"The Mule", as many of Eastwood's movies, especially after year 2000, is a slow one. I was actually expecting a slow burner, pretty much the same as "Gran Torino", but it's much more calm than that and doesn't have the same impact in the end.
The movie is mostly based on a real story, changing some names and locations. Earl Stone, an old florist specialized in lilies growing, goes bankrupt. To save his last working family connection, the relation with a niece soon to be wed, whom he promised covering some costs, he accepts to run an errand. So he does a transport with his truck. Strict rules: not allowed to see what he's carrying, no direct contact at delivery, he must throw away his phone afterwards. The first run is a success and the payment is enough to even upgrade his car, so the old man decides to continue. Obviously, it doesn't take long for him to figure out he's a drug mule, but the runs keeps going on with larger quantities. Sufficient enough to not be able to move back from it and also to hit the top list of mules tracked by the DEA...
"The Mule" is not an action movie, although it doesn't lack it completely. It's mainly a drama, a large part of it being focused on Earl's tries to make peace with his family. At the same time it's also a reflection over life, or better said over the possibility of changing it even at the age of 90. I can't say I wasn't a bit disappointed by an anticlimactic ending that doesn't close completely all the subject threads, but 1) probably it would've forced the real story otherwise and 2) as I was saying it has a calm that it keeps up to its end, which is somehow comforting, and that's probably the main reason to recommend it.
I didn't like "The Little Prince" when I was a kid, and I heard it repeatedly as a radio play on a vinyl. It was one of the stories where the ending seemed too sad. I don't recall if I read the book or not at that time, but even if I did it didn't change anything. A couple years ago, when I heard about a new animated version for "The Little Prince", I told myself it might be good to check if my perspective on it changed, but I kept postponing it. Well, I did it now. Verdict: 1. This is not a children's story, despite its animated character. 2. Don't try this alone at home, late at night when you have too many thoughts that don't let you fall asleep - a horror might be a better option :P
I won't start telling the story now. It's the most popular book by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, not very lengthy, and probably well-known. For who doesn't know it, it's probably better to give it a read and what's to understand of it will be up to the personal interpretation of each reader. In any case, to explain point 1 above, the text is full of metaphors, some maybe understandable at a young age, but requiring a level of maturity to see their depth. There's simple stuff like "think outside the box" in the first chapters up to not look at an end as the end, in the final part of the book. Which explains (partially :) ) point 2 above, as well as the director's view of this in the 2015 movie. Or to be more precise, I couldn't resist without figuring out why the story doesn't end where I remembered ending, and at about 3 AM I started reading the last chapters of the book to see if I'm prone to an early Alzheimer or not.
It seems not, because the ending of the book is where I knew it was, but still doesn't seem anymore as sad it did. Because the movie moves on as I was saying. It takes a sort of "Neverending Story" approach, another writing with lots of metaphors, where the universe is infinite and alive as long as "there are hopes and dreams", or well... that's at least the way I see now "The Little Prince", because at the time when I was listening to the vinyl I didn't know about "Neverending Story", and there was no "neverending" on the vinyl cover :). Well, it's obviously debatable the version of the director relative to how it goes on from where the book stops, which might seem too Hollywoodish. Even more debatable is the omission of some big parts in the original story. However, I'd say that overall it draws attention on the end of the written story, and does that by pointing out the uncertainty of it. Or to put it differently, an end is just a form and there might be always something after as long as you keep room for questions ;)
"Here, then, is a great mystery. For you who also love the little prince, and for me, nothing in the universe can be the same if somewhere, we do not know where, a sheep that we never saw has −− yes or no? −− eaten a rose... Look up at the sky. Ask yourselves: is it yes or no? Has the sheep eaten the flower? And you will see how everything changes... And no grown−up will ever understand that this is a matter of so much importance!" (Antoine de Saint-Exupery - "Le Petit Prince" - English translation)
"Escape from Pretoria" doesn't get to remove "Shawshank Redemption" from the top of "prison escape movies", but I'd say it's over "Shawshank Redemption" at least for one thing: how incredible is the actual escape. Especially since it's a real escape ;)...
In 1979, in the middle of Apartheid in South Africa, two white people, Tim Jenkin and Stephen Lee, got sentenced to some long years in jail for activism + bombing with anti-segregation pamphlets. Sent to a prison with a section dedicated to political convicts, the first thought seemed naturally how to escape the place. And that's the topic for the entire movie - the elaborate planning of an escape. The only spoiler that I'll give (half of which is in the trailer, the other half in a book), is that the whole action involved wooden keys and passing through 15 doors. At a quick search, it's the only escape for 43 years during the Apartheid from that prison. There was one more, but in the more recent years, after the renovation of the institution and funny enough from its max security wing.
I've seen some criticism on the fact that the movie's losing too much of the social aspect and gets too focused on the action part. The social/political aspect is not missing, but indeed the escape comes on top. After all that's the primary theme of the movie, so I can't understand such criticism. If you want something else, there are options: "Invictus", "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom", etc. We have other problems here. Except the camera work, I found the technical part a bit disappointing for how much potential the subject has. The actors are ok, but there are moments when we have a bit of overacting. And maybe the most 'complex' problem to call it so, is the somehow confusing mingling between what's real and what's invented...
Apparently Tim Jenkin, the brain behind the escape plan contributed directly as a consultant to the production, mostly based on a book with the same name published by him in the '80s, which describes in detail the entire action. In some parts though the movie changes a bit the reality. A third escapee for instance, Alex Moumbaris, is replaced by a fictitious character at least name-wise. It's rather unclear why, especially since when we get to the end we're presented in parallel the real characters and the actors in the movie, minus that guy. But if you search Wikipedia, you can uncover quickly some post-escape biography that's a bit pro-communist, and that gives some room for speculating.
We have a couple more elements in the final escape attempt where luck seem to have a too bigger impact, and some pieces do not fit very well together. You can't make a clear difference between what's real and what's not unless you give a look to the corresponding chapter in the book (easily found online). And when you see what's extra, surprisingly you find out that isn't so much. So, assuming the written material is true to the facts, the outcome is indeed one of the most spectacular prison escapes in the previous century, added that was also a perfectly justified one = overall, this was enjoyable ;)
A couple days ago, I was wondering if the there's some crossed digits typo in the Mayan calendar. Hopefully not... or at least not the digits I was thinking about. In any case, I said it might be a good idea to check a title of this year, since anyway, the number of new releases will most probably be smaller than usual. Besides that, I was complaining last time that I don't really have comedies in my schedule as an alternative material to the "apocalypse" genre promoted by most TV stations in their movie schedule these days. Well, I found an option that seemed perfect - "Bad Boys for Life" ... at least until I got to choose what poster to pick: one with "Ride Together. Die Together" as tagline or with a sober dark background. The clothing choice wins - when in doubt, wear black.
The latest "Bad Boys" was a nice surprise - 17 years since the previous one (damn, I'm getting old...), and 25 year since the first one (so old...), when I heard they're making another movie I didn't expect anything else than lots of hype, cheap story and exaggerated screen time for shooting and explosions. I don't know how much hype this got, the story is debatable on how cheap it is, and we have shooting and explosions, but thank God, the movie is not directed anymore by Michael Bay (if you watched any of the Transformers you should know what I mean). In the first part it still gives you the same feeling of an exaggerated action movie with lots of potential for eye-rolling at each third scene. Still, slowly, it did grow on me quite a bit.
If you don't know who the two bad boys in the tile are, it's probably recommended to watch the first two movies, which I'd say are "classics" of the '90s and respectively of the beginning of this century (even though I always found the first one overrated). In brief, Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) are two detectives in Miami PD, who make a funny cop duo involved in actions where they need to deal with some really bad guys. Basically, the same trend as many of the movies of the period (for which I think that the "Lethal Weapon" series is the reference). Even though I only vaguely remember what the plot in the first two is, I'd risk saying that the in this third movie we have the most complex subject of them all. And that helps a lot, even though at some point it might start looking as a telenovela. I will only say that we have a revenge story, where the target is one of the two - Mike, who after escaping the bullets struggles to find out who and why shot him. And that in a context of his partner dreaming of nothing else than a quite retirement.
First thing first, the movie is funny. I really laughed, which happens rarely. But it also depends if you taste the kind of jokes you have here, and also maybe the advantage of the age has a role ;) = you've watched sometime, long ago, the other movies, and you see in a certain light the bunch of references in the range of "we're old & obsolete". Besides that, it also creates a bit of nostalgic feeling that might help. And on top of everything, in moments when you're ready to say that this is too exaggerated, it applies the only valid recipe for such situations - the movie makes fun of itself. Keep in mind having Kate del Castillo as main villain and the reference to telenovelas regarding the story ;). Even so, we're still left with some over-the-top moments, and probably the worst part is that unlike the other movies we have a main bad boy, the other getting lost a bit too often from the action.
Anyway, I don't have any psychotherapy experience, but I'll stick to my opinion that to stay as lucid as possible in though real life moments, you need some time off from the real life. Not too much, to not lose the contact completely :) And what we have here, I think it's a good option to remove a bit of the current days stress. .
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