Author Archives: Eugene

About Eugene

I'm currently trying to get back to my original weight of 7 Pounds and 6 ounces. yeah it's an uphill battle... I am a purveyor of many genres and mediums, from comics and anime, to movies and television shows. I'll get anything a shot and if it's good I'll praise it, and if it's bad... I'll be brutally honest. And I love frozen yogurt, I will always seek some out after a meal.

Lawless

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I attended a Q & A screening of Lawlesslast night, thanks to Jeff Goldsmith.  The film is another team up by director John Hillcoat and screenwriter Nick Cave, who previously brought us The Road and The Proposition.  This film is based on the book entitled The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant.  It’s about the Bondurant brothers during the prohibition era in Franklin County Virginia, they make moon shine and have run ins with no so nice people.  The film stars Tom Hardy, Shia LeBeouf, Jessica Chastain, Guy Pearce, Mia Wasikowska and Gary Oldman.

The good; it’s Hillcoat and Cave collaborating again, I love their movies.  They manage to blend two genres together, the western and the gangster/mob genre, this melding is much better than that of Public Enemies.
The acting is great, there’s a great sense of family with the Bondurant brothers, normally I don’t like Shia Le-Beef, but in Lawless he’s casted perfectly as the young brother Jack.
Tom Hardy’s portrayal of Forrest, the brains behind the operation, is wonderful, he reminds me of Clint Eastwood in a western, long stares with minimal dialog.
Guy Pearce plays Special Agent Charlie Rakes, and is creepy as all hell.

The action and violence is gritty and visceral.  It gives this film that wild west feel, where frontier justice ruled over any authority.  The pacing is methodical, but not to the point of being slow, and these moments are then punctuated with scenes of violence.

The music for the film is great as well, it’s done by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (non-comic book).  The score feels period appropriate but then there are songs with lyrics and even those songs are done as if they came from that time.  Great choices.

The bad; it does detract from history, but then again the movie is “based” on a true story.
There’s not enough Gary Oldman, his introduction in the film is superb, I wanted more of him.  We’re introduced to his character, Floyd Banner a wanted gangster, through the eyes of Jack, we see this brutal act of violence with a sense of longing and romanticism that influential youths have, this is what leads him down the road to criminal activity.

Overall a gem of a movie, I can’t wait to see Hillcoat’s next movie, I hope he teams up with Cave again.  During the Q & A Hillcoat mentioned that it’s hard for him to make films in this country, USA, cause there’s not enough time, things are rushed.  I couldn’t agree more.  When people talk about Grindhouse cinema, I might argue that that period of filmmaking never ceased, it just became the  norm.  I highly recommend this movie.

Oh and don’t sit next to old people during movies… during the Q & A this guy brought out a book and started reading…

Premium Rush

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I saw Premium Rush this weekend.  It’s about Wilee (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who’s a bike messenger in New York.  He gets a delivery and from there it spirals down into a world of complications as he tries to just make the delivery.  Sound simple enough right?

The good; this movie is slick, I mean it’s a fairly straight forward story, but the integrate some nice devices.  Wilee uses his smart phone to plot the course to the destination, we get to see this on the big screen, it’s an advertisement for google maps, new gps and the like.  What could’ve easily become a gimmick actually worked well.
Another thing they used reminded me of the Dragon’s Lair cartoon series that came out after the popular arcade game, where Dirk would imagine different scenarios of how to overcome an obstacle, this was also used much later in the CG Action Man cartoon series, but the film uses it as Wilee’s judgement on how to navigate through traffic safely.
They also incorporate non-linear editing with the way they tell the story, and I like it in this case.  We start the movie with an accident shot in slow mo, the movie rewinds to earlier that day, but then it continues to do this through out the film because events are overlapping each other, it was quite impressive to see the same scene covered from a different angle at a further point in the movie.

Wilee as a character is great, Gordon-Levitt plays a very good everyman-good hearted guy.  The script focuses and allows us to understand who Wilee is, his set of rules that he lives by and why he lives by them, we really got to know his motivations and routing for him wasn’t forced.  I gotta hand it to Gordon-Levitt, he did a lot of peddling for this movie.  They also nicely employed the use of a stunt man to do the more tricky bike stunts, this is one instance where motion blur was used to mask that fact, bravo, very well done.

The bad; this movie will under perform, I don’t know who to blame for this one.
Wilee not only has an antagonist in the form of a suit wearing Michael Shannon, but he’s also got bike messenger rival Manny.  Physically this guy looks like he could out peddle Wilee any day, but his “roid” usage and multi-gear bike loses out to Wilee’s endurance and smarts.  So not only is Manny the heel as a messenger but he’s also the love interests’ rival.  If Manny’s role was more prominent it would’ve felt forced, but his presence was appropriate.

Overall I really enjoyed this movie, when I said that the eighties were back I meant it.  Premium Rush felt very much like an eighties movie, but not of the action ilk, just more of an average Joe (pun intended) getting caught up in something crazy that interrupts his everyday world.  Other movies that come to mind are Gleaming the Cube and No Way Out.  Premium Rush is  written and directed by David Koepp, you might know him more for the movies his written; Men in Black 3, Angels and Demons, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, War of the Worlds, Zathura, Spider-Man, Jurassic Park, The Lost World Jurassic Park… well done with Premium Rush Mister Koepp, now I know that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’s failure rests all on George Lucas.
The story of this film is strong and that’s why the so called gimmicks of non-linear story telling, integrated computer usage and multiple outcomes works.  Future movies, please take note, focus on the story first and don’t let the tricks be the focus.

PS. it also doesn’t hurt that the movie is bookended with Baba O’Riley by The Who, hehe.

The Expendables 2

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The Expendables 2 opened this weekend.  I haven’t looked forward to a movie since The Dark Knight Rises, and boy did this movie deliver.  It’s about a team of mercenaries that get hired to recover something in a crashed plane, they wander through some third-world European country and find a bad guy that they need to take down.  Simple enough right?

The good; the opening sequence.  It starts off with a condensed version of the first movie, the team comes in guns-ablazing (as if there were any other way) and they pretty much decimate this Nepalese hide out.  Seeing this masterpiece in the Arclight Dome was perfect, the screen was adequately large so I could see all the bodies flying and being eviscerated, and then the sound was in my face!  It’s the only way to go.
What an opening to a movie, the thing felt twenty minutes long if it was a yard… is that a saying?  Explosions, body count, bullets, cheesy lines – The eighties are/is back, with a vengeance.

We get the old team back together with some additions and we even get more time with Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.  The first film had all three of these action stars in one scene, the sequel integrates all them in to the plot, very very enjoyable.  The back and forth with Willis and Schwarzenegger during the shoot out is that first scene in the church amplified and then fuel injected, these guys are such great sports to have done that scene.

The action is amazing, they were able to re-create the tone and feel of the first movie, why can’t other sequels follow this mold?

Van Damne!  He’s in the theatres again!  And we also get Chuck Norris!  These are not spoilers, if you’ve seen the trailers and advertisements you know that these two are in this movie.

How did all these action stars come together to make this greatness?  Please give us a third one.

The bad; I don’t know if there’s much to put here.
I would’ve liked to have seen more Chuck Norris… I know that sounds weird, but with the tone of this movie, they really could’ve played up his part in it all.  It felt as though they only had him for a small window of time, because the bulk of his time is taken doing Total Gym infomercials, but most of his scenes he was in a cutaway of him shooting and kickin’ butt.  The only real time he was with the cast was his introduction.

Van Damne’s death scene was too short, I would’ve liked some more in his last fight.  The man can still kick, that’s for sure.
His hence men were lacking, there should’ve been a pecking order that the team had to work up to before they get to the big boss.  The first film had Stone Cold and Gary Daniels before you got to Eric Roberts, I wanted that repeated for this sequel.

Schwarzenegger mentions that he’s got his team waiting when he meets the Expendables team… what if the team from the first Predator movie showed up as his team, tell me you wouldn’t want to see that?

Overall it was everything I wanted and it certainly delivered.  So avoid this movie if you don’t want  your expectation met or if you weren’t around for the eighties action movie.  This sequel delivers and satisfies.

The Dark Knight Rises

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Just saw The Dark Knight Rises. It’s about Bruce Wayne and his one man war on crime. This time it’s eight years after the last movie, The Dark Knight, Bruce’s body is worn down (like an athlete) and so is his faith in people. There’s a plot to destroy Wayne Enterprises and Gotham, which bring both Bruce and Batman out of “retirement.”

The good; the movie is about three hours long, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it. It had me pretty much on the seat of my pants the entire time, beautifully edited.

The acting is great. Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle, love me some Anne Hathaway. Much like Charlize Theron in Prometheus, Anne Hathaway’s in that catsuit most of the time, no complaints there.
Gary Oldman as the ever faithful Gordon.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Blake.  Tom Hardy as Bane.  Michael Caine as Alfred the father-figure.  Everyone delivers a wonderful performance.

The Bat, flying thing, what’s great about these movies is the science and logic behind the technology, they make it believable. From the movie physics of the Bat-Pod to the Bat vehicle, I just love it all cause when you watch it move on screen you think, “yeah, that’s how that would move.”

The bad; oddly enough, I do have some complaints. There wasn’t enough Batman, when you’re watching the movie you don’t really notice this, but thinking back, Bruce Wayne is Batman in the end of the first act, and then at the of the third act, I kinda wanted more Batman-time… on screen that is.
Bane’s voice – in the comic books he’s supposed to be Latin-American, I don’t know what accent he has in the movie, but it’s obviously dubbed and very stage present-ish.  In a shot where he’s in the far background of the scene his voice is still coming in very present at the center channel, that bugged me.

*SPOLIER* When Bane breaks Batman’s back, it doesn’t take him long to recover, there could’ve been more passage of time at this point. His back goes from a vertebrae protrusion to doing push ups and scaling the wall to freedom.

*SPOILER* The ending, very easy, almost too easy, and predictable. Much like Nolan’s previous movie Inception, this one ends in a montage and we’re given information visually. Alfred is away on holiday and sees Bruce just like he’d imagined years and years before Batman showed up, he’s sitting at a table with Selina. I wonder how it would’ve been if they’d taken the ambiguity of Inception’s ending and applied it to The Dark Knight? Leaving us with Alfred’s forming smile instead of cutting to Bruce at the table? And then to have Blake’s character’s real name be Robin? That almost felt like the studio pushed that onto the movie. Don’t get me wrong, I liked that the cowl and mantle would be passed along, but why dumb it down?

Overall, I enjoyed the movie, despite the criticisms I state above. I guess I’m so critical of this new film because I extremely enjoyed the previous films
Definitely worth watching on the big screen, and what a way to end a trilogy.

The Amazing Spider-Man

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Saw The Amazing Spider-Man, it is a reboot.  We all know the story, nerd-loner Peter Parker gets bitten by a radio-active spider, he gains super powers and his Uncle Ben dies in the process.  He learns some life lessons and is the better for it.  But this film does add something different.

The good; I like the swinging scenes, I didn’t think I was going to like the video game like FPS POV angle, but it worked, and it wasn’t over used.  They got a lot of those classic Spider-Man poses in, always love when the film imitates the comic.  The fight scenes with the Lizard are very well done, I love the use of the web-shooters and how they’re choreographed in to the fighting.

Andrew Garfield doesn’t do a bad job, he’s like-able enough and believable enough as the nerd high schooler.  Denis Leary is great as George Stacey, I’ll probably enjoy everything he does anyway.

Without spoiling too much, we get Peter’s parents’ backstory, which is a nice touch.  But that plot line, along with the murderer of Uncle Ben go unresolved by the end of the movie.  Yet, it didn’t bother me at all when the credits roll… strange.

There’s a rather cheesy scene as we approach the climax of the third act that involves Spider-Man being helped by the “common working-class man,” but it works.

The bad; a lot of CG usage.  I miss having a stunt man that has the physical prowess to perform what’s needed of the character.  I miss practical effects, while it takes limitations off of the filmmakers we also lose a sense of, “wow, how’d they do that?”  I remember watching this.
Sure it’s dated, but it’s a guy actually climbing up a building and swinging and doing stuff.

We don’t get any resolution with Uncle Ben’s murderer, Peter goes out in search of this thug and doesn’t find him like he did in the previous franchise.  We also never find out the whole truth of what happened to his parents… I know I put this in the good section, but why were we given these plot threads to begin with?  If they’re going to reboot the franchise and start over with another origin story, why not give us this “new” part of the origin?  Why does everything have to be a trilogy these days?

The scene where the Lizard emerges from the sewers and on to New York’s streets with his bag of “goodies” is so the Sony lot, hahaha, but that wouldn’t bug anyone else but THIS GUY.

Overall, I actually did enjoy this movie.  It wasn’t the best, but considering that first trailer left such a bad taste in my mouth, my expectations were low, then it turns out that it isn’t the worst of the worst, so I was able to enjoy this.  They mentioned Norman Osborn without showing him, such a delight.  Dangling plotlines were unresolved, but masked well so that I didn’t care while watching the movie.  I wish they would’ve had more of the Jekyll/Hyde thing going on with the Lizard.  Andrew Garfield and Marc Webb do a very good job, they were able to craft a story without the set piece of the Daily Bugle or J. Jonah Jameson.

*SPOILER* or speculation… there is a scene during the credits, so stay and read the names of all the people that worked so hard to bring you this film, cause you should… know how to read that is, hahaha.
But Doc Connors is placed in prison, he then sees and talks to a mysterious man… who is this person?  We never see his face.  Is he the voice that’s talking to Connors in his sewer lab?  Is Connors crazy and talking to a dual personality?  Is it Norman Osborn?  Certainly a man that rich can buy his way in to prison.  Or… is it Richard Parker?  Since we never really find out what happened to him???  Dun dun… dunnnnn, Kurtzman and Orci better not screw up the sequel… one can hope write?  See what I did there??

Brave

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I saw Brave at the El Capitan, always a treat at the El Cap.
The short of it, it’s about Merida a Scottish Princess who buts heads with her mother, the Queen. They argue over who and what Merida should be and how she’ll be married off. Through the course of a contest to win the Princess’ hand in marriage Merida chooses to change her destiny, be careful what you wish for… throw in some bits and gags and there ya go.

The good; it’s Pixar, it looks amazing. They pull out all the stops with the hair and Merida is the first female protagonist as well as the first period piece in a Pixar film.

The opening of the movie is incredible. It grabs you immediately with child-like wonder and then slams the brakes as danger approaches. Merida’s learning to shoot a bow and arrow, then wanders off in to the woods. Upon arriving back to her parents… a bear has followed her, Merida’s father, King Fergus, stares down a ferocious bear – opening title card, wow, it had me from that moment.

The spine of the story is very simple and relate-able, it’s about a child growing up and wanting to be their own person, and rejecting the person their parent imposes on them. Who can’t relate to this? It seems that it’s a part of life these days, must rebel and resist… older… people… ah what the hey, money money monies.

The bad; the trailer is misleading. Honestly not much here, just that the marketing was for a different movie. You’d probably never know this from watching those excellent trailers, but the movie is a mother/daughter movie.

I wanted more story and character moments, instead we got more action and thrills. This could be because the lead is a girl so they want to bring in the boy audience with the action.

Overall, check it out. Pixar delivers again. It’s fun for everyone and there’s something for all the members of the family. The brothers never say a thing through out the whole movie, I wonder why that was. Don’t get me wrong, they were still funny on screen, but that question just kept creeping in. Oh, and stay for the credits (as you should), there’s a dedication to Steve Jobs and a scene at the very end.

Mirror Mirror

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I saw Mirror Mirror… you all know the story of Snow White.

The good; Lily Collins is pretty?  I honestly don’t know.

The bad; everything else.  All of it?  I mean, it’s Tarsem Singh, who did a great job on The Fall.  So I don’t know what went wrong here.  The movie was slow, with a run time of 106 minutes, it felt like a three hour tour.  I was adjusting and squirming in my seat, I wanted the movie to end.  It was slow for no reason at all.

Overall, skip it.  I can’t find any reason to watch this movie.  It ends with a celebratory Bollywood dance number, but it didn’t earn it.  Two Snow White live action movies, and nary a good one to be found… booo Hollywood, booo…

Snow White and the Huntsman

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So I saw Snow White and The Huntsman after much anticipation. I would like to correct myself and say that I endured Snow White and the Huntsman. We all know about this fairy tale right? Snow White, Evil Queen, Apple, castles, a Prince, a Huntsman… and so forth.

The good; the look, I highly enjoy the look. It’s grimy and gritty, makes it believable. It also reminds me of movies that I grew up on, there was a sense of imagination and risk that’s almost gone these days. Here’s some of the movies that come to mind; The Dark Crystal, The Neverending Story, Willow, Princess Mononoke…
There’s a scene in the forest where the Spirit greets Snow White, it’s almost right out of ​Princess Mononoke, ​the plants have eyes, there are little spirits flying around –


Charlize Theron makes a great villain. The Dwarfs were great too, who knew the names that would fill out their group? Also, the technology that made them short, amazing.
They had some wonderful wide shots, loved it. A portion of these shots was also to showcase the beautiful locations or sets.

The bad; ohhhhh where to begin. I don’t say this much, especially about bad movies, but I want more story! The film relies too much on the assumption that everyone knows the details of the tale, so there are a lot, A LOT, of things implied and not explained, we need more exposition of why things are happening.
The fight scenes, urghhh, more close ups, why?

Overall, skip this one.  Mirror Mirror might be the better movie, I guess I’ll have to see, it was supposed to be the other way around 🙁

 

The Avengers

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Like most anyone out there, I saw The Avengers this weekend. It’s about the superheroes in the previous Marvel movies coming together to save the world… go see this movie.

The good; go see this movie.

Overall, it’s unlike any of the previous Marvel movies, it’s not overly sad or angsty, there’s a LOT of humor in it, exactly like a comic book.  Oh and go see this movie.

And stay all the way through the credits, as you should always do.

 

There’s nothing else in this review, go to where tickets are bought and sold for seats in a large dark room and feast on The Avengers!

The Raid: Redemption

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I just saw ​The Raid: Redemption.  Why did we wait this long to see it??
It takes place in a slum of Indonesia, in this particular apartment building lives the mob boss, and all the tenants are under his rule/employ.  A SWAT team goes in to take out this boss, little did they know that they’ve entered a hornet’s nest.

​The good; ​ wall to wall action, in the age of close up shots and shaky camera action, this Indonesian film knows how to cover an action and covers it well.  I get a sense of geography with the wider shots, I get the impact of punches and kicks from close ups, I get a sense of training and skill from the medium shots and I appreciate that I can see things without getting dizzy.
The film starts off with gun fire and as they ditch the guns for obvious reasons they have to switch to hand to hand combat, which is beautifully choreographed and executed.  The skill of all the bodies on camera is very apparent and appreciated.  Makes me think that everyone in Indonesian knows the martial art of Silat.

There’s also a lack of a love story, the film opens with Rama, played by Iko Uwais, praying before he goes to work as he then says bye to his pregnant wife.  Here we get that he’s a family man, expecting a child, and he’s Muslim, it’s a nice way to introduce this character and get the who love interest thing out of the way.  If this were an American movie there would’ve been a “hooker with a heart of gold” that’s in the apartment building and she’d want to help the Police, thank you for not having that archetype.

​The​ bad;​ ummmm, not much in this department.  The movie’s a lean one hundred minutes, it’s a meat and potatoes type of movie that showcases martial arts skills.  Oh, they use they forearms to block a lot, A LOT, of hits from enemies, and yet they’re arms remain unbruised or bloodied.  Some wounds there would’ve made it more believable, but maybe they train so their forearms are like leather??

One very bad thing… they’re remaking this in America… go watch the original and learn to read, cause this movie is subtitled.  You just might learn a new word or two, or heaven forbid, learn what some words are in another language.

Overall, ​The Raid ​does not disappoint.  It’s directed by ​Gareth Evans ​who’s Welsh, and this is his second film with Iko Uwais.  ​ Please make more like this.

Lockout

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While The Hunger Games plows through with a force at the box office, being the number one movie three weekends in a row, I opted out for something that was more… on the non-thinking side.  I saw Lockout this weekend.

The short of it, we’re in the future, technology is amazing and criminals are sent to a prison in space where they’re put in stasis.  There could be some effects, so the President’s daughter (Maggie Grace) has a bleeding heart for them and wants to see the effects if any.  While taking a visit to the prison the inmates break out and take over.  The government calls in Snow (Guy Pearce) to run a one man rescue operation.  Queue the whacky-ness and explosions – go!

The good; it’s Guy Pearce, haven’t seen him in a lead role in a while.  I mean, he’s in things, but briefly.  Let’s see if you’ve spotted him in these movies; The King’s Speech, The Road, Bedtime Stories and The Hurt Locker. So Lockout is a departure from his usual dramatic roles, it’s nice to see him in the wise-cracking, gun-toting anti-hero.  The opening scene with him over the credits was very amusing.

The embracing of the cheesy over-the-top quality, this movie knows what it is and goes with it, at no point did I get the feeling that it was taking itself too seriously.  And for that I applaud.  One moment in particular is a very CG chase scene, the whole sequence is overly CG and when Snow slides off his vehicle on to oncoming danger, the blending works out, I know Snow is real while the background isn’t, but considering everything else looks that way, it just felt normal.  Unlike a overly CG shot placed in to a movie to cover something up, which throws me out.

Luc Besson‘s name is attached toLockout,for that fact alone I have faith that this movie will be entertaining, at the least.  And I certainly was not disappointed.

The bad; Guy Pearce, why is he doing this movie?  Is this a stepping stone for his next bigger movie?  Did he owe someone a favor?  Or is he doing someone a favor in order to do his next movie?  Just seems very unlike him and it took me a while to accept it.

Very cliched set ups, you could see them going where they were going a mile off.  I would’ve liked a twist or a variation on a theme with these set ups, something to spice it up.

There’s one moment in the beginning where Snow is running away and sees his getaway future getaway vehicle.  But the shot and the production design had us focus on a patch job on the wall behind the vehicle, that was confusing and sorta distracting.

Another thing I have a slight problem with was the ending, they threw in too many twists here, I won’t go in to it for fear of spoilers.  But they used the Tony Scott patented editing style, but not on crack just caffeine, which at this point in the movie was ok for a moment, but not as long as they dragged out that editing style.  Then the twist where that thing they were looking for wasn’t there, but in plain sight the whole time.  A more straight forward ending would’ve been more satisfying.

Overall, I checked my brain at the door and had some high orbiting popcorn munching explosion filled goodness.  This movie was just a lot of fun, and it could possibly be improved by having a running audio commentary while watching with friends.