Shameless Self Expression

Set in the early 80s, Jason Statham stars as a former CIA assassin who tired of the life and moved to the Yarra Valley in Victoria to retire and hook up with a local girl, played by Yvonne Strahovski. However when his friend and mentor Robert De Niro is kidnapped by a sheikh in Oman who has an axe to grind, and uses De Niro to lure Statham out and persuade him to track down the killers of his sons. The killers are apparently ex-SAS men, and Statham’s job is to kill each of them without it leading back to the sheikh. Make the killings look like accidents, basically. However, just as Statham and his band of brothers are pros, there is another group of shadowy men, known as The Feather Men led by ex-SAS man Clive Owen, who are attempting to protect the four men. Dominic Purcell, Michael Dorman, and Aden Young are among Statham’s team, with the former being a burly brawler of dubious Welsh lineage and unpredictable temperament. Matthew Nable and Ben Mendelsohn turn up for Owen’s side. ...

Pop-star/actor Andy Lau (who is the subject of a funny in-joke here) is a rather mild-mannered Triad member attempting to go on vacation with ballsier girlfriend Ling (May Lo), and boards the same flight as famous monk the Daka Lama. On arrival in Singapore, a bunch of terrorist-types open fire (in a great scene, by the way), shooting both the Lama and Ling. Both need a blood transfusion, and both have a very rare blood type. Cops Alan Tam and Kar-Yan Leung need to track down a possible donor in only 12 hours. The bad guys, however, have already killed two of the possible donors, and the only one left is the delightfully unscrupulous ‘Fatty’ (Eric Tsang), who is being targeted by seemingly a whole army of baddies (Are you still with me?). Lau is hell-bent on saving his girlfriend’s life and goes off on his own, and the cops, who want to save the Lama first, are none too happy about his interference.   This 1991 Wong Jing (whose films range from the wildly entertaining “Se...

We are introduced to three robbers and long-time acquaintances who have just pulled off a heist and coming away with about $5 million in diamonds. Ryan Phillippe plays the hothead of the gang, Brett Granstaff is the nice guy with a new wife, and 50 Cent is Granstaff’s loyal best friend. After the robbery, one (Phillippe) ends up betraying the other two, killing one of them (Granstaff), and leaving the other (guess who) for dead too. But 50 Cent ain’t dead, though he sure as hell is mad and sets about tracking down his elusive former friend and killing him. Meanwhile, a polite Iranian hitman (Shaun Taub) is tracking both 50 and Phillippe down. He wants the diamonds, and he absolutely means business. 50 Cent’s quest sees him get involved with some mobsters whom Phillippe has apparently been hanging with, and eventually he is brought to the attention of mobster Bruce Willis. Willis doesn’t much like 50 fiddling around in his territory, but agrees to help him find Phillippe if he and bod...

In 1982, palaeontologist Mary Elizabeth Winstead is abruptly called upon to join a team of Norwegian scientists to a station in the Antarctic. Apparently an otherworldly discovery has been made, buried in ice for a hundred thousand years. Soon they also uncover an alien creature similarly buried in ice, which they take back to their base for study. The ice melts, the creature springs to life and proceeds to bump off the scientists and accompanying chopper pilots one by one. Apparently it is able to absorb human bodies and duplicate them, making it difficult to tell who is human and who is not. Let the paranoia begin! Joel Edgerton and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje play pilots, Ulrich Thomsen is the head scientist of the expedition, with Eric Christian Olsen his assistant. Although it boasts an interesting concept, I’ve never been a fan of this story. The original 1951 film “The Thing from Another World” was a crushing bore, John Carpenter’s celebrated 1982 remake “The Thing” boasted g...