2 Unnecessary Remakes + 1 Great Indie Film + Another Link in a Franchise Chain(saw)
"Dredd"
starring: Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, Lena Headley
directed by: Pete Travis
This is definitely an action-packed, violent, brutal, relentless, bloody action film, which is actually a much better remake of the original film aptly titled "Judge Dredd" (which starred Sylvester Stallone and Sandra Bullock) from 1995. This one is much better because it pulls no punches in presenting a grim futuristic reality of a world with a little bit of sci-fi mixed in, but what it's really focusing on is what the world has become and that our society needs to be governed by a large, ever-present police force. A force that has perhaps self-appointed themselves as jury, executioners, but most important "judges," hence the title character known simply as Judge Dredd.
You can almost hear the grimace of Judge Dredd (Karl Urban, doing terrific work under the Judge’s omnipresent helmet) creaking like old leather as he’s saddled with rookie Academy of Justice Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby, equal to the task at hand) – a female no less, with psychic abilities. It’s training day in Mega-City One – a hazy, muggy megalopolis that stretches from New York to Washington, D.C., which is the lone post-nuclear refuge of humanity – and the pair end up at Peach Trees, a 200-story residential tower controlled by the bloodthirsty Ma-Ma (Lena Headey, stone-cold evil incarnate) and her gang. They, in turn, control the supply and demand of the new drug in town, “SLO-MO,” which slows the user’s perceptions to 1% of their normal speed. Sounds like fun, except when you’re plummeting those aforementioned 200 stories. From here, it’s a simple cat-and-mouse game between Ma-Ma’s legions and the Judges, but the filmmakers keep your eyes glued to the action and have you rooting for the fascist tool Dredd and his scary-smart partner. The two judges really play well with and off each other. And the ride your on for a good 90 minutes is action-packed with absolutely no lull. This is clearly a sign of a great action film that knows its purpose.
................................................................................
"Drinking Buddies"
starring: Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick, Ron Livingston, Jason Sudeikis
written and directed by: Joe Swanberg
I've been learning a lot more about film and the industry thanks to my closer look at films through my project and I thankfully discovered a subgenre that I really enjoy and had been enjoying for a few years, but never really knew exactly what it was: Mumblecore.
Mumblecore is a subgenre that prides and distinguishes itself on being natural, in performance and in dialogue. Sometimes it involves non-professional actors, but there have been some great professional performances in these low-budget, low-production value films. Sometimes what makes these films the most natural is that there's little to no script and can often thrive on the improvisation of the performers.
The first mumblecore film that really brought it to the surface was "Funny Ha Ha" which I haven't seen, but here's a list of ones that I've seen, appreciated and loved:
The Puffy Chair
LOL (which stars Miley Cyrus, huh?)
Humpday
Tiny Furniture
Nobody Walks
Frances Ha
Jeff, Who Lives At Home
Cyrus
Drinking Buddies
Ones I Want to See:
Your Sister's Sister
Red Flag
Open Five
Medicine for Melancholy
Breaking Upwards
Audrey the Trainwreck
Alexander the Last
Nights and Weekends
Hannah Takes the Stairs
Well, for this review, I recently watched "Drinking Buddies" which I had first noticed on DVD at Target, of all places. It stars so well-known actors and actresses, whom I was really interested in seeing push themselves by performing improv in a seemingly simple concept film about 2 different, yet similar couples, two of the people happen to be co-workers at a micro-brewery, which coincidentally makes them drinking buddies.
This is a mumblecore film that had virtually no script, relied basically on a simple outline of a story and its characters and was completely improvised by the actors. I certainly got that feeling within the first few minutes of the film; this is of course before looking into the film online and realizing exactly what it was. All the dialogue certainly comes off as spontaneous and off the cuff (which I've kind of noticed Jake Johnson seems good at and makes me wonder how much of his acting on "New Girl" is truly just him being himself). There's some awkwardness in the characters interactions, some lull in conversations, but doesn't that happen to the best of us in normal, everyday activities with our own friends. It's like they don't really know how to push the conversation further or move on, sometimes.
Kate (Olivia Wilde) and Luke (Jake Johnson) are best friends who work together at a beer factory called Revolution Brew. They spend a lot of their free time together and are constantly flirting with one another. An eventual hookup seems inevitable except that Kate has been seeing a music producer named Chris (Ron Livingston) for eight months and Luke is far enough along into his relationship with Jill (Anna Kendrick) that they're already planning their marriage. The four of them begin to hit it off, but things get a bit more complicated when they all take a trip to Michigan, under the guise of a camping outing as well as a sort of double date.
"Conan the Barbarian"
starring: Jason Momoa, Rachel Nichols, Stephen Lang, Rose McGowan, Ron Perlman
directed by: Marcus Nispel
This might by one of the most unnecessary and gratuitous reboots of a 1980s franchise that I've ever seen come along in our new age of CGI capabilities and 3D technology in order to really throw a film in your face and perhaps distract you from the fact that what you're watching is an utter disaster. Although, they did pick a director who's becoming well-known for "rebooting" seemingly dead franchises (re: "Friday the 13th" and "Texas Chainsaw"). Here, director Nispel is bringing new life into a confusingly dull action film with a new meathead-type "actor" in Jason Momoa.
Of course, when you set yourself up to watch a film like "Conan the Barbarian" you (should) already know what you're getting yourself into. It's not going to be earth-shattering or eye-opening. There's blood, there's nudity, there's action-packed fight scenes. It's an action film for the 13 year old boys whose hormones are raging inside of every guy who wants to relive their teenage fantasies of bulking up and hitting the gym constantly and getting it on with a super-hot girl-in-distress (Rachel Nichols, who is surprisingly from Augusta, Maine and can be seen in other action film franchises like "G.I. Joe" but here is completely written off as a lame woman who needs constant protecting).
It really doesn't make sense to go through the plot of this reboot. If you want to watch the disaster yourself, be prepared, you'll gain nothing from the experience and it's far too long (almost 2 hours) and wears its welcome out really soon. At least Ron Perlman had enough sense to have himself killed in the first 20 minutes, which sets up the rest of the film, because at his core, Conan is just a vengeful man out to settle a score with the man who killed his father.
There's lots of grunting by the men in the film and it just makes me so glad I had enough sense in high school to leave the locker room culture of jocks.
.......................................................................................
"Texas Chainsaw"
starring: Alexandra Daddario, Dan Yeager, Trey Songz, Scott Eastwood, Tania Raymonde, Shaun Sipos, James MacDonald, Thom Barry, Paul Rae
Although I have never been a fan of any movie that finds itself in the throes of what I hope to be a dying trend in films- 3D- it should be noted that I do have an affliction and guilt for the pleasure of watching formulaic horror films. And this latest "reboot" of the now-40 year old franchise "The Texas Chainsaw Masacre" does not disappoint (me) at all. It provides the viewer with a great continuation of the original story from the 1974 film and actually picks up right where that one leaves off, with a lone female survivor getting away from the cannabalistic clan in a pickup truck while an angry mob of Texas townsfolk battle the family outside their farmhouse with guns and torches. They subsequently set the house on fire and presume everyone dead. Little do they know that a baby has survived, a Sawyer, which happens to be a cousin of the sadistic Leatherface.
Then we cut to 20 years later and the baby survivor. Lovely young Heather Miller (Alexandra Daddario, who has the most piercing blue eyes I've seen in a long time and perhaps I found a new horror film muse and love in this 27 year old actress, because I was completely mesmerized by her every time she was on the screen) is thrown for a loop when she’s informed that the white-trash couple she’s always known as mom and dad really are her adoptive parents. Truth to tell, however, this revelation doesn’t appear to strike her as bad news. Besides, she’s perked up by what she thinks is good news: A recently deceased grandmother she never knew she had has bequeathed her a palatial home near a small town in Texas. Daddario — who’s given ample opportunity to flaunt the flattest stomach of any scream queen in recent memory — makes an impressively resourceful heroine, too.
I appreciated director Lussenhop ability to tell a decent story and not simply rely on the blood and guts and gore for the film's glory. What's perhaps most interesting and a rather risky move is that with this interpretation of the story, Lussenhop is presenting the audience with a wrench and twist to the story by asking us to sympathize with Leatherface which makes him an anti-hero, which is bold considering what Leatherface is most noted for- brutally murdering "innocent" people and skinning them. Heather (Daddario) is after all his long-lost cousin and she sympathizes with him because he is family, after all. The end of the film even sets up for yet another sequel, which I would welcome as long as Daddario appears in it to some degree.
starring: Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, Lena Headley
directed by: Pete Travis
This is definitely an action-packed, violent, brutal, relentless, bloody action film, which is actually a much better remake of the original film aptly titled "Judge Dredd" (which starred Sylvester Stallone and Sandra Bullock) from 1995. This one is much better because it pulls no punches in presenting a grim futuristic reality of a world with a little bit of sci-fi mixed in, but what it's really focusing on is what the world has become and that our society needs to be governed by a large, ever-present police force. A force that has perhaps self-appointed themselves as jury, executioners, but most important "judges," hence the title character known simply as Judge Dredd.
You can almost hear the grimace of Judge Dredd (Karl Urban, doing terrific work under the Judge’s omnipresent helmet) creaking like old leather as he’s saddled with rookie Academy of Justice Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby, equal to the task at hand) – a female no less, with psychic abilities. It’s training day in Mega-City One – a hazy, muggy megalopolis that stretches from New York to Washington, D.C., which is the lone post-nuclear refuge of humanity – and the pair end up at Peach Trees, a 200-story residential tower controlled by the bloodthirsty Ma-Ma (Lena Headey, stone-cold evil incarnate) and her gang. They, in turn, control the supply and demand of the new drug in town, “SLO-MO,” which slows the user’s perceptions to 1% of their normal speed. Sounds like fun, except when you’re plummeting those aforementioned 200 stories. From here, it’s a simple cat-and-mouse game between Ma-Ma’s legions and the Judges, but the filmmakers keep your eyes glued to the action and have you rooting for the fascist tool Dredd and his scary-smart partner. The two judges really play well with and off each other. And the ride your on for a good 90 minutes is action-packed with absolutely no lull. This is clearly a sign of a great action film that knows its purpose.
................................................................................
"Drinking Buddies"
starring: Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick, Ron Livingston, Jason Sudeikis
written and directed by: Joe Swanberg
I've been learning a lot more about film and the industry thanks to my closer look at films through my project and I thankfully discovered a subgenre that I really enjoy and had been enjoying for a few years, but never really knew exactly what it was: Mumblecore.
Mumblecore is a subgenre that prides and distinguishes itself on being natural, in performance and in dialogue. Sometimes it involves non-professional actors, but there have been some great professional performances in these low-budget, low-production value films. Sometimes what makes these films the most natural is that there's little to no script and can often thrive on the improvisation of the performers.
The first mumblecore film that really brought it to the surface was "Funny Ha Ha" which I haven't seen, but here's a list of ones that I've seen, appreciated and loved:
The Puffy Chair
LOL (which stars Miley Cyrus, huh?)
Humpday
Tiny Furniture
Nobody Walks
Frances Ha
Jeff, Who Lives At Home
Cyrus
Drinking Buddies
Ones I Want to See:
Your Sister's Sister
Red Flag
Open Five
Medicine for Melancholy
Breaking Upwards
Audrey the Trainwreck
Alexander the Last
Nights and Weekends
Hannah Takes the Stairs
Well, for this review, I recently watched "Drinking Buddies" which I had first noticed on DVD at Target, of all places. It stars so well-known actors and actresses, whom I was really interested in seeing push themselves by performing improv in a seemingly simple concept film about 2 different, yet similar couples, two of the people happen to be co-workers at a micro-brewery, which coincidentally makes them drinking buddies.
This is a mumblecore film that had virtually no script, relied basically on a simple outline of a story and its characters and was completely improvised by the actors. I certainly got that feeling within the first few minutes of the film; this is of course before looking into the film online and realizing exactly what it was. All the dialogue certainly comes off as spontaneous and off the cuff (which I've kind of noticed Jake Johnson seems good at and makes me wonder how much of his acting on "New Girl" is truly just him being himself). There's some awkwardness in the characters interactions, some lull in conversations, but doesn't that happen to the best of us in normal, everyday activities with our own friends. It's like they don't really know how to push the conversation further or move on, sometimes.
Kate (Olivia Wilde) and Luke (Jake Johnson) are best friends who work together at a beer factory called Revolution Brew. They spend a lot of their free time together and are constantly flirting with one another. An eventual hookup seems inevitable except that Kate has been seeing a music producer named Chris (Ron Livingston) for eight months and Luke is far enough along into his relationship with Jill (Anna Kendrick) that they're already planning their marriage. The four of them begin to hit it off, but things get a bit more complicated when they all take a trip to Michigan, under the guise of a camping outing as well as a sort of double date.
"Drinking Buddies" is really an appropriate name for the film. Not only does it describe Kate and Luke's relationship perfectly, but the film is mostly people sitting around talking while drinking. It's a simple concept, but at the same time it's as if you're getting the chance to become a part of the daily lives of these characters. Getting into that mindset is a serious plus since it makes it seem like there's much more depth to these characters than there really is.
With all that being said, I really enjoyed the "realness" of the film and I appreciated Olivia Wilde's performance the most.
........................................................................................"Conan the Barbarian"
starring: Jason Momoa, Rachel Nichols, Stephen Lang, Rose McGowan, Ron Perlman
directed by: Marcus Nispel
This might by one of the most unnecessary and gratuitous reboots of a 1980s franchise that I've ever seen come along in our new age of CGI capabilities and 3D technology in order to really throw a film in your face and perhaps distract you from the fact that what you're watching is an utter disaster. Although, they did pick a director who's becoming well-known for "rebooting" seemingly dead franchises (re: "Friday the 13th" and "Texas Chainsaw"). Here, director Nispel is bringing new life into a confusingly dull action film with a new meathead-type "actor" in Jason Momoa.
Of course, when you set yourself up to watch a film like "Conan the Barbarian" you (should) already know what you're getting yourself into. It's not going to be earth-shattering or eye-opening. There's blood, there's nudity, there's action-packed fight scenes. It's an action film for the 13 year old boys whose hormones are raging inside of every guy who wants to relive their teenage fantasies of bulking up and hitting the gym constantly and getting it on with a super-hot girl-in-distress (Rachel Nichols, who is surprisingly from Augusta, Maine and can be seen in other action film franchises like "G.I. Joe" but here is completely written off as a lame woman who needs constant protecting).
It really doesn't make sense to go through the plot of this reboot. If you want to watch the disaster yourself, be prepared, you'll gain nothing from the experience and it's far too long (almost 2 hours) and wears its welcome out really soon. At least Ron Perlman had enough sense to have himself killed in the first 20 minutes, which sets up the rest of the film, because at his core, Conan is just a vengeful man out to settle a score with the man who killed his father.
There's lots of grunting by the men in the film and it just makes me so glad I had enough sense in high school to leave the locker room culture of jocks.
.......................................................................................
"Texas Chainsaw"
starring: Alexandra Daddario, Dan Yeager, Trey Songz, Scott Eastwood, Tania Raymonde, Shaun Sipos, James MacDonald, Thom Barry, Paul Rae
Although I have never been a fan of any movie that finds itself in the throes of what I hope to be a dying trend in films- 3D- it should be noted that I do have an affliction and guilt for the pleasure of watching formulaic horror films. And this latest "reboot" of the now-40 year old franchise "The Texas Chainsaw Masacre" does not disappoint (me) at all. It provides the viewer with a great continuation of the original story from the 1974 film and actually picks up right where that one leaves off, with a lone female survivor getting away from the cannabalistic clan in a pickup truck while an angry mob of Texas townsfolk battle the family outside their farmhouse with guns and torches. They subsequently set the house on fire and presume everyone dead. Little do they know that a baby has survived, a Sawyer, which happens to be a cousin of the sadistic Leatherface.
Then we cut to 20 years later and the baby survivor. Lovely young Heather Miller (Alexandra Daddario, who has the most piercing blue eyes I've seen in a long time and perhaps I found a new horror film muse and love in this 27 year old actress, because I was completely mesmerized by her every time she was on the screen) is thrown for a loop when she’s informed that the white-trash couple she’s always known as mom and dad really are her adoptive parents. Truth to tell, however, this revelation doesn’t appear to strike her as bad news. Besides, she’s perked up by what she thinks is good news: A recently deceased grandmother she never knew she had has bequeathed her a palatial home near a small town in Texas. Daddario — who’s given ample opportunity to flaunt the flattest stomach of any scream queen in recent memory — makes an impressively resourceful heroine, too.
I appreciated director Lussenhop ability to tell a decent story and not simply rely on the blood and guts and gore for the film's glory. What's perhaps most interesting and a rather risky move is that with this interpretation of the story, Lussenhop is presenting the audience with a wrench and twist to the story by asking us to sympathize with Leatherface which makes him an anti-hero, which is bold considering what Leatherface is most noted for- brutally murdering "innocent" people and skinning them. Heather (Daddario) is after all his long-lost cousin and she sympathizes with him because he is family, after all. The end of the film even sets up for yet another sequel, which I would welcome as long as Daddario appears in it to some degree.
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