Movies Watched The Week of 5/31 - 6/6

Welcome back folks, another week and another sampling of the media I’ve ingested.  So of course I need to share it.  It’s a smaller than usual week, with a great high but a shockingly bad low.  I ran through this quick so enjoy a smaller than usual week.  And in a few weeks, I’ll be done with the other site and this will probably be more dense than usual.  So enjoy.

The Verdict (May 31st, 2015)

Director: Sidney Lumet

Starring: Paul Newman, Charlotte Rampling, Jack Warden, and James Mason

Paul Newman is the man.  Sidney Lumet is, too, the man.  So bring both of them together in a court room drama, returning Lumet to that genre he mastered 25 years prior in 12 Angry Men, and you got yourself another gem in that world.  Newman plays a down on his luck drunkard of a lawyer, an ambulance chaser who’s just been drifting through life for years now after a world shattering experience.  But when a big case is brought to him, it ignites something in him to crawl out of the shit and fight for once.  This is a very dreary, sad movie.  It’s not a bright, faced past drama.  Newman is in a shit place and just takes beatings the entire time and even in the end, it’s a bittersweet victory for him.  The only negative I have to say for this movie is that the pacing is a little too slow in an unnatural way which could have been trimmed a bit.  But it’s all pointless as it’s a movie with a superb cast, Newman leading the charge like a pro yet again.  Lumet directs this like a pro, this is just a pro fucking movie.  And for me, it’s all about the ambiguous nature of life.  Even good things aren’t that great, people will disappoint and you just gotta keep on trucking.  Give it a shot. 

Rating: 8.5/10

Da Sweet Blood Of Jesus (June 4th, 2015)
Director: Spike Lee
Starring: Stephen Tyrone Williams, Zaraah Abrahams, Rami Nalek, and Elvis Nolasco

I like Spike Lee.  I do.  He’s hit and miss like a motherfucker, capable of dropping a masterpiece or a shitheeled joke with ease.  He’s dropped more bombs in recent years with three consecutive movies in a row. But that’s following Inside Man, a genuinely amazing movie that is firmly in his top 5.  But he always tries.  Which makes this movie really odd, because it feels like he didn’t.  He essentially just took the script from a 70s blaxploitation flick and put a little new touches on it and just filmed it.  The acting is really bad, and not in a good way like Black Dynamite did.  It’s just bad and wooden and not interesting to watch.  But mainly, it’s just really ugly looking.  It is so cheaply made, you can tell just by watching it.  Visually, it looks like a college student film with a slightly bigger budget that the rest.  But thats the problem when you crowdfund something, like Spike did here.  He used all his money and apparently it wasn’t enough.  And it could have been a good movie.  It’s a vampire movie, but not really.  The rules aren’t particularly well explained, but it’s all about addiction with vampiric blood sucking as the drug of choice.  It could have been cool, but Spike just whiffs it big time here. Gotta give him some credit though.  It takes big balls to make a remake after just getting shit on for making a remake.

Rating: 4/10

Oldboy (June 5th, 2015)
Director: Park Chan-Wook
Starring: Min-sik Choi, Gang Hye-Jeong, Yoo Ji-tae, and Chi Dae-han

And speaking of Spike, it was time to see the original movie of the first movie he remade.  And long story short, it’s a great fucking movie.  It’s got it’s problems but nothing being too killer.  I speak about the movie and the remake at length more on my podcast here, so give that a listen.  The movie is nasty, surprising, and immensely Asian.  It’s directed with a masters touch and just works.  I can see how it wouldn’t land with everyone because it’s an aggressively violent and sexual and weird flick.  Despite that, I give it a high recommendation.  I don’t wanna spoil too much, as seeing it fresh with no ideas beforehand is a great way to see it.

Rating: 9/10







Top Movies

1. Oldboy
2. The Verdict
3. Da Sweet Blood of Jesus

- Tom Lorenzo