Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Friday, January 18th, 2013
I’ve been thinking about Kathryn Bigelow lately because of ZERO DARK THIRTY, and I realized she has two theatrical releases that I never saw. We’ll call them the “in between STRANGE DAYS and HURT LOCKER” period. So I decided to fill that in.
Alot of times when directors make a movie that’s really different from what they’re known for it’s cool, because it shows that they’re challenging themselves and stretching and experimenting and all that. I’m sure some people feel that way about THE WEIGHT OF WATER, but I gotta admit I’m not that into this movie. It’s well made and shows some of the things Bigelow’s good at. But it’s not about surfing bank robbers or nomadic vampires or the manhunt for Osama bin Laden. In my opinion it’s about two couples on a boat trip having relationship problems while one of them reads old files about a murder that happened in 1873.
It is from the producer of ON DEADLY GROUND though. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: ax murders, Catherine McCormack, Ciaran Hinds, Elizabeth Hurley, Josh Lucas, Kathryn Bigelow, sail boats, Sarah Polley, Sean Penn
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 30 Comments »
Tuesday, January 15th, 2013
TAKEN 2 is another Liam Neeson post-action thriller where he gets to be smart and tough and wear a leather jacket and then the camera wiggles around while he cracks some bones or whatever. I tend to like these disposable Luc Besson productions for their absurd gimmicks and shameless lowbrowness, but they were more fun when they also had good action sequences. This one’s from Besson’s acolyte of the moment, Olivier Megaton, who did the joyless TRANSPORTER 3 and the more enjoyable COLOMBIANA. Neither of those have action scenes half as good as the ones in previous Besson joints like LEON, TAXI, TRANSPORTER 1-2, UNLEASHED, KISS OF THE DRAGON or DISTRICT B13.
I didn’t love the first TAKEN. Of course it’s funny to see Neeson as a wrist-snapping black-ops know-it-all, and I love a simple plot about a guy like this saving his daughter from kidnappers, and it was funny how his overprotective father paranoia seemed to become a reality, with her getting kidnapped by white slavers about 5 minutes into her European vacation. But then there’s the wobbly action scenes (a shame coming from the director of DISTRICT B13) and it doesn’t exactly have the momentum that makes this type of premise sing. It’s fun, but should be better.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Leland Orser, Liam Neeson, Luc Besson, Maggie Grace, Olivier Megaton, post-action, revenge
Posted in Action, Reviews | 45 Comments »
Monday, January 14th, 2013
CITY HEAT is a light-hearted gangster movie from 1984 that attempts to combine the powers of two of its era’s biggest icons of manliness: grimacing Clint and wisecracking Burt. They also have Richard Roundtree in there, but he’s playing kind of a weasel, so he’s not able to perform as a representative of blaxploitation swagger.
Burt is a behind-on-his-payments gumshoe, Clint is the Lieutenant who used to be his partner before he quit the force. Now they act like they hate each other, but of course they team up and work pretty well together. Their first scene together is a good one: Clint sits at the counter in a diner, drinking his coffee, staying out of it while two mafia thugs beat the shit out of Burt. He wants nothing to do with it until he gets bumped and spills some of his coffee, then he gets pissed. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Burt Reynolds, Clint Eastwood, Irene Cara, Richard Roundtree
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 22 Comments »
Thursday, January 10th, 2013
Okay, we were all horses pulling the Kathryn Bigelow bandwagon, right? We loved her for POINT BREAK and NEAR DARK, mostly. Also BLUE STEEL and STRANGE DAYS and all that. But did any of us ever predict Respectable Kathryn Bigelow would come about, and if so, did we guess how fuckin good that Bigelow would turn out to be? I sure didn’t.
The respect came for THE HURT LOCKER in 2008. It got the Oscar for best picture and she got best director, the only woman to receive that honor so far. It also had one of those career-exploding performances, the one that launched Jeremy Renner, at the time known mainly for playing Jeffrey Dahmer, into the guy who has two Oscar nominations and co-starred in big ass movies like THE AVENGERS and GHOST PROTOCOL and starred in THE BOURNE LEGACY and hosted Saturday Night Live and all this. I loved THE HURT LOCKER, which I saw as an ingeniously structured suspense thriller and character drama for its time that also worked as a deconstruction of many of our favorite action movie tropes. So I had high expectations for ZERO DARK THIRTY, and somehow it exceeded them.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: CIA, Edgar Ramirez, Frank Grillo, Harold Perrineau, James Gandolfini, Jason Clarke, Jennifer Ehle, Jeremy Strong, Jessica Chastain, Joel Edgerton, Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Mark Duplass, Scott Adkins
Posted in Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 203 Comments »
Tuesday, January 8th, 2013
THE SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK is a quirky dramedy-romance about people with mental problems, based on a novel I guess. That’s not my usual beat, but I like this writer-director, David O. Russell (THE FIGHTER, THREE KINGS) and there’s a small part for Chris Tucker, his first non-RUSH HOUR since RUSH HOUR, believe it or not. That’s 14 years! I like Chris Tucker, so like these characters with their mental illnesses, you’re just gonna have to deal with it.
Bradley Cooper stars. He was a natural to play Face in THE A-TEAM, but here he’s Murdoch. His mother (Jacki Weaver from ANIMAL KINGDOM) takes him out of a court-ordered mental facility where he’s been since an incident that caused him to lose his wife and house. He comes to live with Mom and OCD, Philadelphia Eagles-obsessed Dad (Robert DeNiro) while he uses a self-prescribed regimen of exercise, reading and positive thinking to attempt to win back his wife. Although the restraining order does prove to be an obstacle. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: bi-polar, Bradley Cooper, Chris Tucker, David O. Russell, Jacki Weaver, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert DeNiro
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 13 Comments »
Monday, January 7th, 2013
ARGO is based on an amazing true story, recently declassified and told in this great Wired article. During the Iran hostage crisis, it turns out, the CIA managed to rescue a group of stranded American workers using an unusual cover story: they were part of a Canadian film crew scouting exotic locations for a STAR WARS inspired sci-fi fantasy epic. John Chambers, the genius makeup artist behind the PLANET OF APES series (and played by John Goodman here), had done “some contract work” for the CIA according to the article (let’s hope he gets a whole series of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE style thrillers) and helped to set up real Hollywood producers and offices for the fake movie. The now-worshipped-by-nerds comic book artist Jack Kirby (seen only in a cameo here, played by DEATH WISH V’s Michael Parks) provided the artwork that they used as pre-production set and costume designs.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adrienne Barbeau, Alan Arkin, based on a magazine article, Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Christopher Denham, Clea DuVall, Iran hostage crisis, Jack Kirby, Jack Pierce, Jimmy Carter, John Goodman, Kerry Bishe, Michael Parks, Philip Baker Hall, Rory Cochrane, Scoot McNairy, Tate Donovan
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 48 Comments »
Saturday, January 5th, 2013
About a third of the way into TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D, when the sound of the heroes’ van rolling off the road faded and I realized that everybody else in the theater was laughing too, it was clear we were on the same page. This is a dumb fucking movie, but we’re enjoying it. That’s not what I want from a sequel to my favorite horror movie of all time, but it’s about the best I hoped for. So I’m chalking this up as a win.
I have long considered Marcus Nispel’s 2003 remake TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE to not exist, and now I’ve been proven right. If there really was a remake (and a prequel to the remake) then how do you explain this being a direct sequel to Tobe Hooper’s original 1974 masterpiece, smart guy? Nope. No remake. If there ever was one it doesn’t matter ’cause there isn’t anymore.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 3D, Alexandra Daddario, Bill Moseley, cannibals, John Dugan, John Luessenhop, Marilyn Burns, Scott Eastwood, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 74 Comments »
Friday, January 4th, 2013
BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD is one of these magical realist New Orleans storm parable vehicles for an unknown 5-year-old actor. Kinda like early David Gordon Green meets Spike Jonze circa WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE with a dab of BEYOND THUNDERDOME. It deals with the racial and class divide in the face of imminent environmental disaster. You know the type.
Our protaganista and narrator is a tiny little girl named Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis) who lives in “The Bathtub,” a town on the other side of the levees. Everything is made of junk and they know when there’s a storm it’ll all be underwater, but they have alot of fun and celebrate more holidays than on the other side. They have fireworks and stuff. There’s music and drink. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: New Orleans
Posted in Drama, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 37 Comments »
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013
THE BOURNE LEGACY is a sequel with the uphill task of replacing its title character. Not recasting, like James Bond, but creating a new hero, like when Valerie Harper got fired from Valerie and they brought in Sandy Duncan as her sister-in-law. I actually think that’s more interesting than if they just made another Matt Damon BOURNE. I liked those movies but I think they’re pretty repetitive, and they wrapped up that storyline anyway. Enough of that, I say. But I’m surprised the studio thought there were enough people like me to justify making this movie.
(And I thought they were wrong, based on the reviews I’d heard. I know at least a couple of you guys hated it, and I assumed not many went to see it. But I just looked it up and it turns out it made more money than they expected it to and they might do another one.)
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Albert Finney, David Strathairn, Edward Norton, Jeremy Renner, Joan Allen, Oscar Isaac, Paddy Considine, Rachel Weisz, Scott Glenn, Stacy Keach, Tony Gilroy
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 83 Comments »
Tuesday, January 1st, 2013
I don’t know if this is true but I heard it’s good luck for movie critics to start a year with a Clint Eastwood review. So I saved TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE for the occasion.
It’s a pretty standard mainstream feel-good-about-everything-at-the-end father-daughter relationship drama, but I couldn’t resist it because Clint plays the stubborn old grump dad and Amy Adams plays the daughter. She’s pissed off and sarcastic through half the movie but I’m still powerless in the face of her charms. I’m sorry.
Here’s the situation: Gus (Clint) is a veteran scout for the Braves baseball team, sent to evaluate some young hot shot out in North Carolina (Scott Eastwood). But Gus is secretly losing his eyesight and openly losing favor in the organization to a young douchebag (Matthew Lillard) who prefers modern methods involving computers and statistics. Gus’s best friend (John Goodman with an impressive mustache) worries they’re gonna drop him if something goes wrong, so he begs Gus’s estranged lawyer daughter Mickey (Adams) to come keep an eye on him. Meanwhile, a young pitching-phenom-turned-scout who Gus likes (Justin Timberlake) helps out and tries to woo Mickey.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amy Adams, baseball, Clint Eastwood, Ed Lauter, John Goodman, Justin Timberlake, Matthew Lillard, Robert Lorenz, Robert Patrick, Scott Eastwood
Posted in Drama, Reviews, Sport | 23 Comments »
