Reviews

Cradle Will Rock

Noone in the shop could tell me anything about “Cradle Will Rock“. I couldn’t remember any trailers or posters either. The list of names on the DVD cover looked impressive, so I rented it.

Directed by: Tim Robbins
Genres: Drama
Cast: Hank Azaria, Rubén Blades, Joan Cusack, John Cusack, Cary Elwes, Philip Baker Hall, Cherry Jones, Angus Macfadyen, Bill Murray, Vanessa Redgrave, Susan Sarandon, Jamey Sheridan, John Turturro, Emily Watson, Bob Balaban
IMDB raintg: 6.8
My rating: 7.0 [rate 7.0]

I wasn’t wrong. The film turned out to be excellent.

I’ve seen several films that show theatrical play in development. As far as I remember, I liked all of them. I don’t know why. Maybe it is a theatre lover inside of me. Or maybe because theatre demands more acting and directing talent attention.

“Cradle Will Rock” is an original movie. It mixes the theatrical play development with pre-Second World War political tension and adds a lot of personal drama to the mix.

With all of that, it is a little bit difficult to follow in the first half of the film. Things get developed slowly and it is not always easy to make sense what is what and why is it there. Excellent casting helps the situation a lot. Actors deliver that personal touch that makes the film interesting to watch even without making much sense.

Towards the second half of the film situation changes. I could suddenly make sense of everything that was happening. All those many characters became clear to me. All story lines started to merge. The more they merged, the more I was sucked into the film. It was an amazing feeling.

Another good side of the film was that it was ver positive. Surely, it touched upon some ugly issues of life in society, but it never lost its huge positive charge. Happy ending was expected from within the first few minutes of the film.

Overall, I enjoyed it a lot. I can’t recommend this film to everyone out there as it is not a simple and easy going one like most of the Hollywood crap these days. But if you are in the mood for a good film, make sure you watch this one.

The Fan

With all the heat that we are having here in Cyprus, anything that sounds like a chill out sounds like a really good thing. I know that “The Fan” could have several meanings but I picked it up anyway.

Directed by: Tony Scott
Genres: Thriller
Cast: Robert De Niro, Wesley Snipes, Ellen Barkin, John Leguizamo, Benicio Del Toro, Patti D’Arbanville, Chris Mulkey, Andrew J. Ferchland, Brandon Hammond, Charles Hallahan, Dan Butler, Kurt Fuller, Michael Jace, Frank Medrano, Don S. Davis
IMDB raintg: 5.4
My rating: 6.0 [rate 6.0]

Continue reading The Fan

xXx: State of the Union

I wasn’t very eager to watch “xXx: State of the Union“. I am trying to be careful with sequels to good movies. Especially those that don’t feature the original character anymore. You can even say that I was avoiding this movie until today. With its IMDB rating of 3.9 is not surprising…

Directed by: Lee Tamahori
Genres: Action, Crime, Adventure, Thriller
Cast: Ice Cube, Samuel L. Jackson, Willem Dafoe, Scott Speedman, Peter Strauss, Xzibit, Michael Roof, Sunny Mabrey, Nona Gaye, John G. Connolly, Ramon De Ocampo, Barry Sigismondi, Michael Don Evans, David Rountree, Ned Schmidtke
IMDB raintg: 3.9
My rating: 4 stars

Continue reading xXx: State of the Union

Elektra

“Elektra” is one of those high profile movies that I missed in its time. Catching up…

Directed by: Rob Bowman
Genres: Action, Adventure, Crime, Fantasy, Thriller
Cast: Jennifer Garner, Goran Visnjic, Kirsten Prout, Will Yun Lee, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Terence Stamp, Natassia Malthe, Bob Sapp, Chris Ackerman, Edson T. Ribeiro, Colin Cunningham, Hiro Kanagawa, Mark Houghton, Laura Ward, Kurt Max Runte
IMDB raintg: 5.0
My rating: 5.0 [rate 5.0]

This is one of those movies with a lot and a lot of potential, but that blew it all away. While watching this film I kept thinking that the only purpose of it is to show how sexy does Jennifer Garner’s semi-open mouth is. Yeah, well, OK. I get it! One, two, three… even five times – show it and I will appreciate it. But you have to get on with the movie after some time. It didn’t happen with Elektra. It was just it.

Note that I am writing this post off the top of my head and thus I don’t know what I will end up with, so some spoilers can get in. Be warned.

The film is very disbalanced. Some things are done very well and others suck so much that it is hard to believe that both were made by the same group of people. The story sucked. Big time. The traditional battle of good and evil and the epical meaning of both. “Ancient war” and stuff like that. There were practically no character development. All I understood is that the main character (questionably even that) Elektra had some bad childhood memories which messed her up psychologically. Who she is and why she is the way she is I didn’t understand. And she was the most developed character of all. Crap.

But the biggest disbalance was betweeen the good and evil powers. This film had some of the best evil powers that I’ve ever seen.

Consider them: the biggest boss played by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa who is a well known bad ass in movies. He always plays yakudza mafia people and other evils. Sadly he didn’t show any evil powers in this film, but just his presence gave evil side a lot of credit. Than there was his son, who was wearing this styled long kimono with some letters on the back. And it came with two swords and some really cool powers like teleporting. This guy was leading a gang of super cool evillers. First there was this huge black guy with a stick. Somehow he couldn’t be shot with a gun and cut with the knife. Things were just bouncing of off him. Unfortunately he died rather stupidly killed by a huge tree that he broke himself. Next comes a guy called “tattoo”. He is rather small and tattooed all over the body. Different forms of wildlife (eagle, wolves, snakes) come out of him and follow his enemies in a burst of really cool special effects. And turned out that he was just hypnotising everyone around him while falling into a mediation. A simple neck brake killed him easily. And there was a woman. There was this gothic looking woman who reminded me Rogue from “X-Men” but the evil and much more powerful kind. Everything she touched, kissed or waves at died a rather quick death. Alltogether an excellent team which is hard to fight.

On the good team were all losers. First there was this teacher of martial arts and good philosophy. Apparently he was blind, but I couldn’t notice it until it was said so in clear text. He was supposedly possessing some really cool superpowers. Like he could even bring people back alive from the dead. But he hasn’t got enough screen time to practice that except for once on … you guessed it – Elektra. Than there was Elektra – some lost women with a couple of knives and teleporting power (hello?! repeating? how come two different characters possess the same skill?). Than there was this girl – Treasure – who was supposedly very good in fighting, but she was never truly shown. And there was her young father who was a total loser – no superpowers or skills worth mentioning.

How the hell did it happen that the good won? Evil powers in this movie were thirty gadzillion times more powerful than good powers. I don’t get it.

More on the film – costumes sucked and were virtually non-existent. Locations were good, but there were not enough of them. Two or three places couldn’t provide all the scenery that was needed for this film. Also I would suggest adding more drama to the movie. Otherwise all those dramatic pauses, looks and other moments weren’t connected to anything meaningfully and were lost.

And martial arts. This film could have benefited from good martial arts tremendiosly. You say there were martial arts? No. I’m telling you. Martial arts is when you can see one or more people performing a complex and fast choreography, and more often than not, being involved in a fight with some other people doing the same. Showing how two sticks hit each other in full frame, or how a bare foot cuts air does not qualify as martial arts. I can do that without breaking a sweat, and I am 120 kilos of fat that are no good at any martial arts what-so-ever. This is just the way the camera works…

Anyway, the film left a lot of unfilled space. It could have been a lot better. Seriously. It was on the right track, but it stopped all developments long before the finish line. Skip it.

Be Cool

“Be Cool” is ought to be one of the less promoted celebrity full movies of all times. I haven’t heard anything about this film until today – no posters, no trailers, no rumors – nothing.

Directed by: F. Gary Gray
Genres: Comedy, Crime, Music
Cast: John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Vince Vaughn, Cedric the Entertainer, André 3000, Steven Tyler, Robert Pastorelli, Christina Milian, Paul Adelstein, Debi Mazar, Gregory Alan Williams, Harvey Keitel, The Rock, Danny DeVito, James Woods
IMDB raintg: 5.5
My rating: 7.5 [rate 7.5]

John Travolta is dancing with Uma Thurman in the movie with Harvey Keitel and it’s not “Pulp Fiction”? Yes. Danny DeVito is in and the film is both a comedy and a crime movie? Yes. The Rock is playing a gay guy and he’s got more screen time than Aerosmith voice Steven Tyler who is also in the movie? Yes. Vince Vaughn is in too and he’s trying to make out for more than himself. See, he thinks that he’s black and he sounds like Samuel Jackson half the time and like Snoop Dog the other half. And I haven’t even named half of the people yet.

The story is rather cliche, but it’s done well. In a nutshell – lots of criminals and show businessmen are trying to get over each other over money and power. But it has lots of charm and humor to it. Cedric the Entertainer plays a leader of a crime gang. But he lives in a good neighborhood himself and has Harward education behind his back. The monologou on racism was outstanding! Oh, and his gang is great too. Especially his first assistant.

There are lots and lots of things happening on the background. They are those nice touches that make up a movie. A Russian mafia guy with two black eyes and a rig, floored armchairs in Uma’s house, her wearing a “Widow” t-shirt after her husband was killed in the first two minutes of the movie – these and lots more is what made the film so good.

Character development and dialogues were outstanding.

Additionally, it was perfect technically. Camera work was great. Soundtrack – excellent. Costume and decor designs – fantastic. Especially costumes. Some of them were changing like for every scene of the movie (Uma’s), and other’s stayed the same during all the time (Travolta’s).

Now, all of that was perfect. The only thing that is offsetting this film is the story. An original plot would have made this one into a perfect movie. As it is, it’ll stay on my “Very good” shelf.