Posts Tagged ‘Matt Damon’
Monday, August 12th, 2013
ELYSIUM is a real solid sci-fi picture, and different from the ones we usually see these days. The story is pretty simple: Max (Matt Damon), a hard-working ex-con in the shitty world of 2154, gets fucked over by an easily preventable industrial accident. It’s gonna kill him in 5 days but he knows if he was only on Elysium, the space station where all the rich people live after abandoning this polluted, overpopulated shit pile, the medical care he needs would be easily accessible. So he’ll try anything to live, including going back to work for his old crime boss who is involved in some (unsuccessful, from what we see) attempts to smuggle the tired, poor, huddled masses onto Elysium.
It’s written and directed by Neill Blompkamp of DISTRICT 9 fame. He’s from South Africa, and that movie was about apartheid of course, and this one is also about a separation between classes (not entirely, but mostly, along racial lines, it looks like). The whole planet is like one big favela on top of another big favela. Elysium is like a ring of luxurious mansions and golf courses on a perpetually beautiful Spring day. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alice Braga, Gael Garcia Bernal, Jodie Foster, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Matt Damon, Neill Blomkamp, Sharlto Copley, Wagner Moura
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 63 Comments »
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
No joke, I never saw SAVING PRIVATE RYAN before. I’ve never been big on war movies and I think back when it was a recent movie I was real cynical and suspicious of any type of flagwaving. I thought movies like this were just brainwashing kids to join up in case they needed to blow up Iraq again.
But that’s stupid. This one’s about “the good war” and still makes it look like something to avoid at all costs. The famous Omaha Beach invasion sequence near the beginning is a total bloodbath, soldiers pouring off the boats into waves of machine gun bullets. They might as well just be jumping from a diving board directly into a giant fan, it seems like. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Goldberg, Barry Pepper, Bryan Cranston, Dennis Farina, Ed Burns, Giovanni Ribisi, Harve Presnell, Jeremy Davies, Leland Orser, Matt Damon, Max Martini, Nathan Fillion, Paul Giamatti, Steven Spielberg, Ted Danson, Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Vin Diesel, WWII
Posted in Drama, Reviews, War | 103 Comments »
Wednesday, March 16th, 2011
My man Clint’s new directorial work HEREAFTER hit the home video this week, and it’s some creepy timing. The movie opens with vacationing TV reporter Cecile de France (from HIGH TENSION and MESRINE but once again I didn’t recognize her) leaving a Thai beach hotel one beautiful morning to shop for souvenirs in an open air market. Something about the filmatism here reminds me of JAWS, it’s just that heightened sense of sight and sound, you can hear voices and tones from every direction and almost feel the warm breeze on your neck. It’s so beautiful and peaceful but you know something horrifying is rumbling in the distance. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bryce Dallas Howard, Cecile De France, Clint Eastwood, Jay Mohr, Matt Damon
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 35 Comments »
Wednesday, December 29th, 2010
Jeff Bridges makes a great Rooster Cogburn – weird froggy voice, sloppy beard, aura of laziness, legitimately kind of disgusting as he’s introduced taking a shit and later casually pisses himself. If you don’t know the character from the novel by Charles Portis, or from John Wayne’s Academy Award winning portrayal in the 1969 version, or from the considerably less Academy Award winning sequel, or perhaps Warren Oates in the TV movie version, or obviously the episode of Scooby-Doo where Rooster has to figure out which Harlem Globetrotter has been replaced by an evil Moon-man, then let me fill you in: Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn is an eccentric, one-eyed civil war vet turned U.S. Marshall who “really knows how to pull a cork” and has a reputation for unnecessary but high quality shootings of suspects. So he’s the bounty hunter of choice for 14-year-old Mattie Ross, who wants to “finish [her] father’s affairs” by chasing down the drunken ranch hand who killed him and fled into Chocktaw territory with the Lucky Ned Pepper gang.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Barry Pepper, Charles Portis, Coen Brothers, Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin, Matt Damon
Posted in Reviews, Western | 106 Comments »
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010
So Mandela (Morgan Freeman) has just been elected president of South Africa. The headlines ask, “He can get elected – but can he run a country?” Mandela says it’s a legitimate question.
Apartheid ended a few years earlier, but the white Afrikaners still aren’t ready for this. In his first day as president he has to make a speech explaining to the white people in his office that no, contrary to rumors they are not fired. Whatever they did in the past is in the past. If they don’t want to work with him then fine, pack your shit (paraphrase), but otherwise he needs you so stay and do what’s right for the country.
The mistrust goes both ways. Mandela’s head of security (Tony Kgoroge) knows this is gonna be a tough job, but when he asks for more men Mandela gives him a bunch of white South African cops, the enemy of the African National Congress. He has every reason to believe these scary motherfuckers could plan an assassination themselves, but Mandela wants them for their symbolic value. If he goes around with an integrated security team then that says something. What else can he do, really? Somebody’s gotta put their toes in the water. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Clint Eastwood, Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman, South Africa
Posted in Drama, Reviews, Sport | 46 Comments »
Sunday, September 20th, 2009
Today I have a Steve Soderbergh double feature. I got his new one, THE INFORMANT! followed by his previous one, THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE.
Twenty years after SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE and Steve Soderbergh is still experimenting up a storm. This year he’s alternating a low budget improvised drama starring a porn star (more on that later) with this big studio comedy starring Matt Damon. But as far as Soderbergh’s commercial movies go THE INFORMANT! is on the weirder end. He takes the true story of a corporate crime whistleblower who helped the FBI crack open a huge price fixing scandal, but he plays it as a broad comedy. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Clancy Brown, Matt Damon, Steve Soderbergh
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews | 40 Comments »
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
If you saw INFERNAL AFFAIRS you know the storyline. Undercover cop vs. undercover gangster. There’s alot of stories about cops going undercover in gangs, but this one also has a member of the crime family who entered the police academy and moved up the ranks as a mole for his gang. So now both traitors are well situated and it starts to get obvious to both sides that they have a mole in their midst. And the moles are given the job of finding out who the mole is. It could be called LOS TOPOS.
Mr. Scorsese took that premise and moved it to Boston and told his own story about contemporary Boston criminals. Scorsese’s young associate Leonardo Del Caprio (looking more like Benicio Del Toro every year) plays the cop who pretends to get kicked out of the force, does some time and then joins Jack Nicholson’s gang. Matt Damon plays the cop who’s really working for the gang. We first see him as a little kid getting money from Nicholson in a diner. And the kid they chose is a dead ringer. They even taught him how to cock his eyebrow like Damon. Somebody’s gonna have to find a young Ben Affleck doppelganger and these two can go on the road. Or they could do THE YOUNG JASON BOURNE MYSTERIES where the camera shakes around while he’s fighting some kid in a treehouse. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alec Baldwin, Boston, Jack Nicholson, James Badge Dale, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Sheen, Matt Damon, Ray Winstone, Scorsese, Vera Farmiga, William Monahan
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 10 Comments »
Monday, December 12th, 2005
SYRIANA is not the movie about the talking Jesus lion, that’s CHRONICLES OF NARNIA. CHRONICLES OF NARNIA is not the one where Vin Diesel says “I haven’t smelled beautiful in a long time,” that’s CHRONICLES OF RIDICK.
Sorry, my man Richard Pryor died this week, so the jokes are awkward. But seriously folks. “Syriana” and “Narnia” sound similar enough, and there are alot of people who space out on movie titles. There’s got to be somewhere in this great country of ours where some knucklehead mixed up the names and went into the wrong movie and hilarity ensued. Picture a guy sitting waiting for what he thinks is a political ensemble drama. Thinking, wow, I’m surprised this many kids are interested in global politics. Or vice versa. Get all the popcorn, load all the kids in, wait through the ads and the previews and make the people around you uncomfortable. Shhh, Gunnar, time to be quiet. Skyler, you too. Do you need a time out? And then all the sudden a chubby George Clooney is in the middle east somewhere trying to set up a deal to sell a missile launcher. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amanda Peet, Chris Cooper, George Clooney, Jeffrey Wright, Matt Damon, Stephen Gaghan
Posted in Drama, Reviews | No Comments »
Friday, August 26th, 2005
Ever since that documentary LOST IN LA MANCHA, Terry Gilliam has a reputation as the bad luck director who can’t finish a movie without the Lord dropping down on him like a bag of cinder blocks. I heard he writes his shooting schedules under a ladder on the 13th day of the month. It’s been what, six years since FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, he’s been trying to make movies since then but this is the first one to make it to the screen. People figure it’s a miracle if he can shoot a scene that is not interupted by an act of God, let alone finish a whole movie and have it released in theaters. So in that sense, THE BROTHERS GRIMM is a miracle. Because it is a finished movie with credits and everything. They even made a poster I think.
As far as actual entertainment value though it’s maybe a little less miraculous, in my opinion. The main problem: the first hour. A man of my knowledge and insights, I oughta be able to put my finger on it more than that, but all I can say is I was bored as shit for the first half of this movie. Nothing really painfully lame or anything but it’s just not involving and not in the usual Terry Gilliam way where he overwhelms and disorients you with his powerful imagination rays. It looks like a Terry Gilliam movie, it seems like an okay premise for a Terry Gilliam movie, but it just doesn’t click. It’s not funny. It’s not that clever. And takes for fucking ever to get going. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ehren Kruger, Heath Ledger, Matt Damon, Terry Gilliam
Posted in AICN, Comedy/Laffs, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | No Comments »
After seeing WAR HORSE I wanted to see something about a civilian horse, so I watched this 2002 animated cartoon movie about a horse running wild in the old west. I guess his name is Spirit. I guess he is a stallion. I guess he lives in one of the places that is called Cimarron. I’m not sure which one. 
