Category: 2011
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Puncture is a crusading attorney picture with a couple twists. First, there’s no trial and, specifically, no eureka moment in the trial. Second, the crusading attorney in question–played by Chris Evans–is haunted by more than demons or the bottle, he’s a rabid drug fiend. Oddly, Puncture never condemns the character’s drug use. In fact, he…
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No doubt, Deadball is a strange one. And not just because thirty-six year-old Sakaguchi Tak is playing a seventeen year-old and actress Hoshino Mari is playing his sixteen year-old male sidekick. I’m not even sure the suggestion conservative Japanese politicians are really in the pockets of Nazis is Deadball’s strangest feature. It’s just a messed…
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It’s somewhat shocking, given Jonah Hill’s presence and David Gordon Green directing, The Sitter is such a mess. Would a remake of Adventures in Babysitting with a listless college dropout in the lead instead of Elisabeth Shue be funny? Maybe. Probably even. Sadly, Sitter doesn’t give Babysitting any source credit (although some of the scenes…
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Five screenwriters get credit on Cowboys & Aliens. I wonder which one (or ones) are responsible for the stupider “twists” in the plot. Cowboys is stupid the entire time, of course, but it gets even dumber as it progresses. The movie’s big problem is director Favreau. He isn’t just incapable of directing actors (Olivia Wilde’s…
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Near as I can recall, Tormented is my first modern Japanese horror movie. Somehow, I’m still familiar enough with the genre to know this one’s highly derivative. The writers throw in something else ominous every few minutes just to keep the picture moving–and it’s only eighty minutes so they clearly didn’t have any initial story,…
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It’s hard to explain why Swamp Shark is watchable. The primary reason–besides seeing what weathered professionals D.B. Sweeney and Kristy Swanson–is the Louisiana location shooting. Cinematographer Lorenzo Senatore really brings out the greens. Besides the terrible, digitally aided day for night scene, Swamp Shark looks better than it should. Even though the casting director forgot…
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About the only inventive thing in Bangkok Revenge–and I doubt writer-director Minéo uses it for this reason–is lead Jon Foo being unable to experience emotion. It means Foo doesn’t have to give a particularly good performance. He just has to deliver his lines and he does. He’s not a bad guy, of course, quite the…
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The Great Magician is a madcap romp through rural early twentieth century China. It never says rural–Peking is mentioned a couple times–but it feels rural, where a somewhat dimwitted warlord (Lau Ching-wan) can still be powerful. The time period’s a little confusing too. Moviemaking plays a significant part in Magician and all the example films…
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Tales of the Night is a visual masterpiece. It’s computer generated silhouette animation, usually two dimensional (though director Ocelot does branch occasionally into the third), about what seems to be a futuristic theatre company. Late one night, two young actors (and costume designers and writers) and the guy who seems to be their director, sit…
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I think Guy Ritchie has to be the last blockbuster director who still likes bullet time. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows has so much bullet time, one would think it’s from the late nineties. Sometimes Ritchie uses it pointlessly–there are some fight scenes with it and it doesn’t work so well. In contrast, Ritchie…
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Given the filmmakers are members of an organization dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft stuff, I’m going to assume the plot problems with The Whisperer in Darkness are from the source material. As in, the stupid stuff is in the original and they just left it in. Maybe they thought it was good, maybe they thought it…
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The big problem with The Thing, besides it being pointless (though it needn’t be), is its stupidty. While van Heijningen is a perfectly mediocre director, he doesn’t know how to add mood or make something disturbing. Some of it probably isn’t his fault… I can’t see him caring about the addition of Eric Christian Olsen’s…
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Sector 7 is about twenty-two years late. It’s another “Alien with sea monsters;” 1989 had two and a half major entries in that genre. It does, however, add one interesting element. Wait, I guess it’s more Aliens with sea monsters. The female lead, Ha Ji-won, is more Ripley in tough mode. Anyway, the interesting element…
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For a while during Suicide Forecast—in the first act and third—it seems like the film will be about protagonist Ryu Seung-beom discovering he doesn’t want to be a soulless business success and redeeming himself. But Forecast isn’t exactly about Ryu. A plot summary sounds like a perverse comedy—Ryu’s an insurance adjuster who discovers three people…
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Stay Still has so many layers and so much texture, it’s hard not to appreciate it. Director Kelly opens the short with narration out of a fairy tale–knights and dragons–and introduces the viewer to two boys (Kyle McCaffrey and J. Michael Trautmann) listening to their mother fight with her boyfriend. Trautmann, the older boy, intercedes…
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Extranjero is some exceptionally pointless, exceptionally pretentious swaddle concerning an illegal immigrant (Cristian Cardenas) who can fly. He actually just hovers and then maybe disappears. About the only good thing about the short is the special effects of him flying. Otherwise, it toggles between boring and confusing. Directors Campbell and Lumb do a fine enough…
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Sly Sylvester fails its lead actor, Richard Turgeon. He’s got a good costar in Jay Krohnengold, who plays his ornery landlord, but once his love interest arrives, Sly runs downhill. Tiffany Gustafson, as the love interest, trips, stumbles and falls through Kim Nunley’s dialogue. Nunley puts in way too much exposition, but Gustafson talks so…
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Given its outstanding ending, one has to wonder if filmmaker (or filmmakers) Two Trick Pony came up with the rest of Games People Play to tell one joke. As far as the filmmaking goes, Games is almost indescribably good. It reminds a little of the Coen Brothers, played more for humor. Zephyr Muntari’s editing is…
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I once described Francis and the Lights–specifically the singer and songwriter, Francis Farewell Starlite–as Tom Waits meets Prince. The twenty-five minute “concert” film, The White Room, certainly shows the Prince influence. Concert gets quotation marks because there’s no one audibly in attendance to Starlite and his band’s performance. They perform on a stage, presumably in…
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Jennifer Garner plays a Sarah Palin-type evil Republican woman in Butter. There’s her character. She does a Sarah Palin in Iowa impression; nothing else. It’s easily the most useless performance in the film, but the film’s otherwise filled with good, rounded performances so it’s even more glaring. And Garner produced the film too so she…
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So, according to Charles, Your Hangover, hangovers don’t have to do with brain chemistry and blood alcohol content, but an annoying Adam Scott-wannabe played by Tory Stanton. Charles is really well-made. The director (or directors), Two Trick Pony, do an outstanding job with Panavision aspect ratio and Joel Pincosy’s photography is fantastic. It’s just not…
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The saddest thing about Green Lantern has to be the editing. Stuart Baird, amazing action editor of the last twenty or so years, cut together this malarky. It’s not Baird’s fault, exactly, how ugly Lantern plays—cinematographer Dion Beebe’s responsible for the shots not matching in lighting and Campbell composed them. But Baird’s always had a…
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Whatever its faults, Bridesmaids‘s filmmakers get credit for making Maya Rudolph’s parents black and white, instead of ignoring her racial background like many other films would. Sadly, being better in that regard does not make up for Rudolph’s performance being the film’s worst or her character being dreadfully underwritten. Writers Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig,…
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When the best thing in a 132-minute movie is a thirty-second cameo… it’s not a good sign. X-Men: First Class is self-important dreck. The four credited screenwriters do a bad job with everything except the one-liners; they do some of those quite well. There are a lot of goofy sixties details. Bad guy Kevin Bacon…
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Funny how Stokoe can have the present action of an issue be fifteen minutes and I can’t imagine anyone would ever think of calling him decompressed or lazy. Maybe because he does the art (and colors and letters) too and the art in this speedy issue is probably more complex than the longer paced ones.…
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I never thought I’d see a movie where Bradley Cooper gives a far better performance than Robert De Niro. Not to say Cooper’s good in Limitless—the film is mildly amusing, sort of an amped up episode of “House,” mixed with Love Potion No. 9 and Flowers for Algernon, but Cooper’s still a lot better than…
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While it only runs a minute (I think), Superman Classic–which director Pratt describes as a “super fan film”–is pretty, well, super. Only the final moment disappoints, mostly because it’s a promise Pratt’s not going to keep. Classic is mostly hand drawn animation, which gives the cartoon the “fan film” feel occasionally, but Pratt professionally packages…
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Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol might be a vanity project for producer-star Tom Cruise, but he sort of deserves it. His first scene features some athletics from him–the film’s full of them–and it’s hard to believe Cruise is nearly fifty. Either he’s got a portrait locked in a closet, they CG’ed his body or vitamins…
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The Gate opens quietly on Tryphena Russel. The first few minutes of the short, director Westrup just holds on her. She’s witnessed some strange happening and the police are interviewing her. Her performance, and the finely intercut flashback snippets, are the short’s hook. Westrup then cuts to John Mawson, who’s one of those British scientists…
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Stitched has long end credits. Like two and a half or three minutes. On a seventeen minute short, one suspects they’re supposed to pad it out to respectable length. Too bad the long end credits don’t make up for the bad acting and weak photography. It opens well enough–director Ennis is a comic book writer…
The Stop Button 