London Has Fallen, the sequel to Olympus Has Fallen, will not be opening until 2016. But, until then, we can enjoy this trailer! It’s fun and exciting in the way that action film trailers often are, promising us a world of thrills that the actual film will probably not deliver.
But until the disillusionment sets in, enjoy this trailer for London Has Fallen!
To be honest, I’m really only interesting in seeing Steve Jobs because it stars Michael Fassbender and it was directed by Danny Boyle. I do, however, think it will be interesting to see Seth Rogen in a dramatic role and I’m also curious to see if Kate Winslet can overcome the fact that screenwriter Aaron Sorkin is incapable of writing strong female characters.
(And for those of you about to go, “What about C.J. on The West Wing!?,” don’t. Just don’t. First off, everyone always cites C.J. as a strong female character in a Sorkin-penned melodrama and it’s gotten just a little bit boring. Secondly, I never watched The West Wing because I had and continue to have a life.)
Here’s the latest trailer for the very Oscar baitish Steve Jobs.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
All of the scenes below come from films that were made and released between the introduction of sound in the late 1920s and the adoption of the infamous Hays Production Code in 1934. This was truly an exciting time for film as an art form. Not only were filmmakers intoxicated with discovering what they could accomplish through the medium but they were also unhindered by censorship or regulation. The end result was some of the most visually imaginative and narratively daring films to ever be released by the major American studios.
There’s a reason why film lovers continue to eagerly seek out pre-code films. And if you want to experience what made the pre-Code era so memorable, you could not do any worse than to start with the four films featured in this post.
Madam Satan (1930, dir by Cecil B. DeMille)
Safe in Hell (1931, dir by William Wellman)
Rasputin and the Empress (1932, dir by Richard Boleslawski)
Search For Beauty (1934, dir by Erle C. Kenton)
The first trailer for Creed was released earlier today! Now, I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of boxing. Nor did I exactly love Rocky when I watched it on TCM. (That said, I’ve always secretly felt that I was a bit too glibly dismissive of it in my review.)
But you know what film I did really admire? Fruitvale Station. Ryan Coogler’s directorial debut was a powerful and disturbing look at race relations in America. It had its flaws but overall, Coogler crafted one of the best films of the decade. Equally impressive was the film’s star, Michael B. Jordan.
So for me, my interesting has been piqued because Creed is another chapter in the careers of both Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan and I can not wait to see where they go.
However, I think a lot more people will want to see the film because it is another chapter in the story of Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky. So, before seeing Creed, be sure to check out our own Jedadiah Leland’s look back at the history of the Rocky franchise!
And watch the trailer for Creed below!
Will Tom Hardy finally get his Oscar nomination this year? Well, he has already starred in one of the best films of the year, Mad Max: Fury Road, though I would argue that Charlize Theron is the one who deserves to be nominated for that film.
However, Hardy may have a chance of scoring a nomination for his performance in the fact-based gangster film, Legend! Not only is Hardy playing a real-life killer (which always seems to be a good way to get nominated, just ask Steve Carell) but he’s also playing twins!
That’s double the Tom Hardy!
Legend will be released in October.
Meh.
Who cares?
That was my main reaction to watching The Stranger, a film from Chile that, for some reason, is set in Canada. (There’s absolutely nothing about the film that brings to mind Canada. The film was obviously shot in South America and almost all of the actors are Chilean. And, just in case you forget, they’ve all been badly dubbed.) The Stranger is full of atmosphere and it does attempt to do something new with the vampire genre so I guess we should give it some credit for that…
No, sorry.
Can’t do it.
Listen, I love horror movies. I think that some of the most interesting films being made today are coming out of the South American film scene. And, in the past, I’ve even defended Eli Roth, who is credited as being one of the producers on this film. But I’m sorry — The Stranger is an incredibly boring and unpleasant film.
And yes, I fully realize that the best horror films are meant to be nightmarish and, as a result, somewhat unpleasant to watch. However, there’s a difference between the stylized violence of a good giallo and the relentless sadism of The Stranger. There’s no real point or style to the overbearing violence and gore in The Stranger and, as a result, it gets pretty boring after just a few minutes.
Of course, another huge difference between good horror and The Stranger is that The Stranger takes itself way too seriously. Again to return to the Italian horror comparison, the best giallo films always featured quirky characters, clever dialogue, and plot twists that took us by surprise. They were exercises in pure style that celebrated cinematic excess. The Stranger is so somber and grim and serious that it all becomes a bit tedious to deal with.
Also, an innocent black cat is brutally murdered about 30 minutes into a film. Then, towards the end of the film a dog is similarly attacked and left to die in the desert. And you really don’t get the feeling that there was any reason for these scenes, beyond the fact that the director needed to keep up with his onscreen death quota.. If you’re going to portray an innocent animal being killed by your hero, at least make sure it’s absolutely necessary to the plot. Otherwise, it just comes across as pointless sadism.
Anyway, the movie itself is about a stranger (Christobal Tapia Montt), who shows up in what we’re told in a small Canadian town. He’s looking for his runaway wife, who he discovers has subsequently died. The man has secrets of his own, of course. He hates the sunlight. He apparently cannot be killed by ordinary methods. His blood can heal others but it also tends to transform them into being blood-thirsty monsters. Yes, the man is obviously a vampire but the film never comes out and admits that.
There’s all sorts of small town intrigue going on but I’m not going to talk about it because it was tedious enough just trying to watch it. Ultimately, the whole film is basically just a collection of scenes of people threatening the stranger, the stranger looking somber, and then people threatening each other. None of the actors are particularly memorable and very few of them speak in their own voices. One gets the feeling that the Chilean cast could not sound properly Canadian and so a bunch of American actors were hired to overdub everyone’s dialogue. (I say American because I heard many regional American accents but not a single Canadian one. All of this again makes you wonder why this film was set in Canada as opposed to some place like maybe Chile.) The dubbing is atrocious, with the voices rarely matching either the facial expressions or the body language of the original actors.
This movie is a total mess. Sorry, Eli. I still think that the Hostel films have a lot more to say about America’s place in the world than most people are willing to admit but ultimately, The Stranger is a disappointment.
Last night, I watched the first post-Deadly Adoption Lifetime movie, Perfect High!
Why Was I Watching It?
Because it was on Lifetime and it was about a dancer, of course!
What Was It About?
Amanda (Bella Thorne) is a suburban teen who loves to dance. But, after an injury, she gets hooked on prescription pills. She also becomes best friends with druggie Riley (Daniela Bobadilla), Riley’s boyfriend Nate (Ross Butler), and Carson (Israel Broussard). Soon, Carson and Amanda are dating and they become perhaps the most boring couple in history. Of course, since this is Lifetime, the prescription drug abuse quickly leads to heroin, death, and a minute-long rehab scene.
What Worked?
The film did a good job of capturing both the excitement of dancing and the sheer terror of being injured and knowing that, as a result, you can’t do what you love.
What Did Not Work?
The whole movie was just so predictable and so slow. Don’t get me wrong. I understand that a Lifetime film about teenagers using drugs isn’t going to exactly be unpredictable. From the start of the film, I knew that one of the four friends was going to have to die and I easily guessed which one it was going to be. That’s just the way it works, somebody always has to die in these films.
But the problem is that we are now living in a post-Deadly Adoption age. After seeing every single Lifetime convention skewered last week, it’s hard to go back to taking any of those conventions seriously. The whole time I was watching the film, I kept expecting Will Ferrell to suddenly show and start bellowing, “SHE NEEDS HER MEDICINE!”
As well, Perfect High moved way too slowly for its own good. As characters, Amanda, Riley, Nate, and Carson all fell flat. Even before they ended up as drug addicts, they seemed like they wouldn’t be that interesting of a group to hang out with. Before doing drugs, they spent all their time laying on the couch. After doing drugs … well, that couch became even more comfortable. For an anti-drug film to really work, you have to mourn what the character could have been if not for their addictions. But, in Perfect High, everyone seemed to be just as dull regardless of whether they were high or not.
“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments
The movie was about a red-haired dancer who popped too many pills in high school. Oh my God, just like me!
Lessons Learned
Stay away from that heroin, kids. Of course, I already knew that. Even when I was going through my phase where I wanted to experiment with and try everything, I still knew better than to ever use heroin. (Actually, to be honest, I should say that if I had ever had the opportunity to try heroin, I would have politely declined. Fortunately, I never even had to deal with being offered heroin, which I guess is the benefit of going to both a high school and a college where everyone was too busy smoking weed to worry about harder drugs.) Whenever I see a movie like Perfect High, I always wonder how the characters involved have never seen any other movies about heroin abuse.
I mean, don’t they watch Lifetime!?
Well, I think the title of this review pretty succinctly sums up my reaction to Seth McFarlane’s latest film, Ted 2. Thanks for reading and have a good…
Oh, really?
Okay, I’ve been told that I have to try to think up at least 300 words to say about Ted 2. Otherwise, in the eyes of Rotten Tomatoes, we’re not a legitimate film blog.
*sigh*
Okay.
Anyway, Ted 2 is the story of a talking teddy bear (voice by Seth McFarlane) who likes to smoke weed and … well, that’s about it. He’s just gotten married to Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth) and they’re having trouble because Tami-Lynn wants a baby but Ted, being a teddy bear, doesn’t have any reproductive organs. So, he and his friend John (Mark Wahlberg) decide to give Tom Brady a handjob so they can still his sperm. But, it turns out, none of that was important because the state of Massachusetts claims that Ted is not even a person. Instead, he’s just “property.” So, now, John and Ted and their lawyer, Sam (Amanda Seyfried), are fighting the courts to win Ted his civil rights. And then Giovanni Ribisi wants to kidnap Ted and Morgan Freeman shows up and says a few words. And the film is narrated by Patrick Stewart because it’s funny to hear Patrick Stewart curse and…
Oh! And Liam Neeson shows up. He’s a customer at the store where Ted works as a cashier. Liam wants to know if Trix are only for kids. The joke here is that it’s Liam Neeson and he’s asking about cereal. Ha ha.
Oh! And there’s two guys who shows up at New York Comic Con so that they can beat up “nerds.” During every scene set at Comic Con, they’re in the background beating people up and insulting them. And the two guys are gay! See, they’re bullies and they’re gay! And they’re beating up random people at Comic Con, just because they can! Hilarious, right?
Ted 2 spends a lot of time trying to convince us that Ted’s struggle to be recognized as a person is actually meant to be a metaphor for the American civil rights movement. But, honestly, I get the feeling that McFarlane relates more to the bullies than he does to any oppressed minority. As he previously proved with his TV shows and A Million Ways To Die In The West, McFarlane is only interested in going after easy targets. He’s your typical white male hipster who thinks that, because he voted for Obama, he can get away with telling racist jokes.
And, before anyone misunderstands, I wouldn’t mind McFarlane’s humor if it was at least funny or original. But instead, it’s the same stupid jokes that he always tells. Seth McFarlane’s comedic technique is to basically drag things out until viewers laugh from pure exhaustion. Is it effective? Well, there are people who continue to praise and defend him and Seth certainly has made a lot of money off of his act. So, obviously, there are people who respond to this. But to me, Seth McFarlane’s humor just feels lazy.
Ted 2 lasts 128 minutes. That’s over two hours devoted to a concept that feels more appropriate for a five-minute skit. Interesting enough, the first Ted was tolerable because it focused on Mark Wahlberg’s Johnny. Ted was just a supporting character and he worked as a metaphor for Johnny’s struggle to choose between growing up or being a happy slacker. (The first Ted was all about Johnny falling in love with Mila Kunis, whose character is rather cruelly dismissed at the start of Ted 2.) In Ted 2, Ted is the central character and once you get over the fact that he’s a teddy bear who drops multiple F bombs, there’s really not much to the character. It helps, of course, that we only have to listen to McFarlane. We don’t have to look at his imminently punchable, oddly lineless face. But, to be honest, even McFarlane’s voice has become grating. It’s just so self-satisfied and smug.
I saw Ted 2 with the blogger also known as Jedadiah Leland. Over the course of 128 hours minutes (it just felt like hours), we each laughed once. Not surprisingly, both laughs were inspired by Wahlberg’s dumb-but-sweet performance. Now, I will admit that the rest of the audience laughed a bit more than we did. But still, there was a definite atmosphere of resignation in the theater. You could literally hear the people thinking, “Oh, Ted just made a joke about black people. Better laugh now so everyone knows that I get whatever the Hell this is supposed to be. After all, those tickets weren’t free…”
What’s the word count now?
758?
Cool.
That’s enough words for me to say, “Ted 2 sucks!”
Yep, this again.
