Small Town Crime (2017)

Short and effective. That's a quick summary for "Small Town Crime". The trailer puts it between "Three Billboards ...", as a recent example, and "Fargo" or anything else by the Coen brothers. It's indeed in the right area to classify it, but doesn't reach to any of the two above. Overall, however... not bad.

Mike Kendall is an ex-alcoholic cop who struggles to not find another job, and lives out of his unemployment stipend hoping to get back in the force. After a drinking night resulting in a sleepover on the open fields, on his way home he notices on the side of the road the body of a young girl seriously beaten. Unfortunately, she doesn't survive the first night in hospital, and neither leaves any clue on who brought her to that state. Since Mike doesn't really have something to fill the time with he decides to take the case as an unauthorized private investigator, despite his former colleagues insisting for him to stay away. The minus of the movie is that the "mistery" in the whole investigation gets revealed relatively quickly and what we're left with is a pretty simple story... so enough details.

What brings value to the movie are mainly the actors. John Hawkes makes a lead role here that's probably comparable with the one in "Winter's Bone", although playing a totally different character. Clifton Collins Jr., who's a latino actor, is cast as a pimp who struggles to show up as a sort of black gangsta, from his car to the way he talks. Robert Forster is an angry grandpa with a "high quality musket". And I really don't know who plays the main villain, but we have an overweight guy with thick eye glasses who's appearing as the ultimate assassin. Despite the obvious comic factor the cast brings, the movie is actually quite serious through its course. I guess it would've been even to dark and gritty if we wouldn't have had the characters in the cast... Too bad that the simple story brings it down. It's probably the perfect example of where the difference between a story and a script comes from = the dialogues are excellent. Besides that, I don't think we could've get a much better movie on this subject.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

A Cure for Wellness (2016)

Two years ago when "A Cure for Wellness" was released I decided to skip it seeing the ratings it got. Obviously I changed my mind, given the lack of time for reaching the cinema to see something newer. Good decision...

The story goes like this: Mr. Lockhart, an employee of a financial company on Wall Street gets sent somewhere in the Swiss Alps to take his boss back to New York from the sanatorium where he went. Reaching the place, what he finds there is a baths resort with a castle rebuilt after the local inhabitants decided two centuries ago to burn it down along with his owner, a baron with very unorthodox habits. Here comes the dark story, where we find out piece by piece details on the obsession of the baron with pure bloodline + the resulting incest with his own sister. Getting back to the present day, the location is used for treating patients who are mostly above 50 and rich enough to afford "the cure". The cure is something created by the director of the institution, consisting in an ensemble of water-based treatments, which strange enough we finally find out that actually dehydrates the patients. Despite the effect, everybody seems to feel more and more better, and even more we're reaching the conclusion that nobody wants to leave the place. Obviously, an enigma for the young Lockhart who doesn't manage to get his boss back, and on top of that he gets into the position of being a patient with a cast on his leg after his leaving attempt is stopped by a ... buck.

The movie has plenty of scenes that might generate a "what the... ?", but this is matched by the number of metaphors behind and the symbolism. From dehydrating the "wellness" in the title, up to more subtle stuff. There are also plot holes, but you typically can fill these on your own. It's somehow compensating the predictability of the movie. There's nothing surprising - you can see where all goes starting from half the movie onward, if not earlier. The movie is long, but doesn't bore. Contrary to the critics received this length has a purpose - the story you see coming is built brick by brick for making the impact more intense. And it works... The direction and partially the story belong to Gore Verbinski, and if "The Ring" tells you something, and you were able to appreciate also "Lone Ranger" (which got pretty much the same bashing from the critics), you can expect the same way of building the whole movie atmosphere - there are elements on top of other elements - camera work, sound, editing, acting taking you there. There's an excellent and complete movie experience. To compare this with something what we have here is a much more complex version of "Get Out" combined with some "Eliza Graves" feeling, but clearly better than both. It's really not worth the time to start debating why the critics praised "Get Out" so highly just because it touches a social aspect and it's better to be politically correct these days than objective - we don't have exploited black population here, so the rest doesn't matter. Just watch this, and decide which is more "movie" out of the two...

Rating: 4 out of 5

Operation Avalanche (2016)

The short version: there's a conspiracy theory saying there was no Moon landing in 1969, and the footage from that day was made in studio. The long version: "Operation Avalanche". Well, extended only for Apollo 11 - nobody seems to care about the rest of Moon landings. This movie is a thriller presenting a version where some new young and ambitious CIA agents put together from scratch everythng, the script, the film, even the phrase with the small step and the giant leap. It's a "found footage" indie movie, which can be praised for the context authenticity. Everything is re-created perfectly, from production design - location, cars, etc to the camera work and sound - you're effectively transported in time more than 45 years back from now. The director is also the main lead, stealing the screen (which is not necessarily fine = there's actually too much screen time for one character), by playing a young agent for who all this operation gets to more like a personal project than work. Overall it was interesting, but I'm still not convinced by this theory. About the first film, if it is real, if it's not, may be debatable - but about getting on the Moon ... why would you release more movies, up to '72? If you publish a fake, I doubt you'll risk revealing it by repeating the thing for about 4 more years. Maybe a better "conspiracy theory" would be what was found in '72 there to stay away since then...

Rating: 3 out of 5

Colossal (2016)

I don't know if I've seen before such a discrepancy between a trailer and what the movie gives you. Which is good. "Colossal" was a total surprise. I was expecting a comedy and I got a real drama. We have some comic accents but these are there more to relieve the tension, and definitely not as your main dish.

Something else that you won't see in the trailer is how original the story is. We have an ex-journalist working in online, fired, who loses nights in New Your bars and gets kicked out by her boyfriend. Lacking options, she returns to her remote home town to the empty house left by her parent. There, she meets an ex elementary school mate, quite courteous, who gets her a TV, a sofa and is also offering a job ... in the local bar. Obviously not the best option given the proximity of many bottles labeled with degrees. Up to this point doesn't really look like the trailer, right? Well, after the first bar night, she moves slowly back home, crossing a small park, and falls asleep until the phone wakes her up from the hangover. Latest news - in Seoul, South Korea, some sort of humanoid Godzilla smashed a part of the city + the inhabitants. When all this repeats, and repeats again, and the monster starts doing familiar gestures, we're slowly getting to associating it with the real counterpart... and here we have the trailer :) What follows next? ... What to say.. I didn't mention the park for nothing = the area is a sort of miniature replica of Seoul, Godzilla doesn't stay alone for long - something worse is on the way to keep her company ... and I guess that's enough spoilers.

Anne Hathaway makes a superb lead role. At least for me seemed way beyond the Oscar win in "Les Miserables", but on the other hand I detest musicals... Technically the movie doesn't shine, but the story helps a lot. There's pretty much that's far fetched, but overall that's lost in comparison with the absurd of the idea placed in the middle of a real life drama. And this absurd, incredibly enough, gets to a coherent explanation (with all the plot holes you might find there) and a pretty good ending, although probably not 100% fair and a bit harsh. But to sit now and analyze the metaphor of your "inner monster", going back to the childhood roots... too obvious & lame. Just enjoy the movie ;).

Rating: 4 out of 5

The Rainmaker (1997)

Long ago... = something like 20 years (damn, I'm getting old...) there was a trend of John Grisham adaptations - "The Firm", "The Client", "The Pelican Brief" are probably among the best known, which also had good box-office at the time, but were not the only ones. The author of the novels is apparently a quite prolific writer in the genre of legal thrillers, which seems it's rather off the Hollywood priorities list since quite a while... the last big screen movie with his name under story was "Runaway Jury" from 2003 (otherwise a very good movie from what I can recall). "The Rainmaker" is one of the titles that weren't so high profile at the time, despite an all-star cast, and also eluded my watched movie list 'til recently.

The action is set in Memphis, Tennessee, for most of it, and here you can probably give some credit to the movie for the specific feel of Southern US, or on the contrary for keeping the stereotype (since I've never passed by there I can't choose the right option). We have a lawyer who just passed the bar exam (a very young Matt Damon), who at his first more serious case must go against an insurance company that denied repeatedly covering the treatment for a patient with terminal leukemia. That's the main story thread, besides it having a couple more cases that bring a romance element, an unfinished context of a shady law firm with a boss running from the feds, and a Danny de Vito in a secondary role to spice up the atmosphere. Moving back to the main story, I wouldn't say more that unfortunately is weaker than all of the ones enumerated above. There's a war going between the lawyer at a first case and his much more experienced counterpart (Jon Voight as devious counselor), involving lots of shenanigans, but something's not there...

The director is Francis Ford Coppola and at some point in all the shady-law-firms-mafia entanglement I felt a bit of "Godfather", but it faded away quickly. Overall, the movie left me a bit of a salad impression, where we have a couple mini-stories just to fill up space, but distracting the attention from the main topic, although without these we'd still have an issue.. the result probably being way too shallow to make it into a movie. Honestly, even though in a pretty different genre, I think that "My Cousin Vinny" was much better put together for the legal "thriller" part compared with what I've seen here...

Rating: 3 out of 5