Logline: Master sorcerer Balthazar Blake recruits a seemingly everyday guy in his mission to defend New York City from his arch-nemesis, Maxim Horvath.

Review: When the trailer had been released, I was very much surprised to hear one of Depeche Mode’s older songs (A Pain That I’m Used To) in it, which was a great addition to underline its action. The movie itself kept me surprised almost every minute of it, as it has quite a lot unexpected twists and turns that were not only new at some points, but also filled with a great range of VFX and snappy jokes. As an old fan of the band itself, I was even more suprised at this quote:

Dave Stutler: I don’t actually know who you are.
Drake Stone: Really? You don’t recognize me?
Dave Stutler: Are you in Depeche Mode?

Nicolas Cage did a great job playing the sometimes a little embittered mentor of Dave aka Jay Baruchel (which I’m not sure if the name is a hint at Dave Gahan and if the screenwriter might be a fan), who seems at first glance like a written carbon copy of the character Sam Witwicky (aka Shia LaBeouf) in Transformers.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is magical!

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Logline: Expendable: capable of being sacrificed in order to accomplish a military objective. A group of mercenaries hired to infiltrate a South American country and overthrow its ruthless dictator

Review: When I first watched the teaser of The Expendables a couple of months ago, I was bored by it, wondering if there’s any in-depth story behind the spectacle, or if it was just another bang-boom-bang-thing being released to heat up this summer? After I watched the trailer, I thought “Wow! That’s kind of Rambo!”, and was looking forward to see.

Yesterday I went to our next town theater to watch it and was bitterly disappointed, because I expected a little more from Mr. Stallone than that; it wasn’t beyond the scope of the teaser at all. To me, he used to be one of a handful of directors / writers in Hollywood, who’d find a decent combination of in-depth characters and a lot of (explosive) action — we’ve seen it in First Blood or Rocky before.

The Expendables is an action flick that evolves around cliched characterizations and cliched, predictable (action) sequences with jokes that are very 80s. All in all: nothing new.
Anyway, it’s obvious that The Expendables is made in the good old-fashioned action-manner; a kind of The A-Team meets Rambo, and serves for pure entertainment, not precisely for real men, but lads, who like to feel a certain strength for at least 1.5 hours before they return to their mommies waiting with freshly baked cookies at home.

Spoiler alert: The joke on Schwarzenegger wanting to run for president was a great laugh. I missed Bruce Willis at the end of the movie, as he was the one providing their mission, which would have topped the story off. Many great actors mentioned on the movie poster were having mere short sideroles.

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Logline: A suburban family moves to a new neighborhood with their large yet lovable Great Dane, who has a tendency to wreak havoc in his own oblivious way.

Review: Sorry, I can’t say no more, but one point for William H. Macy, who, as an actor, has much more to offer than this and definitely worked below his level. Plus one point for the Dachshund, as I had one myself, whom I miss very much. I didn’t laugh for once,… wait, I remember, it happened when the film was over.

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Logline: A group of Iraq War veterans looks to clear their name with the U.S. military, who suspect the four men of committing a crime for which they were framed.

Review: For me it was flattering that up to fifty per cent of this film was actually taking place in Germany. An aerial shot of the Cologne Cathedral was pretty irritating, and was suddenly considered as a symbol of the city of Frankfurt. Since the following scenes were also shot in the train station of Cologne right behind the Cathedral, I was even more irritated and thought the Team was heading for Cologne until Face mentioned Frankfurt again. I hope they will dump the cathedral-shot in the DVD, because it’s useless, senseless and… ugly anyway.

Beside this big mistake, the film spreads the good old charme of the A-Team as a whole. They don’t show off with too much state-of-the-art-technique as known from so many other action films, but rather rely on their smartness and put more emphasis on traditional jokes, which sometimes appear unexpected and so create a much bigger laughter; e.g. Murdock’s imitation of the Blue Men Group. I’ve been left wondering why Faceman was taking over Hannibal’s cleverness a little bit too often, which makes him more of a leader at times.

To me, Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson was the hero of the day, he adapted best to his role: “I ain’t get on no plane!”-B.A. But everyone owned a typical whim.

A-Team The Movie is not only entertaining for fans of the original series, even though it would be better to know who Col. Lynch was back then.

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