Tag: movie7

Tomorrowland (2015)

Pretty scifi for kids, starring some kids, mostly human kids. Britt Robertson is Casey, 18 years old and a freedom fighter for science, though NASA would probably call her a terrorist, it’s always in the point of view concerning that duality. George Clooney was a kid, and he got his chain yanked by a darling robot played by freckly newcomer Raffey Cassidy. So Clooney is bitter and gloomy, and Britt is bubbly and optimistic, and that’s really our plot.

The plot is a bit thin and the devices are a bit preachy, and when this came out there was some grumbling that there are very few black people in the cast, but this week we see that the NAACP Image Award for Best Motion Picture of 2015 was “Straight Outta Compton” and it’s funny, isn’t it, that movies with white leads never win that award, right? So who’s being race-exclusive here? Disney made this movie as a positive voice for humanity’s future, and it didn’t seem like they were excluding black people on purpose, so all that griping falls on deaf ears until the day when the Image Awards are based on something other than just race.

This one is a more adultish Disney movie, like they tried with The Black Hole 35 years ago, thus people get killed and maimed, and a bunch of killer robots get offed. Mostly, instead of being a white-people movie, this is a girl-power movie. Britt Robertson has to save the world, and it’s Disney so we know she does, no spoiler there, but the best girlpower is from Athena (Raffey Cassidy), a ten-year-old dynamo of chopsocky asskicking, exterminating bad robots and, since this future has never heard of Asimov’s Laws, Robot Raffey also takes out some humans.

The scenes of the title place are stunning CGI, fully populated with realism and coherent artistic vision. Very pretty movie to watch, though there are some unexplained loose ends as though the script went through some changes after shooting began, or the editing process cut out some bits of continuity.

Since this is the 2010’s, there is no clear-cut bad guy, other than robots who can be blown up without offending anyone, but one of those missing bits in the plot is that a human controls all those killer robots. It’s namby-pamby stuff like that which is making Hollywood movies steadily lose cultural relevance, then they complain about falling box office without looking in the mirror. In this case, the bad guy turns out to be almost reasonable near the end of the movie, so maybe the real bad guy is humanity itself?

Blah, and that’s what i meant about the preachy stuff, though Disney does not mention oil companies specifically, because Disney is a global corporation too, and the upper floors know which side of the real world is buttered and which is plain. You simply can’t be preachy if you’ve got a tarry gnarled member lodged in your own throat.

So the message is a washed-out fail, but the movie is fun to watch and the characters are plucky and easy to root for. The scifi is good, effects are great, but a few things guarantee that there will be no sequel here.

Rating and more info…

Fury (2014)

Gritty war drama, with all the foul language and gunfights and spitting that a gritty war drama should have. Written by the director and that’s always a good sign, and produced by the star, which always shows confidence in the script. Well made with smoky and misty evocative shots, an ethereal score and good attention to costuming hundreds of extras.

Story is basically about greenhorn Norman and his introduction to World War II, by way of being pressed into a tank crew who have all been together for a few years of heavy combat. Norman is idealistic and wobbly, but with the stern hand of Brad Pitt, he becomes a man.

A wild ride across Western Germany in WW2’s last month, which is supposed to add tragedy to the story since we know the war ends in a few weeks, so all lives lost at this point are lives wasted. Whatevy, it’s still wartime and that means plenty of, well, war. Centering on a tank crew is always a good subject, second only to a story about a submarine crew, for cementing the bonds between the characters.

Some tank-to-tank tactics, some infantry maneuvers, a little taste of town fighting, and deus ex machina by way of random hits by invisible artillery. Hey, it’s a war movie. What sets this one apart in the action sphere is the great final battle. Among the genre, what sets this one apart is great acting from all the main cast. Doesn’t make you think deep thoughts, just keeps you rooting for our good guys, keeping the tension on a tight line and competently pacing the action to keep us engaged.

A war movie is not for everyone, but this one’s pretty good. Since it’s 2014 and not 1954, the gore is real and visceral, with plenty of guys losing their heads on both sides. Important characters, of course, look great when dead. Even when a couple grenades go off inches away. Hollywood magic, that.

Rating and more info…

The Family (2013)

Fun movie with plenty of violence perpetrated by both adults and children, making this a black comedy. Deniro is a mobster turned state’s evidence and now in the witness protection program. Tommy Lee Jones is his FBI handler, a thankless and difficult job because Deniro keeps committing crimes while hiding in France. Just a murder here and there, a savage beating or three, and a reasonable bombing at the local factory.

On the other hand, it’s not all Deniro’s fault. His wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) blows up the local supermarket on their first day in town, and both son and daughter unleash separate reigns of terror in high school, with more beatings, bribery, extortion, drug dealing and general racketeering. All in all great fun, and if the French townsfolk had a nebulous uncertain unease about Americans before the Blake family moved in, well now they have a much more clear idea about why they fear Americans.

A little unrealistic, because not even in small-town France can someone get away with a crime wave like this. And the way that the mob in New York gets wind of where The Family is laying low (!) is very unbelievable. But that’s OK, a couple suspensions of belief are not too much, since this is not a gritty gangster movie, it is a comedy. A gritty black comedy, but still.

Since it’s a witness protection program comedy, we know what’s going to happen, in broad outline at least, so no reason to give any details or spoilers. Suffice it to say that there’s good performances from Bobby and Tommy and Michelle, the kids are a riot, and the mobsters all wear black.

Rating and more info…

Gangster Squad (2013)

Los Angeles, barely post-war, it’s 1949 and Mickey Cohen is a gangster on his way up, a rise fueled by particular violence which we get an inkling of in the opening minutes, where Mickey (Sean Penn) has an emissary from the Chicago mob torn in half, fully on camera. Ewww. But it’s a gangland drama, and it’s made in 2013, so let’s not skimp on the gruesome violence.

Of course this serves as our motivation to see Mickey get what he’s got coming, and it comes in the form of a deeply undercover team of LAPD white-hats who report to nobody and answer to nothing but a smoking gun. Based on the true story of how the mafia was turned back from inroads into LA, this flick is half detective thriller and half vigilante rampage. In the historical sense, this is the story of how the mob only made it as far West as Las Vegas, and this nipping of the buds of organized crime saved, in the end, the whole West Coast from turning into Chicago or New York.

Since it’s 1949, the film is full of glorious old cars, Packards and Hudsons and De Sotos, all curvy bodies with flat windows and no radios. Speaking of curvy bodies, Emma Stone turns in a great performance as expected, as the moll with the gams and a sweet streak, and she’s lovingly introduced as a “tomato”. Ahh, the 1940s.

Since it’s the 40s, the soundtrack has lots of nice jumps from Hoagy Carmichael, Pee Wee King and Stan Kenton, and we even get an actress portraying Carmen Miranda. One gripe is that not much thought was applied to marrying the music to the video, and few of the vintage songs go on past a few bars. There is a ton of music which would have been current on the radio in 1949 and applicable to our story, but this score seems to have been assembled in isolation of the film production, and by someone bereft of a broad knowledge of 1940s pop. The one bright spot in the score is using Peggy Lee’s “Bless You” in its entirety as the credits roll.

The ending of the movie is too quick and pat, with little feeling of real denouement, but otherwise the story is good and the acting more good than poor. A great span of supporting cast: Michael Pena, Giovanni Ribisi, Nick Nolte, and Anthony Mackie all turn in good roles, and the leads (Penn, Brolin, Gosling and Emma) all do a fine job. Josh Brolin is wooden, but that’s on purpose, that’s why he was cast as the main good guy, he’s what we expect from him, the grizzled toughie with a gold heart.

A pretty good movie overall. Period piece but not drenched in itself, great pacing of the action, and a range of heroes easy to root for and baddies we’re glad to see get shot. It’s The Untouchables redone, 30 years later and set 15 years later, and it was about time someone flattered that great movie. I recommend watching this.

Rating and info here…

Captain Phillips (2013)

Pretty long movie but a good story, and it really happened, despite all the legalese denials at the end of the credits. Keeps the tension up for over two hours, casting real Somalis as the pirates was a genius move, and Tom Hanks does his part like a veteran A-lister. Despite a whole lot of violence, there’s no actual death until the final unraveling.

Taking place onboard various ships, the running theme is claustrophobia and this reaches a fever pitch as the whole thing comes to a head in a pretty tough but very tiny little lifeboat. Early on, the foreshadowing machine plays a “special security announcement” when Cap’t Phillips arrives at the airport, just after he tells Mrs Phillips “everything’s gonna be OK.” So we know that not everything will be OK, since there’s two hours of movie left.

The devilish thing this movie does, and the main reason a mass of critics circle-jerked over it when it came out, is that this film takes extra time to make sure we get the story from both points of view: the pirates and the piracy victims. Because we know what happens, because we watched the news in April of 2009, we know the SEALs save the day, but by the time it comes, this crafty flick has you caring whether the pirates live or die.

A straight action flick has you accepting that the bad guys must die simply because they dared to point a Kalashnikov at the hero. In this one, the bad guys are still painted bad, and you’re made to feel they get what they’ve got coming, but the film also slips in a bit of pathos. You’re sad to see the waste of life but buy into the idea that these punks really have nothing better to do, and you are prodded to think of that as the true crime. Don’t fall for it.

There are some fun lines in the script, like the pirate leader Muse (Barkhad Abdi) saying early in the pirate attack that he wants to go to America. And he did. And he’s going to be in prison a long time. Arrr, matey, you stupid douchebag.

More info here

Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)

The more years pass, the fewer people who remember this, but before Sylvester Stallone boxed his way through the 1970s and 80s, when you said the name Rocky then everyone knew who you meant: Rocky Sullivan.  This movie is why.  Jimmy Cagney is William “Rocky” Sullivan, a Bowery hoodlum who gets pinched for his first stint in Juvy in 1923.  15 years later he’s a famous gangster just finished another 3 years in State, and he’s out to find a few things he left on the outside.

He’s found his boyhood hoodlum chum, now Father Connelly, and Rocky’s found the little girl who was sweet on him as a kid, now charwoman at the Bowery flophouse he’s laying low in.  Most important, Rocky has left a hundred grand of rumrunning loot with his crooked lawyer, and the story in this flick is Cagney out to find his lawyer and his loot.  That’s gonna be a scrape, because Humphrey Bogart is the lawyer.

Along the way he picks up a small army, small as in short.  The Dead End Kids, ensemble troupe of the day as the cultural foil to Spanky’s Our Gang kids, now inhabit Rocky’s boyhood hideout.  Out of the joint and clawing his way back to the top of the underworld, Rocky has to navigate the pull of the old neighborhood, the lure of easy money, and the people who cling onto that money.

Since this is 1938, there is a code imposed on Hollywood that the bad guy can never win in the end, a screenwriting self-censorship which held fast until the late 1960s.  Thus the emotional ending and swelling music.  Thus, 1930s ganster flicks are all about the sharp with a heart of gold or the cop who gets his man, and this one is the state of the art.  Current box office heavyweight Cagney shines with up-and-comer Bogart, who had a string of bad-guy roles which led to this casting, and here Bogart shows the chops that will soon get him leading roles.

The music is by Max Steiner, and deserves notice for his nascent style of punchnote-3notes-fade in the incidental accompaniment here, which would reach perfection four years later when he scored a Bogart film again: Casablanca.

The filming is taut and angle conscious, someone here has seen German films of the 1920s.  Floor-up shots with expressive shadowing, and with recurrence of visual themes via the lighting, we are treated to a cohesive photographic vision.  Early in Rocky’s criminal career towering boxcars presage the running theme of incarceration, and late in the movie the Dead End Kids’ boiler-room hideout is soaked with overhead illumination through street grates, completing the circle.  Even when out of jail, the life of crime is a prison.

Although produced in accordance with the censor’s boundaries, Cagney fills the film with a personality of snappy banter and tough-guy confidence which is hard to root against.  Worth seeing as a cannonical Cagney role, and pre-war supporting performances by Bogart and Sheridan, who would both go to greater heights in the 1940s.

See the full review here…