Looper (2012)

Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt

Director: Rian Johnson

Genre: Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Rating: A+

Lately I've been watching a lot of movies that I've either found to be outright bad or else simply not good.  A lot of them have failed to meet my expectations - a lot have made me question my expectations.  Looper is not one of these movies.  In fact, Looper is one of those movies that just absolutely blew my mind.  It is everything that a time travel movie should be.  Everything that a science fiction movie should be.  Everything that a movie should be.

In the not too distant future time travel will have been invented.  Immediately outlawed it is only used by the mob when they wish to get rid of someone; they send the person back in time, thirty years, where a looper executes them.  Sometimes the mob wishes to close loops; they seek out former loopers and send them back to be executed by themselves.  The looper is then given a sum of gold and the next thirty years to live out their life. One day Joe (Gordon-Levitt) discovers that his loop is being closed and makes the unforgivable mistake of letting his elder self (Willis) escape. Joe must find himself and kill him before it's too late - and all he has to go on is a piece of a map with a farm belonging to a woman named Sara (Blunt) and her son Cid (Pierce Gagnon).

This movie did not meet my expectations.  I went into it thinking that it was going to be about one thing and go in one direction and be good at what it did, maybe even great.  It didn't take me long to realize that it wasn't going in that direction at all and after a bit of discomfort I went with it - and I'm glad I did.  What Looper did was so much better than what I was expecting it to be.  It's so intricate and complicated and yet so amazing.

I love the world that they created here.  It's the future and has a lot of the typical futuristic elements that you expect - time travel, telekinesis, hovercars - but it also has a lot of really old world elements.  There's a lot to it that makes it feel like it's set in the 30s or 40s instead of the future, which I felt was just a really nice touch.  The movie doesn't over do the sci-fi or the futuristic elements, making things feel a lot more real than they do in most sci-fi movies.  Sure, time travel hasn't been invented yet an people can't make coins float, but a lot of what happens in Looper feels like it could be real.  A lot of the characters feel like real people.  The issues maybe not so much, but definitely the people.

The thing that really wowed me about Looper, though, was the ending.  It was something that I didn't see coming at all - aided heavily by the fact that I spent at least half the movie not exactly sure who I wanted to win or how I thought things were going to play out.  I had some elements of things figured out before hand, but not most of it so the ending was just this amazing surprise.  Looper distracts you, making you think about possibilities for some things and thus leaves you rather blindsided by other things.  Oh! And another thing that's awesome about this movie is Joseph Gordon-Levitt himself, and all the detail that they put into making him look like Bruce Willis.  I've watched Bruce Willis films for a long time now and Gordon-Levitt really reminded me of the other actor when he was younger.  The fact that they even had similar mannerisms and spoke in a similar way just made it all that much better.  You often see movies that have a young and an old version of the same character (although, rarely do they share scenes), but never before have I seen a film go to such lengths in order to ensure that they were so easily identifiable as being the same person.  It was that detail that really sold this movie for me in the trailers, and it was that detail that really helped sell the movie itself.

The Expendables 2 (2012)

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Stratham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Chuck Norris, Liam Hemsworth, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger

Director: Simon West

Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller

Rating: C

Okay, so I actually really enjoyed this movie.  Like it's predecessor, The Expendables 2 is lame and ridiculous in its plot, but it's also fun and action packed.  I saw this with my little brother and he made the comment that he thought some of the action sequences were extended just so that the movie could be a full length film; I on the other hand thought that the dramatic sequences were extended for the same purpose.

Barney Ross (Stallone) and his crew are back, this time joined by new comer Billy (Hemsworth).  Ross is approached by Church (Willis), who gives him a mission that he's forced to accept - following the events in The Expendables Ross owes Church.  The Expendables travel to Albania to retrieve an item from a safe in a downed plane; they're joined by technical expert Maggie Chan (Yu Nan).  Things go to this from there, and the Expendables come across arms dealer Jean Vilain (Van Damme).

Once again, this movie is lame and ridiculous.  It's fun though, and the action sequences were great.  I actually really liked that I saw it with my brother; periodically we'd turn to each other and make a comment, often along the lines of "do you think x is going to happen, or y?"  The Expendables 2 is horribly predictable, pulling out all the classics of an action movie, but it succeeds in remaining fun while it does so.  My favourite part of the film was the one liners and the fact that they made fun of themselves.  There was probably at least one part of the movie - a stunt, a line, whatever - referencing some other movie that the major players were in.

My one problem with the film is that Liam Hemswroth doesn't really fit into this movie, and sadly not in a good way.  His character clashes with the overall tone of the film and, to be honest, I really didn't buy him as an ex-soldier turned mercenary.  I understood the significance of the character, I just didn't really feel Hemsworth in the role.  He didn't fit in.

Armageddon (1998)

Starring: Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck, Will Patton, Keith David, Steve Buscemi

Director: Michael Bay

Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

Rating: C+

This is not a good movie - few Michael Bay films really are.  It's lame and cheesy and ridiculous and I absolutely love it.  Unlike the similarly themed Deep Impact, Armageddon is pretty much entirely about the attempt to save the planet and not really at all about the people left behind, facing the end of the Earth.  Sure there are some brief moments showing the latter half, but they're not what's important.  That's typical of a Michael Bay film though; they're not about the little people, they're about the great men doing great things and the women who love them.

Armageddon opens with the discovery of an asteroid the size of Texas that is going to hit the planet and wipe out all life on it - even bacteria - in less than a month.  NASA scientists, lead by Dan Truman (Thorton) try to devise a way to save the planet, the best plan of which involves sending a group of astronauts up to it, drill a big hole into the asteroid (named Dottie), drop a nuke into it, resulting in an explosion that will divide the asteroid into two halves - if done before passing the magic line, Dottie will fly past Earth, but if done too late then both halves will still collide.  In order to do this, NASA needs drillers, specifically Harry Stamper (Willis) and his crew, considered to be the best deep-sea drillers on the planet.  This group of ragtag drillers are sent into space with NASA's best, all hoping to blow up the asteroid before its too late.  Oh, and there's a love story - Harry's daughter, Grace (Tyler), is in love with reckless driller A.J. Frost (Affleck), a fact that Harry is not happy about.

Where to start... So, it being a Michael Bay film, the science isn't exactly... well, science-y.  Bay depends on one-liners, flashiness, and things going boom, not intelligence.  There are no real good moments of solitude and reflection, something is happening every moment of the film.  When the people on the earth are reflecting about the impending doom it's always in this moment of passion and anger, there's no calms or moments of sorrow.  When things go wrong its huge and disastrous - such as the explosion of the Russian space station.  A lot of this creates confusion, it's hard to tell just what it is that's going on at points in the movie.  It's also rather messed up that Armageddon doesn't do anything to show any contingency plans and what not - in Deep Impact there's the Noah's Ark style backup plan, but there's nothing of the sort mentioned in Armageddon.

Actually, I do want to take back part of an earlier statement.  This film does take little people and makes them into great people.  In the end it's really the same result, but it's not entirely the same intent.  There are some great moments of Liv Tyler's that are really moving, as well as a few with the crew themselves.  For the most part though, it's all just silliness.  Armageddon doesn't really address the issue of the impending doom so much as the issue of how to stop it.  No one's caring about what happens after the team fails, just about ensuring that the team doesn't fail.  As such there's this huge gap to the film, this thing that's missing.  Despite that, though, I still love it.  Its an old favourite and I suspect it always will be for me.  Definitely not the best action film out there, or the best Armageddon movie, but still a good one.