Movies Watched The Week of 7/5 - 7/11

Hello ladies and jerks, we are back at the game and holy shit was it a busy week.  This feels like the first week since my departure from my other website writing gig that I’ve used the time to watch some flicks.  And they run the gamut of cinema.  Got some toons, art house flicks, horror, crime and indie.  And the gamut is run through in terms of quality too.  Luckily nothing was too bad, or bad at all.  Everything has something worth while in it.  So give it a go, reading what a ridiculous week I had in movie watching.

Wings of Desire (July 5th, 2015)

Director: Wim Wenders

Starring: Bruno Ganz, Otto Sander, Solveig Dommartin, and Peter Falk

I was a big fan of Paris, Texas.  It was the first Wenders movie I’d seen and got me stoked to see some other work from the man.  So it’s a bit disappointing that this movie didn’t do it for me.  It’s not awful by any stretch.  And hell, the last act of the movie had me nice and hooked.  But the first 2/3rds of the movie didn’t do it for me, feeling way too drawn out.  It was making a point and made it earlier than it seemed to realize.  We follow an angel played by Ganz as he watches over humanity and sees that while it seems like they are miserable and always fretting, he realizes he is missing a whole lot because he can’t feel anything.  His life is one of observations, not of action.  This comes to his mind when he falls for an acrobat at a circus.  And that story is something I could really dig on, especially that he films all the angel pov stuff in black and white, and the human pov stuff in color.  But it spends way too much time watching humanity and musing on life, that it just didn’t do it for me as a whole.  I can see why many would dig it though, so if an artful musing on life is something in your wheelhouse, give it a go.  If not, Wenders has at least one movie on his list that’s better than this.

Rating: 7/10

Green Lantern: First Flight (July 6th, 2015)
Director: Lauren Montgomery
Starring: Christopher Meloni, Victor Garber, Michael Madsen, and Olivia D'Abo

While not a bad movie by any stretch, this is the lowest point for the DC Animated movies.  Which is saying something, because the weakest aspect of this movie is that it is far too short.  The Green Lantern mythos is vast and filled with crazy ideas, imagery and rules that could have filled a much longer movie.  But being an earlier in the run animated movie, this is short and to the point.  It’s like a cliff notes version of the Corps.  This is not the definitive version, so don’t get your hopes up too much.  It also streamlines.simplifies the color spectrum that makes up the rings, lessening the scale of the Sinestro Corps War that this is essentially an adaptation of.  But despite the simplification of the material, it still makes for an energetic and fun comic book flick.  The cast is all solid.  The DC movies would get better talent for the roles, so this feels more like a first draft for the cast but they’re still pretty good.  For me, I liked the story because it felt like the DC version of Training Day, with Hal being the Ethan Hawke role and Sinestro being the Denzel role.  So that’s cool for me.  But like I said earlier, it’s too short and coulda used some pacing work with the story.  It lacks the impact it could have had.  But in the end, it works well enough.

Rating: 8/10

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (July 7th, 2015)
Director: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
Starring: Addison Timlin, Travis Tope, Spencer Treat Clark, and Gary Cole

If you’ve seen Scream or just have an interest in horror movies, you’ve heard of the original movie with this title.  The title itself is just great, a totally evocative name for a horror flick.  And while the movie itself isn’t a masterpiece, it’s a solid and unique little movie.  So when the news of a remake came along, it was met with a bit of a shrug.  Now having come out, the most surprising thing is that it isn’t a remake.  This movie feels less like Psycho and more like a more meta version of Scream.  In this movie, The Town That Dreaded Sundown is a movie that exists, but is based on fact.  The town of Texarkana is sort of haunted by the killings and the movie, but celebrates it too.  But when a copycat starts to wreak havoc, it’s up to the two police departments and a victim to figure out the decades long horror show.  Right off the bat, the main difference between the two movies is that this one is more in the slasher genre, with a final girl and all.  The procedural elements are less focused on, despite a more detailed look at the ideas of two departments being involved.  Despite the appearance of Gary Cole, Denis O’Hare and Veronica Cartwright, this isn’t as filled with character actors.  It’s slicker than the original, which sets it apart.  Both are also fiendishly clever, with this one more outwardly clever.  It plays upon the original while forging it’s own path.  Rejon shows a real visual flair that works within the story, not overwhelming it.  The kills are nice and brutal, with one taken right from the original, so it’s silliness is inherent to it’s quasi remake status.  I’d say it falls apart a little bit with the reveal, as it’s kinda too easy and quick.  But even within that, there’s some nice ambiguity to it and a fun little kill in it.  It’s not as ambiguous as the original, where the killer was never caught.  But it’s still there.  The main weakness in this is the teen story, of a girl with some trauma being forced into this story to overcome her past.  It’s a less successful version of the Sidney arc in Scream.  Really, this whole thing screams of, erm, Scream.  For me, this is a cool little flick that’s a nice update of a slasher movie, different than the majority of those remakes from years back (minus the Friday The 13th remake, which too wasn’t a remake).  This is more for horror fans, as it doesn’t elevate the genre and plays within it’s genre.  It’s fun and interesting, so that’s good enough for me in this horror landscape. 

Rating: 8/10

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (July 8th, 2015)
Director: Peter Yates
Starring: Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan, and Steven Keats

Oh man, you gotta love 70s crime flicks.  They are just so dirty and real man, feeling lived in and dangerous.  Based off the highly esteemed crime novel by George Higgins (touted by Elmore Leonard as the best crime book ever), the movie is just as great as the book.  Mitchum is the titular character, a small time hood that does grunt work for the Irish mob.  Having recently been busted for a stolen goods beef, he is set to be sentenced for a few years soon.  So he has to look around at the other low level hoods he hangs with to see who is juicy enough to give up to the law for his freedom.  What sets this movie apart from other crime flicks is that it is not sexy at all and really does focus on low level guys just struggling to get by.  A lot of talk of guys feeling each other out and trying to get by.  Mitchum is a real schlub, not a movie star performance at all.  You can see the weariness in his shoulders, the desperation in his eyes.  There’s only two acts of violence in the movie really, and they are quick and to the point.  The dialogue is great, like a more realistic Leonard prose.  These aren’t super smart guys and they don’t really quip.  But there’s a poetry to the mediocrity of these guys lives.  Visually, you can see the grit and grime of Boston, feel the seediness on your skin.  This is just a great flick, an undervalued crime flick from the 70s that has gone on to inspire many a crime writer.  An absolute masterpiece. 

Rating: 10/10

Maggie (July 9th, 2015)
Director: Henry Hobson
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenneger, Abigail Breslin, Joely Richardson, and Doug Griffin

So, Arnold Schwarzenneger is a hell of an actor.  Who woulda ever thought this would be a statement that would be something not full of shit or ironical snarky bullshit? But it’s true.  This isn’t some Daniel Day-Lewis type acting.  It’s still Arnold, he hasn’t transformed completely.  But this is something totally different from the man.  He isn’t putting on a badass persona.  This isn’t a sexy role, something with iconic poses and quippy one liners.  It isn’t even particularly violent.  Here, Arnold is playing an old man with a sadness overwhelming him at the tragedy about to befall him.  His daughter has been infected and has only two weeks to live.  He watches her slowly rot away and lose herself, physically and emotionally.  The pain is palpable. Now, this may sound like an AIDS movie or some type of cancer flick.  Nope.  It’s a zombie movie.  The girl is infected with the zombie virus.  In this world, it takes a few weeks to kick in.  And Arnold has two weeks to spend with her, and decide what to do.  Let the government handle her disposal or handle it himself.  It’s a really melancholy movie.  This isn’t a Romero movie or something unashamedly ripping off the mans world (ahemWalkingDeadahem).  This one isn’t about a social issue like Romeros movies, or just a simple everything is miserable bent like Walking Dead.  This is a down on the street level view of the horrors of watching someone you love wither and die, showing a human scale look at the plague.  Arnold is, again, great as the father.  And Abigail Breslin is great as the daughter, going through the process of accepting her eventual demise.  It’s really about them, and they knock it out the park.  Now, this is sadly not as good as it could have been.  It’s a little too typically indie, slow and not really filled with enough events to feel like a full movie.  So it doesn’t really hit the emotional highs that it could have.  The technical merits are good, successfully conveying the bleak and melancholic tone it aims for.  It’s a very grey movie, but it works.  The shots are gorgeous and it really helps out.  It’s just the script doesn’t work enough.  It’s really a shame, because this is an amazing feat for Arnold.  This should have been how he played the role in Total Recall, a normal schlub (despite his Austrian superhero physique and accent).  But much like Sabotage, this is a great performance in a less successful movie.  But because of that, this should be seen by any of his fans and even for those not too keen on the man.  It’s a hell of a role, and makes me really interested to see what he could do in the proposed King Conan movie.  And honestly, I’d love to see him in a movie with a legit talented director, like Joe Carnahan or Dennis Villeneuve. 

Rating: 7/10










Top Movies

1. The Friends of Eddie Coyle
2. The Town That Dreaded Sundown
3. Green Lantern: First Flight
4. Wings of Desire
5. Maggie

- Tom Lorenzo

Movies Watched June 28th - July 4th

Welcome back ladies and germs, to the week of the Independence of my country.  So I managed to get some real good movies in this week, using the more ample time I had.  And it was a real good week, with nothing being even close to bad.  Another wide variety, so give it a look at the nonsense I’ve been doing this week on this Sunday after a holiday. 

Apollo 13 (June 28th, 2015)

Director: Ron Howard

Starring: Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, and Ed Harris

It’s kinda rare to see a Ron Howard movie that’s good from top to bottom.  He’s not a bad director by any stretch, but he can whiff a movie big time when he doesn’t really get the themes of the movie.  And he can be a little to upbeat, not really getting dirty with his flicks.  He’s got an old school sensibility like that.  And even movies that you can really like from him have some real problems.  Like Cinderella Man, which is a great boxing movie in a familiar form that was based on a great true story that was anything but familiar with an antagonist that Howard turned into a mustache twirling villain who was actually a conflicted man with a conscience.  A Beautiful Mind completely white washes the true story of the man at the center of the story.  And don’t even bring up the abortion that is How The Grinch Stole Christmas.  So it’s nice to see that this flick here was not only really good, but a movie that actually felt like a step forward for the medium in some ways.  Just in terms of visual effects, it was a leap.  But this was another in a line of movies that cemented Tom Hanks as an icon, one of the best in the game.  But it’s a surprise from Howard, for me at least, was that the movie feels right from the jump, meshing within the story being told.  This is a movie about men doing incredible things, coming together to solve a problem using their brains and not succumbing to negativity.  It feels like a precursor to what is gonna come in The Martian.  Only this is a true story. And while I’m sure some details were fudged and changed around to fit the narrative, nothing was so altered to make it a completely different tale.  The cast is great, with many of familiar faces doing good work.  Like Bacon, Paxton and Harris.  They’re all great and make you feel the pressure and the need to fall into despair.  These are men who came up in the early days of NASA, filled with hope and desire to get to the stars.  So the movie itself is one of optimism, even in the face of insurmountable odds.  It can get tense but it’s never unrelenting.  The only real problem I have with the movie is that it feels a tad too long, and is a little too white bread.  But that last bit is a just a personal thing.  This is a damn good movie and is definitely one that should be seen by all.  

Rating: 9/10

Dom Hemingway (July 1st, 2015)
Director: Richard Shepard
Starring: Jude Law, Richard E. Grant, Demian Bichir, and Emilia Clarke

Jude Law is like the British Colin Farrell.  He’s a guy who is a very capable actor, who can swing from comedy to drama with ease and is able to imbue some real scummy characters with humanity.  And also like Farrell, he is almost incapable of doing good work as an action hero.  He’s a character guy and does better work outside the Hollywood system.  So it’s no surprise to see that he did great work in an indie crime flick from the UK.  What’s surprising is how utterly unrecognizable he is, from the physicality to the voice to even the insanity in his eyes.  He is totally immersive as Don, a wild animal of a man who has no impulse control and is a wreck of a man.  Drinking and fucking and fighting with no sense of the consequences, this could have easily been a role that the idiots of the world could cling to as a badass hero.  But the movie isn’t really a comedy like the marketing showed, nor is it a feel good coming back together drama.  This is a movie about a man hitting rock bottom and coming to the realization that everything he’s wanted and done has been wrong.  The movie ends on that note.  We don’t get the Hollywood version, where you feel like he’s gonna be a saint from now on.  He robs a woman as the credits roll.  But what we get is that he even gets to the point of wanting to change, and that’s good enough.  The story in and of itself isn’t groundbreaking, filled with stuff we’d seen before.  And there’s a role from Kerry Condon that is just absolute nonsense, movie bullshit of a character that feels like she’s out of a different movie, only there to tell Dom the themes of the movie.  What sells the movie though is Law, who is outstanding.  Nothing he does feels false, making this guy terrifying and pathetic at the same time.  I’m sure plenty of people could watch this and not know it was him.  And that is the best compliment one could give to an actor. 

Rating: 8/10

Ratatouille (July 2nd, 2015)
Director: Brad Bird
Starring: Patton Oswalt, Ian Holm, Lou Romano, and Peter O'Toole

Even minor Pixar is usually worth a view.  That is, as long as it doesn’t have talking asshole cars in them.  This flick isn’t the best thing in the Pixar oeuvre by a mile, but it is amazingly watchable.  You can tell it’s a Brad Bird movie, just by the way it looks and the way the humor is delivered.  Even the narrative is typical Bird, in a good way (not like Tomorrowland).  Oswalt is ok as the rat who is a masterful chef.  He isn’t bad but doesn’t hit the highs of some of the other Pixar leads.  Holm does great work though as the primary antagonist, a fellow chef with a desire only to make money.  Romano is pretty great as Linguini, the doofus that Oswalt uses to make food.  But for me, the star is O’Toole.  He plays a food critic in the typical movie vein, as a miserable prick who loves to shit on anyone who makes things.  But O’Toole makes the guy live, and he delights at every nasty little thing the man says and it is delightful.  The main problem with the flick is it doesn’t have the energy to the story that other stuff they’ve done has, feeling a little too long and typical with the story.  But it’s funny and charming and has enough to make it a hell of a movie.  Just in comparison to other stuff, it’s a step down. 

Rating: 9/10

Spring (July 4th, 2015)
Directors: Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson
Starring: Lou Taylor Pucci and Nadia Hilker

I’m a big cinephile, and I usually know a good deal about a movie even if I hadn’t seen it yet.  Not spoilery things, but a general idea of what I’d be getting into if/when I sat down to watch it.  So it’s nice to see a movie that I’m not too knowledgable about and to see it surprise me on a level more than just the initial viewing sheen.  This movie here is one of those movies.  I won’t say too much about it because this really is something that should be seen to experience the originality with pretty fresh eyes.  I’ll just say that it’s like Before Sunset, mixed with a monster movie.  It’s really just two people talking and falling in love, with some genre elements to it.  It’s a pretty movie, shooting Italy real well with a minimal budget.  The two characters are perfectly cast and are charming, with a script that allows them to portray characters we can actually like and care about what happens to them.  It’s a really good movie, sweet and kinda scary.  Wholly original and really makes the clowns that decry the state of cinema look like real assholes.

Rating: 9/10





Top Movie

1. Spring
2. Ratatouille
3. Apollo 13
4. Dom Hemingway

- Tom Lorenzo

Movies Watched The Week of 6/21 - 6/27

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, I am Free at Last! It is official.  My time writing for another website is over, and I can now focus on this bastard for you guys.  And in the first week outside of that prison term, I can bring you a review of a brand spanking new movie in theaters.  And it’s a solid week.  Only one real movie that could be considered bad but has enough to work with to not be a total waste.  So, I’m glad to be back and hope you guys are ready.  Let’s get this shit started.  Enjoy.

Immortals (June 21st, 2015)

Director: Tarsem Singh

Starring: Henry Cavill, Mickey Rourke, Freida Pinto, and Luke Evans

Zack Snyder must feel pretty good about himself.  Sure, neckbeards sweating over their keyboards hate the man for being able to bring breathtaking visuals to the screen with ease with a story they may not find up to snuff.  And sure, he hasn’t hit the zeitgeist since he made 300.  But excluding movies using the slow mo ramping he’s made a signature for himself, but there’s been two movies specifically trying to apes his style to such an egregious length that you really see how tactful and smart he really is.  And they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The first was 300: Rise of An Empire and you can feel his touch missed with somebody trying to do a Snyder impression, to a lesser degree.  Then there’s Immortals, a movie that is narratively hodgepodge of 300 and God of War that is blatantly using Snyders style. But unlike 300: Rise of An Empire, this movie has no reason to look like 300 despite being a blatant cash grab trying to, like Rise of An Empire, latch onto a popular movie way past it’s interest date.  Also unlike the other knockoff, this one is kinda sedate and boring.  Rise of An Empire is a galloping, nut job fucking movie that whips from insanity to insanity.  Immortals though, is rote and unoriginal with only the few instances of violence saving this from being a complete snorefest.  The cast is also not really up to the task of making this sing, playing it down instead of going big like this story calls for.  Rourke looks bored and doesn’t  really sell the anger in the role.  Cavill tries his best but doesn’t have the writing or the directing to make this character someone to care about.  And the gods barely even register since they barely exist in the movie.  But it is in those violent moments that I wasn’t totally disappointed in this movie.  It is so over the top violent and is shot well enough to make it worthwhile.  Cause while the in between shit isn’t high class, it’s not aggressively bad to bring the rest down.  It’s a meh package with some great bloodletting.  If that sounds good enough for you, cool.  Otherwise, I can’t really recommend this. 

Rating: 7/10

Two-Lane Blacktop (June 23rd, 2015)
Director: Monte Hellman
Starring: James Taylor, Dennis Wilson, Laurie Bird, and Warren Oates

A week or so back, I reviewed a car movie by David Cronenberg that was so out of field by the man, a loose and fun little romp that is so totally against the stuffy and intellectual tone he goes for.  This movie here feels more like a movie about cars that Cronenberg would make.  It’s slow and more about a theme. Sometimes with Cronenberg that could be hard to watch, but here that isn’t a total problem.  It could have been, since the majority of the cast is not very good at acting.  Taylor and Wilson aren’t actors, so that’s expected.  But it doesn’t really hurt the movie, since it plays into the movies ideas.  It’s gotta be said though, like I said last week, thank God for Warren Oates. He’s the only one here acting, and acting well.  What he’s doing is also within the ideas of the film, but he has to play that role.  Wilson and Taylor are supposed to be blanks, a statement on that bullshit hippie movement where they don’t have any goals and just do whatever.  Oates is of the older generation, apparently full of bluster and full of shit.  It’s not a movie that says one side is better than the other, just that everything is bullshit.  The movie looks great, a good visual showpiece of the roads of America.  The car stuff is good and fun.  It’s a really singular movie, pretty much unlike anything else out there.    I can see why it tanked completely and ruined Hellmans career.  But I’m glad that it’s gained popularity over time, championed by filmmakers and critics alike as a lost gem. 

Rating: 8/10

A Bug's Life (June 27th, 2015)
Director: John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton
Starring: Dave Foley, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Phyllis Diller, and Kevin Spacey

Pixar had, for the longest time, the reputation of putting out classic after classic.  But that isn’t completely true.  Not that there was a legitimately bad movie until Cars 2.  But people like to forget that A Bug’s Life wasn’t the barnstorming classic that most Pixar movies are.  But I gotta say, A Bug’s Life isn’t bad at all.  It stands in stark contrast to the prior movie, Toy Story.  But this movie is really good and entertaining.  What separates this movie from the pack though is two fold.  One, the plot of the movie feels very Disney in that it just takes the plot of another story and transplants it onto a kids movie, in this case Seven Samurai.  But unlike Disney, it doesn’t really have that certain spark, that energy, to really make the narrative copying a strength.  Not that it isn’t funny or charming, but it’s missing that little something.  The second thing is that visually, it is not as attractive as Toy Story or any of their movies afterwards (minus Cars of course).  Not that the tech is bad, but the design of the world just isn’t as interesting as other stuff.  But the movie overcomes those flaws to be a really good animated film, filled with charm.  The voice cast is great, MVP being Spacey.  It’s really a simple flick, something that doesn’t have the pure heart as Toy Story, but has enough for the kids.  And like most Disney/Pixar movies, the bad guy is taken out in a horrifying way.  I’d say this is a solid recommendation with the clause that you shouldn’t expect high class Pixar.

Rating: 9/10

Ted 2 (June 27th, 2015)
Director: Seth MacFarlane
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Seth MacFarlane, Amanda Seyfried, and Jessica Barth

Seth MacFarlane is the comedic version of EA.  A big, successful brand that most hip assholes like to rip on for being popular.  Sure, some of the stuff they put out isn’t great.  But the hatred is ridiculous and can rear it’s ugly head at an undeserved moments.  A Million Ways To Die In The West wasn’t great, but the hate was overblown to an insane degree.  And now Ted 2 is getting that hatred.  I say to that, fuck that noise.  Ted 2 was really funny and had more energy to it than West.  It’s got Wahlberg playing his lovable Boston doofus role which is alway fun.  MacFarlane playing Ted, a still really great special effect and funny.  Barth is still great as the trashy Boston girl married to Ted.  Seyfried isn’t bad per se, but she really doesn’t play anything interesting.  She’s just the perfect creature, someone to smoke and curse with the guys because she’s a dream girl.  Giovani Ribisi shows up again, but isn’t as fun this time (minus a perfect gag at the end).  Morgan Freeman shows up for a paycheck.  The movie gets way more plot heavy than the last 2 MacFarlane movies, trying to get into some social issues.  That doesn’t work too great, as it tries to be serious but goofy at the same time and doesn’t really stick the landing.  Anything regarding the “plot” isn’t great, where most of the non plot stuff is hilarious.  There are two gags that stuck in my mind that are ingenious.  Now, if you didn’t like the first one this isn’t gonna change things for you.  You’ll either dislike it or smugly stand above it like a smug douchelord.  But if you dig Ted, this is gonna be a hell of a time.  

Rating: 8.5/10







Top Movies

1. A Bug's Life
2. Ted 2
3. Two Lane Blacktop
4. Immortals

- Tom Lorenzo

Movies Watched The Week of 6/14 - 6/20

Welcome back gang.  I managed to get a decent amount in this week, and one of the movies I had to cover at the other site.  Speaking of which I’m almost done with, thank Christ.  But luckily the choices this week weren’t awful.  Some forgettable stuff in there, but all of them interesting in various ways.  So give it a look and open your mind man. 

Lucy (June 14th, 2015)

Director: Luc Besson

Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Min-Sik Choi, and Amr Waked

It’s nice to see Scarlett get the chance to kick some butt in a movie on her own, with the Marvel name brand or some A List boy toys propping the movie up.  But the sad thing is to see it in a movie that doesn’t really work all that much.  It’s got a nice visual style and is fast paced as all hell, never letting up when it hits the pedal.  The pace is part of the problem though. Sure, it makes it easy enough to swallow, but it makes it really hard to connect to the movie at all.  You don’t really know who Lucy is as a person, just that shes a college student who parties.  Real specific characterization.  And then she pretty quickly gets transformed by this magic drug and she just becomes a machine.  No emotions and does everything right and is God essentially. She becomes God and there’s no drama in the movie.  At all.  Forget the silly science and philosophical mumbo jumbo. It’s stupid, sure, but it fits in the world of the movie and the logic is consistent.  But by turning her into this all powerful, magical being that just faces no problems makes the movie inert in face of it’s breakneck pace. If they even powered her down for a chunk of the movie, it could have worked.  But she starts overpowered and just gets more powers. The movie is crippled from the go, but it serves as a decent enough distraction for one viewing.  It’s in one ear and out the other.  Scarlett is fine but doesn’t really have much to pay.  Freeman is there for a paycheck and manages to make the mumbo jumbo he’s only there to spout come out easily enough.  Can’t really recommend it, but I’m not irritated I saw it. 

Rating: 7/10

Fast Company (June 17th, 2015)
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: William Smith, Nicholas Campbell, Claudia Jennings, and John Saxon

I haven’t seen every David Cronenberg movie but I think it’s safe to say that there is nothing like this in his entire filmography.  He’s a man that doesn’t make awards bait movies (usually), but he’s a man with more on his mind and tries to infuse his movies with heady ideas and themes, usually of the body horror variety.  But there is nothing on this movies brain at all.  All this movie wants is to be a silly, thrilling time with some goofy rednecks driving some fast cars.  Yeah, Cronenberg made a movie in the same vein of Smokey and The Bandit.  This is a straight up grindhouse flick, a B movie straight from an iconic horror auteur just having a little fun.  What’s even crazier is that this came out the same year as his iconic horror movie The Brood.  Now, this isn’t the greatest movie in the genre.  It has a light enough tone and is fun, but it doesn’t have the same exact thrills that other car flicks have.  But you can tell a high class director worked on this because there are some of the shots in the movie are great, some real unique shots of fast cars doing their thing.  I’d suggest this mainly because anyone interested in cinema history or David Cronenberg should take a look at the most out of left field entry in the mans history. 

Rating: 7/10

The Ninth Configuration (June 19th, 2015)
Director: William Peter Blatty
Starring: Stacy Keach, Scott Wilson, Ed Flanders, and Jason Miller

This is a nice little gem, a movie that could have disappeared into the sands of time if genre fans didn’t keep beating the drum for this flick, keeping it alive long enough for it to make it’s way to blu ray, readily available for consumption.  This is a very odd, singular movie.  It’s really hard to classify what this is, since it is a hodgepodge of many different things.  But what it mainly boils down to is a movie about two men debating about faith.  It does it in the guise of a mental health movie, about men dealing with the fallout of Vietnam.  Stacy Keach plays an army therapist who is brought into an experimental mental health facility for members of the armed forces.  While there, he gets hung up on the case of Scott Wilson.  Wilson is an astronaut who was seconds away from launching to the moon when he had a breakdown and Keach wants to know why.  The movie plays as a bit of an oddball comedy until it builds to the crux of the movie, these two men.  There’s a lot more to the movie than that, some really cool surprises and a subtle hint at a less than grounded reality.  The first 3/4’s of the movie is decent enough, a nice little movie.  But by the end, the whole thing is torn asunder and you get a new appreciation for what had come before it.  I won’t say more, but to say that it is a nicely written conversation about faith that takes some dark turns but ends in a hopeful place.  The cast is great, Keach and Wilson in particular knocking it out of the park. They had to carry the flick and they really nailed it.  Some of the comedy doesn’t land and you can see that Blatty isn’t the greatest director in the world.  But it all comes together at the end to make a really good, surprisingly beautiful movie.  The fact that it has a really brutal bar fight scene is just icing on the cake.

Rating: 8.5/10

Stripes (June 20th, 2015)
Director: Ivan Reitman
Starring: Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Warren Oates, and John Candy

It’s kinda surprising that I haven’t seen this movie until now.  It’s got Bill Murray and Harold Ramis, who have been comedy icons of mine for a long time.  And as my movie fandom has been growing, I’ve become very fond of Warren Oates.  And all three of these men are in it as main focuses, so I was kinda destined to dig the movie.  And I did.  It’s not the greatest comedy in the world, but I dig it.  For one, it’s too long and runs out of steam by the end.  The mission to rescue the men is just a dead end essentially, padding this thing out way too much.  Also it isn’t really a movie, mainly a bunch of scenes strung together, which doesn’t help the flow of the thing.  In terms of the bare bones slobs vs snobs narrative in there that was a trademark of the Reitman camp at the time, it doesn’t really work.  That’s due to the fact that Murray is an absolutely repugnant asshole, a selfish scumbag who doesn’t care about anyone and puts those around him in mortal danger constantly.  His action could be generously described as treasonous and Oates is totally in the right for hating on the smug prick.  So the slobs really don’t get the work they should for them to be the heroes of the piece.  Ramis comes off much better, despite a nonexistent reason for him to join the army with Murray.  While there, he has an attitude about it but isn’t gonna go AWOL or ruin it for the rest.  Murray is funny enough in the role but hasn’t settled completely into his schtick that he would perfect in Ghostbusters.  He can be a bit too broad at times.  The MVPs are Ramis and Oates.  Won’t even really mention anyone else, since they kinda barely exist, and the women only exist to fuck these silly assholes.  It’s a fun enough ride, with a decent amount of dry spots that haven’t either aged well or just weren’t funny in 1981 to begin with.  It’s a good history lesson to see the beginnings of some comedy legends. But mainly it's funny and that's all that matters.  

Rating: 8/10







Top Movies

1. The Ninth Configuration
2. Stripes
3. Fast Company
4. Lucy

- Tom Lorenzo

Movies Watched The Week of 6/7 - 6/13

Good morning ladies and jerks.  Welcome to the newest installment of my self indulgent piece of weekly work. It’s a solid week all around that jumps through genres.  Nothing reaches greatness but one comes close.  And I jump headlong into an important movie in the annals of cinema.  Take a look at the week and see if you agree or get interested in seeing the flicks.  Enjoy, jerks.  

Clear and Present Danger (June 7th, 2015)

Director: Phillip Noyce

Starring: Harrison Ford, Willem Dafoe, Joaquim De Almeida, and Henry Czerny

We got us here the second and final run Harrison Ford had as the Tom Clancy hero Jack Ryan.  And the second time is the charm for Ford, and third for the character as this is the best Jack Ryan movie there is.  Because while The Hunt For Red October had a bit of complexity in the story, this is the only one that throws Jack into a story where his ideas of right and wrong are thrown asunder and he has to do things he never thought he’d have to.  His faith in the system is shaken and it makes for a much more moral ambiguous story.  The story concerns a South American drug cartel and a hit they commit that accidentally gets the attention of the US President.  When the President decides to start a black ops war against the organization that did this, American lives are on the line and Jack Ryan is sucked into it as a potential patsy.  Now being a Tom Clancy story, it is a bit dry and kinda slow.  It may be a bit too long and too interested in the tedium of the bureaucracy of the CIA to be a beginning to end thrill ride.  But at a certain point, maybe 30 minutes in, the movie picks up the pace and the action starts to ramp up and the stakes start getting murkier and deadlier.  Ford is doing that Ford thing, playing a smart and kinda cranky man with a set of absolute ideals that won’t be corrupted.  Dafoe is a more honorable version of his slimy type performance.  Almedia is a drug dealer again and plays it with more intelligence than his usually roles call for.  This is a much more sedate version of an action movie but it has some real charm and bite to it’s story.  Much more than Shadow Recruit.

Rating: 8.5/10

Desperate Hours (June 8th, 2015)
Director: Michael Cimino
Starring: Mickey Rourke, Anthony Hopkins, Mimi Rogers, and Elias Koteas

Michael Cimino is a really sad case to behold.  He got his big break thanks to Clint Eastwood.  After co writing Magnum Force for Clint, Clint was so impressed that he bought a script from Cimino and allowed him to direct it.  That was Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, a movie that got Jeff Bridges an Oscar nom.  With his second movie, he blew the world away with the Vietnam epic The Deer Hunter, a movie that won 5 Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director.  After that, Cimino used his clout to bank roll a passion project that went over budget and was way too long.  That was Heavens Gate, the notorious bomb that killed United Artists and effectively killed his career.  It took him 5 years to get another movie going, and it was another bomb entitled Year of The Dragon.  After two massive art films, he was thrown into the B movie world, making some real crap to just work.  Then he did The Sicilian two years later, another bomb.  3 years later, he’d make this movie, Desperate Hours.  It’s based on an old play about a criminal holding a family hostage until his girlfriend can get to him.  It’s an ok movie.  It’s nothing really special and would fit right in at 2 am on TNT.  Not only is it sad to see Cimino slumming it with an apparent lack of any real skill anymore, coming off very amateurish compared to Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and The Deer Hunter.  It’s also sad to see Mickey Rourke in the beginning of the phase of his career that saw him not caring and just fucking around in genre trash.  The fact that he’s not trying and is still watchable is a testament to him.  The rest of the cast is ok, nothing special.  Hopkins did this the same year as the Silence of The Lambs, and it seems he spent all his energy there.  The cast does what they can with the movie, but it’s way too short to make an impression on anyone.  No one is fully fleshed out and are just faces in the crowd that fulfill a role.  It feels chopped up, evident in a real choppy editing job.  And the wrap up of the plot is kinda laughable, with a plan by Hopkins that is unbelievably absurd.  There’s some charm to it mainly thanks to the cast being as watchable as they are with a bad script and some lacking direction.  

Rating: 7/10

Drag Me To Hell (June 10th, 2015)
Director: Sam Raimi
Starring: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, David Paymer, and Dileep Rao

Sam Raimi hadn’t been in the horror game for a good long while, arguably since Army of Darkness or Evil Dead II.  After spending close to a decade making Spiderman movies to varying degrees of success, he needed a break from a monstrous movie by making a movie about monsters.  And it was a good idea, something most blockbuster directors should do to knock the cobwebs off.  It isn’t 100 percent successful, since he tries to make a movie with that mix of comedy and horror that Evil Dead II had.  But that was such a precarious tone to hold that it’s not too crazy to see he didn’t nail it perfectly again, especially almost 30 years later.  The premise is cool enough, with a woman with a good heart having to make a tough decision in her job coming back to bite her in the ass.  Lohman accidentally pisses off a gypsy woman who than curses her to hell.  Watching Lohman try to come to terms with this and fight for her survival is fun enough with some good scares and some good comedic bits.  But Raimi isn’t typically great with human drama, and the stuff away from Lohman isn’t great.  Long tries but can’t elevate the material.  It isn’t as perfect a ride as Evil Dead II, with some slow parts and some egregious CGI in it.  But the biggest problem with the movie is the ending, a twist that doesn’t feel completely earned and feels way too mean spirited to make it a satisfying ending to the story being told.  It just doesn’t fit and kinda sours the movie.  But the prior 99% works to make it watchable enough.  It’s a good reminder than Raimi can still do good, even after a shitshow like Oz: The Great and Powerful. 

Rating: 8/10

Heaven's Gate (June 13th, 2015)
Director: Michael Cimino
Starring: Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, Issabelle Huppert, and Jeff Bridges

Having now seen the movie, I can totally see why this movie was blasted by critics and abandoned by the film going audience.  It’s a supremely bloated, overlong self indulgent piece of work.  The pacing is horrible and the story he focuses on is not as good as the story he relegates to the background.  But despite the self indulgence on display, there is some really good stuff in the movie.  Stuff that could have flourished with a massive edit.  Chop out a good chunk of this movie and you’ve got a really solid historical drama.  Because the visuals are gorgeous and the majority of the cast is really good.  The only weak link in the cast is Walken because he just does not fit in in a western.  He has a modern presence that is at odds with his surroundings.  But Kristofferson is really good as the stoic lead trying to do the right thing for the people and Huppert is solid as the love interest.  The movie isn’t short though and the movie is hindered by two major elements.  One, an overlong prologue and epilogue that spends way too much time on pointless beats before and after the main story to give Kristofferson some backstory, but it’s all pointless cause we can get this shit through the story.  And secondly, instead of focusing on this really cool morally ambiguous war between the rich businessmen and the poor immigrants, it spends an ungodly amount of time on a somehow ill defined love triangle.  All this time and it still feels ill defined and uninteresting is the surest sign that it needed to be cut.  The time spent there could have been spent on informing the world of the immigrants and getting to know them better before the big fight.  But alas he didn’t and the movie feels imbalanced.  But as is, there is still alot of good when it focuses on the good stuff.  And the movie is surprisingly violent, with some Peckinpah levels of violence exploding out every now and then.  Those moments really help as it drags the movie back from floating too far up its own ass and down into something relatable.  I can’t rightly recommend this outright because it is way too long for most to watch and is not all good.  But for those interested in film history and/or with the time enough to watch the movie that helped end the auteur period in Hollywood, this isn’t as awful as its reputation would suggest.  

Rating: 8/10









Top Movies

1. Clear and Present Danger
2. Drag Me To Hell
3. Heaven's Gate
4. Desperate Hours

- Tom Lorenzo

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