Archive for the ‘Drama’ Category
Tuesday, June 25th, 2013
In SNITCH, Benjamin Bratt (CATWOMAN) plays El Topo, a notorious ex-military badass who leads a Mexican drug cartel. He’s elusive to the authorities, preferring to stay back in a car and watch his underlings from afar, but when the shit goes down he’s the first to pull out a huge gun that looks like it should be mounted to a jeep. He’s very dangerous, especially to the naive Americans who he convinces to drive his drugs across the border. What they don’t understand is they don’t need to be working on a playlist for the drive back.
The obvious question: is this supposed to be a loose remake of EL TOPO, or a sequel, or what? I gotta go with prequel. At the end of EL TOPO El Topo (originally played by Alejandro Jodorowsky) had achieved enlightenment, gone underground and become a Saint. It just doesn’t follow that he would then become a cartel leader. Instead, SNITCH shows how the El Topo we first met riding through the desert with his young son came from a troubled background. It gives him all the more darkness to be redeemed from, retroactively adding more depth to Jodorowsky’s film. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Barry Pepper, Benjamin Bratt, John Bernthal, Michael Kenneth Williams, Ric Roman Waugh, Rockdrama, Susan Sarandon, The Rock, undercover
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews | 11 Comments »
Monday, June 24th, 2013
I’m kinda late on writing this one up, not sure if it’s even playing anywhere anymore, but what are you gonna do.
THE GREAT GATSBY is the story of this rich guy that’s in love with a gal that’s already married. It turns out he only got rich to try to impress her ’cause when he first fell in love with her 5 years ago she found out he was, as he says, penniless, and married this other asshole, etc. Leonardo DiCaprio (THE QUICK AND THE DEAD) plays the rich guy, Gatsby, Carey Mulligan (DRIVE) plays his love interest Daisy Buchanan, and Joel Edgerton (ANIMAL KINGDOM) plays her husband Tommy. But the main character is actually Tobey Maguire as whatsisdick, Daisy’s weiner of a cousin. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 3D, Baz Luhrmann, Carey Mulligan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jason Clarke, Jay-Z, Joel Edgerton, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 29 Comments »
Thursday, April 18th, 2013
RUST AND BONE is a beautifully photographed French relationship drama. It’s about two broken people who meet by chance, try to help each other, then hurt each other, then try to help again. It has superb performances by Marion Cotillard (as Stephanie) and Matthias Schoenaerts (as Alain). It deals with the responsibility of fatherhood and with overcoming disability. I know, doesn’t sound like my kind of movie, but each of these characters has a major characteristic that is my type of subject matter:
1) Alain does backyard fights for money
2) Stephanie gets her legs bit off by a fuckin orca
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: amputee, French, Jacques Audiard, Marion Cotillard, Matthias Schoenaerts, orcas, underground fighting
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 21 Comments »
Saturday, April 6th, 2013
VICTORY is a 1981 John Huston film that combines a LONGEST YARD type game-between-prisoners-and-guards story with a GREAT ESCAPE type story about escape greatness. It all begins when Sylvester Stallone, a Canadian prisoner in a German WWII labor camp (I thought American, but apparently he has a maple leaf on him somewhere), loses control of his soccer ball. It rolls over to Max Von Sydow, a Nazi officer who starts showboating by foot juggling it even though he’s wearing his big Nazi boots, and he kicks it over to Michael Caine, a British prisoner who was a pro footballer/soccerer before the war.
That one casual sporting exchange is historic because it starts up the conversation that leads to the deal: the best players from among the Allied prisoners will play an exhibition game against the German national team. For the Nazis it’s good propaganda at the end of a war that, let’s face it, did not improve their country’s image on the international stage. For the prisoners it’s an opportunity to plan an escape.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Vajna, Bill Conti, John Huston, Mario Kassar, Max von Sydow, Pele, soccer, Sylvester Stallone, WWII
Posted in Drama, Reviews, Sport | 27 Comments »
Friday, March 15th, 2013
How do you make a narrative film about Alfred Hitchcock filming PSYCHO? Adequately.
Anthony Hopkins (BAD COMPANY) plays Alfred “Hitch” Hitchcock, fresh off of NORTH BY NORTHWEST, anxious about his reputation and itching to do something new. He doesn’t want to turn into some by-the-numbers hack so he turns down bullshit like some stupid “Casino Royale” movie they want him to do, whatever the fuck that is. (keep in mind parkour had not been invented yet so it wouldn’t have been that good back then.) He doesn’t want to repeat himself and he’s fascinated by the gory true story of Ed Gein, famed Wisconsin killer, cannibal, grave robber and mama’s boy. When Robert Bloch’s Geinsploitation book Psycho comes out he decides it’s his next movie, but Paramount disagrees. Through his stubbornness, tenacity and a good agent he finds a way to fund it himself and have them distribute it. He makes them his errand boy. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Hopkins, Danny Huston, docudrama, Ed Gein, Helen Mirren, Jessica Biel, Michael Wincott, Ralph Macchio, Scarlett Johansson, Toni Collette
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 27 Comments »
Monday, March 4th, 2013
I never heard of this movie before and didn’t really have a reason to watch it except that a weird dude I know through work insisted on loaning it to me. In a situation like that you never know. It could be the one.
It’s a good setup for a no-budget movie. There are only three actors in the whole thing and one of them has a bit part as a tow truck driver. It’s the story of a down-on-his-luck white dude named Ernie (Rusty Gray) whose car breaks down on a desert road one day. After hours of trying to wave someone down he’s finally picked up by a wealthy black man named Anthony (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs). Anthony’s on his way to Vegas for a wedding (could this be a sidequel to THE HANGOVER?), but he believes in a paying-it-forward type of philosophy so after initially passing Ernie he turns around and tries to help.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Rusty Gray
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, February 20th, 2013
Well, I was stupid to write off K-19 all these years. I don’t know why I did. I didn’t even know what it’s about. I think I knew K-19 wasn’t a mountain, it’s a submarine. I knew it had kind of an audacious name but was directed by this year’s #1 Oscar snub, Kathryn Bigelow. That should’ve been enough, but I never heard anything too good about it and didn’t feel the need to see it.
Maybe it’s the submarine thing. I know this is blasphemy to alot of people, but I never even got into that one submarine movie that everybody loves that’s by the director of DIE HARD and PREDATOR. I’ve tried and it’s fine and everything but I just can’t get myself excited about it like everybody else. Maybe I’m subconsciously rebelling against my old man, who worked on subs. I never went that way. I’m a proud surface dweller. Strictly a land man. Vote no on Atlantis.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cold War, Harrison Ford, Kathryn Bigelow, Liam Neeson, National Geographic, Peter Sarsgaard, Russia, submarine, Walter Murch
Posted in Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 26 Comments »
Monday, February 18th, 2013
Hollywood is always trying to shove these movies down our throats that are just about a bunch of Hollywood bullshit, like a kid and his talking horse use teleportation to win the Super Bowl, or there’s a serial killer holding a fighting tournament in the sewers to prove his love for a girl, or whatever all these popular movies are now, I would never watch them so I wouldn’t know. But it’s all super heroes and comics books and nothing for the rest of us. What about the grown ups who don’t want to see IRON SPIDER RISES PART 32 or STAR WARS IN THE DARKNESS, we just want to see a nice movie about a French couple in their 80s being miserable in their apartment as the wife becomes increasingly mentally and physically debilitated and the husband has to feed and bathe her and they’re both completely tormented by pain and boredom and we watch in long, static shots as they cry and look off into the distance and agonizingly wait for the sweet comfort of death? No wonder there’s all this piracy and video games, if Hollywood won’t deliver what the people really want. For what we want we gotta go to Michael Haneke.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: best picture nominees, Darius Khondji, Emmanuelle Riva, Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Michael Haneke
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 67 Comments »
Sunday, February 17th, 2013
I wish FLIGHT was called BAD PILOT and marketed as an outrageous comedy. It kinda follows the BAD SANTA and BAD TEACHER model by showing this guy (Denzel Washington, RICOCHET) who is in this occupation (commercial airline pilot) and ruffles alot of feathers with his irresponsible drinking and drugs and being an asshole. In fact, he ingests almost a BAD LIEUTENANT worthy amount of intoxicants. And like Bad Santa, who liked to buttfuck plus-sized ladies in the dressing rooms, or Bad Teacher, who seduced Justin Timberlake into a wild dry-sex romp, this guy is fuckin around, but just with a super hot flight attendant (Nadine Velazquez, BLAST) who gets listed first in “in order of appearance” credits because one of her breasts is the first thing we see in the movie.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bruce Greenwood, Denzel Washington, James Badge Dale, John Goodman, Kelly Reilly, Nadine Velazquez, Robert Zemeckis
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 54 Comments »
Monday, February 4th, 2013
The only reason I heard of this indie teen movie is because it was filmed in Seattle. That’s kind of novel to us because most Seattle-based movies are really filmed in Vancouver (BATTLE OF SEATTLE, HOLLOW MAN 2, TRUE JUSTICE) or even, in the case of CHRONICLE, Cape Town, South Africa. Kelsey Grammer wanted to film Frasier in Cape Town, but he moved it to protest the end of apartheid. That’s a joke, Kelsey, I’m just busting your balls. Thanks for reading.
Anyway this is good for Seattle people to spot recognizable locations, and it’s not supposed to be Everytown, USA like WORLD’S GREATEST DAD, so they mention or make visual reference to Seattle clubs (Neumo’s, Comet Tavern) and institutions (Seahawks, Sounders, SIFF, Easy Street Records [R.I.P. Queen Anne location]). But the great thing is that it’s also a real movie, a sweet underdog story with real emotion and surprising nuance. And it’s directed by Matthew Lillard of SCREAM and SCOOBY-DOO fame. I’m impressed.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Billy Campbell, filmed in Seattle, Jacob Wysocki, Matt O'Leary, Matthew Lillard, punk, teens
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 35 Comments »
