Cinema Alliance Movie Reviews

Share

For news, movies, events, catalog and more!

www.cinema-alliance.com

Where to begin your Pulitzer Prize-winning final love sonnet to your beautiful America, eh? In a weepy dream filled with Disneyesque animatronic unicorns and CGI sea otters that talk like Ernest Borgnine? I think not. Why not begin at the end, the end of everything you hold dear? Why not gracefully narrate in an elegiac (as in elegy: a mournful poem, a lament for the dead) fashion a book about the collapse of the very thing you hold closest to your heart? Why not envision the end as a death march for survival during which you shepherd your own sole heir, your son, into a most uncertain future? This is what Cormac McCarthy, author of  The Road has done. The movie was released in 2009, and director John Hillencoat and screenwriter Joe Penhall  have ably adapted this tale and crafted a near defining moment in the genre of the Apocalypse movie.

Yes, of course there is a genre. Independence Day, I am Legend, 2112, On the Beach, The Road Warrior, Fail Safe, Dr. Strangelove, Cloverfield, War of the Worlds, The Stand, The Book of Eli, etc. My nickname for this genre is Toast: The Movie. Because we’re doomed, of course.

When I say that this movie defines the genre, I say so with respect for its achievements. It is fearsomely, brutally honest about the likely effects of a societal breakdown caused by a nuclear war. You will see scenes of summary execution and cannibalism that, in my opinion, are far more terrifying than the usual horror movie treatment of the subject for their jarring realism. You will see a decision made over and over that is seldom presented honestly in Horriblewood’s Big Book of Plot Devices, the decision to let some other innocent suffer and die at the hands of savages so that we may live another day. Nope, we’re not ever going to try to save ‘em. No chance, no way.

The story takes us on a final tour, a final quest, where Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee as father and son (archetypes, I daresay) push their little cart to the Gulf coast in order to find out if life is any better there. They see all manner of horror and danger and just a little bit of good. They fight and mostly run away in a gray landscape of burned trees to a battered shoreline covered in busted bridges, stranded ships and rusted , broken cars. (Brilliantly shot at Mt. St. Helens and post flood NOLA, apparently). Look for Robert Duvall in a great cameo involving canned peaches.

The main issue in the story is this: how can you possibly teach your son to have a sense of right and wrong in the face of such misery and disaster? How can you convince him that he has to be a good guy, to keep his inner torch burning? Are there any other good people left at all? As you watch two of the toughest characters you have ever seen scrabble like rats, pick through abandoned houses, and eat bugs, you will wonder what you ever had to complain about, ever. Arguably, it even has a happy ending. I rate this movie five one megaton warheads, and I command you to watch it on DVD with a couple of whiny teenagers. Though exquisitely crafted, it was overlooked at the box office. Don’t miss it, especially if you like horrific  speculative fiction.

Kevin Bolshaw

When I first heard of this film I got instantly excited due to the lineup. Now, I am 41 and watched a lot of action films during the 80’s and 90’s. I typically do not go into an action film thinking that I’m going to watch Citizen Kane. I know better. And I know that an action film is there for entertainment, pure and simple. So, while I have a wide variety of tastes as a film fan and a variety of styles as a filmmaker, I can certainly sit back with a big heaping mug of suspension-of-disbelief and just enjoy the escape.

Back to the lineup…

Ok, wow. There’s never been an assembly of big screen action dudes like this, ever. And boy is this fun! Sylvester Stallone co-wrote and directed The Expendables and did an excellent job (he’s been back to kicking ass since the most recent holy-shit-this-is-gory Rambo installment). The story opens with a group of Somalian pirates that have taken some hostages and are looking for their ransom. Stallone and his crew show up to “negotiate” and end up taking out the baddies and saving the innocents. Good stuff. From there we get to know the boys a bit more through some back story mixed in with current events. Something that’s interesting here is that Stallone is always conscious of his age and while he’s had some work done on his famous mug here and there, he plays the role at his age. This isn’t a bunch of has-beens trying to relive their action hero glory days. It’s about a group of aging mercenaries who are getting up there and while they’re still damn sharp and in great shape, they’re also getting older.

Dolph Lundgren’s character is a good example here as he seems to be the burn out recovering from an addiction to something (I don’t think we ever heard what specifically) who occasionally attacks Jet Li’s character (even though they’re on the same side most of the time). You also have Tool, the wise sage of the group played by Mickey Rourke who has retired from killing but still acts as Stallone’s philosophical advice giver and even has a pretty deep monologue about regret at one point. Then there’s Stallone’s Barney Ross character who goes toe-to-toe with Stone Cold Steve Austin and doesn’t fair as well as he might have in the past and seems painfully aware of that.

The story continues in a pretty typical way and while it’s not a new story, it sure is fun just to sit back and watch it play out even though you know where it’s going. No real surprises script-wise.

The action is what you’re here for and there’s plenty of it, from the opening scene on in fact. There’s plenty of gun fights, hand to hand, knives and explosions, LLLOOTTTTSSS of explosions. The hand to hand is much fun to see play out given the expertise of Li, Jason Statham as well as UFC fighter Randy Couture who also gets to take on Steve Austin. My only complaint with some of the action is there are times that it’s hard to see what’s going on thanks to this latest camera style of everything shaky and kinetic. As a director, it drives me nuts to see this over-used which is happening in more and more films. The kinetic style is cool but it’s super-trendy and takes away from actually getting to see what’s happening.

As far as star power, well that’s what gave this project the headlines it got in the first place. Besides Stallone, Li, Lundgren, Couture, Austin, Statham and Rourke, Bruce Willis shows up in here as does the governator himself – Arnold Schwarzenegger. Terry Crews (the dad from Everybody Hates Chris) rounds out Stallone’s team of mercs.

To the critic who said these guys were washed up: bite me. The Expendables shows what makes these guys fun to watch in the first place. For a mega-explosion of massive manliess, check out The Expendables! (I love the quotes for actions movie reviews too)

Side note – there were some great trailers that lead off the movie experience. Robert Rodriquez’s Machete is going to be freakin’ AMAZING.

reviewed by Sean McKnight

OK, I am not going to warn you again, take your heart medicine and hold on tight because this is violence porn action madness. Bring eyedrops to get the gunpowder smoke out of your eyes. Leave the women and children at home and hunker down in that movie seat and hold on to the armrests. The Expendables starts in real time and stays in real time, from the opening hostage situation to the final battle, with very little in the way of flashbacks or reveries or any such thing. You will enter a world of make-believe, yes, where the gun is (sadly) the conflict resolution tool of choice and the cops never show up no matter how many clips you empty on the street in the city during rush hour.

Don’t let your moral considerations keep you from seeing Mickey Rourke (who apparently never bathes), Jason Statham (now, he has charisma, and ought to do a “real” dramatic role), Sylvester Stallone, and a bunch of other rather fugly, hairy-chested action hero types (including Stone Cold Steve Austin and Jet Li) just thrash about in a well choreographed orgy of car chases and lead flinging. Does art imitate life or does life imitate art? Sly Stallone likely doesn’t care, and most of the audiences that see this movie won’t either. It will entertain most people, even though we all might spend a moment wondering when watching killing and mayhem became such a pervasive form of entertainment, and does that account, at least in part, for our crazy violent American homeland.

At the very least, this is high grade killing and mayhem, with many beautiful explosions, such as the scene where Stallone and Statham incinerate a whole column of men and vehicles on a dock on a South American island. Kill the bad coke dealers. Kill the evil South American dictators. Kill them all, and let God sort them out, as the old mercenary t-shirt reads. If you don’t like killing, stabbing, stomping, burning, exploding, and punching, then stay home. It is all ok here, in the world of the male id, everything except hurting women. If you hurt women you are a bad man. This point is made repeatedly and ridiculously in the film. Kill 42 people, but don’t hit a lady. OK. Fine. That does seem a bit hypocritical, but it is apparently part of the rather dim-witted world view of the director (Stallone) and writer (Stallone) that we don’t hurt women and we mercilessly kill all the soldiers, dictators, and rogue CIA coca merchants. Quite simple, really. Simple and ridiculous and abstract and surreal, like Waiting for Godot or Alice in Wonderland with automatic rifles and C-4. Sort of. Though, all in all, it is a well made movie, with excellent pacing and the requisite gooney one liners.

The female lead, rebellious daughter of dictator General Garza, Giselle Itié, is beautiful, and possibly the only pretty thing besides the scenery in the movie. Sorry, boys. In a strange attempt to inject some historical currency into this story she is water-boarded to extract her secrets toward the end of the film, don’t ask me why, when everybody else is just beaten up for the sheer joy of it.

The film has an unexpected cameo. No, not Bruce Willis or the Ahnold; it is the A-12 automatic shotgun, occasionally shooting mini-grenades that obliterate people is horrible geysers of blood. (Yuck.) (While, like Bruce Willis and Mr. Schwartzenegger,it is not credited, it would have received higher billing than the Ahnold, this is that kind of movie.) I imagine it has a bright future in Traumawood.

I won’t ruin the plot for you. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Like I could. Everybody dies horribly except for the mercenaries. Mickey Rourke has a reverie where he muses that even though he has killed more people than the black plague, he could have saved his soul if he had just saved this one innocent woman. Everybody gathers back at the tattoo parlor to throw knives and wait for the sequel. The End.

Kevin Bolshaw

Coming Attractions –Late August 2010

No chick flicks were promoted during The Expendables. Predictably.

It’s coming, like a demented joke movie trailer that couldn’t be stopped. Danny Trejo in Machete. Robert DiNiro. Jeff Fahey, the pilot from Lost. Jessica Alba. That Lohan chick who cannot seem to stay out of trouble. Cheech Marin, Steven Seagal, and Don Johnson. If this movie doesn’t burn a hole in the screen, it can’t be done. With a cast like this, with a director like Rodriguez, people will be howling and screaming in the theater during the 9-3 opening.

Green Hornet, starring Seth Rogan is either brilliant or this is a giant floparoo. Don’t miss it? Cameron Diaz, Edward Furlong, and Edward James Olmos. This either is great or just another comic book inspired story thrown up against the wall to see if it sticks. But the production design and gadgets look interesting. Scheduled for 1-14-11, this is not the first attempt to “movie-tize” this material.

Devil. M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie about something scary that kills people in an elevator during this trailer. Due out 9-17. A cast of nobodies in an elevator down to the dank underbelly of the movie industry. Audiences must possibly endure the hell of another failed MNS vehicle…

The Last Exorcism. Come on, that was at least two exorcisms ago, ok?

Did I see a trailer for SAW 3D in splatterSurround?  There And also Piranha 3D? I know that Sean wants to see this, but…SAW 3D is SAW VII. I haven’t really tuned to these movies, but with this many sequels, they must be great, right? I mean with like 14 hours to fill, the creative people behind this must have explained life, the universe, and everything, right?

Piranha 3D is scheduled for 8-20-10, so it is out now. Here is the cast: Richard Dreyfuss  Ving Rhames, Christopher Lloyd. Either it will be great and campy or….CHOMP (it will bite)!

Kevin Bolshaw

Despicable Me tells the story of Gru, a criminal mastermind out to get himself back in the spotlight as the ultimate villain. It turns out Gru has some competition in the form of another villain named Vector who’s the up-and-comer as far as new, hip villains go. Gru’s plan to put himself back on top involves stealing the moon but he finds some hurdles along the way when Vector provides some opposition. Gru finds it necessary to adopt 3 little girls as a way of combating his arch nemesis in a plot to infiltrate Vector’s fortress and steal back the shrink ray he needs for his moon caper.

Unexpectedly to him, Gru becomes attached to the little girls which throws a curve ball into his plans for world domination (isn’t that always the case?). From there, Gru has to comes to terms with his newfound desire for fatherhood while still appeasing his partner Dr. Nefario and the evil minions that serve him.

Good stuff! The film is well written and while predictable, you don’t really care since this film is primarily set up as fun family fare (which it is). The dialog and interaction of the characters is clever and well constructed and the confrontations between Gru and Vector are enjoyable in a cartoonish way. There are definitely some laugh out loud moments in here.

The 3D design and animation are pretty typical of what’s out there. Overall, the art work is great and as far as the animation goes, the roller coaster sequence is a hoot.

The talent does a fine job with the likes of Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Julie Andrews, Will Arnett, Danny McBride and Jemaine Clement all lending their voices to the characters.

Check out Despicable Me!

reviewed by Sean McKnight

I went and saw Inception at the cinema. After the last time, when it cost me eight (?? !!) dollars for a bottle of water and a small coke, I just invited a date with a large purse and we had tequila sunrises and gourmet popcorn (and I make the best), so to heck with you Regal and AMC! Until you get your value to price ratio in line over there at the concession, we’ll be the people sitting on the aisle with the big bag full of stuff that is a lot better that what you have to sell, anyway.

So, the drinks were not better than the movie, but it was close. Perhaps it had something to do with the casting. Every time Ellen Page came on the screen all I could think of was her Cisco television ads. Pete Postlethwaite was better as Mr. Kobayashi in Unusual Suspects. DiCaprio was just in another dream movie a few months ago. Tom Berenger and Michael Caine are like the faces on currency, they are so familiar. And while the performances were workman like, the plot was so convoluted that I believe that the actors were probably having a bit of difficulty in determining what the motivation was for a given dream layer event.

The plot. Where to begin….inception refers to the process of planting a thought in someone’s head, which you hope that they will think is theirs in order to subvert their motivation. This process can be done during a dream within a dream. Leonardo DiCaprio’s character is a dream diver. He will jump into a dream with some CEO or pol and steal secrets. How this is done isn’t exactly clear, but it all seems plausible enough. That is, until the part where the first dream leads into another dream where time goes slower and dreamers who cannot awake in time are trapped in a world where they sink into madness. Pretty risky. So. Let’s do it!

So, Dom Cobb hand picks a team and they go scuba diving in the mind of some heir to a great energy empire in order to convince him to break up the company. On and on through the levels of confusion in order to get him to break up his father’s company against his will(for whatever reason). For about an hour and a half there are chases and gunfights in a number of locations designed to both implant the incept idea and keep the prime dreamers form being awakened. It is interesting to watch, and I wonder if I would have made more sense of it if the pacing had been slower. It is a dream, so perhaps there is no making sense of it. In the end, I didn’t care if the subject made his implanted decision happen. I didn’t care if Cobb (DiCaprio) woke up or stayed in the dream. The whole story came down to: did he stay in the dream or didn’t he? And in my view, we poor confused audience members didn’t know or care enough, and were left a little stunned, but we didn’t lack for entertainment. That is good, I guess, given the cost of tickets.

At a minimum, you will have to watch this twice with a notebook to “figure it out”. One of those times you might want to watch it in IMAX. (I wish I had.) This is an engaging and clever movie. Not as clever as the Matrix (and they did it first). Not as engaging as Bad News Bears (how are you going to match Matthau and adorable misbehaving moppets?) I rate it three fervid fence-jumping sheep. Go for the matinee price or spruce up the experience with IMAX.

Kevin Bolshaw

Inception is the latest film from Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan who was also the mastermind behind the mind bender Memento. This time out he returns to his Memento roots with a film that explores the subconscious and what happens when you dig deep into it, particularly digging down into the different levels of subconscious mind.

Leonardo Dicaprio is Dom Cobb who’s speciality is infiltrating people’s minds to find out secrets, more specifically secrets that someone else has hired Dicaprio’s character to extract. In his most recent assignment, Dicaprio and his team are tapped to do the opposite with the intent now to actually implant an idea rather than extract one which is apparently much more difficult. The team is made up of a number of people with very specific roles: Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the role of security as Arthur, Ellen Page is the architect who designs the minds landscape (mindscape?), Tom Hardy portrays Eames who provides distraction and coercion, and Ken Watanabe is the client behind the job.

The movie parallels The Matrix on different levels but doesn’t copy it; Inception has it’s own principals in terms of how the universe of the subconscious works and how we can venture inside of it. And like most movies of this nature, it can be a bit tricky to follow where you are and what’s going on. Unlike Memento (which had a reverse-forward kind of presentation to it), Inception is a little easier to grasp if you can remember the concept of a dream-within-a-dream. All in all the concepts of Inception are explained and portrayed in such a way that you won’t necessarily get lost but you may need to watch it 3 or 4 times to fill in some of the subtle blanks.

Very well written and directed; yet another example of why Nolan is a great filmmaker.

The acting in here is great as well. Leonardo Dicaprio does a great job in the lead as he faces the demons of his past while struggling to put the past behind him and be reunited with his children. The cast is rounded out by strong perfomances across the board from Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Marion Cotillard and Lukas Haas.

Try to catch this one on the big screen if possible, it’s one of those films you’ll regret not seeing in the theater. One last side note – be sure to Google: Inception+ending as there are some very spirited debates happening right now in regards to the ending of the film which doesn’t necessarily leave things so neatly finished up.

reviewed by Sean McKnight

I feel like an old school DJ (“I’m gonna take you back to the vaults here for an old classic…”). There is a whole generation who haven’t seen this film, the film that made Miramax by some accounts, a film that is going to be impossible to review properly without killing the great plot twist that won its writer/director Neal Jordan the Oscar for best screen play in 1993. STOP HERE, if you want to see the movie with the plot twist intact. By the same token, I just re-watched it recently with full foreknowledge of the plot twist and I was inexplicably moved. I was touched.

As much as I remembered the larger points of the film, I had forgotten lots of the details. More to the point, I was surprised at how much ground had been covered in a limited budget independent film. (I’ll use film here, it was shot on celluloid, I am certain. You may not have noticed, but so much is shot on digital now that I studiously avoid the term film and use the term movie (wonk-wonk-wonk)).

Alright, let us get to the reasons you should take the time to watch this movie. First off, you will discover or rediscover the genius of Forest Whitaker. He steals the film in the first act, even though he (mostly) disappears. I really enjoy Mr. Whitaker’s work, and after Ghost Dog and The Last King of Scotland, this is the one to see. I am coming to the realization that he is like Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Robert Di Niro, and their ilk, a serious student of method acting who does his work and lets it speak for itself, period. Mr. Whitaker will draw all of your sympathy as a captive British soldier about to be executed by IRA operatives in the Irish countryside. While captive, Jody, the soldier, makes friends with one of his captors, the hapless and tortured Fergus, whose unenviable job is to kill Jody if the IRA’s demands are not met. Jody shows Fergus (ably played by Stephen Rea in what is really the starring role of the film) pictures of his girl and cracks jokes in between tearful pleas for freedom. He asks Fergus to go and have a drink with his girl at their favorite bar if he doesn’t make it. Their scenes together are great, and the story kept me riveted as I wondered if Fergus could really kill Jody.

Well, the moment of truth does come, especially as the other IRA operatives insist that the “punishment” be meted out. Fergus almost lets Jody run off as he takes him into the fields around the abandoned farm where Jody has been held for execution. Fergus chases Jody and is obviously having a struggle with himself about shooting the fleeing man in the back when Jody breaks through the brush and into a road where he is summarily and ironically squashed by a British armored personnel carrier come to rescue him. The IRA hideout gets blasted to bits and the survivors run for the hills. End of act one.

Act two begins in London, where we find Fergus working as a construction laborer and obliquely stalking Jody’s girl, hairdresser Dil. He goes to her shop and gets a haircut. And, eventually, he follows her to her favorite night spot and watches her sing karaoke, finally summoning the nerve to buy her a drink. There are a lot of subtle cues in the bar scenes, especially when Col, the bartender ties to tell Fergus “something” about Dil, a conversation which dies on the vine due to the noise from music and bar chatter. Meetings in the bar continue until Fergus and Dil become friends, Fergus saves her from an abusive boyfriend, and then they almost become lovers. Fergus has something to tell Dil, though, that holds him back: he was responsible for her man’s death. Somehow they manage to work their way through that rough terrain and all seems well. Unexpectedly though, just at the big love scene moment, Dil leaves the bedroom, disrobes, and comes back as a man, an anatomically correct man, at that. Fergus (a bit naïve, this one) is shocked, dismayed, sicks up in the sink, and punches Dil in the face. This is the end of act two.

At the beginning of act three, things are rocky. It appears that Dil and Fergus really have come to love each other, but are struggling to even communicate (this is where the film really breaks some ground). It looks like things might even fade out to anonymity between Dil and Fergus, except that the evil IRA operatives show up in London, looking for Fergus to do an assassination for them. Since the assassination is a suicide mission, they threaten Dil’s life if he won’t do it. From here until the end, the pressure mounts for Fergus to save Dil, confront his affection for “her”, get clear of the IRA, and reconcile his feelings about his life. You will enjoy following this to the end, so I will leave off here without spelling things out.

Suffice to say, I found this film to be a tasteful and tender hearted examination of TSTV/gay culture, one of the best ever. Dil’s role is wonderfully acted by Jaye Davidson. There is nothing campy or stereotypical about any aspect of the storytelling, most of the characters are three-dimensional, compelling, and a bit different from people we might see from day to day, especially since they are British/Irish. None of the actors are really familiar faces, so we are free to absorb the show without thoughts like “he was better when he was driving Miss Daisy”. (I know star power puts asses in the seats, but sometimes it seems that the Hollywierd casting system operates with a rather limited palette.) If you have never seen this, don’t miss it. Otherwise, re-visit a great story with somebody you like to hug during movies.

Kevin Bolshaw

Ok, this was a tough one. I’m a big fan of the anime series on Nickelodean and was really looking forward to this film, especially when I heard that M. Night Shyamalan was directing as I thought originally that he was a good choice. Normally, when I do these reviews and just when I watch a movie in general, I observe and report from a movie fan’s perspective. Unfortunately there are times when I just can’t take off my director’s hat which was the case for this film…

There are good and bad elements to this as there are with most movies, so let’s start on the upbeat side of things. Visually, the production design of this movie is spectacular. The locations, costumes, digital environments and effects (courtesy of ILM) are all top notch. Being a fan of the cartoon, it was cool to see places like the Northern Water Tribe fortress brought to life. The martial arts moves are well choreographed and fun to watch. Many of the actors turn in good performances, especially on the martial arts side; Noah Ringer (who plays Aang) does some especially impressive moves with his staff.

The downside – the writing and presentation of the story come off forced to me. It seems like they’re trying to cram a lot in here (some things that aren’t really even necessary) to try to push things ahead as quickly as possible which is strange since the movie is a little shorter than it could be (1 hour 43 min. long, an extra 20 minutes would’ve allowed some breathing room). The actor’s deliveries suffer as a result of this pushing through the story.

The casting choices in here are a bit odd as well…The company behind the film has been accused of “whitewashing” (casting white actors as non-white characters) with regard to the cast. And it seems like that could be true to some extent. I see the casting choices more as being a bit odd and mismatched if anything. For instance, Fire Lord Ozai is played by Cliff Curtis who seems to be middle-eastern, while the actor portraying his brother is Shaun Toub who appears to be white. They look nothing like brothers, they’re not even the same race. Aasif Mandvi (from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart) was an interesting casting choice and did a fine job; I just had trouble letting go of him from The Daily Show.

Going back to the pacing…As mentioned, everything seems forced forward to try to keep things moving. This applies to the last battle as well. The fire benders are on the move to attack the water tribe, which is supposed to be the epic battle of this installation (there’s going to be 3 or 4 films in here). There’s not much time for build up and the lead to the fight isn’t particularly gripping or suspenseful, it just kind of happens. Even the character arc for Aang just kind of happens with little nuances to help accent it (he’s talking to a dragon spirit, he has some flash backs and all of a sudden he discovers his avatar power and he can master water bending!). The cartoon did a much better job of building Aang up in a way that made sense and he doesn’t discover (or master) his avatar power until much later in the storyline. Here he just all of a sudden kind of gets there from these other brief encounters. There’s no conflict or build-up, it’s like a switch was just flicked on all of a sudden.

Overall, the film is missing a lot of things that made the cartoon series enjoyable – such as the sense of humor as Aang is pretty serious off the bat and you don’t get much sense of him being a kid. It’s the same with the Uncle Iroh character – there are brief moments of levity but mostly he’s business. All the kid characters follow the same lead here so there’s not much fun with them as kids, they’ve already matured and we missed some of the fun elements that could’ve gone along with the storyline but didn’t.

As just a film alone – the movie is decent but not amazing. If you were a fan of the anime series, you’ll want to check it out but don’t be surprised if you’re a little disappointed.

reviewed by Sean McKnight