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Posts Tagged ‘Garrett Hedlund’

Four Brothers (20 years later revisit)

Tuesday, August 26th, 2025

August 12, 2005

I reviewed John Singleton’s FOUR BROTHERS twenty years ago and hopefully I’ll have a few new things to say about it, but the sad truth is my verdict has not changed. This is a movie that starts off with a real good hook and then doesn’t do enough with it. It’s thoroughly okay.

SUMMER 2005The screenplay is by David Elliot (THE WATCHER) & Paul Lovett, the team who later did G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA, and the hook is that an old lady named Evelyn Mercer (Fionnula Flanagan, THE EWOK ADVENTURE) is in a convenience store in Highland Park, Michigan when it gets robbed, and ends up shot to death. It turns out she was a beloved member of the community who helped hundreds of troubled kids find foster homes. But there were four kids so bad nobody would take them, and she adopted them herself. So her funeral brings all four brothers back home, they get to talking, and decide to go find out who did this.  (read the rest of this shit…)

Triple Frontier

Tuesday, March 19th, 2019

TRIPLE FRONTIER is last week’s straight-to-Netflix-no-theaters release from director J.C. Chandor (MARGIN CALL, ALL IS LOST, A MOST VIOLENT YEAR). This one is higher profile than most such releases because it floated around various big name directors and studios before Netflix bought it with the bottomless money supply their CEO famously received by catching a magic fish, and it stars Oscar Isaac (SUCKER PUNCH), Ben Affleck (ELEKTRA, director’s cut only), Charlie Hunnam (KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD), Garrett Hedlund (TRON LEGACY) Pedro Pascal (THE GREAT WALL) and Adria Arjona (PACIFIC RIM UPRISING). It’s such a big deal for the company that they made the uncharacteristic choice of promoting its existence!

Isaac plays Santiago “Pope” Garcia, an American advising the Colombian military in violent raids on drug gangs. His informant/sometime-girlfriend Yovanna (Arjona) claims to know the location of a jungle fortress where cartel boss Lorea (Reynaldo Gallegos, MONKEY TROUBLE) hides out with all his money. So Pope goes back to the states to recruit some of his old retired spec ops buddies as a team to go in and do reconnaissance and pocket a percentage of the money the police ultimately seize.

At least that’s what he says until they get there, and then it becomes clear that the police don’t know anything about it yet. He wants his buddies to do a heist with him. Ah, shit, Pope. Are you kidding me with this shit? (read the rest of this shit…)

TRON Legacy

Tuesday, December 21st, 2010

tn_tronlegacyRemember TRON? The 1982 live action Disney fantasy from director Steven Lisberger (ANIMALYMPICS, HOT PURSUIT) about a dude magically sucked into a video game to play frisbee and ride bikes? It’s memorable for its only-in-1982 approach to design, its one-of-a-kind black light type look, its pioneering computer effects (which still look surprisingly cool today) and a weird electronical score by Wendy Carlos (A CLOCKWORK ORANGE). The only major problem I have with it besides it being boring is the entire silly premise of a guy going inside a computer and the “programs” are alive and they battle each other.

Believe me, I’m a man who knows how to suspend the ol’ disbelief. I suspend that shit all the time. I’m about this close to banning it for life. But Jeff Bridges getting shrunk and playing games with tiny neon people who live in a city inside a computer chip is just not compatible with my brain, in my opinion.

And besides, if video games are gonna come to life then why don’t you put Pac-Man in there? I’d like to hear what Pac-Man has to say for himself.

(read the rest of this shit…)