Red

After trading in his professional past as a black-ops CIA operative for a new identity, Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) is basking in normality. But he’s forced to return to old habits when an assassin puts a target on his back and goes after the woman (Mary-Louise Parker) he loves. Helen Mirren and John Malkovich co-star as former members of Frank’s team who reluctantly reassemble to save his life in this Golden Globe-nominated action-comedy.

Brian
Rating: 3 out of 10

Red is a bad movie. There’s no way around it. I tried to focus on the positive elements of this film. The cast is fantastic all around, particularly Hellen Mirren and John Malkovich. They chew up every scene they’re in and deliver the dialogue in a fun and engaging way. Bruce Willis is also good, as he always is, playing the action hero (a role he was born to play going all the way back to 1988’s Die Hard).

But, I have to point out that the story just plain sucks. It centers on the idea that the Vice President wants to kill a group of ex-CIA soldiers that witnessed his war crimes years and years ago in South America. That’s it…..boooorrriiinngg! It also brings up several questions: Why the hell would he wait 20+ years to take them out? Also, who was talking about his war crimes or threatening to go public? Not a soul! It’s such a huge gaping hole in the plot that is never explained and can’t be excused away as: “Well, it’s just an action movie.” All movies, regardless of genre, have to give me a reason to give a shit about what I’m experiencing. Red gives me zero reasons to stay attentive except for the great cast that is given nothing to do that’s remotely interesting. In fact, I can’t remember a film that had this much action that was so boring. There’s very little danger, no one dies, and the situations are just flat out ridiculous. For example, Bruce Willis has a shootout with a character on a city street. Well, you could call it a city street except for the fact that THERE’S NO PEOPLE ON IT!!! Then, there’s another scene where Bruce Willis breaks into the CIA headquarters, which can apparently be done if you dress in a general’s uniform and have a special contact lens. Once he’s inside the headquarters, he goes to the file room where he meets an old CIA rep. who is old friends with him and hands him the whole file he needs. Why didn’t he just give him a call and meet up with him outside? The mere fact that I’m figuring out all this shit after one viewing and the makers of this turd lived with it for years is just shocking.

Transformers 3 trailer

The Movie Brothers’ hatred of Michael Bay is well documented. We named him the worst director working today, and we weren’t big fans of the first Transformers and hated the sequel even more.

Officially, this latest sequel to the franchise is titled “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” and its teaser trailer gives us a tiny glimpse into what this is about. In the last film we were forced to endure comical characters — two dumb twins who fought all the time, an old-timer who carried a cane, and we hope they don’t introduce more of the same. In the first one we watched one autobot, Bumblebee, urinate oil onto someone. In the second, a giant transformer, made of construction vehicles, had giant testicles made of wrecking balls that clanged with the sound of church bells. According to the IMDB page, Optimus Prime and Megatron will be back, as will Shia LaBeouf. John Malkovich will also be in the film.

There isn’t much to say about this trailer because it doesn’t show any of the usual cast and starts in the 1960s with the first lunar landing, which is well done. As usual, Bay’s films look amazing. Unfortunately, his track record with storytelling leaves us with little hope for this film. Here’s the first trailer for “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.”

Jonah Hex

Enlisted by a Union soldier (Will Arnett), scarred bounty hunter Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) scours the Wild West in pursuit of Turnbull (John Malkovich), a crazed voodoo master with a scheme to assemble a devastating weapon that will destroy the government and lift the Confederacy. Based on the cult DC Comics hero, this action Western co-stars Michael Shannon as strange circus impresario Doc Cross Williams and Megan Fox as the prostitute Lilah.

Matt
Rating: 5 out of 10

This movie had a lot of flash and little substance.

It’s an unusual comic book movie because it doesn’t include a super hero, similar to “Hellboy” — which I loved. You have to suspend reality whenever you watch a comic book movie. This time it’s a Confederate solider who turns in his men for bad deeds and they kill him and his family. He is badly beaten and turtured and some Native Americans find him and save him. Now, he’s half dead and can talk to the dead. OK, I can deal with that. In fact, this was one of the movies I was looking forward to most last summer.

However, instead of developing characters that would have interested me — like Malcovich’s bastard of a villain — we have to deal with a love interest in Fox that is wedged into the script. It slows things down, there’s too much going on, and the result are undeveloped characters that seems to be pieced together between big, sexy action sequences.

This could have been worse, but it could have been much better.