Category Archives: Movies

Movies

Deadfall (2012) a (mildly) belated review

There are films that you love, there are films you hate, and there are those in between.  They may grip you for a while before fizzling out.  They may present a story that you simply can’t get into.  They may even feature all the proper elements to make a great film yet those ingredients don’t make a great whole.

In the case of Deadfall, a film barely released to theaters last year, the ingredients most certainly are there to make a potent whole.  The movie stars Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde as ambiguous (in more ways than one) criminal siblings who just scored a big haul along with their partner and are heading to Canada to get away.  But as they make their way through a snowy road, they hit a deer and their car flips.  Their partner dies in the crash and before the duo can fully emerge from the wrecked car a police officer has arrived to see what’s going on.

Addison (Eric Bana) kills the cop and flees deeper into the woods with his sister Liza.  They decide their best course of action (well, other than perhaps, you know, driving off with the police man’s car at least for a little bit!) is to split up and get back together later.  Addison, we find, is very protective of his little sister and she is a little…strange.  Because she is an unknown in whatever heist they just pulled off, Addison reasons this is why it is a good idea for them to split.  If he’s caught, he’s caught.  If she is found, there is no way to link her to the crime they just committed.

The movie segues into introducing other characters, from an elderly couple (Kris Kristofferson and Susan Spacek) to their just released from prison son as well as the Sheriff of the County and his daughter.  Both sets of parents have issues with their kids and, as the movie progresses, the characters and their fates intertwine.

I won’t go into more story detail but suffice to say that while this film features a good cast, great locations, and some excellent cinematography (there’s something, to me, magical about films set featuring a very snowy tableau), the film’s plot, unfortunately, bogs down rather quickly.  Too much information is presented in too little time, though I would quickly hasten to add that the story presented might have benefited from being pared down of at least two of the characters (the Sheriff and his daughter, alas, serve no great purpose in the film, even if veteran actor Treat Williams is quite good as the intolerant and over-protective Sheriff).

In the end, the ingredients are there for at least a reasonably good suspense film, but the execution and too many ingredients (ie extra storylines) ultimately diffuse whatever steam this film tries to build.

While the film had a limited theatrical release, based on the very bland trailer presented below, I have a suspicion the studios knew the film wouldn’t do too well and didn’t really give it a great push.

Movies

6 Huge Movie Plot Twists That Caused Even Bigger Plot Holes

Been a while since I’ve posted a link to the very entertaining Cracked.com.  This particular article, concerning the above, was particularly interesting to me:

http://www.cracked.com/article_20298_6-huge-movie-plot-twists-that-caused-even-bigger-plot-holes.html

Of the ones listed, the most intriguing to me is Skyfall, the latest James Bond film.  Even when the movie first came out, I noted that it was a feature one could simultaneously love and hate.  The love part related to the spectacle and icy cool smooth execution of the film.  To me, the film was nothing if not entertaining…as long as you kept your mind on neutral.

HOWEVER…

If you take your mind out of neutral for even a few seconds, you can’t help but realize that the plot of the film is incredibly…silly.  James Bond, in retrospect, is for the most part a spectator in the whole affair.  Events happen around him and, as the plot is further revealed, he is revealed to be more of a pawn than an active player.  But even worse that that, by the end of the film the villain accomplishes everything he wanted.

SPOILER!

Javier Bardem’s Silva’s, we find by the end of the film, has two goals:  To rub M’s nose in her failures before, ultimately, simultaneously kill her and get himself killed.  Guess what?  He accomplishes his goals by the end of the film, even with James Bond’s fighting him all along the way!

Getting back to the “plot holes”, the whole villain-getting-caught-on-purpose part was especially difficult to swallow and for the reasons outlined in the Cracked article.  Seriously…he needed to be caught to release the computer virus (earlier in the film he accomplished this without needing that second step) to subsequently escape so he could attack M at the conference she was scheduled to attend anyway?  She was already humiliated by Silva, why not lay low and skip the whole “getting caught on purpose” bit and just attack her at the conference?

Ah well.

Movies

A Lonely Place To Die (2011) a (mildly) belated review

Read about this movie in an article concerning movies audiences missed out on in 2011 and gave it a try.

I’m glad I did!

In a nutshell, A Lonely Place To Die concerns a group of five mountain climbers who stumble upon a little girl locked up in a box buried below ground.  They save her from her captivity and then have to face the cold-blooded individuals who put her there in the first place.

This is a low budget film that does not feature huge special effects and is far from your typical “Hollywood” action spectacular.  The heroes are down to Earth (no pun intended) and the villains are really fearsome.  If the film has any real big problem, it may be the final act/conclusion.  It’s not that the film had a “bad” ending, but after such great sustained intensity in the first two thirds plus of the film, the ending felt a little too ordinary.

I suppose almost all films of this type, where “city” folk face peril in the rugged and unforgiving outdoors, work in the very tall shadow of Deliverance, and in the case of A Lonely Place To Die, perhaps like Deliverance the film might have been a little better if it kept the villains’ identity and intentions more nebulous.

Just a thought.

Still, A Lonely Place to Die is a strong, intense suspense film well worthy of your time.  It may not completely stick the landing, but it does a great job in getting your juices pumping.

Movies

Dream House (2011) a (mildly) belated review

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before (part 2):  Idyllic guy and idyllic family move into an idyllic home out in the suburbs, only to find that there was a brutal murder committed there a few years before.  Strange goings-on ensue…

The last time I used the above opening was for The Bourne Legacy (read the full review here) a film that, ironically enough, also starred Rachel Weisz.

In the case of Dream House, Daniel Craig is Will Atenton, a family man who at the start of the film quits his job and heads to his “dream house” where his wife (Rachael Weisz) and two daughters are already living.  Now free of his city job, he plans to settle down and write a book, fix up the house, and bask in his close relationship with his wife and young family.  But strange things, of course, are afoot and husband and wife discover that five years before the family who lived in the house -all but the husband- were brutally murdered.  The husband was shot in the head by his wife, an act the police believe was meant in self defense.  However, much as they suspect the husband killed the rest of the family, there isn’t enough evidence to verify his guilt and the man was sent to a psychiatric hospital and, eventually, released…

…is he now stalking Atenton and his family?  What are his plans…if any?  And what about the family’s neighbor (Naomi Watts, completely wasted in a role I suspect was considerably trimmed down as the film was made)?  What secrets does she hold?

The little plot presented above gives you most of what you need to know about this film before treading dangerously close to SPOILER territory.

Which I will do now.

BEWARE….SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!

 

Still here?

Ok, you’ve been warned.  The upshot is this:  Will Atenton, we find, is in reality the man who previously owned the house.  He is indeed the man people think (but couldn’t prove) killed his wife and two children.  In Atenton’s current fantasy world, he quit his job in the “big city” but in reality was released from his psychiatric hospital and returned to his vacant home.  His wife and children are hallucinations or, as revealed later in the film, actually ghosts he alone can see.  The mysterious neighbor, of course, knows who he is and humors his hallucinations/visions.  Of all the townsfolk, she alone suspects he didn’t have anything to do with his family’s murder.

Eventually it is revealed this is indeed the case, that the murderer is actually the neighbor’s ex-husband (a short fused bully of a man who wants sole custody of his child from Naomi Watt’s character) and his partner in crime, a thug he hired to kill his wife but who went to the wrong home (I think…I might have been hallucinating myself by that point in the film).

Most of this, by the way, is revealed in the theatrical trailer, presented below.  Seriously, studios…why bother making the film if you’re going to give almost everything away in the trailer?

Anyway, Dream House, unfortunately, is not a very good film.  It never really engages you and when the big reveal comes so early in the movie you can’t help but wonder (and predict) why any time at all was spent on the neighbor and her short-fused ex-husband.  As mentioned before, Naomi Watts is wasted in what amounts to a very small role and I couldn’t help but think that there were considerable changes made to the screenplay as filming was done.  Why, after all, would Naomi Watts, a big star and listed as second star in this film after Daniel Craig, agree to do such a, in the end, small role?  Further, the pace of the film often lags and tests one’s patience.  Given how easy it is to predict where the movie is going, that becomes a double problem.

If there is one bright spot it is a sequence toward the very end, a genuinely emotional final scene between the haunted Atenton and the ghosts of his deceased family.  I found this part to be incredibly well done…emotional, exciting…even sad.  I wish the rest of the film could have been half as good as those few minutes.

As good as the scene is, it does present one of the film’s most glaring plot holes:  If it is confirmed that Atenton is not hallucinating but actually seeing the ghosts of his dead family and they are trying to help him…why didn’t they reveal everything to him earlier?  Why didn’t his wife tell him who actually killed her and her family?  It makes no sense at all.

Needless to say, unless you’re really, really bored and would like to see Daniel Craig doing something a little less “suave” than James Bond, there is little reason for you to bother seeing Dream House.

Movies

The Big Bang (2010) a (mildly) belated review

In the What-The-Hell-Could-They-Have-Possibly-Been-Thinking Department I present to you: The Big Bang.

No, not the popular TV show with the similar name, we’re talking about the 2010 direct to DVD feature film starring Antonio Banderas as private eye Ned Cruz on the trail of hulking Anton “The Pro” Propov’s (Robert Maillet) lost girlfriend…a woman we find he never actually met but interacted with through mail she sent to him while he was in prison.

Right away the more perceptive out there will recognize the movie’s initial plot is a direct rip off of Raymond Chandler’s classic novel (and several times filmed) Farewell My Lovely, wherein private eye Phillip Marlowe helps hulking Moose Malloy try to find his lost girlfriend after he leaves prison.

Anyway, the film goes off on its own (very strange) directions from that initial point. The story is told in media res, with our hero shackled, bleeding, and blind and being interrogated by three police officers over the events that have led him to this point.  We start with the conclusion of a very strange -and as far as I can see completely irrelevant- previous case involving an actor (James Van Der Beek in a cameo) and some dirty laundry he has that’s about to be aired.  That segues into our hero being hired by the hulking Anton to find his girlfriend….and eventually some missing diamonds.

Much of the dialogue and settings in the film makes references to physics and scientific concepts (hence the title) and it is there we find the movie’s first big flaw:  Using Antonio Banderas as the lead.  Mind you, I like Antonio Banderas.  I think he’s a pretty damn good actor but let’s face facts:  He speaks English with a strong accent and this is a terrible hindrance in a movie where he’s called upon to spout plenty of “clever” dialogue…with scientific ideas sprinkled quite liberally into them.

Still, there is stuff to see and enjoy in the film, including one of the most bizarre (though undeniably sexy) love-making sessions committed to film.  Its rare when you don’t know how to react to a scene wherein a character in the movie (played by the stunning Autumn Reeser) makes love while spouting very physics heavy dialogue involving such sexy subjects as protons and electrons.

I can only imagine how they went about filming that scene.  If anything, the lovely Mrs. Reeser deserves some kind of award for playing it with a straight face!

Alas, despite being so “smart”, this film is ultimately pretty dumb.  The plot devolves as it plays out and the revelations of who the “bad guys” are were simply too obvious almost from the beginning.  Finally, the ultimate “reveal” of who was sending the notes to our hulking ex-con elicits unintended laughter (The filmmakers were trying to go for tragedy here…weren’t they?!).

No, I cannot recommend this film to your average movie goer.

…and yet…

This is such a bizarre movie experience that its hard not to recommend it to at least one group of people:  Those looking to see something that’s truly waaaay off the beaten path.

You can’t get farther than The Big Bang.

Movies

Blitz (2011) a (mildly) belated review

When I was young, I was hyper-critical about movies.  There were precious few I felt were “perfect”, and even some of the better ones had flaws that just had to be pointed out…by me…to anyone willing to listen.

As I grew older, I adopted a far more mellow attitude.  I became more forgiving and, instead of starting to watch a film with a razor-sharp critical eye, I sat back and let the film envelop me as best as it could and tried to put my mind in neutral throughout the entire viewing experience.  After all movies, like all forms of entertainment, are made by people and nothing in this world is perfect.  Further, what may be brilliant to you could be terrible to someone else and vice versa.  Live and let live, enjoy what you can.  Don’t take these things so seriously.

Which brings me to the Jason Statham film Blitz.

What a terrible film.

Sorry but even my more mellow/forgiving attitude has its limit and Blitz crossed it.  I suspect going into making this movie the producers/writers/director had in mind the idea to re-make (in a way) Dirty Harry only set it in England and add more (uninteresting) characters to the mix.

The villain of the piece certainly operates on the same level of the Scorpio killer from Dirty Harry.  He is clearly a maniac, one who kills cops in this story (instead of anyone he feels like in Dirty Harry).  He calls a reporter to brag about what he’s doing/about to do (much like the Scorpio Killer left behind notes about who his next target would be), and even wants to be known by a nickname, Blitz (natch).  As the film marches on, he is eventually captured but because he’s oh so clever in how he does his crimes, he is eventually freed and comes back after our protagonist (something very similar happened in Dirty Harry as well, though the killer ultimately was released not because of his cleverness but because of Harry’s inappropriate actions).

Perhaps sensing they needed to do more than just emulate coughripoffcough Dirty Harry, the makers of this film added a homosexual new department head our protagonist works with (there is much homophobic-but-really-said-in-good-fun interaction between the two) as well as a female police officer who once worked undercover as a drug addict but fears she is really a drug addict working as a police officer now.  That side-plot never really goes anywhere, except that she almost falls victim to our villain.

I could go on and point out the fact that the film meanders when it should be tightly focused and that Jason Statham, an actor who I feel often is better than some of the lesser movies he’s sometimes starred in appears to be phoning his role in this time and that the villain, once he is captured by the police, should have stayed in prison (did no one in the police station notice the huge wad of cash he was carrying when captured, cash that a reporter gave to an informant who was subsequently -immediately!- killed, should have been enough to connect our killer to at least that particular killing?)…

What is perhaps most frustrating about the whole thing is that the film is certainly put together fairly well.  The cinematography and direction are generally pretty good and the actors appear competent.  But that story…I simply can’t figure out what anyone saw in this to make it worth their while.

Needless to say, I recommend anyone interested pass on Blitz.

Movies

The Bourne Legacy (2012) a (mildly) belated review

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:  Operatives within a top secret government agency are suddenly being killed off.  The heads of the secret government agency, it turns out, are destroying all evidence (human included) of the existence of said operation.  But one (or more) of the agents in that secret agency survive the initial massacre and take on their bosses, all the while watching out for more assassins coming after them…

Despite much to recommend the movie and partly because of the above, The Bourne Legacy falls short of what one hoped it would achieve.  The original Bourne movie legacy featured Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, an (initially) amnesiac agent who has to figure out his role in a cloudy government conspiracy.  The films were high energy and featured intriguing twists and turns and, while Matt Damon himself noted (If memory serves!) after the third movie that each film was essentially remaking the first film again and again, these films nonetheless delivered.

When I first heard of The Bourne Legacy, I wasn’t put off by the fact that Matt Damon wasn’t returning to the franchise.  I like Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz, the protagonists of this film and hoped for the best.  I did my best to stay away from all spoilers and, over the weekend, finally had a chance to catch the film on DVD.

As mentioned before, there is much to recommend the film.  For the most part it is entertaining enough to keep you going and never does get dull.  The action sequences were clearly designed to emulate those found in the previous Bourne films and, for the most part, delivered.

…but…

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, this film sure had a very familiar plot.  Even worse, despite a long run time (the movie clocks in at two hours and fifteen minutes in length!), we finish off roughly where we started, with no serious closure and, most astonishingly of all, without the hero and villain ever having confronted each other.

To put things bluntly:  By the film’s conclusion The Bourne Legacy didn’t so much feel like a complete piece of entertainment so much as the opening chapter of a new series.  We’re left with so much unresolved that you can’t help but wonder what the point of this exercise was.

Look, I know that if successful, films inevitably get sequels, and the entire Bourne film series has been nothing if not successful.  However, even if you’re already thinking about a new franchise with a new star (or, perhaps, a future Bourne film featuring both Mr. Renner and Mr. Damon), the least you can do with the product in hand is deliver something that stands on its own.  In the case of The Bourne Legacy, once the film was over you realized that despite all the gobblygook concerning enhanced abilities via meds and shady government departments, it was all window dressing meant to kill time before getting to the next action sequence.  And by the time all that was over, we still have the villains in place and the hero on the run.  Pretty much the way the film started.

Despite this, I was entertained enough with The Bourne Legacy to give it a mild recommendation.  If you can shift your brain to neutral and ignore the lazy plot/story, you’ll have a decent enough time.  Otherwise, beware.

Movies

12 Actors Who Almost Had That Part

Another fascinating article, this one from Huffington Post and written by Treye Green, focusing on one of the more intriguing things about well-known films:  Actors who were almost given a very famous role that went to someone else:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/24/actors-recast-in-movies_n_2543452.html

One of the more famous ones mentioned in this article is Tom Selleck for the role of Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark.  According to the article, George Lucas wanted Selleck and Steven Spielberg wanted Harrison Ford.  I’ve heard that there was a little more involved than just that.  At the time, Tom Selleck was under contract for his hit TV series Magnum P.I. and the show’s schedule and his inability to take time off from filming it was ultimately the reason Mr. Selleck couldn’t do Raiders.  I suspect the only thing that remains of Mr. Selleck’s involvement in the role is this screen test for the role along with Sean Young in the Marion role:

My all time favorite “could have been” (and which was not listed in this article) has to be the role of Dirty Harry.  Originally, the role was intended to be for Frank Sinatra but he apparently turned it down because, among other things, an old hand injury made it difficult for him to wield the large handgun the character used.  The role then was offered to, among others, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, and Burt Lancaster before settling on Clint Eastwood.

The rest, as they say, is history.  Ah, but what might have been!

 

Movies

Script reveals lost ending of The Shining

Check out the absolutely fascinating article by Forrest Wickman on Slate Magazine:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/01/23/the_shining_original_ending.html

One of the first times I realized that classic movies may have “lost” or “alternate” scenes (my younger -more naive!- mind, I suppose, probably thought classic films were created “as is”!) was back in 1984 while watching, for the first time, Giorgio Moroder’s take/restoration of Metropolis.  The opening credits, in fact, noted that the full film was some forty minutes longer when it premiered, and that those scenes were likely lost forever (it turned out they weren’t, but that’s another story for another time).

Regardless, my imagination -and interest- in what may still exist out there regarding “classic” films was piqued.  I learned of about many films that featured alternate ideas discarded in the editing or, perhaps, were “toned down” for images that were too sexual or violent.  One of the more fascinating “lost” sequences, to my mind, was giant spider pit from the original King Kong.

Fast forward to…yesterday, when found this article concerning the “lost” or rather “alternate” ending of Stanley Kubrick’s magnificent 1980 film The Shining.  I had heard about this previously (the changes to the ending were done by Mr. Kubrick after press screenings of the film but just before general release) yet was fascinated by the article nonetheless.  The link above gives you the full article and I highly recommend you check it out.  However, in the interests of brevity, let me cut and paste what was written regarding the film’s “original” ending:

After we leave Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) frozen in the hedge maze, we cut to a hospital where Overlook manager Stuart Ullman (Barry Nelson) is visiting a recovering Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall) along with her son Danny (Danny Lloyd). After some pleasantries that are oddly casual for those recovering from an axe murder, Ullman tells Wendy that investigators searching the hotel “didn’t find the slightest evidence of anything at all out of the ordinary,” and that, amid the trauma, she must have simply been hallucinating. After inviting Wendy and Danny to leave to come stay with him in Los Angeles, he begins to leave, but remembers that he forgot to give something to Danny, and throws him a yellow ball.

Basically, what this ending suggests is that the Hotel Manager was a part of the events experienced by Torrances.  I think its an interesting element to add to the film but by grounding it that way it somehow, to my mind, diminishes the conclusion.  Why?  Because what we have in The Shining now is a film that can be interpreted in many ways.

For example, one could posit than the obvious ghost story presented in the film is mere symbolism, and that what the various characters witness/experience is them succumbing to a nervous breakdown.  Clearly Jack is the one who goes completely over the edge, but there is the possibility that his son and, later, Wendy may be reaching their mental breaking points as well versus seeing “ghosts”.

The “cut” ending, however, throws that possibility out completely and ties us down to the certainty that the Torrances were indeed haunted by the ghosts of the Hotel and that, further, the manager knows about them.  He set the Torrances up.  He knew what they would go through.  He’s…evil.

While I think that’s all good and well and I can understand people preferring such an ending, I happen to like the more ambiguous ending as presented in the theatrical release.

Regardless of all that, I’d absolutely love to see the alternative/cut ending.  Perhaps one day…

Movies

Tower Heist (2011) a (mildly) belated review

Many years ago there appeared an interesting sub-genre of the crime film that focused on “heists”.  The idea was to show a group of people plan and then execute some kind of large scale robbery and then follow those individuals after the robbery.  In the more “grim” films of the genre, we inevitably see how things unwind and how the criminals eventually get caught and/or killed.  Examples of those films include The Asphalt Jungle, The Killing, and The Anderson Tapes.  However, “lighter” takes on the heist film also started to appear, most notably the original Ocean’s 11 and the recent George Clooney/Brad Pitt remakes.

The lighter side of a heist film is again presented in 2011’s Tower Heist, a film starring, among others, Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Casey Affleck, Matthew Broderick, and Alan Alda.  Directed by Brett Ratner, the film is light and breezy and if you think about certain things too hard it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense (just how much weight can those elevators carry and just how far up do they go?).  Nonetheless, Tower Heist is entertaining although, perhaps, ultimately forgettable.

The best thing about the film, in my opinion, is Alan Alda’s Arthur Shaw, the villain of the piece.  As presented at the start of the film, Mr. Shaw’s a nice guy who our actual protagonist, Ben Stiller’s Josh Kovaks, likes and is very friendly with, to the point of playing chess with him over the internet.  In the course time, however, Shaw’s arrogance and villainy are revealed, and while the movie never gets too “dark” in that respect, I found this slow reveal the best part of the film.

Now, for the elephant in the room:  I know there are those who despise director Brett Ratner and, given some of the comments he’s made in interviews, I can’t entirely blame them.  For what its worth, for about a nano-second back when he was in high school I knew, via my sister, Mr. Ratner.  He came over to our house once or twice to hang out and seemed like a nice enough guy.  Back then.  Whether this makes my opinion of his work suspect is for you to decide when I say:  His direction in Tower Heist is quite good.  He keeps things moving and gets the most from his stars.  The movie’s greatest flaw, as mentioned above, relates to some of the more…unbelievable…things that happen toward the movie’s climax.

Regardless, Tower Heist is an entertaining enough way to spend a couple of hours, should you be in the mood for a comic heist film.