Movie Review: Into The Blue (2005)

Genre: Adventure Thriller  

Director: John Stockwell  

Starring: Paul Walker, Jessica Alba, Scott Caan, Josh Brolin  

Running Time: 110 minutes  

Synopsis: In the Bahamas, Jared (Paul Walker) is a penniless treasure hunter living with his girlfriend Sam (Jessica Alba). Jared's childhood friend Bryce (Scott Caan), now a wealthy New York lawyer, comes to visit with his latest trophy girlfriend Amanda (Ashley Scott). During the same dive Jared stumbles upon two adjacent undersea wrecks: a legendary French pirate ship carrying treasure, and a much more recent small plane packed with illegal drugs. With unbelievable riches now within reach, Jared and Sam have to guard against greed, ruthless gangsters, deadly sharks, and rival treasure hunter Bates (Josh Brolin).

What Works Well: The underwater photography is spectacularly crisp, and both Paul Walker and Jessica Alba show off attractive physiques. 

What Does Not Work As Well: The long and silent diving sequences are always captivating, but also the only points of interest. Outside the water, the action is all wet, the dialogue stiff, and the mostly ridiculous plot points seemingly made up on the fly. The sharks switch sides from harmless to lethal at the whims of the script.

Key Quote:

Sam (to Jared): I believe in you more than the prospect of any treasure.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Fantastic Four (2005)

A lame superhero movie, Fantastic Four suffers from a cheap look and feel, stiff dialogue, uninspired casting and a profound lack of style.

Scientist Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) and his lifelong friend Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) secure funding from narcissistic tycoon Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) to conduct an experiment near explosive cosmic clouds in space. Victor is dating his employee Sue Storm (Jessica Alba), a genetics researcher and Reed's former sweetheart. Along with Sue's daredevil brother Johnny, they all travel to Victor's space station. Something goes terribly wrong and they are all subjected to intense radiation. Victor's business empire is ruined by the debacle.

Back on Earth, the side effects of the radiation exposure becomes apparent. Reed's body gains incredible elasticity, Sue can bend light and appear invisible, while Johnny can set himself on fire and fly at supersonic speeds. Ben is permanently damaged, gaining superhuman strength but a monstrous appearance with a hard outer shell. Meanwhile Victor's body starts a slower transition to an alloy-like structure with enormous powers. Reed tentatively reignites his romance with Sue and attempts to invent a machine to reverse the DNA transformation, while Victor unleashes an evil plan.

It took about twenty years to bring Marvel's Fantastic Four to the big screen, and the film feels about twenty years out of date. Directed by Tim Story with a distinct absence of panache, this is a flat exercise in painting superheroes by numbers. The production sometimes slips into television-level territory, with cheesy special effects, sets that would have looked modern in the 1980s, and dull, static execution with bursts of over-the-top CGI.

The story is insipid, the science barely explained, and after the super powers are introduced, the film needs to kill about 60 minutes of not much happening before lumbering to a yawn-inducing let's- stand-in-a-circle climax.

Saving the exercise from a total loss are Jessica Alba, Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis giving their all to serve an undeserving cause. Alba and Evans as the sister and brother pair of Sue and Johnny Storm are the only source of energy and provide some wit and edge. Chiklis manages to convey a modicum of emotion from behind the The Thing's rhinoceros facade, and is the one character given a bit of a moral challenge by a script that otherwise seems more machine manufactured than human written.

Fantastic Four is a fumble, and far from fantastic.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Sin City (2005)

An adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novels, Sin City is an artistically stunning anthology crime thriller. With every frame a stylistic triumph, the film jolts the comics to life, ironically in a grim and crime-infested city where life is cheap and hope goes to die.

After a brief prologue featuring an assassin (Josh Hartnett) and his target (Marley Shelton) at a rooftop party, the film features three loosely related stories, with the adventure of detective John Hartigan (Bruce Willis) split into two chapters. With his heart close to failing, Hartigan is about to retire, and as a final mission sets off to rescue 11 year old Nancy Callahan (Makenzie Vega) from child killer Roark Junior (Nick Stahl). Hartigan's partner Bob (Michael Madsen) tries to convince him not to go through with it, but Hartigan is determined to end his career with a bang. The film's final major chapter returns to this story, with Junior identified as the son of Senator Roark (Powers Booth), and a grown-up Nancy (Jessica Alba) still in peril.

In the second story, ugly brute Marv (Mickey Rourke) is enchanted by prostitute Goldie (Jaime King), but finds her dead in his bed after a night of passion. Marv bruises his way through town to identify the killer, a revenge quest that involves his parole officer Lucille (Carla Gugino) and Goldie's twin sister Wendy. The trail leads Marv to maniac cannibal Kevin (Elijah Wood), who is protected by the all-powerful Cardinal Patrick Henry Roark (Rutger Hauer).

The third story takes place in Old Town, where a group of prostitutes rule the streets. Gail (Rosario Dawson) is their leader, and her man is Dwight McCarthy (Owen Wilson). When a gang of thugs led by corrupt cop "Jackie Boy" Rafferty (Benicio del Toro) first intimidate Shellie (Brittany Murphy) and then Gail's girls, a bloodbath ensues, with silent martial arts expert Miho (Devon Aoki) having a field day. The carnage destroys the fragile balance between the working girls and the cops. An epilogue again features the return of the assassin, as well as Becky (Alexis Bledel), one of Gail's girls.

Co-directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez with Quentin Tarantino credited as a special guest director, Sin City is a visual feast of cinematic artistry. Filmed in black and white but with isolated splashes of vivid colours, the film dives into the deep end of adult graphic novel territory, where extreme violence is a shortcut to every problem and every scene threatens to end with a gory punctuation mark.

To survive for any length in this milieu, the men possess superhuman strength, and the women use a combination of weaponry and seduction to carve out their territory. Heads are routinely bashed or severed and body parts are chopped off for fun: Sin City has no pretense of law and order and film is not for the faint of heart.

Across all its stories, Sin City easily lands its punches on traditional targets: politicians and priests are the symbols of corruption hiding behind dirty veils of authority, literally spawning and protecting generations of evil and mayhem. Prostitutes (Goldie, Gail and her entourage), cynical but honest goons (Marv), righteous killers (Miho) and honest cops willing to bend the rules (Hartigan) are the heroes of Miller's world.

Men propelled into action to protect or avenge women, who may or may not need help, is a prevailing theme powering the film. Hartigan's final mission is to rescue Nancy; Marv will tear up the town in memory of the only woman who was ever nice to him; and Dwight risks his life to try and save the ladies of Old Town from annihilation.

The Old Town segment is relatively the weakest, Dwight and the gaggle of girls tangling with Jackie Boy never quite clicking as individual characters worthy of attention, and a few too many mob and mercenary baddies show up to muddle the objective. Jackie Boy himself and the dialogue-challenged Miho emerge as the most memorable contributors, which probably wasn't the intent.

In contrast, the Marv story works best and is delivered as pure cinematic gold. The relentless revenge quest of a most ugly man perfectly fits the film's dank soul, his indestructible forward momentum cutting a swath through sin city and all the way to its religious core. Mickey Rourke as Marv has never been better, transformed into a half-monster yet with his damaged moral compass somehow still functioning.

Slick, hyperkinetic and cynical to a fault, Sin City is an enthralling experience.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: How To Make Love Like An Englishman (2014)

An insipid romantic triangle, How To Make Love Like An Englishman (also known as Some Kind Of Beautiful and Lessons In Love) is a tonally deaf exercise in wasting talent.

In England, Richard Haig (Pierce Brosnan) has followed in the footsteps of his father Gordon (Malcolm McDowell) and also become a professor of romantic literature. Gordon's ethos is to defy authority, raise hell and live life to the full, and Richard teaches with the same passion while bedding a succession of much younger college girls for kicks. But when his latest nubile student partner Kate (Jessica Alba) announces that she is pregnant, Richard decides to move with her to Los Angeles and settle down, despite being more attracted to her more mature sister Olivia (Salma Hayek).

A few years after their son Jake is born, Kate announces that she is thoroughly bored with Richard and takes up with boyfriend Brian (Ben McKenzie), while Richard relocates to the pool house to stay close to Jake. Olivia's marriage falls apart, creating an opening for romance to blossom again with Richard, but with his immigration date approaching Richard has to maintain the pretense that he is happily married to Kate, while Gordon's continued erratic behaviour and caustic attitude disrupts his son's already chaotic life.

Directed by Tom Vaughan, co-produced by Brosnan and barely released, How To Make Love Like An Englishman is an embarrassment with more alternative titles than ideas. The Matthew Newman script does not come close to generating emotions of any type, and instead of love, laughs, chemistry or conflict, the film just goes into a lazy coma. Basic character motivations are repeatedly violated, Richard's sudden turn from philanderer to loyal husband and father just the first of many incredulous moments.

The low point arrives courtesy of Kate, who takes umbrage at Richard's affair with Olivia two years after she abandoned him and moved her toyboy lover under their roof.

With the love triangle taking on a pear shape, Malcolm McDowell appears at regular intervals with a caricaturish portrayal of a father whose entire set of conversational skills consists of acerbic and profanity-riddled commentary. His late conversion to a human being is equally outlandish.

The sub-plot about Richard trying to secure his permanent residency in the United States is tacked on with astounding carelessness, a well-educated and well-resourced applicant reduced to dealing with a bottom-of-the-barrel lawyer.

The cast is too talented for the material, with Brosnan, Alba, Hayek and McDowell giving it their all but unable to do anything meaningful or memorable with their roles. Hayek gets the one laugh in the film, and it's a straight lift-and-switch of the diner scene from When Harry Met Sally.... The only lesson learned from How To Make Love Like An Englishman is that when your script ideas are nonexistent, steal the moment of climax from a classic American comedy.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

The Movies Of Jessica Alba

All movies starring Jessica Alba and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Never Been Kissed (1999)

Fantastic Four (2005)

Sin City (2005)

Into The Blue (2005)

Knocked Up (2007, cameo)

The Killer Inside Me (2010)

Valentine's Day (2010)

How To Make Love Like An Englishman (2014)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star index is here.

Movie Review: The Killer Inside Me (2010)

A disturbing journey into the mind of an abject sociopath, The Killer Inside Me features jolts of cruel violence, but suffers from bland narration and shallow characters.

It's 1952 in a small rural town in Texas. Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford (Casey Affleck) appears to be a normal and dependable part of the town's fabric. When Sheriff Bob Maples (Tom Bower) assigns Lou to drive prostitute Joyce Lakeland (Jessica Alba) out of town, Lou instead beats her up, which she enjoys. They commence an intense physical relationship, despite Lou being involved with long-time girlfriend Amy (Kate Hudson).

Lou is actually a cold blooded psychotic killer, and he blames the rich Conway family for the long-ago murder of his adopted brother. When Lou learns that Elmer Conway (Jay R. Ferguson) is one of Joyce's regular customers, he plans a revenge plot to inflict pain on Elmer and agony on his father Chester (Ned Beatty), the town's construction magnate. Lou's revenge involves brutal murders arranged to incriminate others followed by pathological lying, prompting an investigation by County District Attorney Howard Hendricks (Simon Baker). Lou may need to kill again to cover his tracks and stay ahead of the law.

Directed by Michael Winterbottom as an adaptation of the 1952 Jim Thompson book, The Killer Inside Me is not for the squeamish. The film includes two shocking scenes of barbarous violence, as Lou unleashes his inner demon in a fury of killer blows. The victims are pummeled into grotesque disfigurement, and Winterbottom allows his cameras to linger, prolonging the scenes to emphasize Lou’s soulless brutality and the pathetic helplessness of his victims.

Lou is responsible for many deaths, but the two victims of his most shocking acts are both women. This elevates the visual horror, and is partially explained by the root causes of Lou’s derangement as the film reveals fragments of childhood that helped to twist his brain into a malfunctioning mess.

But the film falters when it attempts to provide substantive depth. Outside of Lou’s actions, the narrative, context and characterizations are distinctly lacking. Winterbottom regularly fails to properly introduce or develop essential people and plot elements, resulting in a detached and blurry experience. Elmer’s relationship with Joyce; Lou’s suddenly urgent need to impart revenge on the Conways; the barely explained appearance of District Attorney Hendricks; and the even more puzzling late arrival of lawyer Billy Boy Walker (possibly a figment of Lou’s imagination) are all barely sketched in. And the morsels from Lou’s childhood are too abstract to be helpful.

And finally, Lou’s narration, delivered by Affleck in a high pitched, nasally mumbled monotone, may be appropriate for the sound inside a killer’s head, but is fingernails-on-chalkboard aggravating as a film experience.

The performances are no more than average, Affleck unable to do much with a character who has no human feelings, while the other actors struggle with roles defined through the truncated thoughts of a madman. Winterbottom does manage to create a sun-drenched laid-back smoke-filled small-town 1950s ambiance, the kind of place where nothing exciting ever happens until a prostitute sets up shop, a psychopath goes to work and the bodies start piling up.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Valentine's Day (2010)

A collection of intermingled short stories so lightweight they are blown away by the February winds into instantly forgettable lands, despite the massive ensemble cast.

With too many loosely connected stories, too many characters, and hardly enough time dedicated to anything or anyone, Valentine's Day degenerates into a brisk but irrelevant game of "spot the star". Although almost every role is played by a recognizable face, director Garry Marshall fails miserably to inject soul into any of them.

The events take place during the course of a single Valentine's Day in Los Angeles, as lovers and wannabe lovers navigate their way through the day of supposed romance. The most developed relationships revolve around florist Ashton Kutcher proposing to girlfriend Jessica Alba, who first says yes then says no, while Kutcher's best friend and school teacher Jennifer Garner thinks she's in love with doctor Patrick Dempsey, who hasn't told her that he's actually married. One of Garner's students, a young boy, is using hard-earned dollars to send flowers to his mystery Valentine using Kutcher's florist services, but everything goes wrong with the delivery.

Receptionist Anne Hathaway is dating mailroom clerk Topher Grace while she also moonlights as a phone-sex operator. Hathaway works for sports agent Queen Latifa, who represents football quarterback Eric Dane, who is contemplating retirement with the help of his publicist Jessica Biel, who is maybe interested in television sports reporter Jaime Foxx, who is annoyed that his producer Kathy Bates has sent him to the street to capture inane on-camera opinions about Valentine's Day.

Meanwhile Julia Roberts is a soldier on a short leave, traveling on a plane heading for a rendezvous with a person only revealed in the final scene. During her long flight she befriends Bradley Cooper, also on his way to meet a lover that we will only meet late.

Unbelievably, there are more characters and more stories nipping in and out of the movie, including teenage lovers, long-married grandparents, and Taylor Swift, who appears from nowhere, for no good reason, and does nothing. It's impossible to keep up, or to care.

It's also difficult to fathom what the purpose of the exercise is, other than for every star to work for a couple of days in-between other projects, and cash a juicy cheque at the expense of bewildered moviegoers.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.