Dolph Lundgren | the m0vie blog

Justice League – Starcrossed (Parts I, II & III) (Review)

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Darren

Starcrossed serves as something of a grand finalé to the first two seasons of Justice League. At the time it was written, Timm and his fellow creators weren’t assured of another season. When they did get another season, the show was massively revamped – repracing the team of seven with a much broader cast of characters, scaling down the multi-part episodes to stand-alone adventures, and building on its own themes. As such, Starcrossed can be seen as a conclusion to this era of the show, tying up loose ends and also serving as an impressive showcase for each of the major character featured.

Flights of fancy…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: Arnold Schwarzenegger, batman, bruce timm, Brucetimm, Damme, diana, Dolph Lundgren, expendables, geoff johns, Hawkgirl, ivan reis, jim lee, john stewart, justice league, Justiceleague, lex luthor, Paul Levitz, pragmatism, superman, sylvester stallone, Van Damme, Video game | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Expendables 2

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Darren

There’s a very thin line between being a tribute to something and becoming an example of it. The Expendables sold itself as an affectionate homage to the cheesy eighties action movies that you’d find populating the godforsaken post-midnight hours on a local television station. They’re the kind of movies we remember with a sense of casual fondness – we don’t lie to ourselves that they were great, but focus on the cheesy one-liners and the ridiculous stunts and the scenery-chewing bad guys. Unfortunately, those movies generally weren’t as good as we remember them. We omit certain details – the terrible pseudo-political subtext shoehorned in, the cringe-worthy character work, the pacing issues, the performances that aren’t so bad they become good, but are instead so bad that they remain bad. The Expendables felt like a revived eighties late-night action movie, rather than a tribute to our cultural memory of one.

So I was quite surprised at how much I enjoyed The Expendables 2, the sequel to the all-star actioner. It seems to have learned a lot from its predecessor and feels like exactly the sort of light and brainless entertainment we remember, rather than the mind-numbingly bad films we actually watched.

Eighties action movie reunion!

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: bruce willis, Chuck Norris, Dolph Lundgren, expendables, expendables 2, film, Jason Statham, Jean-Claude Van Damme, mercenaries, Movie, non-review review, review, Stallone, sylvester stallone, the expendables 2 | Leave a comment »

All This Flying is Making Me Tired: Superhero Fatigue…

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Darren

Well, blockbuster season is really kicking into swing at the moment. Next week will see the release of X-Men: First Class, which will be the second major superhero movie of the summer, following Branagh’s superb Thor. There are two more due to touch down before the end of the blockbuster season, Green Lantern and Captain America: The First Avenger. It’s fascinating how large the superhero genre has grown in recent years, to the point where one might legitimately argue that it has subgenres. Part of me wonders if this particular blockbuster fad is approaching its climax – if the superhero movie might out-stay its welcome, and go the way of the Western.

Is the superhero genre's blackest night ahead?

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Batman in film, captain america: the first avenger, Christopher Nolan, Dolph Lundgren, films, genre, green lantern, Movies, richard donner, sam raimi, superhero, superheroes, western, X-Men (film) | 12 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Expendables

Posted on August 20, 2010 by Darren

Nostalgia is a double-edged sword. When it was mentioned that Sly Stallone would be putting together a dream team of action movie stand-bys – Jason Statham, Jet Li, Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dolph Lundgren – our minds immediately go to a happy a place. We remember the joys of films like Rambo: First Blood or Die Hard or Total Recall. However, we forget that a great many of the films produced over that iconic era we look back to were also just plain terrible (or, at best, woefully mundane): Red Heat, Cobra, Tango and Cash, among many others. Sadly The Expendables stands more with the latter than the former. Which is a damn shame.