Retro Review: Predator

With the big news regarding Robert Rodriguez’s Predators coming out on Wednesday, we figured it was a good a time as any to go back and see how the original film, John McTiernan’s Predator from 1987, stood up against time and its sequels.

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If the genre of science-fiction has an enemy, its name is technology. While some of the greatest movies of the genre were filmed during the 1970s and 1980s, watching them today is almost laughable. Computers have advanced so far in the past twenty years that movies like The Lawnmower Man or The Abyss look almost cartoonish in retrospect.

Today’s films are no different. As more and more CGI is used, no matter how lifelike it looks today, a few years down the line it will look rudimentary and hacky. Someday, Transformers will look like Clash of the Titans. The only way to combat the inevitable is to be subtle and not let special effects take over the film. It is for this exact reason that John McTiernan’s Predator remains a solid action film to this day.

Weekend Winners

As we predicted on Friday, Avatar Day pushed Inglourious Basterds to a $14 million opening night and an opening weekend that more than doubled the money received by its competitors. Check out the rest of the top five after the jump

Weekend Winners

Just like in the movies, the good guys always triumph over the bad guys at the end. Check back later for our review of District 9, but in the mean time, your top five at the box office this weekend is after the jump:

Watch It!: The Ballad of G.I. Joe

If you haven’t figured it out, this site is pretty anti-G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. We are not, however, anti-G.I. Joe. The toys are great for kids that are age appropriate and the animated series from the 80s was far from the worst thing in the world. That is in large part why we dislike the idea of the new movie: it removes what the original G.I. Joe was all about from public consciousness and replaces it with stupid.

All that aside, Funny or Die has created a new video called “The Ballad of G.I Joe” where the private lives of Joes and Cobras are explored. The clip has quite a cast, including Zach Galifianakis, Vinnie Jones, Alexis Bledel, Billy Crudup, Julianne Moore, Laz Alonso, Olivia Wilde, Alan Tudyk, Henry Rollins, and Buster Bluth (a.k.a. Tony Hale). Perhaps you will like it, perhaps you won’t, but I can sleep at night knowing that Destro likes to play the clarinet with The Baroness and that Snake Eyes enjoys paining landscapes (they make him feel at peace). Check it out after the jump.

Weekend Winners

People don’t listen. Despite my begging and pleading, the worst film that premiered last Friday swept the box office and left me crying into my pillow. See this weekend’s top five after the jump:

Author Shuts Down Movie Over Channing Tatum

(Does this look like a gangster to you?)

Phil Carlo, author of best-selling mafia book The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer about the infamous hit-man Richard Kuklinski, pulled out of a deal to turn the hit into a movie when he found out producers were trying to get Channing Tatum to star.

Weekend Preview: Don’t See Joe

I’ll start off this article by putting it bluntly: don’t see G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. It simply isn’t worth your time and money. That said, here is your weekend preview:

GI Joe Tracking 41% – Yeah, That Seems About Right

The biggest “new releases” story that has come out this week is the choice by Paramount to screen G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra only a select number of critics, purposely avoiding those in New York and Los Angeles. For awhile, this strategy worked and the film was able to pick up some positive buzz, keeping its Rotten Tomatoes score in the low 90s.

Then everyone got to see it.

As I am writing this post, the film is at 41% over at Rotten Tomatoes and only one of the five top critics are contributing good word of mouth. Here are some examples of what the critics are saying:

Wow, I Totally Underestimated Just How Bad GI-Joe Would Be…

When I learned that G.I. Joe would be starring Channing Tatum (whose only competition in the “Best Impersonation of a Tree” catagory at the Oscars is Hayden Christensen), and Marlon Waynes (who was responsible for this) and be directed by Stephen Sommers (whose best movie, according to IMDb, is a theme park ride), I knew it was going to be an incredible cinematic abortion. What I didn’t see coming, is this:

Just for the hell of it, I want to analyze this clip: