Tag Archives: Liam Neeson

Trailer: The Dark Knight Rises

Posted on by Arleigh

There’s nothing much else to say other than 2012 looks to be the year of The Dark Knight Rises.

2005 saw the reboot of the Batman film franchise. This first film in the new trilogy put Christopher Nolan on the map as an action filmmaker. 2008’s The Dark Knight with it being such a huge critical and, more importantly, a mega-blockbuster made Christopher Nolan a filmmaker who could do anything he wants and with whatever budget he asks for. Nolan was able to cash in some of that cred to make 2010’s Inception which was also a runaway success.

2012 is just around the corner and we have the third and final leg to Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. With the success and popularity of the two previous films to say that the hype and anticipation for this third film has reached stratospheric levels would be an understatement. This is not to say the film can’t flop, but with Nolan’s track record I am in the camp of highly doubt it.

The Dark Knight Rises is set for a July 20, 2012 release in both regular and IMAX (though not in 3D).

Trailer: Wrath of the Titans

Posted on by Arleigh

2010’s Clash of the Titans remake wasn’t what fantasy fans were expecting. Yes, it had spectacle and taking advantage of 3D (rage of the time due to the success of Avatar), but how the film ended up quality-wise left much to be desired. For an epic summer blockbuster film (as hyped by it’s ads and marketing push) the film felt very underwhelming. It showed in the box-office as it failed to generate Olympian-level cash though it still generated a little under $500million worldwide. I’m guessing it’s this number which greenlit a sequel to a remake of a film that never had one.

Wrath of the Titans forgoes having just two titans battle it out with Perseus (Sam Worthington) stuck in the middle. This time around the sequel will deal with the weakening of the Olympian Gods as human worship wanes while at the same time the powers of the imprisoned Titans rise. So, from the trailer alone this looks to have action that’s even more amped up than it’s predecessor. Previous director Louis Leterrier has stepped aside as director and in his place for the sequel is Jonathan Liebesman (Battle: Los Angeles…which I thought was actually quite good despite what my partner-in-writing Lisa Marie says about the film).

Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes return to their roles from the previous film. Replacing Alexa Davalos in the role of Princess Andromeda from the first film is Rosamund Pike who now takes the role as Queen Andromeda. Bill Nighy and Danny Huston join the cast as Hephaestus and Poseidon respectively.

Wrath of the Titans is set for a March 30, 2012 release which just reinforces my point that the summer blockbuster season seem to be encroaching into Spring with each passing year.

Trailer 2: Battleship (dir. Peter Berg)

Posted on by Arleigh

With Skyrim having taken over my life for the past month or so I’ve been quite remiss with my duties on the site, but no more!

To help me catch up on things around these parts I’ve decided to join the rest of blogosphere and post the latest official trailer for what looks like the offspring when Transformers and 2012 decided to mate. What we get is Peter Berg’s ludicrous, but looks to be quite fun, film adaptation of that classic Hasbro wargame toy. Battleship looks to fill up 2012’s lack of a new Transformers film.

Some have begun to call this the Rihanna film, but I rather think that she’s just a piece in the machine that is Hasbro’s latest attempt to rule the entertainment world with their films based on their classic toy lines. I was very iffy about Berg doing this film, but after two trailer and this one showing more scifi carnage and action I may just put this on my “guilty pleasure” list for 2012.

Battleship is set of a May 18, 2012 release date.

Movie Review: Darkman (dir. by Sam Raimi)

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

As I haven’t been to the movies lately, I’m working on reviews of older films I’ve seen.

A long time ago, just after Tim Burton’s Batman and before Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, Sam Raimi came up with the idea of making his own superhero movie. Supposedly, he had tried to get a hold of both Batman and The Shadow (which eventually went on to Highlander’s Russell Mulcahy), but wasn’t able to. As a result, Darkman was created. I never mind watching it or recommending it, as long as the viewer realizes they’re not shooting for Oscar Winning material here.

Darkman was a strange film. It wasn’t really marketed very well, evidenced in the simple “Who is Darkman?” posters that I remembered seeing on the sides of buses. I don’t recall there being any kind of commercials for the movie. While the movie did alright (and even spawned 2 sequels), I never thought of it as a great success. It still is, despite its flaws, a good film. Well, for someone at 15, it was good.

In Darkman, Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson) is a gifted scientist that has just about everything. He has a great girlfriend in Julie (Frances McDormand), who’s doing well in her job and he’s on the verge of a major breakthrough in developing a new synthetic skin. If he could only solve the problem where the skin apparently decays in light after 99 minutes. Soon after realizing the flaw in his project, he is attacked a group of criminals (lead by Larry Drake in a great role), burned with his own chemicals and his lab is set ablaze. Left for dead, he’s found and brought to a hospital. They’re able to confirm that he’ll live, but he’s also horribly scarred, has no sensation in his nerves (meaning he feels no pain), and will need skin grafts for the rest of this life. The result of all this trauma is also a bit of mental damage. Westlake breaks free of the hospital, resurrects his lab, and decides to get revenge for what was done to him. The synthetic skin technique now allows him to assume the appearance of anyone he chooses (as long as he has a picture of them, of course). He can wear a disguise for up to 99 minutes in direct sunlight, else his face begins to melt.

One thing I like about some of Sam Raimi’s films is that they’re just strange in some ways. Not Cronenberg strange (that’s just creepy sometimes), but they tend to have some weird elements. He likes to throw things into the camera, whether it’s someone’s face or an object. He’s also into these extreme zoom shots where he’ll have the camera low and bring it racing towards it’s subject. At the time the movie came out, my parents gave me a Camcorder. I did a lot of similar shots, chasing the cats around the house with the camera hovering a few inches off of the floor. I’ll admit it, it was pretty effective here.

Some of the acting was okay in Darkman. I particularly liked Larry Drake at the time because he seemed so different from the character he played on L.A. Law at the time, but everyone else here seemed like they were playing up their roles and in some cases, taking themselves far more seriously than they should have. Some scenes didn’t even make sense to me and felt like filler. I get that Westlake was just a little bonkers, but the whole “See the Dancing Freak” song and dance routine kind of left me with a “What the hell?” expression. Frances McDormand seemed to almost whine on cue (though I guess if I had a love one come back from the dead, I’d be a little shocked too). Colin Friels’ villain caused my family to collectively snicker and groan when at one part, he exclaims “Because I built it!!! I built it all!!” It was just all very strange. M. Night Shyamalan did something similar with The Happening, but for me, this really worked better in Darkman’s favor. Since the acting is so campy, the movie never really tries to make itself out to be Dark Knight / Captain America piece.

If you’re looking at it logically, there’s really no way that Westlake should have been able to pull off half of the disguises he used. You’ve height and weight to consider, and last I checked, Liam Neeson and Larry Drake really had two different body types. Where’d he get all the extra bulk, one has to wonder? Extra clothing, perhaps?

If Darkman has anything going for it, it’s the music. At the time, Danny Elfman was riding the high he had off of movies like Batman, Midnight Run, Dick Tracy and Nightbreed. While Edward Scissorhands remains the strongest score he had that year, Darkman has a number of nice action cues mixed with some somber tones. It helps to carry the film, somewhat.

Overall, Darkman was an interesting look at Sam Raimi’s approach to a superhero. It may have also been one of the key factors in securing the directing duties on the Spider-Man movies in the early 2000’s, which was far superior to this film. If nothing else, it’s worth a laugh or two.

Quickie Review: The A-Team (dir. by Joe Carnahan)

Posted on by Arleigh

If my memory serves me correctly the year of 2010 ended up becoming the year of the Action Team Flicks. Arriving first was the comic book film adaptation, The Losers, which didn’t do so well. Coming out last was the Stallone testosterone action vehicle, The Expendables, which did much better though it lacked somewhat in the grindhouse it was promising. Smack dab in the middle of these two was the film adaptation of the classic 80’s action tv series of the same name, The A-Team, which in the end I thought was the best of the three Action Team Flicks of 2010.

The A-Team was a film project that once had Mel Gibson attached to it right up to Bruce Willis, but delays upon delays pared back what would’ve been a mega-budgeted action blockbuster into something in the bargain basement (for a summer film). It starred Liam Neeson in the iconic role of Col. John “Hannibal” Smith made famous in the 80’s by George Peppard. Surrounding him would be Bradley Cooper as Templeton “Face” Peck, Sharlto Copley as H.M. “Howlin’ Mad” Murdock and veteran MMA fighter Quinton “Rampage” Jackson as B.A. Baracus.  Holding court over this A-Team was filmmaker Joe Carnahan working with a script he, Skip Woods and Brian Bloom (who also had a role as the amoral, sociopathic mercenary Pike).

The film took what was great and fun about the original tv series and gives it a 21st-century upgrade. To say that the film’s plot was secondary to watching the cast having fun on the screen would be an understatement. The story dealt with Smith and his team being accused of a crime they didn’t commit and must now escape from a military prison to find out who set them up and clear their name. It’s straight out of the tv series’ basic premise which managed to last a full on four seasons. Fortunately, Carnahan and his writers only had to make this premise last just a little over two hours. While some may think that two hours would be too long for this film it actually moved quite fast for something that went beyond the two hour mark.

Right from the beginning the cast looked to have been having the time of their lives. Neeson was Hannibal through and through while the other actors making up the rest of the team managed to imbue these well-known characters with their own brand of craziness, absurdity and panache. Just like the other two Action Team flicks of 2010 this film also had it’s share of scene-chewing villains in the form of Patrick Wilson as a duplicitous CIA agent and Brian Bloom as the sociopathic leader of a private military company at odds with Smith and his team. It’s these two groups who end up trying to outguess and outmanuever each other to get that final upper hand. Each encounter between these two groups just got more ridiculous with each passing event.

If one ever wondered if one could fly a tank while it was in freefall then this film answers that question. The climactic showdown at the LA shipyard at night has some of the most over-the-top action of the last couple years that wasn’t a scifi-actioner. Laws of physics doesn’t apply in The A-Team and the film revels in that notion as if telling the audience to either get onboard and enjoy the ride or get off and go on the Toad ride instead.

It’s a shame that The A-Team didn’t do as well in the box-office as some would’ve hoped because the film does set things up for further adventures for Neeson and his crew. What Carnahan ended up making won’t be breaking down the doors to the awards committee, but he did deliver on paying homage to the original tv series while adding his own brand of crazy to a film that had just the right amount of fun, ludicrous action to make it the best of 2010’s Action Team Flicks.

Trailer: Battleship (dir. by Peter Berg) Teaser

Posted on by Arleigh

It was just going to take before someone in one of the major Hollywood studios decided to tap into the board game market and pick one to adapt into a big-budget blockbuster. It worked wonders for Dreamworks and their bottom line with the Transformers trilogy. This time around we have Universal Pictures ready and set to release in the summer of 2012 their very own board game turned film in the Peter Berg-helmed Battleship.

Yes, you heard it right. That classic naval warfare game that made long road trips both easier to handle and also ripe for arguments has now been made into a film. There’s not much else to say other than watch the trailer. I will say that Liam Neeson must need a new mansion.

Trailer: The Dark Knight Rises (Official Teaser)

Posted on by Arleigh

The first official teaser trailer for the third and final installment of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Saga has finally arrived in it’s official form. The teaser had leaked in bootleg form last week. People who went to watch Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Part 2 were able to see the teaser in all it’s glory on the big-screen and from my own experience it was one of the major highlight’s even before the main attraction began.

The teaser trailer plays exactly as it sounds. It teases just enough to begin the buzz and hype which should run a full year before the film’s release. We see glimpses of Tom Hardy in the role of Bane. Most of the teaser has Police Commissioner Jim Gordon in a hospital bed looking like he may have just gone a round or two with Bane. It also brings back the lesson first given to Bruce Wayne by Ra’s al Ghul from the first film about how a man could become a legend. There’s even some Inception-like imagery of crumbling high-rises that could only mean Gotham City itself now under siege.

It’s going to be a long wait til The Dark Knight Rises premieres in the theaters on July 20, 2012.

Review: Unknown (dir. by Jaume Collet-Serra)

Posted on by Arleigh

In 2009 Liam Neeson began a new phase of his career as an actor. Before 2009 he was always put into roles as the father figure and mentor to a younger protagonist. He did quite well in handling these roles. Most of the time he was the only good thing about the films he was in and it was due to how he handled the supporting role given to him. But 2009 changed everything as Liam Neeson arrived on the film scene as a bonafide action hero in his role as a former CIA Special Activities Division operative in the action-thriller, Taken. That film surprised many and Neeson’s badass portrayal of a father out to save his daughter opened the eyes of many filmgoers who always saw him as the calm, wise elder. He has taken on the mantle of older, action-hero characters from Harrison Ford who lived off and became rich doing roles such as the one in Taken.

Two years later we have another film where we get to see Liam Neeson in another role which cements his place in the action-hero pantheon. Also like Pierre Morel’s film, this one takes place in Europe and directed by another European filmmaker trying to make a name for himself in Hollywood, Jaume Collet-Serra. It would be disingenious to say that Collet-Serra had it in him to direct a film as tight and fast-moving as Unknown. His two Hollywood productions were the remake of the classic horror film, House of Wax, and the underappreciated horror film from 2009, Orphan. With this new action-thriller, Unknown, Collet-Serra and Neeson create a film which owes much of its film dna to Hitchcock and his mistaken-man classic, North by Northwest. I would also say that this film also owes much of its action and characters to one of the early 1990’s best sci-fi action films, Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall.

The film begins with Neeson’s character, Dr. Martin Harris, and his wife Liz (played by Mad Men‘s January Jones) arriving in Berlin to attend a biomedical conference. Right from the start Neeson makes us believe in Harris being an everyman. The good professor doesn’t seem the alpha male-type. But after certain seemingly random circumstances and events puts Harris in a coma for four days we begin to see signs and glimpses that Neeson’s character may have more to him than meets the eye.

It’s when Harris’ awakens from his coma that the meat of the film’s story begins. We know going in that Neeson’s character knows he’s not crazy and that someone out there has made things appear as if he is becoming insane. Maybe the accident in the beginning of the film have given us a false perspective on the film. What we might be seeing could be a manifestation of Harris’ mental breakdown from the accident and subsequent coma. But little clues in the film’s dialogue keeps things vague, but not so much that our initial stance that Harris’ is being manipulated won’t be the final endgame.

It is the endgame in the film which may make or break the whole production for some people. The screenplay by Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cromwell is not the strongest out there and it tries to be too complex with its red herrings when trying to keep it simple would’ve sufficed. One could almost sense that the two writers were trying to be too Hitchcock that they lost sight of how Hitchcock’s films were simple affairs which only appeared to be complex. Yet, despite some necessary leaps of logic that audiences needed to make to continue believing in the film, Unknown manages to keep the core story moving forward to it’s inevitable conclusion.

The performances by everyone involved is what keeps this film from spiralling out of Collet-Serra’s capable hands. One would almost certainly point out the strong work by Neeson as the Harris. January Jones’ Liz Harris, at first, seemed like an extension of her Betty Draper character from Mad Men, but as the story moves forward we get to see more layers of personalities in her character to make her interesting beyond the dutiful and supportive wife. But the standout performance outside of Neeson has to go to Diane Kruger as Gina, the taxi driver who was involved in Neeson’s character getting in his accident in the beginning of the film.

Kruger arguably is one of Hollywood’s classic beauty, but she has an ability to actually keep that beauty in check with her acting that we believe her to be the “everywoman” in some of the roles she plays. Beauty doesn’t come into the Gina character’s personality. Kruger does a great job of playing the pawn in a much larger game being played on Neeson’s character. Her reluctance to help him gradually crumbles as she soon realizes that her own safety and survival is now inextricably linked to unraveling the mystery of who Martin Harris really is.

Unknown is one of those films that actually has an advantage being released in the so-called dead season which runs from January and into March. It’s a film season when studios put out films they have no faith in being a major blockbuster which means summer and Holiday season release are out. It’s not prestigious enough to be put out in the Fall and early Winter. But as a piece os well-done escapist fare it’s perfect for this so-called dead season. Jaume Collet-Serra has shown that even when working from an average screenplay he knows how to get the best out of his cast to sell the film to the audience. He also has a firm grasped on pacing and how to handle action sequences.

In the end, the film still loves or dies by how the audience reacts to Liam Neeson’s character. While his Martin Harris is not the Bryan Mills from Taken, by the time the final scene fades to black we begin to see how similar the two characters really are and how much they share. Until the big name films start dropping in beginning in March (blockbuster season seem to come earlier and earlier with each passing year), Unknown is one of those films that should help make this early months of the film season more entertaining than it usually is in year’s past.

As an aside, for those who know their films would understand why I say that, in addition to this film having aspirations of being Hitchcockian, Unknown definitely borrows or has been influenced by some of the story and character developments of Verhoeven’s Total Recall. I almost half-expected for a half-mutant seer named Kuato to make an appearance to explain it all to Neeson’s ccharacter.

The 10 Worst Films of 2010

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Sometime during the first week of January, I’ll post my picks for the top 25 films of 2010.  But for now, I’m going to go ahead and post the much more fun list, my picks for the 10 Worst Films of 2010.

10)  Knight and Day — Tom Cruise gets creepier with each film.

9) Robin Hood — Sorry, but that “I declare him to be an …. OUTLAWWWWWW!” line can only carry a film so far. 

8 ) Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps — Money may never sleep but Lisa Marie did.  Shia LeBouf as a financial genius?  Plus, any film that so completely wastes the talents of Carey Mulligan deserves to be on this list.  The Other Guys got across the exact same message and was actually entertaining.

7) Eat Pray Love — Finally, a film that tells us all how to find peace, enlightenment, and happiness.  First off, have a lot of money.  Secondly, be Julia Roberts.

6) Solitary Man — A superb performance from Michael Douglas can’t disguise the fact that this is yet another entry in the “Men-Just-Can’t-Help-It” genre of film. 

5) Hereafter — This is, quite frankly, one of the most boring films I’ve ever seen in my life.  And I’ve seen a lot of boring films.  This is also one of those films that attempts to convince you that it’s a quality production by making all the actors look as crappy as possible.  Seriously, did they just pump collagen into Jay Mohr’s face?

4) Clash of the Titans — Zeus must be turning over in his grave.

3) Chloe — Great director (Atom Egoyan), great cast (Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson, Amanda Seyfried), terrible movie.  I’m still trying to understand how this one came about.

2) The American — An homage to the French New Wave that fails because it is neither French nor new and there’s also a notable lack of waves.

1) Love and Other Drugs — What makes this film the worst of 2010?  The beginning, the middle, and the end.

Review: Taken (dir. by Pierre Morel)

Posted on by Arleigh

In 2009 a little film coming out of France gained a buzz from on-line film bloggers. The film wasn’t the latest arthouse attempt to relive the glory days of French New Wave. It wasn’t a film that’s become part of the extreme French horror that’s becme all the rage in the horror circles in the past decade or so. This film was an action-thriller starring Irish actor Liam Neeson with an ensemble cast of actors from the US, UK, France and Albania. The film I am talking about is Taken by French filmmaker Pierre Morel (his previous film, District 13 with it’s parkour action scenes would make it a cult hit) and produced by his mentor Luc Besson.

Taken at its most basic core is a film about a father’s love for his daughter who has gotten herself kidnapped by Albanian sex-traffickers while on vacation in Paris, France. Liam Neeson’s character gets introduced as a retired government worker and divorcee whose attempt to reconnect with Kim his teenage daughter (played by Maggie Grace of Lost). His attempts to impress his daughter and make her happy gets upstaged by his ex-wife’s richer husband and stepfather to his daughter. It doesn’t help that Neeson’s character Bryan Mills has skillsets not easily translated to the civilian sector. He’d take an offer of a bodyguard gig from one of his former co-workers and it’s during this security job that we get a clue as to what sort of government employee Bryan Mills was before his decision to retire.

Moving forward we finally get past the introductions of the characters (Famke Janssen as Mills’ ex-wife really comes across as a major harridan who seems intent on punishing Mills for selfish reasons). Mills learns of a trip Kim will be taking with her friend Amanda (Katie Cassidy) to follow U2’s European concert tour. Mills, the clearheaded parent, doesn’t like this plan to have his daughter galavanting across Europe without adult supervision, but his guilt for having neglected Kim while he was working for the government plus his ex-wife’s insistence that Kim take the trip makes him relent, but not without giving her some advice to stay safe.

To say that Kim and Amanda get into a heap of trouble right as soon as they arrive in Paris would be an understatement. The two get kidnapped while staying at the luxury apartment of Amanda’s cousin. Before Kim is taken by the masked intruders (who’ve already taken Amanda) she’s able to make a desperate phone call to her father. Calm, collected and knowing that her daughter’s abduction was an inevitability, Mills instructs his daughter to relay to him as much information as possible about those abducting her. With that information in hand Mills heads to Paris to find his daughter (and to punish those who dare kidnap her).

From then on Taken becomes an action-thriller which barely gives the audience a chance to take a breather. Mills knows his time frame when it comes to finding his daughter gets shorter and shorter thus goes about his job searching for her in a deadly efficient manner. Mills becomes Jack Bauer and Jason Bourne rolled into one. There’s no witty, debonair Bond in this character. Mills goes about his business of interrogating, killing and gathering information with cold, calculating efficiency which leaves no room for Bondesque dialogue. The story moving forward once Mills arrive in Paris becomes almost an extension of Mills’ character. Writers Besson and fellow collaborator Robert Mark Kamen keep the dialogue to the barest minimum. We learn more about Neeson’s character through his actions more than we do during character interactions with other players in the film.

The film hinges on the audience buying Liam Neeson as a deadly, ex-CIA operative who manages to survive every violent encounter throughout the film (some by his own doing and others just trying to survive through it). From how people have reacted to this film and Neeson’s character I would say that it’s a big definitive yes that we buy Neeson as someone akin to Bauer and Bourne. In fact, I would say that Neeson’s Bryan Mills would be the more dangerous of the three. He has no compunction about using torture to gather information and barely breaks a sweat when killing those involved in some way in his daughter’s abduction. He has no bouts of guilt about what he has done in the past (probably killing as a secret agent) , what he’s doing in the present (killing to find his daughter) and what he’ll be doing in the future (probably thinking killing thoughts about anyone who will look at his daughter funny). Neeson’s Bryan Mills is a cold, efficient killing machine who doesn’t use fancy moves to take out his opponents and willing to shoot them in the back if it ends the fight in his favor.

The action sequences in Taken has some parkour influences, but not enough to make it distracting. There were no Michael Bay-style skewed camera angles, slo-mo shots and ADHD-style editing. Morel actually keeps the frenetic editing that made the Jason Bourne fight scenes so dynamic to a minimum. There’s just enough of it to make the fight scenes look brutal and painful, but not enough to make people nauseous. The climactic action sequence on the yacht of a rich buyer of sex-slaves goes by so quickly yet was more entertaining than half the prolonged action scenes from Bay’s Transformers sequel.

The rest of the cast barely keep up with Neeson in the film. They become tertiary characters whose job were to give Neeson’s character the motivations he needs to get the job done. I will say that Maggie Grace as Kim was believable as a teenager even down to the spoiled teen she starts off in the beginning. But again her character was just there to motivate Neeson’s character to go back to doing what he did well and that’s kick ass (he’d probably do it just as well while chewing bubble gum).

In the end, Taken was an action-thriller which more than surprised many people. It cemented Liam Neeson as one badass dude in the same league as Kiefer Sutherland’s Bauer and Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne. The film became a showcase for people to witness Neeson kickass and do it believably while Morel does just enough to keep the film from becoming too ridiculous. While Taken won’t herald the coming of another era of French New Wave, it does succeed in doing what it set out to do and that’s entertain, thrill and just give the audience some kickass escapist fare that some big-budgeted Hollywood studio titles never seem to do.