Bound – Review

Well with a new year comes new movies, and one that I’m really gearing up to see is the Wachowski’s newest film Jupiter Ascending. I don’t know if it’s gonna live up to my excitement, but what better way to get ready for it than talking about one of their earlier movies, their directorial debut in fact. When The Matrix arrived on the scene in 1999, it blew audiences into the stratosphere, but before that was a little, yet critically acclaimed, film called Bound. I didn’t know what to expect going into this movie, so my I went in not expecting too much, but what I got was a fantastic neo-noir film filled with sex, violence, and tension that forces you to the edge of your seat.

 

Corky (Gina Gershon), an ex-con and professional thief, has been hired to renovate an apartment that just so happens to be down the hall from mafia launderer Caesar (Joe Pantaliano) and his girlfriend Violet (Jennifer Tilly). The job starts innocently enough until Violet begins taking interest in Corky and the two begin a relationship behind Caesar’s back. Finally getting sick of the lifestyle, Violet confides in Corky that she wants out and to start a new life with Corky, and the only way to do that is to steal $2 million of stolen mafia money right from under Caesar’s nose. Corky soon concocts a plan and the two lovers set it into motion, but it soon begins to go very wrong when suspicions arise and bodies start piling up, literally.

To me, the Wachowskis are almost too cool. The Matrix movies (and yes, I mean all three) are some of the coolest examples of film making that I can think of. Cloud Atlas was an incredibly ambitious film, but I can’t really offer my thoughts on Speed Racer since I haven’t seen it. Now I can add Bound to the list of really cool work that the Wachowskis are responsible for. Like I said before, I really had no idea what to expect going into this movie, but what I got was a claustrophobic neo-noir with some of the tightest writing I may have ever seen. It’s not rare for the suspense of a movie to make me excited and tense, but the suspense in Bound didn’t seem to end at a certain point, and not only that but it was paced so well. It kept me needing to see what happened next by stretching out certain scenes, but I never felt bored during the entire two hours this movie was on.

 

Like Danny Boyle and Kevin Smith both did so well in their debut films, the setting of Bound, for the most part, takes place in two apartments. Of course it reminded me of Shallow Grave a lot more than Clerks, but what I’m trying to say is that you don’t need a lot of set pieces and locations to make an intense movie. I don’t want this review to turn into a film essay, but it’s such an interesting choice to keep the action and story in such a confined place. Just think of the title of the movie: Bound. The characters are not only bound to each other and the plan they concoct, but also the small area of their apartments. This also just goes to show how excellent the writing is in this movie. It’s easy to have big shoot outs and chase scenes to create suspense, but creating suspense out of silence and confinement takes talent.

I feel like the word to describe this movie is simply just “cool,” which makes sense because noirs are traditionally thought of as being a really cool style of film making. Bouncing off the excellent screenwriting comes excellent dialogue that are, at the risk of sounding redundant, performed by a really cool cast. Like his characters in The Matrix and Christopher Nolan’s Memento, Joe Pantaliano proves once again that he’s really good at playing a scum bag. It’s fun to hate Pantaliano’s character, but it’s also fun looking down on him and laugh at how pathetic he is. The real focus of “cool” in this film revolves around Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly. I love seeing badass women in movies, but seeing two badass women as leading characters in a noir film is just a dream come true.

Bound is one of the most impressive debut films I’ve ever seen, and as I mentioned before can join the ranks of debut films like Shallow Grave, The Following, and Clerks. It also reenforces the idea that less can often be more in creating a suspenseful and intense film. The cinematography combined with the stylistic camerawork and exceptional screenwriting makes me wish that in some alternate universe, I made this movie. It’s almost intimidating. The bottom line is that the Wachowskis are two very talented film makers, and solid evidence can be seen at their first attempt at a feature film. It’s almost too awesome.

Once Upon a Time in the West – Review

I’m not a huge fan of the Western genre, especially American made westerns of the 1950s and the early 1960s. There are a few exceptions, like Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, and some modern films, but westerns in the 1950s and 1960s don’t really hold my attention. But let’s talk about Spaghetti Westerns, a sub-genre that can only be described as the graphic novel western. These are a different story altogether, and hold my attention way more than their American counterparts. When one thinks of this genre, the first name that should come to mind is Sergio Leone, and today I want to take a look at his hyper-stylized 1969 film, Once Upon a Time in the West.

The story of this film follows different characters each with different goals which all intersect throughout the film. A man nicknamed Harmonica (Charles Bronson) arrives in the town of Flagstone looking for another man named Frank (Henry Fonda). Harmonica’s intentions are mysterious and his gunslinging is vicious. Jill (Claudia Cardinale) is a former prostitute from New Orleans who’s come to Flagstone to be with her husband, who she doesn’t know has just been murdered by Frank, along with the rest of his family. Cheyenne (Jason Robards) is a bandit who’s been framed for the murders of Jill’s husband and his family. He soon meets Jill and begins helping her, along with Harmonica, to save the land that is rightfully hers and get revenge on Frank and his employer.

I said earlier that Spaghetti Westerns are the graphic novel equivalents of the John Wayne/John Ford type of Western. Right from the get go, it’s clear that Once Upon a Time in the West is all about style, style, style. The beginning of this movie can objectively go down as one of the best beginnings in the history of film. The only soundtrack is the sounds of a train station as three hired guns wait for a train to arrive so they can finish off their target. How long does this last? A few minutes? No, it lasts about 15 minutes and not one of those minutes is boring. It’s an auditory sensation of hyper realism and gets you in the mood to go into this twisted old west. The cool doesn’t stop there, either.

 

There’s a great story that Henry Fonda told about Sergio Leone that I just have to include in this review. Apparently, the main reason that Leone wanted Fonda to play the villain was because he was always casted as the good guy in movies, and Leone wanted people to lose it when Fonda’s character is first revealed murdering a family. Well that’s ridiculous, but it works great because Henry Fonda plays it cool and deadly as the hired gunman Frank. Still, the rest of the cast is awesome. Jason Robards has excellent chemistry with Italian actress, Claudia Cardinale who light up the screen whenever she’s onscreen. Also, Charles Bronson. Need I say more? Seeing Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson square up in duel is just fantastic.

I guess what I’m really trying to say about Once Upon a Time in the West is that it’s just so immersive. The colors that Leone uses combined with Ennio Morricone’s sweeping (as usual) score is just fantastic, and there were times where I really just wanted to listen to the music. The editing is also absolutely extraordinary. For example, there’s a great scene where Henry Fonda fires his gun, but the scene jump cuts to the underside of a train. It’s the kind of jarring juxtaposition that reminds me of the jump cut in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The music, the cinematography, and the editing are some of the finest examples of immersive film making which makes what I’m about to say hopefully seem justified.

I’ve heard it from professors, critics, and movie buffs alike so I’m going to add myself to the long list of people who have said this. Despite being super cool and highly stylistic, Once Upon a Time in the West is honestly, and almost objectively, one of the greatest films ever made. Like Peckinpah did with The Wild Bunch, Sergio Leone breathed some fresh air into a dying genre with this film. He made a name for himself with the Dollars Trilogy, and this film started a thematic trilogy all its own, but as a stand alone film, it succeeds as a revisionist western, an artistic achievement, and just a really cool movie.

Midnight Express – Review

One thing that I can add to the list of things that I never hope I have to deal with is spending hard time in a Turkish prison. That just looks like the opposite of a good time. It looks like a terrible time. Midnight Express is a movie that when it was first released in 1978 caused a big stir both in America and in Turkey, it being based off of a true story about a young man who was made an example of but eventually escaped the Turkish prison system. This is obviously a movie that loves to show off (also being Oliver Stone’s first screen writing credit), but even though it’s a braggart and unfair in some ways, it still entertained me fully for the entire time it was on, and has stuck with me since.

In 1970, Billy Hayes (Brad Davis) and his girlfriend are about to get on a flight back to America from Istanbul, but Billy has a secret. He is hiding about 2 kilos of hashish under his shirt. Unfortunately for Hayes, he gets caught and sentenced to spend four years in a Turkish prison. There he is beaten and tortured by sadistic prison guards, but also finds friendship in fellow prisoners like the irrational Jimmy (Randy Quaid) and the doped up Englishman, Max (John Hurt). After his original four year sentence gets extended to thirty years to make an example out of him, Billy and his friends decide it’s time to catch the Midnight Express out there, which means finding an escape route and taking it.

First, let’s talk about some awkward things in the movie. Midnight Express got a lot of backlash from Turkish viewers for how they were portrayed in the movie. It even got banned in Turkey up until just recently. I heard about all that before seeing the movie, and I have to say they have a point. The guards and a certain character named Rifki are almost cartoon villains in the way they treat other people. Save for maybe a few, all of the Turks in this movie are hammed up. Stone has later apologized for their portrayal. Also, this movie isn’t very accurate in its depictions. The story of Hayes is actually a lot longer, but due to budget and time it couldn’t be fully explored. That’s excusable in this case though, since the movie actually flows very well.

 

Prison movies can sort of wear thin on me after a while. It’s even difficult for me to watch a classic like The Shawshank Redemption is just one sitting, but I had no problem getting through Midnight Express. The characters and the mood and the entire predicament of the movie was really interesting and fun for me to see it play out. The suspense in this movie was very suspenseful and the feeling of dread permeated the screen and found its way into my living room. It being a true story and all, the film had even more of an effect. Even though it’s pretty inaccurate, the core story is true and that alone was enough to push the movie forward. I will say it got a little weird towards the end, and it all comes to a conclusion rather abruptly which felt weird since the slow and steady pace was working really well for it.

You can really tell that Oliver Stone wrote this movie, even though it was so early on his career. It has those show stopping scenes that really grab your attention with their outlandishness, but in some ways it works with the foreign and scary feeling of the entire movie. With a script written by Stone, the actors certainly have their hands full. Brad Davis, who’s kind of a tragedy himself, handles the role very well and is easy to believe that he’s just a young man in a prison. I still feel like the real stars of the movie are Randy Quaid and John Hurt, who give two of the best supporting performances I’ve seen in a while. I really got to love those characters, and seeing them all in their situation had a powerful effect.

I went into Midnight Express expecting to enjoy it for a while and then feel overwhelmingly bored, but that never happened. I was actually gripped for the entire two hours that it was onscreen. The real story of Billy Hayes is a terrifying trip through hell on earth, and it’s shown well here in this film, even if it isn’t exactly what happened. There are some weird scenes that feel out of place at the end and the treatment of the Turks in this movie would never fly today, but all in all there are a good deal of films that owe a lot to Midnight Express and the film as a whole is well executed and memorable. Check it out.

The Theory of Everything – Review

Stephen Hawking is a man with more accomplishments than I can even list. His theories on the time, the beginning of the universe, and what we will become may be enough to make you head spin, but at the same time, it has always been easily accessible to people who want to learn. Surprisingly, there aren’t more biopics chronicling moments in Hawking’s life, with the only other I can think of being from the BBC. This one is The Theory of Everything, a movie that features some really stand out performances and a figure that is well worth the attention, but it falls a little flat in the storytelling department and just doesn’t feel as full as it could have been.

In 1963, Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) is studying at Cambridge, working on getting his PhD in astrophysics. At a party one night, he meets a girl named Jane (Felicity Jones), and the two strike up an automatic friendship which turns into so much more. As Hawking is struggling with getting his thesis in order, he also begins struggling with smaller motions to get through the day. Soon after getting an idea, he discovers he has a type of ALS which will slowly render him unable to move, speak, or even swallow. Stephen and Jane soon get married, and despite the news of his disorder Stephen creates revolutionary theories that scientists have been working on for years. Soon, the name Stephen Hawking is known around the world, but to him, the battle for his health and relationships rage on.

When trailers for this movie were first released I was like, “Oh, shit. That guy playing Stephen Hawking looks insane.” I had no idea who Eddie Redmayne was at the time, but I just knew that this performance was going to be one to be remembered. That combined with the fact that the movie’s about Stephen Hawking was more than enough to make me want to see the movie. Here’s the thing, I’m gonna compare this to The Imitation Game since it’s another movie about a genius that I just saw and is being nominated all the same. The Theory of Everything has a performance in it that makes the movie worth seeing, it’s just so damn good. The Imitation Game has great performances, but the overall story is stronger and more hard hitting. Way more. That’s where The Theory of Everything loses its footing.

 

To be fair, this movie covers many years, more than I initially thought that it would. It’s also only a two hour movie, so it isn’t some grand, epic biopic that has all of this time to kill with character development and padding for the plot. I will say that Hawking’s disease is shown well over time, with it getting progressively worse and worse, up until Stephen has to use a speech program to talk. One really annoying part in this movie is a part in the middle section where another, albeit important, character is introduced. All of a sudden, it seems like this new character becomes the plot, and not the life of Stephen Hawking. When Hawking does come back on screen for an extended amount of time, I almost forgot the movie was actually about him.

What makes the movie more impressive than it would have been is the performances by Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones. These two have great chemistry together onscreen and it is a fascinating relationship to watch. Just think, this movie was filmed out of order, so Redmayne had to keep track of how to use his body for certain scenes, depending on how far along the disease has gotten. He definitely deserves the Best Actor award for his performance in this movie. Jones is an even match for him, with her strengths showing at times of hardships when she literally seems to be staring problems right in the eye and not backing off. It’s a strong, but quiet performance.

Simply put, The Theory of Everything is a vessel for the best performance of the year. Redmayne simply kills it as Stephen Hawking and it is literally impossible to keep yourself from admiring his talent. Other than him and Felicity Jones, this is a pretty average biopic that follows a pretty rote formula. It’s certainly isn’t a bad movie, in fact it’s a pretty darn good movie, but it really wouldn’t be anything special if it wasn’t for it’s two main actors. That’s a pretty rough thing to say about a movie that’s getting so much buzz, but that’s simply how it is. See it solely for the performances because everything else is simply just ok.

Boyhood – Review

Richard Linklater has been the forerunner of independent film making ever since he jumped on the scene with his cult classic, Slacker. Since then the writer/director has been involved with many other projects like his history making rotoscoped films Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, his stoner comedy classic Dazed and Confused, and his trilogy Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight. Little did we know that throughout all of these films, he’d be slowly constructing a twelve year masterpiece that changes the way stories are told in films. This movie is Boyhood.

Mason (Ellar Colatrane) is an average, but special, kid growing up in Texas. The film chronicles different chapters of his life starting when he is six years old and he’s beginning to understand the relationship problems between his mom Olivia (Patricia Arquette) and his father Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke). As time goes on for Mason, Olivia, and Mason’s sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater), we see them age, grow a little more understanding or ignorant, and learn what it means to make mistakes and be part of a family.

At first glance, Boyhood looks like a three hour movie about a kid that’s growing up, what you would call a coming of age story I guess. That seems like a lot of time to fill to just show someone growing up, but it didn’t feel like three hours at all. This is a truly remarkable film and not just one of the best films of the year, it may even be one of the best films ever made. The technical achievement and patience that went into making this movie must have been staggering. While being technically shot over 12 years, it really only took a matter of weeks in total, stretched over a 12 year period. But it makes me wonder how the movie was actually written and edited, and how the actors were committed to the project for so long.

 

Why I’d call this movie the ultimate coming of age movie, is because we literally see it happen before our eyes. A brilliant piece of film making is seen in Boyhood in that Linklater never specifically tells us what year it is or how long its been. Instead we see pieces of technology that weren’t publicly available before or a popular song playing on the radio that may indicate what year we’re in and how much older everyone is. It was also just fun to see certain things and remember my own childhood and growing up. I can’t tell you how excited I got when I saw Mason playing Oregon Trail on an old Mac in his school. Memories…memories.

While the film making is fantastic, a lot of the credit has to go to the actors who put so much into making this movie possible. Patricia Arquette pretty much steals every scene she’s in as a mother who’s trying desperately to keep a family in a healthy environment. Ethan Hawke is probably my favorite part of the movie as the over excited dad who’s just happy to be around his kids. It was also refreshing to see how Ellar Colatrane and Lorelei Linklater kept their performances very together and on point throughout the years. To all of the actors really, who had to keep a sense of their characters over such a long period is very commendable.

Boyhood is the most impressive movie I’ve seen in a very long time, and that’s during a year of very impressive movies. It’s been hailed as one of the best pictures of the year, already picking up Golden Globes for Arquette, directing, and best picture. Now it has 6 Oscar nominations, but that’s still not for a bit. I loved this movie more than I thought I could and it just blows my mind that Linklater and the rest of his cast and crew made it work. This is film history here, people, you don’t want to miss out on it.

Bullitt – Review

Now we’re talkin’. Mac. Bandito. The King of Cool. Of course, I’m talking about Steve McQueen, an action star that even over 30 years after his death, he’s still recognized as one of the coolest, iciest actors in film. The movie that took his career and made it international was the 1968 cop/crime film Bullitt. Now, what’s cool about Bullitt is that it is the main influence for action movies of the 1970s through the 1990s. Think of any huge action movie and it could probably be related to this one somehow. Even though this is one of the most influential and important films in film history, it hasn’t aged well in a lot of ways making it sometimes a bore to sit through.

Lt. Frank Bullitt (Steve McQueen) is the kind of cop that will do anything that needs to be done in order to finish a case the way he wants it finished. When a seedy politician Walter Chalmers (Robert Vaughn) enlists the aid of Bullitt to protect a witness testifying against the Chicago mob, Frank just thinks it’s going to be a by the books protection. When the witness ends up dead and another cop severely injured, Bullitt takes to the streets to hunt down and find those responsible, but the conspiracy is thicker than Bullitt could have imagined.

Let me start by saying this, I dare you to watch the Dirty Harry movies or the Lethal Weapon movies or even play games in the Driver and Grand Theft Auto series and not think of Bullitt. This is widely considered to be the first modern cop/action film with many others trying to copy the formula that is laid out in this film. This is a movie that demands respect because of the influence that it had on films to come. When this movie came out, it must have blown audiences away showing a much more gritty and urban look that wasn’t really used in movies of this kind in America. Still, there are things about this movie that just haven’t aged very well which makes it kind of odd to watch it almost 50 years after it was originally released.

 

The movie starts out really good with McQueen’s Frank Bullitt the definition of a hard boiled cop. He does things his own way and gets them done, which I love seeing. Characters that break the rules to do the right thing is just fun for me, I don’t know. So things are going great and then the second act becomes very wandery. I see this a lot in movies from the 1960s, with musical interludes and various shots of the environment. That was sort of the style of the time, but it really brings Bullitt to a skidding halt after a great first act. The third act kind of picks up again, but I was sort of losing interest in the movie by then. Shave off maybe 20 minutes, and we would’ve been good.

I can’t finish this review without talking about the famous car chase. There were car chases before in movies, with the Keystone Cops coming to mind first for some reason, but many people say that the car chase in Bullitt was the first modern car chase. Who knows, without the chase scene in Bullitt we might not have gotten that awesome car chase in The French Connection just a few years later. Seeming to go all through San Francisco, the car chase lasts 10 minutes with the only soundtrack being the revving of the engines. It’s a blast watching the cars fly over the hilly landscape of the city and is definitely one of the best car chases ever filmed.

Bullitt is one of the most influential modern movies that laid the groundwork for action/crime movies to come in the 1970s through the 1990s. That being said, it hasn’t really aged all that well. I was disappointed to see how slow the movie got in the middle and and giant plot hole in the middle of the movie that we seem to just need to ignore. It’s great to see an important and classic film even if it isn’t really that cool anymore. There were times where I just wanted to watch Dirty Harry, a movie that aged a lot better. Still, if you’re a film enthusiast, Bullitt should be seen for the history.

The Imitation Game – Review

While World War II raged on different battlefields around the world, a much quieter battle was going on behind the scenes. These battles, although quieter and nonviolent, were just as important as the battles going on on the front lines. This is where the story of The Imitation Game comes in, with the brilliant mind of Alan Turing working day and night to create a machine that could break the the Nazi enigma code. Churchill, himself, said Turing contributed the most to the war cause with his invention, which is a pretty huge deal I’d say. Still, The Imitation Game is also about Turing’s own personal war of acceptance which ultimately ended in tragedy.

In 1939, Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), a genius mathematician and professor, finds his way to Bletchley Park to work with a group of England’s most brilliant minds in cracking the enigma code and save the lives of countless Allied troops. It soon becomes very clear that Turing doesn’t play well with others, and that in large part has to do with how he was bullied and tormented during the early years of his life. It also may have to do with the secrets about himself and his sexuality that he constantly hides in order to be able to keep up his work. He soon finds a friend in Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), a newly hired codebreaker who has troubles of her own being a woman working in a man’s environment. As the war rages on, Turing and his codebreakers struggle to find the answer, but this is hardly the end of Turing’s troubles.

This is a brilliant movie for a lot of reasons. For one thing, this film works on the level of a really good spy movie with people from MI-6 floating around, Soviet spies, and plenty of other government secrets thrown into the mix. That in and of itself is enough to make a really entertaining and engaging movie, especially since the story and characters are all based on truth. This movie also works really well on the level of a much more personal story of Alan Turing and the discrimination he faced for being a homosexual, even though he was one of the most brilliant minds of the time and was responsible for shortening the war and saving countless lives.

 

Matthew Goode, who played codebreaker Hugh Alexander in the film said that the film is about “Turing’s life and how as a nation we celebrated him as being a hero by chemically castrating him because he was gay.” I feel like even with all of the espionage and war, this movie is mainly about being different from what’s expected of you. Not only was Turing a homosexual, he was also socially inept and brilliant beyond comparison. His being different was one of the main factors that helped the Allies win World War II, but he was still condemned for his own personal ways of living. This is a theme that can be seen in a lot of different movies, with A Beautiful Mind is the same family as The Imitation Game, but I was surprised to see that this was not a pretentious movie at all.

While this movie really is great, there are a few things in it that could have been executed a little better. For one thing, there were lines that seemed to be pulled from the cheesiest, most inspiring Disney movies you could find. This is a historical movie that doesn’t need to have cheesy inspirational dialogue in there. That’s not how people talk and it was weird. I also wish that this movie was longer because I feel that starting in the middle, the movie just starts skimming through things in order to get everything in. If the movie was a half an hour longer, I feel like I’d have a better grip on the relationship of the codebreakers and Turing but also just a better idea of how he built his enigma breaking machine.

The Imitation Game may not be the best movie of the year, but it’s certainly in the top 10 best. Benedict Cumberbatch gives the best performance of his career so far, and Keira Knightley does great work as Turing’s anchor to reality. The film works as a spy film, but I’d rather look at it as a lesson in how to treat people who may not fit in quite as well as everyone else. It’s a lesson for people of all ages and times, but if that doesn’t float your boat, it’s still a really entertaining movie of spies, Nazis, and codes. It’s one of the best of 2014 and shouldn’t be missed.

Das Boot – Review

Recently I reviewed Fury, David Ayer’s new World War II film that used the claustrophobia of operating a tank on the battlefield to its full advantage. This claustrophobia and panic was already expertly utilized before in Wolfgang Petersen’s 1981 war epic about submarine warfare, Das Boot. Not only did Petersen make audiences feel uncomfortable with being in a submarine, but also uncomfortable with our ideas about all German soldiers in World War II. What makes Das Boot brilliant is that it isn’t so much about the war, but the dehumanizing effects on individuals who were thrown into it.

In 1941, the Allied forces and the Nazis were engaged in an epic battle for control of the Atlantic. Lt. Werner (Herbert Grönemeyer) is a German war correspondent assigned to the German submarine U-96, soon meeting members of its crew like the brave and hard headed captain (Jürgen Prochnow). The submarine leaves port and Werner begins to learn what it means to be on a U-boat: boredom, no privacy, and sheer terror. While they’re not sailing the seas waiting for something to happen, they engage in battles of cat and mouse against British destroyer ships with each encounter possibly being their last. While the soldiers may consider themselves to be battle hardened warriors, it is clear the war is taking more of a toll on them than they may realize.

This movie is a classic, there’s really no denying that. Since making this film, Petersen went on to make films like Air Force One and The Perfect Storm, both of which are fine movies, but it’s clear that none of the movies he’s done since has come close to the epic scope and intensity of Das Boot. This film definitely deserves to be considered a classic because it is one of the defining war movies of all time and also just a fantastic film, but, good God, if it isn’t hard to sit through. There are many different versions of this movie, and I have the director’s cut which has over an hour of what was in the original making it three and a half hours long. I’ve seen longer movies, like Lawrence of Arabia as an example, but this one is much more difficult.

There’s very little in Das Boot that can be called entertaining. Now, before you say anything, that isn’t a bad thing. This movie is an experience, and one that puts you right in the middle of the action thanks to the brilliant camerawork of cinematographer Jost Vacano, who created a camera that used gyroscopes for balance before the steadicam was a really practical thing. There’s really intense and suspenseful scenes of naval warfare as well where the submarine has to hide from the better equipped destroyers and find a weak spot to attack. There’s also a whole lot of waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. This makes the movie really hard to sit through and feel a lot longer, but it is necessary for the whole experience of the movie. This is supposed to make viewers feel the claustrophobia and fear of being in an underwater tube, and it works better than I really would want it to.

Another thing that makes Das Boot far superior than your average war film is how it treats its subjects. True enough, this is a German production made by a German director so its clear that the subjects are more than likely going to be German, which seems like it may seem awkward considering Nazis. Oddly enough, there isn’t much talk of Nazis and only a little mentioning of Hitler and Churchill. This is a movie about the individual, the human soldier and his battle to just wake up the next morning. This isn’t a movie about ideals or political beliefs with clear good guys and bad guys. It simply, or complexly, shows the reality and unbiased horrors of war.

Das Boot is one of the best war movies ever made. It shows the realities of battle and the effects it has on young soldiers while also showing a realistic depiction of life in a submarine. The battle scenes are intense, the special effects are awesome, and the acting is truly fantastic. As hard as this movie can be to sit through, it’s also a very rewarding experience. Not only do you get to witness a piece of cinematic history, but you also feel like you’re seeing history play out in front of your eyes. It’s a landmark achievement in film and is not to be missed.

The Aviator – Review

Making a movie about the life of Howard Hughes, one of the most eccentric and brilliant figures in American history, wouldn’t be an easy task because of how much he actually did. Leave it to Martin Scorsese to, not only attempt, but succeed and bringing this larger than life figure to silver screen with The Aviator. Combining a story about film and aviation history and mental disease, this is an epic and hugely impressive biopic that captures the essence of film almost perfectly.

 

As the sole heir to the Hughes Tool Company, Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) has a lot of extra cash to throw around, and ends up using it to create on of the first truly epic films, Hell’s Angels, after years of production. While living a life in Hollywood and beginning a relationship with the likes of Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett), Hughes isn’t one to forget his true passion: aviation. Soon, Hughes becomes involved with government plans to build many different types of aircraft that will become essential in World War II. Meanwhile, Hughes has his own plan to create the Hercules (aka the Spruce Goose), the largest plane ever created, but only after he can control his deepening paranoia and OCD.

The Aviator begins with what can only be described as a film buff’s dream come true. The first part of the movie shows Howard Hughes almost killing himself and going bankrupt in order to complete Hell’s Angels. Along the way, though, we get to see him interact with some major stars of the time. We get to see Jude Law as Errol Flynn, Gwen Stefani as Jean Harlow, and later on Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner. This isn’t my favorite part of the movie, but it’s easy to see how much fun Martin Scorsese is having with the material, the likes of which he would prove his loyalty to in Hugo some years later. It was a wild time in Hollywood and it’s done so well in this movie. Cate Blanchett especially is note perfect as Katharine Hepburn.

 

After the story moves past Hughes’ work in Hollywood, it moves onto his career in engineering airplanes for the military. While this is still a very interesting part, it begins to get a little confusing. One of the big problems is that there’s a point in the movie where it doesn’t say what year it is. This is all happening during the days of World War II, so depending on what year it is is important to what Howard the government are doing. Since I didn’t know what year it was, it got a little tricky to follow along at some points. Still, I had an understanding of what he was doing and it was still awesome to see the genius at work, building up an empire, even while his world seemed to be crumbling all around him.

The most interesting part of The Aviator to me was the depiction of mental illness. Mental illnesses and genius together is a huge interest of mine, seeing how one affects the other, so it was really interesting seeing a depiction of Hughes’ paranoia and obsessive compulsive disorder take a toll on his life. This is OCD in a way that I’ve never seen depicted before, a dangerous, life altering OCD. It’s almost hard to watch scenes when Hughes forces himself to say certain sentences over and over again or even struggle to get out of a bathroom in the most germ free way he can. It puts that entire disorder in perspective and how damaging it can really be.

It’s not surprising that The Aviator turned out as great as it did. With Scorsese and his cast of actors along with an amazing human being as the subject, it has all of the ingredients for an interesting and entertaining movie, even clocking in at 3 hours. There’s a lot of history in this movie, and it may not be told in the most coherent of ways at times, but most of this ride is really something memorable. It celebrates history, achievement, and Howard Hughes himself.

The Expendables 3 – Review

When The Expendables came out in 2010, I was thrilled to see all of the legendary action stars coming together to be in one movie, even if it didn’t reach the high expectations that I set for it. I was even more pleased with The Expendables 2 in 2012, which was a superior sequel that added Chuck Norris to the mix and gave Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis more to do. These were two fun films that hearkened back to action movies from the late 1970 and 1980s, but Stallone wasn’t ready to stop there. The Expendables 3, which I can now say was released in 2014 (just for the sake of saying it), completes the trilogy and actually offered me with more entertainment than I was expecting, which is a nice surprise.

Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone), the leader of his team of mercenaries called The Expendables, start their mission by breaking an old member of the team, Doc (Wesley Snipes), out of prison and than rush to Somalia to stop the delivery of bombs by a mysterious arms dealer. The mission goes awry when it is revealed the arms dealer is an ex-Expendable and personal enemy of Barney’s, Conrad Stonebanks (Mel Gibson). One of the team members is severely injured and Stonebanks escapes, forcing Barney to assemble a new crew to go in and bring Stonbanks back on the orders of his new boss, CIA officer Max Drummer (Harrison Ford). When the new team gets captured by Stonebanks during the mission, the old Expendables crew comes back in to save the new recruits, defeat Stonebanks’ personal army, and bring him in personally to be charged as a war criminal.

I don’t think I even need to say this, but just look at this cast. Just look at it. On top of Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren and the rest of the original cast we now have Harrison Ford, Wesley Snipes, and Antonio Banderas added just to name a few. Not only that, but Schwarzenegger and Jet Li are back to join in to the action and join it they do. Obviously, there are also a bunch of fresher faces there like UFC figher Ronda Rousey, Kellan Lutz, boxer Victor Ortiz, and Glen Powell. While it must have been cool for these fighters and actors to join in with the legends, they don’t add anything really special to the movie, and their acting can often be subpar, which shouldn’t even bother me in an Expendables movie. I was worried that these newcomers would push the others to the side, but it was great to see everyone get their chance in the spotlight, my personal favorite being Banderas. I just would have rather seen Gina Carano instead of Ronda Rousey, but that’s just me. There’s also a real big lack of Terry Crews in this movie, which was a little disappointing as well.

 

Of course one of the biggest draws to see an Expendables movie is the action, and there’s plenty of it to go around. One of the things that concerned me along with the new cast was the fact that The Expendables 3 was PG-13, which made me think that this movie was going to be completely toned down. It really didn’t feel that way though. In fact, I’d say it may even be superior to the original movie. Another thing that is necessary in action films of this kind is a strong villain, and we get one with Stonebanks. It is obvious that Mel Gibson is having the time of his life, hamming it up as Barney’s arch-enemy and delivering his lines like he’s back in the role of Martin Riggs in the Lethal Weapon movies. Looking back on these movies, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Mel Gibson were two of the best parts of the entire series, which is cool because cool villains are just plain awesome.

It’s clear that this is also a pretty personal project to all of the older actors in this movie, especially that there are now younger actors in the movie kicking ass with them. There’s been a few of these kinds of movies recently where the people we loved for years begin to talk about their age in a positive light. Stallone and the rest of them is reminding us once again that they are quite capable of high octane action scenes and still have fun shooting them. That being said, I don’t think we need another Expendables movie, and I’m hoping and praying that we don’t get one, because as much as I like what they’re doing, they’ve been doing it on repeat since 2010. I will say that some of this movie felt like it was getting a little stale (and I’m including the wonky special effects with this), which means it’s time to pack this series in.

The Expendables movies are simply nostalgic guilty pleasures that no one should really feel guilty about, in my opinion. These movies, the third movie included, are not pieces of work that need to be criticized to quickly. Maybe I liked this movie as much as I did because it exceeded my low expectations, but maybe it’s just because I like seeing these actors do what they do best. It’s not high art and it doesn’t have anything particularly interesting to say, but we’ve known these actors for a long time and it’s cool to see them in a loud, violent, and often funny action film.