October 25th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Michael Jai White, Eamonn Walker, Dante Basco, Michelle Belegrin, Nona Gaye, Julian Sands, Matt Mullins
Director: Ben Ramsey
Runtime: 93 Minutes
Distributor: Remarkable Films
Rating: R
Let’s be clear – Blood and Bone is an above average MMA beat-em-up flick. But since that’s a genre that right now encompasses a whopping six, perhaps even seven films, that’s not really saying much. Blood and Bone is the kind of film where characters say lines like: You had my friend Johnny murdered in prison, after you sent him there for a crime he didn’t commit.”; where illegal bare knuckle brawls take place in inner-city parking lots close to busy intersections; where groups of heavy set gentlemen covered in ink and decked out in bling swagger around wearing sunglasses at night.
Into this neon drenched arena steps Bone (Michael Jai White of Spawn fame, also producing), a stoically badass fighter freshly released from prison and on a mission to avenge his friend’s death and rescue his loved ones from under the boot of local kingpin James (Eamonn Walker, slapping the scenery between two hunks of bread and taking a gigantic bite). The international underground street fighting business, so we’re told, is the biggest moneymaking fight game, period. Of course the idea of a black man being in charge of something that lucrative is just absurd. So enter Julian Sands (further confirming his status as quite possibly the worst actor of all time) as James’ boss, head of a cabal of gamblers who leech off of the profits from their prizefighter, Price (Matt Mullins), a $5 million a head. James wants Bone to fight him, but Bone has ideas all of his own.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
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August 25th, 2009 admin
2005
Starring: Wesley Snipes, Jason Statham, Ryan Phillippe, Nicholas Lea, Justine Waddell, Jessica Steen
Director: Tony Giglio
Runtime: 106 Minutes
Distributor: Lionsgate
Rating: R
While the big names above the title might suggest an action-packed cops and robbers caper with intelligent plotting and pounding action, you would do well not be fooled. Shot on the downslope of Snipe’s career, prior to the upswing of Statham’s, and well into the wilderness of Ryan Phillippe’s, this shockingly lackluster thriller from writer/director Tony Giglio (the man who brought us Soccer Dog) is plodding, predictable, and oh so very boring.
The timing of this project is likely crucial to its blundering inability to resonate on pretty much any level as an engaging thriller. Snipe’s was neck deep is a legal dispute with New Line (The IRS was still to come) over the debacle that was Blade: Trinity, Phillippe’s marriage to Reece Witherspoon was imploding (the couple would file for divorce a year later), and Statham, who had yet to break big with Transporter 2 was spinning his career wheels (seen guy Ritchie’s Revolver?). The result is three guys (one too many for a maverick cop vs master crook showdown) with absolutely zero chemistry who, for one reason or another, look like they would rather be absolutely anywhere else.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
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July 2nd, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse, Evangeline Lill
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Runtime: 131 Minutes
Distributor: Summit Entertainment
Rating: R
In an industry dominated by males Kathryn Bigelow has carved out a long and distinguished career as a director by beating the boys at their own game. The helmer of such cult classics as trashy tech-noir Strange Days and vampire western Near Dark, Bigalow has a knack for turning genre fiction on its head, making the familiar somehow feel fresh and vibrant.
From zen surf masters to nuclear submarine commanders, Bigalow consistently demonstrates an almost preternatural insight into just what makes alpha males tick, piercing the veil of the male psyche and making herself right at home. That she was able to secure completely independent financing for this, her latest, and at the same time retain final cut, cast who she wanted and shoot in the Middle East (surely a non starter for any studio) speaks to just how highly regarded Bigalow is as a filmmaker.
From a script penned by former Iraq War correspondent Mark Boal (who previously provided the story for somber anti-flag-waver In The Vallay of Elah), The Hurt Locker offers a thesis statement that for some war is a drug; a series of defining actions and existential moments the rush of which can be as enticing and intoxicating as any narcotic.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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June 18th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Denzel Washington, John Travolta, John Turturro, James Gandolfini, Michael Rispoli
Director: Tony Scott
Runtime: 106 Minutes
Distributor: Universal
Rating: R
The remake machine continues to mercilessly trundle forward with Joseph Sergent’s gritty 1974 adaptation of the John Godey’s playful heist novel the latest casualty. As with any and all remakes there are two separate audiences walking into the theater; those who remember the original and maintain affection for it, and those who don’t. While the primary motive here is no doubt an exercise in making money one of the more popular excuses studios cling to these days is that of timeliness. They aren’t remaking these classic stories, but rather they’re “updating” them. Which in the mind of Tony Scott typically translates to making it louder.
After a typically Scott-esque skyline intro whereby he unloads his brand of visual jazz from a helicopter with all the patient discipline of a toddler who has been at the red bull, we’re down to the business. An armed gang lead by a man known as Ryder (Travolta with the glib cranked to the max) seize a subway train full of passengers and hold the city to ransom…
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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April 3rd, 2009 admin
2008
Starring: Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench, Gemma Arterton, Jeffery Wright, Giancarlo Giannini
Director: Marc Forster
Runtime: 106 Minutes
Distributor: MGM
Rating: PG-13
After the meaty origin story that was Casino Royale, greeted with almost universal acclaim for its back to basics bravado, it would seem the honeymoon really is over for this latest incarnation of cinema’s longest running franchise. Looking to build on the goodwill accrued refining the bloated Bond into something efficient enough to shed the anachronistic shackles, first time Bond director Marc Foster and scripter Paul Haggis have trimmed so much off the top as to render the series virtually emaciated and delivered a film as confounding as its nonsensical title.
Picking up right where Royale left off, Quantum opens hard and fast with Daniel Craig as Bond weaving his bullet riddled Aston Martin in an out of traffic on a winding Sienna cliff road duly dispatching the customary bad guys in hot pursuit to deliver Mr. White for interrogation. It’s an interrogation that’s short-lived as an assassin is only to happy to illustrate just what White means when he says “we have people everywhere.”
Bond sets off in hot pursuit and a frantic chase through the sewers and onto the rooftops promptly ensues. It’s a chase that essentially runs the entire length of the film as Bond delves deeper into this mysterious global shadow group, moving from Sienna to Haiti, to Austria, to Bolivia, to the tune of chase-catch-kill one flunky at a time, as M (Dench) despairs: “if you could avoid killing every possible lead it would be greatly appreciated.”
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
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March 5th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Ulrich Thomsen
Director: Tom Tykwer
Runtime: 118 Minutes
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Rating: R
Against the backdrop of the credit crunch and the stock market slump arrives a taut and tightly drawn conspiracy saga that speaks to just how badly the average Joe wants his bank manager to wind up getting tortured in the next Saw sequel. From German director Tom Tykwer, a man well practiced in ringing out every last drop of tension from a situation having delivered the likes of Run Lola Run, The International is a throwback to the paranoid thrillers of the ’70s and ’80s; a twisting, tumbling exercise in escalating tension that owes far more to Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer than James Bond or Jason Bourne.
Clive Owen, a man who looks like he was carved from solid rock, who narrowly missed out on the 007 job himself, stars here as Interpol agent Louis Salinger. With a shady past, a grudge to harbor, and a point to prove Salinger works with New York DA Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts), scouring the globe chasing down leads and looking for witnesses they can potentially turn. At the other end of the trail, always elusive and just beyond their grasp, is the imaginatively titled International Bank of Business and Credit (as opposed to banks that don’t deal in business and credit?), neck deep in illegal arms sales and the international debit market. “If you control the debt, you control everything,” apparently.
Dressed like a funeral director sporting the cheery disposition of a funeral mourner, Salinger has made it his mission to crack the case and bring down the bank, despite his vendetta having cost him promotion, the respect of his colleagues, and as of ten minutes into the film, his partner’s life. But rather than morphing the hero into some Jon McClane-esque one-man war machine, Tykwer keeps things grounded and on the level. There are no chases here, no explosions, and no quips (Salninger slapping a fading witness back to life with the line “don’t you fucking dare!” is the closest The International comes to a joke). When the violence does erupt in a blistering shootout in the Guggenheim, that evokes feelings of Michael Mann’s running shootout in Heat, it’s panicked, messy and wholly un-Hollywood. The rest of the film is patience, a lot of shoe leather and old-fashioned police work where a sleep-deprived guy combs his way through a file until he catches a break.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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February 19th, 2009 admin
Body of Lies
2008
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, Mark Strong, Golshifteh Farahani, Ali Suliman, Alon Abutbul
Director: Ridley Scott
Runtime: 118 Minutes
Distributor: Warner Bros
Rating: R
It’s fair to say that the more complicated a subject is, the more infuriatingly oversimplified and dumbed down the Hollywood studio machine will render it – hackers cracking national defense grids with laptops, dinosaur DNA courtesy of a mosquito, etc. So when you hear Warner Brothers announce a film that dares to tackle the geo-political instability in the Middle East and the global War on Terror, you would be forgiven for not being exactly brimming over with confidence.
William Monahan knows a little something about weaving subtle misdirection as characters are forced into dangerous alliances having previously penned The Departed. He also has a strong stance on torture and the importance of depicting abhorrent physical brutality so as to properly convey the true essence of what is dangerously close to becoming just another word. Thanks to his tight and tidy script, some classy performances, and Scott’s confidant, assured direction, together they just about manage to save this film from its big studio fate. Chief amongst the plus points is a noticeable lack of soap boxing. With so many films built around post 9/11 politics unable to resist offering a crude and slanted statement as to the why of it all, Body of Lies ignores all that and just focuses on the how.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
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February 2nd, 2009 admin
Starring: Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Xander Berkleley, Radivoje Bukvic, Oliver Rabourdin
Director: Pierre Morel
Runtime: 90 Minutes
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Rating: PG-13
Watching former Langley spook turned divorced security expert Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) comfort a traumatized young pop star shortly after saving her from an anonymous, knife-wielding nutcase backstage at a gig, it’s clear that Taken has a very important, very socially conscious message – beautiful, ultra-rich, white girls need their daddies because beyond the limos and the penthouse suites, they are just such delicate flowers. It’s a message Mill’s want away daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) is indifferent to, but as she prepares to jaunt off to Europe to follow U2 on tour, it’s an attitude that before the end of the film will cost her dearly.
Grace can do the pampered, sassy teen bit in her sleep, but clearly misheard “pre-school” when her director asked for “high school” as she spends much of the movie bouncing around, giggling like an infant whose been at the Red Bull. She’s supposed to be Daddy’s little princess you see, and if that’s in any way unclear, director Pierre Morel opens the film with an exorbitantly lavish birthday bash courtesy of her rich step dad (Xander Berkley) at the climax of which she gets a horse. They even make a point of letting us know she’s still a virgin.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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December 1st, 2008 admin
1998
Starring: Bruce Willis. Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Billy Bob Thornton, Steven Buscemi, Michael Clark Duncan, Owen Wilson, Will Patton
Director: Michael Bay
Runtime: 159 Minutes
Distributor: Touchstone
Rating: PG-13
When NASA has a shuttle destroyed by a meteor shower, they discover that it is only the initial phase of a much larger problem. An asteroid the size of Texas is heading straight for earth and when it hits in eighteen days nothing will survive. In a desperate attempt to save the planet NASA scrambles to recruit a team of misfit, deep-core drillers for a mission that hopes to land a shuttle on the asteroid, drill a hole to the fault line and nuke it to tiny pieces before it reaches Earth and kills us all.
You know that you have an odd one on your hands when a Michael Bay disaster film with a 41% review average at Rotten Tomatoes is chosen for a DVD release as part of The Criterion Collection – a prestigious honor where selection is based on meeting the criteria of being either an important classic or an example of innovative, contemporary cinema at its finest. Who directed this again? As it stands, Armageddon is one of the most polarizing films of recent times nominated for both the Saturn award for best science fiction film and the Raspberry award for worst picture of the year. Star Bruce Willis called it a very serious and important film; co-star Billy Bob Thornton called it the worst film he has ever been involved with citing it as nothing more than a creatively empty paycheck. Love it or loathe it though, Michael Bay’s assault on your eyes, ears and gag reflex is very hard to ignore if for no other reason than because its so damn loud and pumped-up.
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November 13th, 2008 admin
Broke, depressed, and exhausted, down on his luck eighties icon Jean Claude Van Damme returns home in search of sanctuary and a little privacy. Instead he finds himself embroiled in an international media circus when the local police mistakenly believe he is the mastermind behind a botched armed robbery turned siege at a local post office.
Click here to read the full review at Suite101.com.
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