Category: Text Reviews

Literally taking place right on the heels of Casino Royale, James Bond is seeking revenge on the killers of Vesper Lynd, and through his last suspect, Bond and M discover a far greater threat, that of a new group called Quantum, who even has an operative placed right in MI-6. Bond’s investigation leads him to an environmental entrepreneur named Dominic Greene and his company Greene Planet and also to a woman named Camille who has her own plan of revenge to complete.

And in a nutshell, that’s the premise of Quantum of Solace, Daniel Craig’s second movie starring as James Bond. This movie is almost an extension of Casino Royale completing Bond’s opening arc and setting things up (hopefully} to come. As such, it doesn’t quite carry the same impact that Casino Royale did, though to me, it’s still a very entertaining film with some very nice action set pieces.

This one is directed by Marc Forster, who previously directed The Kite Runner which I haven’t seen. And Forster is doing some things here that’s not atypical James Bond stuff, but still fitting to what has been set up with the first movie. Where it falls a little short is doing something that’s more complete unto itself, that is if that’s what you’re expecting, but if you’re going into it looking at this as an extension of the previous film, well then you’re bound to have some fun with it.

I really like Forster’s action sequences here, some of them giving an almost over-the shoulder type of view and others intercut with some other action going on simultaneously. One in particular going on during an opera, Tosca, is really extremely nice.

Craig is solid gold as Bond, he proved in Casino Royale and he cements it with Quantum of Solace. and while this doesn’t quite ask the same things of him that the previous film did, there’s still some nice character stuff along the way. One scene in particular when Bond is giving Camille some advice about killing a person is very nice. Olga Kurlyenko plays Camille, and she was most recently seen in Max Payne and she’s OK in the part, mostly serving as window dressing more than giving anything real meaningful. Better is Mathieu Amalric, who plays Greene. Now he’s not in the same category as Le Chiffre, but as the tip of the iceberg that should be the organization of Quantum, he does a pretty decent job. The real trick will be in the third film and if the pursuit of Quantum is taken further, then that’s when the filmmakers will have to up the ante a bit. Judi Dench, Giancarlo Giannini and Jeffrey Wright are all back from the previous effort and all are fine, though Dench’s M seems just a bit softer than she’s been in previous efforts (including the Brosnan Bond when speaking of this). Still though, this cast is pretty well suited in the big picture.

I thought it was a lot of fun, even though it doesn’t have the same impact as Casino Royale it does have it’s moments, and it closes the emotional arc for Bond started in the previous film, while setting the stage for bigger things to come. My advice is to set those expectations just a wee bit lower than what you had for Casino Royale and look at this as an extension, and you should have a pretty decent time with it.

It’s Pittsburgh and the dead of winter and platonic roommates Zack Brown and Miri Linky are struggling to make ends meet. We find that Zack works in a Starbucks-like coffee house, but strangely, we never quite see what Miri does… but I digress. Times are tough for the two and then they have their 10th anniversary class reunion that they’re going to and while there, they pretty much discover that they’re not doing anything for anyone to give a damn about them at all… and as they make their way back to their apartment, then everything is cut off- no power, no water, they’ve truly hit their rock-bottom. Now at their class reunion, they’ve discovered that one of their former classmates now makes gay porn, and so that inspires Zack to suggest to Miri, that they should make a porno film and with a ready made list of 800 names from their class reunion, they’ve got the perfect base to sell their film to, make money and live the good life…

And then of course, hi-jinks ensue…

This is the premise of the latest movie from writer/director Kevin Smith, Zack and Miri Make a Porno and unfortunately, while it’s a pleasant enough piece in it’s own way, it’s also Smith’s weakest movie yet…

Here’s the deal, I don’t necessarily mind raunch in my films, and further I expect it from Kevin Smith movies, but there’s something about it in his other movies where it feels right and further where it’s delivered in such a way that it’s wildly amusing. But here, it feels like Smith is doing it just to be doing and saying “yeah, here’s what I can do” and it just feels forced amongst his cast…

… and his cast is just plain wrong for the film. Seth Rogen plays Zack, Elizabeth Banks plays Miri, and they’re backed up by Craig Robinson, Traci Lords, Justin Long, Brandon Routh and perennial Smith regulars, Jeff Anderson and Jason Mewes. Now I’m on the record of just not being a Seth Rogen fan, so I certainly admit that bias, and had this not been a Kevin Smith movie, I doubt I would’ve seen it in the first place, but I don’t buy a bit of Rogen in the film for the most part (though he does have his moments), but he’s just not at all sincere to me with his performance. And I think Elizabeth Banks tries to be too sincere here, and as such, it just never gels between the two. Now you can certainly chalk this up to poor writing as well, as we’re never really told how they end up in their situation in the first place, we’re just shown a scene where their unpaid bills are overflowing, but nothing that really tells us why these too “losers” (and I use that term real loosely in Banks’ case) are the way they are- they both have jobs (though as I said above, we really don’t know what Miri does) and absolutely nothing gets paid, I guess it’s because they really don’t discover anything about personal responsibility until they decide to make a porno film, but that’s really thin, especially in comparison to what Smith has done with his characters in other movies.

Now the rest of the cast is fine, with the exception of Craig Robinson, who doesn’t really do anything to differently from what he does in The Office. In fact, I think Justin Long, Jeff Anderson, and Jason Mewes have the best moments in the film- there probably should’ve been more with these folks than there was with Zack and Miri.

This misses the mark in it’s perception of the porn business as well, but that doesn’t really bother me as much and I think that would’ve gone over better had this had wither two different and more complimentary leads or else either Rogen or either Banks and someone else to compliment them better. It’s not the worst movie that I’ve seen for the year by any means (it’s a comedy and I did laugh a few times in the film- not like Get Smart where I didn’t laugh at all), but compared to what Kevin Smith has delivered before, Zack and Miri Make a Porno falls way short…

Once upon a time there was a promising young movie director by the name of Guy Ritchie. This talented fellow made a name for himself primarily from two movies, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, both in the crime fiction genre. It seemed that the sky was the limit for this fellow, and then he met the singer, a famous American singer who was known for constantly re-inventing herself. And somehow or another, she managed to snag this fellow all the while re-inventing herself again as an earth mother and Queen of the Kaballah, all while starting to use a pseudo-British accent and then he bore her children (or so it seemed). Oh, Guy managed to get in another couple of movies, but something was just clearly “off” about them, almost as though his talent had been sapped from him. But eventually, as all things did with the singer/earth mother/Queen, this also came to pass, and the two were plunged into divorce. Divorce is obviously never an easy thing to go through (as this author can surely attest to), but on the upside, hope was there that maybe this talented director just might get something back- his ability to make a good movie again and not in the limelight of his more famous wife…

… and that brings us to Rock N Rolla the latest movie from director Guy Ritchie, and easily the best thing that he’s done since his first two movies… and thank goodness…

Yeah, I know I’m simplifying his situation with the above, but that’s how a lot of film fans saw this situation (or at least me), and while I don’t know the exact timeline of the making of this movie with his personal tribulations, at least this movie shows that his heart is still in it.

Rock N Rolla follows along the same lines as Ritchie’s prior crime films, being how seemingly disparate people with their own situations wind up causing trouble for bigger fish in the crime pool. Rock N Rolla brings together a band of small time hustlers with a land deal, a big fish gangster with a bigger deal, his self-styled rock and roller son with his own issues, even bigger fish Russians, and a very ambitious and sexy accountant out to get her own piece of the pie, and it does it all in a very entertaining and satisfying manner, that still shows that Guy Ritchie has “it,” though “it” is just a little quieter than Ritchie’s previous efforts.

And again, the above is a huge simplification of what this is about, but for me to go into further detail would just start something even longer than my initial paragraph…

But, I can tell you that I thought Rock N Rolla was very entertaining, filled with some very cool characters, who were extremely well drawn in a very tight and complex situation that all comes together in the end.

Ritchie’s working with some great talent here, Gerard Butler, Idris Elba, Tom Wilkinson, Jeremy Piven, Chris (Ludacris) Bridges, a very talented Russian character actor Karel Roden, the extremely sexy Thandie Newton, and a British guy on the rise, Mark Strong. Mark Strong plays Archie, who’s the right hand man to Lenny played by Tom Wilkinson, the major “heavy” of the film. Archie is more or viewpoint into what’s happening here, and Strong does real nice work in the part. He’s been around for awhile, and just recently he’s been getting a lot of good notices for his work, and I could easily see this guy taking the leads more and more very soon.

In the end, yeah, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but that’s hardly a criteria for my own enjoyment of a film. When it’s well made, it’s still fun, and for me Rock N Rolla was a lot of fun and it makes me look forward to what Guy Ritchie’s next project will be. Welcome back, Guy… we missed you…

With the events of Saw IV now past, it’s believed that the killer known as Jigsaw has finally been put to rest, but those of us who’ve seen the movie know better because of another protege of the famed killer. One lone FBI agent, Peter Strahm (also seen in Saw IV) believes he’s still out there as well, and after surviving his own Jigsaw deathtrap, Strahm is believed to be unsuited to continue the investigation, but he continues on his own. Now, as five new people are put through the Jigsaw paces, Peter Strahm seeks to find the truth, and we’re given insight as to how this new Jigsaw came to be…

Saw V continues what I believe anyway is your genuine horror epic, and while this film seems a little more sedate than the previous entries, it still delivers the goods in it’s own way, and basically, I tend to think that if you’re a fan of the series, and appreciate all of what it does, then you’ll like this one as well.

But also, much like the previous entries, you can’t go into this one as a virgin to the material and hope to get it all. The creators behind the series have pretty blatantly made it so that you need to see the other chapters, and for me anyway, that’s part of the fun of the series. There’s always things left open with each previous film and each new film pulls some retroactive continuity moves and answers those questions, and they do it in a way that really works. There’s a formula to the whole thing, but yet there’s always something new added, but still working in the formula.

This time around, there’s a new director on board, David Hackl, and Hackl does a decent enough job filling the shoes of both James Wan and Darren Lynn Bousman before him, though he doesn’t quite have the same flash that Bousman has, this still fits visually with what’s come before. And more importantly, so does it’s story.

Tobin Bell returns to the series yet again, and really it wouldn’t be Saw without him in some way, also returning from the previous film are actors Costas Mandylor os Detective Mark Hoffman and Scott Patterson as FBI Agent Peter Strahm and Betsy Russell as Jill Tuck, John Kramer’s wife. New faces to the series this time includes actors like 24’s Carlo Rota, Julie Benz, and veteran character actor Mark Rolston. The entire cast does a great job here, and much like I did with Saw IV I have to give high marks to Scott Patterson again, and would just love to see this guy break out into some bigger stuff.

There’s still lots of questions, including one very big one, to answer from this film, and of course Saw VI has already been announced. As a huge fan of the series, I can’t wait to see it, and so next year at this time, I no doubt will. In the meantime though, there’s a lot of fun to be had with Saw V as long as you’re a fan of the series.

Detective Max Payne lost his wife and child to a brutal killing. And though now, Payne is bound to a desk, he still continues to try and solve the murder himself and soon he finds the clues that leads him to the pharmaceutical company that his wife had worked for, currently trafficking in a super-soldier drug called Valkyr, that has hallucinatory effects on most who take it…

Max Payne is the latest video-game to movie conversion and it comes to us from the hands of director John Moore, who was wonderful with the film Behind Enemy Lines but less so with some more recent efforts. The game itself was really quite fun, bringing with it the mechanic of “bullet-time” allowing you to slow time for some really cool effects a la John Woo movies or more recently, The Matrix.

The movie is certainly an earnest effort and above anything else, absolutely has a fantastic look to it, but what it lacks is the fun factor which comes way too little and too late into the film.

The first hour has it’s moments, but for the most part is just so dry that I just didn’t really care about anything that was happening in it. Max himself, at least in this movie, is a one-note character, just driven to the point of being the atypical “cop on the edge” character. Now that would’ve been fine had there been a little more wit about everything else going on, and that doesn’t necessarily mean having to have humor about it, but just something else to it that would’ve at least made it much more fun to get into. Unfortunately, it lacks this, and as such, it’s pretty boring until about it’s last half hour. And even though things pick up then, they don’t pick up enough, at least by what’s promised in the trailer.

Pretty much, the trailer has all of the best parts of the film in it.

Mark Wahlberg plays Max, and he’s certainly got the look and the intensity, but little else, but then as I said, if this had a little more wit about it, he wouldn’t have needed anything else. He’s backed up with actors like Mila Kunis, Amaury Nolasco, Donal Logue, Chris O’Donnell, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Kate Burton and Beau Bridges, and all do a decent enough job, but again all are hampered by a pretty pedestrian first two acts.

I’d recently watched the movie Shoot ‘Em Up again and had a pretty good time with it and actually think that what Max Payne needs is just a little of what Shoot ‘Em Up has in abundance, and that’s more of a wilder over-the-top and somewhat self-aware fun factor, primarily during it;s first hour… had it done that, this could’ve been a whole lot of fun, but as it is, it looks great but doesn’t have anything really cool or fun in it that you haven’t already seen played out over it’s trailer. Not one of the worst that I’ve seen for the year, but certainly a big disappointment.

It’s 1882, and the small town of Appaloosa in the New Mexico territory has fallen under prey by a ruthless rancher by the name of Randall Bragg. After Bragg cold-bloodedly kills the sheriff and two deputies while they try to apprehend two of his men for crimes committed against the townspeople, the town is in a state of desperation. They choose to hire two roving peacekeepers, Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch to come in and clean up their town, with one catch: they literally have to turn control of the town over to them. Soon though, a young widow, Allison French, moves into town and further complicates their situation.

Appaloosa is the new movie from star and director Ed Harris based on the novel by Robert Parker (best known for the Spencer series) and it’s just a brilliant movie, another western that joins the likes of 3:10 To Yuma (though I have a bit of an issue with the ending of that film, I still recognize it’s extreme high quality getting there), Open Range and less recently, Unforgiven showing that there’s still life in the classic Western genre in film, if it’s handled just right.

Harris’ film is authentic as can be, shot against some really beautiful landscapes, and looking at the end credits, he’s even hired enough extras to actually be the populace of this town at the time. Everything just feels really right. But where this really excels is in the relationship between Cole and Hitch, a very deep-rooted friendship with both men as a compliment to each other making them a great team for the job they have to do.

Ed Harris plays Cole and Viggo Mortenson plays Hitch, and obviously after working together in a movie like A History of Violence, these guys obviously “get” each other and have chemistry that’s just totally natural. They’re backed up by Jeremy Irons as Bragg and a rougher than normal looking Renee Zellwegger as Allison, who both do really fine work here. Further welcome in the cast is Lance Herikson as a rival gunman to Cole and Hitch, brought in later in the film, Henrikson is just a natural for something like this.

Obviously, I had a great time with this film. It is leisurely paced, but nothing seems out of place or wrong to how everything plays out in the end. It’s easily followed and yet has it’s own complexities as well as some subtle humor. And if you do decide to see this, stay through the end credits. No there’s no extra scene at the end, but through the credits, there’s a little song sung by Ed Harris himself that’s a really nice and knowing end punctuation to the life ahead for his character, Virgil Cole. Appaloosa is just brilliant and of course, highly recommended…

In New York City, a fluff news TV reporter and her cameraman are assigned the task of riding along with a group of firefighters for an evening. As things are looking to be a routine evening, an alarm goes off and the fire crew and the TV people head in, along with a couple of NYC police officers. They go to an apartment building, where a woman has been screaming like she’s being tortured to death. Once there, they discover that something horrifying has happened to the woman, something disgusting that sends her into a flying rage and makes her attack her would-be rescuers, and just as immediately, the building is closed off to everyone, with various law enforcement, military and the CDC on the case, and a night of brutal horror is set to begin…

That’s the premise of Quarantine which itself is a remake of a Spanish horror film called [REC], which unfortunately I’ve not seen, and it also looks to be the big break for a little known director by the name of John Erick Dowdle. And unfortunately, this looks to be a film that I can’t quite give the type of review for that I’d really like to hand out primarily because we saw it with the worst audience that I’ve seen a movie with since Hard Candy from a few years ago. The thing is, it actually seems like the kind of film that is my kind of horror film, and objectively, I can tell you that it is well made and lis quite effective with just one major complaint, and that complaint isn’t due to the film itself but rather it’s marketing.

But first, yeah, our audience was just horrendous for this- primarily mostly composed of late teenagers and know-it-all twentysomethings that were there more to entertain themselves than to see a movie and really just making this the worst movie-going experience that I’ve had in years, and it’s a shame because I do think this can be quite effective under the right circumstances, but so far those circumstances are calling for me to recommend this as something that you wait for on DVD rather than go out to the theatre to see. As I’ve said about audiences like this before, I can only hope there’s a special place in hell reserved just for them for being assholes. It really makes me yearn for the days when ushers would walk the theatre with flashlights, ready to boot out anyone making a disturbance.

Now with that out of the way, the film itself is made the same way as movies like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield all done from a handheld video camera operated by one of the cast. So if you’ve already got an aversion to these type of films, then straight up, this won’t be for you. I think this is pretty well told though, considering the circumstances I saw it under, with the camera work being a little more straightforward as the film starts and then getting extremely chaotic as things progress.

The cast is filled with lots of “those guys” who you see in other films as mostly support. It’s headed up by Jennifer Carpenter who was extremely effective in The Exorcism of Emily Rose playing this overly bubbly and annoying, but again I hope I’m being objective enough to say that my own perception could certainly be colored by the conditions I saw this under, and that whole perception might change later on. Other cast members include Steve Harris as her cameraman, Jay Hernandez and Johnathan Schaech as the firefighters she’s assigned to cover, and veteran character guys like Rade Serbedzija and Greg Germann as a couple of the residents of the apartment house. And really everyone does a fine job for this type of movie.

My biggest complaint though, other than that of the a-hole audience we saw it with, is the fact that the marketing of the film blows the final shot of the piece. That shot, and I won’t say what it is, is a key part of the trailer for the film and if you’ve seen it, then once it gets to that point, you’re just waiting for it to happen as opposed to letting it shock you the way it should. And it’s a real shame, because the climax is pretty good here, leading you to an area that I certainly didn’t consider as being the root cause of what has transpired through the film.

So here’s the deal- I certainly do recommend this, but really you just might want to wait until some time has passed and it comes out on DVD, doing that will most certainly let you see it under better conditions. Just wait for this to come home, and turn off all the lights as you watch it and hopefully the trailer won’t be too fresh in mind as everything plays out. And then… then, if you like this type of horror film as I do, then you’ll probably have a great time with this, but for now, avoid this like the plague in the theatre…

In what is an undisclosed city in maybe a near future time period, traffic is stopped as one young man is in his car and all of a sudden finds that he cannot see. This incident begins a chain reaction of events leading to all who come into contact with the young man also getting the affliction. When the eye doctor who has been working with him comes under with the disease, that’s when a movement is begun to quarantine those afflicted. The doctor’s wife, who herself isn’t blind, feigns being blind to be with her husband. Both are brought to a center where they and the few others that are with them are left to fend for themselves within their ward. And from there, events multiply, literally sending the world into chaos.

And that’s the premise of Blindness the new movie from director Fernando Meirelles, who previously gave us the movies, The Constant Gardener (haven’t seen it) and City of God (I have seen this one and it’s one hell of a movie). I was sorta hoping that this movie would be what M. Night Shymalan’s The Happening wasn’t, but instead it devolves to what seems more like contrived film school third world allegory that asks you to swallow a lot in order to follow it.

Where this falls apart is in the idea of the quarantine, because basically these people are thrown into this building with literally no one to watch out for them, other than the military standing guard making certain that no one gets out. It just out and out ignores the idea that these people would be in reality under a microscope to figure out what was causing this, especially as the blindness continues to escalate. Later in the film, another character is brought into the ward who begins to explain what is happening in the outside world, and how the process of investigating the source has broken down, but unfortunately, this process feels like something tacked on later (and according to reports of some re-shoots after an exhibition in Cannes, it very well could be) as an afterthought, but not the point that the director is trying to make.

And that point is basically all it takes is one event to send people who have comfortable lives into a life of utter squalor. Now really, I don’t have a problem with this being the point of the film, it’s just that getting there is incredibly contrived. And through it all, one woman, the doctor’s wife, still has the ability to see, which she’s hiding from everyone, except her husband, and due to the script, she does things that a sighted person just wouldn’t do in this situation.

Meirelles has a good cast at work here, including Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Gael Garcia Bernal and Alice Braga and they certainly do what’s asked of them, but as I said above, what’s asked is horribly contrived.

This isn’t a movie for the faint-hearted as there is a lot of unpleasantness here- specifically around scenes within the ward- so consider that a warning if you’re planning to see it. The thing is, I’d almost expect that most might be more tempted to walk out halfway through it, I know I certainly was, and not due to it’s unpleasantness, but more to it’s contrived and forced quality to shove a message down my throat. I give Meirelles credit though for a well done first quarter of the film as the outbreak is happening, with some inventive and stylistic camera work, and also by it’s quality there’s really nothing out there quite like this right now. But at the same time, it just doesn’t hold up, and I tend to think that if you want to see something like this that explores some of the same themes, but played out better, maybe re-watching Children of Men is the way to go, or an even better playing out of these themes in Oliver Hershberger’s excellent film The Experiment. Right now, the only way I could even want to see this one again would be just to play Mystery Science Theatre 3000 with it. Not as bad as The Happening but damn near close and certainly outweighing it on the pretentious side…

As our story starts, on the Fourth of July, a kindly old grandfather is sitting down to tell his grandchildren a story during a family picnic- the story is about a filmmaker named Michael Malone, who’s famous for his highly liberal documentaries, to the point where to the grandfather is anti-American. And so this story that the grandfather unweaves is a retelling of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but with Malone as Scrooge and visited by the ghosts of JFK, George S. Patton, and George Washington…

… and it’s also the latest movie from director David Zucker, best know for being part of the team that gave us Airplane! and The Naked Gun movies and also one of the few Hollywood Conservatives who’s obviously pretty proud of it.

Now I’ll go ahead and tell you right up front that I expect that there’ll be few out there that will really give this too much of an even break- as an admitted conservative my own self (but with some liberal leanings), I had a pretty good time with this, even though I’d also be the first to tell you that this isn’t as funny as the movies mentioned above. If you’re a die-hard liberal, or even a casual one, I seriously doubt that you’ll have too much pleasure with this, though I suppose that could also hinge on the real subject of it’s lampooning, filmmaker Michael Moore.

An American Carol is made with the same abandon that the above films are, obviously more on the side of cartoonish frivolity more than anything else. But Zucker gets his beliefs in there as well, and for that, I have to give him credit anyway on making a movie that bucks the normal Hollywood trend (though, I do think that Moore gets a more harsh lampooning in Parker and Stone’s Team America World Police.

Kevin Farley plays Malone, and he’s pretty much a cartoon character doing it, and that’s fine, that’s what the movie is asking of him. And in other parts, you’ll find other Hollywood conservatives including Leslie Nielsen, Jon Voight, Kelsey Grammer, Dennis Hopper, Robert Davi and country music star Trace Atkins amongst others with just a little sermonizing along the way… but really, not any different from some of the more serious movies that some would see to be carrying a very highly liberal message.

I enjoyed it, I laughed quite a bit at some parts and others just fell flat, but still I had a pretty good time. This is out there pretty much independent of any sort of any major studio release, and as such, we didn’t have a single trailer for any other movie during it, which was surprising. And also surprising was the fact that we had a larger audience for this than I would’ve figured- at best, I was figuring maybe 20 people in to see it, but that number was easily doubled. Like I said above, not for everyone, but I figure if you’ve got conservative leanings and are tired of the normal Hollywood message, you might have a good time with this…