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johnshinnick
Reviews
The Fighter (2010)
It's a sports film that rises above the genre to become something better.
The Fighter is based on the true story of boxer "Irish" Micky Ward's unlikely rise through the ranks to the WBU (World Boxing Union) light-welterweight title.
Micky's story would be a conventional sports film if not for the presence of his half-brother Dicky, a boxer-turned-trainer whose life was screwed up by crack addiction and the petty crimes that associated with that life.
The brother, played by Christian Bale, makes the story interesting and charges it emotionally. Bale bursts from the skin of his character, igniting every frame with his energy (reminding, occasionally of his role as the high-energy boy in Empire of the Sun). As in The Mechanic, Bale lost a lot of weight preparing for the gaunt crack-addicted brother. He was 100 per cent convincing.
Bale's character, Davy, exudes personality every time he enters a room or walks down a street. You know he is a drug-addled screw up and you know he is going to mess up his brother's life, but the brother loves him and is loyal to him so you want to see Davy rise above his problem.
One of Bale's best scenes was shot on the front porch of the house where Charlene, Micky's girlfriend (played by Amy Adams) lives. Clean and sober after eight months in prison, Dicky carries a ton of baggage to that porch. He has hurt people. He has conned neighbors. He has disappointed everyone but his mother and his half brother. The entire town of Lowell, Massachusetts remembers Dicky as a boxer ("The pride of Lowell") but they also remember him being addicted to crack, so nobody is prepared to believe he has gotten past the addiction during his eight months in prison.
On the porch, Micky, knowing that he carries that baggage, wants to charm Charlene and patch things up for his brother. Charlene, however, is fueled by her complete distrust of Davy. She loves Micky and she has seen Dicky mess up Micky's life over and over again. On the porch, she has just walked away from Micky because he insists on being loyal to Dicky. No way is she going to be easily convinced that Davy has changed.
She is skeptical of every word to come from Dicky's mouth, but Dicky pulls out all the stops in an effort to overcome his baggage and connect with her to make things right for his brother.
The immovable object meets the irresistible force. It is a fine scene.
Amy Adams is equally amazing in this film. As an actor, she is gutsy. Even when she started to command bigger paychecks, she continued to make independent films and bring to those indie films performances that made them better than they might have been. She never shies from a challenge. In this role she plays a worldly bartender who flunked out of college despite a full scholarship in high jump. As an athlete, she can understand with Micky.
In the final analysis, it is Amy Adams who makes the chemistry work between Charlene and Micky. Wahlberg can be as wooden as Ben Affleck when it comes to romantic subtleties. Amy Adams in this role is like one of those good dancers on Dancing With The Stars who has to work with a partner who might as well be a post or a tree stump. While Wahlberg is unmoving, Amy Adams' performance reaches out and emotionally draws the scenes together.
The Fighter has dimension to it, and a lot of the depth from the supporting cast.
The mother played with conviction by Melissa Leo. She runs a family home surrounded by seven adult daughters, and all seem to either be living at home or visiting their mother a lot. The sisters are a hoot, sort of like a Greek chorus on a living room couch. Highly emotional, the sisters hate Micky's girlfriend. I loved them because there was something fascinatingly hideous about the sisters.
Rocky, Raging Bull, Ali, Million Dollar Baby, and Cinderella Man are all fight films that have taken the viewer where The Fighter goes. No surprise there. Micky, as you expect, gets the crap beaten out of him. He struggles through the rank. He gets his shot at a title and he enters the ring against a better boxer to compete for a world championship. The sports genre always travels down a well-beaten path and always takes us to a happier place. Every sports film tells this oft-told tale. You enjoy the genre because getting there is what makes sports films a pleasure.
The Fighter benefits from the fact that it is not just a sports film but a story of family and redemption. You family is important, addiction is not unbeatable. The Fighter is a feel good film with a lot of ugly stuff to overcome.
IAlthough I put The Fighter along side most of the other boxing films, it could have been a lot better. If Micky had been more three-dimensional, the film might have been a classic. The elements are there, struggle and redemption. It's a true story with a lot of subtext, and that alone makes it better than Rocky. Unfortunately, Wahlberg is no DeNiro so it's no Raging Bull, and the script isn't up to Million Dollar Baby.
That said, The Fighter is worth seeing. You'll like it for the performances by Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo and character actors whose faces you'll recognize from dozens of other films and television performances. You will love it for the feel-good arc, the love and redemption that are built into this genre.
If you like boxing, you'll love the action. The camera work in the ring scenes is first rate and convincing. On the big screen, you feel every punch.
However, if you are of that generation that hates boxing but likes cage fighting, there's no hope for you, sorry
Unstoppable (2010)
A rail yard worker screws up and sends a toxic-tank loaded train on its way without an engineer.
When I saw the first trailer for Unstoppable, I thought Tony Scott was doing a re-make of Runaway Train, one of the great indie films of all time. In Runaway Train, two escaped prisoners are on the tracks in the Alaskan wilderness in winter. The older film builds tension from the first frame to the last, and it delivers a memorable performance by John Voight with Eric Roberts in his best performance ever (every performance since Runaway Train is a "lesser babka").
Unstoppable is not a remake of Runaway Train, thank goodness. It should, however, be the benchmark for action thrillers, one of the most cliché-riddled genres in filmdom. The chase scenes in this film are not the endless clichés that inhabit most action films. The explosions are not gratuitous.
Unstoppable is based on a true story with fictional heroes dealing with larger-than-life problems. There are a lot of differences between this film and the real incident on which it is based. The real train, for example, was number 8888, while the film train is number 777. The real train went 46 miles per hour, while the fictional train hits a more dramatic 80 mph. The two characters in the film did not exist. The threats to life and limb are more dramatic in the film than they were in real life.
Who cares about the differences? When you board this train, it's for the ride, not a history lesson.
The film contains only a small bit of gunfire (one part that's true), but the effect is mostly comic. In other words, you don't need guns to engage an audience and tell an action story.
A number of on-line reviewers seem to think the special effects are the movie. They miss what is enjoyable about this film.
Unstoppable's plot line follows a good, clean script powered by two characters whose personal baggage keeps getting in the way of the job at hand.
The film starts with stupidity on the part of a railyard worker (played by Ethan Suplee, Earl's dumb as a bag of hammers brother). Everything cascades from there. In the reports I have read, nobody seems to know precisely how the train got away from the yard without an engineer on board. In the film, the sequence of events is akin to those penguins in one of the early Superman movies. A toy penguin wanders away from a street vendor, causes A, which causes B, which cascades into a major disaster. In this case, a bit of laziness on the part of the worker causes the train to go out of control.
The cascading effect leads to a herculean effort on the part of rail and civic authorities to prevent a major disaster of unbelievable proportions. In the real life event, the train was pulling tanks of toxic chemicals and the film doesn't deviate from that. The potential of a toxic spill in a populated area was a real possibility in the actual train incident, but it gets ratcheted up a notch in the film.
The character motivation is pure, and the dialogue is sparse. You like rookie conductor, Will Colson (Chris Pine) and grizzled engineer Frank Barnes (Denzel Washington).You look over their shoulders as they face one bizarre problem after another.
Layered into the action is the story of Hank's two daughters (two wildcats who work for Hooters) and Will's wife (who has a court order against him).
There are no secret agents and there are no bombs. However, lots of stuff blows up "real good."
The camera work and direction by Tony Scott delivers the scale of railroading to the big screen. These engines are huge and their cargo is heavy beyond belief. The human beings operating the equipment are fragile ants by comparison.
This is an action thriller, not a Swedish mood film or a romantic comedy. Unstoppable cuts to the action early and builds to an on-the-edge-of-your-seat third act. It has its clichéd autocrats who stand in the way of the heroes to tell them they're wrong at every stage. It has its smarter than life characters who understand the minute details of diesel propulsion, steel- on-steel friction, hydraulic braking systems, and railroad scheduling.
Unstoppable is based on a true story, but when you take a look at the real incident after seeing the film you will realize how much was enhanced to make the action move the film forward. it's about 10 per cent real and 90 per cent fabrication, but that's okay because the experience is so compelling.
You will learn a lot more about the operation of a train than you ever wanted to know. You will learn just how hard it is to stop one of these things when they get away from the human operator. But this film isn't an educational docudrama, it's an action.
You'll see it for the visceral experience, the 90 minute ride.
Take a defibrillator with you.
Luftslottet som sprängdes (2009)
The victim of a shooting is to be prosecuted for attempted murder after she recovers from her wounds.
The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson is a series of pulp mysteries centered around Lisbeth Salander, an interesting, intelligent, self-reliant character who jumped off the page in the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
In print, Larsson's prose (perhaps only in translation) can be pedestrian. Long expository passages link the scenes where the characters actually interact with one another.
On screen, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest makes creative leaps in partnership with its audience. You don't have to know the back story to get drawn into the film. Although the books were doorstop bricks, the film works without a lot of explanation.
Noomi Rapace -- a Swedish actress virtually unknown here in North America -- plays Lisbeth Salander, a tough, eccentric researcher/hacker. Her performance, under the direction of Daniel Alfredson, is credible. Rapace makes Salander's intelligence an element in every scene, even when she is not speaking.
I missed the first and the second film in the trilogy. Both came and went too fast in the local theatres.
Subtitled with Swedish dialogue, the films were not popular with the average film-goer, despite the best-selling nature of the books. Too bad. Anyone who likes the books would enjoy the films, despite the subtitles. Their loss...
This, the final act in the trilogy, wraps up all the loose ends.
In The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Lisbeth Salander is introduced as an objet, not much more than bandaged furniture around which the other characters move. She just sits or lies on the hospital bed or in a prison cell distrusting her doctor and lawyer as they try to help her. Recovering from injuries sustained at the end of the second film, she has an unspoken agenda and she distrusts anyone else to actually help her.
She is not only the victim of a shooting but the defendant in an impending court case. This free spirit's freedom is on the line as powerful nasties align to silence her. This time, her highly skilled friends work on her behalf.
Interrogated for hours by the prosecutor and police, she answers no questions, shows no emotion, provides no insight into her guilt or innocence. Evaluated by a psychiatrist, she silently conveys a restrained anger. For much of the film Lisbet Salander is a brick, just deepening her mystery.
The bad guys do not want Salander's story told in a public trial because it would expose their secret. Being nasties, they will, of course, kill to get their way.
What Salander wants is more important than what they want.
Mikael Blomkvist (played by Michael Nyqvist) is an investigative journalist and one of Lisbeth Salander's guardian angels. He knows most of the extremely complex and layered truth surrounding her life and her case. He understands her innocence. To help her, he risks the lives of his co-workers and his lover.
This story is essentially about how we all need backup. Salander's not as alone in her struggle as she thinks. In the courtroom, you can't help but notice her backup arrayed around the room. Despite the irresistible forces aligned to put her in prison or in a psych ward, her defence lawyer, a hacker friend, the journalist, her old boss ... everyone is pulling levers to set her free.
One question is raised in first frame of the film: can this shattered, bleeding, feral waif possibly survive the brutal onslaught of bigger, better-equipped, better-connected opponents? Can she possibly survive the legal system without being sent to prison or being committed to a psych ward?
This is crime genre at its best. As you get to know Salander, you come to understand that the bad guys don't have a snowball's chance.
You watch the story unfold to see how she is going to defeat them.
This is a dark, dark, dark film.
I read the book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo only because I liked the trailer for the film by that name. I generally dislike formulaic books because I see the end the moment I read the first sentence.
In film, genre is a necessary shorthand. We tolerate formulaic structure as long as the director and cast tell the story well. The images of Salander and her world in that trailer drew me into the screen specifically because it was the antithesis of the Hollywood mystery.
David Fincher is shooting the Hollywood remake of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Can it be as good as the original Swedish cast, directed in Sweden with high-performance Volvo police cars and the dark, angst-ridden Swedish soul?
I dunno ...
Part of the charm of this film is that you will not recognize a single actor.
The distance from Hollywood helps build the suspense of this film. It keeps you off guard. Moving closer to Hollywood will not produce a better film.
The unknown cast keeps you focused on the story because you are not comparing performances with what came before.
Being a Swedish film helps you live in Salander's skin and walk through her world for a little over two hours.
John Shinnick
Your Cheatin' Heart (1964)
The rise and fall of country singer Hank Williams
For its time, this movie was pretty good and somewhat gritty. It's black and white in an era when color was being used, so there was a sort of deliberately artsy quality about the effort. A lot of the movie, however, is plagued by melodrama, which cursed many of the films of the Sixties, Fifties and Forties. Today, the result doesn't wash. George Hamilton over- acts, but I suspect it's not entirely his fault. I blame the direction, the camera work (mostly the product of cumbersome technology at use in its day) and the editing. It was a good attempt, though, and a better than average effort for George Hamilton and for the film industry of its day. The music is good but the selections included in the film are too clipped, you hear a few bars of this and a few bars of that, but not the entire songs. This story needs to be retold with the quality of music as in the Johnny Cash story and the Ray Charles story, two fine biopics of recent vintage. If you are interested in Hank Williams and his prolific musical output, a better movie is "Hank Williams, The Concert He Never Gave." Now that's gritty, the acting, editing and storytelling are better, the music is superb.
12 Monkeys (1995)
A post-pandemic psychological pretzel starring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe and Brad Pitt.
This is one of my favorite movies. I saw it on the big screen twice and about 50 times on DVD. Each time, my appreciation for the script, editing, direction and acting continues to grow.
It is an amazing drama, rich in layers and dark humor.
On the big screen, the story was so overlaid with complexity that I missed it entirely. I went back the second time to find clues to the storyline. The post-apocalyptic vision and Cole's psychological conundrum are so entwined with time travel that the story cannot be evident on the first viewing. It helps to enter the world a few times to wear the skin of the main character.
Gilliam has undertaken to tell an amazing story, but he asks his viewer to be a partner in the telling. His Monty Python sketches were that way, too, with the humor lying somewhere beneath the surface, inviting you to go down the rabbit hole with Alice.
On the big screen, I was entertained by Brad Pitt, who is sometimes hilarious, but his antics caused me to overlook Bruce Willis, who plays the perfectly sane straight man forced to question his own sanity in a perplexing situation. Even without the problem of a world-killing pandemic, all of us should be able to identify with the problem of the central character. James Cole's psychological overlay adds a lot to the telling of the story.
In lesser hands, 12 Monkeys dystopian vision would be just another piece of pulp science fiction. The psychological dimension enriches the deeper mysteries and gives the film "legs."
Today's headlines warn of an impending world-wide pandemic. England is preparing for 50,000 fatalities, and most other countries are groping for some way to head off a major world-wide catastrophe. In light of our reality, 12 Monkeys' post- apocalyptic vision strikes a cord each time I see it.
If we are tiptoeing along a similar precipice, we should get it right... we don't have the luxury of time travel to fix the problem.