Today's Mini-Review: Machete Kills

Machete Kills: ***/*****, or 6/10

Robert Rodriguez continues telling the strange and ever over-the-top chronicles of his delightfully violent character Machete (Danny Trejo), who once starred in a fake trailer attached to his original Grindhouse segment Planet Terror and suddenly embarked on a life of his own. Though no faux trailer for this second installment was ever attached to other similar themed films (maybe there just were none), Machete Kills itself opens with a trailer for the alleged third movie, the dubiously titled Machete Kills Again... In Space! It's both a stroke of genius – as this 'prevue' perfectly sets the tone for what's to come, as well as pokes fun to the whole B-movie style Rodriguez embraces so vigorously more aptly in two minutes than the following film does in two hours – but also rather frustrating, as we know exactly how the movie we're about to see ends and what characters survive to fight another day (in space, yes). As such, Machete Kills is largely rendered devoid of any large narrative surprises. As we'll find out soon enough, the film doesn't rely on story structure at all, as in this regard it's kind of a mess, bloated with characters and motivations, many which change over the course of the movie. We're just supposed to roll with it as we did in the case of the first film, but it's obvious the paying-hommage-to-grindhouse-cinema is getting stale. This time, Machete is hired by the President of the USA (Charlie Sheen, humorously billed under his birth name Carlos Estevez and given an 'introducing' credit accordingly) to stop an arms dealer with a bad case of schizophrenia (Demian Bichir) from launching a nuclear assault upon Washington D.C. Why Machete cares about America at all, being an exploited Mexican alien and so forth, is only briefly addressed as we're not supposed to care to much for it is his simple duty to 'go kick some ass', and we like to see him do just that (we do!). Of course the situation is not nearly as simple as it seems and the bad guy's trail leads to an even bigger villain, a big shot industrialist named Voz (Mel Gibson) who harbors even deadlier threats to mankind's health. Along the road, Machete must dodge various well armed, colourful hitmen and legions of mindless minions, survive plots by double agents and also make love to beautiful women from time to time. A lot to do in only two hours, and what's more, a lot of characters to introduce and successively kill off in new and interesting ways.

Even more star studded than Machete's previous venture, this movie features appearances by an overly large score of popular actors including the likes of Jessica Alba, Amber Heard, Lady Gaga, Antonio Banderas, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Vanessa Hudgens. With so many celebrities present, it's obvious a lot of them don't get the screen time they deserve. Another, more serious result is that Trejo himself feels somewhat overwhelmed by it all (or maybe it's just his age, as he's pushing 70) and delivers a less than stellar performance than we're used to, not nearly exuberating the same type of invincibility and 'badassery' as he did before. Fortunately we still have the scantily clad tough girl Michelle Rodriguez (no relation), reprising her role as secret revolutionary Luz, to make up for Trejo's lack of bravura. In all other respects, Machete Kills is equally enjoyable as its predecessor, containing the maximum amount of scenes of idiotic ultraviolence, sweaty sensuality (though surprisingly no actual nudity this time) and a plethora of insanely funny genre self-referencing that have proven hallmarks of Rodriguez' grindhouse flicks. My favorite, apart from the opening trailer for Part 3, is the sex scene which out of the blue has the film stock distorted and blurred just when it got saucy, with an overlaying text asking us to put on our 3D-glasses. At least in terms of sheer simple fun Machete once again gives us what we expect, which does still make you want to see him kill again in space: like the trailer says, because 'it's all galactic and shit'.

Today's Mini-Review: We're the Millers

We're the Millers: ***/*****, or 6/10

Typical formulaic Hollywood fare. You take a comedically intriguing premise, you drown it in cheap sex jokes and excessive swearing for swearing's sake, you add established funny actors for flavor to make sure audiences will get what they expect (in this case Jennifer Aniston and Jason Sudeikis: you didn't think they would be together in something other than a comedy, did you?!), and you garner the whole in moralistic messaging to ensure a predictably happy ending for everyone concerned. The end result in this case is We're the Millers, but you could have rightfully entered many comedy titles of the last decades in its place with these ingredients. We're the Millers isn't the worst of them though, since there's a number of good dirty jokes too (and a killer whale eating a shark for extra kicks). Small time drug dealer David (Sudeikis), a loner living a life totally devoid of responsibilities whatsoever, ends up owning a lot of money to his sleazy supplier (Ed Helms from the Hangover series, largely identical narrative territory). He can make up for it by smuggling a load of weed over the Mexican border though. To avoid getting caught, David decides to masquerade as a family unit on a holiday trip in an RV, together with a broke stripper (Aniston) who hates his guts but needs his money, an obnoxious female teen runaway and a socially awkward boy of eighteen that hasn't yet done the deed (and thus ends up being both the victim of the majority of this flick's crude jokes and getting a girlfriend). After having secured the shipment, this so-called Miller family heads for home, but unfortunately for them David's employer screwed over a Mexican drug lord in the whole transaction, who soon is in hot pursuit together with a grotesque, hulking one-eyed henchman. Plus, they also have to deal with tarantulas, corrupt Mexican officials fishing for sexual favors, agressive border patrols, an actual family on vacation suffering from a dent in their sex life, and of course, each other. However, to the surprise of all of them, they quickly discover the benefits of and acquire a taste for family life, as Hollywood's conformative, conservative propaganda machine is working overtime to make sure all's well that ends well. At least we get a decent amount of witty repartee and performances to match from a cast that is all too familiar with this genre and knows how to make it work, which could also translate as being on auto-pilot. And for those interested, Aniston's sexy dance routines are adequate enough to convince us she's playing a cheap stripper. But overall, We're the Millers proves an all too standard comedy that you'll stick with for 110 minutes and you'll forget about just as fast.