Screenhead

Someone needs to tell Vin Diesel to stick to World of Warcraft, because his movies are just getting less and less pleasant with each passing iteration.

You read the headline exactly right, folks–we’re talking Triple X 3, also known as XXX: The Return of Xander Cage. Needless to say I’m downright horrified; it’s been almost eight years since our first go-round with Xander, and another five years since the second.  You’d think Hollywood might have learned its lesson and said, hey, surely there’s better movies to make than to dredge the harbor and pull some corpse out of the water.

But sure enough, they went a-dredgin’ and the next thing you know, we got Vin Diesel coming back to gravelly-voice his way through yet another installment of Stuff Go Boom.  Raaaaaaay.

Of course, there’s already some problem with this concept as they’re going to have to work around the previous title’s death scenes involving Xander–some are already very vocal in their opposition to even bothering to try.  But one thing’s for sure, chances are this’ll make Hollywood a few bucks, and these days, that’s better than nothing.

Popularity: unranked [?]

So we’re back in the MTI trenches for another upcoming title–you’re getting an advance look at a DVD that won’t be hitting stores for about another three weeks, August 11.  It’s called Safehouse, and it’s a low-budget action romp this time.

When former FBI agent Cooper O’ Neal settles down into civilian life, maintaining a boat in a partnership with his former coworker’s attractive daughter, he thinks he’s got a chance at a quiet life.  But when another FBI agent comes rolling into the marina he works at, dead, in a boat with a clandestine thumb drive on his person, O’ Neal finds his old life coming back to haunt him in a very big way.  Now, he’s got to protect his new partner and keep himself alive long enough to figure out what’s on that thumb drive, and when he does, he’ll discover it’s just one part of a larger plan engineered by a madman with a serious missile fetish.

The first thing that got me laughing about this movie was the first time O’ Neal took on an assassin.  Even O’ Neal notices that the guy sent to take care of him is old and fat, but it got just a little pathetic when the two started brawling over a dropped gun and the assassin–get this–started PULLING HAIR.  No, seriously.  This guy, who’s supposed to be a hired gun / assassin sort, was pulling hair in an effort to get O’ Neal away from the gun.

And that was just the first thing–believe me, I had plenty of probably unintentional chuckles at this thing, from the unaccountably high skill of the goon squad involved (how do they get the drop on multiple armed FBI agents so very often?) to the cheerful rounds of Fun With Stereotypes including the homosexual hacker Teabury, to other hackers with such amazing skill that they can spew technobabble at preposterous rates that will, somehow, allow them to steal money DIRECTLY from the Federal Reserve.  Frankly, from what I’ve read about the Fed, anyone who even THINKS the word “theft” in relation to the Federal Reserve has their firstborn vanish in a puff of blue smoke.

And don’t even get me started on the bad guy’s chief computer guy who either can’t or won’t stop blotting his face with his little orange handkerchief.  That guy drove me nuts by the end of the movie.

But anyway, yeah, sure…it’s a little bit overblown and the premise is downright unbelievable even working the suspension of disbelief engines as hard as an action movie generally requires.  But I have to admit, as action movies go it’s still got a little bit of that spy-thriller sort of fun to it.

No one’s ever going to mistake this one for anything involving Jason Bourne, but there’s still a little bit to it.  You’ve got to give a movie like this credit for trying and not sucking too hard in the process.  Thusly, the Screenhead Ten Scale is going to give it what little due it has, a five out of ten.  It’s not going to be the top of your spy thriller list, but it’ll at least take a run at it, and you’ve always got to give points for effort.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Duplicity looks like a fun film to watch on the big screen. The casting makes the film while it appears to have Tony Gilroy’s twists, suspense with a hit of comedy.

Popularity: 1% [?]