“Kick-Ass 2” Thankfully Ends
Aug 24th
“Thankfully Ends”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Kick-Ass 2 is the sequel to the 2010 Kick-Ass, which was a surprisingly and thoroughly enjoyable movie about a nerdy teenage boy who wanted to be a superhero who fights crime and sorta, woulda, coulda almost did.
This movie is not, except for the part about the nerdy teenager, etc.
However, even that part starts out differently, as we hear the teenager, Dave Lizewski say at the beginning, “I’d given up being a superhero, because it was way too dangerous.”
On the other hand, the little sweetheart from the first movie, Hit-Girl, is still fighting crime successfully, and she is doing it by ditching school, where her alter ego, Mindy Macready, has just started high school as a freshman.
Both Dave and Mindy go to the same school, and Hit-Girl’s success causes Dave to get his old costume out, and he suggests to Mindy that they should team up and fight crime together, just like Batman and Robin.
However, Hit-Girl has been grounded by her guardian, but she agrees to train Dave in what she knows about martial arts, and they train every day for three weeks.
Mindy also tells Dave, “If you’re scared of dying, one thing is certain: You’re going to die.”
Meanwhile, the rich kid from the first movie, Chris D’Amico, is still around, but he has given up his desire to be a superhero, too, and instead he designs a costume and wants to be the first supervillain, giving himself a name that can’t be repeated here, but it sounds a little like The Mortarforker.
So, when Dave discovers that he is still not good at fighting crime alone, he learns about and joins a gang of other wannabe superheroes called Justice Forever, which is led by Col. Stars and Stripes, played by Jim Carrey, who is almost unrecognizable and thankfully tones down and doesn’t try to steal the movie with his usual outrageous antics.
Not to be outdone, Chris pays top dollar for every hired hitter in town to form his own gang of villains to support him.
Meanwhile, there is a side story of Mindy wanting to be a part of the cool kids at school, but this ends with extremely bad taste, and the movie turns ugly.
Kick-Ass 2 ends, thankfully, with a Big Fight substituting for the Big Game conclusion.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Kick-Ass 2 – Movie Trailer
Aug 23rd
His heroic antics having inspired a citywide wave of masked vigilantes, Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) joins their ranks to help clean up the streets, only to face a formidable challenge when the vengeful Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) transforms himself into the world’s first super villain in this sequel written and directed by Jeff Wadlow (Never Back Down). Dave/Kick-Ass and Mindy/Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) are about to graduate high school and become a crime-fighting duo when their noble plans are foiled by Mindy’s strict parents. Now, as Mindy hangs up her Hit Girl uniform and navigates the treacherous high-school social scene, Kick-Ass begins patrolling the streets with Justice Forever, a fearless group of urban watchdogs fronted by former mob thug Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey). They’ve got the criminal element on the run when Chris D’Amico lays his Red Mist persona to rest, and reemerges as The Mother F**ker, a powerful criminal mastermind with a loyal legion of henchmen. The Mother F**ker is determined to avenge the death of his late father, who previously perished at the hands of Kick-Ass and Hit Girl. Now, as The Mother F**ker and his minions begin targeting the members of Justice Forever, Hit Girl realizes that the only way to save Kick-Ass and his new friends is to emerge from her forced retirement, and fight back with everything she’s got. John Leguizamo, Donald Faison, Morris Chestnut, and Robert Emms co-star.
“Elysium” a Big Disappointment
Aug 17th
“Big Disappointment”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Elysium is a big movie with big ideas that takes place in 2154 and stars Matt Damon as Max, a man stuck on Earth when all the rich and powerful live on an orbiting space station called Elysium.
It is as if the Occupy Wall Street movement became so successful that it spread into Occupy Earth and all the banksters moved out and way up.
In other words, as the inscription for the Statue of Liberty says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free,” that idea, too, has become so successful that now the whole planet is diseased, polluted, and vastly overpopulated.
Not only that, but the people up on Elysium have technology that can cure whatever disease or affliction ails you, but only people who are classified as “citizens” can arrive safely on the space station, which means that there are also attempts by the people on earth to use illegal space shuttles to sneak across space and get onto Elysium.
Anyway, Max is a factory worker who accidentally gets exposed to radiation and will die in five days unless he can do something about it.
So, Max has the contacts to get himself outfitted with a metallic exoskeleton that makes him as strong as the police robots he will have to fight, his brain gets implanted with data that is very important to the government on Elysium, and he plans to take an illegal space shuttle up to the space station and solve all the problems for the huddled masses on earth and himself, as well.
However, Jodie Foster stars as the director of Homeland Security up on Elysium, and she will have none of it.
Unfortunately for the audience, Foster speaks with an annoying and distinctive accent that makes her and her character a joke.
Well, you can imagine that there are big problems, big fights, and big explosions involved in Max’s attempt to save the world and himself, not to mention the lives of his former girlfriend and her daughter, who is suffering from leukemia.
Oh, I didn’t mention that, did I?
Elysium is one big disappointment, starting with the story, continuing with Jodie Foster, and concluding especially with the ending itself, which I guess means that it is at least three big disappointments, if not even more.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
