4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
4 Shots from 4 Assassin Films
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today is the 62nd birthday of one of the best actors currently working, Gary Oldman! In honor of both this day and also Gary Oldman’s amazing versatility as a performer, here are…
4 Shots From 4 Films
Sid & Nancy (1986, directed by Alex Cox)
The Firm (1989, directed by Alan Clarke)
The Fifth Element (1997, directed by Luc Besson)
The Dark Knight (2008, directed by Christopher Nolan)
You should probably be forewarned – ‘Lucy’ is nothing like the film the marketing would make you believe. It requires one to go in with an open mind…just also be prepared for that mind to be set of fire and stomped into a mush…for better or worse.
The film stars Scarlett Johansson as Lucy, a young American student in Taiwan, who is kidnapped and forced to be a drug mule. The drug she must transport is a new one named CPH4, derived from the chemicals that a mother’s body sends its developing baby, which is surgically placed into her lower abdomen. During the transport she is beaten, causing the bag holding it to puncture, and the drug to be released into her system. The drug begins to change her at a cellular level giving her access to more of her brains potential.
I think it needs to be said that the film is not trying to say we only use 10% of the physical brain (which is the debunked myth) but rather that we only utilize 10% of its potential. Think of it not as an engine only using 10% of its parts, but rather an engine that uses 100% of its parts but only outputs 10% of the power it should and can produce. Then think of the drug, like a more powerful engine fuel, allowing the brain to generate 100% power.
As her knowledge and cerebral capacity grows the film takes some really weird turns as it plays around with the idea of what exactly the human mind could achieve once its full potential is unlocked. Could we control all the cells in our body? Could we control others? Could we feel and manipulate matter and energy? Once you can control both, can you then control time? She begins to be able to see through people, enter their memories, see the energy output of cells, change her hair color, control radio waves…and a whole lot of other crazy stuff. To better understand what is happening to her, and to help pass on the knowledge she is beginning to learn, she sets out to meet a professor who studied and theorized the very changes she is undergoing.
During all this Lucy is also being hunted by the gangsters who want their drug back. This is where the film is arguably at its worst. It leads to some ridiculous shoot outs – and one somewhat out of the blue car chase – which don’t really add much to the overall film. They do create a slight feeling of suspense, but once you get into the scientific and philosophical areas that ‘Lucy’ ventures into, then all the cliché action movie stuff just seems to get in the way.
Luckily none of that really matters as the film’s end approaches and it goes straight past ludicrous speed right into plaid as Lucy, now able to control time, cycles through the history of the earth, right past its creation all the way up to the big bang and beyond. To what end? Perhaps it is to better understand the universe or maybe it is just because she (and Luc Besson) can…there is a lot here that will make you scratch your head. The film definitely tries to be a lot smarter than it is and is built on theories based on theories based on pipe dreams. Still, it never gets any more ridiculous than most superhero-esque films.
The thing that drives it all ( and really keeps it all together) is Scarlet Johansson’s performance. She once again proves to me that she is one of the most interesting actors working right now. She has chosen so many diverse roles in recent years; and as weird as it may sound there are few actors working right now who can express so much through being so completely expressionless in the way she can. She brought more life and emotion to a computer A.I. than most actors did in live action roles last year; and here, as in ‘Under the Skin’, there is quite a lot going on behind her seemingly blank stare.
Her co-star Morgan Freeman sadly does little more than offer exposition. He plays a professor who studies neuroscience and evolution and spends most of the film explaining how and why particular things are happening to Lucy. Freeman seems to be the go to for this sort of role. But that voice really is the only thing that can make this sort of pseudoscience seem convincing.
I have to say it truly is amazing that the film works at all. ‘Lucy’ manages to be just as dumb at times as it is smart. But I was able to overlook the silliness of much of it simply for the fact that the film does attempt to ask some interesting questions, even if they don’t make much sense. From start to finish the film travels down such a fun and exciting tongue in cheek rabbit hole of explosions and trippy visuals and I loved every minute of it. It gets so crazy that at one point Benjamin Franklin’s head literally explodes. It is a mishmash of so many ideas and themes, done with such excitement and ambition, that it is hard to hate any of it. As some critics have mentioned, it really is a Besson action film smashed together with ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and parts of ‘The Tree of Life’. Even better is that ‘Lucy’ has a fast enough pace and short enough running time to never leave you bored. It is entertainment, definitely not at its best, but surely at its purest and I highly recommend it.
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More of my nonsense on Twitter.
Here’s the trailer for the upcoming Luc Besson film, Lucy. Between Under the Skin, Captain America, and this film, 2014 could very well be the year of my number one girl crush, Scarlett Johansson.
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.
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.
Through the Shattered Lens 