arnold schwarzenegger

Review: “The Expendables 3”

It took three tries, but Sylvester Stallone has finally done the unfortunate; he has turned his “Expendables” franchise into the lame, pandering celebrity parade that people thought the original would be. Though far from deep, the first two “Expendables” movies were superior genre flicks that wisely traded on their litany of brawny actors’ iconographies to …

Review: “The Expendables 3” Read More »

Review: “Sabotage”

Last year, writing about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s then-latest film, I wrote, “‘The Last Stand’ isn’t an action movie, a comedy, a crime thriller, or a Western. It’s an Arnold, the smallest genre in cinema. Arnold Schwarzenegger is arguably the only post-silent era actor whose participation mandates that a film be thought of as something other than …

Review: “Sabotage” Read More »

Review: “Escape Plan”

“Escape Plan” is the first film to feature both A-list ’80s action gods, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, in starring roles. Forget the action-fantasy “The Expendables” and its sequel; those were Stallone’s films. Here, the two share top billing and a nearly equal amount of screen time. And it’s with that shared time one can …

Review: “Escape Plan” Read More »

Review: “The Last Stand”

“The Last Stand” isn’t an action movie, a comedy, a crime thriller, or a Western. It’s an Arnold, the smallest genre in cinema. Arnold Schwarzenegger is arguably the only post-silent era actor whose participation mandates that a film be thought of as something other than what it ostensibly is. He’s singular, having such an effect …

Review: “The Last Stand” Read More »

Review: “The Expendables 2”

“Expect the expected” could be the tagline to “The Expendables 2,” the loudest, shootin’-ist film of the summer. This sequel to Sylvester Stallone’s 2010 fanboy action epic finds a nearly identical cast doing nearly identical things. And while that may sound like a damning critique, it isn’t. Also in the vein of its predecessor, “The …

Review: “The Expendables 2” Read More »

Weekend Box Office: Conservative doc “2016: Obama’s America” the only standout

This weekend’s box office returns for the major openers–“The Expendables 2,” “ParaNorman,” “Sparkle,” and “The Odd Life of Timothy Green”–were solid but not spectacular, certainly not the surprisingly strong numbers that “The Bourne Legacy” and “The Campaign” posted last weekend. The Sylvester Stallone/Arnold Schwarzenegger action ensemble pic predictably claimed the #1 slot, but it fell …

Weekend Box Office: Conservative doc “2016: Obama’s America” the only standout Read More »

Review: “Total Recall”

It’s fitting that Len Wiseman’s “Total Recall” remake features a gigantic robot army, given that his films have always demonstrated the bare minimum level of interest in actual people. That’s why Wiseman was a particularly poor choice for adapting Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 masterpiece about a man who discovers that his memories are false and he’s …

Review: “Total Recall” Read More »