The Birdemic of Action Movies: April Rain (dir by Luciano Saber)

Posted on November 29, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Warning: Occasionally, film art can be deceptive.

It was called April Rain and it's like the Birdemic of action films! OMG, it was so bad that I have to rewatch it so I can review it!

— Lisa Marie Bowman (@LisaMarieBowman) November 22, 2014

I realize that is a big claim to make. Birdemic, after all, is known for not only being one of the worst but also for being one of the most inept films ever made. It’s a film that regularly appears on lists of the worst films ever made and, unlike the always entertaining The Room, Birdemic actually deserves the honor.

So, when you compare a movie to Birdemic, it’s kind of a big deal.

However, having now sat through April Rain on multiple occasions, I can say that April Rain totally deserves the comparison.

Imagine if your local community theater decided to put on a low-budget, theatrical adaptation of 24, with the director’s son playing Jack Bauer and a retired accountant playing the main villain and you might have some idea of what it’s like to watch April Rain.

The film opens with endless overhead shots of Los Angeles while stirring “epic” music plays in the background. The movie uses these overhead shots in much the same way that Tommy Wiseau used the Golden Gate Bridge in The Room. Whenever the scene needs to change, we get an aimless overhead shot of Los Angeles that rarely seems to have much to do with either the scene we just viewed or the one that we’re about to watch. At first, it amused me to notice how many buildings had helicopter landing pads but then I realized that I was just looking at the same buildings over and over again.

After we spend a while looking down on Los Angeles, we are immediately thrown into the middle of the action as six men have a fierce gun battle outside of a warehouse. And by gun battle, I mean that each man stands about four feet away from the other, shoots a gun, and somehow manages to miss just as often as they hit. It’s during this scene that we learn two important things about April Rain:

1) Nobody in this film dies without flailing around for a few minutes before hand.

2) Anyone firing a gun will be shown in slow motion.

As for why everyone is shooting at each other, it all comes down to weapons. The group in the warehouse has a few crates full of weapons. The people attacking the warehouse want the weapons so that they can sell them to a terrorist cell.

The people attacking the warehouse, incidentally, a members of the Russian mob. I figured this out because they had names like Nikolai and Dimitri and not because any of them actually had a Russian accent or, in any other way, came across as being Russian.

Which is not to say that they don’t have accents. Their boss, Kotov (Adrian L. Tutor), definitely has an accent. Actually, he has several and they change from scene-to-scene. Sometimes, he sounds like he’s from Italy and then other times he sounds like he’s from Scotland…

Anyway, when we first meet Kotov, he’s running around in circles in his suburban front yard while his two youngest daughters chase after him. He’s wearing a dark blue apron that reads, in bright red letters, “World’s Greatest Dad.”

The face of the Russian Mafia

His oldest daughter, Katrina (Brittany Beery), would probably disagree with that. She’s got a crush on the newest member of the mob, Alex (Ryan Guzman). When Kotov drags Katrina to church, she gets out of it by saying, “I’m getting my period, dad!” and doing a massive eye roll. (Interestingly enough, I used to do the exact same thing to get out of going to Mass. Never underestimate the importance of the eye roll.) What makes this scene especially memorable are the extras sitting on the pew directly behind Kotov and his family. When Katrina explains why she has to leave church, they gasp and look like they’re about to faint from the shock. They do this despite the fact that Katrina and Kotov are whispering and that their voices would undoubtedly have been drowned out by the church organ that is played throughout the entire scene. Perhaps, at one point, the filmmakers were planning on including a subplot that hinged on super hearing…

ANYWAY — and watching April Rain is one of those films that will inspire you to say “anyway” quite a lot — it turns out that Alex has a secret of his own. He’s not really a Russian mobster! No, he’s a member of an elite division of the — well, to be honest, I’m not sure which agency he works for. However, I do know that it’s top secret because it’s housed in a huge warehouse and everyone spends a lot of time talking about how it’s all top secret.

Along with Alex, the team includes:

1) Sikes (Luke Goss), who is I guess is supposed to be in charge. He’s a taciturn but fair man who is first seen disciplining his teenage son. (“I can do what I want!” his son shouts, “In your face, old man!”) Sikes spends a lot of time shouting things like, “I WANT HIM ALIVE!” just before then shooting a bad guy in the head. (Incidentally, in April Rain, getting shot in the head means that a small splotch of red paint appears on your forehead.)

2) Rita (Miranda Frigon), who I liked because she’s a redheaded administrative assistant, just like me! At one point, Rita gets a phone call from someone outside of the agency. Sikes tells her that he needs her to be 100%. Rita agrees. The phone call is never mentioned again.

3) Kenny (Doug Savant), who doesn’t really have much of a personality.

4) Thomas (Vincent Spano), who is Kenny’s best friend and who, as a part of his job, is currently sleeping with Hellen (Anne Leighton) who works for Kotov. At one point, Thomas’s wife (Hillary Tuck) shows up and points a gun at him and screams at him for cheating on her. An exasperated Thomas yells back, “I work my ass off and you show up here and make me look like an ass in front of Kenny!” And the scene goes on and on from there…

And finally,

5) Hillary Miller (Ming-Na Wen!) is apparently Sikes’s superior. Thomas refers to her as being the Wicked Witch of West Los Angeles. “She flies around on her broomstick with a strap-on and a jar of vaseline,” he informs Alex. Ming-Na gets top billing but she’s actually only in a few minutes of the film and she spends most of that time yelling and glaring. It’s almost as if she’s daring you to ask her how she ended up in a movie like April Rain.

Ming-Na dares you to ask her what she’s doing in April Rain.

ANYWAY — Kotov has been supplying terrorist leader Tariq (Deniz Akdeniz) with guns and Vespa motor scooters and you better believe that we eventually do get a chase scene where the bad guy is fleeing on a Vespa. (And you also better believe that almost the entire chase scene is filmed in slow motion.)

Before launching his terrorist scheme, Tariq becomes an American citizen. The oath of citizenship is delivered by a judge who actually shows up on a Sunday to do so. “It’s the least I can do, after all the work you’ve done on my house,” the judge helpfully explains. Of course, as Tariq and the Judge enter the courthouse, the camera lingers on a security guard who views both of them with clear suspicion.

Upon returning to his apartment, Tariq and his family celebrate his new citizenship. Then, his two neighbors arrives to congratulate him. These two neighbors — well, they simply have to be seen and heard to be believed. “Share the wealth!” one of them proclaims, “then maybe everyone won’t want to kill us…” Another one drinks a toast to “education and the redistribution of wealth,” which I guess is the film’s way of letting us know that the only thing needed for the Tariqs of the world to succeed is for them to live next door to stereotypical California liberals.

What’s especially interesting about this film is that, for all the time devoted to the Judge, the security guard, and those two neighbors, none of them are all that important to the plot. In fact, after their initial scenes, neither the judge nor the security guard are ever seen again. As for the two neighbors, they’re kicked out of the apartment after Tariq is visited by Yusef, a jihadi who is also a pizza deliveryman…

(Just about every film has a few red herrings but few take it to the extreme of April Rain, a movie in which just about everyone in the cast is a red herring.)

Everyone’s either a red herring or a redhead or both.

Much like Birdemic, The Room, and Troll 2, April Rain is such a uniquely bad film that it becomes oddly fascinating. You watch and, with each moment, you can not help but wonder how much worse the film can get. And, with each passing moment, you discover that it can get a lot worse.

You want a cast that alternates between catatonic underplaying and histrionic overacting? April Rain has got you covered. (In defense of the cast, it’s not that any of them are bad actors as much as the script doesn’t leave them much choice. For instance, I thought Brittany Beery did the best that anyone possibly could with her role. The same can be said of Ryan Guzman and Luke Goss. As for Ming-Na — well, I imagine she probably just wanted to get her scenes over with.)

You want action scenes that essentially look like a bunch of kids making finger guns and going, “Bang! Bang!” at each other? April Rain is the film to see.

Do you want random scenes that come out of nowhere, make you go, “What the Hell?,” and are then promptly forgotten about in the movie’s grand narrative scheme? April Rain will not disappoint.

Do you want pages and pages of dialogue that add up to nothing more than empty verbosity? Might I suggest watching April Rain?

Do you want to see a movie that’s so bad that it’s good? Well, I’d suggest watching The Room and then Troll 2 and then Birdemic. But once you’ve got those three out of the way, definitely give April Rain a try!

Bang! Bang!

Film Review: The Town That Dreaded Sundown (dir by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon)

Posted on November 28, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Town That Dreaded Sundown is the latest classic horror remake. In this case, it’s a remake of a 1976 docudrama about a real-life serial killer who, shortly after World War II, haunted the streets of my former hometown of Texarkana, Texas. (You can read my review here.) The original was a low-budget but effectively creepy little film that was shot on the streets of Texarkana and was full of authentic Texas atmosphere. (It helped that it was directed by Charles B. Pierce, a Texarkana native, as opposed to some jerk from up north.) What made the film all the more haunting was the fact that — in both the movie and in real life — the Phantom Killer was never captured.

So, how does the remake compare?

*Sigh*

(For the record, I’m not only signing but I’m also massively rolling my mismatched, heterochromatic eyes.)

Listen, I will give this film credit for attempting to be something more than just your usual horror remake. It actually does have a fairly clever premise. Instead of retelling the original story, the remake of The Town That Dreaded Sundown begins with a bunch of people in present-day Texarkana sitting around and watching the original film. There’s even an eccentric character named Charles B. Pierce, Jr. (Denis O’Hare) who we are told is the son of the original director. It’s a clever idea, one that wisely acknowledges the effectiveness of the original film while also commenting on the continuing mystery surrounding both the identity and the fate of the Phantom Killer.

And, when someone dressed like the original Phantom Killer starts to murder young couples in Texarkana, we — just like the characters — are left to wonder whether it’s the spirit of the Phantom or if it’s someone imitating the murders from the original film or whether it’s something else altogether.

That’s certainly the question faced by Jami (Addison Timlin), who survives being attacked by this new Phantom but then grows obsessed with trying to discover who he is. Addison Timlin gives a really good performance here. She’s likable and sympathetic, the perfect “final girl.”

In fact, the entire film is well-cast. Anthony Anderson is a lot of fun as a cocky Texas Ranger while Gary Cole and Joshua Leonard do good work as members of local law enforcement. Denis O’Hare, who I will always think of as being Russell on True Blood, brings a certain dissipated nobility to his role. The victims are all sympathetic and the killer is creepy.

But, with all that in mind, I was disappointed with the remake of The Town That Dreaded Sundown. The reason the original film worked is because it was made by a member of the Texarkana community. Charles B. Pierce knew the town and he understood why the Phantom Killer continued to haunt the citizens. What his movie lacked in technical polish, it made up for in authenticity.

Though the remake features a narrator and duplicates the original’s obsession with letting us know whether each scene is taking place on the Texas-side or the Arkansas-side of the town, there’s still absolutely nothing authentic about it. Whereas the original was filmed entirely on location, the remake was mostly filmed in Shreveport with only three days devoted to getting some location footage of downtown Texarkana. As someone who has lived in both Shreveport and Texarkana, allow me to assure you that you can totally tell the difference.

The remake was produced by Ryan Murphy (of Glee and American Horror Story fame) and the film really does feel like a lesser season of American Horror Story. It’s a film that has so little use for subtlety (just check out Edward Herrmann going totally overboard as a hypocritical preacher) that its creepy moments are totally smothered by all the heavy-handed cartoonishness that surrounds them.

Ultimately, the remake fails because it has no feel for or understanding for my homestate. It was made by people who obviously know nothing about Texas or Arkansas beyond what they’ve seen in other movies produced, directed, and written by other northerners.

The 1976 Town That Dreaded Sundown worked because it was authentic. Despite a few good ideas, the remake is just too generic to do justice to the original.

Film Review: Blood Ties (dir by Guillame Canet)

Posted on November 28, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, there’s this fucking movie called Blood Ties and it’s about a lot of fucking guys who live in fucking New York City in the fucking 70s and they’re all kind of a bunch of fuck-ups but they all know how to fucking use the word fuck as both an adjective and an adverb. That’s the main impression that I took away from Blood Ties, a film that feels a lot like a mash-up of Place Beyond The Pines and every Martin Scorsese film ever made.

The year is 1974. After serving several years on a murder conviction, 50 year-old Chris (Clive Owen) has been released from prison. Chris’s transition back into society is a bumpy one. For one thing, his ex-girlfriend (Marion Cotillard) is now a prostitute and refuses to let Chris see his children. Though he gets a new girlfriend (Mila Kunis), he still finds himself struggling to hold down a job and he soon finds himself tempted to once again pursue a life of crime.

What might make that difficult for him is the fact that his younger brother, Frank (Billy Crudup), is now a cop with an old school porn star mustache. Frank makes little secret of how much he resents his older brother and it isn’t long before the two of them are constantly fighting. However, Frank has problems beyond Chris. For one thing, he’s romantically pursuing Vanessa (Zoe Saldana), despite the fact that he earlier put her husband, Anthony (Matthias Schoenaerts), in prison.

In order to keep their dying father (James Caan) happy, Chris and Frank try to put aside their differences. However, when Frank sees Chris fleeing from the scene of a robbery, it becomes harder and harder for him to ignore his brother’s activities. Meanwhile, Chris has to decide whether or not to potentially sacrifice his freedom to keep his brother safe from a vengeful Anthony…

When Blood Ties was originally released at the beginning of the year, I considered seeing it but — for some reason — I ended up seeing The Legend of Hercules instead. (Don’t you hate it when that happens!) And I have to admit that I had forgotten about Blood Ties until I discovered that we were getting EPIX for free this holiday weekend. Blood Ties is one of the films that’s currently showing on EPIX and, when I saw it was available, I thought to myself, “I can’t wait to see A Most Violent Year but until that opens up down here in Dallas, why not watch another violent New York period piece?”

And so I watched Blood Ties and … well, bleh. Actually, bleh may be too harsh of a judgment. The film is full of fun period details and Billy Crudup gives a really good performance as Frank. There are some well done action scenes and I appreciated the fact that, for the most part, the film did not try to make violence look glamorous or fun. The film has a great soundtrack though, for the most part, most of the songs here can also be heard in a countless number of superior Scorsese films.

But, ultimately, Blood Ties is never as good as you want it to be. The film’s plot is about as predictable as can be and, far too often, scenes that start out interesting quickly degenerate to various characters standing around and yelling at each other. And while that may often be what happens in real life, it still doesn’t make it particularly interesting to watch. And then you’ve got poor Clive Owen, a good actor who is seriously miscast here. Casting Clive Owen as a streetwise New York gangster is a bit like casting Ray Liotta as a member of the Queen’s Guard. It just doesn’t work.

For those of us hoping for a great New York City crime epic — well, we’re just going to have to keep hoping that A Most Violent Year turns out to be just as good as everyone says it is…

12 Things For Which I Am Thankful This Thanksgiving

Posted on November 27, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hello there and Happy Thanksgiving! This is the time of year when we gather together, we look over the past few months, and we think about what we are thankful for. A lot of people online have also suggested that Thanksgiving is the perfect time to argue with relatives who hold different political views from you.

And sure — if you want to ruin Thanksgiving for everyone, go ahead and be that person. But for me, I’m just going to list 12 things that make me happy to be alive in 2014!

1) Dancing Groot! Actually, I’m thankful for all of the Guardians of the Galaxy but I’m especially happy that Groot is still around and he’s still dancing!

2) I’m thankful that Adult Swim is showing old Thanksgiving episodes of King of the Hill so that I’ll have an excuse not to watch any football games.

3) I’m thankful for all of The Hunger Games films and I’m thankful for the strength and empowerment that Jennifer Lawrence brings to the role of Katniss Everdeen.

4) I’m thankful that everything is awesome!

5) I’m thankful that this is the year that everyone else finally discovered that Shailene Woodley is one of the best actresses working today.

6) I’m thankful for Chris Pratt. (Who isn’t?)

7) I am especially thankful for sites like Awards Watch and Awards Circuit. These two sites provide some of the best Oscar coverage around and, unlike Awards Daily, they manage to do it while remaining fair, honest, and entertaining.

8) I’m thankful William J. Mann’s excellent book Tinseltown, a wonderful look back at the Hollywood of the 1920s and the unsolved murder of director William Desmond Taylor.

9) I’m thankful for the haunting perfection of True Detective.

10) I’m thankful for the hilarious satire of Veep. Meyer in 2016!

11) I’m thankful that Richard Linklater spent 12 years making Boyhood.

12) And, most importantly, I’m thankful for you! Thank you for visiting this site! Thank you for reading our reviews! Thank you for leaving comments! Thank you for making all of this worthwhile!

And, most of all, here’s hoping you had a Happy Thanksgiving!

Love you!

6 Late Film Reviews: 300: Rise of Empire, About Last Night, Adult World, Jersey Boys, Ride Along, and Trust Me

Posted on November 23, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, the year is coming to a close and I’ve got close to 50 films that I still need to review before I get around to making out my “Best of 2014” list. (That’s not even counting the films that I still have left to see. December is going to be a busy month.) With that in mind, here are late reviews of 6 films that I saw earlier this year and had yet to get around to reviewing.

1) 300: Rise of an Empire (dir by Noam Munro)

Last night, I watched 300: Rise of an Empire for the second time and I still couldn’t figure out what exactly is going on for most of the film. I know that there’s a lot of fighting and a lot of bare-chested men yelling and, whenever anyone swings a sword, they suddenly start moving in slow motion and dark blood spurts across the screen like Jackson Pollock decorating a previously blank canvas. The style of 300 has been co-opted by so many other films that 300: Rise of an Empire feels more like an imitation than a continuation.

At the same time, I’m resisting the temptation to be too critical of 300: Rise of the Empire for two reasons. First off, this movie wasn’t really made to appeal to me. Instead, this is a total guy film and, much as I have every right to love Winter’s Tale, guys have every right to love their 300 movies. Secondly, 300: Rise of an Empire features Eva Green as a warrior and she totally kicks ass.

2) About Last Night (dir by Steve Pink)

Obviously, I made a big mistake this Valentine’s Day by insisting that my boyfriend take me to see Endless Love. (I still stand by my desire to see Winter’s Tale.) I say this because I recently watched this year’s other big Valentine’s Day release, About Last Night, and I discovered that it’s a funny and, in its way, rather sweet romantic comedy.

About Last Night tells the story of two couples, Danny (Michael Ealy) and Debbie (Joy Bryant) and Bernie (Kevin Hart) and Joan (Regina Hall). All four of the actors have a very real chemistry, with Hart and Hall bringing the laughs and Ealy and Bryant bringing the tears. The film itself is ultimately predictable but very likable.

3) Adult World (dir by Scott Coffey)

In Adult World, Emma Roberts plays Amy Anderson, an aspiring author and recent college graduate. Despite her own overwhelming faith in her own abilities, Amy struggles to find a job outside of college. She is finally reduced to working at Adult World, a small adult bookstore. Working at the store, she befriends the far more down-to-earth Alex (Evan Peters) and eventually discovers that one of her customers is also her idol, poet Rat Billings (John Cusack). Amy proceeds to force her way into Rat’s life, volunteering to work as his assistant and declaring herself to be his protegé. However, it turns out that Rat is far less altruistic than Amy originally thought (and with a name like Rat, are you surprised?).

Adult World is a flawed film but I still really enjoyed it. The story has a few problems and the film never really takes full narrative advantage of Adult World as a setting but the entire film is so well-acted that you’re willing to forgive its flaws. Cusack gives a surprisingly playful performance while Evan Peters is adorable in a Jesse Eisenberg-type of way. Emma Roberts shows a lot of courage, playing a character who is both infuriating and relatable.

4) Jersey Boys (dir by Clint Eastwood)

Clint Eastwood’s upcoming American Sniper has been getting so much attention as a potential Oscar contender that it’s easy to forget that, at the beginning of the year, everyone was expecting Jersey Boys to be Eastwood’s Oscar contender. In fact, it’s easy to forget about Jersey Boys all together. It’s just one of those films that, despite its best efforts, fails to make much of an impression.

Jersey Boys is based on one of the Broadway musicals that tourists always brag about seeing. It tells the true story of how four kids from the “neighborhood” became the Four Seasons and recorded songs that have since gone on to appear on thousands of film soundtracks. The period detail is a lot of fun, Christopher Walken, who has a small role as a local gangster, is always entertaining to watch, and the music sounds great but Eastwood’s direction is so old-fashioned and dramatically inert that you don’t really take much away from it.

Hopefully, American Sniper will be the work of the Eastwood who made Mystic River and not the Eastwood who did Jersey Boys.

5) Ride Along (dir by Tim Story)

School security guard Ben Barber (Kevin Hart) wants to marry Angela (Tiki Sumpter) but Angela’s tough cop brother James (Ice Cube) doesn’t approve. In order to prove himself worth, Ben goes on a ride along with James and the results are just as generic as you might expect. Probably the only really funny part of the film was the way that Hart delivered the line, “You’re white! You don’t fight!” but we all saw that in the commercial so who cares?

On the plus side, Ice Cube has a lot of screen presence and is well-cast as James. As for Kevin Hart — well, he should probably be thankful that About Last Night came out a month after Ride Along.

6) Trust Me (dir by Clark Gregg)

In Trust Me, Clark Gregg both directs and stars. He plays Howard, a fast-talking but ultimately kind-hearted talent agent who mostly represents children. After losing some of his most popular clients to rival agent Aldo (a hilariously sleazy Sam Rockwell), Howard meets Lydia (Saxon Sharbino), a 13 year-old actress. Soon, Howard is representing Lydia and trying to land her a starring role in a major production. Howard also finds the time to tentatively date his next door neighbor (Amanda Peet). However, there’s more to Howard than meets the eye. He is haunted by the death of one of his previous clients and his guilt leads him to become especially protective of Lydia. When Howard concludes that Lydia is being sexually abused by her crude father (Paul Sparks), he attempts to protect her from both him and the Hollywood system that’s threatening to corrupt her. It all leads to an oddly tragic conclusion…

I say “oddly tragic” because Trust Me is, in many ways, an odd film. As a director, Gregg gets good performances from his cast but he never manages to find a consistent tone. The film starts as a Hollywood satire and then it becomes a romantic comedy and then it turns into a legal drama before then becoming an all-0ut attack on the way the entertainment industry treats child actors and then finally, it settles on being a tragedy. As a result, Trust Me is undeniably a bit of a mess.

And yet, it’s a compelling mess and the film itself is so heart-felt that you can’t help but forgive its flaws. If nothing else, it proves that Clark Gregg is capable of more than just being Marvel’s Agent Coulson.

Everything Is Awesome! The Lego Movie Is Still Great!

Posted on November 22, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Have you ever rewatched a film that you remembered as being pretty great just to then be totally shocked to discover that it really wasn’t even that good?

It’s happened to me more times than I care to count. Often times, it seems like the films that have the most immediate impact on us are the same films that, in a matter of weeks, we often end up forgetting. My personal theory is that these films are so designed to make an immediate impact that there’s often little room for the subtext that would be necessary for a movie to actually linger in the mind. These are the type of films that we remember enjoying but it’s often a struggle for us to explain why we thought it was great. (“Oh my God,” we say, “it was such a great movie!” and then we leave it at that.) When we do get around to watching the film for a second time, we’re often left slightly disappointed. Now that we know what’s coming, the film no longer has as much of an impact.

It happens all the time and I hate it. That is why, often times, I find myself dreading the second viewing. Will the film still work the second time or will it turn out that the film only truly works when viewed with virgin eyes?

That’s one reason why I was feeling a bit of trepidation about rewatching The Lego Movie when it showed up on HBO this month. After all, I loved the Lego Movie when it was originally released earlier this year. As soon as I got home from seeing it at the Alamo Drafthouse, I jumped on twitter and tweeted out, “EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!” For the past few months, I’ve been telling everyone that the Lego Movie was great.

But was it really?

Of course, everyone knows what The Lego Movie was about. President Business (Will Ferrell) is seen by the residents of the Lego Universe as being a benevolent ruler but actually, he’s an insecure control freak who enforces strict conformity and who is planning to use a mysterious weapon known as the Kragle to rob everyone of free will and imagination. A group of rebels — known as the Master Builders and led by Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) — hope to stop him. According to Vitruvius, a chosen one will defeat President Business and, to everyone’s surprise, the Chosen One turns out to be a cheerfully ordinary construction worker named Emmett (Chris Pratt).

There were so many things that I remembered loving about the Lego Movie.

I loved the voice work done by the film’s talented cast. Along with the perfectly selected Ferrell, Freeman, and Pratt, the cast also includes: Will Arnett as a hilariously pretentious Lego Batman, Elizabeth Banks as the rebellious Wyldstyle, Liam Neeson as Bad Cop, the always brilliant Nick Offerman as a pirate called Metal Beard, Charlie Day as a “space guy,” and Alison Brie as my favorite character, Unikitty (a unicorn/kitty hybrid, and who wouldn’t want to own one of those?). And, of course, there were also cameos from Channing Tatum as Superman and Jonah Hill as a hilariously obsequious Green Lantern. I remembered that all of these actors had done great work, bringing very vivid life to their characters.

And I remembered that all of the actors were aided by a script that was full of funny lines and clever bits of satire. I remembered loving the enthusiastic way that Charlie Day talked about making a spaceship. I loved Will Arnett’s pretentious hipster posturing. I loved the way that Chris Pratt could deliver a line like, “I understand what you’re saying but could you repeat it again because I wasn’t listening?” I loved Liam Neeson switching back and forth from being the ruthless Bad Cop and the painfully nice Good Cop. And most of all, I loved Morgan Freeman. Freeman, of course, is known for having the most God-like voice in the movies and, in this movie, he delivers even the most over-the-top dialogue with a calm and soothing authority.

And I loved the song Everything Is Awesome, an earworm if there ever was one!

And finally, I remembered that — as funny as The Lego Movie was — it also made me cry. The theme of being yourself and going your own way is a common one but the Lego Movie expressed it with such sincerity that it was impossible for me not to be moved as if I was hearing it for the very first time.

So, as I lay down to rewatch the Lego Movie, I asked myself if the movie would live up to my memories.

Well, guess what?

EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!

The Lego Movie is just as good on subsequent viewings than on the first! So, if you somehow haven’t watched it, then watch it now. And if you have watched it, watch it again!

Film Review: Anna (dir by Jorge Dorado)

Posted on November 19, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I just finished watching Anna, a Spanish thriller that was briefly given an American release way back in June. Anna (which was produced under the title Mindscape) got fairly bad reviews, with many critics dismissing it as being a weak imitation of Inception.

Having now seen the film, I can say that, once again, the critics were wrong.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. It’s obvious that without Inception, there never would have been an Anna. But, as any fan of old school Italian horror can tell you, imitation is not necessarily a bad thing. Anna may start out as a low-budget take on Inception but, by the end of the film, it has established its own unique identity.

Anna tells the story of John (Mark Strong), a “memory detective.” John has the power to enter into people’s memories, where he can search for clues to help people deal with psychological trauma and to occasionally help the police solve crimes. At the start of the film, John is recovering from a trauma of his own. After their son dies, his wife — who is also a memory detective — retreats so deeply into her memories that she can’t come back. (Yes, I know. It’s exactly like Inception. Just be patient…) While exploring the memories of an assault victim, John’s own memories start to intrude on the victim’s memories, leading to John having a stroke.

After John recovers from the stroke, he finds himself both financially destitute and emotionally unstable. His boss (Brian Cox) takes sympathy on John and assigns him to what should be an easy case. 16 year-old Anna (Taissa Farmiga) is refusing to eat and her extremely wealthy parents want to know why.

John meets Anna and discovers that she’s a sarcastic, intelligent, and withdrawn teenager. When John enters into her mind, he discovers memories of neglect and abuse. The night after John first enters Anna’s memories, her nurse is pushed down a flight of stairs. The nurse claims that Anna pushed her while Anna swears that she’s being framed. Anna’s parents, meanwhile, have signed papers to have her committed, giving John just a few days to determine what’s behind Anna’s behavior.

Convinced that she’s innocent, John enters into Anna’s memories and searches for clues that will answer the question of whether Anna is a victim or a sociopath. As he does so, he finds more and more evidence that Anna was abused. However, he also starts to discover hints that there may be more to Anna’s memories than he originally realized.

Anna is a good and entertaining mystery of a film, one that takes its time telling its multi-layered story. Jorge Dorado makes his directorial debut with Anna and he wisely emphasizes characterization and atmosphere above all else. There’s a dream-like sense of menace that fills every frame of the film, casting a palpable feeling of unease over both John and the audience. As a result of his work here, I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what Dorado does in the future.

Mark Strong is a talented and intelligent actor who has gotten typecast as a villain. As such, it’s nice to see him actually get a chance to be the star for once. Strong gives a sympathetic performance while adding just enough instability that the audience is never totally at ease with John. The same can also be said of Taissa Farmiga, who gives a wonderfully ambiguous performance that makes Anna both innocent and destructive at the same time. Anna keeps both John and the audience guessing until the very end of the film.

Anna is currently making the rounds on cable. I would recommend keeping an eye out for it.

A Late Film Review: Winter’s Tale (dir by Akiva Goldsman)

Posted on November 17, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I liked Winter’s Tale.

And I don’t care what anybody else says!

And that’s a good thing too because, critically, Winter’s Tale has been one of the most maligned movies of 2014. It came out on Valentine’s Day, at the same time as Endless Love. And the critics absolutely hated it! For a while there, the online film community was taking bets on which one of the two Valentine’s Day releases would end up with the lowest score on Rotten Tomatoes. And, though it was a close race, Winter’s Tale actually ended up with the lower score, coming in at 13% as opposed to Endless Love‘s 15%.

That’s right — according to most mainstream film critics, Winter’s Tale was actually worse than Endless Love.

Well, those critics were wrong. That’s how I felt when I first saw Winter’s Tale and, after watching it a second time on HBO, that’s still how I feel. Winter’s Tale is not a bad movie!

(Incidentally, Winter’s Tale has a 6.2 rating over at the imdb, which would seem to indicate that I’m not the only person who knows better than Peter Travers.)

Admittedly, the plot of Winter’s Tale does not make much logical sense but that’s kind of the point. It’s a tale and tales are not about being realistic. Tales are about emotion and the whole point of listening to or telling a tale is to inspire feelings. To truly appreciate Winter’s Tale, you have to understand that this is a fairy tale that happens to be set in the most mythical of American cities, New York.

Opening in 1895 and ending in 2014, Winter’s Tale tells the story of Peter Lake (Colin Farrell). When Peter was an infant, his immigrant parents were refused entry into Manhattan because they both had tuberculosis. So, they put Peter in a toy boat and dropped him into ocean and watched as the boat slowly floated towards America.

Jump forward 21 years and Peter has grown up to be a thief, working for a gangster named Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe). What few people know is that Pearly is actually a demon who regularly visits his boss, Luicfer (played by Will “Yes, that Will Smith” Smith). Pearly is immortal as long as he stays in New York City.

When Peter decides that he wants to leave Pearly’s gang, Pearly orders that Peter be killed. However, while fleeing from the rest of the gang, Peter is rescued by a flying white horse. While Peter’s first instinct is to fly the horse out of New York and spend the winter in Florida, he instead decides to rob one more mansion. (It helps that the horse literally takes him to the mansion.)

While robbing the mansion, Peter meets Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay), a passionate and talented pianist who is dying of tuberculosis. In what is literally a case of love at first sight, Peter forgets about robbing the mansion and instead has a cup of tea with Beverly. They discuss their lives and Beverly tells Peter that everyone has a miracle inside of them and that everyone becomes a star after dying.

Soon, Peter and Beverly are a couple and Peter even manages to win over Beverly’s suspicious father, Isaac (William Hurt). Peter and Beverly spend the winter at her family’s summer home. Peter believes that his miracle is to save Beverly. Meanwhile, an angry Pearly waits for his chance to get revenge…

Now, I will admit that there are some obvious flaws with Winter’s Tale. Russell Crowe goes totally overboard, with his accent wildly going from Australian to New Yorkish to Scottish and back again. Meanwhile, Will Smith is not necessarily a bad choice to play the devil and he actually gives a pretty good performance but it doesn’t chance the fact that, whenever he’s on screen, all you can think about is that he’s Will Smith and he’s playing the devil.

But, honestly, who cares? This is an amazingly romantic film and Farrell and Findlay have a lot of chemistry. When you see them together, you have no doubt that Peter and Beverly are meant to be together. You care about them as a characters, even if you don’t always understand everything that’s happening around them. Their love feels real and, when it comes to telling a love story, isn’t that the most important thing?

(Add to that, does any actor fall in love as convincingly as Colin Farrell?)

And the film itself is gorgeous! From the costumes to the set design to Caleb Deschanel’s cinematography, the film is just beautiful to look at. Undoubtedly, cynics would argue that the film is almost too glossy in its appearance but Winter’s Tale is not a film for cynics. It’s a film for romantics.

So, yes, I did like Winter’s Tale and I am not ashamed to admit it.

Film Review: Endless Love (dir by Shana Feste)

Posted on November 15, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh, what a disappointing film this turned out to be!

When the trailer for Endless Love came out way back in the closing days of 2013, both me and my BFF Evelyn were seriously excited about seeing it. The trailer was great! It featured Florence + The Machine! The movie looked hot and sexy and fun and…

Well, let’s just rewatch the trailer, shall we?

Here’s the thing: Sometimes, trailers lie.

I saw Endless Love when it was originally released in February but I didn’t review it. I meant to review it but somehow I never got around to doing so. And, unfortunately, the film itself was so bland and forgettable that I actually struggled to think of anything to say about it. Some movies make you laugh. Some movies make you cry. Some movies make you mad. And some movies are just there.

Endless Love is a just there type of movie.

That said, when I saw that Endless Love would be making its cable debut on Cinemax on Saturday night, I decided to give it a second chance. “Who knows?” I thought to myself, “Maybe I just went into the film with unrealistic expectations. Maybe I was just in a bitchy mood when I saw it. Maybe, on a second viewing, I’ll discover that Endless Love works on a purely emotional level…”

No such luck! Having watched Endless Love a second time, I can now actually remember enough about the film to finally get around to writing a review. However, I have also now been reminded why I didn’t care much about the film the first time I saw it.

Endless Love is essentially a collection of generically pretty scenes that all feature pretty performers thinking about love, talking about, and making love. Recent high school graduates David (Alex Pettyfer) and Jade (Gabriella Wilde) start going out. Jade comes from a wealthy family. David does not. Jade’s overly protective father, Hugh (Bruce Greenwood), does not approve of the relationship because Jade has an ivy league future ahead of her while David has no plans to attend college at all. Jade becomes more rebellious. David lectures Hugh on the fact that nothing is more important than love. Hugh takes out a restraining order against David. Jade goes off to college. David tries to secretly see her. And, of course, there’s a fire.

(Though, unlike in the original Endless Love, the fire is not deliberately set. This is Endless Love reimagined as a Nicholas Sparks novel.)

And who really cares?

The problem with Endless Love is that we’re supposed to care about David and Jade and we’re supposed love how obsessed they are with each other but David and Jade are two of the most boring people ever so who cares? Alex Pettyfer is nice to look at. Gabriella Wilde is pretty. But, as a couple, they have next to no chemistry. Instead, they come across like one of those vapid couples that my boyfriend and I always worry we’re going to end up getting trapped in an endless conversation with.

(“How did you two meet? Wait, before you start — let me tell you how we met… It’s a great story…you guys are going to love this…we were both attending kindergarten on a dance scholarship but the ballet kids all hated the ballroom kids. Then they moved to Iceland and I asked my dad if we could move to Greenland and then…”)

And again, this just shows the power of a good trailer. Watching the trailer, you would never guess how boring David and Jade truly are. Incidentally, the best parts of the trailer are all taken from a “David and Jade dating” montage that occurs about halfway through the film. As such, the scenes that made me want to see Endless Love pretty much just serve as filler in the actual film.

Also, Florence + The Machine are nowhere to be heard in the actual film. And their haunting, atmospheric music would have been out of place anyway. Florence + The Machine embraces the power of ambiguity and Endless Love takes place in a world where there is no ambiguity.

However, there is a lot of blue.

Everyone's wearing blue in htis movie. They should have called it Endless Blue. #EndlessLove

— Lisa Marie Bowman (@LisaMarieBowman) November 16, 2014

Seriously! (And yes, I do realize that there’s a typo in my tweet but everyone is allowed to be illiterate on twitter so get off my back.) This movie opens with a high school graduation where everyone is wearing a blue robe and the entire cast is so oppressively cheerful and overwhelmingly pleasant-looking that I briefly wondered if they were supposed to be a graduating class or a cult. Later on, David works at a valet at a country club and, of course, he wears a blue shirt. Everyone who belongs to the club also appears to be wearing a blue shirt, except that it’s a lighter shade of blue than David’s blue. It’s just odd-looking and reinforces the feeling that Endless Love is less a movie and more a collection of commercial outtakes.

Endless Love, of course, is a remake of a film from the early 80s. The first Endless Love isn’t very good but it’s at least a lot of unintentional fun! And you can read my review of it (and even watch the film!) by clicking here.

A Late Film Review: Non-Stop (dir by Jaume Collet-Serra)

Posted on November 15, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

With 2014 rapidly coming to a close, I am currently trying to get caught up on some of the movies that I either missed seeing or did not get a chance to review earlier this year. After all, in just another month and a half, it’ll be time for me to make out my “Best Of the Year List” and I want to have as many options as possible.

With that in mind, I just finished watching Liam Neeson in Non-Stop, an action-suspense film that came out way back in February.

In Non-Stop, Liam Neeson plays Bill Marks. It’s interesting to note that Bill Marks has the same initials as Bryan Mills, the very specifically trained CIA agent that Neeson plays in the Taken films. And really, Bill Marks might as well Bryan Mills because Neeson pretty much gives the exact same performance in Non-Stop that he previously gave in Taken. That’s not necessarily a criticism. There’s a reason why Liam keeps getting cast in these type of roles. He’s good at them.

In fact, I would say that Liam Neeson is one of the few action stars who I can imagine actually killing someone in real life (though only if he had to). He has a rugged, world-weary cynicism about him. You look into the eyes of a character played by Liam Neeson and you realize that he’s had to do things that you probably don’t want to know anything about. At the same time, Neeson also projects a certain old-fashioned decency as well. He’s the epitome of a decent man forced to use bad methods for the good of us all.

As for Non-Stop, I imagine it was probably pitched as being “Taken on a plane.” Bill Marks is an air marshal who is on board a non-stop flight from New York to London. Shortly after the plane takes off, he starts to receive mysterious text messages telling him that, unless he arranges for a 150 million dollar ransom to be paid into a specific bank account, someone on the plane will die every 20 minutes. While Bill tries to discover who is sending him the text messages and various people on the plane die, the authorities on the ground are convinced that Bill is hijacking the plane. Why? Well, mostly because the bank account is in Bill’s name…

That’s right! Somebody’s trying to frame Bill Marks! Can Bill — with the help of a passenger played by Julianne Moore — figure out who is trying to frame him and why? I have to admit that there was a part of me that was hoping that it would turn out that Bill really was the mastermind behind the whole scheme but instead, the movie offers up a solution that is even more ludicrous and illogical. Naturally, there’s a twist. The hijacking is not what it originally appears to be. Perhaps if Non-Stop itself was more fun, the total implausibility of the twist wouldn’t bother me.

Director Juame Collet-Serra (who previously directed Neeson in Unknown) manages a few good action sequence but, ultimately, Non-Stop is really saved only be the presence of Liam Neeson. Regardless of how implausible or silly the film may get, Neeson always brings a lot of authority to his role. He’s never more convincing than when he’s walking up and down the aisles, glaring at the passengers and barking out orders.

It’s the type of performance that leaves us assured that the world will be safe as long as Liam Neeson is around to kill people.