The Bank Job

Sometimes I want to watch a film strictly for who is directing it. The Bank Job only made my Netflix queue because of the great director Roger Donaldson (13 Days, No Way Out, White Sands, Species, Cocktail) was the man behind it. Donaldson has a way of making movies exciting...even Cocktail... and Dante's Peak for that matter. He specializes in thrillers so when the halfway point of The Bank Job rolls around and the shit hits the fan... boy does it ever.

Our story begins with the lovely Martine (Saffron Burrows) asking her old flame Terry (Jason Statham) if he is interested in doing a little job with her. A sort of last heist so both of them can get out of the business. Terry isn't really in the heisting business and is skeptical of the offer. He finds out that Martine is really being asked to cooperate for a British MI5 agent that got her out of a drug smuggling charge. You see the British lads need to get some compromising photos out a safety deposit box in order to charge an upstart young hood Michael X (Peter De Jersey). As I said before... halfway through the light tone takes a hard turn. Things get veeeeeeeeeery complicated when it goes into thriller mode.

All of the actors are impeccably well chosen no matter how small the part... and boy there is a lot of speaking parts here. I got quite a few twists and turns including two WTF moments... one involving a sandblaster. Donaldson does a great job of getting the entire look too... the costume dept and everyone on the film deserves high praise.

The only downside is perhaps there are a few too many threads to be woven together here. The last 45 minutes gets very deep into the details. Not a lot of loose ends either. How much of the story is actually true is questionable as well. No matter what the answer to that may be, The Bank Job is flat out entertaining. In a marketplace with so many stupid films (eyeballing you Vantage Point), it is a pleasure to see a great director work with this much talent.

90/100

X-Files: I Want to Believe

This film hasn't been given a fair shake at all. I think a lot of the criticism has come from non-fan reviews and casual fans. For the hardcore fans of the series, I Want to Believe delivers the goods on what we realy want: Mulder and Scully. The plot takes a backseat to their relationship.

Let's get to the plot first. Mulder (David Duchovny) has been living in exile when a young FBI agent is kidnapped. Another agent in charge (Amanda Peete) reaches out to Scully (Gillian Anderson) to help her locate Mulder so he can use his unique skills to find the missing girl. The audience (and Mulder) is lead to believe that suddenly the FBI is all forgiving and will let the the two back without consequences. Mulder decides it is worth the chance to help sort out the mystery. Here is where it gets a little foggy. The only lead the FBI has is a reformed molester who happened to be a priest that still goes by the moniker Father Joe (Billy Connolly). Father Joe claims to have pyschic abilities and in fact led the FBI to a field with a maimed arm. Whether or not the good Father has a hand in this is the mystery.

Much of the plot was kept on the down low for reasons unbeknownst to me. Nothing in it is that original other than you do have a legitamite WTF moment half way through. The real story is Mulder's attempt to reconcile who he is and Scully's questions of faith in a fucked up, apeshit world. Ultimately those of the two major themes of the series so to say this is unexpected would be to reveal you to be a nonfan.

I think if you go into the film knowing that it is very low budget(Half the original film's budget) and expect a good longer episode you'll be fine. The interplay between the leads is still some of the best you can find. It is also a pleasure to see Duchovny in something smarter than the lackluster Californication. Series creator Chris Carter wrote/directed the film with a limited feel for visuals. It might have been better to obtain someone a bit more skilled with the camera to make the film look a little bigger. This one looks and feels small. Carter also makes a horrible casting decision with Exhibit as another FBI agent...terrible terrible. What was TI doing...oh yeah he's in jail.

70/100

The Year of Living Dangerously

Some movies start out with a deeper meaning or rather to come across as deep and fail miserably. Some strive for big ideas and are mediocre. This is a mediocre tale from awesome director Peter Weir (Mosquito Coast, Master and Commander, Truman Show, Dead Poets Society). Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) is a young journalist on his first real foreign assignment in Indonesia around the same time that whole conflict in Vietnam was starting up. Hamilton is teamed with a freelance camerman Billy Kwan(Linda Hunt playing a dude). Billy has adopted a woman and her son as his own and believes Guy could be the one journalist to blow the lid off the tragedies taking place there. Along the way Guy meets a hottie working in the British Embassy (Sigourney Weaver) and falls in love. Their relationship is compromised when a story comes between them that could not only destroy them, but get Guy killed in the process.

All of this makes The Year of Living Dangerously sound a lot more glamorous and high minded then the resulting film. Weir clearly loves the humanity of the project, but you never really get a true sense of the plight of the people. Only vague moments provide you a small glimpse into the true atrocities going on. Everything else is a young Weir trying to find his filmmaking self. The actors are fine especially Weaver who classes up a somewhat thankless role.

Nothing special here unless you want to see the evolution of Weir as a director. For this is the only reason I gave it a shot in my Netflix queue. Slight thumbs up for the solid talents behind a subpar script.

60/100

Wristcutters: A Love Story

No doubt Wristcutters sat on the shelf for a long time because really... how do you market a long story about two people who committed suicide? And again the cut that director Goran Dukic finally released was probably not quite what he wanted. Dukic actually adapted his screenplay from his father's short story so that is probably why the characters seem to actually have a depth and feeling to them.

Zia (Patrick Fugit from Almost Famous) kills himself after problems with his girlfriend Desiree (Leslie Bibb from Talledega Nights). He finds out that suicides are condemned to live in a world much like the one he left "only a little worse." The fact that this world is made up of only suicides probably has something to do with that. Zia befriends a young immigrant Eugene(Shea Whigham from All the Real Girls) whose entire family has killed themselves. They talk and commiserate about their stories until one day Zia gets info that Desiree has too killed herself. Eugene and Zia set off on a road trip and that is where the story really gets going. The first person they encounter is Mikal (Shannyn Sossamon from A Knight's Tale and every man's wet dream) who is on the road trying to find the people in charge to inform them that she is in this work by mistake.

The story takes some twists and turns with other nice moments from John Hawkes, Tom Waits, and Will Arnett as the story comes to an end. The subject matter of suicide is a tough one to tackle and Dukic manages to craft a near brilliant tale of remarkable originality. His stark vision of the afterlife limbo in which the characters are habitating was missing only the lonely voice of Billy Corgan ala Spun. Suicide is treated with a bit a humor, but never so that is lessens the message of the film. The ending... the ending is just right.

Wristcutters will rightfully become a cult film one day much as Donnie Darko (tepid response in theatres) did in the last few years. One can only hope a true director's cut will come out with the many deleted scenes back in the film where they belong. If that happens my 90 will be a 100.

90/100

Angel Heart

Angel Heart is one of those odd films that has somehow lived on through the years despite it not being very good. It is almost mythical for the ruining of an American sweetheart Lisa Bonet from the Cosby Show. The nudity and sex scene she has later on in the film seem to be the sole reason why anyone remembers this Alan Parker film. Rumors were about too that the scene wasn't simulated... always one of those every few years in the urban myth variety. On to the movie...

Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) gets a visit from a potential client (Robert DeNiro) one day. Angel is more accustomed to finding cheating husbands than missing persons, but Cyphre (DeNiro) wants him to track down an old singer who has gone missing. Not much of an explanation or reason why just a thread to start with. Essentially this turns into a series of meetings Angel has with various associates of the singer that ultimately end with them showing up deceased. Angel feels a constant pressure to solve the mystery before he joins them in the morgue. Throw in an old girlfriend (Lisa Bonet showing up a long ways in) of the singer who seems to practice voodoo and you've got a glossy trash film noir.

Director Alan Parker has always been an overrated hack with far too heavy of a hand for me to take. Midnight Express got a lot of attention and probably is the only reason he was still making films by the time he got to Angel Heart. Parker would follow this trash up with an undenialable masterpiece Mississippi Burning. It was tough for him to mess that one up just as it is too much for him to elevate this material above standard genre crud. Much later on, Parker would do a string of so-so films culminating with Angela's Ashes and the godawful The Life of David Gale.

Bonet is extremely hot and underused, much like a walk on by British actress Charlotte Rampling. Of course, there is Mickey Rourke who has always been one of the finest actors working depending on how he feels about the film he is in. Here is seems to be trying to make the best of what he has got. Film noir is something Rourke was born to play, tis a pity he couldn't find a better script to do. The interviews with Rourke on the DVD lead you to believe his heart was never in this film and was more into his boxing around this time. I can't figure out for the life of me what DeNiro was doing here... and all the extras seem to point to the fact that he wanted nothing to do with it afterwards.

I'm giving this an average grade and you have to understand, without Bonet and Rourke, this would get a 0.

50/100

The Grifters

Sometimes it is fun to revisit a film that you don't bust out too often to see how well it holds up. The Grifters is a drama from 1990 featuring the talents of director Stephen Frears (Hi-Fidelity, Dangerous Liasons) and producer Martin Scorsese. Essentially it is a story about three grifters (con men) and their relationship to each other. Each one looks at the other as a potential mark despite their closeness. Lilly (Anjelica Houston) runs odds down at racetracks for the mob and is sent to LA for some quick work. She drops in to visit her son Roy(John Cusack) who is hurting from a con he tried to pull in a bar. These two all ready have a contentious relationship when Roy's girlfriend Myra (Annette Bening) enters the picture.

Revisiting this film now, I can clearly see that is set up as a creepy love triangle. Cue the scene where Myra confronts Roy about his work. A wisecrack early about Roy selling matchbooks provides a clue that she knew along what he did, but only later on after she witnesses it does she bring it up. At this point, Myra tell Roy that she is of the same ilk. Roy becomes immediately more intrigued by Myra since there is already that sexual tension between him and his mother.

Cusack is a master at the scenes with Lilly providing the viewer with way too much info with his eyes. They dart back and forth from breast to leg in a manner unbefitting of a mother-son relationship.

Strange that the film would come full circle from a line earlier on in the film. A woman always has one thing...

The Grifters was adapted from a novel by the great Jim Thomson that is less about the script as it is about the perfomances and direction. Cusack has the least showy part, but perhaps the most difficult overall. Houston has always been a fine actress, but most people didn't even know who the hell Bening was before this film. This is an excellent showpiece for one of the best actresses of all time. The daring and ballsy-ness is amazing.

Frears is always the consumate professional who might someday get the word auteur attached before his name. Each of his films has his fingerprints all over it. His work with the camera has a definite feel of the producer Scorsese. Each scene is done with such precision you can't help but feel excited just seeing what he is going to do next. Movies like this are an absolute pleasure to rewatch no matter what the subject matter.

100/100

Cameo alert for the great Pat Hingle as Lilly's mob boss. He was the original Commissioner Gordon in the Tim Burton Batman!

Geronimo: An American Legend

The second half of Walter Hill was much better thank God. You get a good script from excellent screenwriter/director John Milius (Rome, Red Dawn, Conan the Barbarian) with limited chances for Hill to fuck it up. Though the title would lead you to believe it is about Geronimo (Wes Studi), the story is told from a 2nd Lt. Davis (Matt Damon) fresh from West Point. He is put under the direct command of 1st Lt. Charles Gatewood (Jason Patric). Gatewood and Davis are charged with bringing Geronimo in to Brig. Gen. George Crook (Gene Hackman - the fuckin') to surrender. Geronimo's warriors would be the last to go into the reservation system while the US continued to push the American Indians away from their homes. Something happens on the reservation to start a revolt and soon Geronimo is back on the loose.

Altough you never really get to the heart of the Indian exploitation, you do get an excellent surface piece that manages to hit all the main points. Hill is able to sit back and not do anything too distractive to the narration. This represents a great change from his earlier work that would later again be touched on in Broken Trail.

In the description of the film, I wasn't even able to get to the greatness that is Robert Duvall as the tracker Al Sieber. Duvall manages to create a compelling character out of what seems like a stock role. In fact, each performance propels this film out of run of the mill status. For Gatewood, Patric brings the same underplayed, gentleness to the character as he lent to August March. Patric has become the king of understated roles, but that's for another column... Even Damon shows flashes of why, given the chance, he can really act. Also... look for a nice cameo from Kevin Tighe as a general who takes up the search for Geronimo later on. You'd probably recognize Tighe best as Locke's father on Lost or as the bar owner in the action classic Roadhouse.

Geronimo was Hill's follow up to the bomb Trespass. Both films did poorly in theatres despite being worthy of viewing. I liked Trespass a little bit better no doubt due to Bill Paxton and the Demon Knight himself William Sadler as the leads. Still Geronimo marks a key point in Walter Hill's career of direction.

75/100

Speaking of cameos... I almost forgot about Stephen McHattie popping in as well. McHattie is the diet Coke version of Lance Henriksen... right down to the gravely voice.

Wild Bill

It must have been Walter Hill flop month on AMC because I caught two of his biggest. Wild Bill came at a productive, flop-tacular time for Hill: the 90's. I had heard awful, scathing reviews about Wild Bill, but I thought there wasn't anyway it could be that bad... oh dear God I was wrong. It was absolutely worse. The movie starts with Bill (Jeff Bridges, but I'm the dude) hitting Deadwood (which covered all this better later on with some direction from Walter Hill...hmmm) to try and hit it big during the gold rush. The story is juxtoposed with too many annoying side characters and flashbacks. You never get a real sense of story with all the backtracking. Gunfights litter these for no particular reason other than to spice up the dull narrative.

Everybody is miscast. Ellen Barkin as Calamity Jane, Christina Applegate in anything, and The Dude sleepwalking through the lead all are enough to turn the film off immediately. Everything from the look to the direction just smacks of awfulness. This isn't even so bad that it is fun to watch. Even Diane Lane isn't fun... and lemme tell ya that is a hard thing to accomplish.

One wonders if Hill was just in a drug/alcohol stupor until his comeback with an episode of Deadwood and the pretty great tv western Broken Trail. Hill would follow this up with Last Man Standing, Supernova (a long story there...), and Undisputed... all turd sandwiches. Here's your DVD quote... Wild Bill is even WORSE than you would have thought!

0/100

Casablanca

There's not a lot to say about this classic film that hasn't already been said... but in case you've been under a rock or adverse to black and white I'll give a brief rundown of the plot. Rick (Humphrey Bogart) is minding his own business running a little night club in Morocco some time after the Germans rolled into Paris when the love of his life Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) walks through the door. Although the story weaves between the political climate and a plot regarding exit visas, this is essentially a love story about a man who is forced to take a side. Rick is friends with Chief of Police (Claude Rains) and knows that is a dangerous time to do so.

The plot is hardly revolutionary, but the script was for the time. The rapid fire, smart dialogue is something quite lacking in most older films and surprised me the first time I watched Casablanca. This is probably the chief reason this film holds up so well over time compared to it's comtemporaries. All the leads are well casted and devour their roles. Director Michael Curtiz never oversteps his boundaries with flashy shots... preferring to keep the camera as an outsider to the intrigue going on inside of Rick's club.

Casablanca is absolute masterpiece and is a firm reminder why older films can still be as important as newer ones. Forget the rubbish about Citizen Cane and catch this one instead. I'm glad I finally got around to it.

100/100

7 Years in Tibet

Not gonna lie to you... 7 Years in Tibet starts out as a bit of a mess. You have to stick with it for about 40 mins before you start getting to the good stuff. This time coincides with the mess in Heinrich Harrer's (Brad Pitt) own life. Heinrich leaves his pregnant wife at the train station after a fight to head off to climb a mountain in the Himalayas. The time period is just around the point that Britain was pulled into WWII. Harrer and expedition lead Peter Aufschnaiter (David Thewlis) are captured by the British (Since they are German citizens) and placed in a prison camp.

Many escapes later... the two find themselves trying to seek passage into Tibet. Eventually they make their way to the capital city where they catch the eye of a government official (B.D. Wong from OZ) and the young Dalai Lama. Soon the Dalai Lama becomes fascinated with Heinrich and they become friends. Certainly this is to echo the fact that the child that Heinrich created seems to want no part of Heinrich in his life. Waiting out the war in Tibet allows our lead character to find who he really is and wants to be. Later on you get the rumbling of China into Tibet and the backstabbing that takes place... but this movie is at it's heart a tale of a man lost in the world.

Director Jean-Jacques Annaud (Enemy at the Gates, In the Name of the Rose) has done his best in cramming a story of about 10 years into the 140 min of run time. You feel a race at the start of the film to get to Harrer's time in Tibet. The story wants to be a bit more than that and that is a well intentioned goal. Annaud always gives his films a distinct look too... here you get Tibet as mostly a dirty, ugly place with the only glimpses of beauty being the people of the land. All of the actors are quite suited for their roles.

Not everything works here with the storyline. An effort was obviously made to keep this film under 3 hours. This causes the viewer to only focus on this period of time. This leaves you with the disctinct feeling that the most fascinating things might have been what Harrer did with the rest of his life... and not those 7 years in Tibet.

70/100

Untraceable

"He's hacked into my car's computer!"

So exclaims Diane Lane's character in the thriller Untraceable. I had heard all kinds of awful things about this film in the weeks around it's release, but I was surprised at how watchable it turned out to be. No doubt director Gregory Hoblit should get the credit for that after nice turns with Primal Fear and Frequency. Hoblit tried to class things up with a boring film Fracture that boasted the acting chops of Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling. He (Hoblit) feels much more comfortable here with semi-implausible-land and a certain lack of decorum. Untraceable could've gone a different way and made this a sleazy whodunit that could creep into cult land, but instead you get a middling thriller.

Lane is on the case as Jane Marsh who is in the FBI cybercrimes division. Teamed with partner Griffin Dowd (Collin Hanks in all his post pubescent dorkiness) they mostly deal with losers who steal credit card info before stumbling onto a site where a cat is brutally killed live. Marsh wants to get the sonabitch on general principle, but the game is soon changed when the cat is replaced by a man. Enter Det. Box (Billy Burke - a Hoblit fav) as the Portland cop trying to find the missing man. The victim is being streamed live online where the more hits the site gets, the faster the man will die. The public start eating this shit up and the man soon dies. Will the cyberteam catch the killer or will the killer catch them? Probably both in a movie like this.

I have to agree with a writer from the AVclub in that this film would have been better served if the bad guy's identity was kept to the very end. And you also get that Untraceable was gonna get a little dirty with Lane's character spending a lot of time with the Detective. Random nudity from Diane Lane could only help differentiate between the rest of the ho-drum thrillers of this ilk.

A lot of talk was also given to the implausability of the plot... well duh it is a movie. Most of the twists require the same suspension of disbelief that you had to have to enjoy prior Hoblit films. What the film lacked was that complete go for the throat attitude that could have made this a perennial watch. Instead you get an average thriller that has a crush on the Saw films. Not as bad as you think... they should put that quote on the DVD box.

60/100

Very Bad Things

Four friends:Moore(Leland Orser), Michael(Jeremy Piven), Adam(Daniel Stern), and Robert (Christian Slater) take their soon to be wed friend Kyle(Jon Favreau) on his bachelor party to Vegas. And next thing you know after a lot of booze and coke, Piven kills a hooker. Isn't that always how your Vegas trips end? The five friends fearing comdemnation of all of them decide to dispose of the body and act like nothing ever happened. Only things don't work out so easy.

Peter Berg's writing/directing debut Very Bad Things is a rather auspicious one. Berg is determined to make this a dark comedy no matter what... only the dialogue feels ad libbed and the situations seem forced. Whether or not the film works for you will no doubt be based on the assinine behavior of the friends the rest of the film. I didn't buy into any of it. Throw in some overacting from Cameron Diaz and an underuse of Jeanne Tripplehorn...and you get a mess!

Berg would later go on to make The Rundown, an adaptation of Friday Night Lights, and a not bad political action film The Kingdom. So it would seem he just needs someone else script to do. I'd be hard pressed to say any of the actors were that good, but I will say that Christian Slater does just about everything he can do to make his part work. Still... the second half just doesn't make any sense and is rarely funny. It does have a bizarre ending... and I'm not sure if that helps.

40/100

Delirious

Toby (Michael Pitt) had been living for awhile off the street. He is running away from some sort of abuse when he meets Les (Steve Buscemi). Les is a papparazzi and at first wants no part of Toby. Soon Les likes having a guy to talk to and brag a bit about his work when in reality Les is just barely getting by. So Toby becomes Les's assistant on a job working the "Music Awards." Toby gets caught up in an entourage of popstar K'harma (Alison Lohman) and soon the two strike up a relationship. Toby finds his friendship tested as he wants to follow his love, while not losing his best friend.

Mostly this is the same song and dance about a loser who find someone who looks up to him. Toby has no other friends so he looks past the parasitic nature of his collarboration with Les. A talent director (Gina Gershon) soon "discovers" Toby on the basis of his tryst with K'harma. The story takes a dark turn later... that maybe doesn't completely jive with the tone of the earlier film. It seems from the convo with writer/director Tom DiCillo and Buscemi accompanying the film might shed some light on that. Some of the script was toned down and perhaps that is why it comes out of nowhere.

DiCillo and Buscemi first collaborated in Living in Oblivion back in the early 90's which was the toast of film fests everywhere. He has since whiffed on many a fastball with the failures of The Real Blonde and Double Whammy. Clearly DiCillo knows what is ripe for satire in show business. The problem with Delirious is that the jokes aren't all that funny and doesn't go for the jugular. Buscemi has just done something similar with Interview - which takes on a budding actress being interviewed by a "real" journalist.

What really works for Delirious is the cast. Buscemi is always spot on so put that aside. Michael Pitt and Alison Lohman are both at the top of the list in terms of good young actors. They both can bring a realness to the characters that you just do not get with most of the souless names coming out of Hollywood. Both Pitt in The Dreamers and Lohman in Where the Truth Lies, have staked their claim in the role of serious actors. Here they get the tone of the film and try to give more than the perfunctory performance called for from the script. You actually want these two people to end up with each other.

75/100

Sherlock Holmes and the Scarlet Claw

More old school films here at TGE... this Sherlock Holmes tale come all the way from 1944! I was a fan of Sherlock Holmes stories since I was barely old enough to read. I've only seen some movie versions of Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous character and none of them were very good. On the advice of a collegue of mine, I decided to look back a few years. Directer Roy William Neall made a bunch of Sherlock stories in the twilight of his career and I selected The Scarlet Claw to start with. Sherlock (Basil Rathbone) recieves a letter from a dead woman (she was alive when she wrote it) and things are set in motion. Joined by Watson (Nigel Bruce), Holmes sets off to Le Mort Rouge in Canada. The town believes a monster is killing people on the swamps outside of town.

Of course in older stories it was logical to set up each character as a suspect. So you get led around through Sherlock's search from character to character with the full intention of red herrings everywhere. The climatic finish takes a turn from modern movies where the killer is not a major character... but I will leave it at that since there is more to it than just that.

The two leads are both accomplished actors and the direction is solid. The set pieces used are quite good for 1944 with some nice moody atmospherics. Even with modern effects today, there is nothing like a black and white film with some big ol' smoke machines. Filmgoers with an appreciation of older films with no doubt be satisfied with this film. However, if you are still b&w adverse, perhaps you should try something else.

70/100

Murder on the Orient Express

Going old school back to 1974 with Sidney Lumet's adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. Lumet managed an all star cast including Sean Connery, Ingrid Berman, Lauren Bacall, Martin Balsam, Jacqueline Bisset, Vanessa Redgrave (who was hot once?), Michael York, Richard Widmark, Albert Finney, and Anthony Perkins. Each plays a character that winds up as passengers on the Orient Express when a murder occurs. Albert Finney is Poirot - a detective for hire that finds himself asked to investigate the murder by his friend played by Martin Balsam.

Essentially this is a whodunit for the last hour plus. In the movie intro you get a sad story of a kidnapping gone wrong that would seem to figure into the movie's plot. As Poirot starts his inqury you begin to understand that previous crime even better. The actors are universally good except for Perkins and Bergman - which is strange coz Ingrid picked up an Oscar for her role.

Lumet is again quite simple in his presentation of the story. He never does anything too fancy with the shots. Lumet's technique is usually to cast right and then get the hell out of the way. This way of thinking works well here where the story is really the director. The climax isn't anything too mindblowing, but it does throw you something different.

The Orient Express sputters a little out of the gate, but once the murder happens things come to life. Nothing revelatory here, but a excellent chance to see so many great actors together.

70/100

Dog Soldiers

Director Neil Marshall made everyone's list of hot new directors with The Descent. A lot of people don't realize that he actually made a little gem of a horror film before that. Dog Soldiers succeeds as the same kind of small cast, small environment element that made The Descent work.

A squad of British soldiers are out on maneuvers in the Scottish highlands when they encounter a camp of slaughtered commandos. What could possibly do such horrible butchering? Oh yeah... it's werewolves. The soldiers are quickly on the run when they find a local woman (Emma Cleasby) who seems a little too quick to help. Everyone retreats to a small house in the woods to try and hold out til morning.

People might be turned off by the low budget. You aren't going to see cool effects or big action sequences, but you will get a throwback to old horror films like Night of the Living Dead. Actors Sean Pertwee, Liam Cunningham, and Kevin McKidd are all solid as the co-leads for the budget. You never get a feeling that Marshall skimped anywhere except on the blood and guts.

So bottom line, either you can handle or embrace low budget horror or you can't. If it is your thing you are gonna love Dog Soldiers. It lacks the nice cinematic eye Marshall would later show, but for 100 mins you get a good time.

75/100

Second Skin

Sometimes you give a movie a chance for no particular reason. I can't really say one thing made me watch Second Skin. My boy Angus McFayden stars as Sam and the gorgeous (but not so good as an actress) Nastasha Henstridge is Crystal. Cystal applies for a job at Sam's bookstore and is promptly hit by a car. With the trauma to her head, Crystal is left not sure who she is or where she is running from.

This type of film is only gonna work if it goes one of two ways. Either you've got to be exceedingly clever with the narrative ala Memento or you have to go erotic-thriller. Director Darrell Roodt decides to split the difference and completely miss everything. One only has to look at Roodt's filmography to know that this is his forte.

Natasha has not real nudity of any kind and Angus seems to be sleep walking through his character. The plot has no surprises... so in the end. There's no reason at all for this film to even be made.

0/100

Rambo

As a child of the 80's, I was raised on Arnold, Chuck, and Stallone. The first three Rambo's occupy spots on my DVD shelf and are for me a national treasure. Thou shalt not speak ill of Rambo in my house. With that being said, I was pretty pumped when Netflix delivered the newest addition to the series. I knew in my head not to expect too much coz after all its been 20 years since Rambo 3.

The fourth film finds out disallusioned vet working in some shit infested town along a river outside of Burma. Two missionaries (The Soprano's Paul Schultz and Dexter's Julie Benz) hire John to take them up river to help the people of Burma. Rambo warns the do-gooders that the only help the people need is guns. Of course, our hero's prediction comes true and the missionaries are caught up by the local military. So what's a killing machine to do? That's right... kill ever fucking Burmese soldier around and save Dexter's girlfriend.

R4 was directed by Sly himself... which explains why a lot of the killing is done by some mercs he knows. Matthew Marsden earns a top spot in the mercs no doubt due to his awesome performance in Anacondas 2....or not. The main problem is that Rambo has always been about one man versus everyone. This film seems to acknowledge the fact Stallone is getting old and lets some nameless characters have most of the fun. The action scenes are probably the most graphic you are ever going to watch. Limbs and heads explode everywhere... Dawn of the Dead has nothing on Rambo. Even the bad guys aren't established in any real way to get you rooting against them. For a film trying to create a "message" about the atrocities they sure don't spend a lot of time on that.

So I guess you'll enjoy Rambo 4 based on your expectations. If you are looking for a mindless action film with lots shit blowing up - you will probably like it. However, if you are looking for that same magic in the first 3 - that's not hanging around here.

50/100

The Deer Hunter

So after that mad dash to finish the 2007 movie season via DVD, I got a little sidetracked by Lost. Seriously that show is like crack and I've fallen behind on actual films. I thought The Deer Hunter would be a good place to pick up the beat with it's longstanding status as a classic. Twas the winner of 5 Academy Awards and is largely to blame for director Michael Cimino's ability to get Heaven's Gate made. Most of the film nerds know that Heaven's Gate turned out to be a flop and a fiasco thus spiraling Cimino's career into the toilet. After watching The Deer Hunter for the first time, I have to wonder why people thought so highly of him. All the faults of TDH are largely to blame on the director.

Essentially this is the story of three friends from a small town in Pennsylvania that join the Army together to go fight in Vietnam. Michael (Robert De Niro), Steven (John Savage), and Nick (Christopher Walken) all seem unsure of their decision during Steven's wedding the weekend before their Army careers start. Complicating Michael's close friendship with Nick is their love for the same gal played by Meryl Streep. The three friends reunite in Vietnam right before they are captured behind enemy lines. The trials in the prison camp and ensuing escape will each affect the soldiers in different ways that will last forever.

Cimino takes foreeeeeeeeeeeever to get this story going with the opening act being 45 minutes of the fellas last weekend together at home. The wedding sequence is way too long with very little if anything happening except to establish minor characters in roles that do not matter to the overall story. Sure John Cazale and George Dzundza are terrific actors, but they have no importance to the main storyline and should have had their parts trimmed down.

The leads are all quite excellent in their respective parts. It is a pity that the opening sequence with all the great actors suffers from bad sound, innane dialogue, and bits of the wedding celebration that do nothing but draw attention away from them. If you get this kind of cast maybe you should... I don' know... FOCUS on them. John Savage to me is the most underrated actor of this bunch. His part is overshadowed here by the central friendship to this story. Savage is truly wonderful with the scraps the script gives him. DeNiro is pretty much just De Niro and he does do that well. Walken's part feels cut down too much with never allows you to understand the change in his personality. Which leads me to...

SPOILER ALERT



While taking all the time in the world with the first 45 minutes of film, Michael's trip over to Saigon to try and get his dear friend Nick back is done in barely 15 minutes. Plus you never truly establish that Nick's character would go into this life with the Russian roulette sect. I don't buy that the most grounded character, Nick, would suddenly become addicted to that life of one bullet, one kill. What may have seemed profound in 1978 feels very forced in 2008. This has to be one of the weaker entries in the Best Picture Winners in the grand scheme of things. Clearly the ending captured people and made this memorable, but alas the journey there is barely worth the ride.

65/100

The Best of 2007

Ok... I never got around to Sweeney Todd and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is never going to get shipped via Netflix... I didn't see all the talked about docs Taxi to the Dark Side, In the Shadow of the Moon... but here is more or less the best of 2007.

1. Into the Wild - Just an incredibly emotional movie watching experience. Sean Penn was actually able to turn a great book into an even better film. Penn was finally able to follow up the promise of his debut masterpiece The Indian Runner.

2. Zodiac - David Fincher is borderline obsessive compulsive to detail and his adaption of Graysmith's novel shows it. Top notch all the way around and it begs for rewatches.

3. There Will Be Blood - I think this is a prime case of rewatching a film to realize it's greatness. The second and third watches of TWBB have convinced me of director P.T. Anderson's stunning brilliance.

4. The Bourne Ultimatum - Kind of a curveball here. I was quite impressed with Paul Greengrass's follow up to his disappointing first turn in the Bourne chair. The last hour is an action junkie's dream.

5. Starting Out in the Evening - 4 great actors doing a real movie for adults...a foriegn concept I know.

6. The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - Well done debut from Andrew Dominik. The actors almost seem secondary to the beautiful cinamatography and music. Not for the faint of heart.

7. No Country for Old Men - Business as usual from the Coen brothers with the excellent Tommy Lee Jones and ...Josh Brolin? Not quite perfect, but very watchable.

8. Charlie Wilson's War - A well done film from Mike Nichols/Aaron Sorkin that uses Philip Seymour Hoffman to his fullest... that Tom Hanks guy isn't bad either.

9. Rescue Dawn - Another solid adaptation... only this time from a documentary by Werner Herzog. The realism will stay with you long after the film is over.

10. The Savages - Acting tour de force courtesy of Laura Linney.

I grade films rather harshly and there weren't a whole lot of them that made it over the 80 mark. Plus I'm necessarily recommending these films for anyone who isn't a hardcore film fan. Chances are if you like the Dane Cook garbage, you will not like any of these.