Florida Film Festival 2014 review: ‘Not Anymore: A Story of Revolution’

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“Not Anymore:  A Story of Revolution” is a documentary short film that should be seen by everyone, and by everyone I mean people in the Western world and those who really don’t give a place like Syria a second thought because this is the type of experience that really drives home the full impact of what has happened over there and what their current state of living is now. Why is this not on the news regularly? Why are our televisions saturated with faux-reality shows and meaningless drivel? Why are we being encouraged to look away from the horrors happening in the our own world?Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Sabotage’

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“Sabotage” is a particularly brutal and bleak movie from David Ayers, who is coming off his very well liked “End of Watch” and decided the best way to follow up that success would be with a morally murky, ultra violent tale of a questionable DEA agent and his run in with a Mexican DTO (drug trafficking organization, because apparently the DEA does not like the world cartel anymore). A fun action movie? Nope. A good time at the movies? Un-uh. Escapist entertainment? Only if you want to escape to a land of cruel murder and betrayal and moral ambiguity.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is Breacher, a DEA agent and leader of a small elite task force of the best undercover drug agents out there, and of course this a rogue group of agents, all of them just a little insane, partying hard in their off time, being total dicks to everyone, and just pretty much living the lifestyle they promote, that of the hard living, dangerous, over the top, gung ho alpha males (and single alpha female), and of course they blur the lines between the good guys and the bad guys, using their authority to do some questionable things, and even when they are taking out bad guys, it is in a brutal, hard way that is hard to look past.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Noah’

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Darren Aronofsky’s “Noah” is here after a couple years of anticipation, and this is just about the weirdest, most off-kilter, non-mainstream mainstream movie to come out in theaters since “Watchmen” in 2009. I can only imagine what some people were thinking when less than ten minutes into this very short but well known biblical tale the idea of fallen, multi-limbed angels encased in rock gets introduced and then relied upon heavily throughout the film. Definitely don’t remember giant rock ex-angels in Sunday School. Yet here they are. Okay, let’s back up a bit.

So this Aronofsky fella, he makes a bunch of incredible low budget movies, one of em finally hits and makes some coin, and he finally finds himself able to get his apparent dream project off the ground, which is a big screen version of the Noah story, one that takes up very a couple of pages in the Bible, yet is pretty well known by everyone: God made the world and he made Man. Man got all corrupt and evil, so God was like “time to shake this etch-a-sketch” and he told Noah to make a boat, put two of each animal on it, and ride out the flood that will destroy everyone else. Which Noah did. And then his family somehow repopulated the Earth. Pretty straightforward, not really much there, so why are we even going here with this movie? Didn’t we already get “Evan Almighty?” Isn’t that enough?Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Need for Speed’

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For a movie titled “Need for Speed,” there is a distinct lack of urgency or vitality to the whole thing. There was plenty of speed, but was there much NEED for it? Eh, not really. Not in this movie anyway.

Which is unfortunate because “Need for Speed” has some things going for it on the outset that makes it a fun movie to root for to be good and do well. We got Aaron Paul, hot off the success of “Breaking Bad,” and he’s getting his first change to lead a big movie, and in the context of the film and what he has to do, he actually does quite a great job. As a matter of fact, with some more experience and years under his belt, Aaron Paul has a chance to be a strong, reliable movie leading man in the tradition of Humphrey Bogart, Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise (read: short), and even in a movie as lifeless as this one, we still see someone worth watching in this guy. Jesse Pinkman was not a fluke.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Non-Stop’

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Here we go. Another Liam Neeson action movie. If anyone told me ten years ago that Liam Neeson would soon be one of the biggest and most bankable action stars of the 2000s and 2010s, I woulda told you…that would be an interesting possibility. Though not likely. Sure he was okay in Star Wars. But as a stand alone action star? Naaaaaah.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘3 Days to Kill’

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Oh boy. “3 Days to Kill.” Ugh. Let’s get this over with.

Kevin Costner plays Ethan, a dad estranged from his daughter and wife due to his commitment to work, and when he finds out he has three months to live thanks to some brain tumors that somehow spread to his lungs, he tries to reconnect with his family, who are currently living in Paris. His daughter (Hailee Steinfeld) calls him Ethan and prefers to hang out on her own, but of course slowly yet surely Ethan wins her over, despite also regularly screwing up by always being late. He’s gruff but means well and he promises his wife that he’s done with work and he just wants to be there for them and the whole movie is him trying to get to a point where his daughter will actually call him “dad.”

Oh by the way he’s a CIA field operative and a super deadly and effective hitman.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘RoboCop’ (2014)

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Well it wasn’t the complete piece of shit that I was actually expecting, but that does not mean that this new “RoboCop” movie is actually good. Just because a movie brings up some ideas doesn’t mean it is actually smart or even tried to do anything, especially if nothing is actually said by the movie. Anyone can stand on a street corner and yell about how “drone warfare is bad!” But that doesn’t mean people would want to stand around and listen to this person yelling for two hours. We get it. Drones can be bad. So what?

Taking the movie as its own thing, ignoring the fact that it is a remake of a beloved classic, “RoboCop” at least has a couple things going for. Set about 15 or so years in the future, the movie starts with some television pundit blowhard named Novak (Samuel L. Jackson) just going on and on and on about the use of drones and droids in other countries for reasons of forced pacification, and bemoaning how Americans are against the use of drones here in America*. And here during the beginning segment of the movie, we get some decent ideas about drone warfare and modern American imperialism, and an interesting and daring sequence in which these drones (including ED-209s) get attacked by suicide bombers, determined to make this attack unfold on a live television, and we even get to see a young kid, inspired by his suicide bombing father, pick up a weapon and go at the drones himself (which was pretty stupid on the kids part). So the movie starts with a literal bang and actually for a second seems like it might go to some interesting places.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Lego Movie’

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Boom. Insta-classic. Just like that. If only it was as easy as these guys make it seem, but here we are with “The Lego Movie,” a film that traffics in both hilarity and profundity and never at the expense of either one. How did this happen? This really does not make much sense. This should not be. No one has been able to take plot-less toys and games and turn them into truly great movies, let alone good ones (we’re looking at you “G.I. Joes” and “Transformers” and “Battleship“). Yet here we are.

“The Lego Movie” is about Emmet Brickowoski (Chris Pratt), who is a very bland and featureless construction worker Lego guy (in a sentient, active, awesome looking Lego world) and he goes about his day to day routine super happy to be bland and follow the instructions and fit in like he’s supposed to. And then he literally stumbles ass backwards into an ancient prophecy, in which he is told he is actually the most special and unique person in the universe, and as such he will save the Lego universe from Lord Business (Will Ferrell), who seeks to end the Lego world as they know it by using a secret weapon to make all the world’s pieces permanently stuck together, as per the instructions.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Dallas Buyers Club’

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“Dallas Buyers Club” is a good movie, elevated by an incredible lead performance from one Mr. Matthew McConaughey. But if you’ve been paying any attention lately, you’ve noticed that ole McConaughey is no longer a joke, as he has abandoned the romantic comedies that squandered his talents and has turned in a long string of excellent performances in movie after movie after movie. As a matter of fact, his recent award nominations and wins for his role as homophobe turned entrepreneur turned AIDS activist Ron Woodroof feels like he’s getting the accolades not just for this one part but for all the movies he’s done in the last few years, because he could have easily gotten all this same attention for his amazing work in “Killer Joe,” “Magic Mike” and “Mud,” along with his lauded turned in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Bernie” and “The Lincoln Lawyer.” But hey, this role makes for a great cap to a great run of movies. And considering McConaughey has Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” next, the career resurgence of the Mac is complete. Welcome to the A-List, buddy.Continue Reading …