DVD review: Let me in

The strange story of the disaffected teen and the very young, and very old, vampire.

This caused quite a stir in the dark recesses of the internet and, for once, I somewhat agree with the others basement dwelling nerds.

See, this is the American remake of the excellent 2008 Swedish movie “Let the right one” which, solely by virtue of being Swedish, was destined to a remake from the moment the last shot was in the can. Now common view is that Americans don’t like subtitles, probably because it’s too much like reading. In Italy we managed splendidly with dubbing so I really don’t understand what the problem is.

Now a mere three years after the original we got the remake, directed by the excellent matt Reeves of “Cloverfield” fame. Reeves had the classical impossible problem in front of him. How do you remake the already excellent? Apparently his answer is put in America and use a bigger budget so that you can show more blood because for the rest is the same movie.

Now this means that if you didn’t see the original because you are one of those funny people that got an issue with subtitles you are in for a treat  but for the rest of us this movie is, honestly speaking, useless. Another strong turn from the always excellent Chloe Grace Moretz can’t elevate the optimum beyond the optimum.

DVD review: The secret of Kells

The creation of the book of Kells.

As it often happens is easier to talk about a deeply flawed movie that it is talking about a masterpiece. And this is a masterpiece, one of the best animated movies that I ever saw.

I know that the plot doesn’t sound very appealing, the creation of a book come on! But believe me when I say that this is actually an engaging and dramatic movie that even manages to pose some weighty question about what we should do in time of danger and the role of our culture in preserving who we are.

The drawings are gorgeous; hand drawn animation is still the prettiest of them all and in this case they took inspiration from the real life book of Kells using its complex images as a building stones for their animated world. Even without knowing that you’ll marvel at the inventiveness and pure beauty of the art.

Go and see it, now!

Cinema review: The grey

A group of oil workers get stranded in the middle of Alaska after a plane crash. It’s the middle of the winter and a pack of wolves approaches.

It’s difficult for a movie to get grittier than this one. I’m not saying this as a critic; it’s just a word of advice about what you are going to see if you rent this one out.

The tone goes from somber to downbeat all the way to flat out depressing. The total lack of any positive feelings is the biggest flaw of the movie.

On the other hand after watching the movie I can understand why they structured it this way. It kinda works both stylistically and thematically. This is only apparently a movie about survival, in reality this is a movie about acceptance.

Joe Carnahan after his terrible movie version of the A team redeems himself here. He is on both writing and directing duties and clearly excels on every front.

The plane crash at the beginning is a masterpiece, probably the best plane crash ever in movies, to get more impressive and realistic you just have to do it for real. The rest of the movie is up to par with beautiful locations and impressive set pieces that really convey a side of nature that we often forget.

Liam Neeson continues his impressive strings of action roles with another impressive performance. The excellent script of course is helping him but nonetheless is not easy to convey so much by saying so little.

We can nitpick on the diabolical and certainly not realistic depiction of the Grey Wolves but in the end is not that important. This is a movie and here the wolves represent the primal, inevitable forces of nature.

This is a very good, and very depressing, movie. Recommended for all the lovers of good cinema, just get a couple of episodes of your favorite sit com to lift you up afterward.

Cinema review: Journey 2: The mysterious island

Another adventurous journey for our heroes, this time to a mysterious island.

This is the follow up to 2008 “Journey to the center of the earth”. That movie was a surprise breakout achieving an impressive box office just by being a very fun light hearted adventure, with a little help from a very good 3D. The success of Journey number 2, with surpassed number 1, promoted it officially to franchise status with a third part in development right now.

They changed practically all the major players involved, only Josh Hutcherson returns as the annoying brat, but the producers understood perfectly what made the first movie tick and replicated it on a much bigger scale.

If you are an hardcore Vernian (wow so you really exist!) this movie is not for you. It takes so many liberties with the source material that its relationship with Jules Verne “The mysterious island” is just a vague “Inspired by”.

Actually the real source material, if we must point at something, is the big adventure / monster movies of the 40s. “The land that time forgot” and its ilk with their tales of far away isles, always in the southern seas, inhabitated by monsters and littered by the ruins of ancient civilizations are clearly the blueprints here.

This movie is that rare beast which not only is fun but is unashamedly so. How many summer blockbusters pays lip service to stuff like “character development”, “relationships” and “drama”, do it very badly and just manage to sink into boring depths? Nothing of that sort here, just pure unadulterated fun while our heroes jump from set piece to set piece.

Of course to do this you need people capable to hold it together with very little material and the producer got two standout performers.

One is The Rock who is finally recovering from that career suicide that was “The tooth Fairy”. Nobody can say that he is a particularly gifted actor but in doing what he does here, basically playing a funny version of his on screen persona, he is pitch perfect.

The other is arguably one of the best actors ever, sir Michael Caine, who at 79 years old got more charisma while riding a giant wasp that a legion of Channing Tatums.

Making a real popcorn movie is actually much harder than it look, this one is the best that we had in a while, recommended viewing for a fun evening.

DVD review: Eat Pray Love

A woman quest of self discovery across three different countries.

From the beginning this wasn’t an easy proposition. Adapted from the incredibly successful travel memories of Elizabeth Gilbert it combines two very easy to botch genre.

The title refers to the three different legs in Elizabeth travel. Eat is for Italy where she pursues all the carnal pleasures, Pray is for India where she pursue spirituality and Love is for Bali where all the romantic stuff happens.

I did never read the book, and I have no intention to do it either, not my genre, but in the movie Elizabeth doesn’t come off as very sympathetic. She abandons an extremely successful life for reasons that she can explains. I understand that the point of a journey of self discovery is that you don’t know and that life should be more than the purely material stuff but honestly speaking our protagonist comes out as a bit of a spoiled brat. This is noteworthy considering that she is played by none other than Julia Roberts, one of the most relatable actresses on the planet.

I won’t point the finger at Julia Roberts work; I think she did a fair job with the material. The director, Ryan Murphy of “Glee” fame, was also competent but, as I noted at the beginning, this is the type of material that is very easy to botch. For every “Forrest Gump” there are dozens of “Eat, Pray, Love”.

All the various stages of Elizabeth travels are really just a collection of clichés. What she meets is just a bunch of walking stereotypes expressing an endless array of vague phrases that should hide very wise “truths”. In the end the overall impression is that happiness means simply living in a never-ending holiday.

Maybe I’m not the target audience but for me this movie should be avoided at all costs, even by die hard Julia Roberts fans.

DVD review: Grown ups

A group of “grownups” revisits their childhood places when their basketball coach dies.

First let the elephant in the room. I like Adam Sandler, I’m actually a fan of his works, and I normally watch every single comedy that he does. I know that he always plays the same character, the patented Adam Sandler role, but I don’t really care because it’s a very broad one, more like a platform to tell jokes from than anything else.

Having said that “Grownups” is really the lowest point in his filmograpy and considering that it’s coming from the same team that made the underrated “You don’t mess with the Zohan” is really a shame.

First of all Sandler, who is also on writing duties here, is starting to think that he don’t really need any driving force in his plots. Here we have a group of estranged grownups who meet again after many years, a sort of high school reunion, and that’s all. There is no real antagonist, our heroes are all so very very successful that any sense of urgency, any reason we should care about all these spoiled guys, is missing.

Now I understand that we don’t really watch an Adam Sandler movie for the plot but in reality we still need one. To use a metaphor the plot of a comedy is like a skeleton whereupon we can affix the various jokes, with no plot all we got is standup comedy, very funny of course but after half an hour it can get tiring.

This gets us to the jokes and I must sadly report that Adam Sandler made his first mostly unfunny movie. We could feel the lack of inspiration in how he started resorting to that very gross, cringe inducing stuff that is all the rage right now.

His entire extended circle of cinematic friends, Kevin James, Rob Schneider and co, appears in one form or the other. Actually it all felt like watching an extended trip of an old group of friends where every now and then they remembered to turn on the camera.

Unfunny and gross, stay away from this one.

DVD review: City Island

A family living in the picturesque City Island hides many secrets.

A real surprise this movie, written and directed by Raymond De Felitta, an independent filmmaker who made a darkly comic movie without resorting to the usual, boring, stuff.

This is a very well written movie where every member of the family got a distinct story arc and a distinct “secret” that he is hiding from the others. The laughs arise from the complex situations that develop on the screen.

Most importantly this is one of those rare comedies, at least rare for these days, without gross humor and the usual array of cringiness that is ubiquitous these days.

The actors are all very good, with an excellent Andy Garcia leading the way with a scene that is hard to forget.

The real spark of genius of this movie is of course the setting. City Island is an amazingly cinematic setting that has been left unspoiled in a city, New York, filmed so many times that is somewhat more familiar to us than our hometowns.

This movie is the rare gem that manages to get a smile out of us while saying interesting things about not popular subjects like, for example, what does it means to live in a small island beside such a big, famous city. One not to miss.

Cinema Review: Haywire

A Special Forces operative is on the run against a conspiracy.

Steven Soderbergh continues is run of good movies. The idea here is to do a bourne style movie with added MMA style fight with Gina Carano, real life MMA fighter, one of the best in that business.

Legend tells that Soderbergh got the idea watching a Gina Carano match in his hotel room late at night and that he had no previous knowledge of MMA and no idea who Carano was, or even her name, and that it took a while for him, probably for his assistant, to track down the relevant information.

As of lately Soderbergh get an interesting idea and spins it without trying to be art house for the sake of art house but neither lowering the standard too much ocean 12 and 13 style. He makes interesting movies that somebody might want to see.

Gina Carano is not an actress, at least not now, but the role is literally tailored to her so this is not an issue, she basically plays herself as a superspy. She even got some odd kind of charisma going on, nothing too incredible just the feeling that she could do all that stuff for real.

She is surrounded by a lot of heavy weight actors, Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender, Ewan Mcgregor, (and Channing Tatum so she got also somebody that is worst than her) so that all the non action scenes flow nicely.

The action of course is spectacular and very interesting. It is as innovative to current action cinema as “The matrix” was ten years ago, even if it will probably spawn a lot less clones.

Probably overstepping himself Soderbergh went for a peculiar euro vibe. The movie clearly tries to ape those 70s thrillers but is very difficult to recreate the feeling of another genre and another age, Joe Wright was successful in Hanna but Soderbergh ends with a very cold end product.

A very interesting but flawed movie that is still enjoyable to the casual viewer.

DVD review: Going the distance

It’s about the perils of a long distance relationship.

In the increasingly arthritic rom com the long distance relationship has been strangely absent, until now.

Evidently satisfied by one of the last few unmined hooks the filmmakers forgot again to put an healthy amount of genuinely comic moments. The whole movie is so adherent to the established rom com traditions that it’s impossible to avid a sense of déjà vu at each and every scene.

Luckily for them they got one of the great staples of the genre in Drew Barrymore. She doesn’t have that great comic timing but she is so sympathetic, so girl next door, that it’s impossible not to root for her, even when the other lead is Justin Long, who still enjoy a surprising clout considering the number of roles he is getting.

With a plot that doesn’t manage to get over “Long distance relationships never work” this entry is just for die hard rom com fans.

DVD review: 22 bulletts

A mob boss is shot down by his rivals, 22 times, but he somehow survives and exacts his revenge.

The latest product of Luc Besson patented action movie construction set is actually based on the real life exploits of Jacky Imbert, although with an healthy dose of fictionalization to make the main protagonist more sympathetic.

Unluckily while adapting the story they stopped in the middle of the metaphorical river, therefore they made a lot of changes to make it more movie friendly but left in a lot of stuff that doesn’t make sense without previous knowledge of Marseille crime scene, many things are left just there, dangling plot pieces that were left there because they sound awesome, like the legendary flight to Orano, but without the proper context sounds just bizarre.

The action is less over the top than the other recent actioners from France, instead a lot of time is spent trying to establish the character of the “immortal” boss that is trying to reform his ways. It all feels very clunky, disjointed.

Jean Reno plays the stock, and stoic, Jean Reno character. He is still very good at it and by itself this makes the movie watchable. The action stuff is still fun but the convoluted plot make it hard to follow.

Nowadays the French couldn’t make a bad action movie even if they tried but this is undoubtedly the worst film that they made in a while, still enjoyable for fun of the genre though.

DVD review: The last Exorcism

A disillusioned evangelist performs his very last exorcism.

A new exponent in the thriving found footage horror genre “The last exorcism” enjoyed a surprising success.

It starts very slowly; the pretext of the found footage is that this is a documentary on the last exorcism of this minister who admits out loud at the beginning that the exorcism business is all a scam and that he never believed. Of course as genre conventions dictates that “one last job” goes incredibly wrong when all this stuff suddenly look terribly real.

For all practical purposes the first 30 minutes could be a fly on the wall documentary on the subject, as a doc is even mildly interesting.

The scares are slowly built and are more of the generally unsettling type, this is refreshing in today sudden jump scares environment but maybe a little bit too predictable when seen trough the lenses of exorcism movies who’ve been doing this for the last thirty years.

The nice gross, especially considering the very low budget, means that the obligatory sequel is in production so apparently the so called last exorcism will be followed by “The very last exorcism” and maybe “The last exorcism 3: this time for real” to round up the trilogy. J

In the end the fake doc format manages to make this an interesting movie, nothing really ground breaking but it hold the viewer attention all the way trough.

DVD review: The secret in their eyes

The investigation on a rape, murder case in the shadows of Argentina’s troubles.

This movie won the Oscar for best foreign language film and for once it is for a very good and engaging thriller and not some art house stuff.

This movie is masterfully shot; the standout is an amazing five minutes continuous shot which hovers all over a stadium, passes between the football players and then follow one of the public. The rest of the movie is more traditional but still excellent, actually without all the technical virtuosism is easier the appreciate the storytelling.

The director Juan Campanella is an old hand who, in English speaking markets, worked primarily on TV series, like House or 30 rock, while in his native place is an acclaimed film director.

The plot at the beginning look predictable and vaguely boring but discovering the culprit and catching him is only the beginning, huge plot twists halfway through broaden the scope of the movie from mere thriller to a meditation on justice and revenge.

The actors are serviceable, maybe it’s the cultural divide here but I couldn’t get many emotions out of them, there was like a thick screen that dampened everything.

This movie is a masterpiece thriller, heavily recommended to fans of the genre and of excellent storytelling.