Movies Watched The Week of 7/26 - 8/1

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the blog I obsessively do upkeep for.  This was a pickup from last week, as I do one more than last week but also do a better selection overall.  This was a great week for my movie watching and I hope some of you decide to see some of the not as recent ones.  Give it a read and pick some shit up.  Or go to the movies as I saw a new release.  Do it up.

Magic Mike (July 26th, 2015)

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Starring: Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Matthew McConnaughey, and Cody Horn

Plenty of guys didn’t give this movie the time of day because it features chiseled men dancing with plenty of skin a bare.  So yeah, not on many a guys radar because it seemed like chick porn.  And to an extent it is, because it gives females something to look at for a change.  But it’s really a movie that could be set anywhere and be unremarkable without the skin baring antics of it’s stars.  What the movie is is a pretty regular movie about a guy unhappy with his work life who has higher aspirations and a young upshot coming into this world and succumbing to the temptations.  Tatum plays the titular character of Mike, the dreamer who is realizing he has outgrown the lifestyle of male stripper he has been leading. The nights of bro time with all the drinking and banging and fun that that entails.  Alex Pettyfer is the young gun that has a horrible self destructive streak.  Tatum is great in the role, one of the earliest signs of the talent the resided inside of him that wasn’t just about dancing, although he does dance quite a bit.  Pettyfer is a bland piece of nothing, another in a long line of boring nobodies that Hollywood tried to make a thing.  He is lacking in any sort of screen presence, sucking the life out of a cast that is for the most part pretty fun to watch.  The only other weak link is Horn, who plays his sister.  She just doesn’t feel at ease in this movie.  But the rest of the cast is great in the smaller screen time they are afforded compared to Tatum and Pettyfer.  The scene stealer is, of course, McConnaughey.  Early on in the rise of the McConnaisance, he is electric.  Here he is in his sleazy salesmen mode.  Always on and always looking out for himself.  Throughout he goes through funny, slimy, angry and menacing without betraying the character.  Another knockout performance from the guy. Like the Oceans movies from Soderbergh, this is a movie that the main pleasure is seeing the cast just have fun hanging out.  Although the movie can be a bit too serious and kind of dour.  And the narrative is nothing special, like I said a redo of many other movies.  It’s fine and has it’s charms, but it doesn’t really blow the doors down.  Doesn’t reach the highs of two of the Oceans flicks, but if you can get over some latent homophobia you might have, it’s a fun little movie for the most part.  

Rating: 8/10

Get Carter (July 27th, 2015)
Director: Mike Hodges
Starring: Michael Caine, Ian Hendry, John Osborne, and Britt Ekland

Apparently Michael Caine was young at some point, not some eternally consistent grandfatherly figure in the world.  And not only that, dude was a a bad motherfucker in his day.  Case in point, this movie.  A pretty great little crime flick that stands as a shining achievement in the British film library.  And it is something to be proud of.  It’s a nice, grimy little crime flick that is uncompromising in it’s nastiness.  This doesn’t glorify these dudes at all.  It really shows that these guys are low lives and have no honor at all, just getting down to their basest motives and don’t give a fuck who gets in the way.  Caine plays Jack Carter, a criminal who comes back to his old town to find out what happened to his now deceased brother.  What follows could be a typical revenge thriller, but it gets its hook into something meatier and more emotional.  I won’t say why, but the reasoning behind the brothers death is a lot more interesting than one would assume.  And nastier too, with the underworld just being unflatteringly ugly.  Caine is amazing in the role, an absolute model of cool until he starts to explode and it isn’t pretty.  There’s a monster in there and he isn’t afraid to come out and play.  The rest of the supporting cast is good too.  They don’t get the time that Caine does to really chew on some meat, but they all fill the world out with these shitty little characters.  Being that it was 1972 and they were essentially coming up with this stuff, that this was all new ground being tread, it has some rough spots technically.  Could have used some minor snipping in the editing room, just little stuff to up the pace.  The audio isn’t great either, coming up a little too hard to hear.  And while it was a problem in the beginning, the way they don’t reveal much until the movie starts to come to the end can make it a bit hard to follow.  We are thrown into this situation and are forced to sink or swim, which makes the ending that much more rewarding.  And the ending is a bleak ending, one that doesn’t make things clean.  Honestly, this is a great movie and one that I’m sure will grow in my esteem as time goes on. 

Rating: 9/10

Justice League: Gods and Monsters (July 28th, 2015)
Director: Sam Liu

Starring: Benjamin Bratt, Michael C Hall, and Tamara Taylor

I’ve liked everything DC animated has done, but nothing has been able to top The Flashpoint Paradox since it’s release.  But the time has seemingly come for a release to, at the very least, challenge that flick as the best thing they’ve done.  Gods and Monsters is a fantastic movie from them, doing some really ballsy things with their animated line.  Much like Flashpoint, this is an elseworlds title.  We are in a world with some vast differences than the normal DC world, but within those differences we get something familiar.  We get alt versions of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman.  And when I say alt, the differences are staggering.  Superman is Zods son, Batman is a vampire, and Wonder Woman is from a parallel dimension.  They’re still the Justice League, but they are much harsher than we’d expect the League to be.  But when a group of scientists are being killed and all signs point to them, they are forced to confront their acts and prove themselves.  The movie is genius. It’s written with expert care, the visuals are stunning and the action hits hard.  It’s also violent as hell, not a surprise anymore with DC animated, but this is a new high mark for violence from them. The cast is great too, with Hall being the standout as Batman. If you’re a fan of comics, this is a must see.  

Rating: 9.5/10

Mission Impossible: Rouge Nation (July 31st, 2015)
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Starring: Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, and Jeremy Renner

The Mission Impossible series has become very similar to the Fast and Furious franchise.  Started out pretty well, churned out a 2nd one that was abysmal and then turned it around to become a big and purely fun franchise.  But unlike the Fast series, this ones strength is in its lack of identity.  Each entry has been helmed by a different director and bears their markings, feeling different from one another without any real concern about continuity or world building.  These movies are really built around setpieces and nothing more.  Which is perfect for Tom Cruise, because Ethan Hunt can never be recast because Ethan Hunt is so bland a character that he is basically just Tom Cruise.  No character development, no traits.  He’s just bland hero man, so these directors have to make the world around him much more interesting to really work.  Thats why MI2 was garbage, because John Woo just made a movie about Ethan Hunt and didn’t realize he is a bore.  Brian DePalma succeeded because he made an old school thriller that upended the original series to make a point.  And the post MI2 movies have all been rousing success because they turned the focus back to the tv show mentality of being about a team with Ethan being the leader/least interesting one there.  And from there, they infused energy and fun into the romp with some great set pieces.  Which brings us to 5, the follow up the widely considered high point in 4 (I think 3 is better).  This time it’s being helmed by Cruise’s constant collaborator, Jack Reacher director Christopher McQuarrie.  Unlike 4, there is a plot this time that goes beyond bland villain man has a bomb and will use the bomb because he’s bad.  Ethan Hunt now has his own version of SPECTRE, and he is out to get them.  Only this time, he is disavowed and has to do it without government help.  Ok, that sounds like all of the movies at this point.  But it actually plays into the story this time, where it kind didn’t before.  So he is actually going after bad guys who legitimately pose a threat to him and the story is much more interesting and tense for it.  And the most interesting person in the story this time? Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust, someone working for this rogue nation that isn’t what she appears to be.  And the whole time, we don’t know what side she lands on, and it’s more than just good guys or bad guys side.  She is being pulled from multiple angles and it makes her that much more interesting, which is aided by her being a great performer and a real physical presence.  But we also get the return of Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Jeremy Renner.  All do good work and help round out the squad. But for my money, the real star here is McQuarrie.  He directs and writes the hell out of this thing.  The writing is smart and sharp, perfectly playing with the franchise’s patterns and history.  But his direction is on point, taking the set pieces he wrote for himself and knocking them right the fuck out of the park.  Based off his prior directing experiences (Way of The Gun and Jack Reacher), he is a man who knows how to direct action and direct action with an old school, no frills CGI minimal style.  From the opening cold open with the plane, to the Opera fight scene to the car to motorcycle chase sequence, the man just knocks it out.  He tones it down a tad after Brad Bird, but goes bigger than the other 3 MI directors.  I hope this movie blows up big so he can continue his directing work.  As an Oscar winning writer (The Usual Suspects), he’d been working that angle for 2 decades.  But after a bomb with Way of the Gun, it took him about a decade to make Jack Reacher.  And that didn’t hit big, so his directing work was in limbo again.  But thankfully, Tom Cruise loves the man and for good damn reason.  This was a fantastic action flick in a year with fantastic action flicks.  If it wasn’t for Kingsman or Mad Max Fury Road, this woulda been a hell of a top action flick for the year.  But luckily for us, it’s only third.   A must see, and I’m interested to see who they go after for the next go around.  Because McQuarrie is a hell of a man to follow.

Rating: 9.5/10

Ran (August 1st, 2015)

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Starring: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, and Daisuke Ryu

Akira Kurosawa is just a master.  It’s undeniable.  From the beginning to the end of his long and illustrious career, he was an unreal cinematic master.  Telling classic stories and showing off an amazing eye, he managed to work from the black and white early days to the auteur driven days of the 70s/80s, he managed to keep the magic going.  And this late in his career epic may very well be the crowning achievement in his oeuvre, next to Seven Samurai that is.  He took the King Lear story by William Shakespeare and moved it to the feudal Samurai era.  So it would seem like it’s cheating to say that the story is great, because it comes from the master.  But that he perfectly transferred it to this setting is something to applaud.  I won’t lather too much praise on the visuals because that’s redundant at this point with him, but they are perfect and painterly.  The acting is great and pacing is perfect.  He manages to balance a theatrical filmic style with a highly cinematic style.  And he just chews on the themes of the piece, of really allowing the idea of the destructive nature of violence to permeate the piece.  It’s not a narrow view of violence either.  We see how the violence can pollute a soul and affect innocents around these people.  The movie is powerful and packs a massive punch, more than almost anything he’s ever done.  And that’s saying something, because he has made some amazing movies.  I really think this might be my favorite, even if I think Seven Samurai is better. This is a monumental achievement.

Rating: 10/10








Top Movies

1. Ran
2. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
3. Justice League: Gods and Monsters
4. Get Carter
5. Magic Mike

- Tom Lorenzo