Tag Archives: Guy Pearce

Film Review: Lawless (dir. by John Hillcoat)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For most of 2012, I was excited about seeing one film and that film was Lawless.  Why was I so excited about seeing Lawless?  Well, first off, I had spent most of the year being bombarded by the film’s genuinely exciting trailer.  Seriously, that trailer was more entertaining than 80% of the film that I’ve seen this year.  Judging from the trailer, the film was a period piece that took place during one of my favorite decades, the 1920s.  The film dealt with bootleggers and I’m proud to say that there’s a few of those on my family tree.  The trailer also featured Gary Oldman firing a tommy gun, Jessica Chastain dancing, Guy Pearce acting odd, and Tom Hardy being all tough and Tom Hardy-like.

When I watched that trailer, it didn’t matter that the film starred Shia LeBouf (who has always struck me as being a bit of a whiney actor).   It didn’t matter that director John Hillcoat previously wasted good material with his adaptation of The Road.  It didn’t even matter that the film was greeted with indifference at Cannes.  “Oh,” I told myself, “that’s just the French critics being reflexively anti-American.  Lawless has Truffaut written all over it…”

The only thing that tempered my enthusiasm for Lawless was when the first of the 30-second commercials started to appear on television.  As opposed to the exciting trailer, these commercials made the film seem rather average and they now put less emphasis on the film’s stylistic excesses and more on the fact that the film was apparently “based on a true story.”  The tone of the television spots was so different from that of the theatrical trailer that it was hard not to conclude that the PR geniuses at the Weinstein Company weren’t sure how to sell the film.  I found myself wondering if Lawless would be as confused as its ad campaign.

Last Friday, I finally saw Lawless and judged for myself.

Lawless tells the story of the three Bondurant brothers.  In the 1920s, these brothers are succesful bootleggers who work out of rural Virginia and who maintain a peaceful coexistence with local law enforcement through a steady supply of bribes.  The oldest brother is a taciturn World War I veteran named Forrest (played by Tom Hardy.)  The youngest brother is Jack (Shia LeBouf), who idolizes violent gangsters like Floyd Banner (Gary Oldman).  The middle brother is Howard (Jason Clarke).  Howard spends most of the movie yelling.

Things are peaceful for the Bondurant brothers until, one day, a corrupt and oddly fastidious prohibition agent named Rakes (Guy Pearce) shows up and demands a cut of whatever profit the brothers make from their bootlegging.  Forrest refuses and soon Rakes and the Bondurants are engaged in a very violent and bloody war.

That war, however, doesn’t stop Jack from pursuing a relationship with a rebellious preacher’s daughter (played by Mia Wasikowska).  Meanwhile, Forrest hires a new waitress to work at the family bar.  Maggie (Jessica Chastain) is a former dancer from Chicago and soon, she and Forrest are cautiously pursuing their own relationship.  As for Howard, he yells a lot.

Lawless is an odd film.  The actors are all well-cast and Shia LeBouf probably gives his first genuinely good performance here.  The film’s violent action sequences are well-choreographed and one could even argue that, in the character of Rakes, the film is drawing a very relevent parallel to America’s own modern-day war on drugs.  And yet, as I watched the film, I felt oddly detached from the action onscreen and the Bondurants never came to life for me as individual characters that were worth rooting for.  I think the ultimate problem with Lawless is the same problem that Hillcoat ran into with The Road.  Lawless is a film full of beautiful visuals and striking sequences but none of it seems to naturally flow together.  As a result, the film is visually striking but narratively weak.

As a result, Lawless is ultimately a case of the triumph of style over substance.  How you react to the film will probably depend on how much importance you put into either one of those two elements.  If you’re willing to accept the film simply as a collection of striking visuals (as I was), you’ll find a lot to enjoy in Lawless but if you’re looking for something deeper, you’ll probably be disappointed.

You’re also going to be disappointed if you go to Lawless expecting to see a Gary Oldman film because Oldman is only in about four minutes of the film, his best scene is in the trailer, and his character lacks that touch of eccentric charisma that Oldman typically brings to his villains.  Instead, it falls to Guy Pearce to be eccentric and evil and he does a great job.  Sporting an accent as odd as his haircut, Pearce brings a brilliantly perverse jolt to even the simplest of line readings.  Lawless is at its best when its content to just let Guy Pearce play at being Gary Oldman.

Lawless: Trailer #2

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As I’ve mentioned on this site before, Lawless is the movie that I’m most excited about seeing later this year. 

It’s not necessarily that I think it’s going to be a great film or because I’ve suddenly managed to figure out the appeal of Shia LeBouf (though he does look about as appealing as I’ve ever seen him look in the previews for this film). 

No, I’m looking forward to Lawless because it looks like it’s going to be a stylish and sexy throwback to the classic gangster films of the past.  As I’ve been saying for a few months now, Lawless captured me the minute I saw Gary Oldman firing that tommy gun and smirking at the camera.  Add to that, this film’s original trailer also featured Tom Hardy at his Tom Hardiest and Guy Pearce with one of the weirdest movie haircuts (not to mention accents) ever. 

(Plus, the film apparently features dancing!  Yay!)

A second trailer for Lawless was released earlier today and you can view it below.  While this second trailer contains many scenes that should be familiar from the first trailer, it also puts a lot more emphasis on the film’s violence in general and Tom Hardy in specific.  I have to wonder if that has anything to do with all the buzz surrounding Hardy’s villanous performance in the upcoming Dark Knight Rises.

Lawless opens August 31st and I know I’ll be there.

Trash Film Guru Vs. The Summer Blockbusters : “Prometheus”

Posted on by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

It’s funny how our expectations going into a film shape our perceptions of it while we’re watching it and, ultimately, our final opinions about it after we’ve seen it. Case in point : yesterday on this very blog I was talking about Snow White And The Huntsman, a movie I frankly expected nothing from, and about how, even though it delivered nothing but a substance-free series of pretty pretty pictures to look at, I wasn’t too pissed off about spending my hard-earned money to see because I wasn’t even sure it would deliver that much (or that little). Today, on the other hand, I’m going to be discussing a flick that I flat-out expected to suck, and that pretty much delivered on those expectations — yet left me feeling pretty well ripped off even though it, too was gorgeous to look at and even though, again, I figured it would be at least as bad as it was, if not worse.

I’m talking, of course, about Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s completely unnecessary Alien prequel. The reasons I went into this with essentially no optimism whatsoever are numerous — Scott hasn’t made a good film since Blade Runner, the script was co-authored by some guy named Jon Spaihts and one of the chief culprits behind the unwatchable, thoroughly confused mess that was TV’s Lost, Damen Lindelof (who’s apparently irked huge segments of the online film geek community with a recent series of over-the-top-in-the-self-serving-department comments), and frankly because any film that set out to “explain” and “demystify” the H.R. Giger-designed evil aliens form the original film series sounded like something with the power to not only be completely pointless (some power), but to actively detract from the impact the first film had by filling in a bunch of blanks that are best left — well, blank.

Of course, there were reasons for optimism, as well — a first-rate cast, sure-fire scrumptious CGI effects, and a promised “return to the Alien series’ roots” after some rather unfortunate side-steps and detours all sounded pretty cool, but I still went into this one prepared for the worst.

I didn’t get that. Instead I got a confused, cliched, every-bit-as-unnecessary-as-I’d-expected mess of a film that, in its defense, at least really does look amazing. Which was enough for me to give Snow White And The Huntsman a pass, admittedly — but hyprocrite that I am I just can’t be as forgiving when it comes to Prometheus. Why not? Because at the end of the day I don’t really give a shit either way about the Snow White legend, but I do care about the Alien franchise. A lot. Scott’s first film rates right up there with John Carpenter’s The Thing on my list of all-time great sci-fi horrors, and I even enjoyed most of the various sequels to one degree or another. So it’s fair to say that, even though I didn’t figure it would be, I still wanted this flick to be good.

So where to begin with the reasons why it wasn’t? Well, how about we start with that stellar cast I mentioned a minute ago. It’s completely wasted. Apart from the film’s “Ripley-lite” protagonist, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace, who turns in a heck of a good performance), none of the characters are developed at all. the very talented Idris Elba is stuck in a one-dimensional role as the titular ship’s captain and can’t even seem to decide what accent he should settle on when he’s speaking. Charlize Theron plays an ice princess — again. Michael Fassbender, at the top of pretty much every current Hollywood “hot” list, turns in a dry, uninvolved turn as the ship’s android that won’t be causing Ian Holm to lose any sleep (although, in Fassbender’s defense, the fact that Spaihts and Lindelof reveal that he’s robotic from the outset doesn’t help matters any). Guy Pearce, as old man Weyland, the expedition’s financier, might as well be replaced with a computer-generated stand-in. There’s even a completely pointless two-second cameo from Patrick Wilson inserted for reasons I can’t even begin to fathom. So much talent with oh so little to actually, you know, do.

Then there’s the script. Dear God, what a disaster. Shoehorning a bunch of unnecessary Chariots Of The Gods-style crap into the Alien “mythos” is about the worst direction these truly Lost writers could have chosen to go. Instead of illuminating anything (not , again, that much “illumination” was really needed — the original story stood on its own just fine), it just muddies the waters. There’s some laughably atrocious dialogue that wouldn’t sound out of place in an Ed Wood film (like when the ship’s geologist, in the midst of a massive freak-out, declares ” I like rocks, right? I really like rocks!”). And the main thrust of the action is essentially a direct carbon copy of the “story arc” from the first film (you know, for instance, who the only survivor is going to be from the outset). It’s like Spaihts and Lindelof can’t decide between trying to do something completely out of left field (albeit thoroughly confusing) or just settling on the same old blueprint so in the end, they go for both — and end up doing each competing narrative impulse a massive disservice.

I keep coming back to the amazing visual prowess Scott’s CGI gurus display here consistently from start to finish, and I suppose it’s worth mentioning one more time just to balance the scales here a bit, but what’s that old saying about lipstick on a pig? Prometheus cakes on the makeup, but underneath, its true face is still that of the victim of a particularly nasty car wreck. And like an accident victim, it’s so disfigured and tragic that you’re almost tempted to feel sorry for it — until you learn that said victim was driving drunk at 150 mph and the person in the other car (I guess that would be the audience in this case — bear with me as I stretch this metaphor way beyond the breaking point) didn’t make it out alive.

It takes an almost Herculean effort to not be as bad as I was fearing Prometheus would be yet still somehow leave me feeling even more cheated and let down than I would have felt had it actually been even worse (if that makes any sense at all) —yet that’s exactly what Scott, Spaihts, and Lindelof  have managed to do here. File that under “go figure” and then, to return the already-worn-out accident metaphor, move along, folks — nothing to see here.

Trailer: Lawless

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This trailer has been out for a while now but I still want to post it here because, I have to admit, I have slowly fallen in love with it.  Lawless appears to be a stylish period piece about ruthless men shooting each other and, quite frankly, after sitting through such ponderous and overly serious films as Public Enemies and J. Edgar, I think we’re all in the mood for a prohibition gangster film that’s actually fun to watch.

There are three reasons why I think Lawless might be good and those three reasons are: Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, and Guy Pearce (though I do have to wonder what exactly is going on with Pearce’s hair).  Seriously, this trailer had me as soon as Oldman flashed that little smirk of his.  As for Tom Hardy — well, I’m with Jessica Chastain on this one.  I’d dance for him too.

There are a few reasons to be concerned.  Director John Hillcoat previously directed The Road, which I didn’t really care for.  (The end of the world might be many things but it should never be boring.)  However, my biggest concern is the fact that even though the film features Hardy, Oldman, Pearce, and Chastain, it apparently stars Shia LeBouf.  When I saw Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, I had to keep reminding myself that the film was actually about LeBouf because he just seemed so forgettable and watching the trailer for Lawless, I find myself wondering how, if LeBouf couldn’t even summon up enough charisma to hold the screen against Michael Douglas, how is he going to handle being in a film with Tom Hardy, Guy Pearce, and Gary Oldman?

Trailer: Prometheus (International Launch)

Posted on by Arleigh

We get what could be the definitive trailer for Ridley Scott’s prequel to his Alien film.

This latest trailer is the international launch trailer and runs just a shade under 3 minutes. We definitely get a sense of what the film is about but not so much that it spoils the film’s entire story. Some have been anticipating this film since it was first announced and with each release of production stills and teasers the hype just continues to build. Then there are those who hate this film without even seeing it because they see it as either a cash grab or an attempt by a filmmaker to break a string of sub-par films.

I stand pretty much between these two camps. While I’ve always enjoyed Ridley Scott’s work even those he whiffs badly on I’m also hesitant to fully embrace this prequel as a can’t-miss without having seen it. So much about the Alien franchise has been ruined by badly made sequels and mash-ups that it’s going to take something momentous to have me put unquestioned faith back into the franchise.

Maybe Scott returning to something he’s familiar with and having had learned more about filmmaking since the first film means he’ll bring something new to the franchise and help bring it back from the brink of mediocrity. Here’s to hoping that is the case. One thing I’m sure of is that he’s got an all-star cast to work with.

Prometheus is set for a June 8, 2012 release date.

Lisa Marie Finds Herself On Lockout (dir. by James Mather and Stephen St. Leger)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This Friday saw the release of two new genre films, The Cabin In The Woods and Lockout.  As you may have heard by now, The Cabin In The Woods is one of the best films of 2012.  But what about Lockout? 

Well, let’s just say that it’s no Cabin In The Woods.

Co-written by Luc Besson, Lockout takes place in the 2079.  The world is pretty much exactly the same  as it is right now with the exception of the fact that there’s a big space prison orbiting the Earth.  The prisoners — who we’re told early on “aren’t here for traffic violations” — are kept in a state of suspended imagination.  Though the process apparently has the side effect of making the prisoners even more psychotic than before, keeping the prisoners in “stasis” also keeps the prison relatively peaceful.  However, as usual, lefty do-gooders are concerned as to whether or not “stasis” is humane and they basically end up ruining the whole thing and getting a bunch of people killed. 

While the president’s daughter (played by Maggie Grace of Taken and Lost fame) is visiting the station in order to investigate whether the prisoners’ rights are being violated, the most psychotic prisoner is revived so that she can interview him.  Why they would select this prisoner — out of the 400 that they have — to wake up is anyone’s guess.  Anyway, this leads to that prisoner escaping, all the other prisoners waking up, and the president’s daughter being held hostage.

Who can save her?  Well, how about a surly and disgraced former CIA agent named Snow (and played by Guy Pearce)?

The main problem with Lockout is that, with the exception of few welcome moments, it’s never quite as fun as it should be.  This is a film that opens strong (with a witty interrogation sequence and a thrilling chase scene) but it’s almost all rapidly downhill from there as the film fails to come up with anything to match the excitement of the first five minutes.  The space prison, itself, is well-designed but the prisoners within are a pretty bland and predictable bunch and they make for boring villains.  (The one exception is Joseph Gilgun as a half-blind, gleefully insane maniac named Hydell.)  Maggie Grace made for a perfect kidnapping victim in Taken but she’s a lot less convincing here.  Listen, I’m about as independent as you can get and I’m proud of it but I can guarantee you that if I was trapped in a prison and surrounded by potential rapists, the last thing I would do would be to give attitude to the one guy who has been sent to rescue me. 

Especially if that guy was Guy Pearce!  Seriously, this film has its flaws but Guy Pearce is not one of them.  Whether he’s telling off his superiors and informing Maggie Grace that she’s on her own as far as getting off the space prison is concerned, Pearce is pure surly sexiness.  Ultimately, Lockout works best as a showcase for Pearce and he makes the most of it.  He looks good beating people up, he’s a better actor than Jason Statham, and he’s got a sexier voice than Ira Glass.  He’s such a charismatic animal that, if he hasn’t played Stanley Kowalski in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire yet, somebody better hurry up and cast him.

Seriously.

Prometheus: Peter Weyland TED 2023 (Video Clip)

Posted on by Arleigh

The video above was released today by 20th Century Fox as part of their marketing machine to help create buzz for their upcoming summer blockbuster scifi film Prometheus.

It’s a clip of a fictional keynote speech by one Peter Weyland at the TED 2023 conference. Guy Pearce plays the role of Peter Weyland and talks about how technology’s influence in human history from the beginning with fire (he mentions the Greek myth of Prometheus stealing the technology of fire from the gods and giving it to man) all the way to artificial intelligence and realistic cybernetic constructs.

Anyone who has been a fan of the Alien franchise will recognize the name Weyland. It’s the fictional transnational corporation which has become a major part of the films in the franchise and, to a degree, even to the Predator franchise. They’re the corporation which sends Ripley and the crew of the ore mining hauler Nostromo to the desolate planet of LV-426 where they encounter the very lifeform that would become one of film’s iconic monsters. It is also the corporation which 70+ years later would send a terraforming colony to the very same planet which would become a major part of the plot for Aliens. Even the David Fincherdirected third film, Alien 3, would use the corporation as the monolithic badguy behind-the-scenes.

Weyland is just part of the corporation’s name as through the years it would combine with another corporation to become Weyland-Yutani. While the aliens in the franchise have been the immediate threat in all the films in the franchise it would be Weyland-Yutani who became the face of the corporate evil that continues to try to get samples of the very alien the franchise is known for.

It’s going to be interesting how this viral video ties into the upcoming Ridley Scott “prequel” to Alien and whether Weyland-Yutani will play a major role in the film’s plot. One thing I’m sure is that Pearce definitely plays a convincing corporate visionary with a God-complex that’s part Steve Jobs and part Richard Branson (if both iconic businessmen channeled their inner-darkside).

Prometheus is set  for a June 8, 2012 release date.

Trailer: Prometheus (dir. Ridley Scott)

Posted on by Arleigh

This week leading up to the Christmas weekend has surely been quite a busy one for film fans everywhere. Earlier in the week we got to see the new trailer for The Dark Knight Rises (and to a lesser extent the trailer for Wrath of the Titans). That was soon followed a day later by the first teaser trailer for Peter Jackson’s upcoming return to the world of Middle-Earth with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Now we reach the triumvirate of awesome film trailers for the week with the release of the first official trailer for Ridley Scott’s return to the film franchise which made him a household name and helped redefined sci-fi (especially of the horror variety) films.

The trailer for Prometheus looks beautiful especially when viewed on 720p/1080p HD. It still doesn’t explain just exactly what the plot of the film is, but it does show some interesting imagery which harkens back to the original Alien from 1979. We even get to see a glimpse of the pilot chair where the “space jockey” sits and the very ship itself found by Ripley and the crew of the Nostromo from the first film. Even the trailer pays major homage to the original film by slowly revealing the film’s title one section at a time.

Scott has been saying that Prometheus is not a prequel to Alien and that it’s a film that could stand on it’s own without people needing to see the films in the franchise. So far, we haven’t glimpsed any of the typical xenomorphswhich defines the franchise. Time to see if they make an appearance when the film finally comes out on June 8. 2012.

Film Review: Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (dir. by Troy Nixey)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Since late last year, one trailer has managed to consistently scare me.  That trailer was advertising a horror film called Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.  Well, after a few delays, Don’t Be Afraid of The Dark has finally been released and I’ve finally seen it.  Unfortunately, the trailer is the only thing scariest thing about Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.

The film starts out as a classic haunted house story.  Sally (well-played by Bailee Madison) is a young girl who is sent, by her neglectful mother, to live with her father.  Sally’s father (Guy Pearce, who seems to be bored by the whole movie) is restoring an old mansion in Rhode Island with his girlfriend (Katie Holmes).  In a plot development that will be familiar to anyone who has seen Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond, It turns out that the mansion was previously owned by a crazy painter who disappeared over a 100 years ago.  Anyway, Sally isn’t all that happy with the situation to begin with and, once she starts to hear malevolent voices whispering threats at her, she’s even less happy with it.  However, her father refuses to take Sally’s fears seriously.  Why?  Because, simply based on his actions in this film, Sally’s dad is an idiot as well as being the worst father ever!  Seriously.

The main problem with Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is that it’s simply not scary.  Director Nixey, making his film debut here, borrows a few effective images from other, better horror films but otherwise, he creates no sense of pace and no sense of tension.  The owners of the voices are revealed fairly early on in the film and as soon as they show up, the film pretty much loses whatever atmosphere of dread that it may have built up.  It’s as if nobody told Nixey that the unknown is always far scarier than obvious CGI. 

It really doesn’t bother me that all of the characters continually do stupid things.  We expect that.  That’s just part of the horror genre.  If the characters in a horror movie acted sensibly and just left the haunted house or didn’t wander off by themselves then there wouldn’t be any horror.  What does bother me in this film is that there’s no consistency in the way the characters act or any sort of continuity for scene to scene.  Sometimes, everybody in the house can hear Sally scream regardless of where they’re located and then other times, it appears that Sally could scream for hours without anyone noticing.  Sometimes, Katie Holmes seems determined to save Sally from the house’s evil forces and then other times, she seems fairly indifferent to whether she survives or not.  Horror films don’t require that characters act with any sort of logic but it does help if there’s at least a little consistency.

I mentioned Lucio Fulci earlier and I did that on purpose because, in many ways, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark reminded me of one of Fulci’s later, post-New York Ripper films.  Like most of Fulci’s later films, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is ultimately a disappointment but occasionally, a little glimmer of talent shines through and manages to keep the film from being a total loss.  In the case of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, most of those glimmers belong to Bailee Madison who is well-cast as Sally and who bring some much needed conviction to the film.  Also, towards the end of the film, there’s a lengthy dinner party sequence in which Sally attempts to ward off the evil creatures while her unaware father attempts to schmooze with his guests (one of whom was played by Alan Dale, the same actor who played Charles Widmore on Lost).  The dinner party sequence actually generates some tension (as well as some intentional laughs) and it hints at what the film could have been.

Trailer: Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark

Posted on by Arleigh

I love films, all films, in general but if there’s one particular film genre that really floats my boat then it would be in the horror category. This summer will see the release of a title that I’ve been anticipating since I heard about it at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con. The film I speak of is the remake of the 1973 tv horror film of the same name: Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.

While Troy Nixey takes the director’s chair for this film he’s working on a story written by Guillermo Del Toro who’s been known to dabble in the horror genre (Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone). Del Toro promised a horror film that would bring back horror the way it’s meant to be and that’s with genuine scares and not horror predicated on torture and extreme use of gore. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark will be a throwback to the atmospheric, almost gothic horror, that reached it’s peak during the late 70’s before the slasher boom hit.

The film has been delayed several times as Miramax Films was sold by Disney and the restructuring of the studio after it’s owners finalized it’s purchase put the film on the backburner. It now has an official August 26, 2011 release and it looks like the film got an R-rating from the MPAA for “pervasive scariness”. While Del Toro, Nixey and the rest of the film crew were hoping for a PG-13 rating the one given by the MPAA who seemed to really enjoy said “pervasive scariness” recommended it go out as an R-rated horror (one with little to no gore).

So, we have an upcoming horror film by an upcoming filmmaker handpicked by Del Toro. A film written by Del Toro himself and one which just got an R-rating which made Del Toro as happy as a clam. Plus, it’s a horror film that relies on genuine scares and not gore. My answer to that is August 26, 2011 cannot come sooner.