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Features Live Action Movies

Expend4bles

Director – Scott Waugh – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 103m

**

The mercenaries must prevent a nuclear bomb on a ship from blowing up in enemy waters and starting World War Three – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 22nd

Sylvester Stallone’s star-studded, action franchise returns some nine years after The Expendables 3 (Patrick Hughes, 2014) and 13 years after the original The Expendables (Sylvester Stallone, 2010). In the heyday of the first three movies, they were appearing at the rate of one every couple of years and building a cast of returning regulars.

However, aside from Stallone himself, who is clearly getting old, and Jason Statham, for good reason one of the most popular contemporary movie action stars, and a couple of smaller names further down the cast – Dolph Lundgren (as Gunner Jensen, whose major achievement in this film is sporting an unkempt head of blonde hair) and Randy Couture (as Toll Road, the demolitions man with the cauliflower ear) – the members of the eponymous team of mercenaries are played by actors new to the series.

Gone are Jet Li and Terry Crews from all three previous films, and Arnold Schwarznegger who was in both The Expendables 2 (Simon West, 2012) and the third entry.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Minions:
The Rise Of Gru

Directors – Kyle Balda, Brad Ableson, Jonathan del Val – 2022 – US – Cert. U – 87m

***1/2

Three plots involving the Minions, their pre-teen, supervillain master Gru and a gang of supervillains called Vicious 6 compete with each other – out in cinemas on Friday, July 1st

This starts off bravely for a franchise entry with the introduction of a raft of six new supervillains who comprise the gang Vicious 6, their names thrown at the audience in rapid-fire vignettes too fast too absorb, suggesting the makers have half an eye on freeze-frameable, home viewing platforms and half an eye on merchandising. The fabulous, motorbiking Belle Bottom (voice: Taraji P. Henson) who appears to have wandered in from 1970s blaxploitation with enormous Afro hair and disco diva clothing is the main focus of an enthralling car chase in which she outwits the cops with incredible stunts.

Her co-villains are voiced mostly by a roster of action stars known for that rather than animation voice work: the crab-pincered Jean Clawed (voice: Jean-Claude Van Damme), the Scandinavian-sounding Svengeance (voice: Dolph Lundgren), Stronghold (voice: Danny Trejo) and nunchaku-wielding nun Nunchuk (Lucy Lawless).

(A quick aside: older readers will recall that back in the 1970s, nunchaku were a no-no for the BBFC who would prune their use or even excise them altogether, sometimes in the most innocuous of contexts.… Read the rest