Killing’s as Easy as Breathing

I want to see The Expendables, but not for the reasons you think.

The upcoming testosterone-on-steroids action flick from the mind of Sylvester Stallone is being heralded as a throwback to the bygone days of the 1980′s, a time when heroes had more muscle than brains, more guns than laptops, and more stunts than…well there was no CGI. To achieve his goal of resuscitating the clichés of my youth, Sly assembled every macho man he could find (except of course Macho Man Randy Savage). You might have seen the posters or the trailers in which the marketers have decided require no plot detail whatsoever but merely a long recitation of the beefy cast. There’s Stallone, Statham, Li, Couture, Lundgren, Crews, Austin, Willis, and taking a break from whatever he does in Sacramento, Schwarzenegger. Are you ready for some ass-kicking indeed.

Xavier Institute 10-Year Reunion

We are gathered here today to recognize the 10th anniversary of Bryan Singer’s X-Men. It was this very month that the comic book genre was kick-started, ushering in a decade overflowing with billions of dollars worth of attention paid to one of the toughest crowds ever in the history of entertainment: the nerd.

Days of Future Past – Summer 2011

I hope you all are weathering this current movie shitstorm with lots of streaming Netflix, books and video games. While I wish I could say Red Dead Redemption is so far the best movie of the year, I can’t. Aside from Toy Story 3, I haven’t seen ANYTHING that blew my cock off. Additionally, I haven’t been really excited for anything to the point of looking at my calendar and measuring how much longer I’d have to wait for whatever movie I was excited about. Not even Iron Man 2 made me do the movie happy dance. Inception has been the only “wait and see and hope” movie this year, I think. After the release of Predators, I wondered if I was growing out of my love for movies, or the movies we’re just that fucking bad. Thankfully, I’ve discovered it’s the latter, and I have news about it too.

Next summer isn’t looking much better…

An Open Letter to the Movie Studios

Hi, it’s me, Nathan Ayling. You don’t know me, which is probably a good thing because if I met any of you, I’d probably rip off my Empire Strikes Back t-shirt and stuff it down your delusional fucking throats. You’re having a bad summer, eh? No shit. I could have told you that. I could have told you that a year ago. “What’s wrong,” you ask. Well, here is the hard truth: I, Nathan Ayling, have seen three new movies this year, and when Nathan Ayling doesn’t go to the movies it’s a bad, bad thing.