Gravity Review

I'm glad they finally turned Space Oddity into a movie.

Seriously, though.  It's a good thing this movie is only 90 minutes long.  Otherwise I may have blacked out from not breathing.  It is absolutely riveting from the opening shot right until the end credits.  In a way, it reminded me of Buried.  You know, the movie where all it is is Ryan Reynolds in a coffin talking on a phone?  It's like that in the fact that, through the use of excellent acting and a great score, they make you feel like you're there with the characters.  Add in that they could do so much more with camera work and the 3D, and you feel what I can only imagine is close to the same helplessness in the void that Ryan Stone does.  I think it's the 3D that really puts it over the top though.  The movie obviously had to have a lot of CGI in it and it still felt so real.  I guess you can spend a lot on that when you only have two or three on screen actors in the whole thing.

The only beef I have with the film (and it's very minor) is that it beats you over the head with its metaphors and allegory.  It's an obvious tale of persistence and moving on through adversity shown in an extreme case.  There are moments where they move past subtlety and almost say to the audience, "get it?"  But by then, you're so engrossed in the visuals that you don't care.  There are also instances where I'm pretty sure they bent the laws of physics and ignored actual space travel protocols but I can live with that.  I'm no physicist or rocket scientist so I'll defer to their judgement on how far you can take artistic license.

Acting wise, it's very strong.  While it isn't either of their best performance, both Clooney and Bullock are above average.

Definitely see it.  If you suffer from motion sickness, maybe take some Gravol with you.  But don't let it stop you.

Jack Reacher Review

Well, where do I begin?  If this is what Lee Child novels are like, I'll stick to my Jack Higgins books.  I can't find any redeeming qualities for this film.  The closest I can get is that Tom Cruise didn't do a terrible job in delivering utterly horrible lines.  It's sad really because the story is actually pretty good with a lot of potential.  A sniper kills people in downtown Pittsburgh and the accused gets them to bring in a former military cop that has the tenacity of a pitbull.  It could have thriller written all over it.

But all of that potential is wasted through the use of very poor writing and extremely poor delivery of said writing.  It's almost as if every other line was written in a half-hearted attempt to be the next cool action movie catch phrase.  And the director then told all of the actors to channel their favourite 1940s-50s melodramatic actor before delivering it.  It was all over the top, wooden delivery that made it difficult to watch.  Add in the fact that it seems that Rosamund Pike was only there for the cleavage factor and it really is laughable.

For the most part, it seemed actually plausible for the situation to occur in real life.  But the hero is some unrealistic phantom super man and the villain was like some James Bond reject.  Given what Bond had for villains and sinister plots in the 80s, you know it's just that bad.

I didn't think Tom Cruise could make an action movie worse than Knight and Day but he did it.  I hope Oblivion is a step up.  Don't see it.

Chinatown Review

This is one of those movies that was made in a time when Hollywood was just starting to move from overacting glamour to more gritty and realistic movies.  Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson are largely responsible for those style of movies being successful.  Both were tremendous actors back in the day.  They're still good but, as they get older and start embracing other genres, they are starting to become caricatures of themselves.  I'm not saying that they're washed up.  Far from it.  I'm just saying that, when they stick to roles like Nicholson played in Chinatown and De Niro did in Taxi Driver, they are at their best.

Nicholson really carries this movie.  It isn't a spectacular story by any means.  It's a basic crime movie where a guy is investigating one thing and uncovers a whole conspiracy and other shady details and winds up in over his head.  It's one of Hollywood's basic thriller plots.  There is not a whole lot surprise so it has to rely on some good acting and a quick pace to keep the audience interested.

It accomplishes this through a great performance by Nicholson.  He plays the wisecracking, "do it my own way" private detective quite well and shows a great range of emotions throughout.  You can tell that the other actors are trying to step up their game and keep up with his level.

The pace is also kept fairly quick.  There are a couple of times when I thought it was slowing down but that could be because I was watching it on a plane at around midnight.  I'm sure that if I watched this in an early evening, I would have thought it was moving very quickly.

See it.  It doesn't get as gritty and violent as some of today's thrillers.  But given that it's over 30 years old, it still stands up as a fairly decent crime thriller.

The Net Review

This movie is a perfect example of why you should watch any current technology based movie as soon as it comes out. Everything in it is so laughably out of date now that it is actually hard to watch. Having come out in the mid-90s, it did use the technology of the time and it was made for that audience. Because of that, I can respect what they were doing. The internet was so revolutionary and there was (and still is to an extent) a fear of what the new technology could do in the wrong hands. That's what they were trying to portray in The Net.

What I cannot respect is the absolutely terrible way they told the story.  This is supposed to be a thriller.  In a thriller, things have to happen.  A story has to take twists and turns and move at a quick pace.  None of that happens here.  In fact, when it was done, I thought, "nothing happened at all.". Sure, there was a plot (albeit a weak one). And things moved at a snail's pace.  But the level of intrigue is so low that it is easy to let your mind wander.  The good thing about that is that the story is so simple that if your mind wanders, you don't have a hard time picking up when you get back into it.  It's just that, when you do, it's still unbelievably boring.

Don't see it.

The Eagle Has Landed Review

Sometimes these movies from the 60s and 70s are hard to watch.  For the most part, cinema was just on the verge of becoming more realistic.  It's almost as if they knew they couldn't get away with the melodramatic acting anymore but had nobody who knew how to turn the corner.  They also didn't have the effects that we have today that can make a war movie more realistic.  The Eagle Has Landed is right on the edge of that.

What makes it a good movie is the source material.  Jack Higgins' book is what got me interested in reading and this is probably his best story.  He's a master of imagining a "what if" WWII scenario.  And the idea of sending Nazi paratroopers into England in a last ditch effort to turn the war tide is a fantastic premise.  So they had a great story to work with.  And the thrill of the story does keep you interested.  After that, it remains strong with the cast.  Put Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland and Robert Duvall in a movie and it's going to be at least decent.  It isn't any of their best performances (Sutherland's Irish accent is subpar) but they all do know how to deliver a line.  The lack of German accents for half of the Nazis is kind of distracting.  But I'd rather have that than a bad German accent.

Overall, it's worth your time simply because of the good story.  But there is a lack of good war tension that modern movie making techniques could fix.  It's one of the better ones that the era has to offer even if the era's limitations doesn't allow it to age as well as it could.

See it.  And if they ever do a remake, I'll be first in line.

A Fantastic Fear of Everything Review

This is a great example of why I like British cinema; especially the comedies.  Had this movie been American made, they would have made it a horror/thriller and I would never have even watched it.  But, because it's a British movie, it has a quirkiness that I just love.  It's the story of a children's writer who is also writing a series of TV scripts about serial killers.  The in depth research causes him to be paranoid that he is being stalked by murderers.  But it goes much deeper than that.  it also becomes a story of fighting your own demons and getting to the root of your problems so that you can move on with your life.

The two layers combine a good cinematic story with an underlying moral that I enjoyed.  Most of the time, I'm willing to let movies go without getting too deep.  I watch films to be entertained and I don't need any greater message.  If I want that, I can read a book written about that.  But sometimes, if it is done well, I can actually like having it in a movie as long as it doesn't take away from the entertainment.  Because Fantastic Fear has an air of surrealism and weirdness that is able to combine the reality of the story and Jack's imagination in such a way that it mixes fantasy and reality to the point where it is hard to tell them apart.  Most of the time, that would be confusing.  But this film is so well written and acted that it engrosses the viewer completely.

More than the writing, I think it the performance of Simon Pegg that makes this a hit.  Pegg has proven that he has a tremendous range and presence as a comedic actor.  Even in his more serious movies, he brings the comic relief.  In this, he owns the screen.  Granted, the film is centred around his character and his character's psyche and everyone else is more than secondary.  So he has to be at the top of his game because he is carrying the film.  Fortunately, he was.  This is one of Pegg's best performances.

See it.  It combines great tension with absolutely hilarious comedy.

In Time Commentary

At first, glance, this looks like it could be a really interesting movie.  Everyone lives for 25 years and then gets one more year as currency.  The can work to get more, spend it, etc.  When you run out, you die.  Everything else is just like regular life.  There are people killing each other for their time and the elite who have more than they can use.  But this makes them immortal.  And everyone winds up being 25 years old physically regardless of their actual age.  Well, except for Justin Timberlake.  He looks about 30 for some inexplicable reason.

The problem is that I don't know how they could have made this movie good.  The whole thing is crippled by the overuse of cheesy "time is money" writing that makes you realize that the whole idea of time as currency is pretty ridiculous.  There's a weak attempt at a morality story about greed and inequality with painful attempts at Robin Hood with Stockholm Syndrome.  But the poor writing doesn't stop there.  It's pretty horrible all across the board.  And, in a future where they've figured out how to genetically engineer people to be immortal, they're still using gunpowder and the internal combustion engine?  Sorry, but when this all happens, we'd better have flying cars.  It's also crippled by the fact that, because nobody is over 25, almost all of the actors are jackass douchebags and it makes it hard to care about anyone in the movie.  And the girl just happens to know Darwin's birthday off the top of her head?  That one really baffled me.

Finally, for a movie that is supposed to be a thriller, it moves way too slow.  The whole time, they make you think they're building to some sort of amazing, edge of your seat twist and by the time they get there, you've just stopped caring.

Don't see it.

Argo Commentary

Wow.  What can I say?  I knew from the previews that I was going to enjoy this.  It has a compelling story and is made by, in my mind, one of the better directors out there.  I loved The Town and this looked like it had the same feel to it.  But I wasn't expecting it to be that good.  Almost everything about this movie is fantastic.  The cinematography, writing, acting ... everything.  It has such an air of authenticity to it that even the absolutely thrilling climax seems real even though it is a bit far fetched.  With that said, there was one aspect I thought that stood out from the rest and really exemplifies the audience experience.  They used subtitles when it was needed.  If the audience needed to know what was being said, then we saw it.  But if the audience needed to feel the same sense of panic and fear that the characters did, we never got to know what they were chanting or yelling in Farsi.  This is just one example of how Ben Affleck draws the audience in and they wind up feeling like they are part of the film.  These things are done throughout.

I don't know a lot about what actually happened in the true story so I did some research (And almost immediately found myself downloading the e-version of Antonio Mendez' book).  As it turns out, the movie left a lot of things out (as movies based on actual events tend to do).  There's a really good article about some of the inaccuracies here.  Mostly, they ignored just how much the Canadians helped in getting the six people out of Iran.  In the movie, the Canadians are seen as little more than innkeepers when they probably did more than the Americans in getting them out.  As a Canadian, you would think this would anger me.  But it doesn't.  This is an American movie made to sell tickets in America.  So it stands to reason that they are going to focus on Americans.  If Canada wants to get credit for the unbelievable stuff we do in the intelligence world, then our film industry needs to step up.  Second, when you adapt a true story (especially one so intricate), you have to leave some stuff out.  Otherwise, you end up with a drawn out, 3 hour film that will inevitably be very boring in spots.  So all the prep work that the Canadians did in real life had to be sacrificed for thrilling, cinematic value.

So forget any inaccuracies and see this movie for what it is: a near perfect dramatic thriller with great pace and fantastic comic relief from John Goodman and Alan Arkin.  It's perhaps the best movie I've seen this year and I've seen a lot of good movies this year.

Taken 2 Commentary

The first Taken was a great movie.  It was fantastically written, shot and acted.  It kept you on the edge of your seat for the whole time with a terrific pace and tension.  Taken 2 is a prime example of going to the well once too often.  They tried to do the same thing and it fell completely flat.  It has the same great shooting and acting.  But the writing is where it suffers the most.  From start to finish, this story is full of holes and problems.  It is odd though.  I would have thought it could have been really good.  After all, in most movies where someone is avenging a death, it's the good guy going after the bad guys.  In this one, it's a very bad man avenging his very bad son who died at the hands of the good guy.  They could have taken that morality angle a little further.  Rather, they addressed it briefly and moved on trying to focus on the thriller aspect.  Normally, I would applaud this.  But I thought it was too good an angle to dismiss and, if they had executed the thriller aspect better, I could have looked past it.

But the thriller was executed very poorly.  There are just too many holes and conveniences to make it a realistic story that I can get lost in.  the first Taken had that element.  It always seemed plausible and portrayed a very nasty situation so vividly that it was almost disturbing (and, if I had daughters, I probably would have been traumatized by watching it).  Taken 2 loses all of that element of the movie. Sure, the action (what little there is - it takes a half hour for anything to happen) and fights (fist and gun) are pretty decent but it is overshadowed by things like Kim conveniently finding a whole ensemble of clothes that fit her perfectly in a maid's locker.  Or Bryan being able to figure out where he is and where to go later (two different places) using the same information he took in while blindfolded.  He also has a very intimate knowledge of Istanbul's slummy areas and then has to recall the sounds he heard in the van?  That whole aspect is just too confusing to really explain without a three pint conversation.  But the worst hole is just so preposterous; how does a person who has failed a driver's test three times suddenly become able to execute advanced driving maneuvers in a stick shift in unfamiliar, narrow and crowded streets?

It really was a waste of good acting performances and decent directing.  There's just too many of those holes combined with an uninspired and predictable story that it really failed as a sequel.  They should have just left well enough alone with the first one.  Don't see it.  Watch the first one again and get chills down your spine.

Looper Commentary

From the first time I heard of this movie, I wanted to see it.  It's a great twist on the time travel element that seems to capture everyone's imagination.  It's really difficult to review this movie without giving away anything.  Everything that happens is so integral to the plot and story.  Being a time travel movie, you have to be willing to not think too much in order to enjoy it.  That being said, I think this is one of the best ones at not getting too into paradoxes and problems with the issue of time travel.  Yes, they acknowledge it and it is integral to the movie.  But they don't dwell too much on the effects and, when they do, they make sense.

I think the best part of this movie is the acting.  It has two of my favourites in Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis.  Through well used makeup and good acting, Gordon-Levitt is able to make you believe that he could be a young, impetuous Bruce Willis.  It was better to do that than the other way around because I don't think Willis could pull it off.  But through their performances and some good writing, there is an air of believability in a movie where the premise is scientifically impossible.

There really are no heroes in this one.  Everyone is kind of a bad person with the exception of Sara and she's got a past too.  With that, they're willing to break a few cinematic rules and it makes the movie much darker and grittier than I was expecting.  That's a good thing because I found when it did that, I was sucked in much more emotionally and enjoyed the movie that much more.  I will concede that there are times when it is a bit predictable and the foreshadowing isn't veiled very much.  But I think that helped keep it simple given the time travel angle and actually allowed for a better experience.  There also moments of deja vu and then the viewer will realize that there are some intangible elements that evoke memories of another great time travel movie, 12 Monkeys.

This is a definite must see movie.  It is one of the best I have seen all year.

Super 8 Commentary

So this is what would happen if M Night Syamalan were to make Stand By Me.  It's a coming of age story that takes place around an alien backdrop and tries to bring in a human element with Kyle Chandler, Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning and Ron Eldard.  I really liked the idea of the coming of age with the five friends trying to make a movie and accidentally discovering a military alien cover up.  What I didn't like was that they start out with that and try to make it a thriller.  Then they go off on these emotional tangents because they think that a thriller isn't enough.  And that is even reflected in the movie that the kids are making.

From a technical standpoint, this movie is very well written and well shot.  But when Steven Spielberg and JJ Abrams are involved you know there's going to be a certain threshold of quality in that.  I also like that they don't try to keep the alien a mystery to us.  They reveal enough of it physically at the right points to keep you interested in that.  The acting is where this movie falls apart.  You get pretty much what you would expect from kids.  They haven't developed their craft a lot yet.  But the adults are just on the wrong side of average in this film.

Overall, this film is really a wash.  On the one hand, it's well filmed and written.  On the other, it gets bogged down in the wrong themes.  But it isn't a total waste of time so See it.

The Bourne Legacy Commentary

I'm a big fan of the Bourne movies.  When I heard they were going to do a fourth one without Matt Damon, I was against it.  Then I saw the trailer and thought it looked really good.  It looked like a fast paced film where they would continue the Bourne theme with a different actor playing a different (but parallel) character.  Then I saw that it had Jeremy Renner, Ed Norton and Rachel Weisz and I figured it must be at least halfway decent.  I've done a 180 on my original thoughts.  This was a great film and I'm glad they've decided to continue the franchise.

Hollywood should take note.  This is the proper way to reboot a franchise.  Rather than give us the same old tired exposition of how the hero came to be, they recognized that it needs to be different from the original franchise with different characters and a different story.  I will concede that the story in the Bourne Legacy is quite similar to that of the other Bourne movies.  In fact, Renner = Matt Damon, Norton = Chris Cooper, Weisz = Potente and Stacey Keach = Brian Cox in almost every way.  But they've changed the back stories and motivations because they changed the characters.  In a way, it combines the recent Star Trek reboot with Prometheus.  Star Trek is continuing the familiar universe that we like and Prometheus took us to a point in a franchise and sent it off in another direction with different characters.  The Bourne Legacy is doing the same thing.  It starts out with events paralleling and involving those of the end of the Matt Damon movies and sending them on a course on their own while still maintaining the mix of character personalities that make the movies successful.

From a technical standpoint, there is really nothing that makes this one better than many other films of the same genre.  The film making is decent all around with some really good locales and cinematography.  The sets and locations used from the mountains in winter to sweaty Manilla streets do a really good job of evoking the right emotion in the audience.  The acting is believable which is good because it's easy to go overboard in a movie like this.  That's a testament to some very good casting.  Renner has emerged as a good actor and Norton has the range to play just about any personality.  The action is ok but not stellar.  It does have a very good chase scene in Manilla and some well choreographed fights.  But I think what makes this an above average film is that the pace keeps building and that makes the tension rise to a boiling point.  As a thriller, that is what it is supposed to do and they do it very well.

Normally, the fourth movie is a series is going to suffer.  But because they decided to refresh and reboot, it stands alone quite well.  You do have to be familiar with the first three to not get too confused (and the Bourne movies are good at confusing an audience) but I recommend all of those anyways.  See it.  It's a very good thriller.

Prometheus Commentary

For a movie that beats you over the head with exposition, it sure leaves a lot of unanswered questions.  Prometheus has a confusing opening sequence that is never really explained and takes a long time to really explain anything else.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing if questions are answered along the way.  However, the only questions that are addressed are the ones where the answer is blatantly obvious to the viewer.  Anything else is left hanging and I can only hope that much of that will get addressed in a sequel.  Overall, however, this made the movie disappointing.  We all knew going in that it was basically an Alien prequel (no matter how much the lead up tried to convince you that it wasn’t, it is.) and I’m fine with that.  But there were very few questions about origins in the Alien movies and subsequent sequels have really made a prequel irrelevant.  Now, if you take the Prometheus story and, given the ending which I won’t divulge, take it in its own direction, you could branch off into a stand alone franchise.  The problem is that I don’t think anyone would really care.

The problem with Prometheus is that they did an absolutely terrible job of making me care about what happened to any of the characters.  The only motivation that was clearly established was that of the two scientists, Holloway and Shaw.  But the attempt at a human interest story between the two was half assed and unnecessary given the potential of the overall plot.  All of the other characters were just sort of there without any real relationship established with the audience.  The character of David was done particularly poorly.  A lot of the hype surrounded him as this amalgamation of other AI characters from movies that was basically going to change how we looked at cinematic androids.  Instead, they made him very inconsistent.  He’s supposed to not understand emotion but is clearly happy and angry at points in the film.  (Oddly enough, it’s the most emotion I’ve seen from Michael Fassbender. … Not a fan of his work at all.)  If I missed the mark on that it’s because the film makers didn’t explain that while they were beating me over the head with the obvious stuff.  Rather than stick to the basics of humans and aliens, they decided to give it an existential angle regarding the origins of man and religious beliefs and … zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  I could go on with things like Charlize Theron’s phoned in performance but I think you get the idea.  The only character I ever cared about was Idris Elba’s Janek.  It could be that I just like Elba’s work overall.  But that seemed to be a character that I could relate to.

The good in this movie is the effects.  I have absolutely no complaints about any of them.  The animatronics and CGI were some of the best I have ever seen (especially David later in the film).  The sound is fantastic, hair-raising and builds tension well.  There was some music used that I thought was derivative of Star Trek but it did suit the current mood so I’m willing to let that slide.  The use of 3D was very judicious in that it didn’t throw too much at you and actually enhanced the experience; worth the $3.  Visually and auditorily (I don’t think that’s a word but anyways), Prometheus is a treat.  The only drawback was Guy Pearce’s makeup as an old man.  They never seem to get old-people makeup right in movies.  I think it has something to do with the fact that we know what old people look like so we are less likely to accept an artist rendering like this.  But this was particularly bad.  It was almost as if they were trying to turn him into some sort of albino reptile.

I’m not upset that I watched it.  But I am disappointed.  This is one of those movies where part of me wants to say see it for the effects and sound experience.  But part of me wants to stop you from going through the character and plot frustrations that I experienced.  On toss ups like this, I usually say see it so you can judge for yourself.  So see it.

Panic Room Commentary

I saw this movie back when it first came out in 2002 and remember that I really liked it.  But, ten years later, I had basically forgotten everything about it except that Kristen Stewart plays a precocious little girl with diabetes and her and Jodie Foster had to try and protect themselves agains a home invasion by one very bad man (Dwight Yoakam), a somewhat bad man (Jared Leto), and a man who has been forced into doing something bad (Forrest Whitaker).  When you wait that long between screenings of a movie, sometimes you are just as entertained as the first time you watched it.  That is the case here.

The success of this movie is really due to two things: the writing and the directing.  While the acting is strong all around, it never becomes anything more than that.  In fact, Yoakam's performance goes downhill when his ski mask comes off and he goes from detached sociopath to crazy sociopath.  Stewart's performance is quite good and probably the best of the cast.  This is because I actually found her annoying as a spoiled, bratty only child from a rich broken home.  When that is the intent and the result, it's a pretty good performance.

As I said, the writing is very good.  Panic Room is a very tight movie that has few, if any, holes.  Karl and I thought we had found a couple and then realized we were wrong.  The only problems I could find maybe had to do with how to deal with a diabetic teenager in a situation like that.  But I'm not an expert and will assume that it was all close enough.  The end result surrounding that plot point was quite satisfactory because it made you care about Whitaker's character more (even though just the fact that Whitaker is playing the character is usually enough to make you care about his fate).

Because this is a thriller of the first order, the intent is to build tension from the start until you are almost ready to pop.  In order to do this properly, there has to be a few small releases through comic relief and this is done very well through Leto's character.  There are just enough shots of his bumbling to make you relax a bit and then it build up again.  It is fantastic work from director David Fincher.  Because it is a Fincher movie, it is very darkly lit with only enough colour for the situation.  There is also a fantastic blend of closeups of things like cables and ducts leading into the panic room and slow motion to keep it different for the audience.  Finally, one of the things that makes Fincher a good thriller director is the use of music.  If you look at his IMDB page, you'll see that he has a strong background in music videos.  Time and again, he has taken that background and translated it well to feature films.  Even with the superior camera work and writing, I would say it is the use of music and sound in Panic Room that really builds the tension to the proper heights.

Definitely see it.  If you like thrillers that are self-contained in one act and locale, this is definitely for you.

Safe Commentary

You can tell right from the poster that this is not going to be an overly successful or well made movie.  Actually, if you just glance at it, you may think it's nothing more than Transporter 4.  Watching it, you may also think that it is nothing more than Transporter 4.  The story is one that's been done countless times.  A disgraced cop finds a way to redeem himself by protecting an innocent person with information from some very bad people.  Sound familiar?  That's because it's basically the same thing Bruce Willis did with Mos Def in 16 Blocks.

For what it is, they actually did an OK job but really nothing to write home about.  Throughout the movie, the viewer can really tell that the whole thing was slapped together pretty quickly and without much refinement.  Everything about the movie seems a bit too raw.  It's almost as if the writers and director woke up one morning and said, 'oh, crap!  We have to produce an action movie in a week!"  The writing is very average except when they try to say something witty and profoundly cool.  Then it becomes bad.  Overall, the acting is OK though.  I was really impressed with the Russians.  They did seem to be depraved and downright evil.  Overall though, the Chinese gang didn't come off the same way.  Maybe it has something to do with "Seinfeld, four!" going through my head whenever James Hong is on screen.  That's unfortunate because it was a bit part in an early Seinfeld episode and he's done a lot since then.  Also, ironically enough, the Chinese actor that came off as the baddest was Catherine Chan as Mei; the innocent girl who is supposed to be good.  She just had this "Children of the Corn" detachment about her that gave me the willies whenever she talked.

Finally, Jason Statham is what you expect.  He can do the fight scenes and talk with that "bubbling just beneath the surface rage" gravelly voice.  But when he's the lead without good support in a movie, it usually falls flat.  He needs an ensemble around him to really shine (The Expendables, The Italian Job, Snatch, The Bank Job, etc).  Ultimately, I can see what they were trying to do but they just missed the mark on almost all of it.  Having three different rival factions looking for the same thing just made it all a bit too confusing as to what anyone's motivation was.

Don't bother seeing it.

Contraband Commentary

So, Air Canada has video screens on a lot of their planes now.  When I saw this available for my trip to Montreal, I immediately decided to watch it.  I had wanted to see it in theatres but the stars never aligned for that to happen.  So I got to sit back on a plane and watch one of my favourite actors (Mark Wahlberg) in a thriller; the genre he's best at.  Sadly, I was a bit disappointed by the whole thing.

Contraband is basically Gone in 60 Seconds from 2000.  Wahlberg (Nicolas Cage) plays a smuggler (car thief) who was the best at his craft but has gone straight and has to do one last big job to save his brother in law (brother) from being severely punished by some very bad men.  Contraband does deviate somewhat from the same premise and has a few differences.  But not enough to really make it a wholly different movie.  And the big twist isn't even that much of a surprise.

Where Contraband differs the most from Gone in 60 Seconds is in its mood.  Contraband is a much darker movie that relies a lot less on cool cars and witty one-liners from people like Nicolas Cage, Chi McBride and Scott Caan.  While both movies had villains that would do very, very bad things to punish people, you tend to feel that Tim Briggs in Contraband is a much more depraved and desperate character than Raymond Callitri.  However, Givanni Ribisi should stick to playing the younger brother victim rather than the villain.  Perhaps it was just the unbelievable New Orleans accent but he was very unconvincing in his role in Contraband.  And the rest of the cast wasn't that much better.  Wahlberg really underperformed in this one.  Rather than making the audience feel that he was really desperate to save his family and reluctant to get pulled back into the smuggling game, he came off as going on just another job with no real consequences, moral or otherwise.

If you like Wahlberg, there's better movies with him.  If you like heists, there's better movies for that.  Don't see it.

The Grey Commentary

The Grey starts out like it is going to be a very disappointing movie.  Liam Neeson is writing a letter to his woman and having a huge crisis regarding the meaning of life and blah, blah, blah.  However, after watching it I realized that exposition was vital to the rest of the film.  Given where it goes and how the story unfolds, you really needed the aura of absolute despair at the start.

The Grey is not a basic story of survival like Castaway (which is a great film in its own right).  Unlike Castaway, there is an underlying philosophical message to the Grey and it took me a little while to figure out what I think it was.  I'm sure if the film makers were to read this, they would tell me I'm wrong but I see a lot of film as art and interpretation of art is all up to the viewer regardless of what the artist intends.  What I took away is that the Grey uses a story of basic primal survival to show the devolution of man.  Even though man has devolved to an almost animal state, we are still mankind and there is something that makes us different and better than the animals.  Whether or not you believe in a higher power, there is something about man that gives us morality and the will and desire to be better.  The concept of a higher power and character reaction to it is brought up in the film a couple of times and I was actually quite satisfied with the results.  As a religious and spiritual person, I am often disappointed in how this topic is handled in entertainment art.  But in the Grey, I thought it was done fairly well.

So, it starts out really slow and almost too philosophical.  But, once they get that groundwork out of the way, the story picks up and the real thriller starts.  Director Joe Carnahan did an absolutely fantastic job of developing a sense of tension all the way through.  Once the plane crashes, there is not one time where I felt like the characters or I could relax and that they were safe.  Through the use of tense music and wolf sounds, I always felt that there was potential for an attack on the group.  This builds right up to a very dramatic and fantastic final scene.  I won't spoil it.

The setting also lends itself well to the thrilling aspect.  A story of survival could be told almost everywhere.  But to set it in the absolute bleak and dangerous winter yet beautiful scenery of Alaska lends a juxtaposition that is hard to describe.  But I really felt that it added to the tension and watchability of the film (and it must have been absolute hell to film).  The actors also played a significant factor in making a fine thriller.  Liam Neeson is always going to be good and he plays the alpha male of the humans quite well.  But the rest of the cast was very strong and convincing in their roles.  Despair, determination, denial, etc.  It was all done very convincingly.  There's no cheesy line delivery which is a real danger in a movie like this.  Taking it all into account, the result was a film where I found myself sitting still, staring in wonder at the screen with my mouth open.  Normally, I have a hard time sitting still in any setting.  When a thriller can mesmerize me like that, you know it's good.

There are a couple of problems with the movie.  First, they have shotgun shells for a rifle.  That's just laziness.  Second, in a showdown with wolves, there seemed to be a lot of non-wolf related death and injury.  But I guess there's only so much you can do with wolf jumps, wolf tears off body parts, wolf runs away before the audience gets bored.  Any problems like this are minor and far outweighed by the whole film making package.

See it.  It is definitely worth your time and effort.  You do have to be in a bit of a philosophical mood though.  And I'd love to hear anyone's comments as to what message they got from it.

The Bourne Identity Commentary

The Bourne Identity is a lot like Jimi Hendrix.  When you watch it ten years later, you see a fantastic action movie but you tend to forget just how groundbreaking and game-changing it was when it was first made.  Prior to 2002, many spy movies were still following the old mould of James Bond where an extraordinary person was put in an extraordinary position with extraordinary results.  Bourne changed all that.  The fact that many spy/action films are following the same pattern (much like musicians almost always listing Hendrix as an influence) is a testament to the way things are going in the action genre.  Even the James Bond movies have rebooted to make the characters and situations more accessible to the viewer.

I will concede that there have been lots of action moves with a regular guy that we can relate to being put in an extraordinary situation.  John McClane in Die Hard is one of these.  But McClane was thrust into an unbelievable situation.  Jason Bourne, while he leads an extraordinary life, is made accessible and relatable through his amnesia.  Through the whole film, the viewer can relate to not only the character but his situations as well.  We will probably never be fully privy to what goes on in the spy world but I imagine that the events could be very similar to what we see in these films.  From start to finish, you feel like most of these things could actually happen.  Granted, falling 5 stories, shooting a guy on the way down and breaking your fall on a corpse is not likely to turn out for you the way it did for Bourne.  But no action movie is going to be 100% realistic.

Bourne comes as close as you can while making it exciting.  The tension mounts right at the start with Bourne being found floating unconscious in the Mediterranean Sea.  It never lets go and builds to a very tense climax between him and Treadstone at a Paris safe house.  Matt Damon and Franka Potente do a fantastic job of working their way through their mystery and making the viewer feel that they are actually scared as to what they might uncover as well as what is chasing them.

Finally, because it has one and I love them, I need to address the car chase scene.  It is one of the finest I have seen in any movie.  Car chases are great when they involve regular cars in crowded situations.  using a beat up Mini in the narrow Paris streets was fantastic.  The entire gloomy rain atmosphere just adds to it.  The choreography throughout is flawless.  And Bourne's and Kreutz' reaction when it ends in the parking garage is absolutely priceless and one of my favourite movie moments of all time.

This is a fantastic action movie that grabs you and never lets go.  Definitely see it.  You should probably have it in your collection as well.

Safe House Review

This is what happens when you  make a movie using only that iPhone app that hipsters use because they think it makes their pictures look all cool and retro.  Instead, you get pictures that are just annoying to look at.  And, as long as they continue to use shaky camera work and unnecessary and awkward closeups, I will continue to bitch about it.  Those two things take away from what is otherwise a very believable and plausible situation.  And those two things (one thing really - the film making) are the only problem with this movie.

It is a terrific story with a Jason Bourne feel to it.  A young, unproven CIA agent whose only job is to babysit a seldom used safe house is thrust into trying to bring in one of the CIA's most wanted men.  What ensues is well placed and judiciously used action mixed in with very tense buildup throughout.  There are only a couple of times where it slows down a little too much but they are short scenes that don't dwell on making the story too human and moral.  With a film like this it would be easy to use the Tobin Frost and Matt Weston as a morality play about shades of grey and by the book isn't always right.  And while they do a little of that, they do not hit you over the head with it.

The acting is really good up and down the entire cast.  I'm not a huge Denzel fan.  While I do think he's a terrific actor, I also think that he's one of the unfortunate ones that has gotten too big for his roles and you seldom get past the fact that you're watching Denzel instead of a good performance.  Here, you forget you're watching Denzel.  He does a great job with the calm and collected "been there, done that" CIA veteran role.  Ryan Reynolds' performance was only slightly below that in calibre.  We all know Reynolds as being at his best when he can be a wisecracking, cocky guy.  But, through this and his performance in Buried, he's showing that he has some pretty good range.  And while I don't think their interaction is as good as that between Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx in Collateral, it is still quite strong.  (Collateral wasn't a great movie.  But I thought the dialogue between the two was great.)

Finally, I want to mention the location.  For a spy movie in today's political climate, it is easy to just make it happen in Syria or somewhere else in the Middle East.  Or, you could find some exotic European or Asian location.  Setting this in South Africa was brilliant.  It is just exotic enough to hold our interest but it lends that bleak, poverty aspect that keeps it grounded from becoming too Bondesque.

See it.  If you like that surreal, saturated look and shaky camera work, this will be right up your alley.  If you can get put up with it, it is definitely worth your time for the tension, great story and strong performances.

Harry Brown Review

Basically, it's a vigilante "the world's going to hell in a handbasket" movie.  Michael Caine plays a former marine who served in Northern Ireland.  His wife and child are gone and his only friend is killed by the youths that are terrorizing "the Estate" (which I can only assume represents the slums of every urban area using a pathetically ironic name).  I saw it on Netflix and figured, "hey.  It's got Michael Caine kicking ass.  This might be good."  I was wrong.  The potential is there but it never lives up to it.

The pace is very, very slow.  It takes a long time for the story to get moving and, by the time it does, you realize that they aren't really telling much of a story at all.  Characters that should have been more major to the plot are shoved to the background and I cannot really figure out why.  The investigating detectives start out like they are going to be integral to the story but are then shoved aside in favour of some weird, over the top underworld gun purchase scene that goes on for way too long.  As the movie builds, it comes to this convoluted climax that, while they try to make it tense, it just makes no sense.  Then, the detectives come back and they go into this betrayal angle that is just done far, far too late.

Visually, it isn't too bad.  You get the real feel of the English underworld.  The acting, while nothing special, is ok.  And it is much darker and grittier than I was expecting.  While I thought it may turn into one of those gritty movies that you come away with that "wow" feeling like a Fight Club, I came away feeling like they did a little too much and some of it was just for the sake of making it controversial.

Don't see it.  There's way better movies in the genre.