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jung-8
Reviews
RED (2010)
Good Fun but With Limitations
While this movie will please most, especially this time of year when usual flair is aimed at a more highbrow audience with eyes towards the Oscars, I wish more of a direction was taken than the mix of styles and substance this movie portrayed. It's as if Robert Schwentke, the director of Red, couldn't decide on doing a pure spoof of action films going with pure slapstick comedy or if he wanted a buddy caper film a la Ocean's 11 or the Italian Job.
Many of these 'team' films have come out lately with the A-Team, The Expendables, The Losers and others doing a better job of mixing in their humor than Red did. Here it seemed forced and out of place most times.
Don't get me wrong, it is good fun with some great actors doing great things with enough action thrown into the mix to please any popcorn crowd, however I often felt when watching these actors perform their craft I was on the outside of an inside joke.
Many times they just seemed too pleased with themselves delivering campy lines and performing stunts well beyond any rational suspension of disbelief. The movie would have been much better had they taken a nod towards their age, a la The Expendables and not run around like teenagers on spring break.
Reading early reviews have lauded John Malkovich's role and he is as ever a pleasure to watch on screen however he exemplifies the problems with this movie. Richard Dreyfuss, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, et all, each playing almost stereotypical roles which if hadn't been seen before would have been much more entertaining. There just wasn't much new to see in this film although it's packaged together so slickly and clean we enjoy unwrapping the present more than the gift inside.
For me, lost amongst the veterans patting themselves on their collective backs, was a delightful performance by Mary-Louise Parker. She not only holds her own against these heavy weights but surprisingly in a farce based movie lends legitimacy to the chaos and ridiculous action around her.
Without giving away plot and story, most action scenes and scrapes gotten into by the main characters are so far fetched and unbelievable, especially the way they escape the messes they bury themselves into in the first place, you wonder if the writers were out of original ideas and simply watched old Warner Brothers' cartoons for their plot twists.
However, all this being said you will not be disappointed with Red if you go in expecting some light fun and not wanting a film which will spark much conversation afterwards. While I found myself smiling through most of the film and even laughing out loud in some parts, if I had wanted to include a favorite scene in this review I would be hard pressed to remember one with enough clarity to include thus necessitating the 'spoiler' check box to be used.
Bottom line: Go and enjoy this latest Bruce Willis flick but don't expect Die Hard.
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Genius? Hell no, simply misguided directors...
Well, I say spoilers but with no plot, a loose story line, random characters, no resolution to story line, saying this review contains spoilers is a compliment I don't want to give this movie.
When I went to see this movie I did not know, believe it or not, it was a Coen Brothers film. However after the first scene and the visual of the boot marks all over the floor and I guessed that it was. It left me with the same feeling of the blood stains from the wood chipper in the snow from Fargo.
Not the same imagery, mind you, but the same sense of feeling. A sense of something violent and chaotic happened looked at from an obtuse albeit familiar image with contrasting colors of something that shouldn't be there.
Next the dialog came about and I knew for sure.
This movie is just plain misguided. When directors start to be identified by their techniques they are losing the plot and forgetting what film making is all about. To tell a story and to express ideas, not to showcase their quirks and be identified by them.
They should be in the background and not center stage.
The Coens, granted in my opinion only, took a step towards the over indulgent David Lynch and a giant leap away from becoming great directors based on their earlier works. The genius of Raising Arizona or Joel's The Hudsucker Proxy is a distant rock of film work casting a giant shadow on this current piece.
So many are saying that Javier Bardem's morbid and "deep" character is the real gem of the movie and brings originality to a type of role never seen before. Hell, take a look at another Tommy lee film, Batman where he played Two Face. The quirky and annoying Anton Chigurh is simply Two Face in an adult movie and like any bad guy, should not have gotten away.
Then there are the random characters being introduced in the movie for no apparent reason. I mean, just what was Woody Harrelson's character in the movie for? Seriously, without dipping into film school hogwash about stereotypes and archetypes of moral choices and bit characters to drive a moral choice. Or the old guy in the wheel chair towards the end?
By that time I was just rolling my eyes and getting more confused and upset that I was actually trying to make sense of this non-sequitur story line.
Then it hit me.
There was no point. There was no reason for this movie at all. It is just one long Coen self back patting cinematic journey and a movie to praise their own, self recognized, film making skills. What Blazing Saddles was to westerns this movie is to their previous works. It is quite ironic, and knowing the Coens deliberate, that it ends with Tommy Lee speaking of dreams. You know that feeling, the sense when you first wake up from a weird dream but in your half asleep mind set the fact that a pink dog was playing Tchaikovsky on the piano while sipping a martini and explaining why hot dogs come in 10 packs while buns come in 8 somehow can relate to your entire life plan and future goals.
As you regain your senses and become fully awake you realize that it was only a dream and sometimes a cake is just a cake.
Directors should not take center stage and simply let their films speak for them. This movie only speaks about the directors. Those that say this film is genius are still half asleep. When they wake up they also will admit they were stupefied by the Coens and didn't dare to question their "talent".
Well, I am begging you to indeed question it and see this movie for what it really is: Self indulgent nonsense.
Bottom line is that No country for Old Men (even the title is ridiculous and misleading) is a film one can easily skip. When someone comes out and tells you about this film and how great it is, watch them start talking about the Coens and their amazing talent. For if any other director made this heap of trash you would be renting this directly off the shelves as it would never have made the big screen.
The Number 23 (2007)
The Trouble With 23
The main problem with this movie is that in the end "23" is just a number.
After all the obsession and plot twists and pursing the number 23, in the end it really doesn't matter and it could have been 24 or 14 and a half or 3.1415 or virtually any number.
A movie like this hangs a premise out like a carrot for their viewers. Sometime you want a nibble and sometimes a big bite, depending on the movie.
The number 23 not only hangs a carrot out for us to follow but gives us reason after reason to want that carrot and catch it but once we do.. .Well hell, it's just a carrot!
The journey of this character does not enlighten us nor does it explain the curse, it simply provides justice for a girl brutally murdered by a sick man.
Our compassion and desire for him to find himself and for him to reach salvation is replaced at the end with a hallow feeling of remorse and disappointment in the journey and misplaced emotions.
May be fun for the director and script writer, but for a film goer and lover I was hoping for a better ending and resolution to his demons not simply locking him up.
The kid and wife are the losers in this movie. And how about the foreshadowing of the original guy accused of the murder? How long before his kids and wife stop their visits? How long before he is alone with his demons and they consume him again?
Overall I am not happy with this film and expected a ton more...
Derailed (2005)
Give it a go, you won't be sad you did
While this won't make anyone's all time top 10 list, this film is still quite good and worth a watch. I would even go as far as saying it is worth a trip to the theater and not simply wait for a good rental.
However, if you do miss it at the cinema make sure you do rent it as this is a perfect Saturday night at home movie night.
Jennifer Anniston is surprising in this film and when the plot unfolds you wish that you would have seen more of her. Her character and her motivations are one of the key points in this film and seems to get lost by some last min editing. I'm sure there are many great scenes with her in them that hit the cutting room floor.
Overall, good flick. Don't worry about getting Derailed.
Hell Squad (1985)
Either the best comedy or worst action film ever made...
From the cheesy dialog to the no-talent 'actresses', there is not one redeeming quality about this 'film'!
About the point these commando bikini-models were putting on their flippers and snorkel gear to swim across a lake in a middle of a desert to a stock photograph of a castle in the European mountains I lost my lunch.
The biggest laugh of the movie was the reveal of 'Ann' as 'Andy' when a halloween budget mask was pulled off of Ann/Andy. Couldn't help but think of Austin Powers, "That's a MAN, man!"
So bad it's laughable! If there was a ZERO STAR rating this movie would have it!