Directed By – John Woo Starring – Yun-Fat Chow, Danny Lee, Sally Yeh, Kong Chu, Kenneth Tsang, and Fui-On Shing
A disillusioned assassin accepts one last hit in hopes of using his earnings to restore vision to a singer he accidentally blinded, only to be double-crossed by his boss.
Am I an asshole? Am I an asshole for not liking this film? Look at those ratings. 8.0? 100%? I’m going to just assume that I’m a horrible person for thinking this film was one of the cheesiest things I’ve ever watched. I’m a bad person and you should stop reading. Seriously John Woo? SHRIMP HEAD?
I’ll be honest off the bat, I haven’t seen many Woo films. Growing up I had a steady dosage of Jackie Chan and Jet Li, but anything related to John Woo fell by the wayside. I’ve seen his American films but this was my first dive into his films with Chow Yun Fat. It started poorly.
First let me state that the police in this film are horrible. They may possibly be the most insanely inept squad of men I’ve seen in film. They let people get assassinated easier than whoever ran the parade in Dallas. Chow Yu Fat was sitting on a boat with a gun pointed at a very important man whom the police force KNEW could be assassinated and nobody spotted him. They were at a goddamn rowing race. There was literally a thousand people watching the water and they couldn’t see Chow Yun Fat with a bad mustache and a rifle. Then when a bullet blasted through his head, they covered him up and said he fainted. I could have spread that cheese on toast.
The whole film was cheese. The WHOLE film. Woo tried to portray serious emotion but when one of the characters is screaming over the loss of his buddy Shrimp Head, yeah you lost me. The movie also suffered from cliche action movie tropes such as endless ammo, endless villains, and endless times you get shot in the chest before you die. I guess I should be appreciating the action scenes and taking an 80s film for what it’s worth but I’m not going to do that. I hope Hard Boiled is better than this or I’m not even going to touch John Woo again.
Wait, Red Cliff was fucking awesome. This must have just been a mistake. Also, I know get the John Woo dove jokes now. I have arrived to that level of movie reference.
Directed By – Julian Gilbey
Starring – Melissa George, Ed Speleers, Alec Newman, Karel Roden, Kate Magowan, Garry Sweeney, Sean Harris, Stephen McCole, and Holly Boyd
A group of mountaineers in the Scottish Highlands discover a kidnapped girl and are pursued by her captors.
Being an adult is hard. I’ve been so busy lately that I’m starting to unintentionally neglect my hobbies which includes things like reading, writing, film, and music. Luckily for me, The week is going to be rainy and my workload had been light. I started off my lazy hobby life again by getting back to the service that I shell out twelve dollars a month for, Netflix. I’m somewhat of a movie hoarder. I always have the maximum amount of films on my Netflix queue and while it helps me keep unknown films in mind, it also gives me the horrible dilemma of choosing what to watch. I ultimately went for a shorter film towards the front of my queue and we landed on this, a thriller about mountain climbing and the perils of such an activity that includes murder and kidnapping. I never knew these fun activities were associated with each other but now I do. Thanks movies, now I’ll never go to Scotland.
The movie starts out pretty tame but soon accelerates into full on thrill ride. I’ve always enjoyed films that depict crazy events happening out in the middle of nowhere. This is where you get to see some creative story telling because James Bond can’t just pull a pen out of his ass and have it turn into a helicopter. This group of mountain climbers, led by Aussie actress Melissa George, stumble upon a girl who has obviously been kidnapped due to the fact that she was found in a hole with nothing but a breathing tube. The climbers are then tasked with outrunning the kidnappers while carrying along this little girl who while I understand is pretty exhausted, couldn’t be more of a pain in the ass.
I ended up liking the film. The middle act ended up being a pretty balls to the wall thriller that rarely let up. I’ve always been into those kind of films. The fact that it took place in the beautiful Scottish highlands also was an added plus because goddamn is it gorgeous out there. The cast did their jobs well and while the film certainly fell apart near the end I can’t really complain too much given the nature of the story. It could have been worse, but the end just seemed cliche and countered the uniqueness of the first two thirds. The film also happens to fall victim to having the badass evil villains be way to badass for their own accents. You know how Clint Eastwood stares down the people he is talking to and speaks in a tone of voice that screams how he doesn’t give a shit if you can understand him or not? Well, Clint is an American. The villains in this film have that hard and cold way of speaking, but since their Scottish I can’t understand a damn word of what they were saying. I had to turn the subtitles on and I hate having to do that when the language I’m listening to is English.
It was a completely serviceable movie though, with some great actions scenes including a couple falls where they either actually threw somebody off a cliff or they had a really awesome stunt dummy because it shocked me how real it looked. Certainly worth a watch on Netflix.
3/5
Suggested Viewing – Frozen (2010, not the animated one, the one with the ski lift), Touching the Void, The Loneliest Planet, Vertical Limit, Cliffhanger
IMDB Score – 7.2
Rotten Tomato Score – 100% Nominated for four Oscars including Best Editing, Best Sound, Best Writing, and Best Actor (John Wayne)
Directed By – Allan Dwan
Starring – John Wayne, John Agar, Forrest Tucker, Wally Cassell, James Brown, Richard Webb, and Adele Mara
A dramatization of the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima.
My Netflix dvd queue is a funny machine. I had about 13 films in front of this but every single one of them wasn’t available when it was time to ship out so I was surprised when this came in the mail. I honestly forgot all about it but was eager to sit down and watch an old film as it’s been way too long due to all the films from last year that I’ve been cramming in my face. There are so many older films that I’m finally going to be able to sit down and watch now that my Netflix queue is starting to get older and this pleases me. I’d rather watch bad film from the 40s than a bad film from last year any day. “Sand of Iwo Jima” ended up being a completely patriotic cookie cutter of a film but when you’re watching John Wayne and his infinite manliness, it doesn’t really matter.
The film follows a group of soldiers through boot camp to the…well…sands of Iwo Jima. John Stryker is the leader of this group, played by the manliest man of all men, John Wayne. Stryker is kind of a mix between drill instructor Hartman from “Full Metal Jacket” and Tom Berenger from “Platoon”. The men don’t like him. He is tough as nails and don’t take no shit from NOBODY! You had plans to get laid over the weekend? I don’t think so! Looks to me like your bed is a little uneven. That will be a revocation of your weekend pass soldier. Seriously, this exact scenario played out in the film. Wayne, who would later go on to earn his first Oscar nomination for the role, was made to play this character. He takes nobodies shit and dishes out punishment. He ended up giving one of the performances of his career as we follow Stryker through his bouts of alcoholism, regrets, anger, and acceptance. The films co-star, John Agar, plays one of the privates who claims to be an intellectual and finds his Sargent deplorable. What plays out for the next two hours is a cookie cutter production of every single war cliche that has ever happened. Yet, with this being a mere four years after WWII ended, it’s obvious that this film was made as a symbolic power fist in the air for America, and for that I can put up with it.
One cool aspect of the film is that they spliced a lot of great real footage from Iwo Jima and other pacific battles into the film. If you know what you’re looking for, you can spot the actual footage which is always an interesting watch. I’ve always been interested in the years we went to war and the film shed more light on what it was actually like to run up those beaches into a hail of gunfire. Due to the time of its release, you’re not really getting anything gritty or brutal. The men who get killed on screen just kid of fall down or do that clutching to the chest as they slowly let gravity bring them to the sand. Like I said, cliche and cheesy. It was however a great display of acting from Wayne and a much needed break from the glitter and glamour of films released this year.
2.5/5
Suggested Viewing – The Longest Day, Bridge on the River Kwai, Band of Brothers: The Pacific
Starring – Michael Fassbender, Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Bruno Ganz, Rosie Perez, and Edgar Martinez
Directed By – Ridley Scott
A lawyer finds himself in over his head when he gets involved in drug trafficking.
Earlier last year I wrote about how excited I was that this film was even happening. The cast, aside from Cameron Diaz, was fantastic. I am a Ridley Scott apologist. I thought “Prometheus” was a gorgeous film and although it was written by a man who should have no business in science fiction, I thought the film did space horror justice. The film boasted one of my favorite authors at the helm of the screenplay. I have enjoyed everything Cormac McCarthy has ever written and was excited for his first work written directly for the screen. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG GUYS?
Everything. Everything went wrong.
This was one of the most pretentious pieces of hot garbage I have ever seen. It was like Ridley Scott found a pile of shit in the middle of the room, found out who made it, denied it was a pile of shit, and threw glitter on it. How is that image doing for you? I’m actually proud of that analogy. It is fitting to what this film ended up being. So we have a lawyer played by Michael fucking Fassbender. This lawyer decides to get into the drug trade and then I honestly don’t understand what the hell happens next. Actually, if I had not read the synopsis before watching the film I would have had no idea what was happening during the entire two hour run length. This is not to say that I don’t enjoy films that make no sense. Those films however know what they’re aiming for and try to present it in a unique and experimental fashion. This films plays like McCarthy watched a Tarantino film and decided he was going to write one and use much bigger words. I love the mans writing but this was just a huge failure in trying to be profound and philosophical. NOBODY TALKS THE WAY ANYBODY IN THIS FILM TALKS. The last line was spoken by Cameron Diaz and she used the word “famished”. She wasn’t even being ironic. It was like a high school drama student was trying to sound cool on facebook. I’m just completely surprised by how bad the entire film was.
That isn’t to say there weren’t a few stylish elements I enjoyed. For one, Ridley Scott is just a natural behind teh camera and I enjoyed the colors portrayed in the film. There are also two very entertaining scenes that involve wire and Cameron Diaz fucking a car.
Yes. I just said that. I’m sorry if I ruined it for you but there is no way in hell I’m not talking about this. Cameron Diaz fucked an automobile. The term “catfish” was used in the film to describe what such an experience would be like. I vomited in my bed. Cameron Diaz owes me new sheets.
Let’s elaborate on Cameron Diaz for a moment. Why was she cast in this film. Her character is supposed to be ARGENTINIAN. Does she look Argentinian? Does she sound even remotely Argentinian? That must have been one hell of a blow job she gave to the casting director because that’s the only way that untalented woman got this job. Actually, that could probably be said for most of her career. I’m so glad that she didn’t end up doing what she always ends up doing, ruining good films. Her involvement in this was just an extra piece of lunacy added on to a debacle of a movie. Penelope Cruz was underused and had horrible lines given to her which she delivered with a subtle hint of “am I really saying this?” Javier Bardem decided to do this just so he could have his hair styled like that. I have know idea what he said in the film because of his outrageous blow out haircut. Brad Pitt played the same character he always plays, in the same voice, with the same everything.
Why did this have to happen. It was like the entire production company set us up for something brilliant and then delivered us a failure pile with a party hat on it and a note saying “Suck it population!”. I feel bad for people who paid to see this.
Let me summarize this who thing before I write Netflix a letter asking them why they didn’t email saying “NO PLEASE DON’T” when they saw I had this movie in my queue. The film was a mechanical pretentious slob of pseudo philosophical drivel. That sentence was brought to you by the Thesaurus. The same thesaurus that Cormac McCarthy used to construct 90% of the dialogue in this film. It had a few entertaining scenes. I believe a mentioned a car being slobbered on by an old untalented vagina. It was not entertaining enough though to hold even the slightest of my attention and I would like my two hours back. Oh, an there were Cheetahs in this films that were treated like both horses and house cats. I feel violated.
Directed By – David M. Rosenthal
Starring – Sam Rockwell, Jason Isaacs, Kelly Reilly. William H. Macy, Ted Levine, Joe Anderson, and Jeffery Wright
The tragic death of a beautiful young girl starts a tense and atmospheric game of cat and mouse between hunter John Moon and the hardened backwater criminals out for his blood.
Ahh, back to my old roots of watching bleak films about backwoods crimes and the fight to survive. I rode the feeling I had from watching “The Lego Movie” for as long as I could before I got back to the more gritty cinema that I seem to find myself watching a couple times a week. I hope this isn’t a statement of my personality but light hearted comedies and children’s films just aren’t really in my interests. I’ve always gravitated towards dark drama/thrillers and my most recent film “A Single Shot” is a perfect example of the genre. It is not, however, a perfect example of a superior film of that genre.
I’ll be honest, there are just some things that peak my interest. Dark forests and Sam Rockwell are two of these things. The film centers around John Moore, played in typical magnificent fashion by Sam Rockwell. John is out hunting and accidentally pulls a Dick Cheney except instead of a mouthful of birdshot, the victim gets a shotgun blast to the chest and dies. This is in the trailer. This is in the synopsis. This is in the first two minutes of the film. The following two hours is a “wrong place in the wrong time” scenario that we have seen countless numbers of times. There isn’t anything new being presented in this film. The films director, David M. Rosenthal, is not known for many films, but is a talent behind the camera. This is a nice looking film. Most of the film has a dark, ominous color to it that only adds to the already suspenseful atmosphere of running around what I’m assuming is backwoods Kentucky. They may have stated where the film took place but I’ll be honest, I didn’t pick it up. The film reaks of similar films released in the last couple years including “Out of the Furnace” which was released at nearly the same time. The plots may be different but the feel is exactly the same. Everybody is dirty and talks like “Boomhauer” from King of the Hill. I almost turned the captions on because I couldn’t understand what the hell people were saying and it only got worse because as soon as I started to get the gist of what somebody was saying, they pop in chewing tobacco and it all turns to gibberish. Maybe this is why I don’t know where the hell this all took place.
Like I mentioned earlier, the film is nice to look at. The camera paints the bleak backwoods very well and the minimalist/dissonant score actually kept me from clocking out of the film. Sam Rockwell was also extremely good as he continues to prove he should be starring in more films instead of stealing scenes as secondary characters. In the end the bland, redundant, and sometimes unintelligible script was what did this film in for me. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before and it’s nothing we won’t see again. I suppose it’s worth a rental but don’t expect to be amazed by what you end up getting.
2.5/5
Related Films – Winter’s Bone, The Hunter, Deliverance
Thoughts From the Booth 