Posts Tagged ‘Scarlett Johansson’
Tuesday, October 14th, 2014
This director Jonathan Glazer, I can’t really put my finger on him. SEXY BEAST I didn’t like all that much, but most people seem to, or at least they did at the time. British crime comedy stuff, mostly normal, but people forget the weird interludes with the half man/half bunny. What was that about.
Second movie BIRTH. Not as recognized, but I loved that one, a unique and creepy thriller with potent Kubrickian filmatism. Got me excited for movie #3, which turned out to take nine years and be his least commercial work so far even though it’s a sci-fi movie that has Scarlett Johansson taking her clothes off. The thing that gets me is none of these movies seem like the same director to me. He’s mainly a commercial and video director, so he likes to play with different styles, but that never stopped David Fincher or Spike Jonze from being identifiable. Maybe I’m missing it by seeing them years apart.
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Tags: cryptic arthouse shit, Jonathan Glazer, Scarlett Johansson
Posted in Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 29 Comments »
Thursday, July 31st, 2014
LUCY is the new movie by Luc Besson and his first directorial work since… THE MESSENGER? … to be noticed much in the U.S. He had supposedly retired from directing after ANGEL-A in 2005, but then he made another one of those ARTHUR children’s movies and by 2010 he was doing THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ADELE BLANC-SEC (which I liked) and fuck it, he was still a director. Last year he did THE FAMILY with Robert DeNiro and Michelle Pfeiffer (which I, like most Americans, haven’t gotten around to yet) but now all the sudden he has this LUCY and it’s a big hit, opening much bigger than The Rock’s HERCULES even though that one is PG-13. (There actually was a point early in LUCY where I thought to myself “Oh good, they do still make R-rated movies.”)
Scarlett Johansson plays the titlogical Lucy, a student in Taiwan when her douchebag boyfriend of one week (a Donal-Logue-at-a-rave type dude with a shitty cowboy hat and yellow-tinted glasses) gets her involved against her will with some ruthless gangsters led by Choi Min-sik (OLDBOY). She doesn’t speak the language so she barely knows what’s going on by the time she has a bag of experimental drugs (actually blue pop rocks I think) sewn into her belly for clandestine transport.
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Tags: Choi Min-sik, Luc Besson, Morgan Freeman, Scarlett Johansson
Posted in Action, Crime, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 46 Comments »
Saturday, April 5th, 2014
Okay, bad news first: CAPTAIN AMERICA TOO is pretty much Marvel’s post-action movie. It has a good action movie type of plot: Captain America finds out his agency S.H.I.E.L.D. is compromised, has to go on the run, has to figure out who he can trust and operate without his usual resources to uncover and defeat a vast conspiracy. He has to fight two different legendary warriors, both with some “just how badass is he?” buildup, and one of them even played by the great UFC champion Georges St-Pierre. The Captain gets continually chased and attacked by a crew of headset and vest wearing soldiers led by Frank Grillo of WARRIOR and THE GREY. There are many, many fight and chase scenes involving different fighting styles, fun acrobatics, various forms of transportation (motorcycle, SUV, robotic wings, helicarrier), weapons, super strength, super parkour, colorful technologies, interesting locations, clever gimmicks, epic destruction, badass dialogue and good character and plot motivation. Everything you want in a great action movie except… (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chris Evans, Frank Grillo, Georges St-Pierre, Mark Anthony, Marvel Comics, Robert Redford, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 176 Comments »
Thursday, January 16th, 2014
HER by Spike Jonze – his fourth feature film in 14 years – is a completely unique movie. It’s a touching relationship drama mixed with light sci-fi and cultural satire that’s somehow brutally accurate and gently affectionate at the same time. It’s the story of this depressed writer Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) who’s in the middle of a divorce, and he meets someone who he really connects with… only it’s not a person, it’s the artificially intelligent voice in his computer (Scarlett Johansson). Yeah, he thinks it’s weird at first too, but it just happens. You can’t argue with your heart I guess.
Spending his life with his operating system has its share of challenges. He has to carry a little camera around for her to see the world. It’s awkward introducing her to people. They can’t hold hands or take a picture together and when they get it on it’s basically phone sex. They’re dealing with alot of handicaps here.
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Tags: Amy Adams, Joaquin Phoenix, Olivia Wilde, Rooney Mara, Scarlett Johansson, Spike Jonze
Posted in Reviews, Romance | 27 Comments »
Monday, May 27th, 2013
THE ISLAND I guess was Michael Bay’s big failure. He held his head high during his public shaming as the asshole who directed PEARL HARBOR, but this time he hit the type of bump that means more to him: he made a movie that didn’t make very much money. In the U.S. I guess it only made $36 million, which would be enough for his monthly Lamborghini allowance but doesn’t even cover a third of the shooting budget. For comparison, PEARL HARBOR made $75 million on its opening weekend.
Of course I’m coming to it eight years and three TRANSFORMERSes later having heard of its growing reputation as Michael Bay’s Not As Bad Movie. So when I was looking for a dumb summer blockbuster to get me in a summer movie mood it leapt off the video store shelf into my cold, reluctant embrace. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: clones, Djimon Hounsou, Ewan McGregor, Michael Bay, Michael Clarke Duncan, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi
Posted in Action, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 88 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 »
Saturday, May 5th, 2012
spoilerish
As much as I enjoyed Uma Thurman and the teddy bear costumes in the original AVENGERS, this one is an improvement. It’s a fun super hero movie with lots of colorful super-characters like in the X-MEN pictures, but with more of a disaster-movie-level of spectacle. Instead of just fighting 1-3 supervillains they’re fighting an alien invasion. As you know this teams up characters from IRON MAN 1-2, THE INCREDIBLE HULK (2008) (arguably), CAPTAIN AMERICA and THOR under the direction and writing of Joss Whedon (SERENITY, Buffy the Vampire, all that). If they had had some guy from Doctor Who in there and based it on a video game or anime it would’ve had the monopoly on all of the existing nerd audiences. But also it’s fun for all of us.
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Tags: Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Gwyneth Paltrow, Harry Dean Stanton, Jeremy Renner, Joss Whedon, Mark Ruffalo, Marvel Comics, Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 451 Comments »
Saturday, May 8th, 2010
I never reviewed IRON MAN, because I just didn’t feel like I had anything new to say about it. I enjoyed it just like everybody else did, for the same reasons, and every websight I read had examined the shit out of it, so I just let it go.
Now part 2 is out and I almost did the same thing (tradition is very important to me) but as I was thinking about writing up an explanation of why I wasn’t writing up the movie I realized I did have a couple things to say, so what the hell. Review time. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Jon Favreau, Mickey Rourke, Robert Downey Jr., Sam Rockwell, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 105 Comments »
Saturday, January 3rd, 2009
Yes, as you’ve heard by now, THE SPIRIT is a terrible movie. But don’t fall into the trap I did. Just because almost everyone agrees that it’s terrible doesn’t mean it’s funny or interesting to watch. I thought it looked bad from the trailers and really had no interest until I started seeing some of these reviews comparing it to various landmarks in bad movie history. The more vicious the reviews got the more I started to think shit, I kind of want to see that. People acted like it was some bizarre Ed Wood type shit that they couldn’t believe they were seeing.
Well, there are a couple weird touches. For some reason Samuel L. Jackson’s villain character, The Octopus, talks about eggs all the time. Seriously, he just keeps bringing them up – “I beat you like an egg,” “I don’t have egg on my face,” etc. etc. It’s worse than Tarantino’s obsession with feet. Also there’s a part where SPY KIDS style home computer effects depict a little tiny head attached to a foot that hops around on a table in front of him and he keeps saying it’s “plain damn weird.” I kind of wish writer/director Frank Miller was in the theater to experience the uncomfortable silence as the scene milked the “joke” over and over again for a couple minutes, clearly convinced it was hilarious. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Eva Mendes, fiascos, Frank Miller, Gabriel Macht, green screen, old timey super heroes, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, self-indulgence, the Nerdening of America
Posted in Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Friday, September 15th, 2006
Fellas –
Brian DePalma’s new picture has gotten alot of good reviews, but it’s the really harsh ones that stick with you. The Ain’t It Cool’s own MiraJeff was so mad he literally said he wanted to recreate the mutilations of the real crime on Brian DePalma. (Maybe he’s moody getting psyched up for his bout with the House of the Dead guy.) “Like high-school kids playing dress-up, or bad Kabuki,” is how David Edelstein described it in his capacity as film and apparently kabuki critic for New York Magazine. And a crazy person at the screening I went to announced during the credits that the movie had “nothing to offer to society,” had too much violence and smoking, and would flop at the box office.
Well, I wish I could give a more passionate defense, because I really have no idea where some of these people are coming from. But I also thought that as a DePalma fan (for here on referred to as “a DePalmaniac”) the movie was pretty underwhelming. It kept me interested, it has some great scenes, I even thought Michael Meyers’s nephew Josh Hartnett was surprisingly good playing the boxer/cop protagonist. But since DePalma’s last movie FEMME FATALE was pretty much The Ultimate 100% Unadulterated Brian DePalma Film, it’s a little disappointing to see him doing what seems like just his little spin on material that alot of other directors could’ve done almost as well. I’m guessing fans of the book, though, will be more interested. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaron Eckhart, Brian De Palma, Hilary Swank, Josh Hartnett, Mia Kirshner, Mike Starr, Scarlett Johansson
Posted in AICN, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Reviews, Thriller | No Comments »
