Watched the Lincoln Lawyer a couple of days ago and on Netflix and it was very good. Great cast: McConaughey, Marisa Tomei, William Macy, Michael Pena, Ryan Phillipe, Bryan Cranston. GIving McConaughey’s filmography a look over this appears to be the beginning of the McConaissance. Not really a bad movie after that.
But honestly he was great in a lot of pretty good movies before that. Tropic Thunder was good and he was hilarious in it, We Are Marshall was pretty good, Sahara was awesome, Reign of Fire was very good.
I’m a big fan of your work in the entertainment threads, but liking the DeVito/The Rock mash up is pure madness. Still, let’s not argue, my fondness for the first film means I too will watch however many they choose to make.
Last night I gave Cold Pursuit a spin. It’s a weird film, sort of an absurdist distillation of the Liam Neeson kills a bunch of folk genre. I found out afterwards that it’s based on a Stellen Skarsgaard original, and despite not really liking this I will be tracking that one down. It seemed like it wanted to be a deadpan comedy but the tone of the performances was all over the place, from the usual efficient gruff seriousness of Neeson to a massive, over the top turn from Tom Bateman as the main villain. Also, what I assume were attempts at some kind of satire with Native American characters just left me completely bemused. I suppose these days your can’t just make a straightforward Liam Neeson action movie so it was worth a go, but to me it didn’t really work.
Been eyeing this one for a minute. Watched it last night and was not disappointed. Strong use of soundtrack. Elisabeth Moss gives a really strong performance.
Was on the edge of my seat for over an hour.
Wind River
Cold, taut, crime thriller. Extremely well crafted. Elizabeth Olson and Jeremy Renner are right on point. The cinematography, the superb acting, the undertones of social justice, all meld together perfectly for one of my, now, favorite crime dramas.
Invisible Man sounds great, it’s penciled in for this evening.
Last night was another in my ever ongoing “can’t believe I’ve not seen it” season, Seven Days in May, a 1964 political thriller from John Frankenheimer. His follow up to The Manchurian Candidate, in fact, so I really have no idea how it took me this long to watch it. It feels pretty relevant, certainly if judging by discussion here, as it’s about an attempted coup in the US. Though in this version the President is a peacenik, signing a treaty with those damn commies, and Burt Lancaster’s General Scott decides to take over. It’s very good, all tense dialogue scenes and great acting with a smattering of action to keep things moving along. As ever when I watch Burt Lancaster I’m ready to crown him the best ever, he’s just superb even when he’s against Kirk Douglas and several other “hey, it’s that guy” character actors. The plot feels quite realistic up until the last twenty minutes or so, but then this sort of thing needs a neat conclusion from all the murky goings on. It was lovely stuff.
Rewatch. Obviously a classic and great. Rewatching it later it’s amazing to see no name actions who got like 5 minutes of screen time are now name brand actors.
The Nest (1988)
4/10
A B movie horror creepy crawly film. I have a soft spot for B movie special effects and the effects here were interesting in that way. The movie itself didn’t really keep my attention. Prime Mystery Science Theater 3000 material though.
The Fifth Wave
3/10
A young adult dystopian movie. Clearly, clearly, angled at being a series of movies. Not good though. Immediately after the start I guessed the twist and the movie, I guess to its credit, let’s all the characters discover the twist in the middle of the movie, instead of it being some kind of Ender’s Game twist. Unfortunately, the twist being revealed doesn’t really change anything about progression of the movie, still ends up being as predictable as ever.
The score was bad but the rest of the movie was also not good. I’ll give Nolan a little credit for trying to make a movie that wasn’t soulless and emotionally sterile like all his other films but the MURPH/McConaughey relationship didn’t work at all. I’d tell Nolan to stick to what he’s good at but I can’t for the life of me figure out what that is. Certainly not staging action or fight scenes, which are usually a disaster in his action movies. And when the great McConaughey can’t save your clunky dialog, welp, that’s all she wrote. The most engaging characters were those weird blocky robots.
The Invisible Man was put off in favour of us finally getting round to John Wick 3 - Parabellum. These days I’m so out of touch I’m not sure how heretical it is to be a John Wick skeptic, but I’m afraid this didn’t change my mind. The fights are really impressive, but apart from the first and the last they just merged into Keanu endlessly shooting people in the head. And then the plot, holy shit was that boring. They even managed to make Ian McShane or Bronn doing a hammy Italian accent boring. I dunno, guess I’m just old or something.
(Should say Keanu himself can still do no wrong in my book. He bears no blame.)
Finally saw Prisoners last night. 6/10. Difficult to watch if you’re a parent, but a decent watch. Timely in that it highlights how useless cops can be.
Despite all of my good ideas and this forum’s suggestions, my wife insisted on showing the kids Clueless for movie night. She had been pushing it for weeks and we finally gave in.
