Sunday 27 February 2011

Movie Review: Salvador (1986)


Through the eyes of photojournalists, Oliver Stone tackles the brutal civil war that destroyed El Salvador and killed 75,000 people in the 1980s. Salvador is a small film that dares to ask the big questions, and a smart enough movie to realize that the answers are most elusive.

Richard Boyle (James Woods) makes it his job to take pictures in the world's most violent hotspots, and his experience covers Vietnam, Cambodia, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. Nevertheless, in 1980 he is living in a squalid San Francisco apartment, unemployed and broke. His wife abandons him, so he packs his car, grabs his friend Dr. Rock (James Belushi), and drives to El Salvador, a country in the midst of an ugly war between a right-wing ruling junta and a left-wing peasant uprising.

But it's the cold war and no conflict is simple: the rebels are portrayed as heavily armed communists backed by Castro and the Soviets; the army is recast as defenders of freedom and gets the support of Reagan's United States while committing widespread atrocities, operating death squads, and ensuring that "disappearances" occur on a wide scale.

Despite the chaos, Boyle is initially more interested in womanizing, drugs and alcohol, and he soon hooks up with former lover Maria (Elipidia Carrillo) and her family. But he is also desperate to make some money, so he joins forces with fellow photojournalist John Cassady (John Savage, portraying a character loosely based on real-life photojournalist John Hoagland), and together they start capturing the horrors of the conflict: a mass open grave for victims of the death squads; a trip to a rebel camp; and the disappearance and murder of innocent civilians. Boyle also chronicles landmark events of the El Salvador war, including the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, and the rape and murder of four American women missionaries. For Boyle and Cassady, chronicling the ever more violent conflict and staying alive start to become mutually exclusive.

Civil wars in small countries are particularly nasty affairs, and rarely receive much attention. Using straightforward in-your-face filmmaking, Stone whitewashes nothing. Boyle is a sleazy leach, living off others and believing in very little. The right-wing army rulers are despicable, barbarous and heartless. The Americans pulling the strings of the army are obsessed cold-war warriors who see nothing except a global conflict with communism. The local US ambassador is clueless. The rebels are initially portrayed as peasant freedom fighters who have Boyle's sympathy; but his eyes are opened when they, too, start to cold-heartedly assassinate unarmed soldiers.

The only genuinely sympathetic character is Maria, and she stands for the country, victimized from all sides, and left terrified and abandoned even by those with genuine intentions to help.

James Woods gives a trademark performance with intensity cranked up to eleven. A man driven by pumping adrenaline and capable of talking himself into huge amounts of trouble, Woods makes sure that Boyle is a memorable, hugely flawed but ultimately caring man, perfectly suited to surviving the world's worst trouble spots.

Salvador contains no glamour, no fake emotions, no little victories, and no happy endings: a perfect metaphor for the futility and wastefulness of nasty proxy wars.






All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Saturday 26 February 2011

Movie Review: Red Dawn (1984)


World War III starts with Soviet and Cuban soldiers invading the United States and occupying large swaths of the land of the free. But America is also the home of the brave, and in a small rural Colorado town, a group of high school teenagers take refuge in the mountains and wage guerilla warfare against the occupiers.

Red Dawn deserves some credit for imagining an outlier Cold War scenario, and examining the consequences of bringing a foreign war to the United States. The portrayal of citizen resistance against foreign occupiers seems inherently odd when it's American civilians having to fight a large traditional army, since real-world conflicts have never involved Americans in the role of the oppressed. Getting past this fundamental premise is a stretch but could have been worth a view, except that Red Dawn does not help itself with an asinine script courtesy of director John Milius and Kevin Reynolds, the latter most infamous for later drowning Kevin Costner's career in Waterworld.

The occupying Cuban and Soviet forces are generally portrayed as vicious buffoons, despite somehow possessing the skills to pull off a successful invasion to begin with, and the lines of dialogue throughout the movie would make an eighth grader proud. The combat sequences have a lot of bullets flying, mostly serving to perforate any sense of reality with non-survivable wounds.

Red Dawn does earn back some respect by not flinching from the ultimate outcome of a group of teenagers taking on a large army: the good guys are decimated, and victory has to be found within the ashes of annihilation.

The cast is an entertaining gallery to spot many famous, soon-to-be-famous and never-quite-famous faces from the mid-1980s.  Patrick Swayze leads the teenage rebels, joined by his brother Charlie Sheen. C.Thomas Howell, Jennifer Grey and Lea Thompson are also in the group. Powers Boothe joins them briefly as a downed fighter pilot, and Harry Dean Stanton has a single but over-the-top memorable scene as the incarcerated Dad of Swayze and Sheen. Deep into the cast Ben Johnson and William Smith add colour to secondary characters.

Red Dawn's tragedy lies in the lingering impression that with an injection of a little more talent behind the camera, a classic could have been created. As it is, it's a movie that best resembles a comic book for pre-teens.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.


Thursday 24 February 2011

Movie Review: Inception (2010)


A near-future science fiction thriller that is a breath of fresh air in terms of new ideas, writer and director Christopher Nolan demonstrates in Inception that originality is alive and well, and action movies need be neither derivative nor interpretations of obscure comics.

Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) specializes in modern industrial espionage: stealing ideas by invading the dreams of executives. Dom has unresolved emotional issues related to the death of his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard); as a result her image frequently appears and disrupts his progress at critical points in his invasive work.

Businessman Mr. Saito (Ken Watanabe) hires Dom for a special assignment: conduct an inception by invading the dreams of rival executive Robert Fisher (Cillian Murphy) and planting an idea that will benefit Mr. Saito's business interests. An inception is the opposite of a theft, and is rarely successful, but Cobb assembles a crack team to pull it off. His associates include architecture student Ariadne (Ellen Page), a couple of other expert thieves, and a chemist specializing in dream-related sedation.

The inception operation will require an elaborate dream within a dream within a dream structure, and the whole team may be forever lost in limbo if the plan fails. An extra complication for Dom is dealing once and for all with his emotions surrounding Mal's death.

Inception is both challenging and complex to follow, but in an era of cookie-cutter sequelitis, a movie that demands attention is a good thing. Nolan spent 10 years developing the script, and it shows. Inception has an elaborate structure resembling Matryoshka nesting dolls, with fine threads connecting events happening in several dream dimensions at once. Knowing what is real and what is a dream is a challenge for both the characters and the viewers.

The main heist involves three dream levels, and when things go wrong an unscheduled descent into a fourth dream level becomes necessary. All events in each of the levels are interrelated, and it's not an easy task to keep all the action straight. Nolan pulls this off with a combination of slick editing and sheer bravado, helped by a dedicated Leonardo DiCaprio performance.

The movie does suffer from some routine, prolonged, and unconvincing shoot-out sequences, as Dom's team unexpectedly encounter heavily armed defenders in the dreams of Robert Fisher. The sequences revealing Dom's history with his wife Mal are better, and that is where the film finds it's emotional high points.

Inception is a showcase for some incredible modern movie special effects, but in addition to being justified as part of various dream worlds, they are placed at the service of a fascinating story and engaging characters. Demonstrating an appreciation for old-school film elements, Nolan also brings in Michael Caine for a few scenes to add acting depth as DiCaprio's father-in-law.

Inception inspires awe and head-scratching in equal measures, and the best proof of its impact is that it demands to be viewed again, as soon as it ends.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.


Tuesday 22 February 2011

Movie Review: Body Of Evidence (1993)


Body Of Evidence may or may not be the worst film of the 1990s: it certainly presents a compelling example of a project gone pear shaped to the point of being interesting for all the wrong reasons.

Producer Dino De Laurentiis, king of the derivatives, must have thought that he was onto a no-lose proposition: mash together lawyer-falls-for-suspect from Jagged Edge (1985) with sex-as-act-of-murder from Basic Instinct (1992), add an all-star cast, drop in the sizzle of Madonna as an often naked seductress, and stir vigorously. That despite all these ingredients he ended up with a squashed turkey says a lot about the awfulness of this film.

Body Of Evidence would have had a better chance of success with a half-decent script and a half-decent director. Instead Brad Mirman wrote a screenplay that gets lamer the harder it tries for eroticism, and once promising director Uli Edel used Body Of Evidence to prove his inability to deliver quality movies, spending most of the rest of his tattered career in TV land.

And the hole at the centre of this donut is Madonna, flapping her eyelids in a desperate attempt to prove that she belongs on the big screen, and utterly failing to convince. Madonna's lightweight presence at the heart of Body Of Evidence tilts the whole enterprise towards farce. Next to her on the screen, Willem Dafoe, Joe Mantegna, Anne Archer, Julianne Moore, Frank Langella and Jurgen Prochnow hang on for dear life as they realize that their careers may be drowning in a sea of ineptitude.

As for the plot, old man Andrew Marsh is found dead in his bed. Rebecca Carlson (Madonna) is his much younger lover, and she is soon arrested for having induced Marsh's death by intentionally straining his heart with ever more kinky sex. Rebecca's lawyer is Frank Dulaney (Dafoe), and although he is happily married to Sharon (Julianne Moore), Rebecca is soon tying him up, straddling him naked, and dripping hot wax on his chest in what is meant to be an erotic lovemaking session. Better is yet to come when they have sex in a dank parkade as shards of glass tear through his skin.

Nevertheless, Prosecutor Robert Garrett (Mategna) wants to deprive the world of Rebecca's unique skill set by throwing her in jail for murder, and he thinks he has a strong case, particularly as Rebecca stands to inherit Marsh's fortune. Marsh's secretary Joanne (Archer) is ready to testify that Rebecca shoved cocaine up March's nose; a former lover is uncovered and he testifies that Rebecca also tried to push his heart over the edge with too much sex, and Marsh's doctor Alan (Prochnow) confesses that Rebecca found out from him that Marsh had a weak heart.

All these witnesses eventually implode into a spectacular mess in the farcical courtroom, as Rebecca and Frank are able to discredit them with ever more ludicrous revelations, all without any research, support staff, or actual work to interrupt the hot sex sessions in Rebecca's floating house with flowing curtains. Rebecca walks, and Frank has to confront her when he is shocked -- shocked! -- that she was, actually and after all, behind the murder of Andrew Marsh.

Body Of Evidence is not bad enough to be funny, just bad enough to make for compelling viewing as several careers suffer nasty damage in a most unfortunate screen wreck.



All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Sunday 20 February 2011

Movie Review: Toy Story 3 (2010)


A full fifteen years after the original Toy Story was released, and eleven years after the first sequel, Pixar and Disney release the third episode in the animated story of the toys Woody, Buzz, and their friends. It's a worthy installment, mixing humour with honest sentiment, and a message of friendship, trust, and eternal hope for a better future.

Andy, the owner of Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and other favourite toys like Mr.and Mrs. Potato Head, Jessie the cowgirl, Rex the dinosaur, Hamm the Pig and Slinky Dog, is now 17 years old and on his way to college. The toys know that the old days of Andy playing with them are long gone; they are worried that they might be thrown out, and the best that they can hope for is retirement in the attic. Through a series of unfortunate events the toys find themselves donated to a daycare, where a toy bear (Ned Beatty) and his goons have established rigid rules, insisting that the newcomers play with toddlers too young to treat them with care. Woody has to help his friends escape from the abuse at the daycare, and in the course of the madcap adventure he also stumbles upon a solution to their long-term future.

Toy Story 3 is made more poignant since the core child audience of the original 1995 movie, who purchased the Woody and Buzz merchandise at the time, have grown up and outgrown the toys just as Andy has. The film poses questions about loyalty, kindness and friendship in terms simple enough for a new generation of young kids to ponder, within the framework of a story enjoyable by the teenagers of today and the parents of both generations.

The animation technology gets ever better, and now the toys look rigid only because they are toys, and not through the limits of technology. The fluid motion, light and shadows, and background details are perfected to the point where the animation is almost forgotten, a scary yet brilliant achievement.

Lee Unkrich, who co-directed Toy Story 2 with John Lasseter, takes over full directing duties this time while Lasseter keeps an eye on things as Executive Producer. Unkrich finds all the interesting angles to film the misadventures of the toys, and he is helped by the appropriately over the top voice acting performances of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen.

Toy Story 3 is a visit from old friends for one more round of laughs and tears, and a realization that while times may change, true friendships are forever.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.


Movie Review: The Social Network (2010)


A compelling drama about the creation of Facebook, The Social Network is the first internet era business movie classic.

It's 2003, and Harvard freshman and computer wizard Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) is smart, conceited, and has no friends. His girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara) dumps him, and in that same drunken evening he hacks into various Harvard student club databases and creates FaceMash: a website where guys can rate the photos of campus girls. By 4am the popularity of the site crashes the Harvard network.

Mark gains instant campus notoriety, and is soon approached by twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, also Harvard students, but from a rich, well-connected family. The twins invite Mark to help them implement a new website for Harvard students to connect with each other. Mark agrees to work with the twins, but doesn't follow through. Instead, a month later, he launches The Facebook, his own web site for social interaction. Mark appoints his best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) as his 30 percent partner and Chief Financial Officer, in exchange for a $1,000 investment.

The Facebook takes off, and is soon the coolest new web site on campus. Eduardo pushes for its quick commercialization; Mark resists, wanting to keep the site free of advertising until he knows what it can become. Meanwhile, the Winklevoss twins are sure that The Facebook is based on their idea; eventually, they decide to sue for damages.

Mark and Eduardo meet Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the notorious and charismatic founder of Napster, the illegal music file-sharing website. Sean sees the huge potential in The Facebook (and recommends that the name be changed to just Facebook). Mark falls under Sean's spell, but Eduardo is repulsed by Sean's blatant narcissism. Mark follows Sean's advice and moves to Silicon Valley; Facebook explodes into an international sensation, and venture capital pours in with Sean's help. Eduardo is now out of his depth and out of tune with Facebook's potential. As the site reaches the one million user milestone, Mark and Sean force Eduardo out of the company by diluting his shares down to nothing in an underhanded deal. Eduardo launches his own legal action against his former best friend. All the lawsuits are a minor nuisance to Mark: he becomes the world's youngest billionaire.

The Social Network is a two-hour talkathon, and writer Aaron Sorkin delivers a screenplay that is more than capable of propelling the drama. Although the script is disappointingly silent about Zuckerberg's life before the fall of 2003, it is otherwise a masterpiece of storytelling through dialogue, and avoids all melodramatic cliches. Inter-cutting scenes at Harvard and San Francisco as Facebook is created with scenes of legal discovery as the lawsuits unfold, Sorkin creates drama through intellect rather than histrionics, and maximizes the sense of brainy realism that the film is built upon.

Working from the terrific script, the actors do their part. Jesse Eisenberg successfully projects a sense of inflated cockiness, single-mindedness, impatience with lower intellects, and the almost total absence of empathy. From the supporting cast Justin Timberlake is irresistibly fluid as the magnetic but uncontrollable Sean Parker. Director David Fincher is steady and unobtrusive, allowing the actors and dialogue to take centre stage.

The Social Network is the story of the modern economy, where on-line success can be achieved in hours, a global multi-billion dollar business is launched from a dorm room in a matter of days, and value is measured by coolness rather than widgets. But some things never change: a cut-throat attitude and unwavering self-belief remain more than useful attributes for success.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.


Monday 14 February 2011

Movie Review: Milk (2008)


The film biography of gay rights activist Harvey Milk is an inspirational story of one man's courage, strength and tenacity in the face of seemingly overwhelming forces.

Picking up the story when Harvey turns 40 years old having achieved nothing in life, Milk recounts the years between 1970, when Harvey moved from New York to San Francisco, and 1978, when he was assassinated along with the Mayor at City Hall.

Upon arrival in San Francisco Harvey and his partner Scott Smith (James Franco) settle in the Castro neighbourhood, which quickly morphs into the magnetic focal point of gays from around the world. Harvey's outspokenness for the rights of all minorities soon elevates him to the status of unofficial mayor of Castro, and he gathers around him a group of dedicated activists. He also meets and mentors Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch), who would go on to become a prominent campaigner for the rights of AIDS victims.

Harvey takes a run at public office on several occasions, and repeatedly fails to get elected; the constant electioneering takes its toll on his private life, and Smith leaves him. Anti-gay sentiment is meanwhile sweeping across America, with local laws protecting minority rights defeated in many jurisdictions. In 1977 Harvey finally wins a seat as a San Francisco Supervisor, and becomes the first openly gay man elected to public office in the United States.

In the last year of his life, Harvey Milk faces his three biggest battles: Proposition 6 is on the California ballot, and if passed it will force the firing of all gay teachers in the state; Harvey's partner Jack is becoming increasingly unstable and difficult to manage; and Supervisor Jack White is a political rival who becomes ever more erratic. One of these challenges ends in a great triumph: the other two in utmost tragedy.

Sean Penn delivers a tour-de-force performance as Harvey Milk, capturing a man publicly confident about his position in life, embracing the leadership role that history selected for him, while privately tortured by the consequences of failure.

Through the struggles of Harvey's life director Gus Van Sant seamlessly presents the broader story of the early battles  gays had to fight to gain equality and basic human rights. It's an eye-opening, sometimes sickening tale of wide-scale high-level fear-mongering, abuse and dehumanization taking place in a supposedly enlightened country.

Missing from Milk is any meaningful portrayal of the first 40 years of Harvey's life. We just gets his assertion that he achieved nothing to that point. Some understanding of his upbringing and the events that shaped him into the man that he became would have provided better character rounding.

The chronicle of Harvey Milk is ultimately the story of those rare men who embrace a unique role to define and shape the course of history through peaceful means against impossible odds, often at great personal cost. In an age when seeking instant personal gratification is the rule and violence is celebrated, it is a tale not told often enough.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.


Sunday 13 February 2011

Movie Review: Serpico (1973)


One rotten apple can spoil the whole bunch, but what happens to one good apple in a barrel full of rotten apples? New York cop Frank Serpico found out the hard way. Based on a true story as documented in the book by Peter Maas, Serpico is one of the defining films of 1970s cinema, combining one of the decade's biggest stars with the decade's most compelling city.

An honest cop who found corruption around every corner and in every precinct, Serpico could not get the leaders of the police force to pay any attention to him. Castigated and ostracized by his fellow officers for refusing to join them on the take, Serpico eventually went public with his revelations. He was shot in the face during a drug bust, in circumstances that strongly suggest other officers at the very least did nothing to help him, and at worst set him up. He survived the shooting, and his story finally forced a public inquiry into police corruption, in which he testified.

Al Pacino is hypnotic as Frank Serpico, defining the often imitated and now standard look of the ruffled, messy, frequently disguised undercover cop who refuses to play by the rules. Pacino's performance combines determination with the doubt and despair of a man confronted by an overwhelmingly powerful and established system yet refusing to yield to it.

New York City has never looked more depressing and doomed than in Serpico, Sidney Lumet keeping his cameras well away from any attractive features and focusing on run-down neighborhoods, miserable buildings, and grimy streets. Lumet's New York is filled with shadowy criminals on every corner, some dressed the part and others dressed as police officers.

As an adequate metaphor for Serpico's story, there is not much of a supporting cast around Pacino. The likes of John Randolph and M. Emmet Walsh are very much faceless and in the background, although Tony Roberts makes a bit of a mark as one of the few senior officers who tried to help through his connections to the Mayor's office. Barbara Eda-Young and Cornelia Sharpe as two of the women in Serpico's life both failed to translate their roles into serious movie careers.

The original music score by Mikis Theodorakis is full of emotion, but perhaps unnecessarily overused early in the film.

Serpico is a study of a principled man up against a rotten system in a dilapidating city, a trio that is most compelling to watch.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.


Saturday 12 February 2011

Movie Review: 3000 Miles To Graceland (2001)


A vivid, over-blown, way over-the-top heist drama, 3000 Miles To Graceland is a stylish rough diamond, waiting to be rediscovered as a cult classic.


It's Elvis impersonator week in Las Vegas, with countless versions of the King livening up the Strip. Michael (Kurt Russell) has just been released from prison and at a small desert town outside Vegas, he meets and falls into bed with Cybil (Couteney Cox), who has a brat of a young son Jesse. Michael then joins a gang headed by Murphy (Kevin Costner), a vicious criminal with an unhealthy Elvis obsession. Michael, Murphy, and three heavily-armed members of Murphy's group all dress up as Elvis impersonators, and in a fiasco of a robbery, they hit a Las Vegas casino all bullets flying. They cause mayhem but escape with casualties and a lot of stolen money.

Murphy quickly turns on all his fellow gang members, killing them all except Michael who is saved by a bullet proof vest. Murphy's plan is temporarily derailed when he crashes his car in the desert, allowing Michael to grab all the loot and escape with Cybil and Jesse. With Murphy in pursuit, and federal agents picking up Murphy's trail, Michael makes his way to a prearranged meeting with money launderer Peterson (Jon Lovitz) in Idaho. Meanwhile, Cybil has her own intentions to grab all the money, complicating Michael's life. With SWAT teams closing in, Michael needs to save Jesse, while Murphy makes an epic stand to seal his destiny.

Director and co-writer Demian Lichtenstein has just one thing in mind: a massive sensory over-load experience. 3000 Miles To Graceland is all about colours that are too sharp, bullets that are too numerous, characters that are too desperate to care, and an Elvis story that is too incredible. Lichtenstein makes it work, injecting boundless energy and never even locating the pause button as the film hurtles towards a manic conclusion. The cinematography and editing are all geared towards achieving maximum style points, and capture Vegas, the desert, and the carnage in glorious constant motion.

3000 Miles To Graceland benefits from three performances with enough power to light up the Vegas strip. Kevin Costner is chilling as a man handed a really bum deal in life, and determined to make the worst of it. Kurt Russell anchors the film while chaos reigns around him, and Courteney Cox delivers a spunky performance in one of her few memorable movie roles. Lovitz as the money launderer Peterson cranks up the doomed smarminess in his short on-screen time.

If the life of Elvis was all about excess, 3000 Miles To Graceland may be the perfect metaphorical homage to the King.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.


Friday 11 February 2011

Movie Review: The Blob (1988)


A remake of a Steve McQueen movie from thirty years earlier, the 1988 version of The Blob boasts some gruesome special effects but otherwise finds it hard to justify its existence.

What looks like a meteor crash-lands into a forested area outside the small town of Arborville, California. A red gooey substance oozes out of the pod and starts to devour the local residents. Brian (Kevin Dillon), the local long-haired teenager from the wrong side of the tracks, teams up with wholesome cheerleader Meg (Shawnee Smith) to battle the blob, save their friends and family, and try to stop the carnage.

Soon machine-gun wielding government men in hazard suits descend on the town to quarantine everyone, obtain samples from the blob, and hush-up the fiasco: the meteor was in fact a secret military satellite containing experimental germ warfare material, and the whole situation is a military screw-up. Brian and Meg have to not only battle the blob, but expose the conspiracy as well.

Despite some hints of wit and a few comic winks, The Blob plays most of its cards seriously. So the film attempts, and generally fails, to create genuine tension from oozing Jello that seems to change properties, size, and speed depending on the scene, and that can kill by suffocating, dismembering, or mangling, just for variety. Director Chuck Russell delivers a reasonably professional movie with tight pacing and standard thrills, but he gets little traction from characters firmly entrenched in a single dimension, with all expressions, lines and personalities borrowed from other movies. Brian and Meg are generally unappealing main characters, both Kevin Dillon and Shawnee Smith operating within a narrow range of acting talent.

The best moments are reserved for Meg' young brother Kevin, who against his mother's wishes conspires to watch a horror movie with his best friend Eddie on the night that the blob makes its grand entrance to the town's main street. We only see snippets of it, but the movie that Kevin and Eddie attend appeared to offer better entertainment than The Blob.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.


Thursday 10 February 2011

Movie Review: Charlie's Angels (2000)


The television series was a showcase for models trying to pretend that they were actresses representing women's emerging empowerment. The movie does away with any pretenses. Essentially a 98 minute music video that finds every excuse to fill the frame with the cleavage, rear-ends, and blowing hair of its leading ladies, Charlie's Angels is almost tolerable mainly because this film is honest about its intentions. Director McG also earns some points for stylish action sequences that effectively use slow-motion to highlight the depth of the stunts in the many one-on-one hand combat scenes.

The plot matters about as much as it would in a slickly produced rock video. Natalie (Cameron Diaz), Dylan (Drew Barrymore), and Alex (Lucy Liu) are detectives working for an agency run by the mysterious and rich Charlie. Their handler and only contact with Charlie is the hapless Bosley (Bill Murray). The Angels are retained by Vivian Wood (Kelly Lynch) to rescue her business partner and software wizard Eric Knox (Sam Rockwell), who has apparently been kidnapped by rival computer magnate Roger Corwin (Tim Curry). But the Angels soon realize that neither Vivian nor Eric are what they seem, and the hunters become the hunted as Charlie himself is threatened with violent and permanent retirement.

Diaz, Barrymore (who also helped to produce the movie) and Liu go through the film with a knowing smile and glint in their eye, confirming that they are not at all taking any of the silliness seriously, and they have fun flirting shamelessly with the cameras. Charlie's Angels hustles along from one contrived set-piece to the next, never losing sight of the prime objective, which is to place the Angels in as many figure-hugging outfits as possible before the bad guys are finally terminated.

Charlie's Angels is the equivalent of browsing a fashion magazine with a model staring out of every page: an icky mixture of the glossy and the vacuous.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.


Movie Review: GoodFellas (1990)


Based on the true story of New York mafia gangster Henry Hill, GoodFellas is a sprawling, entertaining epic that covers three decades in the lives of colourful criminals.  While GoodFellas lacks the gravitas of The Godfather, it makes up for it with irresistible personality.

It's 1955, and teenager Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) is growing up in Brooklyn, living in an apartment across the street from a taxi office that in reality is a front for mob boss Paulie (Paul Sorvino). Henry is excited by the prestige and wealth of the mobsters, and over the years he graduates from doing odd-jobs for Paulie's crew to participating in crimes, and grows into the role of a wise guy in Paulie's inner circle. Other criminals with emerging reputations rotating around Paulie include Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci). Jimmy is smooth, calm, and viscous when needed. Tommy is loud, unhinged and volatile, capable of switching from funny to deadly in an instant.

Henry ultimately proves his value by helping to plan and flawlessly execute the theft of a large amount of money from an Air France office. He moves into the big time of flashy cars and slick clothes, gets married to Karen (Lorraine Bracco), and is quickly cheating on her with barely discreet mistresses.

While the life of crime seems to have few downsides, trouble is lurking. Tommy's temper is out of control, and in 1970 he kills a made man, usually considered untouchable, from the Gambino family. And when a shakedown in Florida goes wrong, Henry is sent to jail. Upon his release and with his lifestyle threatened, he becomes a full-fledged drug dealer, despite Paulie's warning not to. With drug money rolling in and now himself an addict, Henry is quickly back to the big time.

In 1978 Jimmy, Tommy, Henry and many other men from Paulie's crew pull-off a multi-million dollar robbery of a Lufthansa office, but the enormous amounts of money cause stress between the men, and they turn on each other. Jimmy starts a clean-up operation, eliminating most of the participants in the Lufthansa heist. Tommy is killed in a hit arranged by the Gambinos. And in 1980 anti-narcotics agents finally catch up with Henry's drug operations, forcing him to make a choice between certain death and full disclosure.

While The Godfather series focused on the upper echelons of mobster families, GoodFellas takes us to the street level, and to the lives of the wannabe men who do the dirty work while wearing expensive clothes. It's an engrossing movie, filled with rich characters, memorable scenes, comedy, drama and violence in perfect balance.

Despite being based on real people, the three main characters in GoodFellas are all larger than life. Relatively unknown at the time of filming, Ray Liotta captures the centre of the film with an affecting performance as Henry Hill, on a remarkable journey from wide-eyed hanger-on to a wild-eyed, drug-addicted desperate mobster. Robert De Niro is surprisingly and effectively controlled as the scheming Jimmy, who emerges as the most calculating member of Paulie's gang. And Joe Pesci gives a most memorably stunning performance as Tommy, a hypnotic package of dynamite that may explode at anyone, anytime and for any reason. It's impossible to ignore Pesci when he's on the screen, as in every scene he's either already in the centre of the action or about to make sure that he creates a maelstrom around him.

Scorsese directs with an emphasis on continuous kinetic energy, and his use of freeze-frames is terrific, but unfortunately limited to the earlier scenes. His screenplay, co-written with Nicolas Pileggi and based on Pileggi's book, keeps the action humming for 146 minutes of running time, while squeezing in as many F-bombs as possible.

Despite lives drenched in crime, GoodFellas succeeds in presenting Henry, Jimmy and Tommy as characters who would be thoroughly entertaining to invite for dinner. Whether anyone lives to finish the meal would be entirely up to Tommy.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.


Monday 7 February 2011

Movie Review: True Grit (2010)


Ethan and Joel Coen turn their attention to a classic Western tale of justice served as seen through the doggedly determined eyes of a young woman. In True Grit, the triple Coen signatures of grand cinematography, dangerous humour and bursts of sudden violence flourish with the help of a stellar cast.

Precocious 14 year old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) arrives in the rough frontier town of Fort Smith. Her father has been killed by the outlaw Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), and no one seems to care: Chaney has fled into the wild territories, and the law cannot be bothered to chase after him.

Mattie wants to bring Chaney to justice. Through an effective combination of persistence, badgering, pleading and financial reward, Mattie joins forces with US Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) and Texas Ranger Laboef (Matt Damon) and they set off to find Chaney. Cogburn is an aging, hard-drinking law man known for having true grit and for killing more often than capturing outlaws. Laboef has been on Chaney's trail for a long time: Chaney has apparently also killed a Texas senator.

Cogburn and Laboef do not get along, and soon Mattie is having trouble keeping the group together. Eventually they do catch up with Chaney as he rides with the gang of Lucky Ned Pepper. Cogburn and Laboef are outnumbered, out-gunned, and uncoordinated, but with Mattie's help they need to take the initiative and hand out frontier justice.

The story of True Grit is built on the shoulders of young Mattie Ross, and the film is carried by a remarkable performance from newcomer Hailee Steinfeld. Selected after an open casting call attracted 15,000 applicants, Steinfeld demonstrates the maturity of a veteran as the sharp, unwavering Mattie. She steps into centre stage with a calm confidence that dominates the movie and propels the actions of all the other characters.

Jeff Bridges has a lot of fun mumbling his way through mostly incomprehensible dialogue while consuming enough alcohol to flood the west. His eye-patched Rooster Cogburn is a philosophical storyteller who is violent when he needs to be, which is as often as he can manage to turn every threatening situation into bedlam. Matt Damon is lost beneath the facial hair of a Texas Ranger drowning in long-winded pontifications, and most of what he says gets on the nerves of Cogburn, whose return insults are shorter and sharper. Bridges, Damon and Steinfeld make for an entertainingly strained trio who all need each other more than they care to admit.

The Coens alternate between the characters developing and the violent events unfolding, all filmed with eloquence and a respectful admiration for a western landscape as harsh and honest as the people who inhabit it.

In a genre as enduring as the Western, it's difficult to bring too much originality to a film like True Grit. It may not smell overwhelmingly fresh, but what is more important is the comfortable mix of worn leather, cheap liquor, rolled tobacco and gun powder in just the right quantities.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Sunday 6 February 2011

Movie Review: Blue Valentine (2010)


A study of the ups and mostly downs of a couple, Blue Valentine is a bleak relationship study, not helped by the generally unappealing two main characters. Ryan Gosling as Dean and Michelle Williams as Cindy give terrific performances; but Dean and Cindy don't do much to endear themselves.

Blue Valentine is set in Brooklyn and Pennsylvania working class neighbourhoods, and switches between scenes of the present with the marriage is falling apart, and the past when Dean and Cindy met. As a young man Dean is not doing much to improve his lot in life. He appears to have charm and musical talent, but he never finishes high school and settles for a job with a moving company. There is barely a backstory to round out his character and personality.

We know a bit more about Cindy. Despite a loveless household and a short-tempered, verbally-abusive father, she has aspirations to become a doctor, but she's also not helping her cause: sexually active at 13; 20 or more partners as a young woman; and a jerk of a boyfriend. She meets Dean, and is soon pregnant. It's never clear if Dean is the dad, but he marries her anyway.

A few years later Cindy and Dean are struggling through a marriage without joy. Living in a rural, isolated setting, Dean never stops drinking and smoking, and his job as a painter means that his clothes and skin are perpetually paint-stained. Cindy is an ultrasound technician, commuting two hours each way to her job at a small clinic. They are both good to their young daughter Frankie, but she seems to be the only common bond. The sudden added stress of the family dog getting lost and killed does not help, and an ill-conceived supposedly romantic getaway at a sordid motel pushes the relationship over the edge.

Director Derek Cianfrance, who also co-wrote the script, maintains a low-key, close to documentary style, and despite the simmering tension he keeps most of the emotional histrionics almost in control. Gosling and Williams are absorbing, and despite the questionable choices made by Dean and Cindy, the performances generate lasting empathy.

Ultimately Blue Valentine has too few moments that anchor the relationship. Early in their courtship they share a magical moment with Dean playing a toy guitar while Cindy dances on the street; and there is another bonding experience at an abortion clinic. Otherwise, the film wallows in a lot of dark clouds with too few silver linings. Without a strong foundation, it is no surprise that a marriage will crumble, and Cindy and Dean ultimately face the reality that their union best resembles a house of cards.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.


Saturday 5 February 2011

Movie Review: Jagged Edge (1985)


A courtroom drama revolving around a sinister and bloody murder, Jagged Edge finds a tone that is more comfortable than edgy. The film is polished, has good star power, and a story that maintains interest, but it does not stray too far away from the familiar spices that garnish romantically-charged legal spectacles.

Rich socialite Paige Forrester is brutally murdered with a jagged knife in her beach-front vacation villa by a hooded assailant. District Attorney Thomas Krasny (Peter Coyote) locks onto the victim's slick husband Jack (Jeff Bridges) as the prime suspect: Jack stands to inherit all of his wife's fortune.

Jack retains lawyer and divorcee Teddy Barnes (Glenn Close) to defend him; she has the advantage of having previously worked with Krasny, allowing her to anticipate his methods. Teddy in not quite sure that Jack is innocent, but that does not prevent her from becoming his lawyer and lover. At the trial, Krasny's case is circumstantial, and Teddy receives information from a mysterious source allowing her to shift suspicion to a fiery tennis pro who was having an affair with Paige Forrester. Teddy is moving towards a major courtroom victory, but she will need to find out if justice has been served or if she was the manipulated victim of a murderous plot.

After the success of Flashdance (1993), screenwriter Joe Eszterhas was on the journey that would climax with Basic Instinct (1992). Jagged Edge is similar but not as explosive. Rather than a police detective and a seductive prime murder suspect getting entangled in a sexual relationship at the core of a foul-mouthed film, Jagged Edge has a lawyer and a seductive prime murder suspect trampling all over the line between work and play, also with a constant stream of obscenities anchoring the dialogue.

Director Richard Marquand wisely stands back and allows the script and his two stars to take centre stage, Glenn Close and Jeff Bridges developing reasonable chemistry but not generating too much empathy. Other than his good looks, Bridges as Jack Forrester needs to remain aloof from the audience for as long as doubt remains about his guilt. Significant and appreciated screen time is invested in rounding-out Glenn Close's character as Teddy Barnes, as we get to know her children and ex-husband. This helps, but the speed with which Barnes drops her professionalism and her clothes to jump into bed with Forrester seriously undermines her judgement.

Peter Coyote as the ambitious District Attorney Krasny and Robert Loggia as a grizzled investigator who helps Teddy provide good cast support. Coyote is a worthwhile courtroom foe, projecting dark menace linked to his political ambitions and his shady history with Teddy. Loggia has fun as the old-fashioned clue-chaser with too many miles on his shoes.

The murder knife may be jagged, but despite some shortcomings Jagged Edge provides smooth-enough entertainment.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.


Tuesday 1 February 2011

Movie Review: The Dead Pool (1988)


Unfortunately leaving the worst until last, Dirty Harry comes back for one final ill-advised mission, but instead of ending the series with a bang, The Dead Pool just leaves a sour aftertaste in the mouth.

The shallow plot has someone sequentially killing famous residents of San Francisco, apparently working off a "dead pool" list that started as a harmless joke. Inspector Callahan is investigating the murders while fending off assassination attempts from the goons of a high-profile gangster that he helped to jail. Schlocky horror film director Peter Swan (Liam Neeson) appears to be a likely suspect behind the dead pool murders, but attention soon shifts to a mysterious sick psycho obsessed with Swan. Meanwhile, television reporter Samantha Walker (Patricia Clarkson) attempts to get to know Callahan better, but generally just serves to get in the way. Callahan finds his name on the dead pool list, and needs to stop the murderer before Dirty Harry becomes the next victim.

Several weaknesses undermine the movie. The main villain is an unnamed, faceless bi-polar lunatic, consumed with the career of horror film director Peter Swan (Liam Neeson). We get to know the bad guy too late in the film to care, and the cardinal sin of creating a hollow centre where the focus of evil should reside is an inexcusable blunder. The Dead Pool also subjects Callahan to a couple of assassination attempts so over the top that the movie enters the realm of the farcical.  Dirty Harry was always meant to be larger than life; but this does not mean that he can survive unscathed from thousands of machine gun rounds while trapped like a sitting duck in two separate ambushes.

The one engaging scene has a small remote controlled car, hiding a powerful bomb, chasing Callahan and his partner through the scenes of San Francisco. It a clever variation on traditional car chases, but in keeping with the rest of the movie, the scene ends in disappointing thoughtlessness as Callahan gets himself trapped and then waits for the bomb to explode under his car -- getting out of the car and up some stairs would have been handy.

Jim Carrey makes a brief appearance in a supporting role as a drug-addicted rock star who is the first victim of the dead pool murders, and there is an inexplicable emphasis on Guns N' Roses throughout the movie, with the band members having walk-on roles. Director Buddy Van Horn, better known as a stuntman, appears to be out of his depth and directs with no more than minimal functionality.

The Dead Pool is the final chapter in the story of one of the most colorful police characters in the history of the movies. Unfortunately but not unexpectedly, the ideas ran out before Dirty Harry harpooned his final victim.





All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.