Mini Review: The Equalizer - (2014) / Movie News: A sequel to a classic, and a third in a series.

(As always, potential spoilers ahead)

Forgive the lateness of this review, but I've been having a rough weekend. Seeing The Equalizer didn't help. I don't really wanna do a full review (I'll explain why in the review) but I also wanted to touch upon a couple of things I've come across recently. But first, a Mini Review of The Equalizer.

Plot Summary - Robert McCall is a former black ops agent whose forced out of retirement after running afoul of the russian mob.

Pros - Denzel Washington is pretty good in this. I imagine this is as kind of what a solo movie of his character from Training Day might seem like.

Cons - It's a really thin plot that's stretched out way too long (2h 12m). I honestly think the guys who made this and the guy who made A Walk Among The Tombstones should've changed scripts cause both movies would've have been much better. Why? AWATT has secondary characters who don't get enough screen time, Equalizer has too many side characters with too much screen time. There's a really long sequence where he's visiting colleagues more near the end of the movie to try and figure out who the bad guys are. What could've been a five minute scene I think goes on for twenty minutes and it's pointless.

Final Score - 2/10

It's bad. Denzel Washington and what he does are the only good things about the film. Other than that it's a thin plot stretched out too long and that's never good.

So you can see why I didn't want to do a long review, there isn't much to talk about the film. Hence, why I wanted to do some news bits as well. First up:

http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon-sequel-netflix-weinstein-co-1201316645/

Netflix and the Weinstein company are making a sequel to one of the greatest martial arts films of all time. Apparently production started last year and it even has a title: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - The Green Destiny.

And you know what? I'm actually happy with this. The weinsteins have a good track record and, even though I don't really watch tv shows, Netflix has been doing well with it's own series of shows, so why not tackle a movie? If they pull it off, imagine the kind of unique content we might get out of this. I said I don't like tv, but I did give Bojack Horseman a try and I actually really liked it, and everyone else seems to like OITNB and House of Cards, so why not films? Don't get me wrong, I still want to see the final result, but for now I'm going to be optimistic.

The other thing I wanted to talk about was this:

The new trailer for Taken 3, or Tak3n (I'm not going to write it like that again, my fingers almost went on strike) and even though I skipped the second one, I'm optimistic about this one. Why? Because nobody is actually going to be taken.

The first film didn't have the most original premise, but it was a pretty good movie for what it was. The mistake with the sequel though was the fact that they did pretty much the same thing that they did in the first one. They got lightning in a bottle and tried to do it again and got nothing good out of it. But the third one, if nothing else, will just be an awesome example of Liam Neeson kicking ass.

So there we go, again I apologize about the long wait for the review, but next week Gone Girl is coming out and I'm stoked for it, so expect a review of that. If you can't wait, check out some of my other posts on the side.

So until next time, I'll see you folks at the movies.

Think Piece: Film adaptations of young adult novels or How a promising idea has mostly stopped working.

(Spoiler Warning, Because I may have to talk about specific examples)

(Also, all of this is simply my observation/opinion.)

So, having seen two films based on novels this past friday, I sort of wanted to express my thoughts on the whole thing, and cast a light on the current trend of making films based on young adult novels as well. But first, a little back story on how the young adult trend came to be.

In The Beginning...

Believe it or not, we actually don't have to go too far back when it comes to the young adult trend. Why? because it all started with Harry Potter. 

When the first book came out in 1998 (1997 if you live in the U.K.) it became an instant smash hit. By the time the fourth book came out, work had already begun on the first movie, which also became a huge smash hit as well and lead to the rest of the books being turned into films as well. Every single one of them was a success both critically and financially. The lowest rated film (according to Rotten Tomatoes) is Harry Potter and the deathly hallows part 1 at 78%, but only because the first part ended on such a downer moment and that didn't resonate as well with some people (at least that's my theory. It did make me come back to see part 2 though, so it at least did that right.)

Now, just to clarify something, Harry Potter I'm pretty sure was meant to be a children's book nothing more nothing less. However the smart move J.K Rowling did was making a full series, thus allowing people who liked the series to grow up with it, hence why nowadays I wouldn't be surprised if the biggest age group who likes Harry Potter would be people either close to or now graduating college a.k.a young adults. 

So, we had a successful series of books that became a successful series of movies, how did it go so wrong?

Well, around the time of the goblet of fire movie, a bunch of people in Hollywood decided that since Harry Potter was so popular, why not try making other books meant for the same age group into movies? Now this is a common thing in Hollywood, when one thing becomes popular everyone tries to find something similar to turn into the next big thing. The most modern example I can think of this is the current trend of superhero movies. So, when the time came to choose the next big franchise, what could they settle on?

The thinking went like this. Harry Potter is a boy, so why not find a series with a female lead instead? we can expand the YA audience and have what they considered a female counterpart to what they considered a male oriented series (this is Hollywood they tend to think in black and white mostly.) So they decided to turn the big female lead series into a movie franchise as well. What series was this you might ask?

The Downward Spiral....

It was......Twilight.

Yep, the disco ball with vampire teeth, Twilight.

For those of you living under a rock and having just emerged, Twilight is a series of books written by Stephanie Meyer, about a young girl named Bella Swan who falls in love with a "vampire" named Edward Cullen and the problems that ensue because of that. In the first sequel they introduced a werewolf named Jacob as the second love interest to try and bring in a love triangle aspect to it (Now being used in the hunger games series, but we'll get to that in a moment).

So, they had a potential gold mine on their hands. A modern romance story with supernatural elements that could appeal to both young girls and boys, what could possibly go wrong?

There are a lot of things that lead to Twilight being the mostly flop film series that it's now considered to be, I'll try and cover them all as best I can. The best way would be in list form so...

1. The book series (at least from both personal experience and from what I read, saw, and heard) were basically only popular with women. But not just young adult women, fully grown women. You ever hear of twilight moms? Yeah, that's a thing, and it's mostly creepy as all hell. And while there are films out there that cater only cater to women, there's a reason that it's mostly romantic movies that do so. Twilight easily fits into that category, but since the book series wasn't popular with young males (which is Hollywood favorite target audience by the way) the films had to rely entirely on the fanbase in order to succeed, and because of that....
2. The films were mostly just fan service. Harry Potter in both book and film managed to appeal to everyone, including people who didn't read the books. There are entire sections of the Harry Potter fanbase who've only seen the movies, and while that's also true for twilight, it didn't happen in as big of a capacity (again at least from my point of view.) I think it was Moviebob from the escapist magazine webstie that said you can turn anything into a good movie, but you might have to rip out it's guts to do so. Twilight was only popular to a certain demographic, so they made the films to cater to the fans, thus anyone who wasn't sold on the book but decided to gamble on the movie would most likely walk away dissapointed and wouldn't return for the sequels.
3. Although reviews of the books were mostly positive at first, later on I started hearing criticisms of it being poorly written and stephanie meyer not being such a great author. Now, I haven't read the books myself, they don't interest me, but I knew a lot of girls in high school who were fans and most of them (if not all of them) said that they knew the books were bad, but it was more of a guilty pleasure and just trashy fun. Trashy fun romance novels, usually don't transfer well, that's why the only Nicholas Sparks movie people seem to remember is The Notebook. And since they just basically catered to the fans, the only people who saw the movies and liked them were the fans (for the most part.)
4. It also didn't help that reviews for the movies were awful. On Rotten tomatoes, the first, third, and fifth (part 2) films are sitting at 49% good reviews. They're basically slightly below average and while a lot of people don't usually go by reviews, anyone who already hated twilight probably convinced fence sitters not to bother. Also, it didn't help that Robert Pattinson has done nothing but trash the movies and Stephanie Meyer.
5. This is the part that'll lead me to the next part of the YA film story. The Twilight movies, despite the problems, were financially successful, mostly due to the love story element that Harry Potter didn't really focus on too much. So Hollywood once again thought, we could make more of these, but instead we can focus on the supernatural and love story elements, and this is were we move onto the mext part of the story.

The Twilight Fallout

One series I haven't mentioned that actually started before Twilight, but after Harry Potter, were The Chronicles of Narnia series. The first one came out in 2005 to good reviews, mostly because I think it was a good match to run along side Harry Potter. The second one came out in 2008 to mostly good reviews, but twilight did better financially, so by the time the third one came out to mostly mixed reviews, Harry Potter and Twilight were both dominating the market and so the rest of the series was cancelled.

There was also Eragon in 2006, but that was bad entirely on it's own merits and they never bothered to make another book in the series since.

There were two other movies that came out in 2008 as well both considered to be YA. Inkheart and City of Ember. I haven't even heard of the second one until I started doing research for this.

But after Twilight like I said most of the films that they intended for the YA audience had to have elements of the supernatural as well as a romantic subplot. Any other YA novels that didn't have those elements were re worked to appeal to larger audiences (Example: 2009's The Lovely Bones. Was not marketed in the same manner as other YA films.)

The first one of these was Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief. It got mixed reviews, but they did make a sequel three years later that got even worse reviews. Last I heard they're not continuing the series.

There was I Am Number Four in 2011, but again mostly negative reviews. in fact let's just list the rest of these out shall we?

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones 12% 2013, no word of a sequel.

Beautiful Creatures 46% 2013 no word of a sequel

Divergent 41% 2014 a sequel is in the works.

Vampire Academy 9% 2014 no word of a sequel.

And most recently The Maze Runner 63% 2014 a sequel is in the works.

Twilight also inspired 50 Shades of Grey which is actually coming out on Valentine's Day next year (after being heavily pushed back from it's original release which would've put it up against Guardians of The Galaxy. Also, fun fact, the first three to four months at the beginning  of every new year movie wise is considered the time when Hollywood dumps out the shittiest films of the year, so it'll probably suck. Also, they won't make a sequel, mostly because those did so poorly that even wikipedia doesn't have articles on them.)

And just like The Lovely Bones, any other YA novel without those elements were reworked and marketed for larger audiences (another example: Ender's Game was marketed as a sci fi thriller.)

The only series to be successful both critically and financially out of all of them were The Hunger Games in 2012 (currently sitting certified fresh at 84%.) Even it's sequel Catching Fire did even better currently sitting at 89% certified fresh. I personally don't understand why as I thought the first one was awful, but mostly because I'd already seen a better version of the main part of the story in Battle Royale, a 2001 Japanese movie which the Hunger Games was actually accused of ripping off.

But getting back to the main point of this, what basically happened is that Twilight was made cheaply (cheaper than Harry Potter at least), catered only to the fans, and was still successful, so with basically any other YA adaptation similar to it, they decided just to do the same thing with those. Made cheaply, catered to fans, but most of them haven't been successful.

The Hunger Games I think decided to go with the Harry Potter route (I know this because friends have told me that classic line "The books are better than the films" with both Harry Potter and Hunger Games) and basically decided not to cater directly to the fans. I don't think I've ever heard that argument as much (if at all) from twilight fans or any of the other flop franchises after that.

It's like what I said in The Maze Runner review: The books do not matter. Moviebob is right that in order to make a good film based off of a pre existing property it will have to be at least reworked if not gutted completely. I think that's why the films for Harry Potter and Hunger Games did so well, while others are lucky to be average.

I'm sure the sequel to Divergent will be awful (and I think it's only being made because Shailene Woodley is supposed to be in Amazing Spiderman 3 and that got bumped back because number 2 was considered the worst spiderman film to date.) I think the Maze Runner has potential to succeed if they capitalise on what made the first one good in the eyes of so many (As of now, I'd have no interest in seeing it, but who knows maybe it'll get fantastic reviews and I'll end up going) but for now the only series of these YA movies that seems to be working is the hunger games, which is going the Harry Potter route once again dividing the last book into two films.

What'll happen after that?

Honestly, I expect that if the Divergent and Maze Runner sequels fall flat, that after the Hunger Games that we might see the end of the YA movie adaptation all together unless they find something else. There's always the Harry Potter spinoff film Fantastic Beasts, but I doubt they'd market that as a YA film. I imagine there are a few YA books out there still to be adapted, but unless they get another smash success, I think the genre might be killed off for a while by the Superhero genre.

Final Thoughts

I saw most of the Harry Potter Movies and I liked them at the time, but I have no desire to see them again anytime soon personally. I also hated the first Hunger Games movie and will also not be seeing the sequels. Basically I just don't like YA movies, and I'll be glad when they finally stop making them for good.

So if you made it this far I thank you. I don't do these very often mostly cause while it's a fun brain workout for me, they are also exhausting mentally. Also, I'm not sure how popular articles like this are, but if there's enough requests I might be able to do one from time to time. But in the mean time I'll mostly be doing reviews, although I am currently unemployed and job hunting so the new movie reviews might have to be few and far between, but I can try to make up for it with DVD, Netflix, and Movies I Watch Online reviews if Netflix doesn't have what I'm looking for. I said streaming, not downloading.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the think piece, and until next time, I'll see you folks at the movies.

Review: A Walk Among The Tombstones (2014) - Liam Neeson doing his thing

(As always, potential spoilers ahead)

Anyone else here remember Taken? Okay dumb question, but I mostly just wanted to point out how awesome it is that a guy like Liam Neeson could start taking on action roles that late in life (I know he's not that old but most of the other big action heroes started younger than he did). So any chance we get after that to see him doing it, kind of has to try and live up to Taken. Now we all Taken 2 pretty much sucked, but how's his latest effort in A Walk Amongst The Tombstones? Let's find out.

As always, Plot Summary, Pros and Cons, Final Score. Let's get to it.

Plot Summary

Former NYPD cop turned unofficial private detective Matthew Scudder (Liam Neeson) is hired by drug dealer Kenny Kristo (Dan Stevens) to find the people who killed his wife. As he follows the trail, he finds himself drawn more and more into the dark side of New York City.

Since this is primarily a mystery film (or crime thriller), that's as far as I'm willing to go plot wise, but also because well.....

Pros - The plot is actually interesting. Simplistic, but interesting. Liam Neeson also does well here as the bitter former cop trying to do good. The side characters are also interesting for the most part, but the thing that I strangely like the most was the time period. 1999. Yeah, the film takes place in 1999. Why do I like that so much? Because trying to tell a story like this in the present setting just wouldn't work. People having to use pay phones, or the first generation of cell phones really adds to some of the tension when you realize that they don't have such luxuries like texting or taking photos with them and it helps the story play out well.

Cons - While everyone and everything is working well, the movie really doesn't build up on it. There's no really intense moments, and the shocking moments mostly fall flat. There's one point in the film that I won't spoil, but myself and a few other people saw it coming, so when it happened, it lost all it's shock value. Most of the side characters are underutilized, especially Brian "Astro" Bradley as TJ. I wish they could've found more for him to do because he is actually an interesting character. I'm not really sure how much more I can say, I enjoyed it, but it couldn't raise itself any higher than just being alright.

Final Score - 6/10

It is definitely better than average, but it really doesn't try and make itself a stand out film. I really wish I could've liked it more, but I can recommend it if you're really looking for something to watch this week. Especially on cheap tuesday.

Looking over my schedule for releases, I realize the equalizer is coming out next week. Another film about an older action star trying to do what he thinks is right. Will it do better than AWATT? You'll have to wait until the review to find out, but until then, I'll see you guys at the movies.

(Reminder: I will be posting a think piece tomorrow.)

Review: The Maze Runner (2014) - *Insert annoyed sigh here*

(There will be spoilers. I have to talk about the ending to make a point. You've been warned.)

Well, now that the festival is over, at least we can get back new releases now that there are actually new movies being released. I'm glad I missed the whole no good deeds fiasco (Apparently critic screenings were cancelled two days before release to save a supposed surprise twist ending which was the fact that the guy savagely beat his wife which they didn't want covered by mainstream media because of the whole Ray Rice thing) and now we can go on to movies that at least don't bring up incidents of domestic violence. I made an effort to see two of these movies friday and I'm going to be splitting them up into two reviews. Why? Well, mostly to try and increase my readership (seriously, tell your friends, I think the blog is great otherwise why would I keep doing it?) and mostly because the two movies are both based on books, but different enough that they don't warrant a side by side comparison. Now the first one of these I'm talking about is The Maze Runner.

Now before I begin, I just want to say two things.

1. No, I did not read the books

2. The books, DO NOT F*CKING MATTER!

If this statement confuses or annoys you, I'll be explaining in more detail in a think piece post I plan to write on Monday. I'll come back and retroactively link to it here.

So, with that out of the way, let's begin the review shall we?

Plot Summary

Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) wakes up in an elevator that arrives at a place called the Glade. He finds that it's run by a group of boys all around his age, none of whom can remember anything except there names. They also tell him that surrounding is a maze and that in the maze are things called Grievers. The boys have also divided up the work maintaining the glade amongst themselves, one of the groups being the titular maze runners, a group who runs into the maze in order to map it with the goal of finding a way out. After on these maze runners is killed, the leader of the glade Alby (Aml Ameen) goes out with one of the runners, only to get injured and get locked in the maze (the maze closes every night) but not before Thomas runs in to help him and the other runner Minho (Ki-hong Lee) survive the night. After that, Thomas becomes a runner, they kill a greiver, use part of it to find a way out, and escape the maze only to find that the whole thing was setup by the WCKD corporation in hopes of finding kids strong enough to not only deal with what's revealed to be an earth scorched by the sun, but also a virus going around that they have no cure for. Yeah, the slightly interesting kids trapped in a giant maze turns into kids have to save post apocalyptic earth and my god is that fucking stupid.

Pros - The Maze actually looks pretty cool to start, and at first I thought the whole film was okay. It wasn't trying to be lord of the flies which is a smart move because very few things can compete with lord of the flies, and I actually thought the whole idea was kind of cool at first.

Cons - Boy, where to start. First off, too many characters. Sure I know most of their names now, but mostly because the names are unique without being silly (Looking at you Katniss Everdeen), not because any of the characters are interesting. Except Chuck, but only because I'm convinced they were trying to rip off chunk from the goonies. Here's a side by side comparison of the two of them.

 

Cons Continued - They even attempt to throw in Discount Kristen Stewart Kaya Scodelario in the third act as Therese but I'm convinced she was only there because she was in the book, because she was next to useless. And the worst part is, even with all of this, it's still better than the first hunger games movie (come at me bro, I stand by it.) The monsters are also butt ugly, the plot steers off into lunacy in the end and overall it's just kind of a meh. Not boring, just meh.

Final Score - 4/10

It's visually impressive (aside from the ugly ass grievers) and while I wasn't bored to tears, when it was done I already knew I was skipping the sequel. It's still a four though, mostly because it could've been better and what I did like about it mostly works. I can't recommend this to even fans because most of you will probably end up saying the book was better anyways. So yeah, there you go, if you're a fan of the franchise just read the books again and save yourself ten bucks and heartache. 

If you want to know more about why the books don't matter, once again I'll be posting a think piece this coming Monday which I will retroactively insert a link to here.

Now I'm reviewing another movie based on a novel, but this ain't no YA novel. Expect a review of A Walk Amongst The Tombstones Tomorrow.

(Want More? Why not check out some of my other reviews along the side? And remember, tell your friends, we're mostly non threatening I promise.)

Review: Foxcatcher (2014) - Steve Carrell is not in a comedy

(Spoiler Alert Potential Ahead)

It's time once again for another festival review. There would've have been one yesterday but I woke up with a migraine so unfortunately I had to skip. But we're back at fighting strength, and we're here today to talk about Foxcatcher. Now Foxcatcher has been on my radar for a while but I didn't even watch a trailer for it. I mostly wanted to see it for who was in which I will get to in a moment but usually I'm not looking out for a movie like this for two reasons.

1. I hate slow dramas.

Okay, I don't hate them, they're just slow. I can appreciate them for the most part hell my favorite slow drama is Mud (although I wouldn't call Mud a slow movie.) Now, what do I mean by slow drama? I mean a dramatic film that mostly builds up to one climatic moment with a few small dramatic shifts in tone along the way (DVD Review of Joe comes to mind.) There's also another thing about Foxcatcher I usually don't like in films.

2. It's a sports film.

I don't watch sports film. Of any genre, usually. The only one I can remember and like is Moneyball, but it is also not a slow drama. Moneyball has a lot of humorous momoents through out. Ohter than that if you're a sports film, I have no interest. Oh and space jam, space jam is alright. So two basically.

Now, if I hate both of those genres, why did I watch Foxcatcher? Well, like I said for the people involved and plus if I avoided the two genres all the time I'd be a lousy film geek. So this was a good way to cross off two types of film for this year at once. Plus I figured if it could intrigue me despite that, that it would score higher as a result. And what are those results? We'll find out. As always, summary, pros and cons, final score.

Summary

The year is 1987. Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) is a gold medal winning wrestler, desperately trying to come out from under his brother Dave Schultz's (Mark Ruffalo) shadow. He gets this opportunity when John Dupont (Steve Carrell) asks him to coach his private wrestling team for a shot at the world championships. After winning them, John eventually hires Dave to coach the team to lead them to the 1988 olympic games, much to Mark's dismay. End of summary (see what I mean about building up to one event)

Pros - Mark Ruffalo, despite being barely mentioned in the promo material I saw, is awesome in this. I also want to bring this up because I want to point out that he should get his own Hulk movie at some point. Anyways, Channing Tatum I think gives off one of the most intense performances of his career. Steve Carrell is unrecognizable as dupont, seemingly losing himself in the role (for the most part.) The movie has this bleak, muted look to it, but it mostly pulls it off. Did I mention this is also based on a true story? and they didn't try to muddle down with overdetail and straight up making up parts of it. That's always great.

Cons - Oh boy, there's no easy way to say this. Steve Carrell, while trying his best, should not have gotten as many laughs as he did, mostly because I don't think he was trying to be funny. At least not in a way were you should be laughing. Creepy, is not a card he can pull 100% because sometimes he himself seemed like he was just doing a bad Michael Scott impression. Also, the film feels like it's all build up for one pay off that I knew was coming (because I knew the true story behind it) that still didn't really satisfy, as the ending kind of feels rushed. It leaves you with a sense of wait that's it?

Final Score - 8/10

I know, I said the ending sucks and Steve Carrell's has some issues but, I didn't hate it. Seriously, Channing and Mark are awesome, Carrell is mostly good and despite containing two elements I usually don't like in movies, I wasn't bored. So basically, it wins heavily by not boring me. Will you like it? if you think you like sports, drama, or a combination of the two, I say go for it.

So there we go. Now, the next two days I'll be seeing shorts that I worked on, so no reviews for those. But, I might try to get in one more feature on the last day of the festival. If not, expect a review on a wide release coming out this weekend.

Until next time, I'll see you folks at the movies.

Retro Review: Blood Simple (1984) - The first film by the Coen brothers.

(Potential Spoilers Ahead.)

One of the things that the Atlantic Film Festival offers as part of it's activities is a retrospective of certain filmmaking genres, or the films of certain filmmakers for free. Basically it's a chance to see free older films. This year the theme is the coen brothers, and they began the retrospective with their first film Blood Simple. I am a huge coen brothers fan, but I've never seen Blood Simple.......until now. As always, plot summary, pros and cons, final score. Let's do it.

Plot Summary 

Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya) hires private investigator Loren Visser (M. Emmet Walsh) to see if his wife Abby (Frances McDormand) is having an affair with his bartender Ray (Ray Getz). Upon confirming his suspicions, he then asks Loren to kill them both. That's it. It's a 99 long minute movie and it really doesn't get too complex.

Pros - Frances McDormand is awesome as always, and the film does look like a neo noir style of film for the most part.

Cons - The pacing is awful. If feels slow even at 99 minutes, and there's this long kid of awkward scene with no dialogue whatsoever. Now I'm not saying no dialogue is bad, but one of the Coen Brothers strengths in later films is their great dialogue. As for the acting, the only other person who seems to not be phoning it in slightly is M. Emmet but everyone else seems like they took a zoloft. Also the story is kind of simplistic, but they try to shake it up a bit but it mostly doesn't work or it's kind of dull.

Final Score - 6/10

You shouldn't be having pacing problems at 99 minutes. Frances McDormand is the only reason this film doesn't get a 5, but I'm also not in a real hurry to watch it again any time soon.

I know this is a shorter review, but if you want to read more, why not check out some of my other articles on the side of the page. It's a shameless self promotion I know but I'm trying to get my view numbers up, so why not help out? Also, I plan on putting up a few more festival reviews, so keep an eye out for those.

Until next time, I'll see you folks at the movies.

Review Double Feature: The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby:Them (2014) and Nightcrawler (2014) - My first film festival review

(As always, spoiler alert.)

The Atlantic Film Festival has begun. And man was the cinema packed yesterday, there were lines all over the place. Luckily I managed to get in there early enough to be able to see the two films I'm reviewing above. But before I get into that, I kind of have to explain one of them first.

Specifically, I want to talk about why the highlighted word in The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby:Them is in the title. See, this film was originally made as two seperate films in 2013. Instead of Them at the end of the title, you could watch this film about a couple from either just his perspective (Him) or from her perspective (Her) and the titles would've been adjusted accordingly. Them was edited togehter using footage from both Him and Her and was only released this year, hence why I marked it 2014. I also want to mention that I haven't seen Him and Her, so I will reviewing Them based solely on it's own merits. If I do see Him and Her will it alter my thoughts on it? No, I'll think of them as seperate films about the same thing. Each film will work entirely on it's own merits. So that being said, let's get to the reviews.

Now, I will be reviewing Them first, then Nightcrawler. If you want to skip over Them, I'll mark a point where you can stop scrolling and start reading. And as always, summary, pros and cons, final score.

1. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby:Them

Summary - Our story begins when Eleanor Rigby (Jessica Chastain) seperates from her husband Connor Ludlow (James Mcavoy) after (remember what I said about spoilers) she throws herself off of a bridge because of a life changing incident. Afterwards, Eleanor finds herself wondering what do to with herself, while Connor tries to find how she's doing while also struggling to keep his restaurant afloat. That's all I'm going to say, it's a romantic drama of sorts it doesn't need much more of a plot summary than that.

Pros - James and Jessica are both really solid acting wise, although Jessica does most of the emotional weightlifting of the film to a surprisingly good effect. The film is also paced well, and manages to mix tearjerker moments and the occasional bit of comedy in as well. When you find out the catalyst for the film it'll definitely make you put everything happening into perspective. The film also looks fantastic as well, as there are plenty of great shots in the beginning where they almost run into each other.

Cons - Only one really. I honestly wish we could've seen more of James in the beginning of the film. Most of when we see him alone he's concerned about the restaurant, or he's looking for or asking about Eleanor. Although it does get better as the film goes along, I did find it a bit odd at first. He also barely talks about the catalyst, but I guess he's trying to be the rock of the situation. Also, at a little over two hours it feels a tiny bit long. So it's mostly minor nitpicking I know, but I still have to acknowledge them.

Final Score - 9/10

Had it not been for the minor issues, this would've been perfect. I hate to let a film go by 100% even if it's just minor nitpicks but to me there are movies out there that are flawless so it just misses getting a 10. But, if you love romantic dramas that heavily favor the drama or are a fan of tearjerkers, this one I can easily recommend.

NIGHTCRAWLER REVIEW BEGINS HERE

2. Nightcrawler

Plot Summary - Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a driven, sociopathic, thief, who one night comes across a bad accident on a highway and it's there that he's introduced to the work of Los Angeles freelance crime journalism or "Nightcrawling." Deciding to try and make it in the industry, he hires Rick (Riz Ahmed) as his assistant and heads out into the night. Along the way he starts selling his tapes to Nina (Rene Russo) a local station news director, while trying to outdo his competitor Chris Day (Bill Paxton.)

Pros - Jake is so fantastic in this, he not only steals the show, he's declaring himself king of the mountain. I can't describe his character perfectly, but he's clearly sociopathic and everything he says makes himself sound like one of those guys who goes around making really impressive sales pitches about really shitty jobs. He's smart, manipulative, driven, and he'll do whatever it takes to stay on top. The films plays out and  looks fantastic as well. And this might be my favorite part, the film is basically just another underdog rising to the top stories. Except they replaced the underdog with a sociopathic nutcase, and that changes the context of everything that happens drastically and it is awesome. I was looking around the theatre and I saw people on the edge of their seats. Even the minor characters for the small amount of time most of them had were amazing.

Cons - Cons? What Cons this movie is awesome.

Final Score - 10/10

Go see this movie. It comes out on Halloween, go see it. Seriously. This is a solid movie. And the only 10 for a new movie that I've given a review for (Had a done a review for it Guardians of the Galaxy would've been a 10 also.)

So there we go. A 9 and a 10. Man film festivals have some good stuff playing. In fact I'm seeing another film tonight, but that one is going to be a retro review. Of what? you'll have to wait.

Until next time, I'll see you folks at the movies.

Review: A Most Wanted Man (2014) - R.I.P Phillip Seymour Hoffman

(As always, possible spoilers ahead. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED)

Did you know that this past weekend was the slowest box office since the weekend after the 9/11 attacks? Why? Because nothing interesting is being released for weeks. So I've been trying to find stuff that hasn't been given as much attention. Just like when I went to see Swearnet, A Most Wanted Man falls under the category of movie I went to see because fuck it why not. It got good reviews in the limited release circuit and It'll be sadly one of the last time we'll get to see Phillip Seymour Hoffman do his thing. So always, summary, pros and cons, final score.

Plot Summary - Günther Bachmann (Hoffman) leads a german espionage team who try and develop intelligence from the local muslim community. When Chechnyan refugee Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin) enters the country, Bachmann (Na na, na na, na na, na na, sorry couldn't resist) decides to track him, while also keeping an eye on Dr. Faisal Abdullah (Homayoun Ershadi) a muslim philantropist who is believed to be funneling money to terrorists. He also has to deal with other agencies who want to do things their way, so he is forced to try and get his targets as soon as possible.

Pros - It's not a complex film. That is a compliment, because with Dramatic Thrillers, you run the risk of boring people with too much plot while also being slow. A good example would be the bourne movies. Sure I know the general idea of what's going on in the story, but could I tell you all the little details of who and why? Not really, but those movies were still good (and still are) because they had Matt Damon kicking ass so you didn't have to remember the little details. So keeping this films story simple is good, because then it can play out better and you don't have to worry about the audience missing important information. Oh, and the story is well acted (especially Hoffman), the story is solid (albeit a bit on the extreme dumb luck side for part of it) and the pacing is mostly good.

Cons - I know I used bourne as my example, this isn't a bourne film nor does it have to be. That being said, the film plays out pretty much exactly how you would expect it to. The agents are tracking a bad guy, some other department also wants the bad guy, they disagree on how to deal with him, hero decides to do it his way, etc. I stand by the simple plot being a good thing, but if you don't do something different to the formula then you're not really gonna wow people. The film does try to throw in what it thinks is a twist ending, and while I wasn't expecting it, I wasn't really surprised when it happened either. That kind of hurt the ending for me a bit.

Final Score - 7/10

Hoffman's great, the story is mostly solid, and it's predictable but not boring. I recommend you see it once, and maybe get the DVD if you're a hoffman fan. It's certainly a nice break from the nothingness of the past few weeks, and a good send off for Hoffman (Aside from what apparently might be a cgi made cameo in Mockingjay.)

In two days (at time of writing) it'll be the Atlantic Film Festival. I'll be sure to review a few movies from there, but until then, I'll see you folks at the movies (I wanna say siskel and ebert said that first.)

Netflix Movie Review: Stoker (2013)

(Potential spoilers as always)

So, right now it's a bit of a dead zone release wise. Oh sure there are a few limited releases every now and then, but nothing for wider audiences. So I figured I'd try something a little different and do a review of a movie I saw on Netflix. Now this is American Netflix, so it might not be available on the Canadian Version.

I decided the first one of these to review would be Stoker, the english language debut of South Korean director Park Chan-wook. I went with this one because Mr.Chan-wook actually wrote and directed my second favorite film of all time, Oldboy (The 2003 original, not the so-so Spike Lee remake, also available on Netflix.) We'll do the normal review, but for Netflix titles, I will not let the fact that is available if you already the service influnece my recommendation. I'll treat this as any other film you might have to watch in a theatre or buy on DVD. That said, let's begin.

Plot Summary

Our story begins on the 18th birthday of India (Mia Wasikowska) who, after finding his gift, learns of her fathers death. At the funeral, she spots a man watching from a distance, who arrives at the wake and reveals himself to be her Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode). He stays with India and her mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman), to the discomfort of the head house keeper and others. This is where I stop because everything past this point would just ruin the rest of the film, and this is one of those rare times where I refuse to divulge even a little.

Pros - Mia and Matthew both turn in very good performances. Mia as the shy girl coming into her own, and Matthew as the stranger who you can't quite pinpoint what his intentions are. The look of the film is very good as well, making heavy use of muted colours, in what almost feels like a strangely gothic look of the world despite the fact there's not just huge amounts of the colour black all over.

Cons - It's supposed to be a psychological thriller, but I have to admit it that, at least for me, it didn't have too many tense moments. But then again, I don't think it was going for tension, it's supposed to make you think. It plays out more like an art film in the sense that you have to really watch it. Unlike an artfilm though it does at least fill in the blanks for you rather than it leaving it up to you. The only other complaint I have is I feel Nicole Kidman does an excellent job, but is under utilized a bit.

Final Verdict - 8/10

I have to admit, any movie that takes a psychological thriller type idea, and plays it out as an art film walks a really tight rope. This movie does pull it off, but I get a feeling a lot of people might not like it. It's one of those films that you sort of have to go back and piece it together, although the film does help with that mostly. I actually really like it, and if you think you can handle a sort of strange hybrid of a film, I can easily recommend it.

Don't expect a lot of these Netflix reviews, I mostly did this because I'm going through a bit of a blank spot movie watching wise due to upcoming stuff. But I will be doing reviews on films playing at the Atlantic Film Festival coming up soon. So between the 11th and the 18th expect some reviews of stuff not yet out on the mainstream circuit, I'm really looking forward to it.

So until next time, I'll see you folks at the movies. (Still sure I've heard someone else use that phrase before.)

Summer blockbuster season is over, how'd we do?

(As always, potential spoilers just in case.)

My favorite movie related website, is rotten tomatoes. They take every review and balance it out a final score out of 100 on their website. Every year, after summer blockbuster season, they list all the films (Wide release and select limited) released during that period in order of score. So I figure why not look it over and see how we did.

The list can be found here: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/guides/summer-movie-scorecard-2014/

Now, first of, out of 53 movies on the list, only 23 of them have a score of 60% or over which the site considers a good film. That's about 43% good films. Now how does that compare to let's say, 2013?

2013 had 57 films released during the summer. 32 of them were 60% and over, which comes out to about 56%. So a thirteen percent drop in quality. 

However, both were better than 2012 (The year the Avengers, Dark Knight Rises, and Moonlight Kingdom came out) which had 17 films out of 44, which is about 39%

But 2012 had the lowest number of summer films, so what does that mean? In theory it would say that the good films were that much better. And looking at the list, the scores for the good films jump drastically, usually between 3 - 8% difference.

2013, the biggest percentage change from film to film (for the ones 60% and over) was 5%. Which basically means that the good films weren't too distinctive quality wise. Basically they were good movies, but on a scaled difference, they were of very similar quality. Now obviously you can tell the difference between a film at 60% and one at 90%, but what I'm saying is you would only notice the drastic differences more.

Now, 2014, also had the biggest percentage difference be only 5%, but then why are there fewer good movies over all?

Let's look at the films on the border of good and bad for 2014.

Good: Hercules 61%

Bad: The Purge: Anarchy 57%

A four percent difference. Now, what happens if we look at the next three worse films after that?

The Amazing Spiderman 2: 53%

Jersey Boys: 53%

Maleficent: 48%

Another 4% drop, then nothing, then a 5% drop. Interesting. So what this basically means is that the bad films, were more distinctively bad. Sure there are plenty of 1% differences, but the biggest percentage difference for the bad films was 8%. The same amount as the best films of 2012.

So what does all this tell us? Basically, the bad films of 2014 were really bad. If the good films of 2012 were good because they were distinctively good, then the bad films of 2014 were distinctively bad.

Three examples from lower on the list

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For: 45%

Tammy: 24%

Blended: 14%

But what about the good films?

We had a pretty good mix of good films for 2014. Big dramas, Comic Book Films, Science Fiction, Comedies, so much stuff. This was the year we got 22 jump street, Godzilla, Xmen days of future past, Boyhood, Guardians of the galaxy. Hell some of the films from this year might even make my personal top 10 (that's a list and a long internal debate for another day.)

For reference, the top three films and their scores according to rotten tomatoes

3. Guardians of The Galaxy: 92%

2. Snowpiercer: 95%

1. Boyhood: 99%

So as for the year over all? Sure the bad movies might be bad, even really bad. But the good films were just that much better. So even though i'd argue the summer sort of just trickled off, I say we did alright overall.

I'm not sure how the rest of the year will go (no really big releases for at least two to three weeks) so it's too early to judge the whole year. But if we were to judge the year by the summer alone, like I said, we did alright. So many of these films will be in my dvd collection when they come out.

So there we go, an alright summer. Sorry if this is a bit more nerd number crunching than usual, also I'm bad at math so most of this might be gibberish. But that's my thinking, we do okay.

So until next time, I'll see you folks at the movies. (I swear I've heard someone else say that.)

 

Review: Swearnet (2014) - The trailer park boys movie....without the trailer park boys.......sort of

(Potential spoiler warning, as always)

So, the next few weeks movie wise are looking, pretty blah. Hell even this weekend was pretty much pointless. It was either another crappy found footage horror film (I could write a thesauras about this genre) or a pierce brosnan spy thriller where he isn't James Bond. I only debated seeing it because I could make a pun about the name of the film and it's relevance to my birthday and that would've been the lamest reason ever for me to see a movie. 

So I decided to watch something off of the beaten path. I joined something called the first weekend club, a group that goes and watches the limited released Canadian films on opening weekend to try and improve their chances for a wider release. I get updates every once in a while when a new one is nearby. Since this was a slow weekend, I decided to watch one of the news one out this weekend. I chose, Swearnet, made by the same guys who made the trailer park boys.

Now, I currently live in Nova Scotia, where the show is based. I've even met some of the crew of certain seasons. They're basically considered a treasure and an industry around here. Swearnet and Don't Legalize were very heavily advertised here. I have no idea about the rest of the country, also, I've never actually watched trailer park boys. I don't really like television, so I went into Swearnet completely blind. Oh boy, where do I start?

Plot Summary - There's basically one plot and two subplots, but I couldn't tell you which one's which. The three guy play themselves though so that helps....I think. But for those of you who don't know their real names, I'll out their TPB names next to them at first.

All three of them are trying to move on from Trailer Park Boys, but when CNT (Canadian National Television) rejects their new ideas, Mike Smith (Bubbles) decides to make their own internet channel swearnet. And for the rest of the movie he films stuff to upload to the site, and there is a thing where he owns a loanshark money for financing the thing, but he basically does what we the audience do and mostly ignore him for 99% of the movie.

John Paul (Julian) is going to compete in a road rally with the ashes of his dad by his side, and Robb Wells (Ricky) has to deal with a psycho girlfriend. Honestly, these are barely worth going into, even though the race is the central event in this movie, again sort of.

And that's basically the thing with this movie, it's all over the place. Like it's never bad eough that it breaks your concentration but at the same time it just feels sort of......flat.

Pros - Honestly, I still have trouble figuring out whats really good about this movie. It was marketed as a comedy, but aside from a few laughs it wasn't over the top funny or anything. It did actually feel really heartfelt for John Paul's story, ad the three guys get along well. Hell I didn't even mind the swearing, supposedly they broke the record but I haven't checked that. I guess the best thing I can say about this movie is that it isn't awful. It also used a Queens of the Stone Age song in the credits which was awesome. Actually that might have been the best part.

Cons - The three story lines barely raise above average. The stakes feel really low. Also Tom Green and Carrot Top are very heavily present in the last half of the film. One of Tom's lines also has him trying to defend Freddy Got Fingered. I had only one finger to present to him when he said it. Also one of the songs they use in the movie was from the Ride to Hell video game. Swear to god. Also Robb Wells story ends when they shoe horn in a love interest practically out of nowhere. Like they barely talk to each other and then in the end they start dating. What the fuck?

Final Score - 4/10

I struggled with the score, even while writing this. But in the end, if your story has no stakes, fails as a comedy, and has Tom Green trying to defend his shitty career, I can't even call it average. It's meh, it's a thing that exists that I can barely recommend unless you like TPB. If it was flat out bad, it would've gotten a 2 or 3, but I can't give it a 5 in good conscience.

It's going to be a slow few weeks folks, expect DVD and Retro reviews for the next while. Unless I decide to go back and watch some of the releases I didn't catch.

Until next time, I'll see you folks at the movies.