Category Archives: Movies

Movies

You’re Next (2011) a (mildly) belated review

While not necessarily a big fan of all her many literary works, I’m very much impressed with Agatha Christie’s novel And Then There Were None.  Originally published in 1939 under the far more politically incorrect title Ten Little Niggers and subsequently re-titled Ten Little Indians before finally being called And Then There Were None, this is the late Ms. Christie’s all time best selling novel.  It involves a group of people brought together on a remote island under various guises, all of which were tailored for them.

Once on this remote island, they realize that the stories they were offered to get them to the place were in fact lies, and that they must now stay on that island and await the return in a couple of days of a boat to pick them up.  In time they find a nursery rhyme and ten Indian figurines.  When the first of them die, they realize the person’s death matched the first death described in the rhyme…and they also find the figurine that matched this death broken.

So a countdown begins…who is the murderer among them and who is the next to die?  And, in the end, who, if anyone, will survive?

As good as the book is, I felt the first theatrical version of it, made in 1945, made some great improvements to what was a pretty grim novel.  In the movie, we had a genuine heroine and hero, something that was absent from Ms. Christie’s book.  I also thought the resolution played out a little better in the film.

Having said that, both the novel and film are terrific and, I believe, have been the source of inspiration to many, many works that followed.  Certainly the concept of a group of people gathering together at an isolated place and then getting picked off one after the other has been used in many works.  It certainly was somewhere in the back of my mind when I wrote Chameleon.

Which brings us to the 2011 film You’re Next.  The story involves the wealthy husband/wife patriarchs of a large family arranging a get together of themselves, their sons and daughters and their lovers for the weekend in a remote mansion…and the hell that breaks loose when a group of mask wearing individuals attack and start killing them off.

When this movie was originally released to the film festival circuit, it received positive word of mouth and I was curious to see it.  Eventually it was picked up and released to theaters, though to a limited run.  It wasn’t until yesterday that I finally got a chance to see it.

Was it worth the wait?

Unfortunately, the answer to me was a resounding “no.”

You’re Next is an at times clever, at times very gory (in fact, a little too gory for my taste) experience.  It also attempts to be a mystery before turning into a black comedy.  Unfortunately, all those shifts in tone hurt rather than helped.  The opening bit with the family meal and first attack on them are probably the film’s highlight, though one can also find a bit of pleasure in the butt-kicking and very resourceful heroine (played by Sharni Vinson) who isn’t about to let these masked killers get her.

Unfortunately, the film is too often gory and sadistic.  Considering the ultimate revelation of what it was all about, very much unnecessarily so.  I don’t want to get into spoilers, but given the plot behind the whole thing, there had to be a far easier way of accomplishing what was needed to accomplish, right?  Stealthy attacks would have accomplished what was needed instead of a big frontal attack that insured everyone was scurrying around from the word go.

Really, really silly if you think about it.

The bottom line is this: if you’re in the mood for a mystery featuring characters getting picked off one after the other, read Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None or watch the 1945 film version.  It’s far better than spending the same amount of time with You’re Next.

Movies

Movie lists!!!

First up, 10 Great Movies That Flopped:

http://www.moviestalk.com/10-great-movies-that-flopped/

This list involves movies that when they were originally released were box office flops yet over time became known as great films.  Some might surprise you (Citizen Kane, It’s A Wonderful Life) while you may recall others which had not such great box office results.

The inclusion of Joe Versus The Volcano, however, is a real head-scratcher for me.  I know the film didn’t do all that well at the box office, but is it considered a great film today?  Is it even remembered today?

Of the films listed, the one I find most curious is Blade Runner.  I was around when the film was initially released and recall the less than sterling box office results…along with (if memory serves) muted and unenthusiastic reviews.  The big, BIG box-office champ that summer of 1982 season was Steven Spielberg’s E. T. the Extra Terrestrial.  That movie essentially was the king of that summer season, yet I can’t help but think that today the film doesn’t hold up quiet as well as some other classic Spielberg films (Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, etc).  As one critic said in looking back, perhaps that year people wanted to see something bright and cheerful rather than dark and dour.

The second list involves Good (or Great) Movies with Terrible Endings:

http://www.chacha.com/gallery/2943/which-movies-have-the-most-terrible-endings

I agree with some of their choices while a few others were films that couldn’t be saved, IMHO, almost from the get-go.

Their choice of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, however, was a curious one.  I’ve stated before that The Birds was one of those films I didn’t like all that much until I finally realized what exactly Mr. Hitchcock was doing: Making his version of those then very popular “mutated monsters on the loose” films.  In his case, he took all the cliches in those films, which often involved the scariest looking creatures -usually insects- that grow to superhuman size and terrorize the populace only to be stopped by either the intrepid scientist, the rock hard military/adventure type, and the romantic interest (or a combination of all three), and invert the cliches completely.

Instead of a mutated extra large scary looking creature/insect, he took a creature NO ONE thinks is terrifying and is present almost everywhere: The common bird.  No mutations, no extra size, just your common bird.  In swarms.  There is no scientist to explain the bizarre behavior.  The rock hard military/adventure type cannot stop their rampage.  And the romantic interest ultimately is shocked into a near coma-state.

And then, most sinister of all, (SPOILERS!!!) the birds simply let the leads go at the end.  Why?  Because they won.  The birds had conquered all (certainly the small city and, implied in this, the world itself), and they viewed the few survivors as no longer a threat to them.

The ending was incredibly appropriate and made total sense.

Switching gears a little here: Mission: Impossible, the first of the Tom Cruise MI films, had a golden opportunity to create an ending that didn’t crap on the original TV series.  As those who saw the film may recall, Tom Cruise is Ethan Hunt, an MI agent who survives a catastrophic mission wherein all his teammates were betrayed and killed.  The betrayer, it turns out, is none other than (SPOILERS!!!!) Jim Phelps, the character who was the lead in the TV show that spawned the movie.  This is not unlike doing a Star Trek film where it is revealed after a while that Jim Kirk or Spock were, in reality, “bad guys”.

But at the very end of the film, when Phelps is dispatched and Ethan is on a flight and receives his first briefing as the leader of the MI task force, I thought the tape recording he was listening to would refer to him as “Mister Phelps”, revealing that name is in actuality a code name for any leader of the IMF group.  Thus, the TV show’s Jim Phelps (Peter Graves) and the movie’s evil Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) could be revealed as separate people…and the Ethan Hunt character is, in the end, renamed “Jim Phelps” and continues from there.

I’m not the first person to think this, and there have been others who noted that maybe the whole “James Bond” ID should/could also be viewed as a “code name”, thus allowing for so many difference actors to play the character.

Not a bad idea, either.  At least in my humble opinion!

Books/Literature, Computers/Electronics, Movies

Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight”

If you haven’t heard/read about it, director/writer Quentin Tarantino’s next film was supposed to be The Hateful Eight.  I heard it was going to be a western with a cast that features more mature/elderly actors and there were those that speculated this might be a film on par, thematically, with The Wild Bunch.

Whether this was the case or not, the film’s first draft script was leaked and Mr. Tarantino’s reaction was, to me, quite understandable: He was pissed.

He released a stinging statement to the media noting The Hateful Eight movie was shelved and the script might be released as a novel.  He went further, stating the first draft script was in the hands of only three actors…and he suspected one of their agents/agencies were the source of the leak.

Today, news comes that Mr. Tarantino is suing Gawker for posting links to the leaked script:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/quentin-tarantino-suing-gawker-leaked-674424

I can’t blame him.

I’ve talked before about my curiosity about the effects of the internet and the changes it has made to the economy, whether for good or bad.

There was a time when there were Music stores.  At first, they sold record albums.  Then 8-track and cassettes.  Then came CDs.  With the advent of the MP3 file, however, the entire music selling industry was uprooted.  Suddenly, it was easy to download -legally or illegally- music online.  So easy, in fact, that if you were interested in, say, the music of Artist X, in a matter of minutes you could have every one of their albums (legally or illegally) along with as many bootlegs (illegally) as you wanted/cared for.

In one moment, music stores were a thing of the past.

I recall many years ago (1986 or 1987) going to see a movie and noting a life sized cardboard cutout promoting the upcoming Robocop movie.  Back in those pre-internet days, I had no idea such a film was in the works, much less on the verge of being released.

The cutout, frankly, looked absolutely ridiculous to my eyes.  “A cop that’s a robot?” I said in disbelief.  “How stupid!”

And yet, when the film was released a month or so later (again, I had NO IDEA AT ALL what the film was about other than this poster/cutout) there were some very good reviews for it and I was curious.

I went to see the film and, again, without knowing all that much about it, was blown away.

Today and thanks to the internet, we already know just about everything we need to about the Robocop remake.  Who stars in it, an idea of what the tone of the film is, even how it differs from the original.  I suspect there are many who have already made up their minds about whether they care to see this remake.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

I suppose on the one hand its good to have an idea of what you’re in for should you choose to go see the film.  On the other hand…where is the surprise?

And what happens if you’re someone like Mr. Tarantino, and you’re working hard on something only to see it prematurely released to the public without your consent?

Currently, I’m working very hard on finishing up the fifth novel in my Corrosive Knights series.  The work has been grueling but I’m getting close to the end.  Frankly, I don’t know how I’d react if the current draft of the book were somehow released to the public.

Would I give up on the book and move on to another project?

I suppose so.

But the heartbreak of what would amount to wasting all that time working on something only to have it stripped from you…that would be a very hard thing to get over.

Movies

Fast & Furious 6 (2013) a (mildly) belated review

Until very recently, I was never a big fan of the Fast & Furious movies.  The first movie was essentially a car-centric remake of Point Break with the late Paul Walker in the Keanu Reeves role and Vin Diesel playing the Patrick Swayze part.

I think I saw one other Fast & Furious film from that point on, 2 Fast 2 Furious (didn’t think all that much of it) and pretty much skipped the others until catching Fast & Furious 5, the film that obviously preceded this one.

F&F 5 proved highly entertaining even if not pushing the limits of the believable.  The interactions between the characters and the element of “the heist” proved an interesting mix and I found the film very entertaining.  When Fast & Furious 6 came out last summer, I was eager to see it but, as with many films I hope to see, would have to wait for the video release.  In the meantime, the film did gangbusters at the box office and appeared to further solidify the series as a great action/adventure saga.

Would I find this sixth film as entertaining as the fifth?

Sadly, no.

Right off the bat, I know I’m swimming against the tide here (Rotten Tomatoes has the film scoring a genuinely impressive 70% positive among critics and an even more impressive -if not outright stunning– 84% positive among audiences), but F&F 6 left me cold.

I think a big part of the reason is because I enjoyed the fifth film as much as I did and was hoping the people working on this one would give us another pretty well written bit of entertainment.  In this case, though, the story is super sloppy with only one admittedly really creative element: The F&F group goes up against their dopplegangers, another group of racing hellions who are stealing high tech military equipment.

Unfortunately, that element is mentioned and ultimately never really dealt with to any great degree.  Like the heroes, the villain(s) of the piece are woefully underwritten, including one that is meant as a “surprise” yet whose revelation of such (I don’t want to get into spoilers) truly comes out of left field and makes not a lick of sense after what’s come before.  Anyway, the villains “look” like the F&F group and do F&F type crimes but that’s about as far as the similarities go.  Their target is a component of something that should have been called the “MacGuffin“, the last piece of a greater computer whole that does something really, really bad.  Truly, I can’t even recall what the heck the bad thing was.

The gang is brought back together by Federal Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson looking really scary pumped up…seriously, I’m worried about him.  Being that muscular can’t be good for you, can it?) to take on this gang of mysterious and super-efficient thieves with one wrinkle already alluded to in the previous movie: The bad guys somehow have the character of Lefty (Michelle Rodriguez) in their group.  This is significant as Lefty, Dominic Toretto’s (Vin Diesel) girlfriend, was thought dead.

The mission, thus, has two goals: Stop the bad guys before they get the last component to their MacGuffin and get Lefty back to the fold.

What follows, naturally, is plenty of gravity defying stunts and action.  But the action sequences this time around veer into the truly absurd.  At one point Hobbs jumps out of a very fast moving car onto another that is at least two stories below him.  Hobbs does this successfully without so much as suffering one broken bone.

Later in the film, Toretto one-ups Hobbs by slamming his car against a bridge railing, flying at least a zillion feet through the air, catching someone else flying through the air in the other direction and smashing against a car which apparently amounts to falling into a bundle of extra-fluffy pillows.  The person Toretto saves asks him afterwards something to the effect of “How did you know that car would be there to break our fall”?

Imagine that…in this alternate F&F universe a metal and glass car can actually break your fall!

And don’t even get me started about the Runway-That-Never-Ends.

Some time ago a Hollywood figure (sadly, I don’t remember who) said that when making an action film which features considerable stunt work, one should go about 30% over what can be done in “real life”.  In other words, your stunts should amaze the audience yet make them think they could/might happen in real life.  With F&F 6, the “unbelievable” factor was pushed to 500% (Or, in Spinal Tap lingo, waaaay past 11) and that proved tough for me to swallow.

In the end, I found F&F 6 a disappointment because a) the script simply wasn’t as engaging as the fifth movie’s and b) the overblown stunts proved too difficult to swallow.

There was, of course, one other element that may well have affected the overall experience, and that was the presence of Paul Walker.

As everyone who is a fan of the films knows by now, Mr. Walker died in a tragic car accident recently (He was on break from filming this movie’s sequel, Fast & Furious 7).  I suspect seeing F&F 6 in theaters and before Mr. Walker’s death is probably a very different experience from seeing it after, which is of course how I saw it.

Those “unbelievable” stunts that bothered me so may well have been even more unbelievable when in the back of my mind I knew what happened to Mr. Walker.  Perhaps if I had seen the film before his tragic accident, my negative reaction might have been lessened.

We’ll never know.

But as it stands, F&F 6 proved a disappointment and, despite glowing reviews from others, I cannot recommend this film.  A pass.

Movies

Elysium (2013) a (mildly) belated review

Following the surprise success of the 2009 Neill Blomkamp directed, Sharlto Copley starring District 9, fans were eager for a follow up.

When it was announced this film would be Elysium and it would star Hollywood A-listers Matt Damon and Jodie Foster along with the returning Mr. Copley and feature a sci-fi premise, anticipation was sky-high.

Was it too high?

To some, the answer would prove to be a resounding “Yes”.  Many fans of Mr. Blomkamp’s District 9 found his follow up lacking, bemoaning problems with the story and, in the case of Jodie Foster, her choice of line delivery.  There was even one critic who listed Elysium among his “worst of the year” films.

As many others, I was curious to see the film.  I liked District 9, though perhaps without the feverish love others had for it.  The commercials for Elysium certainly looked intriguing, with Matt Damon hardwired with an exoskeleton and looking like he could kick some serious ass…

Not bad, I thought.  Not bad at all.

As has become depressingly usual for me, I simply didn’t have the time to catch the film in theaters and had to wait for the home video release to give it a look.  I have.  Did the film deliver or was it the disappointment others felt it was?

The answer to both questions, curiously enough, is “yes”.  The film delivered some really good scenes but I have to agree with others that it was, in the end, a bit of a disappointment…though not quite worthy of being included on any “worst of the year” type lists.

The story goes like this: Worker drone Max (Matt Damon) lives on the squalid Earth while orbiting the planet is the Elysium satellite, the place the rich folks live.  Right away, we’re back in Mr. Blomkamp’s (who also is credited with the screenplay) District 9-like world of the haves and the have-nots.

Max bumps into a childhood friend of his, Frey (Alice Braga), before an accident at his plant irradiates him and leaves him with only five days to live.  Max realizes his only hope for survival lies in somehow getting off Earth and to Elysium, where they have medical beds capable of curing him of his illness.

But getting to Elysium is not an easy task.  A local smuggler agrees to get him on a ship to Elysium provided he steals the memories of a high level industrialist, who coincidentally is Max’s boss at his factory and coldly witnessed Max’s grim medical analysis following his radiation poisoning.  It turns out the industrialist, however, is in cahoots with Delacourt (Jodie Foster) the Secretary of Defense of Elysium, in trying to overthrow the power structure of the satellite.  In his head was a program designed to do just that.

Thus when Max uploads the industrialist’s data into his head, he is suddenly on the run from a fearsome assassin Kruger (Sharlto Copley) while trying to get to Elysium.  He must also deal with the fact that his childhood friend Frey has a young daughter who is dying of leukemia.  Will Max ultimately help Frey’s daughter or will he selfishly try to save himself?

I suspect you already know the answer to this.

Plain and simply, Elysium is a terrific looking movie that features a script that needed some more work.  The cast, for the most part, is certainly game (even Ms. Foster…I’ll get into her performance in a second) and as a director Mr. Blomkamp delivers some very exciting action sequences.  But unlike District 9’s more subtle treatment of the haves vs. the have nots dynamic, Elysium gives it to us with the subtlety of a sledge hammer.  The haves are uncaring in their heaven in the sky while the poor folks live in the dirt and dream of escaping their uncaring hell.

I have to agree with the critics that Jodie Foster delivered an almost bizarre performance/line reading.  It was a curious choice, to be sure.  However, like the other actors in the movie, Ms. Foster didn’t seem to be “slumming” (no pun intended) it.  Her choice of line delivery might not have worked, but she certainly appeared game.  Also, her role was no more than an extended cameo, amounting to not much more than five to ten minutes of total screen time.  Blaming her for the film’s problems is therefore at best misplaced.

Once again I return to the script and its flaws.  In Elysium we have a broad story involving our Earth and an incredibly large satellite for the rich…of which we know almost nothing other than the fact that it is as beautiful as the Earth is grim.  We have a massive satellite that has rivers, mountains, seas and beautiful buildings and a large population…yet somehow does not have any sort of defensive system?

Really?

Why exactly do they have a Secretary of Defense if the satellite has no apparent defensive capability…at least until the “illegals” actual land there?  Add to the fact the too-coincidental meeting between Max and Frey and the daughter that should be called “Plot Point/Hero’s Angst”, the Industrialist who happens to be working on “rebooting” Elysium just as his mind is stolen, Max’s convenient radiation poisoning (which makes him barely able to walk yet when he gets the exo-skeleton he no longer appears to be affected by it much at all) and you begin to feel the film is just a little too manipulative and/or not as well thought out as it should be.

Nonetheless, Elysium is far from a bust.  It is one of those films that are at best “decent” yet could -indeed should– have been far better than it was.  Perhaps that is why it proved to be so frustrating to people.  Had Elysium been made with a no-name cast and featured a no-name director not coming off a smash success, fans might have been a little more tolerant of the finished product.

Regardless and as it stands, Elysium is at best a mild-recommendation for me.  Others might want to skip it.

Movies

This is…amusing (NSFW!)

Seems The Wolf of Wall Street, the latest Martin Scorsese/Leonardo DiCaprio film has become know less for how good/bad it is/may be and more for the extreme amount of profanity uttered throughout.

How much profanity, exactly?

Glad you asked.  Take a look:

http://www.vulture.com/2014/01/wolf-of-wall-street-counting-all-the-curse-words.html

If you’re too lazy to click a link, here’s perhaps the most comprehensive chart found within the above article:

Number of times every curse word is said in The Wolf of Wall Street

Yikes!

You mean “fucksville” only got used four times?  And that’s like my favorite expression!

Seriously, though, check out the website.  They present plenty of other humorous charts noting the *ahem* flowery dialogue to be found in this film.

Movies

We’re The Millers (2013) a (mildly) belated review

I love raunchy comedies that strip peoples’ carefully crafted masks of “goodness” to reveal that deep down inside, all of us share a streak of immorality, incompetence, and idocity.

One of my favorite recent shows to do this was Reno 911!, which took a cue from the far more serious show Cops! and portrayed a bizarro-world police force full of incompetent (pardon my language) assholes that you just knew lurked not only in the halls of justice but probably in every job in every corner of the planet.

With We’re the Millers, I didn’t really get all that excited with the film until I saw red band trailers:

A group of lowlifes forced to pose as a typical “whitebread” American family so they can smuggle drugs from Mexico into the U.S., all while bickering and cussing each other out?

Count me in!

I tried but failed to see the film when it was released in theaters.  I put it on my Netflix list and, soon enough, it showed up.  Would I find the film as amusing as the commercials?

In a word, unfortunately, no.

Mind you, the film isn’t a total bust, though the very best bits are in the commercial.  There are other bits here and there that are amusing but the film unfortunately takes a too predictable turn toward the maudlin and becomes waaay too “nice”.  When it does, it loses the sharp comedic edge that I hoped would continue throughout (one thing about Reno 911! that amused me is that these characters were losers from the get go and there was never –ever– a chance they would be anything but losers in the end).

So, yeah, the film plays out in a sadly typical and too-expected Hollywood-Committee-Writer way.  The “good guys” in the end do the right thing and the “bad guys” get their comeuppance and the dysfunctional Millers grow into something of a real family.

Ho hum.

How strange.  Here I am on Christmas Day bemoaning a film for being about family!

For those interested and as I pointed out before, We’re the Millers isn’t a total bust, just a film that eventually takes a too-safe story path and wimps out on its initial premise.  It is far, far from the worst comedy I’ve ever seen, but it is also one I hoped could have been sharper, more pointed, and, ultimately, better.

Movies

Nosferatu (1922) an (insanely) belated review

The above title is a bit of a misnomer.  My review isn’t so much about the groundbreaking, absolutely excellent 1922 film as much as about the just released 2013 Kino BluRay HD remaster of Nosferatu.

In a word: Wow.

I’ve listed my top three films of all time before (Metropolis, Orpheus, and 2001: A Space Odyssey).  If I were to expand the list to four, Nosferatu would get strong consideration to be the next entry.  I consider it THE best adaptation (illegal though it was) of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  For those who don’t know, Bram Stoker’s widow sued the studio that released Nosferatu, claiming copyright infringement on her husband’s work.  She won the lawsuit (not a big surprise as the film is essentially Dracula) and it was ordered that all prints of the film be destroyed.  Many were.  Luckily for us, not all.

While Dracula may be best known for its Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee characterization, you’ve never seen a vampire quite as sinister as Max Shreck’s Count Orlok.

When I heard Kino was working on a remastered version of the film, I knew I had to have it.  I’ve seen Nosferatu at least a dozen times with varying degrees of visual clarity, from muddy to pretty good.

The Kino BluRay is easily the best of the lot.

Images are incredibly clear.  Yes, there is grain and scratch marks here and there (we are talking about a film that is close to 100 years old!), but I can honestly say watching this version of the film is like seeing it for the proverbial first time.  Details that I hadn’t noticed before came to incredible life.  For example, the opening shot of the city and church, something that never impressed me in previous versions I had seen of the film, was simply eye-popping.

And that was the very opening scene!

If, like me, you’re already fan of the film and have one or more copies of it on disc and are on the fence about whether to buy the BluRay, don’t.  This is VERY MUCH worth getting.  You’ll likely throw away just about every other version of the film you have.  If you’ve never seen Nosferatu before and are curious to see it, this is the version you should get.  Hell, even if you’re not a big fan of silent films, I can’t see how anyone with even a little curiosity about this classic wouldn’t find something to enjoy within.

Nosferatu is a truly seminal work.  And now, as released in BluRay, you can enjoy it as if it were almost brand new.

Highly recommended.

Some interesting trivia about the film can be found at IMDB’s page devoted to the film.  Check it out:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013442/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv

Two of my favorites:

The character of Nosferatu is only seen on screen for a bit less than nine minutes in total throughout the whole film.

I can totally believe it!  Nosferatu, as depicted in this film, is a menace that lurks over all the film’s protagonists.  Though he doesn’t have that much screen time, per se, his presence is felt almost from the first minutes and certainly until the last.

Ruth Landshoff, the actress who played the hero’s sister once described a scene in which she fled the vampire, running along a beach. That scene is not in any version of the film.

Ms. Landshoff’s character is present for much of the film and, toward the end SPOILERS!!! we see that she, like many of the other townspeople, has succumbed to Nosferatu’s “plague”.  Yet we never really find out what became of her, suspecting she like so many others died but not knowing for sure.  Perhaps there was a further scene like what is described above that was filmed to show her actually falling to Nosferatu yet was ultimately not used.  Very interesting stuff.

Movies

Red 2 (2013) a (mildly) belated review

Back in 2010 the movie Red was released.  The term, which stands for “retired, extremely dangerous”, involved the goings on of a retired CIA agent named Frank Moses (Bruce Willis), his looney tune friend Marvin (John Malkovich) and Sarah (Mary-Louse Parker) a “civilian” Moses pines for.  Into that mix appeared ancillary characters such as the deadly British assassin Victoria (Helen Mirren) and ex-Russian KGB superagent Ivan (Brian Cox).

The movie was an action adventure with the (mostly) over the hill ex-agents kicking some serious ass while Moses romances the somewhat flighty Sarah.  While I admittedly don’t recall too many of the movie’s details, I recall the film was a pleasant diversion, made especially so because of the presence and interactions of all those veteran actors.

Three years later, Red 2 hit theaters and I’ll be damned it it didn’t have a really great theatrical trailer:

Would the film live up to its advertising?

Well…yes and no.

On the one hand, there were plenty of great gags in the film, including several instances where deadly assassins in the middle of planning or executing some kind of skullduggery take a moment to talk about how Moses can maintain a vibrant and positive relationship with Sarah.

On the other hand, as the film played out, I got the feeling what I was seeing was either a “rush job” or was whittled down from a too long run time…or both.  After a terrific opening act (the best part of the film) scenes kind of whizzed by and slammed into each other without much grace.  It simply didn’t flow very well.

Part of the problem may well lie with the film’s very, very large cast, which this time around includes many new ancillary characters.  We have Anthony Hopkins’ potentially looney Bailey.  There’s Byung-hun Lee’s deadly assassin Han.  There’s also Katherine Zeta-Jones’ Russian agent Katja (sadly, the most wasted of the big name stars).

And that’s not getting into the smaller roles!

Red 2 winds up being a globe trotting affair, with the team trying to figure out why they have been marked for assassination.  The peculiars of the plot are quite interesting, involving the possibility of a weapon of mass destruction hidden away in Moscow, but it is the characters and their interactions which are still the main draw.

Perhaps one day a “director’s cut” of the film might show up and smooth over the film’s rushed feeling, but I doubt it.  While not an outright bust, Red 2 is a decent film that flirts with being a damn good one…all while just missing the mark.

Trivia Alert!  Is this the first film to feature the two most famous actors to play the villainous Hannibal Lector?  Sadly, neither Brian Cox, the original Hannibal Lector (from the criminally -pun intended!- underrated Manhunter, which featured the first appearance of the character) nor Anthony Hopkins (the most famous actor to play the role, starting with SIlence of the Lambs) share any screen time together.  Might have been fun to see them face to face!

Ah well!

In case you’re not familiar with it, here’s the trailer for Manhunter.  Years later this film was remade with Anthony Hopkins in the Hannibal role as Red Dragon (the original title of the novel it was based on).  You can see Brian Cox’s Hannibal Lector for the first time at the 1:20 mark…

Bonus, bonus trailer: That of Red Dragon (why the heck not?)…

Movies

2013 Black List

The “Black List” is a list of screenplays that are considered worthy of being made into films…but haven’t been as of yet.  The link below offers what is considered the best of the Black List for 2013 (told you the end of the year brings lists!):

http://www.deadline.com/2013/12/2013-black-list-best-screenplays-full-list/

Going through the list, there are some story descriptions that I find interesting and a whole lot that do not all that much for me.  Two screenplays involving the making of Jaws?  Really?  Two screenplays involving Mr. Rogers?!  Then there’s the way out there screenplay about Stanley Kubrick’s alleged late 1960’s recruitment in the creation of a “phony” Moon landing, in case the real one doesn’t pan out.

None of those intrigues me all that much.

On the other hand…

SOVEREIGN
Geoff Tock, Greg Weidman
A man goes to space to destroy the ship that, upon going sentient, killed his wife.

Sounds like it could be interesting, though the story does seem to bear resemblance to other stories (the Berzerker books, for example) and my own personal favorite original Star Trek episode, The Doomsday Machine…

Some other potentially intriguing stories…

SEED
Christina Hodson
After suffering a devastating miscarriage a young woman and her fiance travel to Italy where she meets his family for the first time, but her grief turns to shock when the local doctor declares that she’s still pregnant. And while her fiance and his family seem delighted by the news, she begins to suspect their true motives are quiet sinister.

Sounds a little like Rosemary’s Baby, but I found the idea intriguing.

CAPSULE
Ian Shorr
A young man’s life is turned upside down when he mysteriously begins to receive metallic capsules containing messages from his future self.

Again, sounds intriguing.  Could see this premise going in lots of different directions.

FULLY WRECKED
Jake Morse, Scott Wolman
An R-rated talking car from the ’80s is brought back into service and teamed up with the son of his former partner, a befuddled cop looking to earn his stripes.

Perhaps one of the more original concepts in the list, the idea of having a talking car (modeled after KITT from Knight Rider, I’m guessing), be a foul mouthed character has potential.  Could be a good comedy…certainly a better idea than remaking The Naked Gun films.  This one has me interested.

Anyway, if you find any of the above interesting, give the full list a look.