The Warrior's Way (2010)

I don't have much time today so I'll dive directly into the subject. "The Warrior's Way" is a pretty strange mix between a western and ... "Ninja Assassin" about which I was writing not so long ago. In other words the main idea is pretty similar = we have an assassin who one days gets fed up with his "job", the clan's code of honor, fidelity vows and such stuff and just flees away ... obviously followed by the whole ex-workmates armada who are strongly decided to turn him into chopped sushi.

Although the context is relatively similar, "The Warrior's Way" is after all another story, and this time I should emphasize on the "story". To explain, from the first scene you get a feeling of a sort of "fantasy" having a narrator in the background and a pretty colorful chromatic (but which looks quite ok, so a plus already for the cinematography) and this is kept throughout the whole movie inevitably giving you a light impression of surreal. But, getting back to the actual story, if in "Ninja Assassin" , the "rogue one" had a personal problem with the clan leader and the final purpose of fleeing was a sort of "comeback revenge with guns ... well .. shurikens blazing", here our assassin wants just to simply retire. This, and also he has a fixed idea of guarding the last survivor (a girl of a few months old) from the enemy clan which was supposed to be completely decimated according to his last contract "clause". And considering that Japan is an island = apparently to small to hide, his decision is to emigrate to the west, which is the wild west in this case. And so we get to the action place = a little (almost ghost) town, the headquarters of an unemployed circus collective, place which is periodically raided by an ex-army gang whose members seemingly were left with too much unused ammunition after the Civil War. Well, probably it's already predictable where this state of things leads, our man having no chance to successfully embrace his new flourishing career of owner and main employee of the local public laundry.

I've already said more than enough but there is still to be seen. Without additional details (you can see this however pretty much from the trailer so it's not a spoiler), I can't hold to tell that on the whole salad above you can add also a romance + a certain scent of "Karate Kid". And trust me, there is still more, especially regarding the way the story goes ... Thing, that incredibly enough, leads to the weird mix mentioned in the beginning, which is however quite interesting to watch especially if you didn't expect some "masterpiece" and you just want to see an action movie. As a downside you'll get a ton of cliche and SF-ish scenes, although this part is how to say ... comes in the same package with the action flow = so maybe at some point it would have been more weird to be missing than present. Therefore, the real downside at least for me was another one ... And I have to get back to the comparison with "Ninja Assassin". I think that there maybe due to a less chaotic pace the story was more catchy and like I was writing in that entry, the characters, especially the lead negative one, are pretty well developed. This is pretty true also here, but it's still a difference ... Anyway, for a directorial and screenwriting start (because this is what it is), the result should be appreciated. So, although in my opinion "Warrior's Way" is a bit lower, considering that IMDb underrates them both at pretty much the same level, I will be consistent with what I concluded also for "Ninja Assassin":

Rating: 4 out of 5



PS: Considering that the soundtrack which is in parts close to the Morricone spaghetti western work was replaced in the trailer by something completely different ... I felt the need to give another link, although I don't know for how long it will be valid :

Fase 7 (2011)

The difference from usual zombie movies is that here you don't have anymore the horror part = in this case "the infection" leads shortly to "(cough) .. I think I'm sick .. (double cough) .. I've seen flying U45XWS9C6QT2 .. MMmmm... me dizzy .. (triple cough) .. sAkJDS9mas .. bye bye, cruel world" without any other violent manifestations caused specifically by the disease. For who has already watched "Rec" (or "Rec 2" .. or "Quarantine" which is the U.S. remake), "Fase 7" is pretty easy to describe. It's an Argentinian production (so, also in Spanish to make it even more similar) in which you have pretty much the same "setup" - let's say at least 90% of it = a block of flats set in quarantine due to a virus (but a global one this time, not only in the building). So eventually it turns into that kind of zombie movie ... but without the zombies :). Normally the question comes (especially for horror lovers), so.. where's the fun then ?

Well, the thing is that "Fase 7" is not a horror. Or at most it could be qualified as a "social horror". Meaning that you'll get violent manifestations eventually. However, as said these aren't caused by the "zombification" itself, but by the psychological impact of the crisis situation on the approximately five neighbors (solo or family) who are living in the building. Which makes the movie to end up being somewhere at the border between a thriller and a dark comedy. The last part could start by simply describing the building cohabitants. First, we have the main characters - which are a young couple, who recently moved at the upper floor. He is pretty much a typical/usual/normal guy who was actually dreaming on moving far from civilization somewhere in the mountains, fact that coming from him is considered as a big joke by her - who is pregnant in the 7th month and affirming that he won't survive a week without technology. Their closest neighbor living at the same floor is an ex life insurance agent who apparently now has as main hobby ... transforming his SUV into an armored one (just to start with ...). Probably that's one of the reasons, besides the conspiracy theory paranoia, for which his wife left him alone with a young daughter of about 7-8 years old. Somewhere at a floor below, an old man lives alone. He seems to be the nicest/"welcome here" guy in the building being apparently a gentile inoffensive individual who's pretty much the only one trying to be friendly with the new arrived couple. At the lower levels we have two other guys with some family, passed through the middle age, and seemingly good friends despite the choleric character of one and the mild calmness of the other. Well, that's the main "configuration" of people who during the movie simply manage to transform the building into a veritable battlefront. "The War" starts mostly due to the actions of the two guys from the inferior levels who are strongly decided to move the old man from the middle floor into .. a quarantine in the quarantine invoking that he's sick. Obviously, the incoming lack of food, medication, etc (the classic element in this genre) has its impact in all of this and what's next. And in what's next we see how our "peaceful" guy from the upper floor gets drawn into a pretty tense situation while desperately trying to keep his wife unknowingly of the hell went loose among the other inhabitants, two steps away, just on the buildings staircase.

For me, the best part of the movie is the dark humor, pretty stylish (= "hidden" basically behind the action) about which I'm not going to say more and just leave it as a full surprise. Also as a surprise (at least a partial one) comes the end of the movie = who survives. After all that's the main theme, more or less serious - "surviving your neighbors" - the interesting part being that, incredibly, this proves to be a bit more difficult than surviving the epidemic outside the building. I won't get today into the technical part of the film, because I'm already writing on a hurry - but at least I should just point out the score (u can hear some in the trailer). Overall, it's a movie that can be (sort of ..) fun to watch but in which you also have sufficient scenes that may give you more food for thought.

Rating: 4 out of 5

The Next Three Days (2010)

John Brennan: So, the life in times of Don Quixote, what is it about?
Female College Student: That someone's belief in virtue is more important than virtue itself?
John Brennan: Yes... that's in there. But what is it about? Could it be how rational thought destroys your soul? Could it be about the triumph of irrationality and the power that is in that? You know, we spend a lot of time trying to organize the world. We build clocks and calendars and we try to predict the weather. But what part of our life is truly under our control? What if we choose to exist purely in a reality of our own making? Does that render us insane? And if it does, isn't that better than a life of despair?

You know what's the most interesting part in the movie ? That all what's after the above, culminating with the final consisting of "The Next Three Days", hides under the impression given by that monologue exactly the opposite of it (if you have eyes to see, ears to hear, or to put all those together - enough in the head to get it). All the triumph of irrationality (no matter how "cool" it might sound) has an organized plan behind it. Which, again, no matter how "crazy" is, it's still a plan. And which in all it's craziness is sufficiently well conceived to keep the risks up to some limit. And if the "irrationality" pushes the own limit too far there still is a last "rational" part in it that takes care that at least for the others there still is a failsafe mechanism in place. That's why what's above is full with question marks :) Because the answer to every question is .. well, questionable, from the perspective of the effect for yourself ? or for the others around ?. At least up to the last "?" ;) where all the external dementia should better take care to ensure behind it a single answer for the two perspectives. Which is what in this movie's case ? Well, watch it and you'll find out :D

This id from beginning to the end the movie I'm writing about today. Or more exactly its allegoric interpretation regarding what goes through in front of our eyes for about two hours. I'm sorry I started like this (I have no idea how intelligible was it), and I really hope I didn't scare (for good) the few readers who are landing on this page from time to time. But (for some reasons) I just couldn't hold it :) Eventually, that's the essence (the deepest level, because you have also something above it), and it doesn't happen very often to have something like this on the screens these days (not at the intensity/level you get here), so I would have felt sorry not to point it out. The movie subject itself is quite simple - a literature professor has one day the police swarming inside his house, picking up his wife and placing her in jail for a murder she apparently committed one day before. Left alone, with a 6-7 years old son, the teacher tries every possibility to save his wife from conviction. But every evidence, from her presence at the murder scene, up to the finger prints and blood on her coat incriminates her. From this point onwards, after the last possibility for appeal is exhausted, the guy has only one solution left: illegally getting out of jail, or in other words to "escape her" without any notice :) So, he starts to plan something apparently unthinkable and prone to fail for his status of a normal nice literature teacher. That's the path taken by the movie up to the end where you have two possible outcomes : he succeeds or not ( and now I hope that the intro starts to get some sense :) ).

Like I was saying above, besides "the deepest layer" you also have more on the surface - the movie is after all a romance drama as genre, behind all the thriller, action, etc image. I generally avoid talking too much on this subject, but again, in this case I can't hold (how subjective it might be) not to qualify this movie as a "true" romance drama compared to the bunch of "fake" stuff that displays this as genre, but usually is from "barely touching" to "completely parallel" with the real deal. I don't know .. let's consider "the masterpiece" = "Titanic" which is something like "I met three days ago on a boat the woman who's the love of my life, and now I'm totally and completely sure that I'm ready to die for her, drowned, shot, beaten or all together". Come on ... It just doesn't work like this .. not without second thoughts, in 99.99% of the case. On the other hand, in "The Next Three Days" we have a guy who is married for quite a while, has a kid, and he seems to have reached a level of almost maximum interior peace & happiness with the two near him, from what we are shown in the first ten minutes of the movie. And this makes actually credible (well, I might be subjective, but ...) the attitude of "no matter the costs, jail is not the option for my wife". And this includes also the firm belief in the wife's innocence, which by the way, is the second thing (besides the "escape" result) that you'll get to know for sure only at the end of the movie (I won't say it :) ), although up to that point you might feel already all the time like the main character does.

For the movie making to point out would be the actors, the directing, the script and the music. For the actors, the main role is quite well played by Russell Crowe, and considering the incarcerated = Elizabeth Banks, I would be too subjective :) so I won't say more. What's more interesting is that you have a series of pretty known actors playing secondary parts, some very short = Liam Neeson, Brian Dennehy, Daniel Stern, Olivia Wilde. The directing goes hand-in-hand with the script = Paul Haggis (known for "Crash") and I can summarize the result for both in one word (maybe a bit more for the writing) : "brilliant". You have to options concerning this movie: either to be picky and search for plot holes, which you'll certainly find considering how non realistic is the theme (I observed one flaw just by chance .. so there are present there) .. or .. you can just go with the flow and appreciate what few movies having an action/thriller part try to do = to temperate a bit the "SF" piece transposed into reality by including points that break the smooth flow of events as it was expected to happen. In other words "the escape" isn't after all that easy to execute as a literature professor thought, starting actually with problems in the plan phase, not to talk about the execution. So .. finally, the music ... Danny Elfman is the main composer, and the soundtrack is superb. However, I left this for the end just to say that the movie brings up also some vocal tunes besides the instrumental sound. And considering that maybe the trailer is not conclusive/convincing enough (which is actually good, because you'll have a nice surprise watching the move), I said myself that it might be a good idea to supplement it with something you can hear at the end of the credits. I actually restrained myself to add also this to the "philosophical" piece in the intro to not exaggerate with the length ( which is already done by the way :) ). Nevertheless this has its own place well defined somewhere in the movie behind what you see in clear on screen : "Sometimes all it takes is a walk around the lake ..." ;) Enjoy !

Rating: 5 out of 5

Pontypool (2008)

YAZM ... Yet Another Zombie Movie :) Well .. sort of ... = I include into "zombie movie" pretty much everything that's horror/SF involving hordes of "infected" people (dead, undead, alive, whatever). "Pontypool" is anyway something different from anything I've seen before ...

First of all I should say that we have here an indie production which apparently found a pretty original way to lower the costs. All the action takes place inside a radio station, more exactly around the transmission room. Well, after all it seems that the movie is based on a book, so probably it was implicit to get to this setting. And to be even more cheap on the budget (just to say so), it's a local radio station, with three on place employees, established somewhere at the basement of a church in a minuscule town from Canada. What we have in the movie is a winter day matinee show, hosted by a guy who is apparently a "former glory" in terms of radio broadcasts, but whose agent doesn't seem to be able to find him a better position somewhere else. So, what starts as an usual broadcast session slowly turns into something less credible than every day's news. From some point on, the news from the diverse sources received on the wire are quite the opposite with the normal daily calm of the small surrounding community. For instance, instead of the usual weather forecast info, the correspondent ends up transmitting news about the "flow" of violent people devastating the local doctor's office. Or, in the section "live from studio", some of the members of the familial choir invited to preview the oncoming local musical adaptation of "Lawrence of Arabia" start having unusual behavior (well, more unusual that the one implied by the musical). And so on, what was initially looking as a hoax targeted to the show host, starts getting proportions ...

I can say that up to its first half the movie has an impeccable script, very clever and witty (just observe the repetitions ...), and which keeps you stuck to the screen. After this, the whole "ivasion" of "zombies" (I suppose that the main idea is obvious already) starts to be treated in a way somewhere between surreal and ... stupid. I'm not gonna disclose now what's the "virus" in this movie's version ... but I really doubt that the same idea was ever used in another one. The same for "the cure" (they're related after all). I tried to consider more the originality for this part but I can say that it might become a bit to hard to be believed from some point on, even if you keep in mind it's a movie. Probably that's why you get actually the "surreal" part integrated = in the context of the possible infection combined with the stress, the characters get to some dialogues/behavior which are a bit out of the surrounding context.

The main role is played by Stephen McHattie, probably a guy a bit less known (he's Canadian), but who I was expecting from some time to see as leading actor. And it deserved the wait. I think it's actually one of the main reasons to see the movie. Generally the cast is quite well chosen. Besides that we have the cinematography part which for me was extraordinary. I can't imagine how much further than that you can go in the conditions of the action placed in the same room pretty much of the movie. And the last cherry on top, the sound ... not the score, but effectively "the sound" - effects, editing, mixing. Well, the context of the movie = radio station (& more to see ...) pretty much demands it, but I can't appreciate the quality of what my ears have heard. For all of these, even if the last part of the movie was a bit disappointing, and draws it down pretty much ( I estimate that 3 of 4 viewers to have a final reaction of something like .. "that was stupid ..."), still ...

Rating: 4 out of 5

Devil (2010)

I'm very very tired after four days of walking through other places than my usual residence so I'm not in the very best shape for writing. Fortunately "Devil" is not a movie that takes to much time, at least not with the subject, because if I would say too much I would also spoil too much from what you get to see.

IMDb designates it as Horror, Mistery, Thriller (the usual alphabetic order). I consider that the movie is pretty far from the classic horror definition that you might have in mind, and it's oriented more towards the last two above. Remember "Fallen" with Denzel Washington ? It's probably one of the best movies I've ever seen which is somehow centered on the same theme = devil, demon, etc presence among humans. What we have here is pretty far in terms of quality I might say, but as "horror" level is in the same area. Which is one a bit more particular = I don't think it's scary (the trailer is deceiving) and it also doesn't have tons of disemboweled guts, eyes removed or other possible "dishes" from the classic "Saw" menu (what can I do, I'm giving the same example as usual, it's a reference after how many parts they released). The "horror" itself is just related to the evil presence in the title which here appears in a pretty original context. The idea is the next: one day .. a Philadelphia police investigator gets a new case just after breakfast = a corpse suddenly appeared on the top of a truck. After a short lookup it's determined that the body belongs to a suicidal who jumped from a floor on a high nearby building. In which building ... coincidence (or not .. obviously :) ), 5 persons are trapped into an elevator while going up. Elevator where ...

... the movie will show what happens ;) . I'll just stop at repeating the same boring everyday phrase without saying anything else :). I'm pretty sure that for the most the poster will not raise the interest for the movie and do exactly the opposite. Obviously the reason is the tagline "From the mind of M. Night Shyamalan". Ok, don't run now :) if you didn't noticed it before ... This guy actually succeded in getting out an excellent movie : "The 6th Sense" after which he pretty much messed up everything in which he was involved. Only "Unbreakable" was a bit above average, and "The Village" had some potential but didn't went forward than this. Besides those, worse and worse ... And I'm starting to believer that the main problem was the direction, or the changes the director does on his own script when he's working on the set. It seems that for the mentioned one, this position is not really recommended, because here we actually see the result when he sticks only to the story writing. And the result is definitely better. In most of his productions up to this point (I won't stay to count which one yes and which one not), he really tried to have a surprise factor in the ending, but he didn't make it to get something on par with the first one. It's also neither here, but u have some unexpected factor and the ending at least is not a catastrophe. Even if it might seem that's cut a bit short (and maybe also predictable if you're not very tired), the movie is far from being the mess "Signs" was at the ending. And, repeating myself, I believe that's quite a lot related also to the fact that the directing was left this time for somebody else.

Even if it seems to be distributed by Universal, I don't think that the movie had any big budget, and this actually makes it look a bit cheap on some parts. Even so, the cinematography, the editing and the sound are relatively ok. I especially liked the upside down travelings you get to see also in the trailer. But there is one thing that I liked even more, and that's the casting (maybe it's caused by the experience I had last week, I don't know ...). We don't have any box-office generator in the cast = some ultra known name, but the roles made are sufficiently well done and credible, and the most interesting part is that we have pretty different characters, and you get to see each personality transposed on screen. Ok, I won't get any longer with the entry (because I'm already yawning :) ) and even if down below I have a conclusion which might look partly similar with the last week one, I can say that the general impression was much better.

Rating: 3 out of 5 (more towards 4 .. I think I should start giving with a ratio ...)