Review: ‘The Book of Life’

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“The Book of Life” is a few stock stories smashed together into one story, and while none of these bits are original and perhaps the overall story suffers a little from there being too much going on with the various characters and general plot lines, this is still a pretty enchanting film thanks to the lush and intricate visual style and an earnestness and heartfelt approach to the movie.

The story centers on three friends – Manolo, Joaquin and Maria. Manolo comes from a long line of bullfighters and his father expects him to be one as well, but Manolo would much rather play the guitar and sing, which his father looks down upon as a lowly and unfit vocation for his son. Joaquin, meanwhile, wants to follow in the footsteps of his father, who was killed fighting against a bad guy named Chakal and whom the town venerates as their greatest hero. And then Maria is a free spirit kind of person, one who resists gender stereotypes and wants to be seen as an equal to her male counterparts and not just some prize to be wed off by her father. The three of them grow up together, and of course both Manolo and Joaquin love Maria and both vie for her attention. Meanwhile, Maria has no problem with leading both boys on and giggling and laughing at both of their advances and going a very long time without showing her hand as to which person she prefers.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Fury’

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War is bad, right guys? We can all agree on this? Actually, I don’t think we can. So maybe we still need to see movies like “Fury,” which simultaneously condemns and revels in the iron-forging fire that was World War II, what with all the bodies and devastation and brotherhood and bonding and bloodletting and whatnot.

What sets “Fury” apart from other World War II movies? Is it just the focus on the tank warfare? The emphasis on the violent end of World War II, as opposed to D-Day or Pearl Harbor? The chance to see Brad Pitt and Shia LaBeouf share scenes together? Surely these are aspects of this movie that haven’t been emphasized in other war films, but is it enough to truly set it apart from the pack?

“Fury” centers on one tank in particular, the titular tank named Fury, and the five-man crew operating said tank as it makes its way through Germany, beating down every possible Nazi soldier. Right at the start of the movie, this five-man crew is suffering through the loss of one of their men, and then they immediately get assigned a baby faced fresh recruit, enlisted into the Army as a clerk and re-assigned to the German front lines as a tank driver, despite the fact that he has no experience at all with tanks or war. So obviously the rest of the crew of Fury resents him at first, probably because his innocence and wide-eyed look at the horrors of war cruelly reflected their own callousness and battle-hardened psyches, but then predictably the men all bond together by being forced to go through some harrowing situations. Their newest crew member unfortunately has to lose his innocence in order to be accepted as a member of the team, but then again it is apparent that this war left no man untouched.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Guest’

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“The Guest” takes a lot of elements of my favorite movies and some of my favorite genre elements and cliches and tropes and puts it all together in a slick, sexy, cool package, so I guess this is a bit of a disclaimer up top just to say that this movie kind of hits me in my cinematic sweet spot. Basically if I was making a movie like this, I would make it in the same style, if not go even harder with it, and I loved just about every choice made in every aspect of this low budget yet totally off the wall flick.

First off, the trailer for this movie is crap, and thank the movie heavens that I didn’t see the trailer or see out to watch it before I saw this movie. I advise you to do the same and try to avoid it. Now of course I DID put it at the end of this review, cause SOME of you will still want to see the trailer first, but trust me on this one, just see the movie. As for my review here, I am going to give out as few plot deets as possible while still trying to explain why I enjoyed this movie so much.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Kill The Messenger’

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“Kill The Messenger” is a movie telling two stories. First it is the story of how the Central Intelligence Agency facilitated cocaine sales in our country in the 1980’s so that the proceeds from those sales, at one point reaching a total of $3 million per day, could be used to illegally fund rebel fighters in Nicaragua, all done with the complicity of the Reagan administration, a presidency which double downed on Nixon’s War on Drugs. And secondly, this movie tells the story of the reporter who did the most work in uncovering these ties, and who was subsequently discredited by the mainstream media, apparently acting on behalf of the government. So basically this is the feel good movie of the year.

In “Kill The Messenger,” Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner) is working at the San Jose Mercury News, and coming off the success of his most recent published story regarding civil forfeiture, someone contacted him out of the blue with a tall tale so tall it just had to be true, and this was a story involving drug dealers in cahoots with the US government. Webb meets this person, who gives him a name and sends him down a rabbit hole that went so deep there was no hope of ever coming back out. Webb goes around asking questions, dropping names, and before long, he is visiting a jailed drug kingpin in South America and he’s finding out way more information than he ever hoped to find, information that tied the US government to the crack cocaine epidemic of the inner cities of America, with Los Angeles being ground zero.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Left Behind’ (2014)

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“Left Behind” is the second feature length adaptation of the first book of a hugely successful series of Christian books from the 1990s, a series of thrillers set against the backdrop of the Rapture, a worldwide event in which all of the world’s Christians, along with all the babies and children in the world, get instantaneously sucked up into Heaven, leaving behind their clothes and their possessions and oh yeah all the stinking non-believers who now have Armageddon and what not to look forward to, you know, all the worst parts of the Bible. And who better to usher us into this horrible wasteland than the one and only Nicolas Cage?Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Gone Girl’

Gone-Girl-2014-film-posterWhat does “Gone Girl” have in common with other movies like “Conan the Barbarian,” “Robocop,” “Starship Troopers” and “Jackie Brown?” They are all pulpy B-movies made with A-movie level commitment and talent. What could have easily been a fumbled, ridiculous attempt at a Lifetime Movie of the Week instead is a very adult, smart, twisty-turny, potboiling, corkscrew turning thriller of a movie that just manages to get crazier and crazier until the very final frames.

Based on a very popular book and adapted into a screenplay by the very author of said book, “Gone Girl” is an extremely darkly humorous look at American married life in this day and age, at least an extreme possibility of the results of such unions between people throughout the world. Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) comes home one day to discover what appears to be a crime scene and his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) missing. He calls the police and the investigation starts with a couple of detectives taking a tour of his house and ends up being a nationwide media sensation involving streets filled with news vans, lawns covered with reporters, lots of shouting and yelling and television talking heads, all rising into a collection din that just puts more and more pressure on Nick, whom becomes the prime suspect more and more as the story progresses.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Equalizer’

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“The Equalizer” may be the best bad movie I have seen this year and I mean that in a very particular way, in that the story is filled with these ridiculous cliches and tropes and conventions and plays heavily into them and is also filled with these absurd moments and insane side stories but meanwhile the whole thing is being done by people who know how to make films so it is technically proficient and there are a number of cool moments and beautiful shots and in the end they even tie it all together with a nice little bow, set to rock guitars and drums, so it all comes together for a good time at the theater. A dumb good time, but a goo time nonetheless.

“The Equalizer” is about The Equalizer, a gray haired man working at a Home Depot-like home improvement store. His name is Robert McCall (Denzel Washington), and despite being very friendly and full of smiles and very willing to help his coworkers with their personal goals, he also lives a very austere and simple lifestyle, one fit for a monk, and oh yeah he’s harboring a very violent past, one commissioned by the government to boot. And when the people around him get in trouble with criminals and corrupt cops and whatnot, he secretly gets involved and corrects the situation, leveling the playing field, equalizing the score, if you wil- ooooohhh I get it, I see why he’s named that, oh man these people are clever.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘A Walk Among the Tombstones’

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Who ordered the grim detective noir story featuring rape, torture, mutilation, extreme blood loss, and Liam Neeson saying “Let’s get our eat ons together?” Because your order of “A Walk Among the Tombstones” is up and ready, hot and steamy and messy and in your face and not all that pleasant.

Based on a 90’s novel of some sort, part of a series of novels featuring the same character, “A Walk Among the Tombstones” is about some guy named Scudder (Neeson), an ex-NYC cop with a guilty conscious and 8 years of sobriety under his belt who works as an unlicensed private investigator. A drug trafficker hires Scudder to find out who kidnapped and killed his wife and before he knows it, Scudder finds himself sucked into a crazy plot involving other women brutally murdered in the past and possible future murders n the verge of happening unless he can do something about it.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Tusk’

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A sort of body-horror movie from the director of “Clerks” and “Chasing Amy,” here we are with a film in which an obnoxious man is given the “Misery” treatment by an old Canadian weirdo with designs to turn a human into a beast. A story that involves monetized podcasting, infidelity, convenience store workers, big gulp style beverages, a play on the phrase Not See, a serial killer and a sometimes cross-eyed homicide detective from Quebec, “Tusk” is possibly the weirdest movie to come out in theaters in quite a while, which is a good thing.

Written and directed by Kevin Smith, “Tusk” centers on a guy named Wallace (Justin Long), an LA-based podcaster with a show named The Not See Party, and it appears his show is a kind of audio version of Tosh.0 or any other rip off show centered on showing internet clips of people acting stupid and/or hurting themselves. And the name comes from the show having some wacky conceit in which Wallace goes out and interviews people and then comes back and tells his supposedly hodophobic co-host Teddy (Haley Joel Osment) about the interview, hence the “Not See” part of the show.

I kind of feel like Kevin Smith is shitting on podcasters, having the show being so crass and the hosts being so disgusting and unsympathetic to their fellow man, but then it is weird that the podcast is hugely successful, bringing in over $100,000 per year, and Wallace even goes so far as to note that this figure is based on ad sales alone and that he makes even more money on t-shirt sales and live events. Considering that there are thousands upon thousands of podcasts out there (including, well, you know, this one), most of them struggling and not making a dime let alone a lucrative salary, it is kind of telling that the podcast Smith presents is so successful because he made is own podcast and success came easy because well he’s Kevin fucking Smith. Funny how from his own experience he presents podcasting as a source of income whereas in the real world it is mostly a hobby for most folks, and he also equates it to 90’s talk radio style douche baggery.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Maze Runner’

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So, like, there’s this maze, right? We’ll call it The Maze. And in the middle there is this, like, open glade area with trees and shit. We’ll call that The Glade. And there are all these teenage boys forced to live in The Glade in the middle of the Maze. And they like totally call themselves Gladers. Except for the new guys. They’ll call them Greenbeans. And Greenies! So the Gladers and Greenies live in the Glade in the middle of the Maze, which has weird monsters that they will caaaaallll…let’s see…I don’t know, fuck it, they’ll just call them Grievers, for why I have no idea. Because they grieve? Anyway, the Gladers also split themselves up as Builders and Slicers and Runners, and there’s a virus that causes The Changing, in which the infected, like, uh, changes. And there you go, boom, we got a story. That was easy, let’s go get something to eat.

End Scene.

That’s how I imagine the writing session for “The Maze Runner” took place. The whole movie, based on a popular (I guess, so I’ve read on the interwebz) young adult fiction sci-fi fantasy novel, is full of these archetypes, the characters have names for everything that exists within this universe and it gets really silly really fast when every time the main character Thomas turns around, someone else is telling, “This is such and such. We call it The Something” or whatever. There were even a couple of times where it felt like they could have given things more names and identifiers but didn’t do so and all I’m saying is why not go all out. “This is the time of day we get together and eat some food. We call it The Feedening.” Or how about “This is when we all go to sleep. We call it…The Sleeping.” Just keep doing it. Everything has a name.Continue Reading …