The Billionty-Oneth Geek: Older Than 8 Since 1991

(Warning: Spoilers Ahead) Star Wars !!!!  After a 10 year gap we finally receive a new entry into the now Disney owned Star Wars franchise!  So it is apt that the new entry is called the Force Awakens . The movie starts off 30 years from where the Return of the Jedi last left us.  The Empire has fallen and the Rebels have seemingly disbanded.  But from the ashes of the past, a new threat has risen.  Out of the fallen Empire, a new army called the First Order has spawned, threatening to finish off what the Empire set out to do –  eliminate the force by terminating the last known Jedi, Luke Skywalker.  But as the Empire has evolved so have the Rebels.  Led by General Leia Organa, the Resistance (or the new Rebels) aims to find Luke first, to stop the First Order. We are told this story through two new main characters.  Rey, who is a scavenger on the planet Jakku, who harvests scrap metals to earn a meal.  Finn, a turnco...

Y’know, in terms of movies, this summer has been so shit.  Every week, there seems to be a new letdown, a new Hollywood debacle.  Amidst the piles of summer movie dung, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is a glimmer in that mess.  It rises above all the other stenches. Rogue Nation , the 5 th installment in the Mission Impossible franchise, follows our favourite IMF agent, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), as he tracks down a mysterious organization that he believes is tied to many of the recent real-world disasters or wars.  However, while on the trail of this rogue group, or Syndicate, Ethan himself has become a bit of a rogue agent (hence a rogue nation!  Aha, a-ha!  A-hahaha!).  With the IMF becoming defunct, thanks to recent reckless actions, he no longer has ties to a recognized organization.  Not only does Ethan become a chaser, but he’s also the chased, as the CIA are hot on his trails.  Their adventure takes you around the world ...

After two lacklustre offerings (in X3: Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine ), X-Men: First Class explodes on to the screen with a face melting goodness not seen since X2 . It is a triumphant return and a return to form in the X-Men franchise. Set in the 60’s amidst the Cuban missile crisis, X-Men: First Class depicts the early days and the inception of the X-Men. As such, we see the origin of the friendship between Xavier (Professor X) and Erik (Magneto), destined rivals. Being an expert in mutants, Xavier is recruited by the CIA to assist in capturing a suspected mutant threat in the form of Sebastian Shaw and his Hellfire Club – a band of mutant miscreants. It’s Shaw who wants to stimulate a third World War in an effort to attain mutant supremacy. However, the CIA and the Xavier’s new team of young mutants are hot on their trail and attempt to thwart his plans in causing nuclear strikes. Meanwhile, Erik has his own agenda and seeks the blood of Shaw for the murder of his...

And as it’s becoming typical, another Marvel movie has opened up the summer movie season. Yes, Thor , the movie about our favourite God of Thunder. But will it be up there with the likes of Iron Man , or lower like the second Iron Man , or worst, X-Men Origins: Wolverine ? The movie starts off with a brief history lesson on Asgard, and its relationship to Earth and the rival kingdom, Jotunheim inhabited by creatures called the Frost Giants. The Asgardian King Odin, defeated the Frost Giants, and established a peace with the warring kingdoms. The story then refocuses on two brothers, Thor and Loki, the sons of Odin. One of the brothers is destined to become the new king, and as such, they are destined on a path of rivalry. After an attempt on their kingdom, Thor, both rash and impulsive, gathers his friends to make an attack on the Frost Giants. Nearly suffering defeat, the team is saved by Odin, who in anger, banishes Thor to Earth, sans all the cool powers. He lands in the des...

I probably should have written this a week ago, but man, it’s been a busy few weeks and I’m admittedly behind on many things. But hey, better late than never! And what a movie to talk about... Fast Five ! The movie starts off as we see Dom being hauled away to prison, for crimes from the previous movie. He’s taken away in cuffs and placed on a prison bus, as his friend and sister, O’Conner and Mia look on. A high speed chase ensues as O’Conner and Mia chase after the prison bus, attempting to free Dom. They speed in front of the bus and grind to a stop. The prison bus hits the little sports car, sending the bus flying and flipping through the air. Yet somehow, the sports car is umoved and undamaged! Cue opening titles. The opening scene pretty much tells you where the rest is going. The movie then fast forwards to Rio, where the rest of the movie takes place. To avoid arrest in the US, the band is in Brazil conducting small heists to get by. Unfortunately, they steal a car o...

World Invasion: Battle L.A. Oh no. This was not a good movie. There isn’t very much to the story. The movie takes place in August 2011, when one day aliens decide to invade our world. As it goes, the aliens have pretty much taken all over all of the major cities on the west coast… all save for Los Angeles. The movie follows Staff Sergeant Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) and his platoon of grunts as they look for a way to save the city and any civilians that they come across. Battle L.A. is a lazy man’s Independence Day , without the fun or the tongue in cheek smarminess of Will Smith (awww hay-llll naw!). The story moves A to B without any feeling or emotion. What also hurts is the lack of a climax that is almost pivotal in big action blockbuster type movies. It lacks the sense of direness that one would associate with a world invasion. So the story doesn’t give you anything worth buying into and what’s worse is that they don’t give you any characters worth investing into either. Eve...

I love movies where the title describes what you’re going to get. Like Snakes on a Plane . Or Hot Tub Time Machine . There’s no ambiguity. Here you have a hobo. You give him a shotgun. Hobo With A Shotgun ! Of course!!! The math couldn’t get any simpler. Hobo With A Shotgun follows an unnamed hero/hobo as he lands in the town of Scumtown (or was it Fucktown?) after hopping from a train. Upon arrival, he quickly learns that the narcissistic Drake, along with his sons Slick and Ivan, run the town after witnessing a literal blood bath in the middle of the streets. The town is infested with drug, violence and heinous crime in general not unlike that of the Detroit depicted in Robocop 1 to 3 . The Hobo sees it all and watches with a sick sort of disbelief. What the fuck is wrong with this town? After saving a prostitute named Abby from Slick, Hobo experiences his first run-in with the corruption in the town. Abby befriends the Hobo, and it’s not long before he shares with her h...

Apparently (from what I’ve read and heard) the movie was marketed completely identical to Taken, from 2 years ago. Taken is a movie that I love for its showcasing of Liam Neeson in a total badass form. Now, besides seeing the poster, I knew nothing about Unknown except for what my friend told me shortly before we walked into the theater. I don’t even think I’ve seen the trailer beforehand. All I knew was that from the poster, The story follows a scientist named Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) who arrives in Germany with his wife (January Jones) for a conference. Shortly after arriving at their hotel, he realizes that his luggage and identification was left at the airport and takes a cab back to retrieve it. However, on their way back, the cab gets into a little traffic scrimmage and ends up going off a bridge into the river below. Harris is trapped and drowns, that is until the superhero-like cab driver rescues and resuscitates him. He wakes up at a local hospital, and finds it odd...

Green Hornet. Despite all the negative reviews out there, I thought that the movie was very, very, very… okay. It had good action, it provided some good laughs, thus satiating the crave for an action comedy. The story wasn’t the greatest, but I liked their approach to the concept. It was their attempt at turning the story into a buddy action comedy that I liked. Superheroes are sort of wacky as it is (the original Green Hornet not withstanding), so going for the comedy angle was appreciated. But that said, it was probably the weakest movie written by Seth Rogen and childhood pal, Evan Goldberg, and an even weaker attempt by mastermind director, Michel Gondry. It didn’t feel as polished as any of their previous efforts. The story follows Britt Reid, the son of a wealthy newspaper owner, who lives the highlife as a socialite of sorts; sleeping by day and partying by night. One day his father dies from a freak bee sting, and Britt is handed the reigns as the new owner. He disreg...

Rottentomatoes isn't always the greatest indicator of when a movie is good. Case in point, Unstoppable . Currently, it's sitting pretty with 86% positive reviews. However, that's a deceiving number. If say, 9 out of 10 reviews gave the movie a marginal thumbs up, it would end up looking like a 90% on RT. Deceiving. However, referencing RT and Metacritic will give a fairer look at the critical reviews. MC gives an aggregate score based on professional reviews, which may give a better gauge on how a certain piece of entertainment is doing. On MC, Unstoppable garnered a 69. I think that's a lot more fair than 86%. Unstoppable is a film by Tony Scott featuring frequent collaborator, Denzel Washington, and the new Captain Kirk himself, Chris Pine. It's as you've seen it in the trailers; there's a runaway train, there's Washington, there's Pine, and they try to stop it. Whatever you think would happen probably did. It's one of those sort of ...

I love Warren Ellis' work in comics. I think he's a brilliant writer especially his work on Planetary , The Authority and The Astonishing X-Men . Most of the titles that I've read from him dealt with superheroes or at least some in that realm of reality. So when I first heard about Red , I was kinda surprised in that I've never read any of his "real world" material. But anyhow. Red follows a group of retired CIA agents as they flee from government agents who are chasing them for some unknown reason. The retirees are a unique group and in fact are labeled as R.E.D. because they are " R etired and E xtremely D angerous". The team is led by Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) who is a retired ex-black ops agent. He swoons a pension officer (Mary Louise Parker) who is then whisked away into the James Bond-ian like adventure that she's always dreamed of. They're joined by a bevy of retirees as they balance fleeing with crime solving as they try to crack...

I bet you never thought that they'd make this movie. Well, you're right. Technically, "they" didn't. But someone else did! Yup, our good friends at Asylum Films, who brought us such mockbusters as Transmorphers , The Da Vinci Treasure and The Day the Earth Stopped , produced this spiritual sequel to one of the biggest movies of all time. Nope, Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't come back from the dead and no, Kate Winslet doesn't do a walk-in cameo. This is a brand new story placed in present day with a brand new Titanic dubbed "The Titanic II". Titanic 2 takes place exactly 100 years after the first Titanic sank. To commemorate the occasion, a new Titanic is created with a much stronger and more durable design. It tries to outdo the original Titanic, by completing the course that the original ship set out to do. Unforunately for the Titanic II, the world isn't what it once was, and is now threatened by the dangers of global warming. For you se...

I think the first Tekken game came out when I was just hitting my teen age. Although a few of my friends got really into the game, I just couldn't muster the same love for the game. Even before it was released, I was raised on Street Fighters and Mortal Kombats — not this no-fireball nonsense. To its credit, Tekken had a really deep, technical and intensive combat system, but I guess I just preferred something easier... plus, I liked fireballs and fatalities. It seems as though there is going to be a triad of bad movies based on fighting video games. The gauntlet was laid down last year with release of the box office smash hit Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li (cue sarcasm). Not to be outdone, Namco answered the challenge with Tekken and SNK also threw their name into the hat with The King of Fighters , which should be out soon. But let's talk about Tekken . Tekken takes place in a futuristic Earth, where the continents are taken over by corporate entities. We follow ...

HOLY @#$@!!! WHAT A MOVIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yah, I really enjoyed this movie. It's a shame that it's doing so bad at the box office. In its second week of its theatrical run, it amounted to only 10th place for the weekend. A poor showing. But it was interesting. I went to see it in downtown Toronto with a crew of guys and to my surprise, the theater was nearly packed... and this was a Monday night! It's weekend revenues surely did not reflect this particular cinema. But then again, for this particular movie, Toronto theaters might be biased as our city played host to the movie. The movie opened up with a 16-bit version of the Universal Pictures logo complete with 16-bit audio. As soon as that graced the screen, I knew I was going to love the rest of the movie. Immediately after, the voice over reads an introduction and proudly proclaims that the movie takes place in Toronto to which the theater I was at erupted in applause. Finally, a movie that doesn't try t...

Me: "What a bad-ass movie." Friend Zoro: "I think that's the perfect description." So I'll say it again. WHAT A BAD-ASS MOVIE! Summer 2010 has to have been the year of team-based action movies. Just when the summer season was kicking off, we got The Losers . Mid-summer, we got The A-Team . And to cap it off at the end, we get The Expendables . And I'm happy to say that all three are enjoyable. But whereas The Losers and A-Team were filled with unique characters with distinguishing attributes and skills, Expendables opts for just a simple array of ass-kickers. And boy, did asses get kicked. As the story goes, Sylvester Stallone's team of hired mercs are on a mission to take down a ruthless general and his army on a South American island named Vilena. Also on the ranks of team evil are Eric Roberts and Stone Cold Steve Austin. That's pretty much it. So you're not going into this for a heavy or plot-centric movie (and if you did, what t...

So this past Tuesday I went to see Salt , not that I really had a choice. My mother and sister wanted to see Inception , of which I had seen twice already, and all that was left at the theater were a bunch of movies I had already seen, a bunch that I didn't want to see and then there was Salt . I knew just about nothing about the movie except that it was about spies and that it had Angelina Jolie. And as I sat in the theater waiting for the movie to start, I remembered that I saw the trailer months ago. And in fact, I remembered there was a brief scene in the trailer for a third of a second, that showed the great curve of Angelina Jolie's butt [ side note: isn't that subliminal marketing? I watched the trailer months ago, and this scene was no more than a second, yet it was ingrained in my memory]. Anyhow, I thought to myself, okay, at least there's that to look forward to. But when the movie reached its end, the scene never occurred. The old bait and switch! Any...

I wanted to make sure I had two viewings before I wrote about this movie. I originally saw it early last week but came out of it confused mostly because of the first chunk of the movie. At first I thought that it was something intentional, but during my second viewing, I paid closer attention to the series of scenes that made up the first 45 minutes or so, and realized that it wasn't meant to be confusing at all. So I guess on that first time I was either too tired or it was too late of a show... but probably both. As much as I dislike 20th Century Fox and those monkeys there, I love Warner Bros., their goons, and the way they think (monkeys against the goons). Pretty much after the success of The Dark Knight , they cut Nolan a blank cheque and said, go to town! And so to town he went to create this psychological blockbuster that he dreamt up 10 years ago — Inception be thy name! I'm going to skip the story, because: a.) you've watched it already and b.) if you haven...

Finally, a good Predators sequel! I guess I should forgive 20th Century Fox. I've heard stories of how they're bumbling idiots, especially that fool Tom Rothman who's at the top of the monkey chain over there. And heck, he's probably still an idiot, so I'll partially forgive them for ruining some great movie franchises. But to their credit, at least one of the monkeys over there had the foresight and knowledge to recognize that they shit the bed with the Aliens VS Predators franchise, effectively ruining two highly regarded series in the geek community. So whoever it was up there realized that they needed to wash away people's memories of that hogwash. And so after deciding that the series needed a refocus, they went to a geek favourite to remedy their mistakes: Robert Rodriguez. Rodriguez was originally tapped to breathe in new life into the franchise, but because of scheduling conflicts (his work on Machete ) he oversaw the project as a producer at his Tro...