline. This movie was totally made for fans of the game of Tekken. Fans who like me will be annoyed when a non Bruce Lee inspired version of Marshall Law is portrayed by Cung Le of all people (no disrespect Cung but Bruce Lee/Marshall Law you are not). Gamers avoid this turd with a passion or relive the sour milk taste you once experienced when Street Fighter The Movie was released so many years ago.

Hollywood still doesn’t get it when it comes to adapting our beloved fighting games to movies and Tekken is no revolutionary trial. Do not waste your time on Tekken unless you really want to stare at the crack of Kelly Overton’s ass… well maybe that isn’t so bad. But if you are expecting hot martial arts action then look elsewhere, Tekken is definitely not it.

  STAR RATING: (2/10)   ★★★★★★★★★★

The Expendables is everything you would expect it to be, I mean let’s be honest, you have a movie that pools together all of the most memorable action superstars of 20 years and give them guns, what do you really think is going to happen? The movie has more murder per minute than the standard modern day action and the fight choreography had me grinning from ear to ear with every situation.

The boys are rough, muscles raw, threaded, aged, and for that the corps that called themselves Expendable was believable. These old action stars looked very much like professionals and when it came time to dance it was something to witness. Sylvester Stallone plays Barney Ross the leader of The Expendables, a collective of ex military mercs. His men are played out by action vets Jason Statham, Jet Li, and Dolph Lundgren. Randy Couture and Terry Cruise are a part of the team with Mickey Rourke playing Tool a  knife expert, tattoo artist and a mentor and big brother to Barney and the boys.  Statham is his standard – the ultra charismatic, ladies man and his back and forth with Stallone was so genuine that you immediately grasp that the two guys are tighter than brothers. Strangely enough the lines are done so well that the few exchanges Dolph has with Stallone brings about the same feeling, these guys seemed blood tight.

The formula of having these men be so close in their brotherhood is done in a way that I haven’t seen in many movies. Typically they beat you over the head with dialogue and flashbacks in order to have you believe the closeness, but director Stallone got it across through two things. 1. Whenever a brother was in trouble another was always there to back him up, 2. As hardcore and macho as these men were they were not afraid to cry and open up to one another. This was done so flawlessly that it just made sense, so when the hell breaks loose and the bullets began to fly, you knew deep in your heart that none of these guys were truly “expendable” to one another. They move in, handle business and made sure that everyone got out. It was The A-Team on growth hormone, it is an action lover’s buffet of goodies. The Expendables kicked ass.

If you are expecting a story that will blow you away and provoke thought, then use your ticket to go and see Inception. If you are a fan of Rambo, Commando, Die Hard, The Transporter and Kiss of The Dragon then you should go and see this. I had no disappointment and the pacing, action, silliness and unreal, over-the-top killings was damn near perfect. I mean, it even had the coolest of bad guys to boot, who you may ask? Eric Frikkin Roberts thats who, a bad guy that I can’t bring myself to hate… just like Christopher Walken. They both make me smile when they try to be bad but I digress, the Expendables is all that folks. Go check it out!

  STAR RATING: (8/10)   ★★★★★★★★★★

Can Christopher Nolan do any wrong amongst fans? The man has become the silent Jerry Rice of Directors, making big plays whenever he’s thrown the ball and stepping aside gracefully until it’s his time again. Inception was described to me by a friend as having left him with the same feeling of wonder that he felt when he first saw The Dark Knight. For me it was all pistons firing correctly: original story, awesome visuals, ease of immersion into the world portrayed and a complementary soundtrack.

Inception is the type of movie where spoilers are non-existent; it becomes such a personal experience that your outcome will be different from mine. I can tell you the entire plot (which I won’t) and you still won’t get it, and I can tell you the plot and conclusion that I came up with and you will go in there, watch it and come back and tell me I am wrong. For this you may look at my damn near fully loaded score and tell me that I am just a fanboi for the crappiest movie of the summer and you would be just as right as me giving it a near perfect score. It is all about what you take away from Inception, while I do judge many movies that seem cut and dry as to why they were deemed good or bad, aside from technical things, the story itself is one that cannot be easily judged. Now doesn’t that make you want to at least give it a watch?

I will share a little secret with you folks that are still on the fence about seeing Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio may be plastered all over the trailers and posters but the true action star of Inception is Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). While the DiCaprio/Page scenes will force you to think and put the pieces of the puzzle together, Arthur’s scenes will keep you action junkies in your seats with his skills and combat smarts. Ken Watanabe of The Last Samurai fame and Letters from Iwo Jima plays Saito but I was unable to understand him much throughout the movie due to his low voice volume clashing with the music. You may or may not remember Ellen Page (the young woman who played Juno) but she was a delight to watch as Ariadne. Her scenes with Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) seemed very genuine even more than the ones Cobb shared with Mal (Marion Cotillard).

After seeing movies like Jonah Hex, my eye has gotten somewhat ready for CGI influenced scenery. However, watching the world of Inception and the people running, gunning and dreaming within it seemed so refreshingly different. It felt real, as if they were there on location, and for good reason being that Nolan had his world built outside of a computer generated framework. Inception uses the computer to assist the reality, not have it create the reality. It is something to marvel at in this rough summer of lackluster movies. The other positive to having the scenes look so real is in the immersion that you are able to experience within the world. There is nothing more distracting than watching a movie and in the back of your mind the little voice goes “wow that looked reaally, reallly bad”. Inception had me leaving the theater thinking about our very existence. It has made for interesting roundtable discussion with other viewers and it is a movie I expect to watch several times over.

Inception is a must-see, it is Spicy, it is intelligent and it is the type of writing we can appreciate for years to come. It has been a bland summer and I know your tongues are salivating for the Spice, so go see Inception and give your palette a treat.

  STAR RATING: (9/10)   ★★★★★★★★★★

Salt is your run-of-the-mill summer action movie with a twisted story akin to The Bourne series or James Bond of old. Like those movies the action is over the top and crazy, guns blaze and sparks fly but the PG-13 rating spares us the blood and guts that should accompany such wicked projectiles. One scene has Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) killing a guy by ramming the jagged end of a broken bottle into his neck but this is left to your imagination since all we see is the motion and then the discarded bloody bottle after the fact. Am I the only one who prefers his action graphic and R-rated? Still Salt was highly likeable and the liking goes beyond the beauty at the helm.

The plot of Salt is not easily summarized without offering up spoilers so I cannot go there. I will say however that it involve the CIA, a super-spy named Evelyn Salt, her fellow spy Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) and a plot involving Russia, North Korea and terrorism. Angelina Jolie does her thing as Evelyn Salt, with the action looking very much like she did the stunts herself (which she did). Speaking of stunts, unlike the Bourne series, the fighting and action in Salt was done extremely well. When Evelyn fought bigger guys she would use objects and moves that made sense for a smaller woman. I have grown tired of seeing small, slight women throwing roundhouses, jabs and fancy moves to drop big 300lb muscle men in action films. Salt takes guys out by kicks to the groin, trapping the knee, breaking bottles across their faces and choking them out with chains. If anything, this really impressed me with the action.

What I didn’t like about the action was the tired, incorrect and convenient knockouts that occurred when people got beat up. Movies tend to lean on this to discard bad guys who they don’t want to have the hero kill. The hero will punch baddies in the gut and step on their hand and they will lie on the ground knocked out no matter where they were hit. Salt did a good job on the choreography but guys were getting knocked out from subtle blows and it really bothered me that they took this route. Film quality fluctuates at times especially during the traffic scenes but it isn’t enough to distract the viewer from the scenes that are playing out.

Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Peabody and is a strong presence as he always – which leads me to wonder when he will headline his own picture. Salt starts out a bit uninteresting and scarily bland until 30 minutes in then it turns into a bullet train ride of action. Angelina is a Jack of all Trades in the acting profession having played the tender damsel and the hardcore action heroine. I believe that after Tomb Raider, Angie was bitten by the action bug and not only loves playing the femme fatales but does a damn good job at it too.

Go out and check out Salt if you are an action fan and wish to see one of the better movies this summer.

  STAR RATING: (7/10)   ★★★★★★★★★★

Suddenly the Asian guy, who has spoken maybe 2 lines throughout the entire movie stops and settles himself. Looking back the team wonders why he hesitated and he motions them to keep moving… they do so without anyone caring to question his suicidal motives. Not even the pragmatic but empathetic Isabelle (Alice Braga) gives a thought to saving Hanzo the Yakuza (Louis Ozawa Changchien). I thought to myself, here we go again, the sole Asian, a Japanese equipped with a katana, stoic, suicidal and prepped to take on a Predator… solo. I tend to believe that I may have been the only one in my theater that was bothered by this all too familiar scene.

Predators manages to channel James Cameron’s Aliens with the feeling of dread and fear placed upon a team of military people placed within the habitat of a superior and mysterious enemy. Much homage is paid to the original Predator as we get people from different walks of life being hunted by the alien(s) and a familiar jungle backdrop unlike the recent installments which had the fighting within city limits. Predators was refreshingly good and will become a favorite for fans of the series, comics and older movies. In terms of this year and the horrible run of pictures that have been bombing in the Box Office, Sci-Fi has been holding up and with this being the second Brody helmed movie this year, I can safely say that the nose plays.

Adrian Brody, an actor that I have followed closely since the Pianist, has his share of negative critics (myself not being one of them) but manages to stay busy with a broad variety of roles. I really appreciate his character acting and this movie really sells him well as a hardened military badass. Alongside Brody are a few familiar faces like Topher Grace (Spiderman 3), Alice Braga (Repo Men) who I teasingly refer to as the bootleg Michelle Rodriguez, Danny Trejo (Machete) and Laurence Fishburne (Matrix).

The cinematography left much to desire as I hoped for the beautiful, lush forests of the original Predator but was made to settle on a nastier rain forest with the one shot of the horizon appearing more Boris Vallejo backdrop than exotic, alien landscape. The music was reminiscent of the original however the tune at the beginning when the shock and awe of dropping on the planet was presented did not fit at all. To be honest the score was more distracting than complimentary and it took me watching till near the end to warm up to the soundtrack.

Plot-wise it was no Sixth Sense (this is my attempt to uplift the beaten down M. Night) but it is a Predator movie, seriously it is what it is. The same story as always without spoilers is that you have a collective of military talents scattered on a planet as prey for a group of Predators to hunt and prove themselves. These Predators are intriguing and after seeing this movie I would love for them to make a movie that shows us their civilization and methodology so that we can understand why it is they setup these hunting grounds. AVP gave us some insight into this with the ascension of proven warriors to lordship but we still don’t know these aliens and why hunting is even important.

Nolan (Laurence Fishburne) and Stans (Walton Goggins) were my favorite in terms of acting out their respective parts and Nikolai (Oleg Taktarov) gets the badass award for the movie. This is a must-watch folks, and a necessary boost for those of you who have wasted money to see bad movies this year. Support Sci-Fi, Predators did not disappoint and I look forward to owning it on Blu-Ray.

  STAR RATING: (7/10)   ★★★★★★★★★★

Rushed, soulless and harboring some of the worst acting I’ve seen in an adaptation, M.Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender will probably become the blueprint for future Directors as to what not to do when making a movie. Leaving the theater a fan of the Nickelodeon show described what he had seen as a “highlight reel of all the cool things from the first season.” When the credits went up after the final scene, people were groaning, two guys clapped loudly hoping that the applause would catch on (it didn’t) and the obvious fans of the show scurried out hurriedly whispering thoughts of disappointment and wearing expressions of being letdown.

It has been a long road to the launching of this movie, as a non-fan I sat on the sidelines observing the build-up and the hope that M.Night would knock this one out of the park. Controversy over the races of the main characters plagued it from the beginning but the confidence of the Director reassured people that it would do justice to their beloved show. As a movie watcher I was appalled by the acting of Jackson Rathbone as Sokka, the kid managed to channel both Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker and Ben Affleck’s… hell anything Ben Affleck has done, all in one character. Channing Tatum would rival Robin Williams in animation compared to this guy. I think the term is wooden, but in this case I will say he was iron, an emotionless waste of screen time and a laughably distracting reminder of Anakin from Attack of The Clones.

While Sokka was making me wonder whether or not he was trying to singlehandedly ruin the movie, I found Aang (Noah Ringer) to be an extremely likeable kid. Having him being the focus was not a bad thing at all as his martial arts katas were impressive, his acting was tolerable and the emotions of Aang were played out well upon his young face. Katara (Nicola Peltz) was a little better than Sokka (not saying much) and we all know that Dev Patel (Prince Zuko) can act after kicking ass in Slumdog Millionaire. These main players are who we stare at throughout the movie and the terrible dialogue they were given did not help things as they traded off lines with little care for authenticity.

The pacing was rushed, and I haven’t even watched the series to make this judgement. By the time the movie ended the only people I gave a crap about was Prince Zuko and Aang. There was no background given on the weird flying bison that Aang rode, his flying monkey or even his friends. The people who were supposedly downtrodden by the fire nation did not evoke any emotion or care from me and the might and threatening power of fire did not come off as convincing as I thought it should. I hate to draw comparisons, but the sheer scale of this movie gave me flashbacks to Peter Jackson’s Lord of The Rings. In that movie you felt the impending doom of The Eye, you worried for Middle Earth and you gave a damn about the main players. The Last Air Bender could have used some lessons from that trilogy to being about some sort of ownership of the characters from the audience.

This movie felt as if it was a homage to the series assuming that you already knew what everyone had going on, already know what will happen and already like individual players. It rushed through the tale of Aang and ended without much explanation, leaving me with questions and wondering if it stunk because I didn’t view the source material. My questions were along the lines of “was Sokka that wooden in the cartoon? Cause if he was this guy needs an Oscar”, I also wanted to ask about the flying monkey and bison. The Last Airbender should really have been three movies, split up realistically to allow for character development, strong pacing and a more dynamic display of what Aang could do.

Protesters of the movie will boycott it due to the previews looking like evil Desi people being mean to a bunch of white heroes… well that’s not too far off of what I saw but there are people of color scattered throughout the nations (thanks for throwing us a bone M.Night). While your boycott will prevent you from seeing it anyway, let me assure you are not missing anything worthwhile so clutch your Nickelodeon Avatar Blu-Rays closely and don’t you sweat. I am not sure whether to feel sorry for Mr. Shyamalan or chalk it up to the fact that maybe he just isn’t all that great. It was a visually beautiful movie for what it’s worth, but it lacked a soul and that my friends is why it fails.

  STAR RATING: (3/10)   ★★★★★★★★★★

For the longest time RZA has been talking about a movie that he was working on and how he would not release it until he got the blessing of “The Abbot” Quentin Tarantino. Well judging from this lengthy expose trailer for Wu-Tang Vs The Golden Phoenix, I am going to assume that the Abbot told his young padawan learner to go ahead and birth his baby to the world.

Being a lifelong hip-hop fan and one of the kids of the eighties that worshiped Kung-Fu Cinema, Enter the 36 Chambers by the Wu-Tang Clan revealed to me a sound that echoed many flashbacks of the movies I so love. From the production days for the Wu-Tang clan all the way up to being one of the most wanted music producers in Hollywood, Robert Diggs aka RZA has become a cultural icon along with his friend Quentin Tarantino. On this alone I put my trust that this movie should not disappoint!

I dunno folks, with Black Dynamite’s success, this coming out and The Karate Kid doing as well as it did, I am going to wager that black and yellow makes for some good Kung-Fu creativity… and to think we thought that the love of Kung-Fu died sometime in the 80s. Somebody pinch me, I think I’ve fallen into fanboi paradise.

Well it had all the makings of a special movie: cool looking hero, sexy side-kick, machine guns strapped to a horse and John Malkovich. It had the Western flair, the civil war and Ulysses S. Grant yet it somehow forgot that movies need to be interesting in order to work. Jonah Hex was so bland that words cannot describe how disinterested I was throughout the entire movie. Based on a DC comic book which I am very unfamiliar with, I will go on the assumption that fans of the graphic novel will have a different level of appreciation for it than I did, that level of course being none.

Josh Brolin stars as the infamous Jonah Hex, a terribly scarred bounty hunter who gets hired by the United States president to stop a very bad man from exacting Confederate revenge on the unified states. With a summary like that, you can image a Clint Eastwood type riding through towns, shaking down the simple Sheriffs for info and taking the bad guy out in a one on one cross of six-shooters. Smoke settles and he emerges victorious to hop on glorious steed and ride off into the sunset, a hopeful damsel in tow crying for lack of keeping him. Not this flick, we get a sort of crossover between real life events and comic book fake-dom. Jonah is one part The Crow, one part The Man With No Name from Clint’s Spaghetti Western era (think The Good The Bad The Ugly). He is a wraith with one weakness – a beautiful prostitute named Lilah, played by the fox herself Megan Fox.

You can go ahead and skip this one being that for all the efforts of John Malkovich as Quentin Turnbull and Brolin’s Jonah Hex, the movie has absolutely no crescendo. Megan Fox, who probably thought this would be a good movie to gain back some of her fans (those who joined the anti-Fox bandwagon) must be quite frustrated at her agent. While people will go on about her accent, her acting and her looks, I did not find her to be bad at all as Lilah, quite the opposite really – femme sidekicks of Western badasses are notoriously glorified arm candy. See not much to expect, but Megan shot guys, sexied it up (despite hard censorship) and delivered the cheesy lines as well as she could. I noticed you Megan, no worries, heres hoping you land a good movie one of these days (raises Tanqueray glass).

No Jonah Hex is not the second coming of The Dark Knight, hell it isn’t even Superman Returns. It was a bland movie, with ridiculous explosions, Dragon Balls (you’ll get this joke if you see it) and non-existent violence. Which makes me wonder – had it been a bit more adult, would it have worked? Every sexy scene, violent scene or anything beyond a G rating was squelched by a cut-away. This happened so much it actually annoyed me, I mean why have Megan Fox as the sexy arm candy if we aren’t even allowed to look at her? Riddle me that Jimmy Hayward. Anyway folks, it’s sad to say but Jonah Hex sums up 2010’s summer of movies. Wait until something Spicy comes out before wasting your money on a Jonah Hex.

  STAR RATING: (4/10)   ★★★★★★★★★★

This will not be a popular review for 2 reasons, the first being that most people are not martial artists, and the second being that little Jaden Smith already has a ton of haters for whatever reason.

Foreword – My Feelings on The Karate Kid series (lengthy)

Before getting into the review I must explain a bit about myself. I am a martial artist, have been all my life and will continue to be until I die. I grew up watching Kung-Fu theater (hence the ongoing reviews I still do on the classics).  So when I saw the original Karate Kid I was excited at first about the movie but the excitement grew into bitter cynicism as I got older and wiser into what was martial arts versus what I saw in that movie. I strongly dislike the original Karate Kid (there I said it), I thought it was a campy mess of real philosophies being played out poorly by people that obviously had no martial training.

Going into this movie, this new “Karate Kid” starring a boy who has annoyed me in former movies (The Day The Earth Stood Still) and the setting being China with Kung-Fu not Karate, I was thinking “here we go again” with the bull. The difference however was that I knew Jackie Chan was involved and instead of the standard cast of players, this would have a different feel to it based on the setting and the actors. I avoided it for as long as I could until the blaringly good reviews kept pouring in and I became way too curious to not go give it a watch.

What Was So Good About The Karate Kid

The number one thing that I loved about The Karate Kid is the message, yes the same message that was given in the 1984 version, but a great message nonetheless. The message is that beyond all the MMA, K1, action stuntmen, Bruce Lee worship that we have of today, Kung Fu is a way of life and the real reasoning for its being is for “self-defense” and a betterment of life. While we have the fancy dojos that drain money for the purpose of seeing kids go through the motions towards promotion, this key philosophy is the Karate Kid from beginning to end.

Beautiful cinematography (the Forbidden City scene was all that), honest acting and well choreographed fight scenes made the presentation quite pretty. Jaden’s Dre Parker grows on you as the plot goes through and Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) is as tremendous as he is impressive. There are flaws yes, and it is heavily clichéd and predictable – This latter critique of course falls hollow for a summer movie, since I deem most movies predictable especially one that borrows the formula and title of an old 1984 classic. Yet it has that “it” which makes you feel it, none of us saw this coming from the weak trailers that were made for it.

Who Should See The Karate Kid

Biased, angry and closed-minded, adult nerds should sit this one out (I was one but I’m being serious, haters gtfo), especially if martial arts is foreign to you. It may seem like a kid’s movie at first but by the time it ended I thought to myself that parents need to see Karate Kid as much as their children. I thought the evil Dojo master (no it wasn’t Cobra Ki) was a great example of the wrong kind of teacher for any martial student. His calloused tutelage exemplified how a trainer can be worshipped by his students to the point where they will do morally questionable actions in order to garner favor. It isn’t a caricature so much as a reality warning for parents to sit in on classes and know who it is that teaches your child karate/kung fu.

Taraji P. Henson did a decent enough job as Dre’s loving young mother and while Jaden wasn’t terrible, he was a bit hard to believe in the scenes across from her. This is of course balanced out by his time with Jackie Chan whose master/pupil relationship with Dre takes on a patriarchal type of bond. In the end, as in the end of the movie there is the big tournament (as you already know). My theater cheered as if they were in the movie watching little Dre prove himself against the best. By the time the credits rolled, I saw one little girl bawling her eyes out from the violence and the whole theater cheering as if they were watching the Super Bowl.

Karate Kid is surprisingly a sleeper hit, and unlike its predecessor I can at least appreciate it for both the philosophy and the martial arts. The film is also a bit of an advertising brochure for the country of China since the views of the Great Wall, Forbidden City and architecture are breathtaking, in contrast to older movies which showed the country as old buildings, ruins and rice hats. Go and check out the Karate Kid, you will not be disappointed – no nerd rage here, just intrigue and then there’s Nocturne by Chopin pounding away in my skull unwilling to leave – damn you Meiying (Wenwen Han)!.

  STAR RATING: (9/10)   ★★★★★★★★★★

So The A-Team wasn’t the steaming pile of garbage that everyone expected it to be. Even I was guilty of uttering the words “The Losers looks more true to the A-Team than the A-Team does” back when they were flashing the trailers before every movie, but I was wrong and the A-Team didn’t fail. I had no idea that Sharlto Copley was such a funny individual (he plays Murdock), his timing and intentional/unintentional switches in accents made for quite a time whenever he was onscreen. After seeing him in District 9 and now this, he is quickly growing to be one of my favorite celebs. In the original television show it was a toss-up between Murdock and Faceman in terms of who was the least talked about individual – well when you see A-Team the movie, you will be talking about Murdock and chuckling at his antics throughout.

The cast was phenomenal – yes this means newcomer Rashad (Rampage) Jackson too, dude wasn’t fumbling his lines or failing the way you would expect any MMA turned actor to do. Not only did Rashad pull the B.A. Baracus character off, he found a way to be likeable while doing it. We all know that Mr. T’s shoes are of a size that cannot be easily filled, hell any 80’s icon being “emulated” is a difficult feat, but seeing Rashad you saw “B.A. Baracus” not Mr.T and for this movie, this was a good thing. Liam Neeson was good, but he always is isn’t he? And Bradley Cooper was the PERFECT pick for Face. Not only does he play the douche bag with ease (remember him in Wedding Crashers) but I’m sure dude’s time in the gym got some panties wet in the audience – no homo.

The one downside to the cast is my beloved Jessica Biel. Now Spicy readers, if you have seen many of my reviews you know me to be a HUGE Biel fanboi (looks not acting) but she was odd as hell in this movie. She felt forced, unnecessary and to top it off they go on about how beautiful she is yadda, yadda, yadda but this wan’t Jess at her finest. The good thing is her screen time is limited and while I was disappointed in them casting her across from Faceman (ScarJo would have nailed this role), she did not bring the score down overall. The real downer to the A-Team was the god-awful writing…

Spicy Hater: Erm Greg, the original show had crappy writing too, how does that even add anything to this review? The show was campy and pretty silly given the violence and lack of death therein.

Well SH, this movie is not the television show, while it may come close with little things that bring about nostalgia, it is far from the television show so I warn nostalgic fans to go in there with this in mind. The A-Team is on the level of Crank where the stunts they perform, tactics they come up with and situations they survive is so far beyond reality that you may as well consider it to be a cartoon. Seriously, they were using projectiles from a tank to guide it as it fell from 20,000 ft in the air towards a body of water. Murdock pulls off loop-de-loops with ease in a helicopter, oh and Hannibal (Liam Neeson) escapes a cremation chamber… if you’re looking for reality this is not the movie for you.

Overall the A-Team is simple, action-packed fun. What’s the term… popcorn movie – there ya go. It’s the “sit back, turn your brain off and watch things blow up” type of movie, sans the offensive rape of the mind that a Transformers was. I highly recommend you check it out, not for the killer story (rolls eyes) but for the awesome characters. And oh ya… stay for the credits.

  STAR RATING: (6/10)   ★★★★★★★★★★