Evil Dead (2013)

Evil Dead directed by Fade Alvarez, starring a cast of characters that will soon be meeting their fate as the movie moves along, Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas, and Elizabeth Blackmore.

This is one of the most pointless remakes I've seen in a long and every single frame of this movie made me long for the awesome low budgetness of the original.  I think the first five or ten minutes of this movie had the combined budget of the original Evil Dead 1 and 2.  But no  matter much slicker, glossier, or even better acted this movie is, it doesn't in anyway hide the fact that the one that came before was that much better.  Which just goes to show that no amount of money can hide misplaced passion and the pursuit of more money at any cost.  This movie also proves once again that creativity is in very short supply in Hollywood and this movie cements the fact that this creative wasteland isn't going away anytime soon.

Where the original Evil Dead had the passion of the film making process clearly on display in every frame and every minute of the film.  This film's one and only passion is to cash in on the horror genre and to get as gory as it can get away with.  Make no mistake, this is one gory, violent, and bloody movie when the possession hits the fan.  It gets so violent, bloody, and gory that I started laughing as they tried to keep out doing themselves with the gore, violence, and blood with each set piece that followed each other.  Funny thing, they actually tried to create a story line and characters to base these scenes of violence around and get the audience to actual care for what was going to happen.  They didn't succeed at all, at this, but I will give them an "A" for effort but that's the only "A" I'm going to give this movie.

The only other positive thing to say about this movie is that it's not too long.  It's just the right amount of time to be dissatisfied with seeing a remake that is nowhere near as perfect as the original but not long enough to feel like you wasted time.  Even the gory, bloody set pieces aren't all that bad if you're into special effects and make-up they are worth seeing the movie for.  I am so I didn't have that bad a time watching this movie.  I just wish they come up with their own original story line instead of hanging this film on the bones of Sam Raimi's way better film.  There's just some low budget films that are priceless in their low budget and no amount of money will ever change that.  If fact remaking them only shows how much more superior they are despite the limitations placed on them.  But don't get me wrong a lot of money in the right hands can an extremely watchable movie, just not this time around. 

Hugo

Hugo directed by Martin Scorsese. 

If you haven't see this movie go out and watch it with your kids, it's that good. This is one of the best kids movies I've seen in a long time. I watched Hugo over the summer by myself just to see how much of a kids movie it was and then today I watched it with my kids: my girl liked it better than my son but my son still watched it, just not as intently as my girl did for some reason. 

As far as directing goes this is one of Scorsese's best directed movies in a long time.  I would put it in his top 5 of movies directed, and it's a kids movie at that.  Who would have thought the tough guy, foul mouthed, gangster, with blood through his veins could direct a kids movie like this?  Not me that's for sure.  I think that's one of the reasons this movie took me by surprise as much as it did.  

The visuals alone are worth watching and it will be the visuals that will have your kids sitting watching intently to what is going on for minutes on end. We've been watching movies together for a long time but I've never seen them as focused watching a movie without dialog and solely relying on the visuals to tell the story.  As a movie buff and fan it was joy to watch them become fully engaged with the visual storytelling of the movie. It was also a pleasure to see that Martin Scorsese hasn't lost his directorial touch, though I never thought he did but he's just chosen some terrible screenplays to work with. 

This time I watched the movie to see what I missed the first time I saw it. I didn't realize the opening scene lasted 12 minutes before the title of the movie flashed across the screen and in that 12 minutes the entire story line and characters are set up in some very beautiful continuous shots that not only set up characters and storyline but also immerse the viewer into the world of Hugo. I just loved the over all all theme of the movie: machines, gears, mechanics, broken machines and mechanics fixing those machines. 

This movie has at the basis of it a very blue collar mentality, you know getting in there and getting your hands dirty. One of the lines of dialog I remember sets up the theme perfectly, "If you have no purpose, you are broken." There are so many broken things in this movie: Hugo (with the death of his dad), Georges Melies and his wife (the death of his dream and the inner death of her husband), the automaton that is truly broken, and the station agent (the death of trust and intimacy because of the war). Then the reliance to machines is an interesting aspect of these people lives also: George Melies (the film projector and mechanical toys), Hugo (the automaton and clocks) and the station agent (his mechanical leg). Hugo connects them all together and tries to find his purpose in life after the death of his father and how all of these stories interweave is a joy to watch. 

I also like how the story weaves in a historical lesson on how movies started, which depending on how you look at it is also just one big machine but ultimately the machines in this movie that need fixed are the humans living their lives.  Some realizing their broken and other unaware of their brokenness. I know most kids won't pick up on these heavy themes, I think there put there more for the adults, but the kids will sympathize with a kid - Hugo - who lost his father and finds a friend in another kid - Isabelle- and the relationship that blossoms between is a delight to watch unfold before my eyes.

The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises directed Christopher Nolan staring Christian Bale, Michale Caine, Morgan Freeman, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, and Marion Cotillard.  Once again this cast list reads like it's going to be a serious type of dramatic movie not a superhero movie.  It's amazing to me the people Nolan can get to star in his movies. 

I watched this last weekend but seeing as how it's Christmas I've been too busy to write about it, until now. I finished up watching this trilogy in three days and I've got to say it's the best trilogy that's ever been done hands down. I will put the Toy Story movies in second place but what Nolan has done with the Batman story is simply amazing and blows my mind when I think about it. 

Each movie is it's own entity, with it's own story line, not rehashing things from the other movies, but telling a completely different story.  They also expand the mythology established in the previous movies not just simply settling for what had been established. I think one of the joys of watching these movies has been seeing Nolan grow as a director because with each movie since Batman Begins his command of story telling, pacing, camera movement, camera placement, and editing has grown.  But I think the one stable foundation in his talents has been his consistent eye for casting and finding the right person for the right part. Again in this movie every person is perfectly cast down to the first guy we see as the movie opens.  The man leading the professor onto the airplane, who just has that one part but I wouldn't have cast anyone else in that scene and Bane's silent, second in command who doesn't say much but his appearance and facial expressions made him a person perfectly cast. I've noticed in all Nolan's movies since his first movie The Following, casting has been his one stable foundation that has followed him through his movie career and I would say he's the best at it in Hollywood by far.

I like how this movie deals with the consequences of the second movie namely Rachel and Harvey Dent's death. Rachel's death has deeply affected Bruce Wayne and Dent's death has truly changed Gotham in a way no one would have known.  So much so that Bruce Wayne has pretty much retired as Batman. And that is where the movie begins with a retired Bruce Wayne dealing with the after effects and emotions of Rachel and Harvey's death. What a way to begin a movie dealing with the after effects of the first one! 

Well at least starting it off on familiar grounds because the opening part of the movie is one the greatest action sets pieces I've ever seen done on film in a long time.  And was simply amazing to see in the theaters. This is another thing I like about Nolan, he doesn't get caught up in the fades of Hollywood namely 3D which is just a gimmick nothing more. I will tell you I saw Avatar in 3D and Transformers 3 in 3D at the IMAX, which were cool and a good movie experience but lost a lot of the wonder when I watched them at home because they were gimmick movies. But when I saw that opening scene of The Dark Knight Rises in glorious 70mm IMAX I was blown away like I'd never been before even the effect of it translates well to the smaller screen. It also says something if the director actually has a descent story to tell and doesn't solely rely on set pieces but instead, you know, relies on acting, story lines, dialogue, and pacing.  It helps to make the movie experience better when you actually care about the characters and know them. I hope Nolan stays away from 3D because from what I've seen from him his connection with IMAX blows away all 3D movies I've seen.  And this movie was one of the best movie experiences I've had in the theater, right next seeing Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut in the theaters. 

There's just something about seeing a good director at work in a theater that no amount of gimmicks, flashy special effects or glittering technology can compare with. That and also seeing Anne Hathaway in a black, sexy suite as Catwoman - whose never actually named Catwoman in the movie - but I found she was as sexy when just wearing the simple, plain clothes in this film, which just goes to show that a woman doesn't have to wear revealing outfits to be sexy...hint...hint, that terrible acting job by that girl in Transformers 3 whose every scene seemed destined to enhance her sexiness but instead did nothing for her character.  Where as Hathaway was given a character and made her appealing and sexy without the use of revealing clothing, but I've got to hand it to the wardrobe department they did a good job dressing her. 

I also like how Nolan boldly cast new characters in this movie and gave them something do and made them interesting.  Hathaway being one example and Joseph Gordon-Levitt being the other who was given a good part and made his character very interesting as the movie went along. These are two examples of building on the mythology created in the first two films but not copying the previous films. Lucas could learn a thing or two from this as New Hope, Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace all have the same type of ending: a ship going to blow up a larger ship but the sequels also fail in the one aspect of adding new characters but not making them interesting, therefore I don't care about the characters despite all the flashy effects surrounding them. Nolan understands you must care about the characters to be truly involved in the film, which is why I've liked every Nolan film I've seen since I first saw Memento on DVD with Jess and his crime thriller Insomnia with my brother in the theater: characters dominate his movies.  Characters I care about.  Characters I'm interested in seeing how their story plays out. Because of that I'm eagerly looking forward to his next movie.

The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight directed by Christopher Nolan staring Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, and Maggie Gyllenhaal, again just from the cast list alone this doesn't seem like a comic book superhero movie. 

How do you do a sequel to a good movie? 

There have only been a handful of movies that have improved or expanded on the original movie and in some cases were even better than the first one: Godfather 2, Toy Story 2, Aliens, and Empire Strikes Back (feel free to throw in some more).  Because other than these movies, sequels suck despite the fact that as a nerd I keep hoping when a sequel happens that it will be good. I know I'm stating the obvious now since The Dark Knight was released in 2008, but I'll say it again: this is one of the best sequels of all time. Nolan does everything a sequel is supposed to do with this movie: he improves upon the story, expands the mythology and doesn't for one second repeat any part of the previous movie. 

I also have to admit that I was very apprehensive when Nolan cast Heath Ledger as the Joker.  I just didn't think Ledger had it in him to be the kind of Joker that would fit into the world Nolan had created. But once again Nolan proves he knows his story and the world he created. Heath Ledger was an inspired piece of casting as he inhabited the role of the Joker with such a conviction and abandon that I just sat in amazement when I saw him on screen. He is the personification of evil for the sake of being evil, chaos for the sake of chaos - do those few lines of description sound familiar? Nolan thought so as the Joker clearly mimics the terrorists who inhabit our world today. 

One thing Nolan firmly established in Batman Begins was that he wanted to explore the Batman in as realistic a way as possible and how a world would respond to him as realistically as possible. I don't know if Nolan has read The Watchmen or not but irregardless he takes those same questions of superheroes and realism - as brought up by Allan Moore and Gibbons - and explores them in every possible way he can with the answers clearly aimed at making us think about our own world. 

All of this from a comic book movie. 

One of the first things I noticed about The Dark Knight was how improved Nolan's direction had become since Batman Begins. There is such a fluidity and seamlessness to his direction this time around. Every shot, scene, and edit has an assured flow to it, not that Batman Begins didn't have it but The Dark Knight just seems to overflow with it even more than Batman Begins. I really think the use of the IMax cameras helped Nolan to control things more, because those IMax shots are truly a thing of beauty and really enhance the action and story to a degree I would've never thought possible. 

Another thing I like was how Nolan pushed Batman/Bruce Wayne to the limits - or at least we thought they were the limits here, until The Dark Knight Rises which I'll talk about in another post.  Here those limits are pushed by having Rachel killed, played really well by Maggie Gyllenhaal, I wish she had been in the first movie. The effect of her death is clearly seen in Bruce Wayne as he sees the price he's going to have to pay to be Batman and to fight the Joker. 

Casting is one of the big things with Nolan, I've said it before and I'll say it again, he's the master of finding the right person for the right part. Aarron Eckhart as Harvey Dent was amazing casting as he was fully able to hold his own with Oldman, Bale, Ledger, Caine and Gyllenhaal. Even the role played by the bank executive at the beginning, the guy in the passenger seat in the SWAT van carrying Dent, the small accountant who tries to blackmail Wayne, the TV talk show reporter, even the Ballerina Bruce Wayne brings to the dinner with Dent and Rachel, and the guy who plays the Mayor: all of these people helped a lot in making this movie feel real and more than the sum of its parts. There's not many movies around where little bits parts like these are cast right but Nolan seems to understand the importance of every part as it pertains to the story line and he seems to have actors lining up play in his movies as his films after this one has shown. 

Another thing I noticed and even Nolan mentioned this, this movie owes a great debt to the Michael Mann movie Heat from the frame work of the story - cat a mouse of the cop and robber - and the visual pallet of the movie: chromes, blues, darkness, and shadows making it a visually different experience from Batman Begins. I could talk about this movie for much longer but right now all I have to say is bring on The Dark Knight Rises.

Batman Begins

Batman Begins directed by Christopher Nolan staring Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson, Cillian Murphy, Rutger Hauer, Tom Wilkinson, Katie Holmes, and Ken Watanabe.  What a cast.  It doesn't even seem like a comic book/superhero movie. 

To celebrate the release of The Dark Knight Rises on Blue-ray I started watching the trilogy from the beginning a couple of days ago. I would say Christopher Nolan, as of right now, is the best director in Hollywood.  Even from watching Batman Begins I can see the genesis of his talent starting to grow. 

One of the best things Nolan does with this "reboot" of the Batman franchise is to establish Batman as a flesh and blood character basically ignoring the superhero part of him for the first hour of the movie. I mean Batman doesn't even show up fully in costume until over an hour into the movie, doing that takes great faith in the storyline and a huge set of balls. What a great hour it is of establishing Bruce Wayne as a character. 

Who would have thought the origin of Bruce Wayne transforming into Batman would have been this interesting? Even though it's basically not really more than an extended training sequence still Nolan uses this as a means to explore the origin of Wayne's character: what drives him, what he fears, how he learned how to fight. Through all of this we come to know the person of Wayne like we've never known him before. Being a true comic nerd who has read many Batman stories this was a thing of beauty to behold as I got to know Bruce Wayne minus the Batman cowl for the first time in my life. 

I also like how Nolan establishes Bruce's dad as not just an image in Bruce's life but infuses Bruce's dad with enough character and life that the audience has a really good sense of him as a person. This is established not just in scenes with young Bruce and his dad but also with other characters and how they talk about him. By doing all of this Nolan gives the audience a solid foundation for who Bruce's father is.  So we feel the effects of his death and fully understand why Bruce leaves his wealth and Gotham behind to try and figure out what kind of person he is without his father to guide him. We also get to see how his father death's affects Gotham.  When he's alive visually Gotham city is bright and clean.  The dialogue supports this as his dad is striving and trying to make Gotham a better city with his wealth and when he dies visually Gotham goes dark, dirty and the criminals come out to play. Then Nolan goes Godfather on the audience, by this I mean that when Brando's Corleone dies his presence is still felt throughout the movie(s) the same effect happens here with Bruce's dad.  Even though he physically dies, his presence is still felt in every frame as Bruce struggles to come to terms with who he is and who he has become because of his father's death. I also have to give credit to the actor who played his dad, Linus Roache, who does a magnificent job of acting with the small amount of screen time given to him. 

This choice of casting Roache as Mr. Wayne brings up another aspect of Nolan's film making: casting. He is the best casting director I've ever seen and always seems to choose the right person for the right part no matter how small the part. He has done this time and time again in every movie I've seen from him and even down to such parts as a person just standing there. I see these actors there and I think to myself I wouldn't have gotten anyone else to play that part. I also like how Nolan has faith in character actors versus the big bright money sucking stars.  I've always thought character actors were much better at acting than the major Hollywood stars.  They bring a real workman type approach to a part versus the bright lights, starry eyes of huge movies stars. Batman Begins proves this statement absolutely true. Gary Oldman totally immerses himself into the role of Gordon.  I mean he even looks like Gordon from the comic book. Morgan Freeman is amazing as Lucius Fox more or less the Q for Bruce Wayne. Michael Caine is truly amazing as Alfred. I think the one thing Nolan has done by using these character actors is that every scene has an authenticity to the acting that wouldn't have been there if "these" actors hadn't been the ones acting. It's truly a pleasure to watch them on screen acting. 

Another thing Nolan is great at is pacing. There is never a wasted scene in the movie, even if the scene is of a skyline of a city, I never feel that scene is wasted.  Because he's using those skyline scenes to establish the city as big and real, something the previous Batman movies didn't do as the city felt more like a set or a caricature of a city. Nolan's Gotham feels real and becomes a character in the movie. I remember looking at the time as this movie was playing. There was over an hour left and I was like wow that's a lot time but then when I looked up later there was like 15 minutes left in the movie and I was like wow the time just flew by. 

The last thing I want to talk about is how Nolan turned multimillionaire Bruce Wayne into a blue collar, journeyman superhero and make me believe him to be this blue collar grinding hero despite the fact he has enough money to just buy a hotel after walking into it. Nolan uses some visual scenes to show this: Bruce Wayne grinding out his Batman darts on the grinder; Bruce Wayne spray painting his Batman uniform black; Bruce Wayne first starting out using a black ski mask as a cowl; visually seeing the large, purple bruises/cuts on his body shows the pain and torment is body is going through.  Even his Batmobile is not a finesse sports car but is one large grinding vehicle called the Tumbler - even the name has its roots in blue collar mentality. 

Truly not just one of the best superhero movies made but one of the best movies made.

Presumed Innocent

Presumed Innocent directed Alan J. Pakula starring Harrison Ford, Brian Dennehy, Raul Julia, Paul Winfield, Bonnie Bedelia, and Greta Scacchi. 

What a cast list.  Most of them are character actors, but some of the best character actors there are.  Then you have Pakula directing them. How can this movie go wrong? It can't when you toss in a solid screenplay that I believe John Grisham has been trying to write for the last 20 years or so.

I don't know what I was fully expecting from this movie but I had a great time watching it and watching these solid actors chew on the dialogue given to them. There were so many scenes in this movie where the acting - backed up by a director who let his actors act without editing the scenes to death - was just so great I was glad to be watching this movie. 

I've got to admit there are a few genres I really like, sci-fi being the top of my list and a really good "who done it?" being a close second - this could stem from a deep childhood affection that has continued to grow over the years for Sherlock Holmes from reading the stories, watching the movies and TV shows. This movie is a solid "who done it?" that leaves no loose ends dangling when the movie ends and frankly the story was built so well it kept doing about faces as it progressed and heading in a completely different directions than I thought it was originally going, normally most movies don't do that to me. 

Some of the best scenes in this movie involve the family and the domestic life and how it's affected by the murder trial, these scenes of family life I felt really gave Ford's character some emotion and depth and pulled covers back on what a bastard he could be that's a brave screenplay to do that to the main character. Most of the emotion in this movie didn't feel forced but I felt it was clearly drawn from the screenplay, scenes, situations and characters so much so that it wasn't a normal cliched Hollywood screen play or charactrers, something every John Grisham books suffers from. 

And a lot of the courtroom scenes didn't seem like they were drowned in the courtroom cliches of surprise witnesses or surprise evidence. There were plenty of scenes where Ford had to check his ego and just stand there silent while the other actors acted around him, but it was believable when this happened because if his character had talked he risked damning himself, so silence was his only option.

Michael Clayton

Michael Clayton written and directed by Tony Gilroy, staring George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Sydney Pollack, and Tilda Swinton.

I'd heard about how good this movie was and how good Mr. Clooney was in it so I figured I'd give it a go.  I mean why not it's free from the library - one of the best places in all the world, where I can full fill many of my indulgences: books, movies, musics and comic books and they're all free. 

First off George Clooney doesn't do anything remarkable in this movie that he hasn't done in previous films. He basically plays Danny Ocean if Danny Ocean had become a lawyer, which isn't a bad thing because I liked his Danny Ocean character, but would the media people would please stop butt kissing him like he tried something new to challenge himself with his movie.  Because he didn't.

This is a good typical corporate/lawyer thriller only made bad because of some directional and screenplay choices. Why do movies think they have to have flash backs all the time?  I seriously blame Tarantino for this and even he had no idea how use a fractured narration for the story. This movie does it very early in the film when a car driven by Clooney's character, Michael Clayton, blows up and the words "Four days earlier" pop up on the screen. 

Immediately I groaned. 

Then as the movie started to roll on I'm already trying to figure things out because of the car blowing up - pacing wise this destroys everything that makes a thriller good because I know any "dangerous" situation or threats made to Clayton are devoid of any tension as I know he was still alive when the car exploded. The director even tries to milk the car bomb explosion for tension as the guys trying to kill him keep following him around trying to get the bomb to explode and the music is the typical tension type of inducing music. I kept yelling at the TV because there's no tension there.  Just get to the exploded car because I already know it explodes without Clooney in it.  So, I know he doesn't die, you've already shown this scene before.  

I just wish they had started this movie in chronological order I think it would have been much better because the character Clayton is an interesting character as the movie shows, but they just needed to have faith in their character and story. He's just not giving that chance because that car exploding mixed with the narrative time shift ruined all form of momentum and took me completely out of the narration. Time fractured movies that worked well: Citizen Kane, Lawrence of Arabia, Out of Sight (I say this now but I haven't seen this movie in a long time, I remember it working at the time but I should probably watch it again), and The Usual Suspects. These are just a few I can think of but for the most part as I'm thinking about it straight up normal narration works the best. I just don't understand how people don't know this.