Film Review : Out of the Furnace (2013)

IMDB Score – 6.9
Rotten Tomato Score – 52%

Starring – Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson, Casey Affleck, Willem Dafoe, Forrest Whittaker, Zoe Saldana, and Sam Shepard
Directed By – Scott Cooper

When Rodney Baze mysteriously disappears and law enforcement doesn’t follow through fast enough, his older brother, Russell, takes matters into his own hands to find justice.

Today I sat down to watch on of the most anticipated films of last year that ended up being one of the most disappointing films according to critics. Written and directed by the man that gave us the bleak and heartbreaking “Crazy Heart”, “Out of the Furnace” stars Christian Bale as a blue collar working Pennsylvania man trying to do right by his family. Scott Cooper is a talented filmmaker. I really ended up enjoying “Crazy Heart” when I sat down to watch it a year or two ago and was pretty excited when I heard of this film coming out. The cast he put together is pretty incredible as we have the majority bring Oscar nominees and two of them being winners in Bale and Whittaker. Reading about the film before hand led me to learn that some of the film takes place in the Ramapo hills that blanket northern New Jersey. Being that I’m from these exact hills, it made me even more interested. I do however need to get something off my chest…

While not a negative on the film, the portrayal of the “Jackson Whites” that live in this area of New Jersey is pretty insane. I have personally worked with and around these people for years and have never felt in danger, ever. Are there some bad eggs? Are there bad eggs in every culture and town? I rest my case. I just wanted to point that out seeing as I have first hand experience of what living in that area, up until last month that is, was like. Back to the film…

I ended up really enjoying the movie. I did have problems but for the most part it was a gorgeously shot character study (for the most part) that only really fell apart near the end. As a writer, I know how hard it is to carry out a great idea until the finish. I’ve always had trouble ending papers and stories with a nice bow so I’m more lenient on things that can’t hold it together the whole way through. Would it have been better? Sure, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy what led up to the disappointing ending which took place in the film. For one, the acting in the film is pretty stellar. I won’t call it my favorite but Christian Bale put on one hell of a performance. There is a scene in the film with Zoe Saldana on a bridge that is one of the most heartbreaking scenes and bits of acting I’ve seen in the last year or two. Casey Affleck just continues putting everything into his roles and he’s becoming one of my favorite supporting actors. I don’t know if he’s ready for a leading role but the kid is a dynamic actor who keeps impressing me in the films he’s in. Harrelson plays a despicable villain very well and Willem Dafoe is just amazing in everything he does. The only real problem with the cast I had was with Forrest Whittaker who continues to be as inconsistent as ever. His great roles are amazing and everything else, including this, is just horrible. I don’t know what kind of accent he was going for but it just came off silly and really took me out of the film whenever he was on, which lucky for me was very little.

I think people had a problem with this film due to it’s very bleak and weak script. I can understand that. American movie watchers like to have everything spelled out for them. I just so happen to fall into teh group that can do with a little ambiguity. In teh beginning of the film Christian Bale gets into a car accident and the next scene he is in jail. I can see why this may seem bad because we weren’t told what happened but honestly, can people not figure that out? There were specific shots before the accident that are HUGE clues as to why he is in jail. The ending shot also follows this technique of letting the viewers figure it out for themselves. It wasn’t eve that difficult. People who complained about the weak script just are too lazy to do any thinking. The script had problems, but that wasn’t it. The ending is what kept this film from being great.

The first half of the film was a brilliant character study on blue collar America, getting tossed shitty cards, and trying to keep the ones you love close to you. The second half was a revenge thriller that didn’t come off cheesy but rather just unearned. I didn’t see the need to go down that path and the final encounter between hero and villain was just way to predictable. The film just ran out of steam.

I’m not going to damn a film because of a bad ending. I enjoyed the film. It’s bleak. It’s not very uplifting. Forrest Whittaker has a shit accent. Yet, it is a beautifully shot film with great performances and a first half that is up there with the best of last year. It’s a solid rental.

3.5/5

Recommended Viewing – Snatch, The Hunter, A Single Shot, The Deer Hunter

My Experience with The Raid 2

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Okay, so I had a disappointing night. If you regularly read my work then you’ll notice something is off. My usual set up of details regarding the movie is absent and I titled this in a very odd way. There is a reason for that. Tonight was honestly one of the most disappointing and frustrating nights of movie watching I have ever had. I’m going to start off by getting this out of the way…

I didn’t finish the movie. I walked out. I have only ever walked out of a movie once before (The Informant) and I am still in disbelief that I did. I don’t understand what went wrong. I’m going to try to figure it out in this post but I give you all fare warning, I’m going to spoil, in small ways, the first half of the film. I do however have a favor to ask of you…

IF YOU HAVE SEEN THIS FILM IN IT’S ENTIRETY AND DISAGREE WITH ME THEN PLEASE…PLEASE…COMMENT AND CHANGE MY MIND.

I honestly need you guys to convince me to go back and see the end of the film because I wanted to love this movie so much but I just couldn’t sit in the theater any longer. I left with about an hour left in the film and I need you guys to tell me it becomes badass in that last hour. There just has to be more but I honestly couldn’t take how bored I was any longer. I looked at my phone and realized that I had another hour and change left and I just couldn’t sit there any longer. Now, let me preface the following words by saying I did not think that this is a bad film. There is a huge difference between a bad film and a boring disappointment and “The Raid 2” was that of the latter. Now, let’s get into this so I can flush out the sadness…

So, like many of you, I loved The Raid. I think it is the best action movie since “The Matrix” and is my top five favorite action movies of all time. I didn’t care that the story was lacking or that the acting was amateur at best. I loved the fact that somebody made a balls to the wall fighting film that rarely let up and didn’t bow its head to Hollywood tropes and actually let the villains get away with some evil shit. I loved the fact that one of the main cops dies. I loved that I was rooting for one of the villains during most of the fights. I just couldn’t get enough of the film. So, naturally, when I heard the sequel was finished and that it was two and a half hours long, I salivated. I thought, if this is anything like the first film, but longer, that I would lose my shit. I refrained from seeing trailers in an attempt to go into the film totally blind and get my face rocked off. The podcasts that I listen to praised the film and the small lot of you guys that have seen the film gave positive reviews. I was ready. I just can’t believe I ended up walking out.

So the film starts off about two hours after the first film ended. This is deceiving because it really only takes place in that time period for about ten minutes before we’re thrown into a plot that is so boring and confusing that I honestly didn’t know what the hell I was watching. Our hero, Rama, has now been persuaded into an undercover position in order to protect his family so he spends two years in a prison getting to know the younger son our a local politician/crime boss. What follows plot wise, and takes up most of the film, is a boring and horribly written story that is trying very hard to be compelling but I could honestly give a shit. Where are my fight scenes? Where are my adrenaline filled, blood pumping, boner inducing fight scenes that I was given in the first Raid? I just didn’t get it. By the time I left there were three fight scenes that had moments of glory but ultimately left me unsatisfied in a way that some people experience blue balls. I was being prodded with glorious fight scenes for five minutes only to be left with talking for another twenty. It was an hour and fifteen minutes of tease. I just couldn’t handle it. I had to leave. I was going to fall asleep or worse, completely punch out of the film, so I folded. There wasn’t even any music in the film. Mike Shinoda contributed a hell of a lot to the first film by giving an intense and fun techno score that added to the fun. There was so much silence in this film that I almost fell asleep. The final straw was the fact that the man who played my favorite character in the first film, Mad Dog, was in this movie, as a completely different person. Let me rephrase the fact that this movie takes place in the same universe and directly after the events of the first film. Having the same actor, and having it be obvious, be in the sequel after he fucking dies, is just stupid. I had enough. I left.

Now, the management staff was kind enough to give me a pass to return and I do plan on revisiting and finishing the film. I ask you though to please help me get back there sooner. Does the film get better? Is the last half hour an incredible display of fighting badassery that I missed because I’m a snobby asshole? Please let me know in the comments because my disappointment was just too much to handle tonight.

I will post a full review if I ever return to this film. Please help me do so.

Film Review : Rush (2013)

IMDB Score – 8.3
Rotten Tomato Score – 89%
IMDB Top 250 – #140
Golden Globe Nominee for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor (Daniel Bruhl)

Directed By – Ron Howard
Starring – Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Bruhl, Olivia Wilde, Alexandra Maria Lara, and Pierfrancesco Favino

The merciless 1970s rivalry between Formula One rivals James Hunt and Niki Lauda.

I’m back. Along with having some family matters to attend to, I also have been busy as shit with my real person job and just haven’t been able to sit down and watch a film. I also just realized it’s been over two weeks since I’ve written a movie review and it’s time to get back on the horse. I picked a good film to come back to as the film ended up being a perfect example of powering through adversity and tragedy. I’m back bitches!

When I first saw the trailer for “Rush”, I was honestly not impressed. I remember muttering under my breath that it was going to be a completely cliche racing film with it’s cheap thrills and predictable outcomes. I really have to stop watching trailers and acting like a snob because I ended up really enjoying the film after reading so many positive reviews about it. The film tells the true story of the rivalry between formula 1 drive James Hunt and Nikki Lauda. It reminded me of an excellent documentary that is required viewing for anybody who enjoys racing or even documentaries in general. “Senna”, which chronicles a nearly identical rivalry between Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, is a fantastic film that should be seen is you enjoyed “Rush” as much as I did. “Rush”, which took some liberties to dramatize the rivalry between Hunt and Lauda, still tells the story of what actually happened in the two years that the drivers were the best in the world. They are stories of true adrenaline filled eras that I don’t think have been seen since.

I think the first thing to be said about “Rush” is that it is an intense ride. Ron Howard, who I’ve always regarded as a very good director, crafted a thing of beauty when he made this film. I was on the edge of my bed watching this. It’s late where I live. I don’t usually watch films this late but I felt the urge to watch something but was a little skeptical on whether or not I was going to finish it. I had no problem finishing this film. The race sequences were some of the best action sequences of the last few years. Howard took advantage of every single sharp turn and car overtake to deliver a ride that made me feel like I was in the driver seat. Recently I drove down to Jersey City where they have some pretty fast go-karts. I think they got up to 45 mph which is nothing compared to the speeds of this movie but just fast enough to be an exhilarating experience. Watching the race sequences in this film put me right back in that kart flying around turns and overtaking fat middle aged men and their wives whom they dragged along onto the go-kart track. I should go back because it was honestly all I could think about watching the film. I didn’t expect that to happen.

The other great part of this film was the acting from both leads. Chris Hemsworth proved to me that he is a fully capable actor. I always thought he was just perfectly cast to play Thor and that his acting skills rode shotgun to a talented casting director but he really can excel in certain roles and he excelled in this. Daniel Bruhl however, stole the entire film. He perfectly portrayed the real life Nikki Lauda. He was able to get me to go back and forth between rooting against him and rooting for him. It’s a shame that most movies only consider one person to be the lead actor, usually the one who gets paid the most or is the most popular but this film proved that there can be two leads commanding the screen and when it really came down to it, Bruhl ran away with it.

I did have a problem with the film. The screenplay, which was mostly solid, failed miserably when it came to Olivia Wildes’ character. She was introduced and before I knew it she was married to Jame Hunt and before I blinked another eye she was gone. There was zero emotion whatsoever between the two of them. I barely saw them even kiss yet I was supposed to feel for them when the nature of their relationship came into question. It was completely necessary to even have her in the film and if the rest of the film wasn’t so engaging, would have completely distracted from an otherwise sound script. There was also way too many shots by Howard depicting nudity where there just shouldn’t have been. I’m a straight male, but even I was thinking “why the hell did you have to have these nude shots that contributed nothing to the film other than the source of erections?” It was just a strange tactic.

Other than that the film was pretty fantastic. It managed to balance the pretty boy lifestyle of James Hunt with the serious and precise lifestyle of Nikki Lauda without coming off redundant or preachy. It successfully ran home the theme that life will give you enemies and that they are just as important as friends. They give you something to be ambitious about and in the case of Nikki Lauda, fight through horrible circumstances. I don’t think it should be in IMDB’s top 250 films of all time but it was an addicting film with some of the best action scenes I’ve seen in a long time.

4/5

Film Review : RoboCop (2014)

IMDB Score – 6.7
Rotten Tomato Score – 48%

Directed By – José Padilha
Starring – Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Abbie Cornish, Jackie Earle Haley, Michael K. Williams, Jennifer Ehle, Jay Baruchel, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, and Samuel L. Jackson

In 2028 Detroit, when Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) – a loving husband, father and good cop – is critically injured in the line of duty, the multinational conglomerate OmniCorp sees their chance for a part-man, part-robot police officer.

I’m going to start off this review a little differently. The following quote was pulled from the trivia section of IMDB for this film…

During production of the film, director José Padilha phoned friend and fellow Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles to confide in him his frustration in the lack of creative control he was allowed by the studio for the project. Padilha estimated that for every ten ideas he brought to the project, the studio refused nine, and went on to the describe the making of the film as “The worst experience of [his] life”. When word of this conversation became public, in an effort to appease the studio Padilha released counter statements expressing satisfaction with the film.

The reason I quote this is because I’m about to rip this film a new asshole. It was a piece of garbage and anybody involved in making it should be ashamed. It’s not that I just didn’t like it. It was so poorly constructed, acted, edited, and written that it seemed like the entire production team made this on the weekends when they were occupied with something else. The fact that they put this remake in the hands of a first time screenwriter shows how much effort they were willing to put into this. José Padilha is a director I admire. His Elite Squad films and documentary Bus 174 are fantastic gritty stories that up the realism and don’t hold anything back. I feel bad for the man who came to Hollywood hoping to hit a mainstream audience and he’s going to look like a fool now because of inept studio interference getting in the way of his creativity. What a waste of talent. Shame on those studios. This is why I give José Padilha a pass on this one. He should keep making excellent Brazilian films where he has complete control. There are going to be a lot of people who will seek out his films. He doesn’t need Hollywood bullshit.

That being said, the movie was atrocious. I don’t even know where to start. I guess the first order of business is the one thing we knew would hold the film back, the PG-13 rating. I know that direct adaptions are kinda lame. The original “RoboCop” was violent as hell and why the story was still a basic Frankenstein re-imagining, it was fun as hell. This remake wasn’t fun. This remake wasn’t even a little bit fun. I didn’t laugh. I didn’t think any of the effects were cool. I didn’t find a single thing enjoyable except for the wonderful Gary Oldman who tried his best to make anything in this film work. I think that may be a biased statement, but he didn’t do anything wrong with this role. Another slight positive was just the notion that it’s nice to see Michael Keatons face on the big screen again. He wasn’t very impressive but it was still great to see. The rest of the cast were horrid. Abbie Cornish shouldn’t act. Her attempts at being an anxiety filled house wife were laughable. Joel Kinnaman should stick to television. He just doesn’t have the face, voice, or presence to command a film. He’s a supporting actor at best. It was nice seeing Michael K. Williams in a role that isn’t Omar from “The Wire” but the lines his character was given were so corny that it was like a ten year old in the back room of a studio came up with them while playing cops and robbers with his imaginary friend Steve. The whole cast besides Oldman failed on a major level.

I couldn’t stand the writing. They spent almost two thirds of the film setting up the development of RoboCop only to realize that they haven’t developed any conflict yet and just shoved a villain in at the last second. Again, it is a remake so I’m not spoiling anything but if you’ve never seen the original film you would be very confused as to why Michael Keaton all of a sudden became a villain. It was that sudden. The film also revealed all these different plot twists with corrupt cops and completely forgot about closing that part of the story. A major character is revealed to be an asshole and then the scene ends and we hear nothing of it, or see that character again for the entire rest of the film. You could land a space shuttle through these holes. It was laughable.

Oh, I nearly forgot about Samuel L. Jackson. His character was one of the most annoying characters I’ve ever seen in a film. He acted like a segmented narrator throughout the film giving comments on what we just saw while doing so in a fashion that was abrasive and obnoxious. They also just HAD to throw in him saying “motherf*cker”. They had to do it. It was entirely distracting and stupid.

The action was also just poorly done. There was no sense of danger or intensity. It was bland, quick cutting PG-13 video game slop. I actually almost fell asleep during the big set piece at the end. That’s how boring it was.

Don’t waste you time seeing this film. It’s a mistake that should never have happened and was sabotaged from the beginning. If you want to see good work from José Padilha then check out his previous films. This is something he will be forgetting and I will be too.

0.5/5

Film Review : The Wolverine (2013)

IMDB Score – 6.8
Rotten Tomato Score – 69%

Directed By – James Mangold
Starring – Hugh Jackman, Tao Okamoto, Rila Fukushima, Svetlana Khodchenkova, Hiroyuki Sanada, Hal Yamanouchi, and Will Yun Lee

When Wolverine is summoned to Japan by an old acquaintance, he is embroiled in a conflict that forces him to confront his own demons.

If you’ve read my reviews over the last year you may have learned that I’m not a huge fan of comic book films. Never having been into them, I really only connect with the films of each franchise and tailor my opinions from them. I don’t like Superman. Thor never interested me. Most of the Avengers themselves never really peaked my interest but have produced two very well done films (Ironman and Avengers). I enjoyed the Spiderman cartoon as a kid but the movies left little to be desired. Batman has always been my favorite but mostly due to the fact that Christopher Nolan is a great director. Finally we come to the X-Men which I’ve seen all the films involved in the series. There have been great ones (X2 and First Class) and horrible ones (Last Stand and Origins). I was always interested in Wolverine and the fact that Hugh Jackman has always played him so well added to the want to see this film. I was surprised but not floored.

What I liked…

I enjoyed the first two thirds of the film. It was enjoyable and entertaining as action set pieces and fight scenes were fun to watch. While lacking any real interesting villains, the film picked up the slack by having a good amount of henchmen falling to their deaths at the hands of the Wolverine. One set piece on a train was pretty fun to watch and we actually got to see most of the action instead of seeing a bunch of bodies blurring by. The film also had a deeper back story with Logan and Jean that played out through the film that kept the movie from just being silly and actually meaning something.

What I didn’t like…

The acting was shit besides Jackman. Svetlana Khodchenkova was particularly horrible as the films main villain. The movie also fell into a pit of CGI and comic book blandness that I had during the last act. At that point I really didn’t care much what happened to anybody. It pissed me off. The whole “OH MAN IT WAS ACTUALLY YOU!?” routine is getting real old real fast. No creativity at all.

Overall the film was a decent watch with an absolutely boring and stale ending that nearly ruined it for me. The scene at the end of the credits setting up the next X-Men movie was worth it though.

2.5/5