The Place Beyond the Pines is has three distinct acts, the first is excellent, the second is pretty great, and the last one misses the mark almost entirely. [Read more...]
Film Review: The Place Beyond the Pines
04/15/2013 by Leave a Comment
Film Review: Holy Motors
11/20/2012 by Leave a Comment
Leos Carax’s Holy Motors will most certainly stand as the most original film of the year, and possibly the oddest, but it is also an incredibly riveting celebration of cinema and features an amazing performance by Dennis Lavant. [Read more...]
For Your Renting Pleasure
09/19/2011 by Leave a Comment
And I am back with “For Your Renting Pleasure,” a supposed-to-be-weekly post that made it maybe 2 weeks tops before fizzling out. My bad. For those of you who don’t remember this is basically a compilation post of movies I watched that week of the non-new-release variety, whether they be rentals, watched through the Netflix instant queue, or what have you. This week we’ve got Last Night (2010), Wind Chill (2007), and The Good Guy (2009). [Read more...]
Review: The Other Guys
08/06/2010 by 1 Comment
The Other Guys is the latest from Adam McKay and Will Ferrell and it serves as a great send up of the buddy cop genre with a consistently funny pacing and many flashes of brilliance along the way.
Allen Gamble and Terry Hoitz are not the guys, that title is held by Detectives Highsmith and Danson. Gamble and Hoitz are the other guys on the force who push the pencil and do the paper work for the NYPD heroes. Besides being the other guys of the office, Gamble and Hoitz are quite the odd couple of partners as well. Gamble has long been behind a desk, in police accounting, and has worked his way up to detective but has no ambition to leave the office during the day. Hoitz is the exact opposite. Itching at any chance to get out on the streets and to be the guy, he unfortunately is in some hot water after an unfortunate incident in the Yankee club house. But when Gamble uncovers a scaffolding permit violation the two begin to get wrapped up in a crime bigger than they could possibly imagine.
Now Playing Review – The Other Guys
08/06/2010 by 1 Comment
If you are like me then Will Ferrell acting out the role of a cop gunning down criminals is an intriguing thought. I mean, he’s done pretty much everything else at this point, so why not fill the shoes of an action star? Unfortunately the film’s poster isn’t really an appropriate representation considering you can’t quite pull that off when carrying a wooden gun in your holster. Funny, but it doesn’t quite carry the same bang I had hoped for.
Instead Will Ferrell plays Allen Gamble, a man who is much more comfortable humming the theme songs of action films from the safety of his own desk as apposed to being the inspiration for the music. A man who is not so musically inclined is his partner, Terry Hoitz, who still aspires to be the man people look up to while fighting the good fight. No matter their feeling, eventually they find themselves knee deep in a case that might just be what it takes to pull them from their seats on the sidelines, as long as they can handle it. [Read more...]
Review: The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans
01/17/2010 by Leave a Comment
Werner Herzog in spirit sequel to the 1992 film Bad Lieutenant is a trippy, darkly humorous, detective story with Nicholas Cage’s Terrance taking us on a wild ride into depravity that we can’t really predict.
During the mayhem of hurricane Katrina Terrance and his partner watch a prisoner trapped in a cell as the water is slowly rising around him, Terrance decides to jump in and let him out only to hurt his back and when we pick up again a few months later, the man has grown addicted to pain pills and seems to have much more of a problem beyond that. Upon investigating a homicide in which an entire family is murdered over a drug turf dispute, Terrance becomes involved in a case that deals with a top drug lord, Big Fate, and between his desire to close the case and battling his own demons Terrance ends up having to juggle a lot of risks to try and come out clean with Big Fate in jail on the other side.
Now, Werner Herzog isn’t afraid to take us anywhere, we get involved with gangsters, bookies, gambling debts, drug dealers, throwing games, police brutality, witness murders, dirty cops, cocaine, heroin, and just about any drug you can imagine you are going to touch it all. And with that in mind, it gives the film a feeling of uncertainty in what is going to happen next and it is almost kind of fun/scary to watch where Terrance will end up next. [Read more...]
Review: The Spirit
01/08/2009 by Leave a Comment
Frank Miller steps behind the camera solo and creates a visually beautiful, but wholly absurd and over the top film, that if you know what it is going for heading into the picture, is an entertaining piece.
The Spirit (Gabriel Macht) loves his city and he has sworn to protect it from the evil of the world. Along the way, running along rooftops, he makes women swoon when they see him, and he is always chatting them up when ever the opportunity presents itself. His arch-nemesis is The Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson) and when the film opens, The Spirit, is checking in on a hot tip about a deal going down with The Octopus involved. Mixed up with the deal is a beautiful thief, Sand Saref (Eva Mendes) who is attempting to steal what The Octopus is going after as well. By the time The Spirit shows up on the scene, Sand is gone but The Octopus is ready for a showdown. While the two brawl, we discover both of them can take incredible punishment and are able to recover almost any wound with ease; The Octopus even leads the Spirit on that they are two of a kind, and all the same. The film from here turns into a stylized and super clichéd film noir into the investigation of The Octopus and the mysterious Sand Saref who The Spirit has a history with. [Read more...]
Review: We Own the Night
10/14/2007 by Leave a Comment
This cop drama is pretty much standard fare across the board story board with nothing we haven’t seen before. I think one thing that took a bit away from me on this movie was that the preview gave way too much away. But anyways, the lead, Joaquin Phoenix, does some great work here and is a character you can easily get behind and relate with. [Read more...]
