Samuel L Jackson Month - Mini Review - Arena

It’s Samuel L Jackson Month

We’ve seen Samuel L Jackson as a veteran, we’ve seen Samuel L Jackson as a jackass, we’ve seen him as a coward, now let’s take a look at him playing an outright villain.

No, we won’t be covering that one this month, although it may come up as a possible future review. My feelings are that I do not have enough expertise on Will Eisner’s work to give that movie the thorough trouncing it deserves – watch the Bad Movie Beatdown/Atop the Fourth Wall crossover if you want to see people’s work that matters on the subject. In the meantime, let’s look at Arena

Made on a modest $10m budget (no idea about performance figures) Arena did not go down well with audiences, a 27% rating on rotten tomatoes with an average 2.5/5, the one critic whose review is on the site gave it a 0/4.

TV Retrospective: Young Justice Invasion Episodes 6-10

 

Samuel L Jackson Month - Mini Review: Snakes on a Plane

Well this is a movie featuring well snakes… on a plane… Yeah, this joke’s redundant.

#35 - Samuel L Jackson Month - Barely Lethal

It’s Samuel L Jackson Month

And time for the one and only rage review of the month – and the last one until August. This is Barely Lethal

This one’s a tough one folks, it took me 2 viewings and much rambling on twitter (I’ll save it because spoilers) (follow me @rageformedia for more ramblings) to get through this, not to mention copious amounts of alcohol.

We’re back with another lower budget film with this one. Why I keep coming across these action/sci-fi movies with low budget (although this isn’t sci-fi) is baffling. If you’ve not got the budget for grand effects and stunt-work, what’s the point? I mean of course, it could be on a zero budget with no effort (looking at you, Incredible Bulk) but it still baffles me I keep coming across them in this genre.

Before we jump into the review, I want to discuss the rating. According to Wikipedia this movie was originally given an R rating, but they fought to have it rated PG-13 without making substantial cuts and that’s all well and good, except my DVD of the movie is the UK equivalent of R-Rated. Film Brain (@FB_BMB) suggested this is because of an R-rated trailer. And it likely was, there’s a trailer for Rise of the Krays here that really looks like it’s R-rated.

Are you f*cking kidding me with this sh*t? They appeal to the MPAA to get the movie changed to a PG-13 but ruin it by including an R-rated trailer. Sure, they’re not a massive company and want to promote their movies but why not make a PG-13 edited trailer. You are limiting a massive portion of your potential audience with this decision, especially given the subject of the movie but we’ll get to that.

The movie has a mere 22% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, although the audience approval is higher at 39% but even that is not very good.

Let’s dive in and prepare for pain. Lots and lots of pain

TV Retrospective: Young Justice: Invasion Episodes 1-5

It’s time to get started with Young Justice Invasion

Guilty Pleasures #27: Samuel L Jackson Month - Avengers: Age of Ultron

It’s Samuel L Jackson Month

And yeah… I’m cheating a bit with this one, since Jackson barely appears but screw it, it’s my review blog and I say this counts! So, yeah, it’s the Avengers

Yeah… The Avengers was my first Marvel Movie. And I f*cking loved it. But that’s not to say it was entirely flawless, the first half or so can kinda drag and the way the Chitauri are defeated is kinda dumb but it’s 2 hours of entertainment. How long is this movie again?

2hrs 21 minutes

Goody! Yeah, despite making over a billion dollars, again, this movie has received a fair amount of critical backlash and some of it is kinda undeserved and I’m here to defend its corner, I’m not gonna tell you it’s a perfect movie, there’s no such thing and this isn’t even close. I also have a message for most of the critics of this movie but that’s for later, let’s dig into 2 hrs 21 minutes of Avengers: Age of Ultron

Samuel L Jackson Month - Mini Review: Rules of Engagement

Time for another entry into Samuel L Jackson month

This time we’ll be looking at a war/crime drama called Rules of engagement. Let’s have a look at the cast

Obviously, we have Samuel L motherf*cking Jackson as the lead role

We have Two Face from Batman Forever – Tommy Lee Jones

We have Batman from Young Justice – Bruce Greenwood

And we have Ben Kingsley, who really keeps showing up in these reviews

Amongst others of course

The film was not met with great critical reception, only a 35% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, 6.4 on IMdB and 45% on Metacritic. It saw moderate success at the Box Office despite this.

TV Retrospective: Young Justice Episodes 21-26

We return one final time to the first season of Young Justice, it's been a strong start, but it's not been faultless - let's see what the final episodes of the season brings

Guilty Pleasures #26: Samuel L Jackson Month - Big Game

It’s Samuel L Jackson month

And yes, Guilty Pleasures has been on a bit of a hiatus of late, blame DC and Marvel and all their bloody relaunch titles… Anyway, it was January the last time one of these reviews came out, but we’re back and it’s time to look at Big Game

Produced on a meagre budget of $10million (according to Wikipedia) but I’m yet to find any valid information about how much it made. What I can say is that it’s got a rating of 76% on rotten tomatoes, 53% metacritic and an average 5.5/10 on IMDb.

Let’s dig in and see the glory as it unfolds.

Samuel L Jackson Month - Mini Review - S.W.A.T.

Welcome to Samuel L Jackson Month

Where we’ll be looking at 9 films of varying quality starring Samuel L motherf*ucking Jackson. We’re starting off the month with S.W.A.T., unless I’ve already published Big Game, in which case that’s what we’re starting with.

S.W.A.T., based on an TV series from 1975 of the same name was released in 2003. Produced on a $70m budget it made a fairly respectable $210m at the box office. Reception was mixed with it holing at 48% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average 5.4/10, 45 on Metacritic and a 6 on IMDb. What are my thoughts? Let's take a look.

TV Retrospective: Young Justice episodes 16-20

Mini Review - Looper

This was initially intended to be a guilty pleasure review but upon closer examination I’ve realised something, there’s just not enough material for me to do so. GP reviews tend to fall into 1 of 2 categories, one is the movies which I enjoy in spite of their flaws out of legitimate passion for what they’re adapting. The Dark Knight Rises and Daredevil (and arguably Iron Man 3) are prominent examples.

The vast majority however are movies with lots of sci-fi silliness, not intended to be taken very seriously. This allows me to have fun pointing out some of the sillier parts of the plot whilst at least enjoying it because its tone works. The other thing about guilty pleasure movies, there tend to be problems scattered throughout the movie, I would argue this isn’t really the case with Looper.

Looper’s certainly seen some good reviews, holding a damn good 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and 84% on metacritic. In the box office it held its own, making $180m (give or take) on a $30m budget, hardly blockbuster territory but it’s not what this story was aiming for.