Since I didn't manage to see much this week, I'm forced to resort again to older stuff. And from the more recently seen I don't have much choice - two mafia stories: "We Own the Night" made in U.S., without much to remark about it, and "A Bitersweet Life" from South Korea, which is even simpler as a subject .. but overall more powerful and more original. So I'll stick to the last of them getting back once more to the Asian cinema ...
As I said, the subject is simple. A trusted man from a Triad is asked by the group head to watch over his much younger girlfriend while he's out of town, for three days. With the order to deal with the problem if he catches her cheating or at least to notify him in order to "take measures". Obviously, after not too long, the guy in charge with the "mission" catches the subjects together. But, being struck by mercy (after beating badly before the young Don Juan) he decides to do nothing from what his chief asked if the two break the affair. Somehow the boss finds out, and as result the first punished is his own employee. How is punished, how escapes and what happens after .. I'd rather leave to the viewer to discover. Again, the subject is quite simple = classic revenge story. What gives it a plus as story are several nuances sufficiently out of common to look taken from a script by Terry Gilliam collaborating with Tarantino (other better example I can't get now) = escape from the grave, Russian arm dealers with an IQ inverse proportionally with the motherland surface, battle scenes a la Bruce Lee = 1 vs. 20, etc.
I can't say that I liked the movie story wise. I'd rather have had a different ending. But I have to appreciate pretty much of the rest: directing (Jee-Woon Kim), cinematography, score, etc. The main role (Byung-hun Lee) as well as acting and script-wise, sort of remembered me about Alain Delon in several movies from '60-'70. So, to conclude, overall is a pretty bitter movie and relatively rough. Depending on your mood you might like it or not, but in any case is sufficiently powerful not to be forgotten quickly.
I've had a full weekend and I'm still not in my best mood for writing. So, I've decided for something light .. maybe too light. In general I prefer having entries that I can positively recommend, but since the ratings in the end are (in theory) from 1 to 5 I guess from time to time I can justify having here something like: "if you want to feel good about having an IQ above 50, watch this movie". So, in case is not clear yet, "Olympus has Fallen" also falls in this category. Details ...
Not to be completely against it I have give it credit for being .. funny. Unintentionally, but still if you take it as a comedy it can rescue itself. So, let's follow this line. We have him (Gerard Butler), Secret Service agent sent to the treasury security after he manages to save the life of the U.S. president from an accident. The reason for that: he didn't have time also for the First Lady, and the president suffers from depressive attacks remembering the scene when he sees the guy who rescued him. Our brave agent still cares though about the safety of the supreme ruler, and periodically tries to find out how things are going in the White House (ok, to be fair, this piece of beginning in the movie is actually acceptable, but still it deserves its dose of sarcasm for what followed). So, we get like this to a situation that wants to look like an alternative to the ultra-bashed Die Hard 5. In a sunny day, from the East, a big military transport plane (apparently a Hercules) gets like teleported into Washington D.C.'s air space, and cuts like cheese with an efficacy that would make Tony Stark's armed division proud, through two fighters sent to tell hello, after which also shreds the White House. Sufficient enough that the president, with all his staff, to retire in a secret subterranean bunker. And obviously, not to give a bad name to the U.S. hospitality, contrary to the protocol, he also invites the North Korean delegating which by chance was just visiting. Meanwhile, the Tatar Horde .. or better said, their much more eastern followers assaults the building at ground level. Obviously, the president is taken hostage immediately after the bunker door is sealed from inside so no one could attempt a rescue. But, we lost our hero. The treasury agent remembers that he never got a bullet for the one who dismissed him from the lead position of the presidential guard, and his conscience drives him through the bullets directly into Olympus (the code name for the White House in case it wasn't clear already). Since further than this is quite easy to grasp what follows, I think it's useless to lose time in more details.
But still .. I don't think I justified enough my sarcastic attitude towards this production worthy of a 5 star review in the Army Magazine. Well .. I didn't want to spoil the comic situations, but for me the motive of the terrorist attack was quite enough to form an opinion. Accessing a top secret protocol for ... disarming (yes, disarming) all U.S. nuclear warheads (altogether). Maybe it sounds a bit weird. My bad .. I've omitted a detail. It's not disarming in the terms normal sense, it's a destruction of the missiles through self-detonation (even if they're not launched). 4th of July fireworks TM design ;)
Rating: 2 out of 5 (to keep the spirit: 1 point goes to the hacker girl :P .. even if what she was doing was quite far from hacking, but let's get over it)
I guess it's not the first version of the R.L.Stevenson classic that I see, but I don't remember any other one. If I've seen another either it was really long ago, or was really unimpressive. From what I heard, the version shot around 1990 with a young Christian Bale as Jim Hawkins might be the best. But for now I'm stopping to the newest, a mini-series from last year with a pretty unknown name in the leading position (Toby Regbo) .. but it depends how we define the leading role here ;)
I don't think we can consider any spoilers. Since we have something based on a pretty known novel I'll allow myself to do a short recap of the first part. The young Jim Hawkins, orphan of father and with a worrying living budget gets in possession of a treasure map showing the place where the fearsome (and late) captain Flint buried his loot. The treasure is hunted though also by the former crew of the aforementioned. Since all the wealth of Jim and his mother is limited to the small income they gain from administrating an inn, the young man has to call for help for financing an expedition which it gets from the local doctor and a squire who owns the land where he lives. Like that we get to the point where we have the three + a ship captain and a couple of crewmen on one side, and on the other side .. the ship's cook. Long John Silver - a guy with a wooden leg, ex quartermaster on Flint's ship, who manages to infiltrate in the expedition crew almost all of the former pirates looking for the treasure. Of course, their intentions are kept hidden until they reach the island, and after ... Well, after is written in the book :) I could say also in the movie, but even for the first part we already get some significant differences to the novel. Which initially was pretty distasteful, seemingly there just to impose some original note to a classic (= pretty much the same with all the "Monte Cristo" adaptations to give a similar example). In the end though, I can say, that different from other cases, at least the flow of the action didn't get simplified (maybe even the opposite). So, due to this let's say that the result is acceptable.
Let me get back to what I was saying in the beginning. Who is the leading character in "Treasure Island" ? When you read the book, you could define Jim Hawkins as main character. The most complex is though, by far, Silver, and I think this actually gives the level the novel has. Without the attitude changes, the manipulations, and the "political" flexibility of the pirate leader = overall the way the Long John Silver character is built, this book probably would hardly overcome a statute of a pulp adventure novelette and would be lost among others as I don't know .. the 15th Tarzan from the E.R. Burroughs series among the rest of them (with the difference that Burroughs wrote sufficiently many Tarzan stories ~ around 30 novels ~ to remember its existence). In the movie version Silver gets even closer to the lead character status. And in this particular case, the acting does its best to consolidate this. I didn't have the opportunity to watch Eddie Izzard very often. And I really couldn't imagine him as Silver. Who is far more dramatic than comic. I've been surprised. So positive, that I will probably give a too high rating to the movie :) But it really deserves watching hust for this, especially if you've read the book at some time and you still remember the character ..
About the rest, what can I say ... It shows that's a made for TV production. It's far from the perfect adaptation. But even so, the movie looks fine as production level. The director is Steve Barron, who's probably totally unknown, but for me is the man behind the best movie made for TV, as subjective as I might be :) - "Merlin", the Sam Neill version. Still, the level is different here, but it's ok. I would point out before closing also the score which unfortunately is quite hard to find and the cinematography, which probably due to the lack of budget was permitted to get a bit .. let's say "artistic". The first impression was a bit weird, but as the script changes, in the end I have to admit that overall the result wonderfully supports the dramatic side of the story. It creates that feeling somewhere that's between strange and eerie sometimes. Which ( if my memory doesn't fail me .. there are more than 15 years I believe :) ) it's present, at least between the lines if not directly also in the book. Which is more mature, more cold, more dark but finally it has also the happy end of a "a la Disney" adventure.
Rating: 4 out of 5 ( mostly for the lead negative character ;) )
The Fall (or better said September, since you don't really know when a season starts end ends) begins with "Riddick". Obviously I couldn't have stopped at anything else than a SciFi :) Sequel to a very well done "Pitch Black" (although as marketing as obscure as the title) and a much worse "Chronicles of Riddick" (overall level inverse proportionally to the budget). The traile for this one doesn't seem very encouraging but we'll see what we'll get from episode 3.
Since we're on sequels, call this a guilty pleasure, but I won't jump over "Machete Kills". The first part was superb in regard to the satire towards action movies. And since the second seems to follow the same trend ...
Getting into a more serious zone, towards the end of September we have a biopic. "Rush" is centered on one of the most, let's call it "terrible" stories from the Formula 1 history = the rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda + the accident of the last of them from 1976. I'm not really into biopics, and for various reasons I'm neither watching Formula 1 since years, but this movie looks quite good, and the direction by Ron Howard ("Apollo 13", "A Beautiful Mind", "Cinderella Man" to count only the same genre) gives an increased degree of probability to hear about this title also at the next year Oscars.
The movie for which I have the biggest expectancies in all the current series comes at the start of October and it's ( obviously :) ) a SciFi (more or less). "Gravity" is a production with two actors (probably only them for 99% of the length) - Sandra Bullock & George Clooney - a director who should guarantee a good result - Alfonso Cuaron ("Children of Men", "Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban" - the only in the series that left me with a nice impression) - and an apparently simple subject, but at least an original one: following an .. "accident", two astronauts fall into space drift on the orbit. And that's pretty much all we know for the moment :) ...
November starts with a SciFi expected by apparently lots of people: "Ender's Game". I didn't read the book (Orson Scott Card), awarded with Hugo and Nebula, but I know the story in brief, and in the SciFi range that I had time to digest it leaves me pretty much as cold as "Starship Troopers" (Robert Heinlein). I know that it's not the same thing but is the niche of the genre ("military science fiction" to quote from Wikipedia) for which I really don't have any interest. I'm waiting to see if the movie manages to contradict me.
It couldn't be possible to skip completely the super-heroes section. And since I don't have many options anyway as trailers for the end of Fall, I won't jump over "Thor: The Dark World". From all the Marvel series, the first "Thor" is for me somewhere at the bottom of the list (together with "Iron Man 2" and more movies from the "X-Men" series), so if the second episode surprises me it cannot be otherwise than on the positive side.
Another sequel, "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire", closes November and the current preview round. Without extra comments, I'll just say that's another example, where considering the first part, this one cannot surprise me in any other way than positive. If it surprises me, on which I don't give much chance :P
That's about it for the current "preview". Time during I managed to gather up a couple of subject for the coming weeks. Cam atat pentru "avantpremiera" curenta. So, back next with a movie ;)
I'm maybe in the worst mood for writing since the beginning of the year. So the end of May is well synced, since it's the usual time when I go through the movies of the following 6 months. So, less words, more video ...
In June we have, the way too promoted "Man of Steel". Getting over the semi-alergic condition that I lately developed for super-hero movies (although I have to admit that "Iron Man 3" was decent), the only part that attracts me to this one is the direction by Zach Snyder. But not even this probably can save a story told already in something like 3-4 trailers (+ the known background), the last of them covering pretty much all the blank spots left.
I'll stop for a moment on "White House Down". Because I've recently seen "Olympus has Fallen". Which is a bit like a Die Hard at the White House. And now, at least than 3 months distance comes the "remake". Why I insist on it ? Just because the first version, contrary to some ratings that mislead me when I payed my ticket, makes the last "Die Hard", bashed by everybody, to look like a Oscar movie. To bad for the idea, which has potential for an action movie. So, from the weirdness of having two movies with the same topic one after another, maybe something good manages to finally come out. Even though Roland Emmerich directing (remember "Godzilla" ?) doesn't sound encouraging.
By far, the most interesting title for June comes from UK. "Hummingbird" is a thriller written and directed by Steven Knight ("Dirty Pretty Things", "Eastern Promises"). As an alternative title it also comes as "Redemption". No pun intended, but even so I'm curious to see if Jason Statham in his first role with a more solid drama content deserves getting credit for the acting, demonstration avoided by now with the skill of the "Transporter" driver.
"The Lone Ranger" opens July as the last collaboration between Gore Verbinsky/Johnny Depp/Jerry Bruckheimer & Disney. Contrary to the majority of the public, who besides "Pirates of the Caribbean", pretty much ditched every Disney super-production in the last years, to be read "Prince of Persia" & "John Carter", I actually liked them. Quite a lot. There's something there from the feeling of the movies before '90 ("Indiana Jones", "Back to the Future", "Star Wars" the old series). So, I have hope also here. And since the mentioned triplet is the same from "PotC", if the movie confirms, I hope it will get enough public this time to avoid getting canceled for eventual sequels.
Not to forget animations completely, this summer we have "Turbo". After the first teaser, close to 0 details, the title did sound promising. Without more comments, following the 2nd trailer I start to think if DreamWorks is somehow "virused" by Pixar lately as feeling/age target/rest of script+story related stuff (and it's not supposed to be something good).
I know I mentioned above that I become allergic to super-hero movies, but I don't know if I have any better option for the end of July. And the last version of "Wolverine", although again giving quite a lot from the subject in the trailer, looks anyway relatively promising. If we take as plus only the Orient location and we already have something more original than the other title with "steel" in it.
I have to admit that this year seems very good for SciFis, compared to others. And more, SciFis that seem promising and already confirmed ("Oblivion", "Star Trek"). Because there's also the "classic" category targeted on getting profit proportional with the explosions amount (maybe I'm wrong but it looks that "Pacific Rim" sort of fits). From the others though, in August we have "Elysium". But let's see if what we have here it's not just competition to (and on par with) "Hunger Games" ...
I'll allow myself to put also "Grandmaster" on this summer list, although the movie was already released. I don't really preview Hong Kong movies because even if I have a pretty good opinion on many titles that are getting out of there, there are a lot which are totally lame. This one was sent though to a bunch of festivals (where to be true the opinions were divided). So I said that I can do an exception. Especially since is directed by Wong Kar Wai, somehow strange for a biopic that (after I don't know how many other installments) it's about Ip Man's life, known as essential figure in the Chinese martial arts. Why the directing seems strange .. because WKW is known for a series of movies that don't have almost anything in common with this type of action, and get much more close to a surreal drama area (yes, surreal drama from that part of the world - check out "2046" or "Chunking Express" - it might be surprising after you see them but they're made in China). Anyway, after the trailer, the movie looks fine at least visually, so I would give it a chance ...
If I already got into a niche that's far from mainstream, and with movies that are released already in some places, I'll end August and today's entry with a made in UK production, about which I don't know if it's low budget or not, but looks quite indie. And for an indie to get catchy, especially a fantasy in which there were pumped some money, "Hammer of the Gods" should hopefully have at least a decent story .. or lots of blood. We'll see which one ...
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