Seven Psychopaths Review

One thing is for certain.  Marketing materials for movies are deceptive.  The last movie I saw, Silver Linings Playbook marketed itself as a run of the mill romantic comedy.  It turned out to have a lot of layers and emotion and has been nominated for Best Picture.  Seven Psychopaths marketed itself as a hip and quirky underworld comedy; much like any movie based on an Elmore Leonard novel.  With one, the viewer is pleasantly surprised to be entertained comedically and still experience a deep movie.  With the other, the same thing is attempted but fails miserably.  (It also marketed itself completely false.  Neither Abbie Cornish nor Olga Kurylenko is one of the psychopaths.  It is completely not what the marketing would have you believe.)

Seven Psychopaths is about a guy writing a screenplay about psychotic people.  He wants the movie to have depth and be about more than just killing.  It's a commentary on almost anything Guy Ritchie has ever done or inspired.  Then, he gets sucked into a world of actual psychopaths.  I won't give away any more in case you want to see it.  The actual movie you are watching is trying to do the same thing that the writer is.  Ironically, they should have never made the attempt and it should have just been a movie about a group of psychos who kidnap another psycho's dog.

Keeping it shallow would have enabled them to really play off of the potential for the cool one-liners that they hyped up so much in the trailers.  They had the cast to do it.  Colin Farrell proved he could do cool, underworld comedy in In Bruges.  Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson and Christopher Walken can all play that very well too.  But Harrelson is cast as a mob leader and should have been an anti-hero.  Rockwell would have been better as the mob leader.  Walken was cast well as the aging weirdo but his lines were obviously written with his quirky delivery in mind.  It would have had more punch if they had just written the movie with clever dialogue and let Walken add his weirdness to it.

But the thing that really makes this movie fail is that they wanted to make a comedy.  But then they bring in very, very dark topics that make the viewer very uncomfortable when they're supposed to laugh at the dialogue.  Comedy mixed with violence often works.  But there's a line when, if crossed, they fail to mix.  Seven Psychopaths crossed that line with most of the back stories of the psychos.  If you don't laugh, everything falls flat and the movie seems boring.  If you do laugh, you feel guilty.  It's a lose-lose for the viewer.

Don't see it.

Feeling Minnesota Review

From the DVD cover, this movie is grossly misrepresented.  It makes it sound like a lighthearted romantic comedy where Cameron Diaz and Keanu Reeves hook up under dubious yet honourable circumstances and are then pursued by Vincent D'Onofrio who is Diaz' husband.  They only hit on half of that.  Reeves and Diaz hook up and are pursued by D'Onofrio.  But that's where it ends.  This movie is anything but a lighthearted romantic comedy.  Had they gone that way or had they gone fully to the dark movie that it is, it could have been a good movie in either genre.  Instead, they can't pull the trigger on either and it ends up being a poor film.  There's some good subtle dark humour and some over the top physical bits but the consistency with either is never really there.

That isn't to say that there is no comedy in the film.  There is quite a bit; especially when Reeves and D'Onofrio are interacting (ie. fighting) with each other.  I haven't seen such comedically awkward fist fighting since  Bridget Jones' Diary and Pineapple Express.  In fact, D'Onofrio is really the only thing that really works in this movie.  Even though it felt at times like he was trying to channel John Malkovich, it worked and most of what he does is is funny yet dark and that's what they were going for.  His performance is really strong and believable throughout.

The problem is that D'Onofrio is not one of the two main actors in the movie.  While, without his role there would be no film, the hero and heroine are Reeves and Diaz.  Neither one of them does a good enough job to grab the role and make you care about the character.  But it's for different reasons.  Reeves' character is flawed.  They try to make him some kind of suave and loveable guy while also making him an out and out criminal too.  His character is too layered and, while he's an OK actor, he can't do too much depth and couldn't really pull it off.  Diaz, on the other hand, is just an out and out terrible actress.  Her character had no depth and she still couldn't pull it off.  Her line delivery is always terrible and her body language is always annoying.  While she is a fairly attractive person, those other attributes are enough to just make you want to punch her.  She really played par for the course in this one.  I was actually relieved when she got shot.

Apart from those problems, I do have to say that the film is shot very well.  The lighting, setting, costumes and set designs gave it a real bleak and hopeless feel which suits the story quite well.  But without good characters and acting, that isn't enough for a good movie.

Don't see it.

Leaves of Grass Review

This was Steph's pick for the Wednesday night movie.  She went to Rogers to find something last minute and hit a home run.

I need to meet Tim Blake Nelson.  I need to ask him if he was trying to just tell a quirky thriller story with this movie or if he was going for something more allegorical with a moral.  I couldn't tell.  It seemed through the whole picture that he wanted to say something very profound but it just never came as to what it would be.  That being said, this is still a very good movie.  It's funny and dramatic when it needs to be.  The tempo is kept at the right pace and it never really seems to drag along.

It's a really cool story about the relationship between twins that have become very different people as time has gone on.  The acting performances are solid all the way around.  But with a cast like Ed Norton, Tim Blake Nelson, Susan Sarandon and Richard Dreyfuss, you would expect them to be.  Norton, in particular, gives two fantastic performances as the twins.  They are supposed to have taken very different paths and they are so different that you can see this.  But because they are played by the same guy, you can obviously see the similarities.  To top that off, as the movie progresses, you can see their tendencies start to come back together a bit.

Nelson also does a great job in writing this movie.  Although their is one point where characters make unrealistic yet correct assumptions that seems to be impossible, it doesn't take away from the film.  Over all, it's quite solid with no real holes.

See it.  It's too bad it never got the release it should have.  It is very entertaining.