As has been previously and unanimously agreed upon by everyone in the world, RED 2 is the most anticipated sequel of 2013, and it should already be awarded all of next year’s Academy Awards. But even with everyone on this planet in absolute agreement on that – with the lone exception being Vince, because he only watches movies that have the word “Movie” in the title – Summit Entertainment has still released a second trailer in case there were people living deep in the rain forests who hadn’t decided if they’d see it on the opening weekend or not.

Bruce Willis returns as Frank Moses, as he and Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich) must enlist the help of a Russian scientist (Anthony Hopkins) who has been locked up for 32 years to recover a bomb that he built during the Cold War. The only problem is that he’s batsh*t looney tunes now, which should lead to even more zany adventures for this gang of old farts teaching the new generation of assassins a thing or two. And this time Helen Mirren has been enlisted to stop Frank, which has left us with some wonderful GIFs.

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Welcome to this week’s installment of Netflix Instant Theater, which has us watching random straight-to-DVD films and/or forgotten classics that we otherwise wouldn’t know of if it weren’t for the magic of legal online movie streaming. As a disclaimer, I’m not trying to make this all about 50 Cent and his 10-picture deal through his production company, Cheetah Vision, but it’s just impossible not to talk about these movies.

Setup (2011)

Starring: Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Ryan Phillippe, Bruce Willis, Jenna Dewan-Tatum, Randy Couture, James Remar, Rory Markham, Shaun Toub, Brett Granstaff

Directed by Mike Gunther (Beatdown, which stars Michael Bisping, and I did not know that existed)

Written by Mike Gunther and Mike Behrman

The Basic Plot Summary: Sonny (50 Cent) and his two best friends, Vincent (Phillippe) and Dave (Granstaff), put together the perfect plot to steal a small fortune’s worth of diamonds from a dealer, thanks to Vincent’s sister or girlfriend – I can’t remember – Mia (Dewan), who poses as his employee. But as they’re ready to celebrate their big score, Vincent surprises his friends by turning his gun on them and stealing the diamonds for himself. Except, he fails to kill Sonny, which turns out to be a big mistake.

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“This summer it’s… Bad Actor, White Lightning.”

Welcome to our new weekly feature, Netflix Instant Theater, in which Vince, myself and some very special guests will select a Netflix Instant movie to watch and review for you each week. Kind of like Awesome Movies on Netflix Instant, but sometimes not as awesome. This week, I’m kicking it off with a spectacular tale of action, love, revenge, racism and Bruce Willis being paid money to look old and mean in…

Fire With Fire (2012)

Starring: Josh Duhamel, Bruce Willis, Rosario Dawson, Vincent D’Onofrio, 50 Cent, Rampage Jackson, Vinnie Jones, and that guy from Nip/Tuck who played Dr. Doom in those awful Fantastic Four movies

The Basic Plot Summary: When firefighter Jeremy Coleman (Duhamel), who ain’t too hard on the eyes, witnesses the brutal murder of a gas station owner and his son, he is forced into the witness protection program so he can help take down the notorious Aryan gangster, Hagan (D’Onofrio), responsible for the kills. However, the law dogs underestimate the reach of Hagan and his crew, as they gun down Jeremy’s girlfriend, U.S. Deputy Marshal Talia (Dawson), so Jeremy purchases some guns from the Crips and vows to take Hagan down himself.

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“And you’re not coming back, Richard Dreyfuss, because you were shot in the head.”

Some unnamed people around here like to make fun of a movie like RED, because it featured an ensemble cast of older actors as former CIA agents and international spies, and that’s just goofy because Viagra jokes and broken hips, LOL! So forgive me if I’m a little more enthusiastic than a certain someone else today, because RED, which starred Bruce Willis and John Malkovich as retired CIA killers, is one of my favorite movies of the past few years, and I will stop whatever I’m doing and watch it whenever it’s on cable.

So when the trailer for RED 2 was released in January, I was extra excited, because Anthony Hopkins is joining the crew of old farts, and it allowed me to wonder if they’re going to bring back Brian Cox as Ivan Simonov (he’s not listed on the sequel’s cast) and maybe use some suspended disbelief to tell us that Morgan Freeman didn’t really die.

Well, good news for me, because Summit Entertainment is moving up RED 2’s release date from August 2 to July 19 because I’ve been a good boy this year.

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“HW, did you ever hear the philosophy that once a man admits that he’s wrong that he is immediately forgiven for all wrongdoings?”

Oral history articles are like my crack, and I’ve seen Pulp Fiction about a billion times, so Vanity Fair’s new oral history of Pulp Fiction was of obvious interest. Casting is a particularly tricky part of development, and it’s always fun to play the “what if” game (Nick Nolte as Han Solo?!? Nic Cage as Superman?!?). Some Pulp Fiction what-ifs and almost-weres include Daniel Day-Lewis as Vincent Vega, Paul Calderon as Jules Winfield, and Matt Dillon as Butch.

Harvey Weinstein was dead-set against giving the role of Vincent Vega to John Travolta. “John Travolta was at that time as cold as they get,” says Mike Simpson, Tarantino’s agent at William Morris Endeavor. “He was less than zero.” Simpson had given Weinstein a “term sheet” of Taran­tino’s demands, which included final cut, a two-and-a-half-hour running time, and final choice of actors. “One of the actors I had on the list was John Travolta,” says Tarantino. “And it came back: ‘The entire list is approved . . . except for John Travolta.’ So I got together with Harvey, and he’s like, ‘I can get Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Penn, William Hurt.’” By then, according to Simpson, “Daniel Day-Lewis and Bruce Willis, who was the biggest star in Hollywood, had both gotten their hands on the script and wanted to play Vincent Vega.”

John Travolta was washed up before Pulp Fiction, he was amazing in Pulp Fiction, and he hasn’t really done anything great since. Casting Travolta wasn’t like Christoph Waltz, where Tarantino discovered this amazing actor that no one had seen before. Travolta was around, but no one else thought he had it in him. I don’t know how many times Tarantino had to watch Look Who’s Talking coked out of his face to see that role in Travolta, but it’s one of the all-time serendipitous castings, where persona and role lined up just perfectly. It’s also fun to imagine Daniel Day-Lewis doing Pulp Fiction lines all perfectly enunciated in his Daniel Plainview voice. “Now HW, eating a bitch out and giving a bitch a foot massage ain’t even the same thing!” (I know that’s a Jules line, but I don’t care).

Bruce Willis’s interest in the project relieved Weinstein’s concerns that the movie lacked bankable stars. With the main role of Vincent Vega already cast, the only option for Willis was Butch, the boxer—which Tarantino had promised to Matt Dillon.

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