Pretty damn awesome, I’m looking forward to seeing this – after Captain America, Super 8, Immortals…

First, a better-than-expected trailer for Captain America. It’s about a small, weedy man who gets turned down for the US Army in the Second World War and – wait, you really should know who Captain America is. Here’s the trailer:

Whaddya reckon? Looks pretty good, doesn’t it?

The second is a RED BAND TRAILER for Your Highness, starring James Franco and Danny McBride. I say RED BAND TRAILER as it has 18+ language in it, and bums and boobs, so be warned. It looks like a bit of a goofy laugh movie, so I’m in. Hey, not every film I watch has to be Inception, or The Seventh Seal, or Mon Oncle, or In The Realm Of The Senses, or Zatoichi, or Oldboy, or – ah, here’s the trailer:

“It’s a trap, a booby trap!” – worth the ticket price alone

First off, as I’m a fan of pratfalls and slapstick, a chap call Larry Griswold (Clark’s dad?) on The Frank Sinatra show. Now, I do a lot of falling over, but this guy does a lot more and walks away unscathed, quite a talent. It’s basically a high dive routine, but the guy’s a bit drunk and unsteady:

That was courtesy of Boing Boing

Next, a trailer for a new film called Battle For Los Angeles – it looks like Independence Day + War Of The Worlds + Skyline, but, you know, better:

Warning: the trailer allegedly contains the Brown Note, but no effects were observed

That was courtesy of First Showing, where you really should go to read more about the film and just in general, as it’s a great site for films

Looks good, hopefully it’s more Hangover 2 than the official Hangover sequel, which I really don’t think is necessary.

H/T to FirstShowing.net

To sum up the plot, the two “hero” cops of the NYPD (played briefly by Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson) are, er, removed from service and the other guys, the guys who do their paperwork, need to step up and fill the missing places. Well, one of them does – Hoitz (played by Mark Wahlberg) is a very angry cop, desperate to prove himself and a bit of a mess. He drags his partner, Gamble (played by Will Ferrell) into an investigation sparked by Gamble’s boring investigation into scaffolding permits, and it escalates from there.

This is not a buddy-buddy movie – Hoitz hates Gamble (and most other guys), has no problem telling him to his face, but Gamble is able to respond in his own way. Obviously, the pair warm to each other a la Lethal Weapon but with more laughs.

The film takes a rapid-fire approach to the humour, and there are some great, great lines in there. A favourite is Hoitz’s disparaging remark about Gamble’s Prius: “I feel like I’m driving around in a vagina”. The poor Prius comes in for far worse though.

Mark Wahlberg, no stranger to gritty drama and hard-nosed characters, plays the comedic role well, and makes it work. His frustration at his partner, his job, his life easily comes out but never seems like exposition. Will Ferrell, who can be samey at times, is reined in here and is far more funny as a result. As someone else said, he plays Gamble as his usual man-child character with a few quirks – he’s a babe magnet, which confuses and consternates Hoitz, and provides a great scene when Hoitz meets Gamble’s wife, played by Eva Mendez. Speaking of whom, she’s really funny in her screen-time, but again, comes across as a real character and not just a comic foil. The same can be said for Michael Keaton, who is just excellent in his role as the police captain – again, lots of good, quick one-liners from him.

The comedy does slow a bit towards the end of the film, but it allows the characters the necessary time to establish the situation and Show Growth ™. The end of the film is suitably bombastic and a great ride. Speaking of the end of the film, stay for the credits, as it explains what a Ponzi scheme is (involved in the film), and details about US financial bail-outs, CEO remuneration, etc. – it’s quite educational.

Overall, I’ll give it 8 / 10, a very funny comedy

Coming Soon: I saw trailers for The Town, which looks excellent, and RED (Retired Extremely Dangerous) which looks like a lot of fun, so they’re on the “to watch” list.

Giangrosso, owner of the Scott Adkins Fanz site and forum has put together a showcase reel for Scott, which contains clips from Wolverine, Black Mask 2, Undisputed 2 and 3, and much more; it’s well worth a watch

I was looking forward to seeing this film immensely, and even managed to get an evening pass on the first day of release. I also managed to see it for free and get a free ticket for another film thanks to the projectionist starting the film early, but that’s another tale.

The tale of The Expendables goes as follows (well, from what I saw from about 10 minutes in): Sylvester Stallone leads a small group of (highly capable) mercenaries consisting of himself, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Terry Crewes and Randy Couture. Sly is hired by a “friend” (after beating out another “friend” to the job) to go and take out another 80s star, Eric Roberts, who is running some scam on the (fictitious?) island of Vilena with the help of a corrupt general and Steve Austin (the MMA guy, not The Six Million Dollar man).

The first recon with Sly and Statham (who meet their contact there) goes very bad and they just about make it out, after stopping off for some serious aerial payback. Their contact refuses to go with them and goes into hiding, whilst Sly and Statham return.

After a bit of character development from Statham (basically him kicking the poop out of a guy who hit his ex-girlfriend), Sly chats to Mickey Rourke (who is very, very good in his small screen time) and decides to go back for the girl alone and probably kill Eric Roberts as well. He’s interrupted by a traitorious attempt on his life, but manages to get out of it with the aid of Jet Li, conveniently along for the ride – some humorous dialogue is exchanged during the chase, very funny.

Anyway, long story short, Sly is met at the plane by (almost) everyone on his team, they go back, and pretty much all hell breaks loose for the last 15 minutes of the film. The action is fast, frenetic, bloody (more on that later), there’s a machine shotgun, knife fights, mano-a-mano fisticuffs, almost everything you can conceive of in an 80s action film. I won’t spoil the ending as it pretty much writes itself, but there is a pleasant surprise at the end that I was pleased with.

But why only 8 / 10? Well, it’s very much Sly’s film (which is fine), but even then there didn’t seem to be lot of him or any of the other actors on screen for long. I suppose with that many big names (still), it’s hard to fit them all in. The chap who played the general (David Zayas) did a very good job, I really felt for his character and the dilemma he was in.

The fight scene between Jet Li and someone else was, unfortunately, choppily edited which is par for the course these days. However, later in the film when all hell is unleashed, the action is framed much better and there are some stand-out “wow” moments, e.g. Jason Statham’s two-shot to a soldier’s foot then face, and Sly’s extremely rapid reload-and-fire technique, which I can only assume he’s trained for.

One thing that really, really put me off was the CGI blood. Very badly done, too red, too comic book. The blood effects in the recent Rambo film were far more convincing, but maybe they hard to “cartoon it up” a bit for a 15 rating. That said, when the machine shotgun is doing it’s work, it’s awesome.

Overall, more than good film, definitely worth a watch. I personally don’t see it as throwback to the cheesy 80s action movies (Tango and Cash, anyone?) but rather a non-cheesy action movie in its own right.

Incidentally, the rather excellent UK martial artist Gary Daniels is also in it, whilst (again) he doesn’t get much screen time, he has a great fight at the end with Jet Li and a rather nasty end

Put simply, the technology exists to join someone’s dream, and whilst in that dream, steal secrets if you’re good enough. Leonardo’s character is this best there is, but he is hired to implant an idea, rather than steal something.

To be honest, that’s as much as I’m going to say about the story, as it is something that should be allowed to unfold with you knowing as little as possible up front; we’re way beyond spoilers here

The film has been incredibly crafted, and I don’t mean the actors’ performances or the special effects, both of which are excellent. The story is layered well, and covers a very important strand of Caprio’s character’s past. No-one’s character is one dimensional (although Michael Caine is only in the film briefly, so is not given much chance to evolve). Cillian Murphy does well in the film, I really felt his emotions over the relationship with his father, but again, I don’t want to give anything away.

In short, see it, I recommend it highly with 5 stars.

Bloody vuvuzelas… Over 2 million views is quite impressive

Simply text “night in” (without the quotes, natch) to 3000, and you’ll be sent a code. Go to your local Blockbuster store, show it to the chap / chapette behind the counter and you’ll get a film and a game (or two films), some cola, a bag of popcorn and a bag of sweets for just £5 – for two nights.

There are some restrictions, namely the code is only good for Mondays to Thursdays, but if you rent on a Thursday, you can return the film late on Saturday. Also, the cola, popcorn and sweets are all Blockbuster’s own-branded, but I can recommend the popcorn

Further details on T-Mobile’s Night In microsite, if I wasn’t so busy painting my house, I’d be taking advantage of this…

I’ll be buying this as soon as it’s out

Yes, I know it’s in Thai, with no subtitles, but… look! ELBOWS!!!!

Scott Adkins plays Boyka, the antagonist from the previous film, becoming the protagonist here, fighting for his freedom (he hopes). The film boasts quite a roster of fighters, including Lateef Crowder (soon to be seen in the Tekken film), and Marko Zorar as the end boss fight.

I was going to see the film anyway, but this impressive trailer only cements that decision.

Looks good! Incidentally, the trailer comes from the Scott Adkins Fanz forum, head on over and take a look.

Matthew Vaughn directed the film, adapted from Mark Millar’s comic book by himself and his writing partner Jayne Goldman (Mrs. Jonathan Ross) as it was being written. In fact, the film was actually finished before the comic book, as Matthew Vaughn said on a little Film4 info programme.

To the film: Dave (played excellently by Aaron Johnson) decides to become a superhero, despite not having any super powers, no dead mother to avenge, no special training (“unlike Batman”). He gets a suit, gets a name (the titular Kick-Ass), practices for a bit and gets seriously hurt on his first outing. Six months later, he’s all healed with lots of plates in him (“Like Wolverine!”) and handy nerve damage, so he doesn’t really feel pain much any more.

A series of events transpire to place him in serious harm’s way, and he is suddenly rescued by Hit Girl and Big Daddy, played respectively in a break-through role for Chloe Moretz and a career-reviving role for Nicholas Cage who is brilliant in the role. Then, frankly. all Hell breaks loose as Kick-Ass is dragged into Big Daddy’s and Hit Girl’s revenge against a mobster (Mark Strong in another, er, strong role) for past transgressions.

I am being deliberately vague in this review as the film really needs to be seen with as little knowledge beforehand, although there are some comic book in-jokes to be found. I was going to write that there are a few other story lines going on, but apart from some father-son angst, there isn’t – it’s a tightly-focused story.

Things happen in the film that I don’t think need to have happened, but fit the story. There is no “oh, come on” moment at all in the film – well, maybe one, but it’s easily forgiveable. Add to that the humour (and not even dark humour, the film itself isn’t dark), very strong characters, great acting, and Kick-Ass comes out as a must-see.

There are so many stars in here, it’s dizzying: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Terry Crewes, Steve Austin, Randy Couture, Eric Roberts, a couple of people who I vaguely recognise in cameos, etc… The trailer certainly does its job, I’m looking forward to seeing it, a good mix of action, adventure, fights, and a sly modern-day take on what could once be called cheesy lines

Although it’s embedded, I thoroughly recommend heading over to You Tube and watching in in HD – just click on the video above and select HD…

And damn, love that “suit in a briefcase” from the comics