Tag Archives: Movie Reviews

Movies

3 Days to Kill (2014) a (right on time!) review

It’s rare to get the chance to actually go to the theater and see a film, and when the opportunity arises, often the films available aren’t terribly appealing.  In the case of 3 Days to Kill, I can’t say I was dying to see it, but of the films currently screening, it was the one that most appealed, if I can use such a strong word.

OK, so I went into this expecting at best a mediocre and at worse a terrible film.  In that respect, I was pleasantly surprised.

3 Days to Kill’s story goes like this: Ethan Renner (Kevin Costner, exuding cool charisma and graceful ageing) is a CIA hitman who, after his most recent job and a collapse at its end, goes to a doctor who informs him he is dying of cancer and has at best three months left to live.

Renner decides to spend the short time he has left in the company of his estranged daughter (Hailee Steinfeld) and wife (Connie Nielsen), but a CIA handler (Amber Heard) has other plans and needs him to finish the job he started at the beginning of the movie and take out a dangerous terrorist.  Her incentive to get him to do the job despite his grim prognosis?  An experimental drug that may allow him to live a longer life.

3 Days to Kill is a hybrid action/comedy with a surprisingly big heart.  When we first meet Renner, he’s presented as a hard-ass killer but during the course of the film not only does he have to deal with a teenage daughter -and issues relating to being a teen- but also with a large family of squatters who have taken over his apartment along with his target’s aids…two of whom he handles in surprisingly funny ways.

While 3 Days to Kill is not a “superb” film and may well be forgotten as soon as it leaves the theaters, I found it enjoyable and liked the way it transitioned from action to comedy and back again.  The film’s success lies for the most part on the shoulders of Mr. Costner who, after seemingly disappearing from films, delivers a warm and weathered turn.

Recommended.

Movies

Escape Plan (2013) a (mildly) belated review

After all these years, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger finally team up and co-star in a film.

Yes, they shared screen time in the first two Expendables movies, but the first one featured not all that much more than a minute or so of them sharing screen time while the second featured a more extended cameo from Mr. Schwarzenegger -and a whole host of other 1980’s action stars!- but a cameo nonetheless.

Was the team up worth the wait?

Sorta.

Escape Plan involves Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone), whose profession can only exist in the fantasy world of movies: He’s hired to break out of jails to test their integrity.  Right off the bat, you have to swallow this little bit of craziness.  Let’s face it, you don’t hire someone to check out your prison’s security after spending many millions of dollars building the damn place, right?  You hire the guy/gal to check the security before you commit all those millions of dollars and…

…it’s just a movie…it’s just a movie…

Anyway, that quibble aside, Breslin is hired to check out a CIA backed fortress/prison that houses prisoners meant to never be released.  Breslin is betrayed and realizes that the warden of this prison, Hobbes (Jim Caviezel, essentially playing a bad guy version of his John Reese character from Person of Interest) has it in for him and is determined to keep him locked up.  Thus Breslin, with the help of fellow inmate Rottmayer (Arnold Schwarzenegger), must find a way out…or be imprisoned forever.

I find it interesting how many “prison escape” films Mr. Stallone has appeared in through his career.  Just off the top of my head I can think of at least three of them, from 1981’s Victory (Allied POWs escape from their Nazi captors via Soccer) to 1989’s Lockup (Stallone is locked up (duh!) and must deal with a sadistic new warden just as he’s about to be freed) to 1989’s Tango and Cash (Stallone and Kurt Russell team up as a pair of salt and pepper cops who are framed and sent to jail, where they escape).  And that’s not including films with tangential prisoner related themes such as the Rambo films.

How does Escape Plan measure with the others?  Frankly, of the three I mentioned (excluding the Rambo films), Tango and Cash probably remains my favorite, if only because of how balls-to-the-wall crazy it is.  Having said that, of Mr. Stallone’s more recent action films, Escape Plan winds up being a pleasant enough time killer that is far more coherent than some of his other works, even if it isn’t quite as exhilarating.

Movies

The Lone Ranger (2013) a (mildly) belated review/autopsy

History repeats itself in more ways than one.

Way back in 1981 a big budgeted “new/updated” version of The Lone Ranger, a classic western pulp adventure series which at that point was known mostly for the famous 1949 to 1957 TV series starring Clayton Moore, was set to be released.  Early word wasn’t all that encouraging, and when The Legend of the Lone Ranger finally arrived in theaters, the critics were incredibly harsh.

That film proceeded to flop.  Hard.  How hard?  Newcomer Klinton Spilsbury, the man who played the title role of the Lone Ranger, has not appeared in another movie or TV show since.  The Legend of the Lone Ranger remains his one, and only, movie credit.

In 2012 Walt Disney Studios were set to release another big budgeted would-be summer blockbuster.  Based on a popular early pulp novel series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter took on a life of its own -all negative- even before its release.  Leaked missives hinted at the studio’s displeasure with the product while extensive re-shoots were reportedly made.  By the time the film was finally released, audiences were poisoned against the product.  Sure, there were those who defended it along with the many who knocked it.  In the end, I fell somewhere in the middle and felt that while the film wasn’t as atrocious as others felt it was, it was at best a decent time killer but certainly not something worthy of its incredibly big budget (if you’re curious, my review of John Carter can be found here).

A year later, the very same Walt Disney Studios got director Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp, both of whom hit mega-pay-dirt with Pirates of the Caribbean and its sequels, to once again take on The Lone Ranger.  Released in the summer of 2013 this film, like its 1981 predecessor and last year’s John Carter, turned into another embarrassing big budget flop for that studio.

So…what happened?  Was this film also the victim of bad pre-release press?  Was the movie’s failure further proof that the western genre is dead?  Had there developed a backlash against Johnny Depp and his sometimes “out there” characterization/acting?  And perhaps the most important question of all: Was The Long Ranger really as bad as many said it was?

When I finally sat down to watch the film, I tried to keep my mind as neutral as possible.  There were far more people, it seemed to me anyway, that had a negative opinion about this film versus John Carter.  And yet, there were also many who staunchly defended it.

During the first few minutes of the film I was rewarded with something that…wasn’t all that bad at all.  In fact, I wound up enjoying the first thirty to forty five minutes of the film quite a bit.  I was certain I’d fall into the “I like it” camp.

And then…

…and then…

Let’s be brutally honest here: The Lone Ranger clocks in at a ridiculous 149 minutes long according to IMDB.

Two and a half hours?!

Seriously?

As good as the movie’s opening segments were, as the film reached its middle, I began to feel restless.  During the course of this mid section of the film we were introduced to strange/ferocious/mutant(?) rabbits, a prolonged and increasingly less amusing bit involving a child in 1933 being told the story we’re seeing by a very old Tonto who may or may not be an apparition in the kid’s head, an Indian tribe about to be massacred, and Helena Bonham Carter as a madam with a prosthetic ivory leg she hides a rifle in.

Seriously?!

Most of what I mentioned above could have been eliminated from the film without seriously impacting it.  The Indian tribe massacre sequence was particularly egregious as we’re supposed to be horrified by it yet immediately afterward (we’re talking seconds after the two main characters realize this noble tribe has been wiped out!) we’re hit with a joke regarding a horse on a tree.  The ferocious/mutant rabbits really had me scratching my head.  I guess whatever the filmmakers were going for must have really worked on the page but was completely lost in the translation to film.  I found the rabbits neither interesting nor humorous nor worthy of being in the film at all.  What I came to realize is that the middle segment of the film featured a lot of ideas presented without any real focus.  I was now thinking I’d fall into the “didn’t like it” camp.

But then, like the Lone Ranger himself, the film heroically rises from that messy middle to deliver a genuinely thrilling ending.

In sum, we have a film with a pretty good start and end jammed between a mediocre and bloated middle.

So, back to the questions at hand:

Was the film a victim of its negative pre-release?  I suppose.  Like John Carter there was early word that the film wasn’t all that good and when the first images of Johnny Depp as Tonto were released, he looked rather ridiculous.  Still, I suspect people found what they saw and heard about The Lone Ranger confusing, and I’m sure that didn’t help to bring ’em to the theater.

Was Johnny Depp guilty of delivering another of his highly stylized characterizations and is it possible audiences had finally had their fill of this?  Absolutely.  The character of Tonto takes up quite a bit of space versus the Lone Ranger.  Having said that, if Mr. Depp’s Tonto wasn’t in the film and wasn’t as humorous and engaging as he was, the film would have been a far, far worse experience.

Is the movie’s failure a further sign that the Western is dead?  I suppose one could make that argument.  However, if there is one genre that was even deader than the western it was the pirate film, and that didn’t stop Pirates of the Caribbean from being a hell of a success.  If the makers of The Lone Ranger could have kept the middle section of the film as good as the beginning and end, I suspect things might have turned out very differently.

In conclusion, I can only give The Lone Ranger a mild recommendation and in this it shares the same impression John Carter gave me a year before.  The Lone Ranger is a decent enough film and, in my opinion, an overall better one than John Carter, but considering its bloated budget one expected something that was overall far, far better.  A shame.

Movies

The Wolverine (2013) Extended Cut, a (mildly) belated review

Back in November of 2012 I wrote the following in the review for the then just released James Bond film Skyfall:

It is a credit to director Sam Mendes, Daniel Craig, and all those in front of and behind the cameras (that they) delivered a movie that moved as well as it did.  In fact…it wasn’t until after the movie was over that I realized the screenwriters delivered a truly underwhelming, ultimately silly story.  (you can read the entire review here)

I might as well have been speaking of last summer’s The Wolverine as well.

The summer of 2013 was awash with superhero inspired movies and The Wolverine was a late comer to the party.  Yet there were those who felt that of all the superhero related films released at that time, this was the one that merited better scrutiny and reward.

I can’t agree with that although there most certainly was a great deal of effort put into this film.

The Wolverine is essentially a “stand alone” story that takes place shortly after the last X-Men movie and, in its credits, hints at what’s to come in the next X-Men feature.  The always reliable Hugh Jackman returns for the fifth time in the role of Logan/Wolverine and, at the start of the film, we’re given a window into something he experienced during World War II and as a prisoner of war just outside of Nagasaki (yes, THE Nagasaki and, yes, just before -and after!- the bomb was dropped).

Logan saves a kind Japanese soldier from the devastation of the Atomic Bomb before we move, chronologically, to the present.  That Japanese soldier, it turns out, is named Yashida and after the war he became the head of a very powerful -and rich- company that is at the technological forefront of Japan and the world.  He’s also very old and dying.  He gets Logan to come to Japan to visit him for one last time.  During this visit, he tells Logan he can make him mortal and end what he perceives as the man’s Earthly torment.  This, Yashida states, is done by somehow transferring Logan’s immortality to the aged Yashida himself, effectively giving him the immortality Logan has.

Despite his torment, Logan refuses the deal and, in short order, all hell breaks loose.

Yashida dies, his son and apparent heir is up to no good, and his granddaughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto) is in mortal peril.  Logan jumps into action and saves Mariko but quickly realizes that during his visit to Yahida’s estate something has happened to him.  He no longer recovers as quickly from injuries as before.  On the run in Japan and with the forces of evil converging on the two, will Logan have enough gas in his tank to emerge victorious…or will the two fall?

As noted above, I’m reviewing the Extended Cut of The Wolverine.  If you’re interested in the differences between this version of the film and the Theatrical Cut, check out this website as it offers a terrific in depth comparison:

http://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=274643

Now, moving on to the movie itself and as I noted before, this film experience proved similar to Skyfall.  I found the effort put into The Wolverine truly admirable.  The movie looks great and moves like lightning.  The characters presented are interesting and their motivations arouse your curiosity.  Yet it was also very obvious early on who the “big bad” was.  Just reading my fairly non-spoilery plot synopsis above should clue you into that.

The problem with The Wolverine lies in the fact that, like Skyfall, we have this huge/big/enormous set pieces that ultimately are revealed to be…nothing.  In Skyfall, the villain’s goal was so damn small and petty and all the running around proved to be just that: silly running around.

In The Wolverine, all the running around is also incredibly pointless as (I’m going to try to tiptoe around the story without getting to spoilery) the villain had his hands on his “prize” early in the film and there was absolutely no need for all that extra crap that followed.  Or, to put it another way: All the villain(s) had to do was knock their intended victim out with some kind of tranquilizer (which, by the way, they already did as the villains managed to implant something into their victim without their realizing it!), take what you need on that very first night, and -voila!- you’re done.

Silly, silly, silly.

And yet, like Skyfall, I can’t entirely dismiss The Wolverine despite its ultimately idiotic story line.  Again, there’s some really good stuff on display here and its just a shame that it gets torpedoed with such a silly script.  Perhaps it is a sign of these ADHD times that filmmakers are more focused on the thrills presented to their audiences rather than any logical explanation for why those thrills are occurring.

In the end, I can only offer a tepid recommendation for The Wolverine.  The film is worth seeing but, whatever you do, try not to think too hard about it afterwards.  You’ll only drive yourself crazy.

Movies

Riddick (2013) a (mildly) belated review

Back in the year 2000, many critics and fans expressed enthusiasm over the just released sci-fi action suspense film Pitch Black.  Starring the then pretty much unknown Vin Diesel (his two biggest roles up to that point were Private Carpazo in Saving Private Ryan and the voice of the Iron Giant in that animated movie), the movie was relatively low budget and, admittedly, felt like it owed a great debt, story-wise, to both Alien and Aliens.  Nonetheless, the film delivered an entertaining tale with characters who weren’t easy to pin down.

The movie was so successful it spawned video games, an animated feature, and an ambitious 2004 sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick.  Unfortunately, that movie may well have been a little too ambitious for its own good.  While Pitch Black was a more small scale and “intimate” monster movie, The Chronicles of Riddick attempted to create a HUGE space opera on the level of Dune, complete with a large cast of characters, political intrigue, back-stabbing, etc. etc.

After that film’s release and the subsequent critical drubbing and disappointing box office it received, it appeared the character of Riddick would grace the screen no more.

But Vin Diesel’s star was on the rise and I suspect the incredible success of the last few Fast and Furious movies gave investors enough confidence to allow Mr. Diesel and director/writer David Twohy another go around with Riddick.

Released in 2013, Riddick, the third film in the series, wisely chooses to draw the space opera stuff so prevalent in The Chronicles of Riddick waaay down, though there is no attempt to ignore the events of that film.  In fact, after Riddick’s start, we find via flashbacks that our favorite anti-hero’s current predicament (he’s heavily injured and stranded on a desert planet with considerable hostile wildlife) were a direct result of things that happened to him after/because of The Chronicles of Riddick.  By the end of that film, Riddick was the king of a group of dark mages.  At the start of Riddick, he was unceremoniously dumped and abandoned by the same group on this planet and must now survive.

Without getting too SPOILERY, the first part of the film involves Riddick doing just that: Recovering from his injuries while figuring out how to move from the more dangerous zone he’s in to another within the planet.  However, he soon realizes a massive danger is about to be unleashed and uses a distress beacon he finds in an abandoned trapper’s shelter to summon two groups of Mercs to the planet.  Both are hunting for Riddick yet each group has their own unique reasons why.  Meanwhile, the danger Riddick knows is coming arrives, and soon everyone is fighting for their survival.

In reading the reviews of the film, I found there are those who were very positive about the first third or so of Riddick -the lone survivor section- and critical of the later part of the film.  Many felt this part of the film was little more than a re-tread of Pitch Black.  I can’t argue the point.  However, to me Riddick worked in spite of the less than original second half and that was because Mr. Twohy knows how to carefully build suspense.  Unlike others recent action films, Riddick is almost old fashioned in its presentation.  Other than one ludicrous scene involving a balanced machete, it doesn’t feature the more ridiculous ADHD “action” effects that I found so hard to swallow in movies like, yes, Fast and Furious 6.  Further, Riddick keeps the characters interesting throughout.

For example, I found the character of Lockspur (Raoul Trujillo), the leader of the second group of Mercs to be very intriguing.  Until the movie’s end, we weren’t quite sure which way he would go.  Similarly, the character of Dahl (fan favorite Katee Sackhoff) was a two-fisted delight.  I especially enjoyed the way she treated the leader of the first Merc squad.  Finally, Diaz (WWE star Dave Bautista) was yet another intriguing character who showed several shades of gray…as well as a black deviousness.

Please note, though, that I saw the “unrated director’s cut” and not the theatrical version of the film.  I’m not sure what the differences are or even if they make much of a difference at all.

Regardless, I enjoyed Riddick and I’m pleased to hear that because of the success of the home video release there may be a fourth film in the works.  Hopefully, Mr. Diesel and Twohy has some interesting ideas for this upcoming film and, even more hopefully, they’ll be allowed a bigger budget to show it.  Only, please don’t go the route of Chronicles of Riddick, ok?

Recommended.

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

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

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.