November 13th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Gerard Butler, Jamie Foxx, Colm Meaney, Bruce McGill, Regina Hall, Emerald-Angel Young, Leslie Bibb
Director: F. Gary Grey
Runtime: 109 Minutes
Distributor: Overture Film
Rating: R
With a sprawling yet tightly wound Machiavellian conspiracy at its center, this overblown game of cat and mouse between a cocksure Philadelphia DA and the grieving husband and father-turned-vengeful psychopath wronged by him offers itself up as a thinking man’s actioner. Which is ironic really because if you actually stop to think about it for even a second the entire mess starts to unravel. The latest from director F. Gary Grey this undercooked psychological tussle wraps itself in pretensions of something deeper, offering musings on the glaring imperfections and inadequacies that riddle our justice system, but plays like a big budget Law & Order episode with Bond styling crossed with The Shawshank Redemption.
In something of an odd piece of casting Gerard Butler is Clyde Shelton, doting husband and happy father. Happy for about ninety seconds until a pair of thugs crash through the door, knife him and slaughter his family. Realizing he can preserve his conviction rate against a risky jury trial, dedicated but cold DA Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) cuts a deal; one thug to death row, the other to a holiday camp for 3-5 in exchange for testimony. Despite the physique of a Greek God Butler cuts a surprisingly convincing figure as the devastated family man whose life has just been eviscerated by a seemingly senseless act of violence. But who wants to know about that guy? Not Grey, he wants to get to the cool shit!
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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September 16th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Bobby Campo, Shantel VanSanten, Nick Zano, Haley Webb, Mykelti Williamson, Justin Welborn, Krista Allen
Director: David R. Ellis
Runtime: 82 Minutes
Distributor: New Line Cinema
Rating: R
With its cheesy franchise status and conveyor belt sequels that while not entirely terrible are the very definition of diminishing returns, it’s easy to forget what a good film the original Final Destination was. A smart, slick nasty little thriller that married primal fears with elaborate death scenes knitted together by an unbearable slow-burning tension leaving a genuinely nasty taste in your mouth that was hard to rinse. Sadly, by the time we arrive at this forth installment, the idea has devolved into gimmick and we appear to be hurtling along on autopilot at a breakneck pace that never allows you to savor the macabre morsels tossed your way.
We know the formula by now of course; a group of fresh faced, socially diverse, and oh-so killable folk narrowly avoid a spectacularly bloody fate thanks to a bizarre premonition had by one of them. But, having cheated Death’s grand design, they are gradually picked off in ever more fun and inventive ways for our, um, enjoyment. But even knowing exactly what to expect there is still something wholly arbitrary about this latest round of summary executions that come thick and fast – too fast, really – and subsequently fail to generate even the vague hint of a chill.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
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July 29th, 2009 admin
2009
Starring: Shane West, Ed Burns, Ving Rhames, Sergey Gubanov, Martin Sheen, Tamara Feldman, Jonathan Pryce
Director: Greg Marcks
Runtime: 105 Minutes
Distributor: Paramount
Rating: PG-13
With its thunder somewhat stolen by Steven Spielberg and Co’s similarly plotted, infinitely superior techie romp Eagle Eye, this poor budget, poorly imagined cousin found it’s wide release slashed to a handful of theaters on its way to what is sure to be a long and productive shelf life as a staple of the Wall*Mart $5 bin. Billed as a “tech-charged conspiracy thriller” Echelon Conspiracy skirts dangerously close to violating the Trades Descriptions Act, as the closest this colossal borefest will take you to the edge of your seat is if you happen to slide off it having nodded off.
Echelon Conspiracy finds IT security consultant Max Peterson (Shane West of E.R fame) inexplicably embroiled in a global conspiracy via a series of mysterious and prophetic text messages from an anonymous sender. From Bangkok, to Prague to Washington D.C Peterson becomes a pawn of Martin Sheen’s shady NSA suit, finds himself perused by Ving Rhames FBI agent, and a target of Ed Burn’s former-Fed-turned casino security boss.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
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June 4th, 2009 admin
1993
Starring: Michael Douglas, Robert Duvall, Barbara Hershey, Tuesday Weld, Rachel Ticotin, Frederic Forrest
Director: Joel Schumacher
Runtime: 113 Minutes
Distributor: Warner Bros
Rating: R
Somewhat lazily dismissed at the time of its release as merely a “white collar Taxi Driver” this taut, tidy, intelligent thriller has stood the test of time and slowly ascended to something approaching cult status. It’s a career best performance for Michael Douglas, whose career has largely defined itself through unflattering turns in risky projects. Wall Street might be more showy and Fatal Attraction more accessible, but it’s the jaw-clenching resentment and white knuckle intensity of this ordinary man pushed past the brink that stands as Douglas’ finest hour. It’s also by far and away Joel Schumacher’s best film; also, it’s further testament to the performance of his leading man and Ebbe Roe Smith’s layered script that a director who can, in all honesty, fuck up a cup of coffee could deliver such a complex and compelling picture.
It’s 1993, and the Cold War has ended. With it comes the collapse of the defense industry on the back of the Reagan-Bush era, which saw an unprecedented increase in the wealth gap in the United States and the rise of outsourcing. Out of this field of broken promises steps Douglas as William Foster (known as D-Fens on account of his license plate), a defense industry worker recently handed his pink slip after being politely informed that he was “not economically viable.”
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
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October 3rd, 2008 admin
2008
Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Rosario Dawson, Billy Bob thornton, Michael Chiklis, William Sadler, Anthony Mackie
Director: D.J. Caruso
Runtime: 118 Minutes
Distributor: Dreamworks
Rating: PG-13
Quietly and without fuss Shia LaBeouf is fast on the ascendancy to mega-stardom and could just be the new Teflon Don of Tinseltown in that nothing bad seems to stick. High on a crest of anticipation over Transformers 2, he has already achieved the impossible in bringing respectability to the PG-13 thriller with the sleeper hit Disturbia (over which exec producer Steven Spielberg now finds himself embroiled in a copyright suit). He managed to completely avoid all the finger-pointing fallout from Indiana Jones and the Fridge Nuking Mess. He also seems to be able to leap tall DUI charges in a single bound.
Now here he is at the center of this hi-tech, hi-concept, post 9/11 tale of paranoia that’s blistering pace and excitement level are only exceeded by its ability to confound and ignore all semblance of logic. Indeed its very release suggests a mish-mash of different ideas and muddled priorities that make it hard to categorize – too serious and somber in theme to be a summer event movie and too ridiculous in plot and execution to be part of the Oscar-baiting fall schedule.
Click here to read the full review at WiFly Radio.
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September 30th, 2008 admin
2008
Starring: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Carla Gugino, John Leguizamo, Donnie Wahlberg, Brian Dennehy
Director: Jon Avnet
Runtime: 101 Minutes
Distributor: Lionsgate
Rating: R
More than a decade on from Michael Mann’s underworld epic Heat, whether you are a hardcore cinephile or a part time movie patron, when talk turns to that cup of coffee, the hairs on the back of your neck still stand on end just a little. Ever since then there have been promises and rumors flying around of an extended coming together of arguably cinema’s two greatest living actors, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino – and now that daring dream is finally a reality. Except that it’s about twelve years too late and a bloody awful, needlessly convoluted genre picture that starring any two other actors in the world would be arriving at a Wal*Mart bargain bin instead of a multiplex.
On paper it’s clear how this unfortunate beast was born; the two actors, De Niro now 65 and Pacino 68 wanted to work together again, realized that they probably should have been more pro-active years ago and that it was now or never. Enter longtime producer, bit-part director Jon Avnet waving a sophomore script by Inside Man writer Russell Gerwitz about two dogged maverick cops hunting a vigilante killer and the scrambling “will-this-do?” project is a green light. From the opening credits onwards it’s clear that in the minds of those making it this isn’t a movie, it’s an event. A quick cutting MTV style credits sequence proudly slaps up PACINO and DE NIRO in gigantic lettering so big it’s a wonder that they even bothered giving the film a title at all.
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September 29th, 2008 admin
2005
Starring: Ellen Page, Patrick Wilson, Sandra Oh, Odessa Rae, Gilbert John
Director: David Slade
Runtime: 104 Minutes
Distributor: Lionsgate
Rating: R
Now that Ellen Page has made such a sensational splash in this years little Indie that could, Juno, this 2005 film that quietly slipped under the radar might get a little retro traction as something more than a curiosity. If it does, it is no more than it deserves as this tightly wound thriller has enough tricks up its sleeve to shock and surprise with an audacity that is likely to catch more than a few people off guard.
The plot taps directly into the hyper-aware, ultra paranoid world of the parent confronted with the vast expanse of cyberspace, where potential predators lurk behind every seemingly innocent url. Ellen Page’s Hayley is a streetwise 14-year-old, who has an online romance brewing with Patrick Wilson’s much older Jeff. After meeting for the first time in a coffee shop, photographer Jeff takes her back to his apartment to burn some music. Already a sick sense of dread is bubbling at the back of the mind and director David Slade knows it and plays with it to the full. Once inside Jeff’s apartment the safe familiar medium shot is banished from the picture and Slade subjects us to a barrage of sweaty reverse shots and suffocating close ups. It’s a deliberately uncomfortable invasion of personal space. As Hayley begins to relax the flirting slowly builds the relentless, forced intimacy and has you climbing the walls for an escape.
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September 24th, 2008 admin
2006
Starring: Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Willem Dafoe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Christopher Plummer
Director: Spike Lee
Runtime: 129 Minutes
Distributor: Universal
Rating: R
Spike Lee directs an all star line up for this stylish, high concept heist movie in which Lee attempts to show that he can do mainstream Hollywood thrillers just as well as politically driven dramas.
Denzel Washington is Keith Frazier, a police detective trying to make first grade but under investigation over some missing drug money that he claims he knows nothing about. When Clive Owen’s wily bank robber and his crew decide to knock off a bank, it forces Frazier to step in as hostage negotiator and try and prevent a bank full of hostages from coming out in body bags. Unfortunately, that is not all he has to worry about. There is also something hidden inside the bank’s vault that could be very embarrassing for the bank’s president. Jodie Foster’s political fixer is dispatched to lean on Frazier to make sure that Owen doesn’t get what it is that he wants and offers to make all his IAD problems go away if Frazier can guarantee that he won’t.
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September 5th, 2008 admin
1998
Starring: Will Smith, Gene Hackman, John Voight, Lisa Bonet, Barry Pepper
Director: Tony Scott
Runtime: 140 minutes
Distributor: Touchstone
Rating: R
Think way back before 9/11 to a time when nobody had even heard of Al’Quada. Before there was The Patriot Act, before administration scandals about data mining, monitoring of telephone calls and public outcry about Guantanamo and the war on terror, there was this slick and somewhat contrived high-tech thriller from Tony Scott starring the then hotter than volcanic lava Will Smith. A sort of Hackers for grown-ups it played into a mindset of mistrust and paranoia in the face of blatant abuse of power that many today feel we are closer to than ever before.
Smith stars as labor attorney Robert Dean, a man trying to juggle investigating mob-related union busting with trying to repair his marriage in the wake of an affair with a colleague. When a nature photographer catches the murder of a US congressman by high-ranking NSA officials on videotape, a black bag NSA team headed by Jon Voight’s corrupt politician comes after the tape hard. Fleeing for his life the photographer offloads the tape to the unknowing Dean, who then becomes the target of an intense and relentless technological assault bent on invade his life and destroy it in order to prevent the tape being made public.
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August 29th, 2008 admin
2006
Starring: Jamie Fox, Colin Farrell, Li Gong, John Ortiz, John Hawkes, Ciaran Hinds, Naomie Harris
Director: Michael Mann
Runtime: 134 Minutes
Distributor: Universal
Rating: R
In the hands of virtually any other director, this would be a guaranteed unmitigated disaster. A big budget remake of a hugely popular eighties television show that had essentially already been remade into the Bad Boys movies. But hope springs eternal whenever Michael Mann steps behind the camera and the last time he had a pop at remaking television, he had Pacino and De Niro share a cup of coffee amidst one of the greatest cops and robbers films of all time. Here he turns his attentions to Florida drug running. Undercover cops Tubbs and Crockett (Fox and Farrell), along with their DEA unit suddenly find themselves drafted into a compromised federal investigation of a dangerous Columbian cartel. As the only people left whose cover is not blown, they infiltrate the network, but quickly discover that getting in is a lot easier than getting out again.
Examine his work and one thing is clear above all else – Michael Mann loves cities, just loves them. Never before has a director gone to such great lengths to make a skyline of bloated sky scrapers and ugly high rises look like Monet could have painted it. The blinking lights, the lure of the streets at night, the gentle hum of the neon are this director’s paradise and here he is in good form. Miami Vice looks spectacular; crisp, clean visuals blanketed in diffused neon and bathed in the soft warm glow of the street lamp. The fact that Crockett and Isabelle take a speedboat to Cuba and go dancing is less of a plot point and more of an excuse for Mann to hop in a helicopter and majestically track Crockett’s approach to the Miami harbor on his way back.
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