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Rollerball (2002)
Yikes......
There are bad films...... and then there are films like Rollerball. I'm still trying to figure out why someone thought that this would be a good idea.
The acting is "meh" at the best of times, the script is bizarre and who in their right mind thought Rebecca Romijn would pull off a fake Dutch accent?
... and a ten minute sequence filmed with a NightVision filter? It could have worked if it had been filmed in first-person, but the angles make it illogical at best. It's like The Fast and the Furious had a kid with Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome... and it had a severe mental disability. The only reason this gets a 1-star rating is because it is impossible to give it a 0-star rating.
Haywire (2011)
Watchable... step forward.
Not a bad film, by any stretch of the imagination. The acting gets a little wooden in places (to be fair, Gina Carano is a fighter and not an actor) and the story isn't the flashiest action picture of all time, but it is still a very watchable film. Probably the most impressive part of this film is that action set pieces look really good. Aside from a couple "What a conveniently placed ledge!" moments, the action is fun to watch and generally makes sense.
Now, the big step forward: Gina Carano as a tough female action hero. Sure, there have been other "actiony" films about women -- Colombiana, Point of No Return, Domino, etc.-- but they all have the same flaw... the over-sexualization of the protagonist. In Haywire, Gina Carano is usually dressed reasonably, she doesn't get by merely on her looks, and doesn't have to get close to a bad guy by seducing him. In other words, she's a clandestine agent who can kick butts. I love the fact that Soderbergh has put together an action film about a woman and she is perfectly believable as a dangerous person without being butch or a slut.
Final thought: Worth seeing once.
The Great Gatsby (2013)
The Great Gatsby...... The Great
Just saw Baz Luhrmann's "Great Gatsby". ((note: for a fun drinking game, take a shot every time I mention Moulin Rouge)) Thought I might just throw out a review for the heck of it. First things first, it isn't perfect--though, if you expected it to be, you were expecting too much of an adaptation of a book. The script came down with a bad case of "Titanic Syndrome" ((those with angst about the liberal use of the words "Rose" and "Jack" in that film will know what I'm talking about)), to the point that if I hear someone called "Old Sport" again, someone is going to get punched. For the record, Harry Potter has a lot of the same problem with the script... it's almost like the writer forgot that this was going to be filmed (allowing us to see who is being addressed) and seen in one sitting (so we know that the person called "old sport" in shot 4A is the same person in shot 12B). Apart from that small shortcoming in the script, the acting was pretty good and the action was well paced.
Now, the real reason for seeing a Baz Luhrmann film... the cinematography. The film strikes a near-perfect blend of not taking itself too seriously and heavy inter-personal drama. Like the three previous full-scale productions Luhrmann has done (Australia, Moulin Rouge, and Romeo + Juliet), the main reason for seeing this film is the impeccably creative way in which the story is told. If you've seen Moulin Rouge, you may get a little distracted in the use of the "in scene narrator" and semi-first-person storytelling as it feels all too familiar to the previous project... but the stories are so radically different in both setting and content that that can be pretty quickly tossed aside. There is some pretty sick animation work done too (for example, during a snow storm towards the end of the film, instead of snowflakes, it is falling and rotating letters which forms the words of the narration on the screen) that all is done for great effect to never let the viewer forget that they are hearing a story that is being typed. This is what allows for the already-mentioned similarity to Moulin Rouge... and the rockstar persona that comes with it.
For some reason, when you make clear that the story you are seeing is taking place in context to a story being told within the film (ie, the "main character" of the actual film is telling the story you are watching to other people), it allows for a lot more bending of the rules of reality. Moulin Rouge and 300 would be the clearest examples of this--though there are certainly others. Because the rules of the road can be ignored somewhat, Baz Luhrmann feels quite comfortable setting a party scene in the 1920's Empire architecture with 2012 hip hop and then dares the audience to question it (like Moulin Rouge). The weird part is that it works. I don't know if it is the combination of the bombastic characters, the semi-over-colored sets or the core animation/camera work, but for some reason the blend of JayZ production capabilities with the "flapper/speakeasy/gangster" vibe fits in the 1920's atmosphere almost seamlessly... probably because this is the kind of music you would expect to hear there if they had it.
For the real crowning moment, however, we find another of Luhrmann's recent favorites... a film with no good guys. Like Moulin Rouge, Gatsby centers on a protagonist who isn't the main character--yet whose main role is to narrate the film and hold all the various story elements together. Also, like Moulin Rouge, the narrator is a washed up writer that the world has chewed up and spit back out that is writing/narrating the story as a way to get it off their chest. Because of this, like in Moulin Rouge, pretty much everybody involved turns out to be a shmuck. There's the girl that makes you groan, the guy you want to deck at every opportunity, the love story with a bad ending and a couple rowdy and colorful party scenes in the middle. Though, I will say, watching this movie did make me wish I was a bond salesman in New York during the 1920's...... I wish I could get paid for doing that little work in a week.
Final thought: Lots of eyecandy, sterling camera work, underpaid animators, good actors, good-but-not-great script. They told the story of Great Gatsby mostly as I remember it from the book.
G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)
Underrated
First things first: this film needs to be seen (and is being reviewed) through the lens of it being a summer blockbuster. High on entertainment value, low on "artsy-ness". Translation: this film exists primarily as eye-candy--if you are expecting Oscar-winning writing or acting, you are watching the wrong film.
Now, about the film itself... it's worth sitting through just for the cliff-sequence and the Dwayne Johnson/Ray Stevenson fight. If you watched Day After Tomorrow just to see the Empire State Building get frozen, you will not be disappointed with this GI Joe sequel. Great visuals, some eminently watchable actors (Johnson, Willis and Stevenson all punctuate the film with some enjoyable interaction) and a serious throwback to the over-the-top action style of the 90's classics. The nice thing about the GI Joe movies is that both avoid the deadly sins of Transformers by not taking themselves too seriously.
Now the bad: firstly, and perhaps too obviously, this is a movie based on a line of action figures. While it defrays this largely by writing the kind of story that an 8-year-old would come up with on a Saturday afternoon, it is still a movie based on a line of action figures. Secondly, this film has it's share of laughable moments, but it is mostly due to the dialogue writing instead of the actors... on that note, thumbs up to Adrianne Palicki for being able to hold her own opposite Bruce Willis--some good chemistry there. Hope to see her in some other stuff.
There are definitely worse ways to spend 2 hours and this review is probably going to catch hell... but I found this a really enjoyable film that I could just relax and have fun in.
The Bourne Legacy (2012)
Liked it, not perfect.
I'll start off positive-- I liked Bourne Legacy. There, I said it.
Bourne Legacy--had it come out right after Bourne Identity-- is a fine enough film in its own right. It is more character-based and Jeremy Renner does a pretty good job with his role (as he usually does). Legacy, however, is going to suffer in the eyes of most fans of the franchise because of the ridiculously high bar set by Ultimatum. The director tries to tie Legacy to the other films with occasional references to both Supremacy and Ultimatum, but the problem is that this film has almost nothing to do with Bourne in the direct sense. Thus, the attempts at tying this film in so directly with the others almost makes Legacy seem even more ancillary to the other three in the franchise... "Here's what happening in Germany right now, so we are going to SE Asia."
For the hardcore Matrix fans, you could make a comparison of "Enter the Matrix" and the film trilogy to Bourne Legacy and the original three. Not necessarily a bad thing, but certainly not of the same "oomph".
If you watch the original three Bourne films, there is a cinematographic progression where the cameras become more frantic and shaky from one film to the next, matching the action and intensity of the story. In Legacy, the story is much smaller and more compact, meaning the cameras are more fluid and smooth. In essence, it would be like watching the trilogy and then going back and re-watching Identity immediately afterward... after the hectic nature of Ultimatum, Identity feels very slow-moving and less adrenaline filled. Take that to the next level for Legacy.
Final word: Good, but not perfect... probably would have fared better if not for the monumental expectation created by Ultimatum.
Olympus Has Fallen (2013)
Nice Idea, Badly Executed
Occasionally you go to a theater just to see a jingoistic throwback of a man-vs-world action thriller... unfortunately this one earns a 4/10 on the strength of the idea more than the execution of a watchable film. The CGI is pretty amateur (like, "90's Command and Conquer" amateur) and the composite shots are quite obviously footage from two different cameras.
The acting is passable, though unspectacular, but the casting is fairly curious... Aaron Eckhart is a pretty good actor, but one of the least "presidential" people I think I've ever seen in my life. Battle for LA and Thank You For Smoking were perfect for him, but being Presidential just over-matches him. Gerard Butler's American accent is "ok" but still laughable in places... However, Yune's portrayal of a psychotic villain--though typecast and telegraphed--is pretty fun to watch.
If you pay attention while watching the film, almost none of the plot twists are that shocking... except the one that inexplicably "doesn't happen". It's almost like they 2/3 of the way through the film and realized that they needed to drastically change the story to allow the main character a moment of redemption-- but didn't have the attention span to make it work with the rest of the script, so they just kind of left it as was. **Spoiler Alert** It's in with the Cerberus codes... they just ignored the part about getting the last piece out of the President.
Beyond the off-balanced quirks and shoddy cinematography, the only real complaint to make is that it is fairly generic. If you want popcorn, it's "alright", but probably best as a Redbox night.
Love Never Dies (2012)
Good--not spectacular.
Okay, so, I watched this reasonably soon after having watched the Phantom of the Opera 25th anniversary performance--so a) it was fresh and b) I might be a little harsh.
The camera work was a little...interesting. There was only one shot (before the curtain call) that showed any of the audience, so it was easy to forget you were watching a play in a theater--except that you kept seeing stage lights in shots. Not a bad thing, but not ideal. The music is good, but rather weak in comparison to Phantom. Phantom is soaring and operatic... LND had me asking if Webber composed it in collaboration with Trans-Siberian Orchestra. The big thing for me, however, is the continuity disasters between LND and Phantom that fundamentally change the apparent story in Phantom. Full-disclosure, I think Love Never Dies would be perfectly fine in it's own right, but as a sequel to the awesomeness of Phantom of the Opera... I was a bit disappointed. I did appreciate the sporadic musical references to Phantom of the Opera in the score, however.