Untraceable This one’s an FBI suspense thriller in the vein of Silence of the Lambs and Seven. This one is as brutal as either of those, but not quite up to their “quality”, if that is the appropriate word. It stars Diane Lane as an FBI cyber specialist, catching predators and hackers by being better with computers than they are. I went to this one for two reasons. One—it looked pretty good in the trailers, and two—Diane Lane is my number one favorite world-class gorgeous actress. Be still my heart.
I liked this one. It isn’t perfect, but the suspense is good, keeps you guessing, and there is a lot of super high-tech babble that might have been genuine or might not—I have no idea. There were a few times I thought they were making the bad guy omniscient. He hacked into everything-cell phones, On Star, FBI computers, etc.
The crime in this semi-cerebral thriller is diabolical. Someone is abducting people and torturing them while streaming the live video to the web. Here’s the clincher: the more people who log on to watch, the faster whatever is being done to the victims kills them. Which makes millions of us accessories to first degree murder. Nice touch, eh? The killers skills are a little too mad to be believable, and his ability to plot, plan, and execute (get it?) is Olympian, but it still manages to entertain in that sick, self-loathing kind of way. And you get to watch Diane Lane work her craft and be beautiful and stuff. Who needs a plot?
It’s rated R, for adult content and language. Nita would have loved the suspense and mystery and hated the crime and stuff. It was okay. They tried to make Lane look like a regular forty-something single mom but it’s impossible. She way too hot.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Movie Review: Sweeny Todd
Sweeny Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street Well, it took a while but I finally managed to see this one. I had several reasons for wanting to. First, Nita and I had seen the stage production years ago in Cedar City. Second, it stars Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, both of whom I respect as actors (although not necessarily any other way) and finally, it’s a Tim Burton movie and I think he’s the best insane writer-director out there.
In case you are unfamiliar with the story line, a word or two will be necessary. A London Barber has a wonderful life—beautiful wife, new baby daughter, when a powerful judge (Alan Rickman) has him arrested in order to put the wife back on the market. As it were. The Barber escapes from prison after 15 years, comes home and is told his wife is dead and his daughter is the ward of the judge. He’s quite insane by now, obsessed with revenge, and changes his name to Sweeny Todd, colludes with Mrs. Lovett (Carter) who owns an uninspired (and unsanitary) meat pie shop.
Todd starts killing men he believes had anything to do with anything, and Lovett makes meat pies out of the cadavers. The plot thickens, Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) makes a nice cameo as the Spaniard, meat pie stock goes way up, a twist or two, tragedy, the end.
Did I mention it’s a musical? Stephen Sondheim, the genius. The music is not as approachable as some of his others, which makes sense since the story is far more macabre than his others. Depp and Carter, neither singers, make up for lack of training with amazing emotional range. I like musicals, but I know many, perhaps most, people do not. Your loss. Camelot is my favorite.
I found this movie to be a disturbing, uneven version of the Broadway hit. It is brooding, dark, brilliant and bloody with the kind of graphic, gory detail only Burton is capable of. Very dark humor here and there as well.
If you are a serious aficionado, I highly recommend this movie. If not, I can’t recommend it. Hopefully you know which you are.
It’s rated R for weird, blood and gore, cockroaches and being a serious buzz-kill.
In case you are unfamiliar with the story line, a word or two will be necessary. A London Barber has a wonderful life—beautiful wife, new baby daughter, when a powerful judge (Alan Rickman) has him arrested in order to put the wife back on the market. As it were. The Barber escapes from prison after 15 years, comes home and is told his wife is dead and his daughter is the ward of the judge. He’s quite insane by now, obsessed with revenge, and changes his name to Sweeny Todd, colludes with Mrs. Lovett (Carter) who owns an uninspired (and unsanitary) meat pie shop.
Todd starts killing men he believes had anything to do with anything, and Lovett makes meat pies out of the cadavers. The plot thickens, Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) makes a nice cameo as the Spaniard, meat pie stock goes way up, a twist or two, tragedy, the end.
Did I mention it’s a musical? Stephen Sondheim, the genius. The music is not as approachable as some of his others, which makes sense since the story is far more macabre than his others. Depp and Carter, neither singers, make up for lack of training with amazing emotional range. I like musicals, but I know many, perhaps most, people do not. Your loss. Camelot is my favorite.
I found this movie to be a disturbing, uneven version of the Broadway hit. It is brooding, dark, brilliant and bloody with the kind of graphic, gory detail only Burton is capable of. Very dark humor here and there as well.
If you are a serious aficionado, I highly recommend this movie. If not, I can’t recommend it. Hopefully you know which you are.
It’s rated R for weird, blood and gore, cockroaches and being a serious buzz-kill.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Movie Review: Cloverfield
Cloverfield At last! The long-awaited and much-anticipated new sci-fi-monster-action-thriller is here. This movie has been under a secrecy lid that would have made Lubyanka proud. Nobody knew anything about it except for the tantalizingly brief glimpses of something in the trailer. Cloverfield is the government code word for the “incident”. This movie is awesome—way better than most of the critics are claiming. They’re all idiots anyway. It is a breakthrough, it raises the bar, breaks the mold.
Picture this: Rob is moving to Japan—big promotion—and his friends are having a party for him. One of the guys, Hud, is tagged to videotape the whole thing, getting testimonials from everybody. The party is noisy, but we the audience manage to hear a few big thumps in the background. Then a big jolt. Earthquake. The lights go out, then come back on. And everything is being seen through the lens of this amateur videographer. They go up to the roof to see if they can see anything. Suddenly there is a huge explosion somewhere uptown. Pieces of debris come flying over and in. People are screaming . . . the guy with the camera is screaming. They run down the stairs, image jumping everywhere, making you dizzy. Out on the street people are screaming, running. Another explosion, and something comes flying towards you, hits the street, bounces and crushes a few cars. When it stops you discover it’s the head of lady liberty—as in the statue of. Panic, mayhem. Building are collapsing, there is a sound booming through the air you would not want to hear twice in your life time.
New York is under attack.
All the actors are no names—never seen any of them before. They do a great job. The entire movie is shot with a video camera as Hud, Rob, Lilly and Marlena try to stay alive, then go back into the city to rescue Robs girlfriend. He received a brief call—she is in her building and she can’t move. In the meantime something is destroying the city. The army arrives and is ineffective against this nightmare creature (which we haven’t even seen yet) but they manage to begin a mandatory evacuation and protect the civilians as they flee.
That’s all for the plot. This flick rocks the house. The tension level is a nine on the Richter scale. It starts out with no credits. Instead we are told it is an eyes only account of the “incident” called the Cloverfield event. Hud never stopped filming and it is the best record the government has. It is so inventive, so well done, that you totally forget it’s not real. Even the monster, when we finally see it, doesn’t break our concentration because by now we have totally bought into the whole documentary thing. And no one knows what the thing is, or where it came from or what it wants. It is the anti-Godzilla movie. Usually some bright scientist gives us a running explanation as to what is happening and why—think Matthew Broderick in Godzilla—but not this time. (Don’t get me wrong, I love Godzilla.) The camera follows the twenty-something’s with commentary by Hud—a dim bulb—all the while. Bombs exploding, guns firing, tanks shooting round after round, jets screaming overhead, and helicopters shuttering through the canyons of the city—all getting their asses kicked. The point of view never changes, we only see what Hud sees, and the lens.
Okay, enough. Did you see The Blair Witch Project? This one has the same intensity, the same immediacy. Except it’s way better. This movie is a masterpiece, but not a lot of people are going to see it that way, so be forewarned. It is straightforward, head banging terror. Which comes not from gore or sudden noises, or hideous acts of cruelty by demented, demonic mutants, but from the fear of not knowing what’s going on. Never. Total ignorance in the midst of indescribable and impossible chaos. It’s not our terror—it’s their terror. It ends the same way it started, following the survivors until they stop moving. It is not the movie we see in the trailer. It is more complex, more subtle, more human. It is brutally realistic. It has no ending . . . the tape just stops and we finally hear music as the credits begin to roll. Awesome!
It is rated PG-13 but don’t take little kids. It’s a good date movie if your partner is a total freak. There is a little cussing, a little blood, a really big monster like nothing you’ve ever seen, and lots of dog sized-crab-shrimp-scuttley little manic biters. They fall off the thing like barnacles from a Teflon ship hull.
The CGI is incredible. Newell and I saw it at the Rave, in the Town Center and they have new DPL projectors. The picture and sound are so superior it hurts. Cloverfield is a keeper.
Picture this: Rob is moving to Japan—big promotion—and his friends are having a party for him. One of the guys, Hud, is tagged to videotape the whole thing, getting testimonials from everybody. The party is noisy, but we the audience manage to hear a few big thumps in the background. Then a big jolt. Earthquake. The lights go out, then come back on. And everything is being seen through the lens of this amateur videographer. They go up to the roof to see if they can see anything. Suddenly there is a huge explosion somewhere uptown. Pieces of debris come flying over and in. People are screaming . . . the guy with the camera is screaming. They run down the stairs, image jumping everywhere, making you dizzy. Out on the street people are screaming, running. Another explosion, and something comes flying towards you, hits the street, bounces and crushes a few cars. When it stops you discover it’s the head of lady liberty—as in the statue of. Panic, mayhem. Building are collapsing, there is a sound booming through the air you would not want to hear twice in your life time.
New York is under attack.
All the actors are no names—never seen any of them before. They do a great job. The entire movie is shot with a video camera as Hud, Rob, Lilly and Marlena try to stay alive, then go back into the city to rescue Robs girlfriend. He received a brief call—she is in her building and she can’t move. In the meantime something is destroying the city. The army arrives and is ineffective against this nightmare creature (which we haven’t even seen yet) but they manage to begin a mandatory evacuation and protect the civilians as they flee.
That’s all for the plot. This flick rocks the house. The tension level is a nine on the Richter scale. It starts out with no credits. Instead we are told it is an eyes only account of the “incident” called the Cloverfield event. Hud never stopped filming and it is the best record the government has. It is so inventive, so well done, that you totally forget it’s not real. Even the monster, when we finally see it, doesn’t break our concentration because by now we have totally bought into the whole documentary thing. And no one knows what the thing is, or where it came from or what it wants. It is the anti-Godzilla movie. Usually some bright scientist gives us a running explanation as to what is happening and why—think Matthew Broderick in Godzilla—but not this time. (Don’t get me wrong, I love Godzilla.) The camera follows the twenty-something’s with commentary by Hud—a dim bulb—all the while. Bombs exploding, guns firing, tanks shooting round after round, jets screaming overhead, and helicopters shuttering through the canyons of the city—all getting their asses kicked. The point of view never changes, we only see what Hud sees, and the lens.
Okay, enough. Did you see The Blair Witch Project? This one has the same intensity, the same immediacy. Except it’s way better. This movie is a masterpiece, but not a lot of people are going to see it that way, so be forewarned. It is straightforward, head banging terror. Which comes not from gore or sudden noises, or hideous acts of cruelty by demented, demonic mutants, but from the fear of not knowing what’s going on. Never. Total ignorance in the midst of indescribable and impossible chaos. It’s not our terror—it’s their terror. It ends the same way it started, following the survivors until they stop moving. It is not the movie we see in the trailer. It is more complex, more subtle, more human. It is brutally realistic. It has no ending . . . the tape just stops and we finally hear music as the credits begin to roll. Awesome!
It is rated PG-13 but don’t take little kids. It’s a good date movie if your partner is a total freak. There is a little cussing, a little blood, a really big monster like nothing you’ve ever seen, and lots of dog sized-crab-shrimp-scuttley little manic biters. They fall off the thing like barnacles from a Teflon ship hull.
The CGI is incredible. Newell and I saw it at the Rave, in the Town Center and they have new DPL projectors. The picture and sound are so superior it hurts. Cloverfield is a keeper.
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