This Week's Entertainment Body Count: Pretty High

Usually, I am not one to frequent movies with terrifically high body counts, lots of guns, buckets of blood, and huge explosions, but this week there were to rather enjoyable exceptions to this rule. 

Cheese, glorious cheese!

The first, Machete (2010) was added to the Netflix queue last year only because a (now former) coworker’s husband worked on the post-production team – titles, posters, etc. This movie is a bit like the Mexican immigrant version of Django Unchained (2012), but with more purposeful bad acting, amateurish editing, and even more buckets of fake blood. It reminded me of a B grade horror movie with a social message.   

You know that when you have Robert DeNiro, Lindsay Lohan, AND Steven Segal in the same movie, you are in for a special treat. If you haven’t seen it, add it to your queue. I think you will enjoy it if you are a fan of slasher movie send-ups and you are not overly sensitive to the ham-handed / satiric use of stereotypes.

Rating: 4 enthusiastically sharpened machetes out of 5 due tongue-in-cheekiness and Lindsay Lohan's surprisingly perky breasts.

 Thursday night, Carl and I found ourselves at the sneak preview for Olympus Has Fallen (2012).

 Olympus Has Fallen is another shoot ‘em up, jingoistic, blood bath of an action thriller. The premise is that a North Korean commando team takes over the White House, holding the handsomely tragic and likeable President hostage. While Carl found a few holes in the narrative (he is a bit logical at times), I found it to be a smart, witty, tense, and enjoyable romp – albeit a bloody one.

If you liked Air Force One (1997), you will most likely enjoy this movie as well. The bad guys are really bad. The good guys are really handsome. And the women are bad-ass!

I freely admit that I LOVE the USA. And, I hate to admit that while watching this movie I was more than a little moved at the destruction of buildings considered national symbols. I have always taken the position that a flag is only a piece of cloth that identifies a country – it is not actually my country. However, in watching this movie, I was viscerally affected at seeing the destruction of the Washington Monument and the White House. Of course these feelings added to the experience and most likely inspired my applause when the good guy finally wins. I apologize for the spoiler, but really, can you even imagine Gerard Butler losing to a villain? LOL.

Gerard Butler: Hero!

We had free, sneak preview tickets, but if it’s the guy’s turn to pick the date night movie and you are tired of Oscar-nominated films and romantic comedies, this one will fill the void. Of course, you could save your boy-movie night for the next GI Joe movie, but there will be plenty of rom-coms between now and then.   

Rating: 3.5 slaughtered secret service agents out of 5 due to unnecessarily high body count. If your acting specialty is getting shot and lying around as a dead body, you probably found some work in this film.