The Expendables (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Sylvester Stallone. Starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li.
The Expendables is exactly what you're expecting.
The movie's primary claim to fame is its inclusion of every aging action star and musclehead of the last 400 years - even Schwarzenegger has a completely useless cameo. The overstuffed pack of leading men spends the entire film growling amongst itself for dominance and marking territory with a fire hose of testosterone.
All that anyone needs or wants to know about the plot is thatit gives plenty of opportunities to shoot people and throw knives into necks.
Heads explode. Jet Li fights Dolph Lundgren. The movie is directed by Sylvester Stallone and written by a sentient jar of anabolic steroids.
Stallone is so jacked in this film that he runs like a minotaur and needs to tape down the veins on his forearms to keep them from getting tangled up in his feet. Still, though he looks like he's made out of lumpy clay, he has to be in the best shape of any 63-year-old there has ever been. Mickey Rourke is six years younger and looks 20 years older.
Rourke is the movie's best actor; the worst, UFC fighter Randy Couture. Of course, all of the action stars are equally invincible and all get their moment in the spotlight. Stallone is quite gracious about sharing the film's major heroics.
So I kid because I love--or at least I kind of like. The Expendables narrowly dodges becoming a caricature of the very worst 80s "buddy" action movies and settles into a solid genre film. All the pieces are there. It might not do anything original, but no one can say it doesn't give the people what they want.
Rated R for significant headsplosions throughout.
3.5 out of 5
Eat Pray Love (Director's cut) (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Ryan Murphy. Starring Julia Roberts, Javier Bardem, Billy Crudup.
Julia Roberts (as Liz Gilbert) proves that mid-life crises aren't just for men anymore when she decides that God is telling her to divorce her husband and go on a trip around the world.
Early on, Eat Pray Love smells suspiciously like the typical chick flick in which a self-indulgent main character strings along a series of far-too-patient men on some neurotic personal journey. However, the movie is self-aware. The character flaws we are expected to see as cute in other female leads are eventually unmasked here for what they are. A lineup of no-nonsense supporting characters keeps Gilbert from wallowing in self-pity and self-entitlement.
The director's cut runs at an absurd two-and-a-half hours, and the regular cut isn't much shorter. As no sane person wants to watch Julia Roberts for that length of time, the previously mentioned supporting cast is essential to keeping things tolerable. Interesting characters appear at every one of the film's four major locations, which is much more than most stories can claim.
The movie's central premise - that to abandon one's life and change the scenery is a plausible way to find happiness - is perhaps foolish and irresponsible, but it's all but forgotten under a pile of smaller lessons that are occasionally poignant.
Eat Pray Love is not something that husbands should willingly watch with their wives, but it's a far cry from the offensive shallowness of the likes of Sex and the City 2. Those who think it sounds interesting to watch Julia Roberts find herself for two or three hours may well love it. They will learn what the rest of us knew in the first 30 seconds: she's right there.
Rated PG-13 for Julia Roberts' horrifying mandibles.
3.5 out of 5
