Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

5/10. No surprises in this genre mash-up blockbuster.

You can read the synopsis of this film on basically any movie site, as it was one of this summer's biggest films.

I like Jon Favreau, I like Daniel Craig, I like Olivia Wilde, however this film was just too silly, I couldn't suspend my disbelief enough to go along for the ride. I blame this on the writing. It is my understanding that Cowboys & Aliens was in development hell for a long time, and went through many rewrites (this is evidenced by the writing credits), but even super-writing team Orci, Kurtzman and Lindelof couldn't save this exercise in ridiculousness. Favreau's directing was crisp, but if you're going to combine two drastically different genres into one film, you need an exceptional script to make it believable. This one fell flat.

I would not recommend this film to anyone, it was just a below average outing upped a notch by all the money they put into it. Even the actors seemed like they weren't really trying.

As an aside, I would like to vent my frustration with the new all CGI monster's that seem to all look the same in today's movies. I call them the "J.J. Abrams Monster", as I feel it all started with Cloverfield. Tell me the alien from Cowboys & Aliens below doesn't look like some rehashing of an Abrams monster from, say, Super 8. Who knows, maybe I should blame Andy Chung.

The Turning Point (1952)

7/10. William Holden shines in this run of the mill fifties noir.

Edmond O'Brien heads up a city wide crime commission set to take down syndicate boss Ed Begley. William Holden is the cynical crime desk reporter who reluctantly joins the cause.

In all honesty this is a pretty forgettable story. a film that would have stood out a decade earlier, but was past it's prime on it's release. Aside from the well written dialogue, William Holden is this films saving grace.

Caught between his performances in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard and Stalag 17, Holden outdoes everyone in this relatively unheard of noir. It's easy to see why, it's basically a rehash of early noirs, only with conservative camera work, and not-so-special art direction. The other players are well known but fail to offer anything exceptional. Maybe I'm prejudiced, as Holden is my favorite actor of his time, but he really earns the top billing he receives. I would have loved to see what could have been accomplished without what appeared to be director William Dieterle holding him back. I'm not badmouthing Dieterle, but he seemed to be running things like it was still the thirties or forties. It really took a modern innovator like Billy Wilder to let Holden cut loose and show his chops.

Oh and criminal standby Neville Brand makes a brief appearance as a hitman. Love that guy too.

So if you're a Holden fan like me, you should check this one out. If you're just looking for a good noir to watch, there's better stuff out there.

Cry Vengeance (1954)

6/10. Classic mid-fifties second-tier noir set in Alaska.

When ex-cop Vic Barron gets out of prison, he travels to Alaska seeking revenge on the mob boss whom he believes murdered his wife and child and framed him for bribery.

This film is Mark Stevens directorial debut. The actor best known for playing Olivia de Havilland's husband in The Snake Pit does an admirable job in helming his first feature, whilst portraying it's main role. There's nothing particularly memorable done on the back end of the camera, save some unique-for-it's-day aerial and dolly shots. The movie as a whole is probably pretty forgettable.

The cast does a standard job for mid-fifties noir. Skip Homeier stands out significantly as the despicable thug Roxey Davis, mostly due to his unique looks as opposed to any acting forte. The beautiful Martha Hyer does an average job portraying love interest Peggy Harding, but as I said before, nothing truly memorable. Mark Stevens is more stone-cold than anything, which is what the character called for.

The only real thing of note about this film is the fact that it's a noir story set in the lumberjack capitol of Ketchikan, Alaska. The two don't obviously go together in one's mind, but the writers manage to pull it off, primarily by having the central ensemble all hail from San Francisco.

SPOILER ALERT

I would have cared for this film much more had it followed classic noir and climaxed in a dismal ending. The writers however chose the happy route and all is resolved with no true consequences. So although this movie was noir in style, it was really just an average Hollywood thriller.

Citizen Kane (1941)

5/10. I watched Citizen Kane for the first time today. I must say it was a disappointment. Most likely this is because I had built it up in my mind my entire life. Loving movies, you can't not know about Citizen Kane's greatness in history.

As there are already so many reviews and studies of this film I'll just give my wholly subjective opinion.

I honestly didn't care for it. The movie made me feel four out of ten stars, but I'm bumping it up to a five simply because it is such an artistic feat. I can see it's groundbreaking style, it's camera work, special effects, dialogue and acting that was a grand avante-garde departure from it's contemporaries. However, despite all of this it left me feeling empty.

Perhaps that was Welles' intention. Perhaps it was meant to be a jumbled confusion of imagery and half remembered dreams... I don't know for sure. This is the only movie that I've ever marked higher than I subjectively felt it rated...

Would I watch this movie again? Probably. Would I watch it repeatedly and study it? Probably not. I'd prefer to study The Trial, Welles' masterpiece in his own book. An opinion of which I share. A film which I actually liked.

Perhaps I've been so conditioned for the "Hollywood Narrative" that I completely missed the train on this one? I just don't know.

I may post more on this film later. But as it stands as a first impression, I'm sticking with my above rating.

Retiring An Old Friend

When people ask me what are my favorite movies, I list my top ten. Ten movies which I could watch over and over again, amazed at their greatness every time. One of them throughout the years has consistently been Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Perhaps it was nostalgia, I remember seeing it in the theater with my father in 1991. Perhaps it was because I considered Nick Meyer's script to be so intellectual and entertaining. But upon viewing the movie today for the first time in several years, I must retire this old friend. Though I could recite the dialogue along with the movie, my tastes appear to have changed. If you had asked me not too long ago my rating of this film, I would have told you wholeheartedly "10 out of 10 stars." That is no longer the case. This old friend seemed dated and slightly boring in parts, it no longer held my rapt attention as it once did. The script seemed quasi-intellectual, and somewhat forced. The acting, poor. The direction full of holes. It is with a bittersweet heart that I send this film on it's merry way from my top ten list. I can't say I'll miss it terribly, but I can say I enjoyed it while it lasted...

Now I must find a new friend to take it's place. I must determine which film out of the thousands I've seen is worthy to be placed in my personal top ten. It will be a tough decision, but like phases in my life, a new film friend will most assuredly present itself.

R.I.P. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. 8/10.

Hugo (2011)

5/10. This review is a little late as I actually saw this movie three days ago on Thanksgiving Day with my sister and her fiancee. We saw it in 3-D as was intended and none of us really cared for it.

The story follows an orphan named Hugo who lives in a 1930s Parisian train station, and his efforts to find his place in the world. In the process he meets famed silent film director Georges Melies, and is introduced to early cinema.

This was really a labor of love by director Martin Scorsese. The sets are stunning and steampunk, and the recreations of early silent films are engrossing. However, the pace of the film is so unbearably slow that it will not be able to hold any child's attention for more than five minutes. It is also a preachy film, extolling the greatness of film preservation and the history of early cinema. It is quite poorly written, especially for a Scoresese feature, and the acting by all involved is expressionistic at best and tragically bad at worst. But as I stated before the pacing is the trick, and it will leave most viewers with boredom through it's majority.

Overall, this is a feature that rates simply as "okay" in my book, had it been tighter and shorter, it would have been much more enjoyable. If all you care about is 3-D effects and fantastic set design, then this is for you. But not even it's generous embellishments in that area can save it from being a visually stunning borefest.

Even my sister who is a film preservation major and serious movie buff disliked this film, so I'd have to recommend a pass on this one.

Crimson Tide (1995)

10/10. This was the first R rated movie I was allowed by my parents to see in the theater. I was 16. I literally had to beg them to let me, and it was wholly because the R rating was given due to the language and intensity of the film. My guess would be that it would have been rated PG-13 were it to be released today. I enjoyed the film so much that I went out and bought the soundtrack immediately after seeing it. I still consider it one of Hans Zimmer's best scores.

The plot of the movie is basically a standoff between the Captain of the USS Alabama nuclear submarine (Gene Hackman) and the Executive Officer of the same ship (Denzel Washington). This standoff is brought about by a convolution of Naval rules and regulations during a topside nuclear standoff between the US and Russian rebels. I won't reveal any more in case you haven't seen it, as it is most suspenseful the less you know beforehand.

The primary reason why I rate this film a ten is the script. It is so seamless and intense, with dialogue that matters and stands out. I later learned that no other dialogue heavy wordsmith than Quentin Tarantino was brought on to polish Michael Schiffer's script. I also learned that Tarantino had made the captain a racist who used the word "nigger" in heated arguments with the XO. This overt nature and the use of the n-word were removed at the insistence of Denzel Washington, and it makes for a far more interesting battle of wills.

The technical dialogue and plot points dealing with US Naval rules and regulations are engrossing as well, these I assume were brought onboard by the two retired Naval Captains who served as technical consultants on the film. And there is an interesting subplot involving the morality of nuclear war, and it's classification as war, when it is more accurate to classify as holocaust.

Tony Scott's direction is intense and crisp as usual, with realistic special effects when necessary, but mostly suspenseful pacing and claustrophobic angles that accurately convey what I must imagine serving on a submarine must feel like.

All actors involved, down to the bit parts, are wonderful in their performance, truly conveying the immediacy of the situations. I credit this partially to Tony Scott as well who never seems to overburden his actors, but allows them to work their own magic.

All in all a perfectly executed throwback to the Cold War genre, which I absolutely love even more so than when I first saw it in the theaters nearly twenty years ago. This was one of the movies that almost had me enlist in the US Navy to become a nuclear technician onboard a submarine.

As an interesting close to this post, here is a bit of trivia from IMDB's website:

The disagreement between Cpt. Ramsey and Lcdr. Hunter over the origin of the Lipizzaner stallions throughout the movie foreshadows and illustrates the fundamental source of friction between the two men, both insisting that their mutually exclusive version of reality is the truth. Ironically, Cpt. Ramsey, (who believes the stallions are Portuguese) or Lcdr. Hunter (who says they are Spanish) are both incorrect. The Lippizaner stallions are in fact Austrian.

Life In A Day (2011)

8/10. In 2010 YouTube asked the Earth's residents to chronicle on video the day July 24th. The submitted footage was edited and produced into a documentary in the truest sense. No unifying narration by a third party voice, just the people of the world living their lives.

The resulting film is breathtaking in it's scope, really as a result of so many narrow fields of view being stitched together by director Kevin Macdonald. Some of the footage is poor, some is professional, but all of it captures one's attention.

I can safely say this is probably the most approachable and universally relatable documentary ever made.

The conclusion I can draw from this film is that, save cultural and material differences, we are really all the same. We all have the same fears and loves. We on this planet are really all one. And though we strive against each other to matter to ourselves, in the end we all do matter, we are all important.

"NOOOOO"

‎"People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians" - George Lucas 1988

Sucker Punch (2011)

7/10. Thoroughly enjoyable comic-book-slash-video-game styled movie that every teenage boy will love.

Abbie Cornish plays Sweet Pea, an abused young girl who recruits some friends to help her escape from a mental institution before she is lobotomized. Fantasy action ensues.

This was a pleasant surprise of a movie, probably because I went in with such low expectations. No real acting heroics, no breathtaking screenplay, just alot of stylized action performed by girls in skimpy outfits. If this film were a comic it would be written by J.Scott Campbell as opposed to Alan Moore. No depth, just style.

Excellent soundtrack choices really propel the film along, and the visuals are amazing which is par for director Zak Snyder. You could tell this was his baby as the action takes center stage, and he executes it perfectly.

Lots of homages to the Matrix movies early on which obviously influenced Snyder. Though it produces a similar feel, it's definitely funner and more lighthearted than those.

So next time you can't get a date, check this out, the junior high schoolboy in you will appreciate it.