The guy behind me is staring at me, right? I totally feel it.
Rating: 9 out of 10
It is expected now for any member of the political beltway or those who report on it (and other daily news events) to grace the shelves of our local bookstores (or the front page of our eBook apps) with a tell-all/biography/memoir. Most are pushed on them by overzealous managers and agents trying desperately to cash in on their popularity with various demographics, but every now and again one journal will come to fruition from a much more real and meaningful purpose.
Dispatches From The Edge: A Memoir of War, Disaster, and Survival is a touching remembrance from CNN superstar Anderson Cooper. Covering portions of his childhood and the darker moments of his youth, it also details heart-wrenching details of his reporting on Hurricane Katrina and the wars in the Middle East. Filled with honest and frank recollections from not only the front lines of some of our most recent calamities, Cooper also pushes his investigations internally to find out what drives him to consistently drop himself into some of the worst places on Earth.
The first thing that grabbed me about this book was the random similarities I didn’t expect to share with Anderson Cooper. His father passed away when he was ten years old, mine when I was five. It had a dramatic effect on each of our lives. He mentions his inability to fully process the emotional impact of that event, and the later suicide of his older brother, as key reasons for his apparent addiction to placing himself in the literal and psychological cross-hairs of the worst spots in the world.
Some of the most interesting parts, including those about his personal life, are when Cooper reveals many of the things he saw that never made the news, things deemed unworthy of CNN coverage. One scene talks about when he was in the Middle East passing out over 200 gallons of water to locals with the help of our armed forces. No one died that day, no IEDs went off, so no one ever heard about it. Cooper sadly admits the old adage that still holds sway over all news coverage, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Another story mentions gruesome and horrific details about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The utter lawlessness committed not only by the locals taking advantage of the chaos, but law enforcement personnel who devolved just as much into primitive gangs of roving warlords. Some of those stories were snuffed out early on because it was deemed too dangerous in risking a possible backlash against all authority, which very well could have happened, but it doesn’t make the reality of it any easier to swallow.
Cooper also eloquently covers his tenuous balancing act between being an unbiased reporter and an opinionated celebrity. Once he made it out the other end of some incredibly dangerous job hunting tactics, landing in the spotlight of CNN forever altered his ability to reach millions of people and also his struggle to keep his sanity. He now was given access to people and events ranging from awe-inspiring to nightmare-inducing. With great skill and strain he has always come from those places knowing he had to wrap those images into a coherent story meant to inform, educate and enhance the world discussion. The Achilles heel for any reporter is to somehow deliver that information without bias and political overtones, which Cooper has managed to do time and time again, making him one of the most respected in the business.
In the last couple of years, Cooper has begun to step out of the middle ground and reposition himself as a true fact finder in a much more aggressive sense. Under the moniker, “Keeping Them Honest”, Cooper began bringing on politicians and other notable news makers when he felt something they were preaching about was demonstrably false. No longer fulfilled by calmly reporting the facts to his audience, Cooper decided to drive the falsehoods out into the light during live interviews. The only down side is if he brings on someone from the right side of the political spectrum and corrects them, Cooper becomes labeled a liberal activist, and if the guest is more left leaning, Cooper becomes labeled a political tool for the right. It seems like a no-win situation for him, but he is taking it in stride, sticking to what he believes is meaningful for people to know and that is what keeps him cemented as one of the best in the industry. Dispatches tries to ride that thin line as well, pointing out the inequities in the reporting that most of the country saw, while not coming down as an outright attack on the media as a whole.
The End of the Page recommendation: Dispatches From The Edge is a harrowing and heartfelt look in front and behind the lens of one of the most notable newsmen in the business, Anderson Cooper.
This suit is powered by sheer will (and a fanny pack of 9-volt batteries)
Rating: 5 out of 10
Every trend in the movies goes through the same motions. They come out of left field when no one thought it would be a viable idea, then instantly becoming the most watched genre in years, finally over-extending itself to the point of pure silver screen saturation and the profits nose dive off the celluloid cliff. You can usually mark the first movie going over the edge by how far it pushes the genre out beyond the norm. For fans of the comic book genre, even knowing that Iron Man 3, Captain America and The Avengers are still on their way, this weekends superhero offering gave many pause, wondering if this was one spandex’d crusader too many. Did the curtain begin to fall?
Nope. Not quite yet.
Green Lantern tells the story of Hal Jordan, a reckless flyboy who is chosen by a magical ring to protect his planet from destruction. Never one to follow through on anything, Jordan must struggle to discover the hero he never imagined was waiting inside.
I was going to start with some of the struggles and hardships that this story and script had to work through, but really, let’s get down to the green, glowing tacks here…Ryan Reynolds. He is not just playing a superhero, the man actually is one. No matter how bad the dialogue, no matter how convoluted the script, no matter what crazy situation you put him in, his charm and nearly flawless ease on screen allows him to raise that bar a little higher. I’m not saying that all these things were necessarily terrible here, but they could have been and Reynolds still would have found a way to make it work. Following his career since the Van Wilder days, Reynolds has never failed to enliven each and every project and provide at least one or two solid moments of wit and enjoyment on screen. For his generation of actors, I believe he is the closest they will get to George Clooney, a man who can truly balance comedy, action and drama all while looking like he was born to play that part.
Now that we have that out of the way, back to the problems. With all the comic book movies capturing the audiences recently, most are earth-bound or at least set mostly in an environment we can all easily recognize. Thor was the first in the new battalion of superhero flicks to test the waters of magical landscapes and far away universes and it succeeded fairly well. Without that preceding it, Green Lantern might have suffered more by spending so much time in outer space, but Thor built a bridge to that arena (and then busted it at the end of the movie…*in-joke*) so Green Lantern flew right over and pushed even farther out into the cosmos. Instead, the surrounding characters and subplots became the weakest links. Sadly the first half of the movie had to do so much of the heavy lifting: establishing the universe, literally, and giving some foundation for all these new and outlandish creatures, while still getting enough time to bring in their human counterparts back home. Peter Sarsgaard pulled out some decent angst and rage, but was never given enough time to really fuel the fire. Even worse was Blake Lively, who was given absolutely no room to breathe in a virtually lifeless character. Her introduction as a fellow fighter pilot was painfully unnecessary and forced her to try and work her way back into relevancy, which might have worked if given time, but she really wasn’t. As for the arch-villain CGI cloud creature, Parallax, the effects were impressive, but the story behind him felt flawed and unstable, so he never brought a whole lot of weight or tension to the scenes.
Overall, I still give this a five rating because it brings us back to those true summertime carefree flicks that didn’t try to give more than we bargained for. People who say this is a failure because it isn’t Dark Knight are making unfair and outlandish comparisons. Director Martin Campbell (who helmed two of the more successful recent Bond chapters, Goldeneye and Casino Royale) wasn’t going for grit and bones, he wanted light, fun and entertaining for the few moments he had you trapped in the theater. In that context, and with the effortless abilities of Ryan Reynolds, they achieved their goal, albeit one set far lower than what audiences may have envisioned.
The End of the Page recommendation: Green Lantern may hold a little more light for the comic book enthusiast, but for the mainstream moviegoer, this is only a mildly flickering flame, not a bright light of the summer.
Posted 10 months, 4 weeks ago at 9:49 am. Add a comment
I’m fairly sure there is something more than lead in the water here.
Rating: 10 out of 10
One is a legend in the movie industry, the other is the current hot ticket with a winning streak not seen in a long, long time. Sometimes when teams like this are paired up, the expectations can be unbearable and completely fantastical, but J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg are not ones to break under the pressure of expectations. The stage was set perfectly for them and they delivered brilliantly with an homage to each other’s previous works and the simple storytelling styles of film classics gone by.
Super 8 surrounds a group of movie loving misfits who find their town the unwilling center of a government takeover after a terrible and deadly train accident. While filming their own Super 8 movie for a local festival, they bear witness to the escape of something unexplainable, setting up a quest the kids must all rise to complete or watch their friends, families and entire town get erased from the map.
“I just saw Super 8. Wanna know the guarded “secret” behind it? Abrams uses plenty of screen time to develop characters you’ll care about. (@yogoldsmith)”
As usual, Jeff nailed it on the head. Above and beyond all the other things that done right in the making of this film, it is the writing and careful execution of creating characters that are human, real and inherently lovable. Super 8 brings back the youthful purity of classics like E.T., The Goonies and Stand by Me, something the movie industry has been woefully lacking in the last few years. The story gently reels you in until you almost look at their story as your own, a memory being perfectly played out they way you wish it happened to you.
Then comes the picture perfect casting, where I was compelled instantly by the innocence of Joel Courtney (as Joe Lamb), who is the first young actor since Patrick Fugit in Almost Famous to truly capture that wide-eyed stare into the possible purity of the future. Another factor connecting the audience to Courtney was our shared need to care for and protect the young damsel in distress, Elle Fanning (playing Alice Dainard). Fanning is the epitome of the first girl we all fell in love with in elementary school and she holds the audience in the palm of her hand throughout every scene. Not to be outdone, Riley Griffiths (playing Charles, the young film director), taps into the other side of the coin, the best friend who always wanted to be the hero, but never quite made it to center stage.
Behind the camera, Abrams and Spielberg may have just cemented themselves as the ultimate dynamic duo. Spielberg is still a legend in Hollywood and has incredibly well tuned story senses, but some of his recent efforts (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, War of the Worlds) have been slightly off from his previous greatness. Abrams, on the other hand, is still a relative newcomer to the big screen (only directing Mission Impossible III and Star Trek), but has proven himself a near master of the current form, grown on the sensibilities of a changing and ever adapting crowd. Abrams took this story and crafted it into a beautiful homage to the man sitting right next to him. Super 8 is a throwback to Spielberg’s younger days, giving a whole new generation of movie watchers a glimpse into what others grew up with in the late 70′s and early 80′s. The balance of character development, action sequences and well-paced comedy beats really gives this film a perfect blend for nearly every audience member.
The End of the Page recommendation: Super 8 is a perfectly crafted summer blockbuster. It just doesn’t get better, at least not this year.
Posted 11 months, 1 week ago at 9:28 am. 1 comment
It shows here that your flip-flop lines are good, but you will struggle with future high heels.
Rating: 1 out of 10
Many movies have gone down in history as pushing the envelope, changing the way critics and audiences perceive movie making as a whole. Citizen Kane, Psycho and A Clockwork Orange are only a few to raise the bar on how effective a film can be on a viewer. Sometimes those filmmakers go down in history as visionaries, decorated time and again by journalists, historians and movie fans alike, but pushing the envelope can also bring about the opposite reaction. Every now what comes along is something that few understand and even fewer care to try. For the reclusive director, Terrence Malick, he doesn’t seem to care which category he falls in and maybe that’s the best way to play it. He makes his movies as a personal statement and they represent exactly what he wants to say, never mind what people want to hear. Lofty and admirable as that outlook may be, it can make for an incredibly risky movie-going experience. There are already heated words being tossed all over blogs and movie sites everywhere, so here’s my two cents in the debate.
The Tree of Life is a visual and ethereal poem about loss, despair, God and the search for faith and reconciliation.
(I usually write much more about the basic plot of the movie for the review, but honestly, there wasn’t much of a plot or story to speak of.)
From the opening whispers of narration, I knew that we were in for something a little off the beaten path, which in itself is not automatically a bad thing. Challenging the norm should be done on a regular basis, but that comes with its own risks. With only a few precious moments of actual characters to speak of, The Tree of Life launches into a 45 operatic display of the birth of the universe. Within the first few minutes I felt I thoroughly understood the director’s point of view, which admittedly may have been wrong, but either way I definitely got what we were witnessing. The main issue here is there was absolutely no need to witness it for 45 minutes. While listening to a tremendously overblown and self-indulgent score, nearly a dozen people walked out of the theater in that opening sequence. After twenty-to-thirty minutes of something more akin to a Discovery Channel special on the universe, the audience began feeling like there was no point being made and an actual narrative story was nowhere to be found. I’ve made a promise to myself never to walk out of a movie, but I was dangerously close. I knew Brad Pitt and Sean Penn were cast in this for some reason; I was waiting to find out what that was.
Sadly, there really is no reason. There are a small handful of poignant moments from the various cast members, but they could never separate themselves from the poor cinematic experience or even truly showcase why they were cast. In the end I felt like any actor could have played these parts because each scene was only tangentially connected to the next, a feather-light spiderweb string trying to keep some type of flow or momentum, but it continually snapped under the hot air blown by Malick.
The real debate here is whether or not this even qualifies as a movie (or “film” for the pretentious). Even farther down the philosophical debate is whether or not movies are “art”, which this piece clearly strives to be. For me, this would have made a much better impression and found a more receptive audience if it was screened in the MOCA or LACMA or any museum. It felt completely out of context shown in a normal movie theater. Some people will point to this winning the Palme d’Or at the legendary Cannes film festival as proof of its value and credit as a great movie, but I would pleasantly remind those people that it was also roundly booed by half of the audience afterwards, something only reserved for the most detested of films in the festival. The Tree of Life is being hailed by critics everywhere, who mostly can’t put into words what it is about or why they liked it, but in turn reviled and railed against by audiences, who walk out by the dozen and request their money back (true story, happened in my screening and in each of the ones attended by friends of mine). If anything this will help remind movie lovers everywhere, don’t listen to critics, including me. Make up your own mind, at your own risk. In the end we are all critics, just some are louder than others.
The End of the Page Recommendation: The Tree of Life wilts under the scrutiny of any audience not sitting in a museum or on hallucinogenics.
Posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago at 11:19 am. 12 comments
Why do I keep eating at those damn sidewalk taco stands?
Rating: 7 out of 10
A new age is coming, or maybe just returning to its once proud form. The age of the action hero who isn’t ripping through his tank top in post-pubescent fury, but instead seething with a controlled rage only found in those with a few years to their name. Faces grizzled by battles both won and lost, voices scratched by the screams of sorrow and victory and hands that know the feeling of breaking a nose, not just the squeeze of a trigger. We had it once with John Wayne in the west, but then it moved into the city and we found our urban cowboys in Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood. Now, a new maturity is reigns with one man sitting firmly on the throne, Liam Neeson, and he’s back on a somewhat familiar ride, but he makes it enjoyable nonetheless.
Unknown is the fractured story of Dr. Martin Harris (played by Neeson), on his way to a Biotechnology summit in Berlin when his car careens off the road and into the icy waters of a German river. Awakening four days later in a hospital, he embarks on a fervent attempt to reconnect with his wife, who not only doesn’t recognize him upon their reunion, but has another man next to her claiming to be the very same man. Trying to tie the loose ends of his spindling memory, our original Dr. Harris finds himself embroiled in a plot much larger than he could ever imagine, winding around a foreign prince, an immigrant taxi driver and a secret many people are willing to kill to control.
Last time we saw Neeson running through the streets fighting with people it was in the freight-train momentum film, Taken. Neeson drove through the movie with an unwavering determination that in other cases might have made the character seem one-sided, but he was able to make the single-point laser focus still seem layered and interesting. Neeson didn’t miss a beat as he walked onto the set of Unknown, he still carries the mack truck mindset of barreling through anyone and everyone to get what he needs, but here the layering is more upfront since his character is dealing with fractured memories and a wife who won’t even acknowledge him anymore. On the writing front, the script is well done, but seems to miss out on some key moments that would have helped to deepen the motivations in a few scenes later in the film.
**ACTUAL SPOILER WARNING – HERE COMES THE GOOD STUFF**
I can’t really talk about the missing moments without mentioning the plot details surrounding those particular scenes. Once it is revealed that Neeson actually is a secret agent and the people trying to kill him are actually members of his old team, the story does ring a little close to the Bourne franchise, but that actually didn’t bother me too much. What falls a little flat is the emotional connections between Neeson and his old team, specifically with January Jones‘ character (who we originally believe to be his wife) and Aidan Quinn (who originally is touted as the “real” Martin Harris). There is an interesting layer that is never explored about how January Jones really feels about turning on her undercover partner and also how Aidan Quinn feels about stepping into his shoes. The final fight between Neeson and Quinn could’ve inserted some nice interplay, but just went for the action, while Jones never got to have a final meeting with Neeson because she went out in a somewhat unclimactic explosion. I’ve said it before, you can win or lose your audience in the last five minutes and this came dangerously close to losing me.
While those story points did leave the ending slightly under par, the rest of the film holds up the overall experience and Neeson just continues to prove his dominance in the action/thriller genre. Also, not to be forgotten, Bruno Ganz turns in an excellent performance as the old ex-German secret service friend who comes to Neeson’s aid. It culminates in a truly magnificent scene between Ganz and Frank Langella, who is in the film for a woefully short time.
The End of the Page recommendation: Unknown is an enjoyable romp through the spy-ridden streets of Berlin.
Posted 1 year, 2 months ago at 4:19 pm. Add a comment
When someone mentions they are excited about going to see movies during the “holiday season”, you probably get visions in your head of chipper families around festive dining room tables, playfully bickering and sharing memories of holiday hi-jinx, eventually collapsing into a montage of lessons learned and hugs received. But it is specifically during seasons like that where it is really beneficial to read a synopsis of the movie you are about to see, because not only could the holiday joy be mysteriously missing from the film, but you could leave a lot more disturbed than you ever intended. Happy Holidays!
Black Swan is the tempestuous tale of a young ballerina named Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) who yearns more than ever to star in her troupe’s upcoming revision of the classic Swan Lake, where the Swan Queen and her nemesis will be danced by the same person. Pushed and tested by her tyrannical director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), Nina is an example of elegance as the White Swan, but must reach deep inside her prim and proper casing and find the darkness and desire necessary to fully inhabit the Black Swan. The pressure only increases with the introduction of Lily (Mila Kunis), a young sultry transfer from the San Francisco ballet, who seems to only want her friendship, but Nina fears she is after so much more.
Before seeing the film, many imagined it to fall securely under the category of drama, but little did they know indie-film aficionado, director Darren Aronofsky, was unleashing on them one of the most dark and disturbing psychological thrillers, possibly even horror films, of this year. Returning to true form, after a touching turn with The Wrestler, Aronofsky brings back what we have come to expect of him through multiple viewings of Pi and Requiem for a Dream. Beautiful imagery is seamlessly intertwined with horrific context, resulting in scenes that remain nearly unforgettable for weeks afterwards. Relying on much simpler tactics than the ones he employed in Requiem, Black Swan creates a tension-filled reality where the audience bears witness to a sad and terrible descent into madness. Credit also must be given to the writers (which are currently shown as Mark Heyman and John J. McLaughlin for the screenplay, with Andres Heinz for screenplay and story), who all helped to weave a poignant portrayal of the tenuous balance between passion and perdition.
I’ll add my name to the bandwagon cheers for the performances of nearly every main character in this film. Natalie Portman is a gold mine, once again stepping humbly into the spotlight of young Hollywood royalty. She seems to refuse to be nailed down into any pigeon hole (proven by her immediate upcoming release of the romantic sex comedy, No Strings Attached), preferring to prove to audiences that actors can still successfully live on both sides of the comedy/drama fence. Portman brings a raw timidness to her portrayal of the damaged ballerina girl, living breath by breath under the weight of her own expectations and those of her kind, but painfully overbearing mother (played tremendously by Barbara Hershey), a former dancer herself. Her final frightening and sensual transformation into the Black Swan brings an amazing close to an already stellar performance. But not to be outdone, and many will argue the more surprising in quality, is Mila Kunis. Mostly known for her long running role on the stoner-inspired comedy, That 70′s Show, and also for currently voicing the persistently and hilariously abused Meg on Family Guy, Kunis rarely steps into the darkly psychological sphere; while the character of Lily was much more suited to her ability to play with dangerous sexuality, the tone and gravitas with which Kunis displayed it was wildly unexpected. Kunis held her ground passionately while sharing the screen with Portman and I proved many of her detractors wrong. Acting as the engine behind this derailing train to purgatory is Vincent Cassel, the brutally honest (or possibly just brutal) ballet director. The charm Cassel wielded in some of his previous films was turned on its head here as he displayed the darkness and seediness behind the beauty of the ballet world. Rounding out the mounting pressure on our fragile lead dancer was the legendary Barbara Hershey. The layers and depth of Hershey’s performance grants each audience member the gift of choosing to at once agree and despise the actions of the desperate and frantic parent. One of the more common discussions I heard after the film was, “What would you do if that was your daughter?” and people were passionately on all sides of this delicate issue.
The End of the Page Recommendation: If you want to be moved, possibly not in the most pleasant of ways, absolutely do not miss Black Swan. It is a valiant return to form for Aronofsky and a welcome reminder of the power of Portman.
p.s. For those who read my tweet earlier about Black Swan feeling like American Psycho in dancing shoes, another trivia-minded connection does exist between these two films: Mila Kunis played the villain in the direct-to-video sequel, American Psycho II: All American Girl.
Posted 1 year, 4 months ago at 1:13 pm. Add a comment
Boo! Scared you, didn’t I? Now send me money and I’ll tell you how I can protect you from people like me.
Rating: 9 out of 10
There are many things that connect us all, no matter where we live, what color we are and which God we believe in. One of the deepest and most integral of those connections is fear. We all have it, whether it’s worrying about the spread of Communism, the shortage of scientific breakthroughs toward a cure for cancer, or maybe just late night jitters about the foul-smelling thing hiding underneath the bed. Most of it can be boiled down to a simple phrase, “fear of the other“. While some fears can be debated and argued as being justified, the underlying problem with fear is that once someone or something knows what your fear is, it can be used against you as a weapon. People throughout history have made their livelihoods based on that fact alone and it is on proud display here in the present day inside the formation of the Tea Party movement and the outlandish opposition to Barack Obama.
The Backlash by Will Bunch is a well thought out and deeply researched journey into the heart of the fear that sprung forth like snakes-in-a-can upon the inauguration of our new President. While many progressives and liberals clamor from the sideline, poking fun at the Tea Party and their growing membership, Bunch takes the honorable mission of tracing the movement to some of its more humble beginnings and the people actually at the ground level. What he discovers is real people with real fears who are being co-opted by big business and private interests in order to stop the change promised by the new administration.
One of the first things most people were introduced to when they saw the Tea Party crash onto the political scene was their fascination and fervor for protest signs and costumes. While this might have increased their news coverage, it also quickly devalued their message. From the subtle to the incredibly overt, racist slogans and imagery littered the reports of the fledgling movement giving an overall impression that everyone involved had the same color-coded mission, to purify the White House, and by extension, the country as a whole. On one side of the cable news spectrum (MSNBC, CNN, BBC, etc…) the Tea Party was characterized as rednecks that time had obviously left behind, while the other side (championed by Fox News) raised them onto the pedestal of patriots and grassroots revolution hailed as “real America”. The problem here is that neither description is true, but labels are sticky and even removed they can leave a nasty residue behind.
Another factor behind the proliferation of the “real America” illusion was those pundits and political commentators who saw the Tea Party as the lightning-in-a-bottle moment they were waiting for. Once they grabbed onto the coattails of fear inside the Tea Party, people such as radio/TV/internet phenom Glenn Beck wove those coattails around and around into each other until the fear escalated into paranoia, which in the ratings world is a wonderful thing. Beck had actually boiled it down to a simple equation, the bumper-sticker solution to all the fear in the country:
On his November 23, 2009 show, Beck went back again to the theme of a looming economic meltdown and recommended to his listeners what could just as well be a mantra of the right-wing movement in this new decade: “The 3 G system” of “God, Gold and Guns.”
Beck skyrocketed in popularity and influence, like many of the voices from the outer right-wing fringe, preying on the fears of people feeling like their country was forgetting about them. He wheeled out his chalkboard day after day, giving his viewers something familiar from their childhood, a symbol of learning which they all believed would never lie to them. Beck littered the surface of the chalkboard with various historical people and moments, drawing incredibly slippery and weak connections between them to prove any conspiracy theory he imagined that morning. Worse than that were those occasions where he blatantly misrepresented the views of historical figures to grant his own ideas more credence. Bunch illustrates that nicely in this section:
“Beck – and probably many of his listeners – would be turned off by many of the views of the real Thomas Paine. For one thing, while Beck has tried to argue that America’s true roots lie in Christianity, the real Thomas Paine was a Deist who loathed organized religion, writing in “The Age of Reason” that all churches “appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”
You can be sure that particular quote from Paine never graced the esteemed surface of Beck’s chalkboard.
This is the thrust of Bunch’s message, that much of the Tea Party is being towed along by puppeteers and plagiarizers, purposely mis-informing them to wean the money from their wallets and the devotion from their hearts. The fervent devotees of the Tea Party should not be written off as a joke, especially since some of them actually won seats in our government during the last election. They should be listened to, but filtered through a lens of mis-appropriated fear. If we do not try and understand where they are actually coming from, people like Beck and his cohorts will continue to wield them like a bludgeon against the wall of this country until its inevitable collapse.
The End of the Page recommendation: The Backlash by Will Bunch is a staggeringly human look into the real fear behind the so-called grassroots revolution of the Tea Party and how it has been co-opted, controlled and ultimately, how it will be condemned.
Posted 1 year, 4 months ago at 4:36 pm. Add a comment
You’re serious? She’s going to write more of these books? But, I got other stuff to do, like, umm…food shopping!
Rating: 6 out of 10
Let’s hit this head on, since a ten year run on any film franchise deserves the respect of not beating around the bush.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 begins the final chapter of our lightning-branded fated friend and his cadre of dedicated compatriots. His arch-enemy, Voldemort, is out in the open and gathering his armies and weapons together, while the Potter team is trying to ready themselves for the inevitable battle to come. The stress of staring death directly in the face threatens to break our heroic trio apart at the very time where their bond needs to be the strongest.
Sure, the description above is a decent hook to get you interested, but it’s a terrible summary of a film because it doesn’t relate a complete story, which of course is because this movie is not a complete story either. After shuffling shoulder-to-shoulder out of the theater on opening weekend my first impression was that of resentment and anger against Warner Brothers splitting this final book into two films. I am a huge fan of the original books and I understand how much material there is in the final book (757 pages worth, to be exact), but in their effort to cover every little detail from the source material, they failed to take into account that some of the book might not be worth filming. It feels like the decision to split into two movies was made more about profits for WB and not for the enhancement of the overall experience for the fans. Honestly, I wish they would have ended this series with a much bigger bang, going out with a Lawrence of Arabia-styled epic 3 1/2 – 4 hour marathon movie (intermission included). Sure, they would sell less tickets because you could only screen it a few times a day, but it would go down in history as one of the most successful epics in film history and that should’ve been enough to make the studios proud. Alas, pride in the finished product is mostly less important than profits.
*Mild Spoilers ahead – but if you haven’t already read the book, do yourself a favor and do it now, I’ll wait right here… *
Friends of mine can corroborate this: when I finished reading this book seventeen hours after buying it on day one of release, I said, “When they make this movie, please let them drop the damn tent section!” Yes, in the book it is more needed to show the strains in our famous trio of young heroes, but even in those hallowed pages the section read very slowly and drawn out, which I knew would only be exacerbated by filming it. The little light-hearted moment of Harry and Hermione dancing in the tent felt incredibly forced and only there because they needed to break up the morose, moody whining that had already gone on too long. It was a weak attempt at solving a much bigger problem.
As for the overall structure of this offering, it suffers much more than the previous filmed chapters because it literally holds onto the ‘Part One of Two’ description to a fault. Even if you are making a film that is a piece of a bigger whole, each piece must be able to encapsulate an enjoyable movie experience on its own, which this film fails to do. I knew it would end in a cliffhanger, setting up the final battle in Part Two, but I at least hoped we would feel something had happened in the first part to whet the appetite. This turned out to feel more like a 2 1/2 hour trailer, teasing us for the end of the Potter road.
Now, after taking a breath and calming down, let me recount some of the quality points on display here. Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson, all grown up and matured, felt oddly stagnant in their roles, but Rupert Grint got to stretch his acting chops a little here and prove that he was more than just a comedic foil for tension-breaking asides. There is a sad lacking of Alan Rickman, as the supremely calm Professor Snape, but again, we can expect a lot more of him in the final piece. Rhys Ifans makes a nice addition to the cast as Xenophilius Lovegood (loopy Luna’s father), but he also gets a disappointingly small two scenes to play in. Although I was disappointed in his small number of scenes, it was during one of those scenes we were treated to a really interesting animated mini-movie while Hermione recounted the story of the Three Brothers, which finally announced what the Deathly Hallows were (nearly two hours into the movie).
The artistic tone and visuals continue to hold up the world and don’t fail to make you feel like you could walk out and lift cars in the parking lot by pointing at them and waving your hand around. With all the jumping tent sequences, there were many incredibly picturesque locations, which assisted in really blending the real world together with the fantastical wizard palaces and ornate decorating of the Ministry of Magic. Yet, trying to think forward into the final piece of this decade-plus-more puzzle, I imagine we will get less pretty locations and much more crazy spell-casting visuals and magical monsters, mostly centered around the much-loved Hogwarts School of Wizardry (C’mon, who wouldn’t want to go there?)
The End of the Page Recommendation: If you haven’t read the books or at least seen all the previous movies, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part One will do nothing for you. Yet for those devoted fans who know every inch of the back story, this is mainly a teaser for a finale that I hope will live up to expectations.
Posted 1 year, 5 months ago at 8:00 am. Add a comment
Action movies, like many genre films, have one big thing going against them – we’ve seen it before. So the first thought when writing an action film is how do you make it something the popcorn-buying crowds nationwide have never laid eyes on? Then, once you realize that all the writers before you have thought the same question, and inevitably come to the same brilliant idea you just did, you have to ask a more specific question like, “What twist can I put on an old tale?” Sometimes the result still reeks of a dozen or more previous cinematic exploits, but every now and again the similarities can be easily forgiven when the finished product is just done so damn well, like the case we have here.
Red stands for “Retired, Extremely Dangerous” and when you work for the CIA and achieve a glorious marking such as that, things don’t tend to go so well for you. Frank Moses was trying to build some semblance of a life after years of working in the shadows as one of the best government agents around, but his name gets dropped on a list and the number of people still breathing on that list is growing increasingly small. Frank only has one choice, bring together the best of his old contacts and find out who marked him, then erase the person or the list — whichever feels right at the moment.
The first murmur I heard from the crowd as I walked through the hallways of the theater was surprise at how funny the movie was, to which I definitely agree. Most films of this ilk show one or two of the great lines in the trailer but the movie as a whole fails to keep up the punchiness of the original teaser. Yet with Red, the creative minds behind it decided not to just try and balance the action and violence with the humor and brevity, they chose a much more dangerous route, to keep laughter throughout by making the violence funny. From the mounted mega-cannon in the parking lot to the rocket launcher inside of a stuffed pig, the gunplay never took over from the just-plain-play. This inter-weaving of moods kept the momentum going from beginning to end and allowed a nearly two-hour film to feel much, much shorter.
Now we can mention one of the main reasons the humor is there, the cast of brilliant, talented, and, um…’well seasoned’ actors. The casting here is incredible and I will just touch on this, since I could write another thousand words on each cast member. Bruce Willis, at the head of the pack, proves once more that he is still the king of solemn action movie leading men. Soft spoken and hard hitting, he has lost almost none of his true grit from Die Hard all the way through Sin City. Red also proves how to use someone like him (being his age) and still allow it to be believable, unlike the last chapter of the Die Hard franchise. Then there’s Morgan Freeman, who often is not the big shooter out front, but the silent, stoic killer behind the big gun. Just like in Seven and Unforgiven, Freeman lends his particular gift for wisdom and depth to each scene, making it more than just a shoot ‘em up flick. Next, what can be said about John Malkovich other than very few people play crazy better. Just getting to see him charge down a street with numerous explosives strapped to his chest, screaming like a madman, should be enough to get you into those comfy theater seats. Rounding out the senior staff, saving the best for last, the one most people are talking about when they mention this film is Helen Mirren. A paragon of grace, beauty and skill, nothing could prepare an audience for how amazing it is to see her firing off hundreds of rounds from a fully-automatic death dealing cannon. She somehow manages to handle high powered weaponry in this film the same way she handled her crown in The Queen, with the utmost class. Not to be left behind, Brian Cox, Mary Louise Parker and Karl Urban all hold their own around this top-billed cast and their decades of talent.
Bonus Movie Geek reference: I’m not 100% on this, but I swear the swamp shack set for John Malkovich was the villain’s hideout in the John Cena masterpiece, The Marine. Anyone who could verify that would be greatly appreciated.
The End of the Page Recommendation:Red is one of the most surprisingly enjoyable movies for almost every type of audience member. Comedy, action, even a couple love story angles, all mix together in a magically light-hearted way.
Posted 1 year, 6 months ago at 10:23 am. Add a comment
Tell me one more time how I violate the dress code of this “white” party.
Rating: 5 out of 10
From the moment of inception each film runs the gamut of a seemingly endless series of choices before the final product shines its way onto the silver screen. One choice in that clamoring multitude is whether to attempt an overall balance of effort through each aspect of the film or puts all your eggs in one basket and let the rest fall where they may. Most people might think the clear answer is to go for the balanced approach, maybe reach a broader audience and critical support – that is a very logical suggestion, yet for certain films with a pre-built fan base they find their needs are much more specific. In the video game adaptation realm, in most cases the number one desire is to bring to life the video game essence, which these days means incredible visual elements. Crank that knob to eleven, drown out the rest and you just might find yourself the number one movie of the weekend, like the subject of this review. Will it gain lasting cinematic glory, not likely, but why glow forever when you can burn big and burn out? Sometimes the money is exactly the same.
Resident Evil: Afterlife continues the revenge fantasy of Alice against the evil Umbrella Corporation. This time she follows an emergency beacon to the long sought after safe haven of Arcadia, supposedly a city in Alaska where the deadly T-Virus has not yet reached. Once there, Alice finds the pieces of civilization she expected are not so easy to put together. She finds her way to a prison in the middle of Los Angeles, where she leads a small group of survivors to what she hopes is the real promised land.
It has been said that if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all, but as any editorial reviewer would tell you, that would make our job all but moot. Yet, I will say I find it sets up a nicer flow to begin with the good before delving in to the muck, so let me explain where nearly all five points in this rating came from…the visuals! Afterlife put all its money and talent into this one facet of the movie and it really did pay off. Bright colors that pop right off the screen and 3D effects that never make you second guess paying the ridiculous extra price for those glasses, specifically in the scene halfway through the movie featuring my personal favorite character, crazy-sack-head-super-duper-axe-pounding-stick-guy. The possibly overused, but perpetually enjoyed, mixture of 3D with bullet-time technology really painted this picture with a slick glossy coating that was hypnotizing to say the least. Even the set design was expertly crafted to shine, ranging from the picturesque outdoor landscapes to the stark white rooms of the secret Umbrella hangars, brought together a visual experience worth talking about after the final credits disappeared.
But every campfire rendition of “Kumbaya” must come to an end, and so I must bring in some of the downsides to the continuing adventures of our incredibly limber video game heroine. First off, the entire movie leaves you with the impression that director and writer, Paul W.S. Anderson, the video game adaption king, watched The Matrix one day and thought, “Man, I wish I’d made that. Oh wait, I can just do it again and name it something else!” Sure, the deep philosophical monologues about reality are missing here, but the opening action scene bore more than just a passing resemblance to Neo and Trinity storming the building. Even more of an homage was made with the character of Albert Wesker, played by Shawn Roberts, but could’ve easily been a digital photocopy of Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith, even down to the bullet dodging in the final fight sequence. So much of the action rang unoriginal that it dissolved some of the magic from the highly powerful visuals. I’ve got nothing against picking up a technology or style where one film leaves off, but you have to show us something new. It’s even worse when the audience begins to feel the original film did it better, even eleven years ago.
Moving beyond the lack of originality in action, the rules created by the universe seemed tossed away from five minutes in. After Alice, played once more by Milla Jovovich, goes through what should be a physical and existential change to her character, she proceeds through the movie as if nothing is different about her. It would have exponentially more interesting to see her try and deal with those changes while still attempting to be the superhero and save everyone, but that idea was not even hinted at. Ali Larter, continuing in the role of Claire Redfield, also undergoes significant emotional and mental shifts throughout the movie, but the script never gives her an opportunity to fully explore that side of her character. The same problem existed for Wentworth Miller, who is new to the revolving cast, but failed to find a single place in the movie to change the one, single expression on his face. Also, I don’t know if anyone else will find the irony, but I liked the idea of the character found locked inside of a portable prison cell is the same actor who starred in the TV show Prison Break. The only moments in interesting character development were between Jovovich and Boris Kodjoe, who played basketball star Luther West. Some may find the romantic sparks unnecessary and trite, but I actually felt they were played well and provided a good break from the monotone being pushed up to that point.
The End of the Page Recommendation: Resident Evil: Afterlife already brought in enough money to greenlight another sequel, but the franchise is now finding itself relegated to the video game version of the Friday the 13th series. People will watch, but mostly out of novelty and a gross curiosity to see if it got any worse.
Posted 1 year, 8 months ago at 3:26 pm. Add a comment
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