THE ITALIAN JOB circa 2003 is a standard issue studio ensemble heist movie, and a really enjoyable one. The director of FRIDAY and the writers of DEEP BLUE SEA put together a good group of likable actors to play the team of expert thieves, they came up with some clever gimmicks for an elaborate heist, and they executed it well with good pacing, light humor, a sense of fun but also a reasonable enough sense of danger. So it’s closer to OCEAN’S 11 where they obviously know what they’re doing but have to put in some elbow grease than OCEAN’S PART 13 where they seem to have super powers and can do absolutely anything at a moment’s notice with no trouble at all. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘Mark Wahlberg’
The Italian Job (2003)
Thursday, August 12th, 2010Max Payne
Sunday, January 18th, 2009MAX PAYNE is the story of the conveniently named Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg), a burnt out shell of a man working as “a glorified file clerk” in the dark caverns of the cold case department of the such and such police department. (IMDb says New York, I thought it was supposed to be one of those New York-like nameless Every-Cities, but whatever.) But actually he doesn’t work, he just spends his days gloomily trying to find out who killed his wife and baby an unspecified time period ago. (Long enough ago that his wife’s co-workers don’t recognize him.)
Everybody describes Max as this scary guy – they think he never sleeps, and at one point a guy compares interaction to him with kids holding their breath as they walk past a graveyard. But Wahlberg is in his regular grimacing badass mode. He’s cool but the way they talk about him he should be a walking mess of a man, not just a sculpted tough guy who doesn’t smile. Oh well.
There’s a good scene early on where three junkies try to jump Max in a public restroom and are disturbed to find that he knows their names and what they’ve been doing all day. “You’re following us?” one of them says. “No, I’m following you,” he says. Ass kicking ensues. Another nice touch in this scene: he takes the guy’s gun but instead of firing it at him he throws it in the sink and pulls out his own, more powerful gun.
But as the mystery begins to unfold we start to see musclemen with ritualistic tattoos and shadowy demons chasing after people. In the end it turns out to have a reasonable explanation but at the time you worry this is some kind of CONSTANTINE type deal. Unfortunately the character and action scenes are only about halfway there and the mystery isn’t involving enough to fill the gap. (more…)
The Happening
Sunday, June 15th, 2008Okay, you guys were right. I’ve been defending M. Night Shyamalan as a talented director based on how he moved the camera around in THE SIXTH SENSE and UNBREAKABLE. I didn’t like SIGNS as much, but alot of it worked. I didn’t see THE VILLAGE, which may have strengthened my argument through the ancient technique of “denial.” And LADY IN THE WATER was a hilarious disaster, which means he’s at least interesting even when he’s embarrassing himself and all of his ancestors and descendants and anyone who has ever known him or seen one of his movies.
But after this one I’m with you guys, I give up on Shyamalan. And it has nothing to do with twist endings (there isn’t one in this movie). This is just a bad movie that blows it from the beginning and gets more silly as it goes along, and there isn’t even much of the technical skill he used to display to make up for it.
The movie (loosely based on WHAT’S HAPPENING? I believe) is about a day when all the sudden everybody in Central Park just snaps and commits suicide. It’s assumed to be caused by a terrorist attack, but then it starts happening at other places, and not just in major cities. The story follows science teacher Mark Wahlberg and his wife Zooey Deschanel as they try to find somewhere safe to go, etc.
It’s a scary idea with some creepy death sequences and you’d think the Shyamalan of those two Bruce Willis movies would be able to make it, as they say on the covers of DVDs, “Scary as hell.” But to me the movie never, even at the beginning, feels real. The opening is kind of like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD or VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, two great movies to emulate. Except in this one, instead of taking a little time to establish everyday life before something odd starts happening, it takes about 3 sentences of conversation on a bench before everybody starts killing themselves. (more…)
Four Brothers
Sunday, August 21st, 2005A saintly old white lady gets killed during a liquor store robbery in Detroit. She has four adopted sons that return to town for her funeral – Mark Wahlberg from Boogie Nights, Andre Benjamin from Be Cool, Tyrese from Baby Boy, and… some kid in a leather jacket. See, this dead lady was some kind of pillar of the community, bein a grandma to all the disadvantaged kids in the neighborhood, bringing people free turkeys on thanksgiving, teaching important moral lessons and what not. But these four kids, these were the worst motherfuckers anybody ever saw… out of all the kids she helped, these were the only little shits she couldn’t get anybody to adopt, because they were too bad. The dirty dozen of juvenile delinquents. Except there’s only four of them, I think I mentioned that already but I don’t want anybody to get confused. The dirty four brothers.
So now Motown’s Most Infamous are back in the neighborhood like blaxploitation stars, and somebody out there killed their mom, and they aren’t quite as forgiving as she is so holy shit is somebody gonna have all hell brought down on them, in my opinion.
If that isn’t a good hook, I don’t know what is, but unfortunately Mr. John Singleton doesn’t really hang too much meat on it. This isn’t a bad movie, it’s a mediocre one, which is probaly worse. The cast is good, there’s some good moments, I like the basic outline, but it just doesn’t fly.
One big mistake, they didn’t do enough with the problem child angle. We hear alot about how these were the baddest kids on the block, but we pretty much have to take their word for it. Wahlberg is pretty mean and grizzled, has apparently lived a life of crime, etc. He passes the test. Tyrese has muscles, but he’s mostly a fuckup like he gets into trouble screwin somebody else’s girlfriend and that kind of garbage. Not one of the top four worst kids in Detroit. Benjamin isn’t a bad guy at all, he’s a family man with a conscience, and even Terence Howard, the cop who explains to us the premise of the 4 brothers at the beginning, admits he’s an okay guy. And then the kid in the leather jacket, they just tell us that something bad happened to him when he was little, and the brothers pick on him and call him a fag all the time. So he’s a bad motherfucker, I guess. (more…)
I ♥ Huckabees
Saturday, January 1st, 2005I’m not 110% sure but I think there may be a new movement poking its head out from over the Hollywood hills. Only a few years ago it was unimaginable that a Hollywood studio would make an entertainment-oriented movie with recognizable stars but also with a premise so weird and convoluted that it is hard to even explain. Then all the sudden there was this movie starring John Cusack and Cameron Diaz and it was about how there’s a door hidden inside an office building that you can go through and you will be able to control John Malkovich and make him quit acting to become a puppeteer. Then also there was the movie by the same director and writer where Nicolas Cage played twin brothers who try to write a movie based on a non-fiction book about collecting rare orchids but they can’t do it and instead write the movie that you are actually watching about twin brothers who try to write a movie based on a non-fiction book about collecting rare orchids but they can’t do it so instead they write the movie that you are actually watching.
Usually Hollywood is all about what they call “high concept” where the movie can be explained in one sentence or less. For example, Martin Lawrence has to go under cover so he dresses up as a fat old lady. Or, the Wayans brothers have to go undercover so they dress up as creepy blonde zombies. Or, Robin Williams is a bad father and husband so he dresses up as an old lady and lights his fake tits on fire.
But now all the sudden we got this different category of film that cannot be summed up so easy. And I’m not talking about some experimental arthouse type deal, I’m talking about movies that are intended to entertain the audience, etc. I don’t know what to call this movement other than Kaufmania in honor of its founder, Charles Kaufman. Or Kaufman Fever. Or Kaufmandomonium. (more…)
Planet of the Apes (2001)
Friday, July 27th, 2001It pains me to be that jackass who tries to point out that the remake is not as good as the original. Whoah, you’re blowin my mind, Galileo! But facts are facts, and science is science, fellas. The one and only mainstream event movie of the summer of 2001 is a big fat mess.
Planet of the Apes is the story of Mark Wahlberg landing on the Planet of the Apes. After this happens, there are many apes, etc.
Now if you’ve seen the original 1968 film by Rod Serling and friends starring Charlton Omega Man Heston, you know what not to expect in the remake – a strong story with unique elements of social commentary, good direction and atmosphere, etc.
Now I’ve read a thing or two about this one in the magazines and what not but I wouldn’t have to know it already to tell that this is one of those mega budget hollywood vehicles where they were still trying to Write it when they had already filmed it. And I know this is gonna be unpopular but buddy, you need a script for a picture like this. I know Mike Leigh, Wayne Wang, Christopher Guest etc. would disagree with me but improv is for pussies, in my opinion.
They got all of the elements of the original: apes and people. And nothing else. In this one, the people talk, and the apes have an even more primitive culture where they don’t even have guns. There is so little difference between the apes and people that the premise doesn’t even make sense anymore. Nobody knows why the apes look down on the humans so much or why the humans don’t fight back. Especially since in this one apes are afraid of water. You fuckin humans ever heard of a dam? Just flood the fuckers. Planet of the beavers coulda figured that one out why can’t planet of the humans? (more…)
