Punisher: War Zone (2008)


Directed by: Lexi Alexander

Starring: Ray Stevenson, Dominic West, Doug Hutchinson

Other Actors of Note: Wayne Knight

Plot: After hunting down and killing hundreds of violent criminals, Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, faces his most deadly foe yet: Jigsaw.

It's no coincidence that he looks like Steven Seagal here.

I didn't know what to expect coming into this movie. Having not seen anything by Lexi Andrews, anything with Ray Stevenson, or even a trailer my mind was pretty blank walking into this one. Still, I wasn't quite expecting this.

This is the second Punisher reboot following the criminally underrated and misunderstood (we'll get to that in a minute) 2004 movie starring Thomas Jane and a phoned in John Travolta and an 80s movie starring Dolph 'Drago' Lundgren which is actually a decent film so long as you pretend it's not supposed to be an adaptation of the comic book.

Anyway Ray Stevenson is Frank Castle AKA the Punisher a vigilante with a chip on his shoulder and a stick up his ass who either broods, mopes, or tears shit up. He used to have emotions but he doesn't anymore (I'm fairly certain he killed them. With his bare hands.) His family died at a picnic when they witnessed a mob killing and he was reported dead too but he wasn't dead and nobody found out because... that's never really explained. Anyway Frank is so downtrodden over the loss of his family that he beats anything even resembling crime into a bloody sauce. He's so intimidating that villains only ever shoot him in his kevlar vest, he's also 8 and a half feet tall and made of rusty steel, he has barbed wire for teeth, chainsaws for fingers, and Tom Selleck for a cock.

Anyway the badguy from "300" (the one that looks like Mark Wahlberg, not the oen that looks like Dhalsim) aka Dominic West aka Billy "The Beaut" Rissoti is a mobster that is very vane and tends to check himself out in the mirror all the time. (Gee, I wonder if he ends up horribly scarred and ugly later in the movie as a half-assed lesson about the dangers of vanity, hmm)

Well the Punisher crashes this big mob party and kills people so quickly and brutally that Jason Voorhees would either be proud or jealous. (He cuts a guy's head off with one swipe from a kabar, I mean I know they're sharp but come on) But Billy gets away and Frank tracks him to a recycling plant.

He then kills, like, fucking everybody and tosses Billy into a big glass recycling machine and turns it on where it strangely enough only tears his face to shit rather than turning him into cole slaw. Naturally he comes back with a vengence, kills some people, holds a woman and child hostage, kidnaps Newman, and has a crazy brother (aptly named Loony Bin Jim as he is in an asylum and is named Jim) who he breaks out. Also there's some Jamaican guy and his partners that figure into this whole mess somehow (It's Maginty from the Punisher Max series but there's really no reason for him to even be in the movie) but they're pretty superflous.

Magnum PInis

Ray Stevenson looks the part of Frank Castle just like Steve Dillon draws him as a weird combination of Steven Seagal and Clive Owen. Unfortunately since Ray Stevenson has all the eloquent speech patterns of Lou Ferigno he doesn't even utter a single word until about 20 minutes into the movie (thus further enforcing the Jason comparison) and seeing as how Ennis' overly tedious monologue that rivaled that of anything from "Sin City" can't be spoken by Frank he reads more like The Saint of Killers with a skull painted on his chest. I'm told Stevenson can act which is why I'm wondering why he didn't do much of it at all during this movie. He mostly just looks alternatively bored or mopey for the entire film. The big problem is we see that Frank was a happy family man but mostly he just seems like a major cunt and you don't believe that he was once a decent guy just maybe a slightly lesser cunt.

Dominic West in much the same way that Heath Ledger beat the hell out of Christian Bale's remarkably unremarkable performance in "The Dark Knight" is the real show stopper here. Jigsaw is waaaaay beyond over the top and even kind of comes close to Ledger's Joker in tone and style. My big problem with West's performance was his accent, his Italian accent sounded fake but then again that may have been intentional given the style of this movie. Jigsaw looks something like a cross between Mason Verger and Leatherface and actually kind of acts like that as well. Jigsaw's origin has been changed to Frank accidently not killing him after dropping him into a glass bottle recycler (because apparently having The Punisher filet his face with a combat knife was deemed too family friendly.)

Doug Hutchinson (AKA the dick-head prison guard from "The Green Mile") plays Jigsaw's brother Loony Bin Jim. If West's accent was bad Hutchinson's is far worse and his job is mainly to kill off characters in the most batshit crazy ways possible and inflict physical harm upon himself, you know, just 'cause. Still, however pointless the character is, Hutchinson plays him well.

Wayne Knight (AKA Newman from Seinfeld) plays Linus Lieberman AKA MicroChip a character that hasn't been seen in the comics since the 90s, mostly because he kinda sucked and was only really there to answer the ever present question of "Where the fuck does he get all these guns?" Thus the character has been relegated to "likeable side-kick who will die before this movie ends." No less, Knight (an actor who I have liked in.... hmm... nothing) actually does a really good job (though he seems to be channeling Penn Jillette) and manages to be likeable (which is no small feat seeing as I hate both character and actor.)

Dash Mihok plays Martin Soap, a character that will be more than familiar to people like me who lovingly recall Garth Ennis' run on Marvel Knights Punisher. Mihok plays the character near perfectly he's just as much of an unlucky doofus as is expected the problem is while the character starts out like he did in the comics we find out he's actually an ally of the Punisher which kinda bothered me (probably more than it should have, really) especially since there obviously won't be a Daredevil around constantly trying to throw Frank in jail.

T.J. Storm plays a Maginity, a lover of parkour who is 1/2 Jamaican and 1/2 Irish (and 1/2 Pirate judging by the horrible accent) and plays a role of no importance at all in this movie. You thought Harry Heck and The Russian were pointless fan-service? You ain't seen nothing yet.

Frank Castle once beat Chuck Norris. To death. With Jean Claude Van Damme.

Okay let's get this out of the way since you cunts are going to whine about this review anyway. The 2004 version was still a better movie. I get to hear oh so much about how "it wasn't really the Punisher" and "Thomas Jane spends most of the movie whining and drinking" and "he spends more time breaking up Howard Saint's marriage than killing people" bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch.

First of all, the 2004 film was an origin story as many times as the Punisher has been changed and brought back his origin has only been covered in detail one time and even that was pretty piss-poor (It was the 70s after all.)

No, Thomas Jane's character was not The Punisher, he was Frank Castle. He didn't actually become the Punisher until the end of the movie (in fact if you would shut your goddamn cock holster and listen Jane's last lines: "Frank Castle is dead, I am The Punisher" spell it out for you in blue crayon) it's a detailing of his journey for revenge ultimately culminating in him losing any spark of compassion and humanity he had left and essentially becoming a modernized version of "The Man With No Name" with just a tiny bit of Travis Bickle sprinkled in there to make it intersting. Yes he drank and he moped and he felt like shit, but come on his entire extended fucking family just died like two months ago give the guy some time for Christ sake. He could have just instantly gone emotionless and became The Punisher but that's something that industry buffs call "Bad writing."

And yes, Frank didn't kill Quentin Glass or Olivia Saint but seeing as neither of them actually killed his family and it was Howard Saint he really had the beef with for calling out the order he was not simply content to kill everyone he loved, he wanted to make it hurt especially bad so he set it up to where Howard did the dirty work and thus realized he had killed the people he loved in cold blood. (It would have had better effect if John Travolta wasn't such a terrible fucking actor.)

Now if you liked Punisher Max, you'll probably like Stevenson. He reads as a Steven Seagal character which is pretty much how Garth Ennis writes Frank Castle. He kills bad people, that's pretty much it. I have never been pleased with that aspect of Ennis' take on the character as it's rather shallow, particularly from a writer who pulled 1/6 of a comic series on the characterization of someone called "Arseface." I've always felt that versioin of the Punisher was weak, but if you're an Ennis fanboy or you just don't like to complicate your action heroes with all those pussy feelings than Stevenson is the man for you. (The honestly Stevenson spends far more time moping around than Jane did, at least Jane had the decency to drink while doing it, half the time I expected Stevenson to be balled up in the corner cranking Linkin Park so hard his ears bled.)

"Punisher: War Zone" is more gory than "Rambo" (I feat I didn't expect to be achieved, at least not this soon), more overstylized than "The Dark Knight", and more over-the top and cheesy than "Shoot 'Em Up."

It's essentially Punisher MAX mixed with the old Punisher: War Journal comics from the 80s and 90s. All the dialogue is horribly written (They actually managed to top "God's gonna sit this one out!") and every single scene is fraut with camp. Of course this isn't a bad thing, but what's troubling is there's a fair amount of the movie that is supposed to be taken seriously.

The style of the writing is almost straight up Garth Ennis, the problem is while that works in print it doesn't work so much in movies. Ennis' style goes from surreally ridiculous to deadly serious in the blink of an eye and while this works in comics it's not so succesful acted out. Oh sure there's a lot of moments that just come as a surprise and crap all over typical action movie traditions but at the same time it uses a fair amount of them. (I swear the director consulted the Steven Seagal Guide to Action Sequences more than once on this one.)

It's also painfully obvious this is a Lionsgate film by the cinematography, the over-the-top gore, and the fact that Jigsaw's origin looks like something out of one of the "Saw" films. It's dark, every frame is usually saturated with a lot of red or green side lighting and if they go five minutes without someone dying horribly then something's wrong.

Much like Tim Bradstreet's art portfolio, google images was filled with nothin but pictures of The Punisher looking broody and ashy all shrouded in shadows.

"Punisher: War Zone" is a fun cheesy action movie that unfortunately aspires to be more than that. It's fun but little else, relying more on guns and gusto than character development or plot, it's too hard to take seriously when you're supposed to. No less it's not a bad movie just not particularly great and it makes me miss Thomas Jane.

I give "Punisher: War Zone" a 4 out of 5. It's worth seeing.

Bolt (2008)


Directed by: Byron Howard and Chris Williams

Starring: John Travolta, Susie Essman, Mark Walton, Miley Cyrus

Other Actors of Note: James Lipton, Malcolm McDowell, Deidrich Bader,

Plot: The canine star of a fictional sci-fi/action show that believes his powers are real embarks on a cross country trek to save his co-star from a threat he believes is just as real. Taken from www.imdb.com.


I already shared my opinion on computer animated films in my "Madagascar 2" review. This is a Disney computer animated film, not to be confused with a Disney/Pixar animated film. Disney is famous for such crap as "Dinosaur", "The Wild", and "Meet the Robinsons."

I went and saw "Bolt" because "Twilight" had already started (and because I didn't really want to see it anyway) and "Transporter 3" wasn't on for another hour. I went in with low expectations and it worked out pretty well for me.

Did you see "Toy Story"? Well then you've pretty much seen "Bolt". It's the story of Bolt (John Travolta) and his owner Penny (Miley Cyrus) who star on a show that seems to be trying really hard to not look exactly like "Kim Possible."

The key to the show's success is that Bolt doesn't know it's a show. He honestly thinks Penny gets in danger every week and he's able to save her. But when an unfortunate turn of events ends with Bolt out in the real world he teams with an unlikely group consisting of a racqueteering cat named Mittens (Susie Essman) and a nerdy hamster in a ball named Rhino (Mark Walton) to go cross-country and be re-united with Penny.


John Travolta is surprisingly good in this. I am deeply dissatisfied with Travolta's performance in every film that hasn't been based on an Elmore Leonard novel (and yes, I'm counting "Pulp Fiction") I find him to be dweeby and annoying but as Bolt he actually fits the part perfectly, something I didn't even begin to see happening.

Miley Cyrus is thankfully not a big part of this movie. She's about as important to the story as Andy was in "Toy Story." She does do a decent job as Penny and manages to not be annoying which is a miracle for the spawn of Billy Ray Cyrus.

Susie Essman, who I have strangely never heard of, does a fairly good job as Mittens, a declawed cat running an extortion operation with some pigeons in New York City. She plays the straight-man Woody to Bolt's delusional Buzz Lightyear.

Finally the real show stealer is Mark Walton (who I swore was Jim Gaffigan by his voice) as Rhino, a nerdy fan-boy hamster who shares Bolt's delusion that the dog's exploits are real. He's the funniest character for sure and one particular scene where Bolt tells him there's a guard and he marches around the corner proclaiming "I'll snap his neck." is one of Rhino's finer moments.


The animation for this show is okay, not great but it doesn't fall under that terrible fucking Dreamworks animation either. It's about the quality of "Toy Story" and "A Bug's Life". However it never becomes a problem, the animation style fits the movie and it works.


"Bolt" is for all intents and purposes just "Toy Story" with pets. Bolt is the Buzz Lightyear character who is trapped in the delusion that he is anything more than an actor while Mittens plays the real pet trying to point out that he's just a dog. Naturally Bolt finds out he's not super and gets all downtrodden and then Mittens teaches him how to be a real dog as they go to find Bolt's owner Penny who he has become lost from.

This fact should not detract from the quality of the film, however. As much as you've already seen it before, it's still fun and interesting if albeit cliched. It's a kid's movie for sure but it's still sprinkled with enough "in" jokes to please older audiences as well. One inparticular involving a trio of pigeons pitching a script idea to Bolt and one saying "Don't get too excited, this is how we lost Nemo" had all the adults and none of the kids in the audience busting out in laughter.

It's a nice return to form for Disney as they haven't had a good animated film since "Treasure Planet" in 2002. There's nothing parituclarly special about it but it never seems to matter.


"Bolt" is probably the best non-Pixar computer animated film made to date. It presents nothing new or exciting but it's still a lot of fun for people of any age.

I give "Bolt" a 5 out of 5. See it.

Australia (2008)

Directed By: Baz Luhrmann

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Nichole Kidman, Brandon Walters, David Wenham

Plot: In northern Australia prior to World War II, an English aristocrat inherits a cattle station the size of Maryland. When English cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn stock-man to drive 2,000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country's most unforgiving land, only to still face the bombing of Darwin, Australia, by the Japanese forces that had attacked Pearl Harbor only months earlier. Taken from www.imdb.com.


If you've done something good even once in your life that's gotten you important enough to have name recognition then from that point on you can pretty much turn out whatever shit you want and people will eat it like hungry dogs. Sony does it, Mike Myers does it, and lets not even get started on Alan Moore.

"Australia" is by all means a movie of great ambition. Throwing caution and common sense to the wind it's a Western, a World War 2 Movie, a Romance, and a Drama, with elements of Comedy thrown in to make it interesting.

Basically there's a small cattle ranch in Australia called Faraway Downs that is the only competition against the local cattle seller. We meet plucky fish out of water Sarah Ashley (Nichole Kidman), Obligatory Man-With-No-Name Drover (Hugh Jackman), adorable kid who is only slightly less annoying than Short Round, Nullah (Brandon Walters), and despicable cattle baron King Carney (Bryan Brown) complete with weasly two-faced henchman Fletcher (David Wenham.)

They have to "drove" cattle (because aparrently in 1940s Australia they had yet to master verb tenses) to a ship for a military order before King Carney can fill his. Naturally some shit goes down, I mean come on the poster involves Hugh Jackman angrilly whipping fire!

However you'll soon find that the movie is very low on fire whipping and in fact has no gunfights, but you know, it works. The movie ends and there's triumph and fun to be had by all, but what's this? The movie isn't over? Well surely this is just an epilogue! FUCK NO IT'S NOT! The film goes on for another hour and at least 6 more endings before the screenwriter finally puts a bullet in its head to stop all its flailing.


Hugh Jackman in the first half of this movie seems to be channeling Clint Eastwood. His character is the typical man with no name who seems to sweat testosterone and bleed lesser men, he even manages to pull off that cock-eyed half-squint Eastwood always does and does the voice nearly perfect. He's the average story, prefers a life of freedom, has compassion for "insert minority here" because his late wife was an "insert minority here." However even when the movie seems to nosedive into the "what the fuck, this is still playing?" zone he manages to be interesting.

Nichole Kidman has admitted that she did not read the script before signing on to the movie and did it simply because Baz Luhrmann was directing. This makes sense as I'm fairly certain that what is in the movie is a cardboard cut-out of Nichole Kidman that's moved around as she reads her lines over the phone. While it's no surprise that Kidman is phoning in her performances at this point (Seeing as how she's been doing it for almost 10 years now) it's somehow more annoying this time.

David Wenham goes from sniveling assistant to main bad guy in the second act of this train wreck. He's menacing but his heart never seems to be in it, perhaps if he were wearing an eye patch and carrying a spear I would have been more enthralled with his performance.

Brandon Walters as Nullah is supposed to be the main character of this piece judging by the fact that he narrates, but honestly the entire movie could exist without him and we'd barely notice. It seems he was kept in more for charisma and cuteness and to detract from Nichole Kidman's atrocious acting.


There's something to be said for telling a story in a quick manner. While I respect directors being uncompromising about their visions I've yet to see a movie that doesn't involve Hobbits nearing the 3 hour mark that didn't have a bunch of uneccesary pointless shit that could have easily been left out. (I'm looking at you "Dark Knight")

The thing is, I didn't just like "Australia", I fucking loved it. It was a new spin on the western formula. Okay sure it was formulaic, just change the setting to Arizona, the time frame to the 1800s, and the Aboriginies to Indians and you've got a Western. The problem is the Western ends and the movie has the audacity to continue.

Now I'll admit I like a good World War 2 movie as much as the next person, I also like a good Drama/Romance as much as the next person. The problem is while the adjectives apply, the word "good." doesn't enter into the picture.

Where the formulaic nature of the narrative was charming for the Western portion of the film it proves tedious and annoying for the latter parts. In fact, Luhrmann might as well have named the movie "Chlich'e." Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, is absolutely 100% predictable and I garuntee you've seen it all in some other movie.

So why are people getting their rocks off and calling the "Casablanca for a new Generation?" The answer you seek lies in whose name is on the directing credit. Now don't get me wrong, "Moulin Rouge!" was great so long as you like musicals and "Romeo + Juliet" is probably the only context in which I have ever enjoyed that particular Shakespeare play. But face it people, Luhrmann got a little too excited, decided to do a little too much and made a movie that really isn't all that good.

After having seen this movie I still have trouble wrapping my mind around how this movie even exists, the entire thing seems like a horribly bad idea and the very concept of someone doing this willingly is disturbing to no end. I'm told you have to be a Baz Luhrmann fan to enjoy this movie, which makes no sense, there's no "style" present here. The movie seems to have been phoned in by the screenwriter, cinematographer, director, and most of the cast.


"Australia" is charming and fun so long as you stop it at the halfway point, otherwise you'll watch a bloated cautionary tale abotu the dangers of being a stuck-up-your-own-arse director being overly ambitious about your movie.

I give "Australia" a 2 out of 5.

Madagascar 2: Escape 2 Africa (2008)


Directed by: Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath

Starring: Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith, David Schwimmer

Other Actors of Note: Sacha Baron Cohen, Cedric the Entertainer, Andy Richter, Bernie Mac, Alec Baldwin, Phil LaMarr

Plot: The sequel to 2005's "Madagascar", in which New York Zoo animals, Alex the Lion, Marty the Zebra, Melman the Giraffe and Gloria the Hippo, still stranded on Madagascar, start to leave the island. All of a sudden, they land in the wilderness of Africa, where Alex meets the rest of his family, but has trouble communicating with them after spending so much time at the Central Park Zoo. Taken from www.imdb.com.

"Don't look Doll, 'Shrek Goes Fourth' will be out soon."

There are two kinds of Computer Animated movies. There are Pixar movies and then there's everybody else. Fully CG movies are nothing new any more and have generally lost all novelty but for some reason most studios fail to be able to pull it off with non-Pixar hits ranging from mediocre ("Open Season", "Flushed Away", "Dinosaur") to godawful ("The Wild", "Doogal") with "Shrek" being the one exception to the rule.

"Madagascar" was a movie that could be best described as "okay" it was a sea of mediocrity speckled with a few rare chunks of genuine humor tossed in. However the sequel looked promising as the trailer was catchy and Etan Coen (who co-wrote "Tropic Thunder" and whom I found out only recently is a seperate entity from Ethan Coen) wrote the script so I grabbed my coat and sped off to the $5 theater to give Dreamworks another chance to not suck. I should have taken it as an omen when I totalled my truck by hitting the biggest goddamn deer this Earth has ever produced on the way to the theater. Still I was strangely optimistic, you could say that I was... questionably content... (I was ominous just there.)

So this movie picks up where the first left off with Alex (Ben Stiller), Marty (Chris Rock), Melman (David Schwimmer), Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith), and the penguins: Skipper (Tom McGrath), Kowalski (Chris Miller), Private (Chris Miller), and Mason (Conrad Vernon) leaving Madagascar to go back to New York.

Naturally things go terribly wrong and hijinks ensue and the ragtag group (along with Lemur King Julian (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his henchman Maurice (Cedric the Entertainer) end up in Africa where, if you actually stayed awake long enough for the first movie, you'll recall they were headed to in the fucking first place.

Unfortunately they wind up in some pseudo "The Lion King" on an animal reserve while an old Jewish lady conquers to wilds and small flightless birds rock out to "Boston."

"No seriously, we're cool. No further sequels are necessery from this point on."

Pretty much all the performances are the same here, the four leads are well below par even for their incredibly waning careers and that goes for pretty much everyone except Alec Baldwin who is always horrible in everything that isn't "30 Rock." He essentially plays Scar only minus the scar and with a haircut that could only be worn by a gay German hairdresser named Bruno.

The few exceptions include Sacha Baron Cohen who is as entertaining as he was the first go-round as King Julian.

This is yet another dud performance for the late Bernie Mack whose genius was sadly rarely realized before his unfortunate demise. (Ah well, we'll always have Bobby Bolivia...)

The Penguin Christmas special that came with the original "Madagascar" DVD was pretty much the only reason to buy the movie so it comes as no surprise that once again the penguins are the main, and pretty much only, reason to watch. When they're onscreen the movie is good and you feel you're watching something great, and then we go back to the main characters and you find yourself glancing at your watch.

The average aftermath of an American Airlines flight.

The CG in this film is pretty poor even for a cheaper made movie. Everything is clunky and cartoonish in a way that seems unintentional putting the quality only slightly over that of the original "Toy Story" this is also exacerbated by the fact that the character models are mostly all bland and uninspiring.

Tonight on Night Line NBC: Furries and the sick shit they're into.

"Madagascar 2" is pretty creatively bankrupt storyline-wise. Alex and Marty still struggle with their burgeoning gay inter-racial relationship bu this time with a dash of racism when we find out that all zebras look and sound exactly alike. I'm sure they also survive on a steady diet of fried chicken, watermelon, and red Kool Aid as well.

Meanwhile we deal with the giraffe and the hippo falling in love which is more than a little weird when you give it actual thought. Pretty much nothing else happens as the "villain" of the story is only slighltly more profound than the mangy lion things from the first movie.

A few moments of comedy are spot on and well done (I think maybe two of them don't actually involve penguins) but it's just another lovely dumbed down movie to feed our kids, though admittedly it's a fairly decent one. The thing is, there's nothing really wrong with "Madgascar 2" there's just nothing particularly right about it.

They just saw the trailer for "The Tale of Despereaux"

"Madagascar 2" is just another of Dreamworks Animation's spectacularly unspectacular movies that most people will rent at Red Box and never watch again.

I give "Madagascar: This Poster Is Ambiguous as to The Location of the Letter 2" a 3 out of 5.