Another interesting
scary movie from Spain. There’s not a lot that I have to say about it.
On a
production and direction level is all very well done, Spain is still a
guarantee of quality when you talk about scary movies.
Guillermo
del Toro produced this movie, another guarantee of quality. It’s not Hollywood
style, and level, of production, but this for many could actually be a bonus
point.
For the
story I have some reservations. It certainly works during the movie, a lot of ominous
situations are nicely set up without having to resort to that dreadful cliché of
the protagonist blindly, pun not intended, walking into obvious danger. Stuff happens,
thing move along nicely and we are fed a lot of info about the evil forces at
works. To sum it up, it’s very nice to follow.
The
problems starts when you get to the end, after the big final revelation, and
watching back it’s all so incredibly contrived, it must be the most picky and bizarre
evil force ever to grace my screen…
Conclusion:
A very competent thriller. It will not leave a very lasting impression
afterward but certainly works on every level. Recommended viewing.
A group of
samurai set out to kill a sadistic lord.
This is a
fairly peculiar movie. The first part is all preparations and drama, the second
part is entirely occupied by an extended battle scene.
The movie
is very Japanese so it can be off putting to people not used to eastern cinema.
The first
part is a throwback to those classics black and white samurai flicks that maybe
you glimpsed late at night. It’s fairly interesting material although it doesn’t
engage a lot a modern viewer, most probably alien to the web of traditions that
directed those people lives.
This is a
Japan set movie from Japan by a Japanese author, Takashi Miike, so don’t expect
any explanatory aside, or too much comic asides by the way. These samurais are
very serious people and they don’t smile a lot.
The second
bit is an incredibly lengthy battle sequence, I wasn’t joking when I said it is
practically the whole second half of the movie. It’s all very well set, crafted
and choreographed.
Probably I’m
a true believer but I had no problem with such a lengthy battle, I actually
enjoyed it quite a lot. It’s strange but the very length of the battle lends
gravitas to it. It means that it is not a secondary event, like those random
shoot outs in action movies. Instead it becomes a life changing event, a true
moment of life and death.
Miike, regarding
the action sequences, is of the “blood and guts” school so expect an incredible
amount of bloods with severed body parts flying around. It’s so bloody that I’ll
advise against seeing it if you are in any way easily impressed.
Conclusion:
A nice old school samurai epic, the first part can be boring but the battle
sequence alone is worth the price of admission. Only for katana heads anyway,
certainly not recommended to the general public.
A
professional killer hides out in a tiny Italian Village.
The critics
all loved it; it sits on top of many top ten movies of the year lists. I think
you can already guess where this is going the end…
I rarely
watched a more boring movie in my life. I’m not starting from the position
where if there is not an explosion every 10 minutes I fall asleep. I actually
enjoy more cerebral fares, but still I actually need something to be happening
and somebody to relate to.
Everybody lauded
the “restrained” acting by George Clooney. Now I got where they got the ideas,
I understand the subtle pleasures of all the tiny signs. The revealing
gestures, where the gaze goes and all that related stuff but still it all
should lead to something, to somewhere. And moreover the really great
restrained performances are not the impenetrable ones, are those where you can
actually glimpse behind the face, those where the eyes actually tell a story.
The overall
impression is of a long extended vacation. A very American view of Italian
life. Yes they inserted some killing shenanigans pretending to be more “realistic”
than the normal Hollywood fare even if in the end they just invented a
different kind of fake “professional killer” job.
Conclusion:
A pretentious movie by a pretentious director, to avoid at all costs.
A girl moves
to a new flat. Sinister things start to happen.
After a
long wait I’m back and the next movie on the list is “The resident”. Never saw
so much misguided effort.
It’s very
hard to not spoil the big concept. Suffice to say that it’s the kind of thing
that sounds very scary if it would happen in real life but doesn’t translate so
well filmically.
It’s not
like they didn’t try. The cinematography is suitably moody thank to Guillermo Navarro,
a long time collaborator of the other Guillermo, Del Toro of Hellboy fame. The
movie itself is professionally done with a lot of talented actors. Hilary Swank
is the damsel in distress, Jeffrey Dean Morgan the strange neighbor, there is
even a cameo from Christopher Lee himself.
Yet they
don’t manage to make it work. We couldn’t help but feel kinda sorry for the bad
guy, probably the least threatening bad guy in recent horror history.
With this I
don’t want to say that it is terrible. We waded through the running time with
no effort and the concept is still interesting enough that our attention was
kept awake.
Conclusion:
This will probably end up in those late night reruns. Good to keep insomnia at
bay at least.
An upstart
politician runs afoul of the forces that control destiny to save his love life.
A fair representative
of the recent wave of “high concept” movie, “The Adjustment Bureau” got a splendid
jumping point of a concept and some crazy visuals to accompany it.
It all
starts with a Phillip Dick short story but as it often happens with those it is
more of an inspiration than a straight adaptation. It’s that paranoia
sensibility that translated so well in movies.
The love
story bit is the main original addition by writer director George Nolfi. It’s
certainly a good idea, it gives us a reason to care about the whole thing and
position this movie in that awesome category, the Metaphysical Romantic movies,
also known as Meta – Rom.
Matt Damon
is perfect as the everyday man with the weight of the world on its shoulders,
many argued that he was born to play average Joe in extraordinary
circumstances. Emily Blunt as the love interest is as good as usual. She always
manages to communicate some kind of intensity, even though the cheesiest lines.
The main strength,
the high concept, sadly becomes the main weakness. The filmmakers clearly
feared that they would lose their audience trough if the movie becomes too
bizarre and so they played their hand incredibly tight.
A concept
like this want to be expanded, played with, at least a little bit. Think of the
final act of “Groundhog day”, that is the high mark on how an high concept
movie should develop.
Not only
they didn’t dare, they also filmed a very contrived finale that basically
solves the entire conundrum with a literal Deus Ex Machina.
It looked
so promising coming in.
Conclusion:
An interesting little movie that doesn’t deliver on what was promised.
Ip Man
moves to Hong Kong where he fights rival martial arts masters and corrupt
officials.
Ip Man 2
builds on the foundations laid out by the first iteration delivering a better,
smarter product on almost any fronts.
The story
is still spot on and also, very refreshing. The quiet, unassuming, Ip Man is
light years away from the conflicted heroes of Hard Boiled cinema or the
slapstick protagonists of Jackie Chan fame. It’s strange how martial arts
movies still have to get Ip Man as a character.
Although
they swiftly produced, not one, but two copycat movies about Ip Man in less
than two years. This prompted Donnie Yen, our titular Ip Man, to declare that
Ip Man as a subject is over saturated therefore shelving any prospect for Ip
Man 3. Please think about that Donnie! We need some more Ip Man!
Pleads to
Donnie yen aside, let’s get back to the movie.
The
narrative is more coherent, the story may be very tiny, it can be summarized as
“Ip Man is looking for a job”, but it works well. The various characters just work,
with a stand up in Sammo Hung as a rival martial arts master.
Speaking of
Hung, who also choreographed the fights, the martial art in this movie is just
spectacular. The mid movie fight between Hung and Yen is the material of
legends, is the kind of fight that can convert a non believer into martial arts
cinema.
The ending
fight, although still nice, is comparatively a letdown. Maybe it resonated with
the Chinese but for us westerners martial arts vs boxing isn’t that
interesting.
Conclusion:
A masterpiece, so good in his genre that it transcends it.
As the rest
of the internet I was annoyed by the announcement, back in 2010, of this
Spiderman reboot. I wasn’t at the level of the death treats throwing masses but
I must admit that I declared loudly many many times that I didn’t want to see
this movie.
The very
idea of a reboot always annoys me. Maybe it’s a psychological thing, the subtle
message “All that you watched before didn’t count because we are starting again”,
the “You gonna pay to see the same story twice”, I think you got the drill.
Of course
there is the argument that with enough time technology gets better, that a new
era could approach the same story from a different angle, and here is where
they rubbed everybody wrong.
It was like
1 week after Sam Raimi Spiderman 4 was canned that they announced the reboot.
It was, for us unwashed masses of the internet, too soon.
Well, I’m
happy to say that I was proven wrong. The smart heads up there at Sony
Headquarter really had another take of the character.
The big
trick was to focus on Peter youthness. This Peter never leaves school, neither
he gets that job at the Daily Bugle, he remains an awkward teenager during the
whole movie.
It works,
Sam Raimi version breezed through Peter Parker life losing many nuances in the
middle. This Peter Parker is a much more relatable character.
A lot of
the merit of course goes to Andrew Garfield, an incredibly youth looking guy,
at 29 plays believably a teenager. He and Emma Stone develop a rom com style
romance that is in many ways better than the boring offerings from fully
fledged rom coms. The director, Marc Webb, whose debut feature was the
critically lauded “500 days of Summer” probably was also very important in this
regard.
The fight
and the various special effects scenes, a point where Sam Raimi’s version was
groundbreaking, are also very good. All done in a very professional and
engaging way.
The plot is
that famous origin story so they can’t escape that feeling of déjà vu, but
enough things where changed and remixed that it’s watchable even for us old
comic book fans. There are many plot points that don’t hold water if watched
too closely but they are all hidden fairly well so it’s not too hard to pretend
they are not there.
Conclusion:
An excellent superhero story able to hold the interest of the non fans.
Little Red
Riding Hood, now in a teenager version.
The story
you know it roughly. What they changed is, at least on a surface level, not
that bad.
There is
something of Ten Little Indians now, people keep dying in Red Riding Hood
village and the problem is guessing who the bad werewolf is.
A suitable
amount of stuff happens, some blood get spilled, Gary Oldman himself makes an
apparition as a Van Helsing style character, of course in this case is a
Werewolf Hunter and not a Vampire Hunter but factually is the same.
The visuals
are actually not too bad. I commend the style of the famous red hood. Although
the CGI of the wolves is a terrible miss the rest of the setting is nicely done
and shoot with a keen eye on the light.
Also every
moment Gary Oldman is on the screen the movie switches gear because he is that
awesome.
Amanda
Seyfried is the titular protagonist. She doesn’t stretch a lot but this is the
kind of role that she was born to play. She looks the part and she played
similar characters so many times that she is now effortless in this kind of
role.
Sadly we
live in the post twilight era; they even got the director of the original
Twilight, Catherine Hardwicke. So the usual undertone of “Werewolves are
supposed to be very sexy” is overbearing. A very big chunk of the movie is
spent with stolen glances, sexual innuendos, attractive guys with their chest
bare etc.
Maybe if
you are a Twilight fan you’ll love this stuff. Personally I have nothing
against Twilight but I can’t bear supernatural teen romance, is so off putting.
Conclusion:
The core of the movie is terrible and cliché but there is enough meat on the
side to satisfy the most ardent twilight hater. Also there is Gary Oldman himself,
what else do you need?
A
stunningly unoriginal story, all the characters are stereotypes and cliché, the
setting is so familiar that at first sight you’ll think you have already seen
this movie while the effects are so classical that probably some of those where
rejected from an old episode of Xena Warrior Princess.
It’s
baffling, but certainly good for the writer, that the original script, made in
2000 by Bragi F. Schut according to Wikipedia, was won by MGM after a bidding
war and that it was made only now, one year after the very similar, Sean Bean
starring, Black Death, only because of the financial woes of that studio.
Yet another
of those “Movies that Nic Cage is doing because his accountant stole a lot of
money” it stars the aforementioned Nic Cage and Ron Perlman, of Hellboy and a
thousand B movies fame. Maybe it’s up to their personal charm but this movie
that notionally shouldn’t work somehow clicks and becomes even engaging.
The much
maligned Nic Cage is a great actor but as other movie demonstrated he can’t
elevate terrible properties all by himself. Here luckily with the help of Ron
Perlman he constitutes a terrific couple. Their easy chemistry and their jovial
banter keep afloat a movie all by itself.
Don’t
expect any surprise or any detounement, just a somewhat old western style
medieval fantasy. Exactly like those old John Wayne movies it’s all clear cut,
black and white, and old cowboys, templars here, ride along trying to right a
very wrong world.
Conclusion:
A surprisingly enjoyable fantasy, still not very recommended if you can’t bear
some chainmail and sword fighting.
The spaceship
Anansi vital mission to earth is hindered by the schemes of a rival
corporation.
As is often
the case with Larry Niven stories this one got some wonderful and amazing scifi
concepts but struggle with the rest.
The setting
is the near future, the beginning of the colonization of space. Everything is
believable and a rational extrapolation of the possible future.
The famous
weak point of Larry Niven stories resurface here. The characters are all really
weak and it’s very hard to care about them. Their relationships are bluntly spelled
out with the same style normally used in a travel guide. At the core of
everything there is possibly the most awkward love triangle ever.
In
practical terms this means that for the first half of the novel is kinda hard
to get into the various events. Too much time is spent on people that we don’t
like but then Niven plotting get into gear.
An incident
of purely Scifi nature happens and the various characters stop acting like they
were living in a remake of “The bold and the beautiful” and start acting to
solve stuff.
This is
Niven at his best. The problem is interesting, the solution even more
interesting and very original. The only problem here is that it’s complicated
and fairly hard to visualize stuff.
Conclusion:
Hard Scifi people will love it but even they will have an hard time with all
the pointless characters.
In an all
female Psychiatric ward something is killing the inmates.
After a ten
years hiatus John Carpenter returns to filmmaking. His career got a turn for
the worse in the 90s when he seemed unable to make movies that connected to
modern audiences; it was like he was stuck into that seminal era during the
late 70s and early 80s that made him so famous.
Part of the
problems that plagued his late movies are present also in this one, albeit in a
reduced form.
As all
Carpenter movies this is something of a B movie. Not a bad thing per se but as
many experimented making a modern B movie is no mean feat. It’s nice to be
rediscovered 20 years later but not really worth it when you are looking for
financing.
As a whole
the movie works. The plot is that classical crazy asylum tale where so much is
hidden behind the surface. To me it was all a little bit obvious but maybe I
watched too many examples of a genre that doesn’t have that many possible
permutations.
The actual
shoot and effect work is a little bit underwhelming. The monster looks and
feels very cheap, like one of those b movie monsters from the 70s actually. The
various “thrilling scenes” are nicely done but again with a very retro feeling.
It’s a
smart move to retread to what you know best but overall this effort feels
undercooked and not very inspired.
Conclusion:
A Carpenter movie for Carpenter fans, he even put his name on the title.
Rango, a
pet chameleon, ends up in a western style town.
This movie,
according to the people who made it, is an attempt to do a western style
animated feature, just a little bit adult oriented. The end result is an odd
affair which earned rave reviews and an Oscar.
First, as
it all too often happens with those reviews, they are mainly made by
professional, or at least people deeply invested into moviedom. The problem
with that is that so called “movie’s movies” tend to aggregate much better
reviews than simpler affairs.
Rango certainly
is a movie for movie fans. It is littered with movie citations and the whole
structure liberally rips off the Dollar trilogy of Eastwood fame mixing it up
with non sequitur, animal puns and LSD inspired spiritual trips.
Is this
better than classical animated fare or at least more profound? Not really but
is at least as good as that.
In the end
what they made is a much quirkier than usual product, with a distinct independent
cinema atmosphere.
The
animations are made by ILM, Industrial Light and Magic, their first fully
animated feature, with the direction in the competent hands of Gore Verbinski.
It’s all very competent stuff, but honestly they still need a little bit to get
to the level of the giants of animation.
Conclusion:
An interesting experiment, recommended to adult fans of animation. The kids I
fear want get most of the stuff.
To stop a
satanic cult a guy literally comes back from the dead.
One of the
infamous wave of b movies that Nic Cage had to do to pay his tax problems “Drive
Angry”, like most of his brethrens, is not really that bad and can’t really be
accused of being dishonest. It does what it says on the tin, a lot of drive
angry and a lot of other verbs angry, mainly shooting angry.
Nic Cage
role, the aptly named John Milton, is a character as thin as cardboard, not even
Cage manages to sell him wholeheartedly. There is the classic all American Blonde
Babe, played by Amber Heard, who of course is very handy with guns and fast
muscle cars. Then we have the shady and slimy cult leader.
It’s not
really an original movie but of course that’s the point. B Movies were never
that original, and of course they weren’t that good either. That’s a reason
most of that stuff is relegated to the back shelves.
So as a B
movie how does it fare? Quite well actually. There are a couple of scenes that
are really insane and the rhythm is good, is not a boring experience.
The main
problem is that they got the insanity level right only on a few occasions. The
rest of the time it can be entertaining but it doesn’t deliver on the level of
over the top action that the title promised. It’s like one of those comedies
where the jokes aren’t enough, nice but in the end not satisfying.
Conclusion:
If the title sparks your interest have a look but don’t expect too much.
The title
is all that you need to know about this movie.
The really
daft premise, coming from Seth Graham Smith who sold millions of copies writing
“Pride & prejudice & zombies” so maybe he is into something, it’s the
real deal breaker here.
Maybe there
is a way to develop it sensibly and coherently but it never happened here,
instead we got an incredibly dumb plot which not only is completely unrelated
to any sensible history of the period, is also completely missing any internal
coherence.
Maybe it’s
because I know a thing or two about history but normally I don’t care too much
about historical accuracy. Plot and fun are much more important. The problems
start when the inaccuracies are so blatant that I can’t pretend I’m not seeing
them, when very important plot junctions are decided with ploys that are
nominally astute but in reality doesn’t make any sense.
If it was
at least fun it could be all forgivable but instead we got some of the dumbest
stuff ever. I normally don’t spoil anything of the movie but it’s really
obvious that Lincoln somehow ends up hunting vampires. He acquires incredible fighting
skills with which he can single handedly defeat dozens of vampires. The secret
of his supernatural haste and strength? None other than the power of truth! He
is super powerful because he is Honest Abe!
Even little
kids deserve something better thought out.
The
director is Timur Bekmambetov, who made the incredible “Wanted” in 2008, and so
the fandom had very high hopes for this one. Sadly the failure is not limited
to the plot.
While some of
the action scenes bear the trademark blend of insane kinetic fights and crazy
concept the rest of the movie is marred by the oh so American reverence for
Lincoln.
I
understand that he is one of the patron saints of American democracy but you
can’t picture Lincoln straight while doing Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
What you get this way is a movie grinding to a halt every single time Lincoln
open his mouth. It gets so so boring.
At least we
still got the very underrated Rufus Sewell as the main bad guy.
Conclusion:
A so bad it is good movie, good train wreck value.
An ingenious
dark comedy this movie got one of those wonderful and completely original premises
that are so rare nowadays. Sadly it doesn’t develop it properly. The main idea
is there and is all kind of amazing but a lone idea doesn’t add to a whole
movie. You need more stuff to add to it.
The movie
also suffers a bit from its independent nature. The shoots, the actors, the
overall feeling is that of a somewhat amateur production. It’s not really that
bad I need to add, just unimpressive.
A lot of
time is devoted to a subplot about a kid trying to find his place in an undoubtedly
very harsh world. It’s even done fairly well but honestly we would have preferred
more Santa and less psychological introspection.
One last
note about the movie, without spoiling the aforementioned premise this is a
dark comedy so expect mature themes, a lot of blood and a very unusual take on
Santa Claus.
Conclusion:
Recommended to those who love their oddities but for the general public this is
really to underdeveloped.
A mentally
ill man decides to become a real life superhero.
After Kick
Ass popularized the concept of “What would happen in real life if somebody put
on a spandex costume and started fighting crime” we start with the usual wave
of copycat movies.
Defendor
didn’t learn Kick Ass lessons properly. Maybe they can be excused considering
that Kick Ass didn’t perform as expected at the box office, although it still
turned a good profit, but where Kick Ass was all kind of wonderful and funny
this is a somewhat depressing experience.
Yes we all
know that dressing up as a superhero and fighting crime in our society would be
a form of madness but that’s not the point. Superheroes stories are escapist fantasies
where the wrongs can be righted and evil can actually be punched in the face.
Kick Ass
managed to have his cake and eat it too with the creation of Hit Girl. So they
had Kick Ass as the sad loser superhero and Hit Girl as the “Kick Ass” one, if
you can pardon the bad pun.
Here we
only get to loser part of the equation, played by an extremely well cast Woody
Harrelson who looks and sounds the part, but he is not really a story that we
would like to follow.
Who’s the
target audience of this? Superheroes fans will be annoyed, non superheroes fans
will be disinterested, maybe former superheroes fans that recovered from their
vices and want to laugh at their former interest? It’s a mystery.
Kat Denning
is entertaining as usual but terribly miscast as a young prostitute / crack
whore.
There are
some laughs every now and then but really too few and too little. It clearly
aims to be a black comedy but it doesn’t do enough.
An average
tourist is drawn into a web of intrigue by a beautiful woman.
While the
main plot of the movie roughly works, being a remake of a French original this
shouldn’t be a surprise, the rest is all a real big misfire.
The main problem
incredibly lies into the main protagonists. Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie two
of the most charming actors in the world somehow when working together create
the anti chemistry. It’s amazing how the movie stops when they try something
romantic, how Depp, normally so deft, is reduced to a bumbling buffoon and how wooden
Angelina is. I really don’t understand it.
Even alone
they don’t fare much better. Depp is so wonderful when he plays the abnormal,
the strange, and the peculiar but evidently he is not capable to play the
normal, the average. Moreover his natural good looks hadn’t been toned down not
even a little bit. I understand that the main selling point is he and Mrs. Jolie
making out but the story simply doesn’t work if the average guy came straight
out of a fashion shoot.
Jolie doesn’t
fare better. The makeup and costume department is evidently directed by some
madman. Her hair and attire is incredibly over the top and, most importantly,
she looks terrible in it. It’s so bad that it’s worth having a look just to appreciate
it.
On the
acting side also she, like Depp, evidently has a lot of trouble in conveying normal
human emotions. All the social interactions are so stiff, her eyes absent.
Maybe part
of the fault lies in the director hands. The long named Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck
decided to set the movie in one of the more cinematic places in the world,
Venice, and completely fails to use it. The lights are all terrible and the
shoots uninspiring.
Conclusion:
A real stinker, even if you are a fan of the main duo you really don’t want to
see it because it’s the first really bad movie that they made in ages.
The second “unconventional
movie adaption of the classic Snow White fable” of the year. Yes of course it’s simply a coincidence, Hollywood
is such a creative place that they don’t really need to copy other people ideas,
do they?
Jokes aside
this was actually fun. Two wildly different takes, because for once they are
really diverse, separated by just a couple of months, they beg for a comparison
but before getting to it let’s consider this movie on this own.
Plot wise
this is a case of too many cooks. Universal reportedly paid 3.2 million for the
screenplay before setting two different screenwriters on remaking it. Official
sources say that 40% of the screenplay came up during these rewrites so they
paid more than three million for practically half a screenplay. Amazing.
It’s easy
to see the scars on the butchered plot. Countless things are incredibly
important for the first 30 minutes before getting lost in the shuffle. Romance
subplots disappear randomly, the Mcguffin is forgotten just before the end, the
dwarves appearance clashes so much tone wise with the rest of the movie that
you could smell bad test screening all across the Atlantic.
Then at
least is a pretty movie. First timer Rupert Sanders was given the keys to the
kingdom, 170 million has been spent on this movie, but he used the money
wisely. The locations, the costumes, the CGI, are all very pretty. The overall
tone is really darker, with some interesting choices. The mirror in particular,
is spot on.
Kristen
Stewart looks good in the part. She is still very Bella Swan, but this is more the
fault of the director than hers. All the actors didn’t perform very well here.
Chris Hemsworth for example is really terrible; it’s hard to believe he is the
same guy who did so well with Kenneth Branagh guidance.
The only exception
is Charlize Theron. I used to dislike her; she’s always been stunning of course
but never impressed me with any of her capabilities. Here she quite literally
steals the movie. She finds a way of delivering, a peculiar kind of speech that
is amazing.
She succeeds
in quite an hard task, trough an amazing performance she manage to elevate an
inane and terribly written role and make it her own.
As to the
above mentioned comparison movie wise Mirror Mirror is better but this one
certainly got the best evil queen.
Conclusion:
An average movie brought up by the sheer amount of money that they spent into
it and a very good performance from Charlize Theron.
Three
loosely interconnected stories about the hereafter.
It was
bound to happen; the bad Clint Eastwood movie interrupts a streak that lasted
at least 10 years, maybe more if you can appreciate “Blood Work”.
Strangely
this is something that a lot of critics are apparently waiting for, many hailed
the excellent “Invictus” as that paradoxical bad Eastwood movie. I honestly don’t
understand why.
But how bad
is bad here? Not too much in the end, certainly watchable.
The main
problem lies in the plot, the first bad plotted movie chosen by Eastwood in
ages. Many stories never get anywhere, Matt Damon is a medium who can feel the “dead
people” (It’s hard to be more cliché than this), it climaxes at a book
convention and I could go on. It’s very weak material.
Eastwood
himself is in journeyman mode. The composition of his shoots, normally pitch perfect,
is still functional but nothing more.
At least he
retains his gift in obtaining good performances from practically everybody. At
this stage in his career I think that if he decided to get me to star in one of
his movie I’ll end with an Oscar nomination. He is that good.
In the end
he still gets the job done. As many masters before him he honed his craft to a
point that a bad Eastwood movie is still a fairly decent movie by any other filmmaker
standard. He milks the inane plot for what is worth. He bring atmosphere, at
least one sequence in the beginning is amazing, he deliver on the rhythm and in
the end he left us strangely satisfied.
Still he
doesn’t manage to get over the very difficult subject matter. Maybe out there a
movie exist that talks about death and what comes after without being morbid,
preachy and depressive but is not this one.
Conclusion:
A mediocre effort from one of the true masters. Still worth watching.
A raid in a
mob occuped building goes terribly wrong.
After “Merantau”
Gareth Evans and his choreographer/action star Iko Ulwais tried to develop a
big prison themed movie. Things didn’t went through and so they downsized
themselves quite a lot and made “The raid” in record time to keep their names
on the market. Very good for them because “The Raid” proved extremely successful
and established new house names in the martial arts panorama.
Basically
they skipped all the troubles with “Merantau” plot by practically abolishing
it.
I’m not
joking, for all intents and purposes “The raid” is an extremely long and
convoluted fight scenes putting Iko Ulwais SWAT hero against an entire building
full of machete wielding, machine gun blazing, Silat practicing crazy mobster.
Yes every now and then we stop for a little bit of exposition, mainly bad guy
gloating about stuff, but we never ever leave the building and more often than
not that exposition is interrupted by some crazy action. It’s that relentless.
It’s all
very creative. Instead of those strange worlds where people don’t use firearms
at all here everybody is a very bad sportsman and so they try to kill each
other in many creative ways.
Evans
clearly learned many lessons while doing “Merantau”. The action is more slick,
the shoots more interesting, and the light placement professional. It’s still
not perfect. The action is so relentless that the various fights merge with
each other and the rhythm is too much stop and go but in the end it’s very
difficult to sustain tension for almost two straight hours, there’s one of the
reasons no one tries something like this.
Now that
they are famous they are aiming for their aborted bigger project. If they can
fix their plot troubles we could have a martial arts masterpiece.
Conclusion:
For fans of the genre this is unmissable but if you can’t appreciate a good
machete swing you’ll better go elsewhere.
I had
expectation for this one, high expectation. I always try to not bet sucked in
the hype surrounding something but every now and then it’s inevitable.
Many have
talked extensively about the plot. In a few words, it doesn’t make any sense.
Maybe the
original idea that Ridley Scot had was working but what we got on the screen
was a muddied mess. The most griping aspect of it is how the characters behave.
We can survive an over complicated mythology, even accept monsters pointlessly complicated
and behaving in an incomprehensible fashion, but the main characters, the
humans, we should be able to understand them.
Their whole
behavior is more than puzzling, is stupid to the point of self harming. It’s so
bad that the salient points did become internet memes. It’s so bad that you
want to throw sharp objects on the screen. It’s that kind of bad.
Then you
look at the screenwriter and you realize that it was inevitable. Damon
Lindelof, also known as the man who ruined Lost completely, wrote it. The continuing
career of Lindelof is a mystery to me. He writes so badly, his mythologies are
just messes created by randomly adding “cool” stuff, his characters inane and
absurd.
But not
everything is terrible in Prometheus.
Scott craft
spectacular vistas, haunting sceneries and gorgeous places. After all these
years we all somehow forgot how good Scott is when he is playing this game. The
whole alien setting is perfectly realized and perfect in its “alieness”.
All the
actors do a very good job with the terrible lines that they’ve been served.
Noomi Rapace in particular got the short sticks with what are clearly the worst
lines but somehow she manages to sell them.
Charlize Theron
brings tons of attitude with another excellent interpretation while Michael
Fassbender is the best android in ages, a shame that these wonderful characters
had to do such an amount of stupid things.
Conclusion:
The ticket is worth it just for the amazing visuals but the story is really stupid.
Notionally
this movie has a plot but it is even more bare bone than the infamous Jackie
Chan early stuff, which was patched together just to move from one set piece to
the next.
From what I
could gather Merantau should be a tradition where the youngsters from this
Indonesian ethnic group spend a period wandering around to gather experience,
knowledge and eventually money.
So we have
this young guy doing his Merantau, he goes from his backward idyllic village to
the big corrupt city where he run afoul of the local bad guy. Luckily for him,
and for us spectators, he is a master of Silat, the Indonesian martial art. A
lot of fighting ensues.
The acting
is wooden, the plot bare bone and tedious, the cinematography of the city uninspiring.
But the fights are good, very good.
There is no
cable work here. They do it all there, for real, Ong Bak style. It’s all very
hardcore and fairly brutal.
It’s also
refreshing for martial arts movie connoisseurs watching a new martial art.
Silat is cinematic and distinct enough from the usual fare.
If you are
not a martial arts fan this is not the right movie to start with. The action is
good but not that good; it will not blow your mind. There is some interesting
stuff in there but all the people involved need that little bit of experience
to make the next step and craft the perfect action fest (which they did in “the
raid” coming in a couple of days).
Conclusion:
Interesting for martial arts fan but, apart from the action, a very boring
experience.
Seven
pilgrims travel to the otherworldly Time Tombs. They share stories on the way.
Very late
to this party I finally managed to read the book that like a storm was on
everybody’s mouth back in 1989. Back then I couldn’t buy it but now, thanks to
the ever amazing charity shops, it is mine.
First of
all if you heard some description form the critics don’t be scared. So many
literary and artistic qualities have been attached to this book that starting
it is a bewildering prospect.
This is not
the sci-fi equivalent of some of those elitist tomes that critics worldwide
seem compelled to like. It is true that it’s been inspired by “The Canterbury
Tales” and that it shares the same stories within a story structure but this is
not some overambitious literary vehicles. This is six stories for the price of
one, all very good stories and all interconnected, to paint a wider picture.
Dan Simmons
writes very well, he remembers to make his characters relatable, at least in
some ways, and writes about interesting stuff. There are a lot of interesting concepts,
this book is very sci-fi in this, it pushes the envelope a lot, certainly more
than the majority of his contemporaries. It reminds me of one of those books
from the golden age of Sci-Fi, of Van Vogt stuff.
One last
note, the book doesn’t end. Lofty artistic types will tell you that it is
better this way, that endings and explanations are for wussies, but reality is
that simply he couldn’t publish it all in one go so he split it up. This means
that if you want to know the real ending you need to check out “The Fall of
Hyperion”. I know I will.
Conclusion:
The hype is for real here. This book is a masterpiece, even non sci-fi people should
check it out.
A
mysterious epidemic gradually makes humanity lose his senses.
This movie
is interesting because it moves against the flow.
Epidemics,
with their zombies ridden addenda, are seen as a way to show humanity
disgregation. It’s one of the appeal of the genre, nothing as heartwarming as
random madness on the streets.
This quirky
little movie instead decides to go in the opposite direction. What if we tried
to continue to exist as a society? What would happen?
Maybe it
goes a little too far with the voiceovers but it’s a real interesting and
unexplored concept.
Eva Green
and Ewan McGregor are a couple trough which misadventures we experience the
global epidemic. Their lives are a little bit too contrived, and here maybe
there’s the real flaw of the movie, but the two actor sell it all so effortlessly
and with such conviction that it’s really hard not to participate.
Maybe there’s
space for a romantic version of the usual epidemic horror genre, let’s hope so.
Conclusion:
recommended viewing, even if you don’t like it this movie will fuel enough post
vision discussions to last for a week.
This should
have been so much fun. A siege movie based on a real historical event, but then
they took so many liberties with the original that they should have simply set
it on Camelot and be done with it.
Historical
inaccuracies aside for a moment I can admit that this movie deliver on the
rated violence. Heads are chopped and blood is spilled aplenty. It’s just not
very interesting.
There is an
art in cinematic violence, an art that writer director Jonathan English still
has to master.
The plot
also has problems. Historical inaccuracies aside, in the movie they are
practically fighting for democracy in a period when the word doesn’t really
makes sense, it’s all so very Die Hard. The villain is so bad that we are only
waiting for him to start twirling is mustache, the heroes so noble, the fair
maiden so fair.
Its missing
subtlety, it’s missing all the subtle nuances that makes characters come alive
without obtaining the epicness and majesty that made 300 and Conan so
unforgettable.
And it’s
still really a shame because they got some really good actors here.
James
Purefoy got charisma in spades, Paul Giamatti idem but even them can’t manage
to enliven a lifeless script.
Conclusion:
Genre fans will still enjoy it but if you don’t like your sword with your chain
mail this is not the movie to start with.
This is the
movie adaptation of the soap opera of the same name. While totally unknown in
Europe Dark Shadows was quite a big hit in America and this movie is actually a
labour of love for Johnny Depp, who was a big fan of the original and so
convinced Tim Burton to do it.
Now of
course this movie probably got a special significance for the fans of the
original but if you want that you’ll have to look somewhere else. I’m European so
I never heard of it beforehand.
As a
standalone movie his soap operatic origin are a lot of trouble. A lot of
characters are terribly underdeveloped and just sit there as reminder of
whatever they were in the original.
For example
Chloe Grace Moretz is the “troubled child”, she plays her role beautifully, as
usual for her, but it’s a tiny part that practically goes nowhere.
The same
applies to everybody else, including Michelle Pfeiffer, another fan of the
original, as the “matriarch of the family”.
The only
good roles are Johnny Deep, who as the Vampire Barnabas Collins is the de facto
protagonist, and Eva Green as the Witch Angelique, the main antagonist. The
parts are strange and disjointed but they literally sizzle, especially when interacting
there is a chemical reaction between them.
The plot is
bizarre, but in the end this is to be expected from Tim Burton adapting this
kind of material.
The tone is
uneven. Horror comedy is hard to pull off properly and here the various bits
aren’t properly connected. The same guy can mercilessly murder some innocents
and then be the center of various funny gags.
The
cinematography could be better. Burton is noted for his impressive visuals but
here he modernized the dated look of the original without going the full way.
Conclusion:
A bizarre movie, only a few will like it but there is something in there to at
least interest a large proportion of the audience.
The
adventures of a group of thieves in a fantasy world.
This book
is certainly original. We had books dedicated to the orcs and the dwarves but
the thieves, who can easily become the protagonists of something, where
strangely absent.
It begins
as a fun romp, with our group of thieves, the Gentlemen Bastards, embodying the
archetypal good con artists characters (they only go after the incredibly rich)
before evolving into a surprisingly bloody and intense adventure against an
overwhelming enemy.
The world
is rich, detailed and original. Akin to a fantasy version of Venice.
The
aforementioned Gentlemen Bastards are an interesting group. Nothing
groundbreaking here but they got enough wit and personality that we easily
start to care about them.
Midway is
easy to see the author realizing that he could make this the start of a serial
(six other novels have been promised us) so many prominent elements are just
left there unexplained, ready to pick up in future installment.
Conclusion:
A solid and original fantasy book. Worth checking out.
A rigid
settled guy is forced to travel with an inept buffoon.
The model
here is obviously “Planes, trains and automobiles”, a 1987 comedy by John
Hughes and while the model is certainly significant and relatively unexplored
in recent years it is also a difficult sell.
Todd
Phillips who wrote and directed should in theory have a relatively easy time.
Cringe inducing comedies are difficult to pull off but he made the most successful
of them all, “The hangover”, so in shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.
Alas the
more times pass to more it looks like “The hangover “was just a random fib in
the career of a not very talented writer. This is not the “difficult second
album” syndrome. All of Phillips recent output ranged from “not very good”
trough “moderately terrible” all the way to “unwatchable”.
Due Date
sits halfway between the last two.
First of
all is not fun. The laugh free comedy is a recent American invention and this
is one of the best examples. Instead of laughs we get the aforementioned cringe
inducing moments. Terrible stuff happens to our protagonist, mostly because of
the insane action of Ethan Tremblay played by a Zach Galifianakis so out there
that they should probably send a mission to space to retrieve him.
Nothing
against having actors playing the same guy over and over again. Maybe my
problem is that, apart from “the hangover”, I don’t like this guy, at all. If
he toned down himself a little bit it would be fine but as it is you can’t help
but sympathize with whatever authority figure is obliged to confront him.
Robert Downey
Jr. plays against type as the guy who needs to have his eyes opened and enjoy
life a little bit more. I love Downey Jr. be this is the rare role when he didn’t
convince me. Maybe is the character that is so unsympathetic, so unrelatable, but
really I couldn’t travel more than 10 minutes with a guy like that one.
Conclusion:
An unfunny comedy where terrible stuff happens to horrible people. Thumb down.
1947, in an
alternate timeline where World War II never happened a young circus acrobat
fights the legendary thief K 20, the man with 20 faces.
A fun romp
from Japan this movie, adapted from a novel at least according to Wikipedia, is
at first impact somewhat complicated and unfriendly. The tone is the literal
opposite of naturalistic, K20 behaves like a Japanese version of “The shadow”,
and everything is very theatrical, but if you stick with it you’ll discover a worthwhile
movie.
The plot,
apparently very disjointed, in the end ties everything nicely trough a lot of unexpected
twists and turns. Even if many of the actors are somewhat wooden, at least from
our western point of view, the unpretentious tone, with many physical jokes and
a lot of action, enliven the atmosphere. As I said above it’s like watching a
pantomime at the theatre, when you get used to it all the problems disappears.
The action
is top notch. A seamless blend of parkour style jumping with CGI eastern steampunk
backdrop, a liberal dose of kung fu and tons of superhero style gadgets.
Conclusion:
This is certainly not a movie for everyone but if you are a part of the fandom
you should check it out.
Two
estranged brothers compete in a MMATournament.
MMA, Mixed
Martial Arts, has been on the rise lately. More spectacular than boxing, which
very few people properly understand anyway, also more violent than boxing, at
least in how it is perceived, MMA was just waiting for somebody to come and do
a movie about it.
Warrior is
a Rocky style movie where instead of following just one individual we follow
two. This may sound banal but in reality is something akin to a Copernican revolution
for the genre because it creates a degree of uncertainty normally absent from
this kind of fares.
The two “Heroes”
couldn’t be more different. One is played by Tom Hardy in physically perfect
form. He is a gifted actor but here he got a very steep obstacle to overcome.
His character is so unsympathetic, so merciless, that even when we know what
actually shaped him it is very difficult to relate. Some sparks of humanity are
sorely missing.
Joel
Edgerton is a less unusual hero. A relatable family man who always tries to do
the right thing.
Here lies
the main problem of the movie, instead of two equally relatable characters we
got a decent person going against an adversary defined only by anger and fury.
But then we
got to the tournament and it’s really awesome. I know that it’s rocky all over
again but the various fights are perfectly choreographed. We feel the intensity
of the action, the ripping muscles, the sweat. Tom Hardy in the ring is really
scary.
Conclusion:
An intense story that will grip most movie fans.
A little Chinese
girl holds an important secret, many wants her but she is under the protection
of one unstoppable man.
And so
Jason Statham continues is endless streak of good action movies. It’s becoming
so long that I have trouble remembering to last bad one that he did, maybe “War”
5 years ago?
This is not
a masterpiece in any shape or form but, as an action movie, is competent and
engaging. Jason Statham plays the patented Jason Statham character, they are
all the same and we really don’t care because they all look very good while
kicking ass.
There is
plot, quite a lot of it for a movie of this kind. They move from place to
place, they scheme, stuff is revealed about the villain’s plot and our hero’s
past and everything is tied up nicely in the end.
This doesn’t
sound like a lot but for an action movie this is like pure Shakespeare.
Of course
if you expect some character development and or some deep emotional
relationship you will be surely deluded. But, honestly speaking, if you were
expecting those why are you watching a Jason Statham film?
The action,
the ultimate selling point of a movie like this, is good, inventive and plentiful.
There are a lot of witty one liners and the camera, directed by Boaz Yakin an
old hand in the action genre, lingers enough on what’s going on making it all
very easy to follow.
The life of
John Adams, one of the founding fathers of the United States.
Directed by
Tom Hopper, who then went to make the wonderful and amazing “The King Speech”,
universally acclaimed with 4 Globes and 13 Emmys this miniseries in 7 parts
should have been practically perfect.
After
watching all 7 parts I can say that no, it’s really not that perfect, in
reality is terrible tv, some of the worst stuff I’ve seen in a while.
The main
problem lies in the plot. The founding fathers are to America what the saints
are to Christianity. Practically perfect human beings who for entirely selfless
reasons gave freedom to their country. Now this is neither the place nor the
time to debate the veracity of this, suffice to say that what is perfect to
build a national myth upon becomes incredibly boring when translated to the
screen.
Of course I’m
not saying that they should have invented something outrageous, we got the
Assassin’s Creed series for that. Just that the John Adams that I saw on the
screen is an insufferable character, even more boring than some of those Vatican
sponsored lives of saints. At least many of them had a period of fun and debauchery
before finding God, or a bloody martyrdom.
He never
evolves, he is incredibly selfless and motivated from the first minute, all
rousing speeches and inflamed rhetoric. It’s only flaw? He is too motivated and
so he alienates those lazy bastards around him! It’s something that you
normally see on CV. “What’s my defect future employer? I work too hard”.
Terrible.
Not only
John Adams himself, the whole miniseries is an incredibly long celebration of
how awesome were the founding fathers and the whole revolutionary period. While
the rest of the world is invariably lazy and sleazy.
Maybe
Americans will find it nice, but for me one sided rhetoric never works.
I never got
the impression that I was watching real people, they were all like cardboard
figures from a bad history book.
The last
episode then is the Piece De Resistance. Instead of closing with the end of
John Adams political career, which is the part of his life that we actually
want to see, they give us one hour of John Adams getting older and older while
the world continues without him. We see him writing letters, toiling the fields
and be generally insufferable.
I really
don’t understand what is this fixation with showing the later days of important
people in these biopics. Everybody grows old, it’s not that big of a discovery.
You don’t stay on top forever and there isn’t any special insight in watching
somebody getting older and older till they die. It’s just depressing.
The third
highest gross of all time, more than a billion and a half in box office, it’s
difficult to argue with such numbers, and I won’t even try, this movie deserved
such a rich financial windfall. There’s an interesting argument on how some
movies not only break out of the relatively small circles of genre fans,
whatever the genre may be, but also to break out of the movie goers circle unto
the general public conscience. I, being a comic book guy, started getting
enquiries about this movie from extremely unsuspected parties, coworkers and
the like that you’ll never imagine watching a comic book movie.
General
considerations aside this movie is really that brilliant and virtually
flawless.
Joss Whedon,
the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and comic book fan, is largely
responsible for it as the writer/director of the movie. First of all he
perfectly understood what makes the Avengers, as a concept, work.
Broadly speaking
the Avengers is the all star team of the Marvel superhero universe, the best of
the best. The tricky part is that all these characters are normally the stars
of their own shows so they must all shine individually, you can’t have a single
superstar and all the rest filler, it just doesn’t work this way. Whedon
manages this perfectly, every hero gets his chance to shine, repeatedly, over
the whole movie. They are all concisely and perfectly characterized.
Then comes
step two. The interaction. Sparkles should fly, there are all stars here so
they can’t operate like a perfectly oiled team. The old comic book crossover
tradition dictates that every time two superheroes meet they should start fighting
over some kind of silly miserunderstanding. This of course stems from the age
old question “Who’s stronger between xxxxx and xxxxx?” but in the end it
highlights that this isn’t a stroll in the park, this is a super group.
Also on
this Whedon get everything perfectly right. The infighting between the
superheroes is so cool that you almost wish for the bad guys to stay home so
that you can have more of that.
The casting
is of course very good. Marvel made a lot of smart choices while casting his
various heroes and we already knew that from the other movies. It’s kinda
pointless the reiterate again how awesome Robert Downey Junior is as Tony Stark
so let’s move on to the new guys.
Scarlett
Johansson gets something more to do as the black widow, she gets some of the
best bits of the action and it’s really good at it. Jeremy Renner got something
of a short stick with Hawkeye, the part is not really that developed and I
still have to see a convincing modern take on the super archer. None the less
he is still enjoyable.
The show
stealer is Mark Ruffalo as Hulk. The precedent iterations of the character all
got their roots in the terribly depressing 80s movie serial and so they were
all more or less exercises in unhappiness followed by some hulk smash.
Whedon and
Ruffalo brought the fun back in the Hulk, it’s that simple.
Wait it’s
not really that simple, there’s another ingredient. The hulk, by his very
nature, as a character, works much better in a team. It’s like the penguins in
Madagascar, amazing as part of an ensemble but imagine two hours straight of
them.
The
climatic ending battle is a relative let down. After so much build up you
expect at least the destruction of a pair of cities but, in my opinion, even on
this they made the smarter choice. A bigger ending, with a more menacing enemy,
would have stolen the spotlight from the Avengers, and this is their movie. We
can wait for something bigger for the inevitable sequel, in 3 years time.
Conclusion:
A masterpiece. You haven’t seen yet? What you’re waiting for? Got and get it!
The
creatures of the night go along fighting each other.
Maybe some
things should never be translated from one media to the other. Darkstalkers originally
is a video game, a beat’em up alas a classic 2d fighting game where you control
one character of your choice out of a selection of monster like creatures and
try to defeat all the others.
In its time
it was an innovative, if fairly obscure, franchise. It featured a gothic world
unlike every other fighting game with colorful graphics and imaginative designs.
I remember playing it at the time and it was really something good.
So how the
conversion to a 4 part original animation could fail? It looks like it could
fail really easily; you just need to port everything as it is from one media to
the other.
A lot of
videogames special moves look a little bit ridicule in their own home medium,
imagine translating them to another. We don’t want to see the legs of one of
the fighters transform randomly in a drill, we really don’t. To adapt you need to betray.
Then there
is the story which somehow is even worse than the native terrible fighting game
stuff, I don’t know how it is possible either but they made it. It’s
meandering, boring, magniloquent and stupid all at the same time.
