Twins (1988) movie review

Movie poster

Arnold and DeVito

Twins is a 1988 comedy film directed by Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters I & II). It's about a government experiment of making the perfect human being from the seed of 6 great man and one woman. But the experiment goes wrong and turns out twins. Vincent Benedict (Danny DeVito) and Julius Benedict (Arnold Schwarzenegger). As a child Vincent is sent to an orphanage and Julius is raised in a remote island as a strong and smart man who finds out about his twin and wants to go and find him. Vincent however had gone downhill from there. He was stuck in a huge debt of $20,000 to loan sharks, The Klane Brothers, so he steals cars from a parking lot his friend, Al Greco (David Caruso). When Julius arrives in L.A. he finds out how Vincent's life has gone downhill (he had sex with one of the nuns at his orphanage when he was 12!) tries to pull him out of the mess. He finds him in prison and bails him out. But Vincent is not convinced that they're twins (you probably know how different they look).

I loved this movie. It made me literally laugh out loud but again its a little bit of a slow starter. By little bit I mean the first 10 minutes are like a documentary with narrator (Tony Jay) explaining the twins' origins but its all uphill from there. A classic from the 80's I give it a 10/10 for being such an awesome movie and making my day!

Sex Tape (2014) movie review

Sex Tape is a 2014 sex comedy directed by Jake Kasdan (Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story). It follows a couple who had a sex drive when they were in university together. But it turns out to be a flashback by Annie (Cameron Diaz) who hasn't not had sex in a very long time since their two kids have been born. Jay (Jason Segel) also wants their sex relationship to improve but there is not time to set aside from all of lifer's responsibility's. Annie writes a blog as a mom and PiperBrothers a toy company is interested in buying her blog. Jay works as a DJ who constantly switches iPads so he gives them away as gifts. On the night of the offer they decide to restart their sex life after Annie sends all the kids to her mom's (Nancy Lenehan) house. After many failed attempts they decide to make a sex tape like they've seen in the internet. So they set the iPad up, take a few shots of tequila and took the book The Joy of Sex and decided to do a marathon through all the positions in one night. They end up with a three hour sex tape which Annie tells Jay to destroy. But Jay forgets to and the entire sex tape is synced with the rest of the iPads Jay used to have. Now they have to go and reclaim all the iPads.
Now this movie has gotten a lot of bad reviews but I just want to state my opinion here. I fairly enjoyed the movie, it made me chuckle but granted it starts very slow. It really starts after the sex tape is synced and from there hilarity ensues. My favorite role was Jack Black as the owner of YouPorn. And Jason Segel really acted his role out. I mean for me in the scene where Annie is wearing Roller Skates and is in her lingerie he really acts like a dad who hasn't had sex in a long while. Cameron Diaz performed like her performance in  The Other Woman. But this movie wasn't all that great and I give it a 2 for Jack Black a 4 for the overall quality which garners it a 6/10 here.

My Pro Wrestling Guerrilla predictions for 2015

Best Friends are your future Tag Team Champions!

To be honest Pro Wrestling Guerrilla may be a promotion you haven't heard of. but it is truly one of the greatest wrestling promotions on planet earth. Now as an independent promotion they stand a comedic but serious standard. Today I'm going to try and make predictions for the fate of their two main titles, The PWG World Championship and The PWG World Tag Team Championships, and who is going to be winning them in the upcoming year 2015. 

I myself haven't seen much of PWG's content except what they publish on YouTube but in the coming year I sure have to since their highlight videos really make me want to check out one of their full shows. 

 1. Best Friends (Trent? and Chuck Taylor) as PWG World Tag Team Champions

Cradle Back To Belly Piledriver by Trent?

Awful Waffle by Chuck Taylor

Best Friends was originally a stable which also featured Joey Ryan but later Joey formed a tag team with Candice Lerae and they are the current PWG World Tag Team Champions. Now, Trent? and Chuck Taylor went on to have their own success in the PWG tag team ranks by winning the 2014 Dynamite Duumvirate Tag Team Title Tournament (I know it's shortened as DDT4) and they even got their shot at the belts against The Young Bucks (Matt and Nick Jackson). They seem like a pretty successful tag team though but their momentum was cut shor after Trent? was injured I think and now Chuck Taylor has been flying solo for a while. Alas, they may never win the titles in 2014 I believe 2015 will be their year.

2. Tommaso Ciampa as PWG World Champion

For the world title I decided to go with an uncommon guess. A guy who never got anywhere far in the 2014 Battle of Los Angeles, never challenged for the title and basically is always out of the picture. But The Sicilian Psychopath will not be denied in 2015. Recently his matches just keep getting better and better and he has shown in his run with Chaotic Wrestling that he certainly is man event material. Here's one hoping for this Boston native and phenomenal wrestler to win the big one in the upcoming year.

Transformers 4: Age of Extinction (2014) review

Movie Poster

My favorite character, Crosshairs

"Crosshairs: Ugh, you just want to die for the guy. That's leadership. Or brainwashing, or something.
Drift: No, that is Optimus Prime."

Transformers: Age of Extinction is an American action movie released on June 27th in USA. It was directed by Michael Bay and starred Mark Wahlberg as Cade Yeager, an inventor whose creations are the only things keeping his farm under his possession. He lives in the aftermath of the Transformers vs. Decepticon war events in Chicago which has made the CIA, namely Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammar) so paranoid that they have acquired the help of bounty hunter Lockdown (voiced by Mark Ryan) to take down all robots on planet earth. Yeager, who lives with his daughter Tessa (Nicole Peltz), borrows money from his employee Lucas Flannery (T.J. Miller) to buy an old broke down truck in hopes of selling it's working parts as spare parts to afford his daughter's college. But when he works on the truck for a while, he finds huge bullets and missiles in it. After powering it up he realizes that it's a transformer. His go to move is to report him and claim a $25,000 bounty which is put on any reported robots but somehow he doesn't want to give him away and believes that the transformers fought for earth not against it. Meanwhile Cade's daughter, Tessa is in an online relationship with a guy named Shane Dyson (Jack Reynor) which would be ok but the fact that she's only 16 and he's 21 makes her keep it a secret. With all that aside Lucas who technically paid for the truck tells the government about the robot in hopes of claiming the bounty. CIA cars show up but they are more eager to get the Transformer who is now is now identified as Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen). A battle scene breaks out between Optimus and the army CIA has brought lead by James Savoy (Titus Welliver). This is when Cade finally meets Shane when he drives his racing car to the farm to save his damsel in distress. As there is no time to argue they make haste and escape the scene with Optimus Prime. Later they meet a team of surviving Autobots, Bumblebee,  Crosshairs (voiced by John DiMaggio), Drift (voiced by Ken Watanabe) and Hound (voiced by John Goodman).

Honestly to me this was the best Transformers film out there. I love the replacement of Sheila Lebeouf with Mark Wahlberg characterwise as Cade Yeager makes way more sense than Sam Whitwicky since I always disliked the mind connection he had with the Autobots. Also Mark Wahlberg was more comedic and more action at the same time. Stanley Tucci as Joshua Joyce gives a great comedic performance and the voice cast is pure gold. John DiMaggio in particuler. I actually went to the movie the day after the premiere and it was great in my opinion, full of action but like all the movies in this franchise had a downfall with some of its characters.

What ruins this movie in my eyes is the relationship between Tessa and Shane which is just unbearable. Not that I dislike Peltz or Reynor but their characters just sucked. The Romeo and Juliet law was awful, promoting minor and adult relationships was also a terrible message and basically every scene involving Tessa and Shane and every scene with Shane (I name the characters again because the actors did good their characters were horrible) brought the movie a rung down on the ladder to success. But Mark Wahlberg and the Transformers make up for that and bring a good action movie to the theaters. I am most likely going to Transformers 5 in 2016. And for reference to know why Shane Dyson sucked so bad here's a quote he says to Cade Yeager after his daughter is taken into Lockdown's spaceship.

"We're not going in there to save your daughter. We're going in there to save my girlfriend."

Just don't get two hot people on set and think that's great. Good characters are what matters.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Movie Poster

To get an idea of different this is how different Toad looks.

"Charles Xavier: The past: A new and uncertain world. A world of endless possibilities and infinite outcomes. Countless choices define out fate: each choice, each moment, a moment in the ripple of time. Enough ripple and you change the tide...for the future is never truly set."

X-Men Days of The Future Past is an American Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi film directed by Bryan Singer (Also known for The Usual Suspects) which was released to public theaters on the 23rd of May. It revolves around the distant future of the X-Men where robots known as Sentinels are rapidly sent to destroy mutants and cleanse world of them. Meanwhile the last fighting group of the mutants which is lead by the now friends Magneto (Ian McKellen) and Professor X (Patrick Stewart). They survive the sentinel attacks by sending Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) who has time traveling abilities, to the future 2 weeks and warning them of the attacks. Later on they reach the verdict that Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) has to go back in time to 1972 when Mystique/Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) shot anti-mutant Dr. Trask (Peter Dinklage) who invented the sentinels and feared America into using the sentinels against the dangerous seeming mutants. The plan works and Wolverine wakes up in 1972 where he needs to find Professor X and Magneto at much younger age to unite them and help stop Trask's assassination. Along the way he tackles his old buddy Hank/Beast (Nicholas Hoult) -who he had already seen the death of in the future- whom is protecting and helping young Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) whom has gone handicapped after taking medications to keep his super-mind from working and giving him a slightly easier way to leave normal. After Wolverine convinces Hank and Charles to help him in his quest they have to go and break a young Erik Lehnsherr out of a prison cell under the pentagon which is the most protected cell in the world. To do so they need the help of a rascal named Peter a.k.a. Quicksilver who has the power of super speed and steals from convenient stores often. He joins them with no doubt as he would love to break into the highest security prison of the country. By the way I love the smart gaming reference with him being so fast he can play Pong with himself.
I quite enjoyed this film mainly because it was a smart way to kill the past franchise and move on with their own story. Now, I haven't seen X-Men First Class but I surly will in the future (no pun intended) but this movie impressed me enough to go and watch X-Men Apocalypse when it drops.

Stuart Little 2 (2002)

 "Falcon: The party's over furface."

Stuart Little 2 is an American Adventure/Animation movie directed by Rob Minkoff (Mr. Peabody & Sherman) and released on July 19th 2002. The story revolves around a mouse named Stuart Little (Voiced by Michael J. Fox) who lives with the human Little Family. At first it shows his struggles in school and how hard life get for him when he tries to adapt to the human ways. For example he is the last substitute in a soccer gamebut then he is shot into the goal with the ball and is stuck in the net until his adoptive-parents Mr. Little (Hugh Laurie) and Mrs. Little (Geena Darvis) hae to help him out. One day as he usually is driving back home in his little car (no pun intended) a canary named Margalo (voiced by Melanie Griffith) falls into his passenger seat. Then Stuart sees a Falcon flying after her so he drives to his house as fast as possible and they get away. After Margalo is nurtured a bit and is healthier she reveals she had a broken wing and had been flying away from the falcon for a while until she finally fell. Later on Margalo and Stuart find a special connection as she is almost his size and they can do many activities together. But their friendship comes to a test when it is revealed that Margalo is actually working with the Falcon (voiced by James Woods) to steal all of Mrs. Little's jewelry. But then Margalo has second thoughts as she really likes Stuart so she tries to convince Falcon to rob another house. Falcon finds out about her feelings and takes her away and it's up to Stuart and his unlikely friend, the house cat Snowbell (voiced by Nathan Lane) to save the day and Margalo.

I know it is a pretty dull review as I haven't seen this movie in a while but it was the step forward for CGI animation to finally make its way into the big leagues of theatrical release. There wasn't anything bad about the film but the kind of cheesy relationship between Mr and Mrs Little is a minus. I give it a 8 out of 10 as it was one of my childhood's favorite movies.

Oz The Great and Powerful (2013) Review

Rachel Weisz as Evanora

Oz the Great and Powerful is a 2013 adventure/fantasy film directed by Sam Raimi (The original Spider-Man trilogy) and takes a different look on the tale of The Wizard of Oz. So different it doesn't even feature Dorothy. This is a gutsy move by Disney which I respect. I believe that new is good and let's throw away the remakes and bring reboots along.

The story starts with a magician named Oscar Diggs (played by James Franco) who has affair with various women telling them all the same back stories and giving each a music box (of which he has a lot of copies). He later on goes to include them in his magic shows but as members of the audience. This pattern goes on with his trusty sidekick and assistant Frank (Zach Braff) on his side until he accidentally has an affair with the Strongman (Tim Holmes)'s wife (Toni Wynne) and this causes the Strongman to attack Oz during a hurricane. This hurricane sweeps Oscar and his getaway hot air balloon to a mystical land named Oz. There he meets a beautiful witch named Theodora (Mila Kunis) who later on falls in love with him and believes he is the destined wizard who will defeat the Wicked Witch. As his journey to find a way back goes on he encounters a flying monkey who he later saves from a lion and that causes the monkey to swear a lifetime allegiance to Oscar. Later Theodora takes them to the castle where they meet Evanora, her sister. She promises Oscar a room full of gold if he kills the Wicked Witch of the south. She explains that her crime is murdering of the King of Oz who Evanora used to be an adviser of. As they progress through the Kingdom of Oz he enters a town made of china. But sees all the town people dead. Later on he finds a china girl (Joey King) with broken legs. He fixes her legs with glue and she becomes a member of their team as they set to find and kill The Wicked Witch of the South.

Having watched the original Wizard of Oz from 1934 I liked this movie. Mainly because the story is a whole other take and also it serves as a story before Dorothy Gale's birth. (Which is referenced in the movie when Annie, a former love interest of Oscar tells him John Gale has proposed to him.) Overall the film had great special effect and great twists and turns. It also covers up the story and didn't leave much questions with answering them all. It also shows the rise of a small-time-magician to a hero of a kingdom in a great way. I give this movie about a 9/10. I took one out because (spoiler alert) Theodora becomes a villain later on.