Olympus Has Fallen

Floro's Late to the Party Reviews - Olympus Has Fallen

This is another attempt to have Gerard Butler out manly-man everything in existence. In this version, Butler is here to out testosterone Aaron Eckhart as the President, and all of the apparently terrifying unknown that is Korea.

The movie opens with Butler and Eckhart boxing in the basement, and then *surprise!* Eckhart is the President, and Butler is his personal bodyguard in the Secret Service. In the first 180 seconds, we now know the following:

1) Eckhart can take a punch from a man with 2 inches and at least 40 pounds advantage, and not have a scratch to show for it

2) Butler is paid to protect the President. He seems to enjoy being bad at his job

3) They're super friends

Also, we meet the spunky First Kid, and the First Lady. Everyone is happy and nothing could possibly go wrong.

After things go predictably wrong, we skip ahead 18 months! Why? Who cares! Our Hero (Butler) has been reassigned to filing paperwork, and the President is about to solve the Korean dispute with his jawline.

"The only place that should have a dividing line is the cleft in my chin"

Also, Butler has a wife for absolutely no reason. Wait, I lied - she's there to have less screen time than the Speaker of the House Morgan Freeman. Yes, Morgan Freeman is not the President...yet?

You now know as much as this movie is going to tell you. Director Antoine Fuqua (most notably - Training Day, less notably - Shooter) typically likes to try and blur the line between good and evil, building it around 1 hero to show us a true paragon. One of the main conflicts he places in front of the audiences is "will the hero stay true in a gray and confusing world?". He also resolves said conflicts with "The world wasn't actually gray. These were the bad guys and they are now dead with bullets." I wonder if he just wanted a break from intrigue and plot sense build up, and just needed to blow things up with Olympus Has Fallen, because it sure felt that way.

The real action for this movie starts with an unidentified aircraft flying in to D.C. airspace, which then starts flying around and murdering everything and everyone. I mean all of them. With large caliber bullets. This leads to a terrorist attack that effectively murders everyone in a suit that isn't in the Oval Office on their way to the super secure bunker. Fortunately, our hero is too manly to worry about this, and he doesn't get anything more than grease paint on his face as he fights his way through a platoon of automatic weapons and RPGs.

Almost unbelievably, he does it without the beard.

Maybe I'm just too patriotic, but I had a hard time believing this would even remotely work. If I learned one thing from my 8th grade class trip to Washington D.C., it was that there is more than just 1 SAM battery monitoring this airspace for just this reason.

That and long bus rides are going to burn out your Discman's anti-skip function.

Once I got passed that, I again had a hard time believing anything else that went on. Without giving "everything" away, one of the ticking clock aspects of this movie is the top secret computer code to all of the nuclear weapons. Obviously, that's a bad thing for terrorists to have. Fate of the world level stuff going on here. And the only thing standing between the terrorists and the code is Eckhart, (Oscar winner)Melissa Leo, and a third person with his part of the code.

AND ECKHART KEEPS GIVING AWAY THEIR CODES! "Don't worry, they'll never get my code." is said a dozen times by Eckhart. These people are openly willing to die to protect this thing, and Eckhart keeps ordering them to give it up. And they listen! What's the point of having the ultimate code divided up to 3 individuals, if the other 2 are just going to give it up because one of them said so?

What if he was secretly Two-Face?

And that's when it hit me. Why am I asking questions for this movie? Gerard Butler is single-handedly dispensing vengeful murder to everything that is over the age of 12 and living. Isn't that what I paid for? Why does it matter that he can do anything he wants to the bad guys access, but the Pentagon can't? Why should I worry that he knows about the only air vent that wasn't sealed, even though they make a point to mention that all the air vents are closed? Why shouldn't he be able to place a headshot through everyone, even behind his back through a wall as he runs away?

If the First Kid is critical to get Eckhart to talk, why aren't they checking behind the walls instead of shooting through them? Did we really need (Oscar almost winner)Angela Bassett in this movie next to (Oscar winner)Morgan Freeman for what must have amounted to a long half day shoot? If the bad guys have what looks to be something hacking a code, why do they need anyone's code? Did anyone else notice that Butler went 1 for the 39 in protecting the President from bodily harm?

If we know about all of the access points that have ever existed to the White House bunker, shouldn't we be doing something about it? What would happen if the old admiral forgot a letter to the ultimate code? How many attempts do we get before we're locked out?  If the bad guys are in a bunker cut off from the rest of the world, how would they know their demands are being met?

There were at least another 80 questions I asked or wanted to ask, but I didn't. I stopped and told my brain to take a breather. Then I realized, I had fun with this movie. It's largely derivative from the best pieces of Action Movie Lore, and slapped together in ways that don't give your brain the option to make any sense of where you are, why this is happening, or what's going on aside from Gerard Butler's chest hair deciding the fate of the free world. Do yourself a favor. Don't ask any questions of this movie or the plot. The only answer you might get is a head shot or an F word thrown at you.

G.I.Joe: Retaliation

Floro's Late to the Party Reviews - G.I. Joe Retaliation

I had such high hopes for this movie. I understand that this does not speak highly of my tastes, but hear me out. The first G.I. Joe movie (subtitled The Rise of Cobra) was wonderfully tragic. It's a masterpiece of Stephen Sommers style of directing known as the, "Stop asking questions. I did a while ago, and I'm directing" technique. I believe that movies can be made purely to be entertaining, and that we don't need a world of deep artistic revelations, or cutting introspectives on life. That's why I love the a movie that decides what it wants to be from the get-go. The first G.I. Joe was one of these movies.

It had a Wayans brother. It had a pre-popularity Channing Tatum. It inspired Michael Bay to replace Megan Fox with a Victoria's Secret model by having one first. It had Christopher Eccleston as a villain because he should always be a villain.

I don't know any Whovians that defend the Eccleston Doctor season. BECAUSE HE'S SUPPOSED TO BE THE BAD GUY

It had crazy impossible science fiction, like face changing nano-robots and a roaming death cloud of all consuming "nanites". Power suits that made a Wayans brother keep up with a young Channing Tatum and missiles. MISSILES! And all the fan service you can buy without having appropriate colored laser battles.

It's not a good film, but it is a fun ride. Just sit back and let it happen and eat popcorn and let your brain unwind a little. It's tired of you too.

Still, this level of great-yet-terribleness is difficult to repeat. In fact, Sommers is one of the few people to pull it off (The Mummy series) So when they announced a sequel and he wasn't attached? I was sure we were headed for a train wreck. Then they put this trailer together. I was ready to believe.

The first movie had just 2 ninjas. This one has a FREAKING MOUNTAIN FULL OF THEM!

The first movie had Channing Tatum. This one ALSO HAS THE FREAKING ROCK!

The first movie had the Eiffel Tower melting. This one has FREAKING LONDON GETTING FLATTENED FROM SPACE!

The first movie had helicopters exploding vehicles. This one ALSO DOES THAT!

The first movie had Dennis Quaid. This one has BRUCE FREAKING WILLIS AND THE FREAKING ROCK!
The first movie had dialogue. This one has NOTHING BUT ONE-LINERS! AND BONUS JABS AT NORTH KOREA!

This should have been 122 minutes of relentless, over-the-top, nonsensical action. Exposition should have competed with explosions for total screen time. Blue and red lasers should have been so superfluous they would have had to build in a seizure prevention intermission. Instead, we got this turd.

I can pinpoint the exact moment when Retaliation completely ruined everything.

It wasn't the attempt at a quick recap of the previous story, even though it was completely unnecessary and slightly confusing.

It wasn't when they removed Destro, Cobra Commander, and Zartan from the villainous spotlight. Seriously, the villain in this is the actor playing the president. The other's total combined screen time is less than the RZA, so they don't count.

Johnathan Pryce gets second billing ahead of Bruce Willis and Channing Tatum in an action movie. That's not what ruined it.

It wasn't when they shoehorned Bruce Willis into the film. You can even see it in the trailer, he's green screened in a truck instead of doing anything that would require a second take or a stunt double.

It wasn't when they introduced a slew of Joes that we didn't know, and only 1 new villain in "Firefly". Also, it wasn't when they paired up The Rock against Firefly instead of someone physically intimidating.

It wasn't when they started rattling off things that sounded like fan service in passing dialogue, and never show any of it.

It wasn't when they decided that the Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow dynamic needed further exploration, so they hired Wu-Tang Clan's kung fu fanatic The RZA to be the new ninja master. This was a good choice, but it's not enough to make up for the decision of making up a twist to the back story in the first place. Not including the RZA in the soundtrack was a bad choice, but that didn't ruin the movie either.

I almost asked why he was in it, and then I came to my senses. Why wouldn't he be in this? Did you see The Man with the Iron Fists? Go do that instead of Retaliation

It wasn't the incredibly boring amount of political warfare that was happening. This could have been called G.I. Joe: Referendum with the amount of time talking about the plots to control the world through politics around nuclear disarmament.

It wasn't the way the evil plan is executed, which when it happens, probably should have wiped out all life on Earth on its own.

It was when they made one horrible decision that killed everything in this movie. 

I'd call it a spoiler, but it was the reason they pushed back the release of this movie, and it was discussed publicly at the time. Still...

You're warned I guess?

It was when they killed everything from the first movie. Seriously. Everything they brought over from the first movie dies in a fire. Take a closer look at the poster. Notice what's missing?

Johnathan Pryce?

It's everyone except Ray Park as Snake Eyes (the all black ninja in the corner), and Byung-hun Lee as Storm Shadow (the white ninja at the top). The entire original cast, plot, relationships, inside jokes, technology, threats - all of it - gone before the first 25 minutes are finished. I can't name anything that has killed off 99% of the cast and characters from one issue to the next and retained viewers.

OK, maybe this one. But only a little because they keep the same main characters.

I was shocked because they had so much source material from the first movie to call back to, and they got rid of all of it. They couldn't even get Tatum to play his own corpse, which made me think he might not actually be dead. That was, until The Rock dumped out a backpack full of more dog-tags than there were people in the movie, and Bruce Willis picked Duke's out on the first shot.

And it was such a waste! The Rock and Tatum had such great on screen chemistry. They had a banter that made you buy in to their friendship outside of "work". Did no one watch the dailies with the two of them? Who made the call to say "Yeah.....nah. We don't want that anymore."

Enough with the pining for a disastrous action movie that didn't happen. This movie committed the worst offense a movie can make. It was boring. It is poorly held together by the gravity caused by the massive plot holes. The impending threat to the world's safety is only brought out in the closing 15 minutes. For all we can tell, the biggest threat is a shiny briefcase with the COBRA logo. I felt more intensity from listening to the dial up connection in WarGames than the whole of this movie.

Don't see this movie. Not even to get that "train-wreck" aspect. Retaliation will only disappoint you. They should have kept delaying the release of this until a few hours after the end of time. Now you know.

LOST Season 1 episode 11

 Far and away the craziest episode I've seen so far

This was going to be a part of the giant catch up post, but I pulled it separately. This episode in particular exploded my brain with badness. For the rest of episodes 6-12, check here.

We pick up from the previous episode and Doesn'tGetPregnancy Girl is going to have her baby, so naturally this comes with a series of psychotic dreams about being attacked. OR ARE THEY?

We learn through flashbacks that she believed in a psychic. Then we learn that the psychic planned on getting her into a plane crash. I'm not convinced I blame him, since I can't stand her accent or extreme levels of dumb. I vote we get this kid out so she can become Doesn'tGetParenting Girl.

Noel Underhill (formerly the Hobbit) is extremely sweet on her, now that he's sober. She decides Dr. J doesn't believe her, so she leaves the caves into the woods. Because the best thing to do in this case, is leave the only doctor while you are minutes away from labor.

Maybe pregnancy in Australia doesn't hurt as much because they're always around kangaroos?

Here's where things get weird again. Hurley decides to be Law and Order Hurley, which works out great to introduce us to Ethan Rom (not to be confused with Ethan Frome? Cuz I wasn't a fan of that, and Rom's clearly a bad guy who will go to great lengths over a girl. In my mind, Abrams did this on purpose to torment high school English teachers with a slew of "This book is just LOST" essays). Ethan is a guy that we only just met this episode, but apparently is a stalkermurderer who can out hunt and track Prof. X according to Prof. X. So now...DGPG and Noel are kidnapped.

As we go hunting for them, Vampire Diaries and X split off into their own group. X seems to want to wander off into the sunset, but VD (heh) keeps following him. Then they find out that the ground is made of metal. X decides it's steel, because his knife tells him so. I can only assume he's murdered enough steel with the tip of his knife to know the difference.

Meanwhile, Ethan "Bear Grylls" Rom appears out of nowhere, beats up Dr. J, and then hangs Noel.

• He does this after blindfolding him, with a blindfold no one had
• He does this with a giant vine, hanging from the space between a bunch of trees instead of a tree
• He does this without a way to hoist said vine, since it's hanging there like left over Spider-Man webbing in the middle of NYC, and there aren't any pulley systems in this jungle. OR ARE THERE?
• He does this without breaking Noel's neck, even though he would had to have climbed one of those near by trees and dropped Noel, then held him still in the middle like you would steady a punching bag.
• All of this while DGPG is probably in the early stages of labor, and hiking through the jungle, but doesn't seem to slow them down at all.

Ethan's a pretty powerful dude.

Learn from the best. And die like the rest, because there's only one Chuck Norris.

Dr J. and Kate find Dead Noel. They somehow cut him down, and then proceed to revive him in ER/Generic Medical Drama fashion. Only HORRIBLY. Kate paces around the waiting room jungle while Dr. J performs CPR that immediately cost him his medical license. I started laughing at the point where he was "punching" Noel in the chest for the second time (after Kate said "HE'S GONE!!!"), clearly stopping himself in his motion, AND Noel wasn't moving at all.  Good doctoring there, J.

Your "pounding the air two inches above the victim to restart their heart" technique meets all the requirements on this obviously medical clipboard I have. You win at doctor!

Of course, this display of unmitigated failure works suddenly and Noel's fine.

I want to take this moment to thank the internet for existing. I searched "lost jack revives" and this is the first thing that came up. It is better performed than the actual show by a factor of 3.8. I did the math.

I'll let you compare the two. But to give the real thing a chance of matching up, it won't be in English.

How much of a spell did Abrams have cast over America at this point to get away with this? There's no way he got a green light for episodes this far past the pilot with only the budget of the pilot. Did they just ship this sequence straight to production from the island? Was this part shot live and nobody told me?

"We did 27 takes and that was the best one."

To recap: Hurley starts a census to introduce us to the only new person we've met in 10 episodes. He's weird, no one knows him, and he's actually Bear Grylls trained by forest ninjas. Jack is able to revive people just by being angry near them. Noel can live through a lynching and DGPG reaaaaallllly annoys me, but not enough that I wish harm on the unborn child. We managed to cram more out of control crazy into this episode than the last 8 combined. I'm proud. I'm ashamed. I'm excited for the possibility of even more horrible jungle-doctoring. Guess the only way to know is to keep going!

10 things that happened on LOST season 1 episodes 6-12

Floro's Late to the Party Reviews - LOST season 1 ep 6-12

It's been a while since I've put up any new anything on...well anything. For why I was on hiatus, check here.

It doesn't mean I've given up on my quest to catch up to the rest of the LOSTrailians and the year 2005. In fact, the last stack of episodes were extremely character specific, and therefore will be summed up quickly in whatever manner I remember them. Ready...go!

1) Episode 7 surprised me at the end, because it was written by Paul Dini (at least in part)! I have to assume that he's an Oasis fan and now I have so much more respect for him. I didn't even know that was possible.

Turns out the Hobbit is actually Noel Gallagher of Oasis and it's not even subtle. There's an entire episode of him coming to grips with being a drug addict rock star with a brother who thinks he's better than Noel. Also Noel writes all the songs and hates his brother for being the more popular lead singer. ALSO THEY NAMED THE BROTHER LIAM.

He even kinda looks like Liam, if Liam were to become a sober accountant in New Hampshire.

So What's the Story? Professor X tells Oasis Hobbit aka Noel Underhill (see what I did there?) that it's time to Dig Out Your Soul. Prof X will deny Noel a dime bag 3 times so that Noel will decide to Be Here Now. Some how, that will cure him of his addiction permanently through some kind of Heathen Chemistry. And of course, Noel overcomes it by Standing on the Shoulder of Giants. But in this show that is Familiar to Millions, Don't Believe the Truth.

I think that's all of them. Definitely Maybe. I'm disappointed that I did this and Abrams & Co. didn't. Maybe it's all part of The Masterplan? I'm done. Stop the Clocks.

 2) Hurley builds a golf course that is immediately forgotten forever during the end credits. Hooray for Hurley!

3) Sayid and Dr. J torture Sawyer because he...knows something that might save someone else...I think it had to do with medicine. That was it! Taken Girl had asthma for an episode. And I think by the end X cured her of that too? Maybe it was Dr. J? Whoever cured her breathing problems with breathing, it wasn't that important and it was laughably dumb. Next I expect someone to have lung cancer, and a random star cures it by smoking all of the cigarettes on the island.
Anyways, the important part was our "heroes" deciding to torture the "villain". And the "villain" turns out to just be a misunderstood ass hat, who still sucks.

Gonna take a lot more than this awkward scene for me to care about Sawyer. Sorry ladies.

Because of this, Sayid decides to run away forever like a 9 year old. No one seems to mind. It's not like he could take the Stretch Armstrong.

4) Sayid is captured by some crazy-ass Frenchwoman scientist who tortures him for answers to prompt his flashbacks until he fixes a music box. Then we learn that Crazy Jane Austen(scientist, jungle, go with me) tells him that she went all murdertown on everyone she hung out with. This is justified because...wait for it...the PolarBearT-Rex might actually just be a cloud of death spores! Or a crazy mental illness! Or Zombie Cancer! That is, until we hear more roars in the jungle, and Sayid escapes.

This is the moment he realized he didn't feel sore from his torture anymore

5) Sawyer gets his flashback episode, (which is apparently part of the Sayid Tortures An Ass Hat episode) in which we find out he is a giant douche AND a con man. Only then we find out he's just a misunderstood ass hat, who still sucks. "I became what I hate?" Come on. Booooooooo.

6) Hawaii Five-O and wife can't speak English....until she CAN! Also their marriage is in shambles because of...business ninjas? It seemed like a bit of that and "you're married to your job". But they were going to get back together, so it would've been OK if they didn't crash. Also, the Only Black Guy gets his ass kicked over a watch. I'm not convinced he serves any other purpose than to take a beating and be a terrible role model for the kid. Much like Sawyer is there to be a misunderstood ass hat and a giant purse. He just happens to have exactly everything someone needs at that exact time? No one else anywhere picked up anything useful at all? Whatever.

Misunderstood. Purse-like qualities. Occasionally shirtless? Think I get why the ladies like him.

7) Across several episodes, a bunch of people move into the caves of infinite water. No wars have broken out between camps as of yet, but it does make for an excellent excuse to not speak to 75% of the cast in any given episode.

8) Episode 11 was so insane, it has been granted a separate post. I've set it up here.

9) Kate gets an episode to remind us she can stand around in her underwear(to go swimming). That leads to her finding a case that holds her secret past. Her secret past of that one time where she was being a bank robber who conned bank robbers to get to a secret deposit box that held the key to her secret past. Inside the secret deposit box is? A secret envelope!

We learn that Kate killed someone who she probably loved, and kept his toy airplane. In an envelope, in a suitcase, in a deposit box, in a bank (in the hole in the bottom of the sea).  Also guns and bullets, which I'm sure will end up all over the place later. That said, if this plane ends up being named St. Elsewhere, I'm gonna break something.

I don't care how hot you are. If the island is contained in that plane, we can't be friends. OK that might be a lie.

10) And last, but certainly not least, we see more of my favorite character to date, Jack's dad. Sadly, this was the part of the story where we learned why Dr. J is so torn up about his dad. J kicked his dad out of a surgery because of drinking, and then a patient died. So Dr. J was going to turn Dr. Dad in. Then he wasn't. Then he did it anyways! So now Dr. J blames himself for Dr. Dad drinking himself to death, and we missed an opportunity for some great Dr. Dad insults like "Go ask your mommy to tie up your scrub pants for you like a big boy, while I drink scotch and take out this jackwagon's appendix. Like a man. A man who wins. Except at having a useful son. But you can't win 'em all, Jack. You can't [drink] win 'em all. [evil eye over rocks glass while drinking the rest]" Bring back the Dr. Dad I like so much, 2005 J.J.Abrams!

Wow. What amazes me most about these episodes is that we barely went anywhere. We have caves that explain the water situation. We have some history on a bunch of the main characters, but no one's died or accomplished anything. Based on the near decade's worth of LOST wannabe's, I'm expecting we won't get anywhere in terms of an overall plot for another 45 episodes. I'm 10% of the way through!