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