- Title: Jack the Giant Slayer
- IMDB: link
Turning fairy tales into big budget live-action CGI extravaganzas seems to be all the rage in Hollywood right now. Director Bryan Singer‘s Jack the Giant Slayer, the retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk, is an inarguably flawed film, but it’s certainly a step up from similar recent films such as Snow White and the Huntsman, Mirror Mirror, and even Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.
Singer’s modest success comes from casting two likable young stars (Nicholas Hoult, Eleanor Tomlinson), clever work in the editing room, some (mostly) good special effects, and fun supporting performances from the likes of Ewan McGregor, Ian McShane, and Stanley Tucci as the film’s dastardly villain Roderick who plans to use the giants to seize power in the kingdom and beyond.
The plot to Jack the Giant Slayer is relatively straight-forward. We’re given a hero’s journey as Jack (Hoult) sets out to prove his worth by helping to rescue Princess Isabelle (Tomlinson), whom he secretly loves, from an army of human-eating giants at the top of Jack’s beanstalk.
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Snitch is perplexing. Despite the promise of Dwayne “It’s Okay to Call Me The Rock Again” Johnson, plenty of action, and a poster that’s oddly similar to the The Rock’s last action flick, what writer/director Ric Roman Waugh and co-writer Justin Haythe deliver is a character study that’s short on action and a treatise whose true purpose is to lecture the audience on the the evils of mandatory minimum sentencing for drug-related crimes.
Despite being the most physically intimidating figure in the entire film, The Rock’s role is written as a upper-middle class suburban dad with little to no experience with violence. The Rock’s part seems obviously written for a schlub (Paul Giamatti would have made for far more natural casting). Choosing The Rock for a heavily dramatic role that doesn’t acknowledge, let alone make use of, his natural assets as an action star may allow the wrestler turned actor to broaden his breadth of work, but it’s just one of many odd choices Snitch makes during it’s nearly two-hour running time (which is about half-an-hour too long).
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If you have any personal experience with watching a loved one suffer a stroke or face the slow and debilitating end-of-life process writer/director Michael Haneke‘s Amour is likely to hit closer to home than you may like. Haneke’s tale is as simple as it is heartfelt, showcasing the strain of a stroke on the lives and the marriage of an elderly couple in their final months together.
Although there are cameo roles which include the couple’s daughter (Isabelle Huppert) and a former piano student (Alexandre Tharaud), Amour is really centered around the performances of Jean-Louis Trintignant as George and Emmanuelle Riva as his wife Anne. The entire film never leaves the walls in which the pair have made their home together which slowly becomes a prison for both of them when Anne suffers a second stroke.
Despite its success overseas, and several awards to its credit on this side of the Atlantic, Amour is only now slowly being released in the United States. You may have to search to find it, but despite its difficult subject matter it’s worth the wait.
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- Title: A Good Day to Die Hard
- IMDB: link
The original Die Hard did a lot of things very well, but one of the most remarked upon was its simplicity. Isolating the protagonist to a largely empty office building, Johh McClane spent most of the film without guns, gadgets, even shoes. Playing the game this straight let all of McClane’s accomplishments shine harder, and stacked up the stakes even more hopelessly against him.
But you don’t need simplicity for a great film. That’s surely something the filmmakers of A Good Day to Die Hard kept in mind with this fifth film in the series. This time around, McClane flys to Russia hoping to get his ne’er-do-well son (played by Jai Courtney, not great) out some trouble he’s run into.
Turns out that the boy is undercover – John Jr. has become a professional at one of his Dad’s recurring hobbies – saving the world, or something like it. Both McClanes become entangled, despite their estranged relationship, on a mission to rescue a political prisoner.
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- Title: Warm Bodies
- IMDB: link
Never was there a tale of love condemned more than that of Julie (Teresa Palmer) and her zombie boyfriend (Nicholas Hoult). One is a human-acting zombie from the wrong side of the tracks. The other is the tempestuous daughter of the leader (John Malkovich) of the army obsessed with blasting the brain-eaters off the face off the Earth.
From writer/director Jonathan Levine (50/50, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane) comes a post-apocalyptic zombie love story take on William Shakespeare‘s classic Romeo and Juliet which definitely has a pulse.
Presented from the point of view of R (Hault), a thoughtful zombie who begins to believe he can be more than just an undead scavenger after meeting Julie (Palmer) and eating her boyfriend’s (Dave Franco) brains, Levine’s script is far more clever than I expected. Warm Bodies may not reach the heights of Shaun of the Dead, but with some heart and a good sense of humor this new take on a classic love story embraces the more absurdist elements of it’s premise and is a surprisingly compelling and entertaining story.
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- Title: Quartet
- IMDB: link
Quartet, which marks actor Dustin Hoffman‘s first time behind the camera in the director’s chair, is a perfectly fine (if completely unremarkable) film.
Adapted by Ronald Harwood from his play of the same name, the plot centers around the goings-on at a British retirement home for musicians. Our leading foursome is made up of a stroke victim who has lost the ability to censor himself (Billy Connolly), an increasingly confused busybody dealing with the on-set of Alzheimer’s (Pauline Collins), and the buttoned-down Reggie (Tom Courtenay) whose life is thrown upside down by the arrival of the famous former fourth member of their illustrious quartet, his ex-wife Jean (Maggie Smith).
Most of the film is devoted into two stories. The first involves Jean trying to earn Reggie’s forgiveness and reconnect with the love of her life who she lost to a terrible mistake in judgement decades ago. Pretty much by the book, you can probably guess exactly how this plotline plays out.
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- Title: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
- IMDB: link
“Whatever you do, don’t eat the fucking candy.”
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters offers audiences the further adventures of Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton), the young brother and sister first introduced by the Brothers Grimm 200 years ago. After a brief retelling of the classic fairy tale (with one or two important tweaks) in which the young children fight off and kill a powerful witch living in a candy house in the woods, we catch up years later with our hero and heroine after they have become the world’s most famous witch hunters.
The plot by Tommy Wirkola (who also directs) and Dante Harper isn’t all that imaginative as Hansel and Gretel are pitted against a grand witch (Famke Janssen) with plans to use the rare event of a Blood Moon to make her coven invincible. What makes the film work, often in spite of itself, is its sense of humor and constant awareness of what it is. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is dumb fun embracing the ridiculous with witches more than a little reminiscent of Deadites and a pair of likable heroes that get knocked around repeatedly over the course of the film. It’s a film about life and death that never takes either all that seriously.
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- Title: Zero Dark Thirty
- IMDB: link
The Best Movie of 2012
Three years ago director
Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter
Marc Boal collaborated on
The Hurt Locker which won them both individual Academy Awards as well as taking home the coveted Oscar for Best Picture. With
Zero Dark Thirty the pair reunite to examine the decade-long search for
Osama bin Laden.
The project was not with pitfalls or controversy. Bigelow and Boal were about to start filming an entirely different script when news hit that American forces had found and killed the man responsible for the attacks on 9/11. Scrapping their initial project, Bigelow and Boal refocused to examine the work that went in to finding America’s most wanted.
The film’s detractors (almost none of whom have seen the film) attack it for what some believe is a pro-torture stance, the filmmakers access to classified information surrounding the search for bin Laden, and some have even argued against what they (wrongfully) believe is a pro-Obama propaganda piece. None of these allegations are true. What is true, however, is Zero Dark Thirty is the best movie of 2012.
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- Title: Gangster Squad
- IMDB: link
Gangster Squad is an average straight-to-DVD action flick that happens to be set in the 1950′s and boast a cast of actors all of whom are slumming here. Adapted from Paul Lieberman’s book, the film centers around real events in Los Angeles when a select group of cops worked to take down gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) by any means necessary. And by “adapted” I mean any relation to the events covered in Lieberman’s book (such as who survives and how Cohen was eventually taken down) to screenwriter Will Beall‘s script are likely accidental.
I can only guess director Ruben Fleischer lured the likes of Penn, Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Nick Nolte, and Robert Patrick to the project with the proposal of making something akin to The Untouchables (which this film desperately wants to be compared to). With poorly cast actors, dreadful dialogue, costumes and sets that feel more like costumes and sets than period locations and attire, Gangster Squad couldn’t be further from Brian De Palma‘s terrific film. It’s actually closer to something as completely forgettable as Takers.
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- Title: Promised Land
- IMDB: link
How far will you go for your job even when you know what you are doing is wrong? That’s the question at the center of director Gus Van Sant‘s Promised Land. Matt Damon (who co-wrote the screenplay with costar John Krasinski) stars as Steve Bulter, a rising star for a natural gas company sent in to a small town with his partner (Frances McDormand) to get his company an initial foothold in the state.
Butler is a closer, known for his ability to use his own small town upbringing to close communities far faster than anyone else. His last trip in the field before his big promotion leads him to a small town hit by hard economic times looking for just the kind of relief his company can offer.
What starts out as a simple sale is complicated by a variety of factors including a local science teacher (Hal Holbrook) against the dangers of natural gas, a possible love interest (Rosemarie DeWitt), and the arrival of a do-gooder (Krasinski) who scares off potential buyers with horror stories of how fracking has destroyed similar farming towns.
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