Did you know that Atlas Shrugged, Pt. II had been released? Poor Paul Constant was forced to review it for Seattle’s Stranger:
Return to Assholes’ Paradise
… I went to the first Atlas Shrugged movie a year and a half ago, and it was an embarrassing cinematic experience. The sets were cheesy, the acting was awful, and the script was totally hambone. Because the first Atlas Shrugged movie did so poorly at the box office, the sequel bears almost no relation to the earlier film. It has a different director, a totally different cast, and, presumably, a different crew working behind the scenes. And the impossible happened as I watched Part II: I was nostalgic for part 1. As awful as the first Atlas Shrugged movie was—and make no mistake, it was incredibly boring—it had a kind of ratty soap operatic charm to it. It at least felt, with its romantic entanglements and fancy parties, like an off-brand episode of Dynasty.This movie is completely joyless. And the chintz levels go through the roof: The special effects are, bar none, the worst I’ve ever seen on a movie screen, with see-through fire effects layered over still shots and bad computer models of derailed train cars rubbing against each other with all the heft and weight of a bouquet of balloons at a kid’s birthday party. The set design is even cheaper than the first outing, too…
Before, the acting was at least passionate, in a sort of hilarious way. Now it’s grim, and the new actors don’t seem to understand what they’re saying half the time….
And that reminded me that I never got around to sharing Anthony Lane’s magisterially dismissive review of The Expendables 2:
It would be unkind, and possibly beyond the reach of statistical science, to calculate the combined ages of the stars who appear in Simon West’s new film. Suffice it to say that various mature gentlemen have gathered together—a larger team, indeed, than the one from the previous movie—to fight not merely a swarm of foreign foes but also the degrading prejudice that insists that only the young and unwrinkled have the right to administer savage violence. So it is that Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis, Randy Couture, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Chuck Norris, and Arnold Schwarzenegger gang up on Jean-Claude Van Damme, which does seem a little one-sided. Also present are Jason Statham, Nan Yu, and, in the role of a sniper, Liam Hemsworth, who seems like a babe in arms amid such company. The plot is plutonium-flavored, but the film exists for two reasons alone. First, to see how many times Schwarzenegger can say the words “I’m back” without inciting his co-stars to beat him senseless. (The dialogue is a procession of thudding bons mots: “Rest in pieces,” “I now pronounce you man and knife.”) And, second, to show blood being shed with astonishing and eruptive frequency, while still convincing audiences that what they are watching comes under the rubric of harmless fun. In English, more or less.
Come to think, “In English, more or less” would apply to the Randroid vanity project, too also…
Late Night Open Thread: Movie Night NotsPost + Comments (35)