Argo

Argo the movie vs. Ben Affleck's acting. Argo, 4 buckets of killer korn. Ben's acting, zero.

This is a must see movie, honestly. It's well worth the price of admission. It's tense, well acted, and it makes me think how in the world they got it done! Go see it NOW!


Ben Affleck has turned into one of my favorite directors. He's right up there with Spielberg, Fincher, Scorsese, and Lee as far as I'm concerned. I thoroughly enjoyed his first to forays into directing, Gone Baby Gone impressed me and The Town was brilliant. I held off on adding him to my favorite directors list though because those two movies were both based in Boston and were well within his comfort zone. I wanted to see him tackle a project that had nothing to do with Bean town and it's people before I made him an official member. Argo firmly plants him prominently on that list.

Argo is the very real story of a plot to rescue six U.S. Embassy workers who escaped the embassy out the back when the Iranians barged through the front. The protesters wanted the U.S. to return the Shah of Iran back to them so they could try him in court and then kill him. The Shah , offered asylum by President Jimmy Carter had come to America dying of cancer but the people he left behind wanted him dead and they figured the best way to make that happen was to storm the U.S embassy and take Americans hostage. Somehow six escaped in the melee and swiftly headed to the Canadian Ambassadors house. How they knew to go there is never explained in the movie (big unexplained hole in the story but whatever) but you're happy he allowed them in.

Ben Affleck plays Tony Mendez, one of the CIA's top guys known for going into hostile territory and getting people out safely. Bryan Cranston plays his boss Jack O'Donnell. Jack calls Tony in 60+ days into for his opinion on how to get the six escaped Americans out of the house of the ambassador and out of the country without being publicly executed. Over a phone call with his son he comes up with a way to get the six out of Iran and it's an ingenious idea. Now Ben Affleck as a director is impressive, as an actor, not so much. He's droll and has the emotional range of a tree. Wait, that's not fair to the trees of the world. How about, he has all the emotional range of wet cement? That's more apropos. I think he should just stick to directing from now on and leave the acting to those that know how to do it. Outside of the big gaping hole in the story and Ben's horrible acting though this movie is flawless.

This movie must have been a nightmare for the production designer because the sets and the cars were right out of the early eighties. From the Star Wars poster and action figures in Tony's sons room to the cars, the clothes, even the phones, they got everything right. The budget for those things alone must have been considerable. Ben also used a nice mixture of dolly shots along with hand held cameras whenever he wanted to ramp up the tension, the music helped with that as well. Scored perfectly by the talented Alexandre Desplat the music wasn't overpowering but nor was it forgetful. It played it's position perfectly, either adding to the tension or defusing it and letting you know it was alright to breathe again. I highly recommend Argo and I'll see you at the theater.

Looper

I am now going to institute a rating system and a "quick read" to my blog. For those that don't have the attention span god gave a grasshopper I will summarize my opinion of a movie up at the top along with my "bucket of korn" rating system. One bucket, don't bother, two buckets, you might want to wait for the DVD, three buckets, worth the price of admission, and four buckets, get your ass down to the theater RIGHT NOW!

That being said, Looper gets three buckets of korn. While I feel there are some serious unanswered questions and some serious holes in the story, it was still a very entertaining movie. go see it. (That was the quick read, read on if you want my fully fleshed out opinion).

Remember in my review of Premium Rush I said that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is officially a star now? Looper, his new vehicle does nothing to diminish or tarnish that star. All it really says is that he looks NOTHING like Bruce Willis no matter how many hours he spends in makeup. That being said, Looper is one lovely mind screw and if you love mind screws then this is the movie for you. That doesn't it's not without it's holes and flaws like why the movie takes place where it does is beyond me. And why the lovely Emily Blunt is cast as Sara, a midwesterner and forced to hide her wonderful English accent I feel is a crime. The movie, written and directed by Rian Johnson, the man behind the great Brick which also starred Gordon-Levitt takes place in the future where apparently paper money no longer carries any weight(which makes me wonder why people are still playing with quaters). Gordon-Levitt plays the looper Joe, he's a hitman in the past which is the present and he kills guys the mob from the future wants dead. So they send back these loose ends and the looper erases the target.


Joe is also a drug addict but he's a drug addict with an eye on the future, like that ever happens. He works for Abe who is played bt Jeff Daniels. Abe was sent back from the future to run Joe and the other loopers, to make sure they stay in line. Abe owns a nightclub/strip joint (cliche's abound) which is his headquaters. He's got a good team of young men who get little bars of silver upon killing the target from the future. Joe is saving his for a day when he can retire but there's a few problems. Firstly there is no real retiring and secondly, all the loops are being closed. Meaning loopers are basically loose ends and the mob doesn't like loose ends so they send back the future looper to the past who get's taken out by his present self. Still with me? Good. Upon killing yourself you are out of the game, blessed with a huge payday (bars of gold strapped to your future self), and you get to party until you die.


That's called "closing the loop" and it rarely ever happens but suddenly it's happening to all the loopers on the orders of the new boss of the mob. He's known as the Rainmaker and he wants all loopers killed. Joe himself gets sent back but present Joe can't kill future Joe, played by Bruce Willis because future Joe is too slick for present Joe and he get's away. Future Joe didn't come back without a plan and once he gets away from himself he intends on making that happen. I'll leave it there for now, don't want to give everything away but Looper could have been better at many points along the way. It could have been a less convoluted story line as well but hey, someone thought it would make a good movie. I know it had the potential to be a better one than it is but that doesn't mean it's not entertaining. See you at the theater!

End of Watch

Okay, I'm just going to put it out there from the get go, I am no fan of the police. There, I said it. That being said, if there were more cops like Jake Gyllenhaal's Brian Taylor and Micheal Pena's Mike Zavala then maybe I'd like cops more. Hands down, End of Watch, directed and written by David Ayer is the best buddy cop film...EVER! David Ayer creates two characters that seemingly genuinely love each other like brothers and they love their job. They aren't gung ho cowboys out to solve every crime but they are in it to win it when they get "in" it. This movie is also filmed in a way that allows you to see how Brian and Mike interact on a daily basis. Brian is taking a film class and chooses to document his days in a squad car for his final exam which is a brilliant way to get the behind the scenes look at cops with their guard down.

David Ayers wrote Training Day which won Denzel Washing his second Oscar. There won't be any Oscar winning going on here but you will laugh and quite possibly cry while watching this film. I doubt you'd walk out of the theater feeling indifferent about Watch. The story is told over about two years and throughout that time Mike takes off his badge and his gun and has a fist fight in the house of a gang member, they play practical jokes on each other and their fellow cops, discover stash houses, roust house parties, and get in really bad with the Sinaloa Cartel out of Mexico. They get in so deep on the cartels shit list that a price is put on their heads.

Also during this time, Mike and his beautiful wife Gabby played by Natalie Martinez have a child and Brian meets and eventually marries Janet played by the Oscar nominated Anna Kendrick. It all gets tripped up when Brian wants to check out a house in their precinct. Mike wants no parts of it but Brian convinces and off they go. They walk right into a hornets nest of trouble, not just from the Cartel but from one of those three lettered agencies. You know the ones, C.I.A., DEA, FBI...those guys. They get warned about the price on their heads by the feds and that gang member Mike had the fight with, as a common courtesy and for "keeping it gangsta".

The movie is fast paced and hilarious as it is brutal at times (I still feel badly for that rookie cop). My only problem with this movie was the ending. It was perfect up until the ending in my opinion but I won't divulge my issues here. The cinematography had that Blair Witch feel since there was a lot of hand held camera work. However they did the coolest thing where Brain and Mike wore cameras so you still got that up close and intimate feel without all the camera shaking. The music by David Sardy was intense and taut. It mirrored the images on the screen pitch perfectly. This movie is worth the price of admission, it's just THAT good (except the ending, of course). See it and I'll see you at the theater.  

The Master

DON'T DO IT!!! I DON'T CARE WHAT THOSE OTHER MOVIE REVIEWERS SAID ABOUT THIS FILM, DON'T DO IT!!! And basically what I mean by that is DON'T spend your money on a ticket. DON'T spend any money on popcorn or soda or candy. DON'T find a comfortable seat in the theater (you know the ones, right in the middle of the theater). And do NOT, for the love of whatever, do NOT waste two hours and seventeen minutes of your life wathing The Master. This go nowhere, do nothing movie does just that, it goes nowhere and does nothing and because of that, those two hours and seventeen PRECIOUS minutes of your life are minutes you will NEVER get back.

Performances were steller. If you like Joaquin Phoenix then you will like him in this movie (though I don't think he's doing any real "acting", I think he's just being himself). If you love Phillip Seymour Hoffman then you will love him in this drivel because he's the best thing on the screen. He's magnetic, as are all of the performances really. The biggest problem with this film in my humble opinion is the story. The reason being there isn't one. In movies like these, where there are two strong characters where one supposedly has it all together and the other is falling apart at the seams there is usually an arc for that tragic character. He usually goes from bad to good or from fragile to steadfast. You see it unfold right there in front of your very eyes on the screen. The Master has those two characters in spades. There is no wondering or guessing who's who and who's doing what. Granted, Hoffman's Lancaster Dodd isn't without his flaws but he holds the facade together so perfectly that anyone who takes a mere glance at the man would see perfection, contentment, and the confidence of one that has it all together. Joaquin Phoenix' Freddie Quell is his absolute opposite.

Freddie is a lush, and the worse possible kind. You know, those guys that drink paint thinner or rubbing alcohol just to get to the alcohol, that's Freddie. For some reason these two men feel like that need each other. Dodd see's Freddie as a free spirit and you get the distinct impression that he's envious of Freddie's freedom to come and go as he wishes, to answer to no one. Freddie sees Dodd as someone he wishes he were, someone smart, unafraid, and unabashedly loved and amired anywhere he goes. While you enjoy the dynamic between these two men and the satellite cast, Amy Adams is frightening as Lancaster's wife Peggy Dodd, you soon realize that there really is NO STORY! There is no plot to this movie and it all seems like an excercise in the art form of film by a director with an oversized ego. That guy would be Paul Thomas Anderson who IS talented (see Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood) but here he swings for the fences and misses wildly.

I read somewhere where a critic said you have to watch this movie twice in order to really get it. I feel the only reason you should watch a movie twice is if you like it, not to "get" it. That told me all I needed to know about this movie, I just wish I read that remark before I saw this movie and not afterwards. Skip it and see something else and i'll see you at the theater.