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Reviews
The Disaster Artist (2017)
Movie of the year
In the spirit of the movie, I'm going to write this review without editing or looking it over at all, its just gonna be a stream from my mind to the keyboard. WOW. I didn't think i'd like this movie this much. I expected funny moments, which there were many of, but I didn't expect any of the depth or emotion this movie would bring, the chemistry between Tommy and Greg is fun to watch and actually heartbreaking at times. I want to say more but it doesn't do it the same justice as watching it. The story, the acting, the humor, it's all so good. With regard to the acting, James Franco and Dave Franco are at their absolute best and I think they deserve awards. The next most memorable performance was Seth Rogen who was hilarious.
I think 2017 is gonna go down as one of the greatest years in cinema given the hard hitters that have come out. As of right now I have this movie neck and neck with blade runner as my favorite of the year, which is saying a lot given how good this year has been.
xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017)
Written by and made for your inner 12 year old
WOW. I wasn't expecting this. I don't know if it was because of all the hate giving me low expectations, or if the movie was actually good, but I enjoyed it. OK, so the movie isn't great, and arguable not good, but I still enjoyed it. I mean, sure its over the top, but that's exactly what this movie was supposed to be.
The actors are what sold this movie to me. Vin Diesel plays an over the top in his 50s teenage skater/ adrenaline junkie/womanizer/man-child really well and gives the movie the self awareness that makes it worth watching. I haven't seen any of the other xxx movies, but Vin Diesel grew on me throughout the movie, he was actually great. Toni Collette and Nina Dobrev also had stand out performances in this. I liked Toni Collette's performance a lot, she plays the cliché overblown shady, uptight government agent very well. Nina Dobrev is hilarious, one of her best scenes came from her mannerisms when she uses a machine gun for the first time, I loved her in it. Again, they were all over the top, but done so beautifully. I love how much Toni Collette and Tony Gonzalez make Xander seem so out of place, Tony especially plays it straight and the contrast between them should make it clear this movie knows its ridiculous.
To be honest I didn't like Donnie yen in the opening sequence, or the opening sequence in general for that matter. Don't get me wrong he was the best part of it, but I still didn't like it. The action in the opening sequence always involved sliding across a surface. I mean it gets out of hand. apparently if you're sliding or doing flips bullets don't affect you. There is just so much sliding in that part, that if there wasn't an overachieving janitor there the night before this entire heist would have failed. I wouldn't have minded the sliding and stuff, but the action here just wasn't enticing. I could almost see people just waiting to have their guns taken when Yen was ready to take it from them.
Passed that Donnie Yen gets some excellent action scenes, two of which stood out to me most. One was in the plane at the end where he's just taking out soldier after soldier hand to hand, I don't think anyone else could of done this so well, and he's pretty funny in between action. The other scene was the fight in the middle of traffic, I'm almost ashamed to say how much I liked this scene. It was nerve wracking and anxiety inducing to me, which is a complement.
Out of the other supporting cast Deepika Padukone is alright, she has a jaws tattoo sharing scene with Vin Diesel thats fairly forgettable if it hadn't reminded me a movie thats actually well directed. Rory McCann reminded me a lot of a lesser version of captain boomerang from suicide squad. Ruby Rose I didn't like that much at the beginning, I felt like some of her jokes and lines fell flat, besides that she was OK later on.
Ice cube had a wasted cameo, it was completely unnecessary. He just comes in and blows stuff up and doesn't do much else. It seemed like he couldn't be scheduled to be on set at the same time with everyone else so they made him shoot a gun from far away for about a minute. I would've liked to see an actual action scene with him, or something cool, he just kind of halts the action with explosions in a surprisingly disappointing way.
No comments on the plot, I don't know who the guy at the end was, or why he wanted the satellite control thing. I don't know why the main cast go from fighting each other to working together to fighting each other to random water ski motorcycle chase out of no where. Also some action scenes at the beginning were not fun, I didn't like the high jump, forest skiing road skate boarding at the start either. I felt like they were not shot well. On the other side of things, My favorite moment was at the end when Vin Diesel says "I live for this s***" and runs off the plane, that was the scene that sold his adrenaline junkie nature in natural and epic way. Other than that there are some fun moments, lots of women in bikinis, and basically a movie you should turn your brain off for. 6/10 (being a little generous here, looking back, the movie is pretty uneven).
Silence (2016)
Great film that runs too long
Silence is amazing. Martin Scorsese has proved to be the most consistent filmmaker of all time with a great body of work for each decade he's made movies. Here he continues to be as versatile and impressive as ever. Just by looking at the past two movies he has made, Silence and The Wolf of Wall Street, you can see this man has no bounds. He's probably the only filmmaker who's quality hasn't gone down over time, and this film proves it.
Although this movie is great, its not perfect. Now, this might seem to contradict everything I just wrote, but you will feel the pain all the Christians in this movie felt by siting through it. By that I mean, you'll need some serious stamina to get through the movie, it's extremely long and at times can be very boring. Its almost like Scorsese was trying to torture us so we can relate to the people on screen. Some parts feel a little repetitive too, especially after the two leads split up. The beginning drags on a little too much and so does the end. The movie didn't seem to know when to end, after the protagonist makes his final-ish decision in the movie, the movie should have been over just a bit after, but instead it kept going. I also feel people who aren't a part of a faith or really familiar with it might not enjoy some of the religious rituals depicted early on, honestly I'm religious and found a lot of those parts boring. I also didn't like that we had a disembodied God voice or the ending "reveal", its just a tool to spoon feed the message to the audience and completely unnecessary, taking us away from reality and taking away from Rodregues' struggle. The ending "reveal" was especially pointless telling us something we didn't need to be told and would have been better if the film let us doubt a bit.
Despite the not-so-goodness I just talked about, this movie stuck with me in a good way. This is one of the few movies where as I thought about it more after watching it, I liked it more rather than less. It's just so rich in meaning, everything about it, the decisions each character makes, from the villagers, the three priests, and the villains of the story. Looking at the Christian villagers and the three priests, everyone makes an important decision that is perfectly fleshed out. the motives and consequences of their actions are thought provoking, but I don't want to spoil anything so I'll move on. This is also one of those movies where the title is a beautiful representation of the film. The idea of silence being both the struggle and answer to those of faith is done perfectly (and kind of ruined when they give God a few lines, but I guess I'll let that slide). Looking away from the message and at the film itself, there are some scenes in this movie that are extremely tense that kept me hooked, of course there are also some less tense dragged out scenes, but when stuff happens and the plot moves it gets interesting and its too well done to ignore.
The entire cast in this movie is great. Liam Neeson isn't in much of this film, but when he is the subtlety of his performance is outstanding. Specifically, his interaction with Andrew Garfield are well done, the awkwardness and genuineness of it is great. Andrew Garfield once again takes the role of a religious man who has his faith tested, pride pushed, and is hunted by the Japanese in Japan. In all honesty, The characters and the films are very different, but this and Hacksaw Ridge are two home runs for Andrew Garfield as he is excellent in both roles, probably more so in this one because of the lack of his creepy smile. Adam Driver, Tadanobu Asano, Yôsuke Kubozuka and the rest of the supporting cast were also excellent and I would have liked to see more of Adam Driver in this because his character didn't have that much of an arch.
Overall loved it, it might be too long and religious for some, but I think you should be able to look past that and really see the deep meaning and excellent filmmaking at work.
Passengers (2016)
Decent chick flick, frustrating sci-fi
Passengers is a decent movie for what it is, a chick flick in space. I really didn't know what to expect going into this movie, I only saw one trailer, but I liked the cast and I liked the concept so I decided to watch. Coming out I was exasperated by the last quarter of the movie. There were so many possible ways of pushing the plot to its conclusion and they just picked one of the worst.
Before I get to that terribleness, I want to point out the things that were enjoyable in the film. The sets were beautiful and well done, with some very nice scenes in space. I absolutely loved the beginning of it. Chris Pratt's character, Jim, having to decide whether or not to wake up Aurora was probably the best part of this entire film. His decision is made in a believable fashion and his reaction to waking her and struggle he faces after is amazing. Jennifer Lawrence's acting is superb here, it really shows when she finds out the truth. The acting overall by both leads was great in the film.
SPOILERS Definitely BELOW.
Now, besides those plot points, its a chick flick. The entire middle section is Jim doing everything he did alone the year prior, except with Aurora. The meaning is good, and is pretty much spelled out for you. I didn't love the way this part played out, but it was decent enough. This is where the problems really begin. The meaning is basically told outright to the viewer by the android bar tender, and repeated again in case you missed it. Once one of the crew members wakes up the bs is kicked into high gear and piles on. First off, the entire plot past Laurence Fishburne waking up, relies completely on a crew member being the person to wake up. One thing I liked a lot about the beginning was that Aurora waking up wasn't by chance, this, however, was complete luck. There are 5,000 passengers and its the guy who could open every door and override every computer that wakes up. ARE YOU KIDDING? but lets ignore that, once he's gone, how does Jim know what to do? I get he's a mechanic, which is also pretty convenient, but there is no way he should know how to do half of this stuff, I feel like this would require some kind of very specific knowledge of large spacecrafts. But let's get beyond that too. This entire end bit is ridiculous and unbelievable. Once he survived the exhaust of the nuclear core thing, and who knows how much radiation, it became clear the filmmakers stopped caring about believability, and him surviving to the end became plainly obvious so there was no reason to care about him being left in space, or her tether not reaching to the end, we knew she would get him back, nothing was at stake. This frustrates me beyond belief because there is no reason to make this part so unbelievable. Absolutely no reason at all. If the point of the film was for these two just to spend their lives together at the end, why not go about the climax in any other way? They could have at least tried a little to make this semi-believable.
One last thing that bothered me was the part where the ship was passing by a star and the crew was told they should observe. WHY would that be programmed if the crew weren't supposed to be up by then? I thought this was some kind of clever hint that Jim and Gus woke up for a reason, that maybe what they know could help if the ship faces a problem and it was programmed to wake them if something went wrong. BUT NO. it was all by chance and the star was just a cheap visual.
Again the love story itself isn't bad, the two leads are believable, them coming together so easily at the end isn't, them spending the rest of their lives alone together happily is pretty ridiculous too, but whatever.
To sum it up, Great beginning, OK middle, terrible, terrible end. The end is just all around bad and the fact that the film maker needs to spoon feed the audience the messages throughout the film is bearable at some points, really annoying at others.
Overall the movie is a solid ehh, some really good positives, but not enough.