Hello gang. Welcome to the new installment of my weekly update of the movies I've watched. This was a very solid week, staying very solid throughout with the exception of one very high* and one very low. No thematic lineup this week like the accidental one last week, but there is a wide variety at hand. Now, I will be starting a full time job soon so this blog (and especially this installment) may be slow for a bit. But I am committed to making this thing a working and functioning blog, getting better and better as I go on. There should also be another list coming soon, so look out for that. So for now, give this a look and hopefully I inspire you to seek something out from here. Enjoy guys.
*Expect to see a full review of The Raid 2: Berandal soon.
Cheap Thrills (March 23rd, 2014)
Director: E.L. Katz
Starring: Pat Healy, Ethan Embry, David Koechner and Sara Paxton
Sometimes, it is best to go into a movie cold. I had heard this movie mentioned around, but I had luckily heard nothing about the premise of movie. All I heard was that it was a crazy ride. And fucking hell was it a crazy ride. Basic set up time. Pat Healy is a down on his luck man, who has a new born baby and an overdue rent bill. He's about to be evicted when he loses his job. When he goes to a bar in a depression, he runs into old high school friend Ethan Embry. Embry is also not doing so great. But they run into Koechner and Paxton, a married couple celebrating Paxtons birthday. They all start having some fun when Koechner starts betting the two guys to do stupid shit for money. From there, things get alot crazier. I won't spoil anything else, but suffice it to say I was surprised by much of the events of the movie. It is very funny, but also very brutal in both physical and emotional ways. The acting is great all around. You can see the distress and desperation in Healy, the fuckup nature in Embry, the life of the party with a sick side in Koechner and the low key master manipulator in Paxton. The writing is also very good, as it lays out these crazy scenes with a wicked black humor. But it also manages to add in a layer of class warfare into the proceedings. It doesn't beat you over the head with it. It's there for those who would look for it. This was a very surprising movie, a hell of a ride that isn't an easy movie with easy consequences. High recommendation, especially with no foreknowledge.
Rating: 9/10
The Art of The Steal (March 23rd, 2014)
Director: Jonathan Sobol
Starring: Kurt Russell, Matt Dillon, Jay Baruchel, and Terrence Stamp
It has been way too long since Kurt Russell has lead a movie (7 years to be exact with Death Proof). So it is with a great sigh of relief to see that his return isn't wasted. He plays Crunch Calhoun, a motorcycle daredevil who is the getaway driver for a group of thieves. Dillon plays his half brother Nicky, the con man of the group. Nicky screws over Crunch, landing Crunch in jail for 5 1/2 years. Crunch gets out and tries to go straight, but the old life calls for him. So we get involved with Crunch and the old crew as they try to make a sizable heist. This is not a particularly deep movie, but it makes up for its lack of depth with a big heaping of fun. Kurt is back in lovable doofus mode, ala Jack Burton. He isn't as useless as good ole Jack, but he isn't the swaggering badass like Snake Plissken. Dillon is perfect as the dickhead that kicks the plot into motion. The whole cast is solid and the writing is very well done. The movie doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it's a fun enough entry into the heist genre to keep things going. There's twists that aren't exactly original, but you get into the movie and let the turns take you by surprise. The main draw of the movie though is to see Kurt back on screen and showing he hasn't lost a single bit of talent or charisma. Hopefully it won't be too long between jobs like last time, the next being Fast and Furious 7 next year.
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Rating: 8.5/10
The Graduate (March 24th, 2014)
Director: Mike Nichols
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katharine Ross, William Daniels
Sometimes a classic will evade me. I went to film school for fucks sake, so you figured I'd have seen this movie sooner than now. But at least I finally saw it and I can say I dig the movie and understand the love. It has to be said though that I don't personally love the movie, as it has a dated feel to it. And not dated in terms of references. It has a lot of that old school acting where things aren't very natural and things aren't still filmed old school. It's hard to really explain, but there's a definite difference in feeling in movies before the 70s and after the 70s. I had those same issues with The Searchers a while ago. But I did enjoy the story enough to not let certain dated elements drag this down. Hoffman is Ben Braddock, a college graduate who comes back home and finds himself unmoored. He doesn't know what to do with himself when he ends up in an affair with his parents friend, Mrs Robinson (Bancroft). But while this relationship is purely carnal and a time passer, Braddock ends up falling for Elaine Robinson (Ross), Mrs Robinsons daughter. This throws a big wrench into everything and Ben has to finally get a fire in his ass to do something and make a choice. The acting is solid all around, though I'll have to admit I found Hoffman really fucking annoying in this movie. More likely than not, that's just the point of the character and the movie. He is playing a really annoying person. But it felt to me like Hoffman isn't as fully formed an actor yet, this being his big break in cinema. Again, it's probably what the role called for but something else kinda irritated me. I don't know. But the writing is also excellent, as a shot at the generation of the time being a bunch of spoiled assholes with no drive and no foresight being snuck into a rom com. Hell, the end of the movie is the biggest sign of that intention, nailing it home before the credits hit. Nichols is very assured in his direction, the perfect fit for the material. The pool/scuba gear scene coulda been trimmed if you ask me, but it's not a killer. I've heard this movie is one that grows with a person over time, so I'm very interested to see how I see it down the line. I'm glad I saw it and am a bit irritated it took me this long.
Rating: 8/10
National Lampoon's Vacation (March 27th, 2014)
Director: Harold Ramis
Starring: Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Anthony Michael Hall, and Dana Barron
This movie is an abysmal piece of shit. Straight up, no preamble. I hated every minute of this miserable piece of fucking garbage. I hadn't seen it and I had a bit of a fire in my gut to see some of Harold Ramis' movies that I hadn't seen after his passing. I mean, everything he's done that I've seen I liked I wasn't worried. But fuck, I really struck out with my first viewing in this filmography. This family of cardboard cutouts pretending to be actors decide to drive from Chicago to California for a vacation that culminates in the movies version of Disneyland. I really don't want to talk about this movie anymore. It's an ugly, unfunny black hole of shit that has tricked people into calling it a classic. Now, I've never been Chases biggest fan. But I tolerated him in Caddyshack, and laughed at times on Community. But this is the nadir. He is beyond awful in this movie. It makes me that much happier that Bill Murray punched him in the face, and that his career has been utter horseshit since the 80s. Honestly, the worst thing about this is that it came after Animal House and Caddyshack. Those two movies were so much better on every level, so confident and well crafted with great characters and great jokes. I really can't believe anyone from those two movies had a hand in this, but they did. All I can say is, I'm glad Ramis got this out of his system before Ghostbusters.
Rating: 2/10
The Raid 2: Berandal (March 28th, 2014)
Director: Gareth Evans
Starring: Iko Uwais, Arifin Putra, Tio Pakusodewo, and Alex Abbad
Sometimes you see a movie and just know in your bones you witnessed something special. Watching the first The Raid, I got the feeling that Gareth Evans was going to be someone to watch out for in action circles. Then when he made the Safe Haven segment in VHS 2, we started to get the sense that there was more to him than filming a good fight. It was still a violent as hell movie, but within a new genre and with a narrative to unfold. So when The Raid 2 was announced, many got excited and for good cause. The first one was an action classic, an economic film with a bare bones plot but tons of brutally and beautifully realized action. So add a story on top of that (a crime saga to boot) and things were looking good. But nothing could have prepared me for the masterpiece of action cinema that Evans and co unleashed on the world. On every single level, this movie tops the first times 10. In an epic crime saga that unfolds over years, we find Rama (Uwais) as he tries to deal with the effects of the first movie. In doing so, he has to go undercover in prison to get in with a crime syndicate to bring down police corruption. But he finds himself in the midst of a gang war that is going to change everything. What will he do to protect his family and to survive? That's the question at hand and what gives us the plot needed to follow the great characters at hand as the war erupts and the violence reaches epic proportions. While the story itself is good, it is nothing groundbreaking. It has enough surprises to not be boring but it is firmly a crime saga. But what sets this movie apart is Rama, the colorful cast of characters and the eye that Evans brings to the violence at hand. Uwais had matured alot between these movies. He won't win any awards but he brings real heart to the role, allowing us to invest in him completely. He also bring a level of badassery unseen before, fighting like it could be his last every time and with no mercy. The colorful cast elevates this too, as it adds some levity and color to the movie to prevent it from being to dark or bleak. Between the assassin who chooses to be homeless, or the brother/sister assassin duo of Baseball Bat guy and Hammer Girl, or the creepy gangster with a cane, the cast in this goes beyond simple gangsters. And Evans himself has completely matured, showing his skills with a bigger budget to show what he can do. Visually, aurally, story and action wise this is above and beyond. The action though is where he brings some instantly legendary stuff. I won't spoil anything except to say the violence is unreal, shot with a clear sense of purpose and vision. He manages to make each scene new and exciting, but also with some story meaning behind it to keep it from being boring. The technical skills brought about to show these fights is unreal, sticking a camera into such tightly spaced fights that you can't believe it's happening without CGI. This is a movie that hits hard and doesn't stop until the very last frame. Gareth Evans has unleashed a new bench mark for action movies, ideally setting the stage for future filmmakers to shoot action like he did the same way The Bourne Supremacy did. An instant classic, one of the best movies I've seen in a while, and a real signal for a new talent at hand. With talk of a third to end a trilogy, I anxiously await what is at hand. Because if it's better than this, Gareth cements his place in history.
Rating: 10/10
Jarhead (March 29th, 2014)
Director: Sam Mendes
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Lucas Black, and Jamie Foxx
Ever since Skyfall, I've been meaning to see this movie. Because the only Mendes movies I haven't seen at that point was this and Away We Go. So now I only have Away We Go to see. And while this is a departure for Mendes as it doesn't involve a malaise with men and their families, it does deal with the crushing disappointment of failing to achieve ones goals. But instead of being a typical family drama in the burbs, this has a makeshift family a soldier makes in war. Gyllenhaal enlists in the marines and is a trained sniper. All he wants to do is to go to war and use his skills to kill. It sounds fucked but it's really due to the training these men go through. They are molded into these killing machines and are basically told over and over they are gonna kill any bad guy they can find. But when they go to Iraq in the 90s, Gyllenhaal doesn't fire his rifle once. 5 months in the desert and he wastes away essentially, everything he was taught and trained to do for naught. The first in the partnership between Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins, it is a not surprisingly beautiful movie. Gyllenhaal is great in one of his earliest great performances. He nails the slipping sanity and crushing disappointment that he goes through. The rest of the cast is great, Foxx in particular in a post Ray performance. While the movie nails it's themes and is well made on a technical level with a great cast, the movie feels a bite been there done that. It's a war movie that deals with a bit of the themes brought up in Three Kings, but with a bit of headupitsassitis. While it is very good, I'd never put it in a top ten war movies list. It isn't even one of the best war movies of the decade. But it is great for a glimpse into what Mendes can do that isn't American Beauty, Road To Perdition or Skyfall.
Rating: 8/10
Director: Jonathan Sobol
Starring: Kurt Russell, Matt Dillon, Jay Baruchel, and Terrence Stamp
It has been way too long since Kurt Russell has lead a movie (7 years to be exact with Death Proof). So it is with a great sigh of relief to see that his return isn't wasted. He plays Crunch Calhoun, a motorcycle daredevil who is the getaway driver for a group of thieves. Dillon plays his half brother Nicky, the con man of the group. Nicky screws over Crunch, landing Crunch in jail for 5 1/2 years. Crunch gets out and tries to go straight, but the old life calls for him. So we get involved with Crunch and the old crew as they try to make a sizable heist. This is not a particularly deep movie, but it makes up for its lack of depth with a big heaping of fun. Kurt is back in lovable doofus mode, ala Jack Burton. He isn't as useless as good ole Jack, but he isn't the swaggering badass like Snake Plissken. Dillon is perfect as the dickhead that kicks the plot into motion. The whole cast is solid and the writing is very well done. The movie doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it's a fun enough entry into the heist genre to keep things going. There's twists that aren't exactly original, but you get into the movie and let the turns take you by surprise. The main draw of the movie though is to see Kurt back on screen and showing he hasn't lost a single bit of talent or charisma. Hopefully it won't be too long between jobs like last time, the next being Fast and Furious 7 next year.
The Graduate (March 24th, 2014)
Director: Mike Nichols
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katharine Ross, William Daniels
Sometimes a classic will evade me. I went to film school for fucks sake, so you figured I'd have seen this movie sooner than now. But at least I finally saw it and I can say I dig the movie and understand the love. It has to be said though that I don't personally love the movie, as it has a dated feel to it. And not dated in terms of references. It has a lot of that old school acting where things aren't very natural and things aren't still filmed old school. It's hard to really explain, but there's a definite difference in feeling in movies before the 70s and after the 70s. I had those same issues with The Searchers a while ago. But I did enjoy the story enough to not let certain dated elements drag this down. Hoffman is Ben Braddock, a college graduate who comes back home and finds himself unmoored. He doesn't know what to do with himself when he ends up in an affair with his parents friend, Mrs Robinson (Bancroft). But while this relationship is purely carnal and a time passer, Braddock ends up falling for Elaine Robinson (Ross), Mrs Robinsons daughter. This throws a big wrench into everything and Ben has to finally get a fire in his ass to do something and make a choice. The acting is solid all around, though I'll have to admit I found Hoffman really fucking annoying in this movie. More likely than not, that's just the point of the character and the movie. He is playing a really annoying person. But it felt to me like Hoffman isn't as fully formed an actor yet, this being his big break in cinema. Again, it's probably what the role called for but something else kinda irritated me. I don't know. But the writing is also excellent, as a shot at the generation of the time being a bunch of spoiled assholes with no drive and no foresight being snuck into a rom com. Hell, the end of the movie is the biggest sign of that intention, nailing it home before the credits hit. Nichols is very assured in his direction, the perfect fit for the material. The pool/scuba gear scene coulda been trimmed if you ask me, but it's not a killer. I've heard this movie is one that grows with a person over time, so I'm very interested to see how I see it down the line. I'm glad I saw it and am a bit irritated it took me this long.
National Lampoon's Vacation (March 27th, 2014)
Director: Harold Ramis
Starring: Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Anthony Michael Hall, and Dana Barron
This movie is an abysmal piece of shit. Straight up, no preamble. I hated every minute of this miserable piece of fucking garbage. I hadn't seen it and I had a bit of a fire in my gut to see some of Harold Ramis' movies that I hadn't seen after his passing. I mean, everything he's done that I've seen I liked I wasn't worried. But fuck, I really struck out with my first viewing in this filmography. This family of cardboard cutouts pretending to be actors decide to drive from Chicago to California for a vacation that culminates in the movies version of Disneyland. I really don't want to talk about this movie anymore. It's an ugly, unfunny black hole of shit that has tricked people into calling it a classic. Now, I've never been Chases biggest fan. But I tolerated him in Caddyshack, and laughed at times on Community. But this is the nadir. He is beyond awful in this movie. It makes me that much happier that Bill Murray punched him in the face, and that his career has been utter horseshit since the 80s. Honestly, the worst thing about this is that it came after Animal House and Caddyshack. Those two movies were so much better on every level, so confident and well crafted with great characters and great jokes. I really can't believe anyone from those two movies had a hand in this, but they did. All I can say is, I'm glad Ramis got this out of his system before Ghostbusters.
Director: Gareth Evans
Starring: Iko Uwais, Arifin Putra, Tio Pakusodewo, and Alex Abbad
Sometimes you see a movie and just know in your bones you witnessed something special. Watching the first The Raid, I got the feeling that Gareth Evans was going to be someone to watch out for in action circles. Then when he made the Safe Haven segment in VHS 2, we started to get the sense that there was more to him than filming a good fight. It was still a violent as hell movie, but within a new genre and with a narrative to unfold. So when The Raid 2 was announced, many got excited and for good cause. The first one was an action classic, an economic film with a bare bones plot but tons of brutally and beautifully realized action. So add a story on top of that (a crime saga to boot) and things were looking good. But nothing could have prepared me for the masterpiece of action cinema that Evans and co unleashed on the world. On every single level, this movie tops the first times 10. In an epic crime saga that unfolds over years, we find Rama (Uwais) as he tries to deal with the effects of the first movie. In doing so, he has to go undercover in prison to get in with a crime syndicate to bring down police corruption. But he finds himself in the midst of a gang war that is going to change everything. What will he do to protect his family and to survive? That's the question at hand and what gives us the plot needed to follow the great characters at hand as the war erupts and the violence reaches epic proportions. While the story itself is good, it is nothing groundbreaking. It has enough surprises to not be boring but it is firmly a crime saga. But what sets this movie apart is Rama, the colorful cast of characters and the eye that Evans brings to the violence at hand. Uwais had matured alot between these movies. He won't win any awards but he brings real heart to the role, allowing us to invest in him completely. He also bring a level of badassery unseen before, fighting like it could be his last every time and with no mercy. The colorful cast elevates this too, as it adds some levity and color to the movie to prevent it from being to dark or bleak. Between the assassin who chooses to be homeless, or the brother/sister assassin duo of Baseball Bat guy and Hammer Girl, or the creepy gangster with a cane, the cast in this goes beyond simple gangsters. And Evans himself has completely matured, showing his skills with a bigger budget to show what he can do. Visually, aurally, story and action wise this is above and beyond. The action though is where he brings some instantly legendary stuff. I won't spoil anything except to say the violence is unreal, shot with a clear sense of purpose and vision. He manages to make each scene new and exciting, but also with some story meaning behind it to keep it from being boring. The technical skills brought about to show these fights is unreal, sticking a camera into such tightly spaced fights that you can't believe it's happening without CGI. This is a movie that hits hard and doesn't stop until the very last frame. Gareth Evans has unleashed a new bench mark for action movies, ideally setting the stage for future filmmakers to shoot action like he did the same way The Bourne Supremacy did. An instant classic, one of the best movies I've seen in a while, and a real signal for a new talent at hand. With talk of a third to end a trilogy, I anxiously await what is at hand. Because if it's better than this, Gareth cements his place in history.
Jarhead (March 29th, 2014)
Director: Sam Mendes
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Lucas Black, and Jamie Foxx
Ever since Skyfall, I've been meaning to see this movie. Because the only Mendes movies I haven't seen at that point was this and Away We Go. So now I only have Away We Go to see. And while this is a departure for Mendes as it doesn't involve a malaise with men and their families, it does deal with the crushing disappointment of failing to achieve ones goals. But instead of being a typical family drama in the burbs, this has a makeshift family a soldier makes in war. Gyllenhaal enlists in the marines and is a trained sniper. All he wants to do is to go to war and use his skills to kill. It sounds fucked but it's really due to the training these men go through. They are molded into these killing machines and are basically told over and over they are gonna kill any bad guy they can find. But when they go to Iraq in the 90s, Gyllenhaal doesn't fire his rifle once. 5 months in the desert and he wastes away essentially, everything he was taught and trained to do for naught. The first in the partnership between Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins, it is a not surprisingly beautiful movie. Gyllenhaal is great in one of his earliest great performances. He nails the slipping sanity and crushing disappointment that he goes through. The rest of the cast is great, Foxx in particular in a post Ray performance. While the movie nails it's themes and is well made on a technical level with a great cast, the movie feels a bite been there done that. It's a war movie that deals with a bit of the themes brought up in Three Kings, but with a bit of headupitsassitis. While it is very good, I'd never put it in a top ten war movies list. It isn't even one of the best war movies of the decade. But it is great for a glimpse into what Mendes can do that isn't American Beauty, Road To Perdition or Skyfall.
- Tom Lorenzo
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