Notorious druglord Gabriel Cortez has broken out of FBI custody in spectacular style, leaving a trail of dead police officers behind him as he races for the Mexican border in one of the world's fastest supercars. The planning is meticulous, right down to the choice for the crossing - a narrow gorge near sleepy little hick town Sommerton Junction, where Cortez's men have erected a bridge for him to cross.
But every plan has its monkey wrench, and this time it comes in the form of Sheriff Owens, the local lawman who is determined that no criminal is getting a free ride through his town.
The Last Stand is a fair action movie. It does a workmanlike job; there's a little bit of a character arc for all the important characters, everyone gets to have their moment or make their contribution, the action sequences are okay, the bad guy is sufficiently smarmy that you like it when he gets punched in the face. But it's all rather thin. Minimalist is the word; it does the minimum needed to be an okay film, but it never really does anything more than that, nothing to make you sit up and go "whoa, cool!"
Of course the most interesting thing about this is seeing how Arnie does now that he is in this phase of his career. He's past the point of "wow, he can still be an action hero even though he's old!" (that was Terminator 3), and now into the point where he has to play characters who go through their films openly making a point of commenting, in the immortal words of Roger Murtaugh from the Lethal Weapon movies, "I'm too old for this... stuff." That kind of thing is a bit of a nod to the audience, the movie maker's way of saying "see? We get it, he's old. We're not trying to pretend he's young any more, we're embracing it. So it's okay."
Well, like most things in this movie it kind of works, but only kind of. Even with the movie openly playing on Arnie's age, there are times in the film where it is genuinely a bit disconcerting just how old and tired he looks - and unfortunately most of them come in the early scenes where he's just sitting around talking. Sorry Arnie, but in all honesty you really are too old for this stuff. You gave us some great films, man. Time to kick back and relax.
Beautiful Creatures
Ethan is a teenager who longs to break out of the monotony of his small town existence. But things look up when the mysterious Lena Duchannes arrives at school. Lena bears a striking resemblence to a girl Ethan has been dreaming about - and as the neice of the rich, reclusive, and much gossiped about resident Macon Ravenwood, she draws instant suspicion and accusations of witchcraft. But as Ethan gets to know Lena he begins to find that the accusations are true - and thus begins a journey into a world he may not survive.
This is a bad, bad movie. Like several recent films you can see that it desperately wants to pull the Twilight crowd - take some pretty teens and throw in a dash of emo, stick it all into a supernatural setting, and wait for that money to come rolling in. Only in this case it didn't, because the film is bad. A couple of interesting ideas here and there, but really nothing more than that.
The Host
The Earth is at peace, the opening narration tells us. No war, no poverty, no crime, no hostility - becasue there are few if any humans left who have not been possessed by the "souls", a race of small glowy alien critters that crawl up inside your brain and move you around against your will. For most, the possessed person is essentially dead and gone, or so it seems. But in a few cases the human mind remains and fights back. One such is Melanie Stryder, possessed by an ancient alien being which calls itself Wanderer. Melanie is able to talk with Wanderer, even take back some control over her own body on occasion. But as the two learn to co-exist they are faced with hostility from both humans and aliens alike.
Holy god, this is a bad, baaaaad movie. It's literally a chore to watch. The science fiction aspects are trappings only - they're never explored or even really explained in any detail, they're just kind of there. Instead we are treated to two hours of Melanie worship. The whole film is about how wonderful and important Melanie and Wanderer are, and how everyone who is good loves them, and everyone who is bad hates them. That really is pretty much it, that's the whole film. Nor does it really come to any kind of conclusion, instead preferring to just kind of meander to a halt in one of the most blatantly sequel-fodder endings I've ever seen. Do yourself a favour and watch something else instead. Almost anything else will do.
The Hobbit
Remember Lord of the Rings? Sure you do. Remember how Bilbo Baggins gave his magic ring to Frodo at the start, along with his glow in the dark sword? Naturally.
Did you ever wonder how he acquired that sword, that ring? You didn't? Well, tough. We're going to tell you anyway.
And better still, we're going to make a trilogy out of it. It demands a trilogy, you see, even thought we have to streeeeeetch the story out to breaking point to do it. Nothing to do with making more money, no way!
So here's the plot of this film. Bilbo is happy enough staying home, but Gandalf thrusts him into going on an adventure with a band of Dwarves who lost their homeland to a powerful dragon years and years ago. Bilbo joins the Dwarves, they encounter some troubles along the way, but reach the mountain where the dragon lives. The end.
Now imagine that spread over 169 minutes.
I never read The Hobbit - tried to once, but I got bored by it and gave up. Maybe this does the book service, maybe it does it a disservice. I couldn't say. What I can say is that it's just plain boring. Yes, it's nice enough to see Gandalf again, and to play about in the Lord of the Rings world once more, but it really all does come across very much as a cash-in attempt.
Jack Reacher
"He was huge....one of the largest men she had ever seen outside of the NFL. He was extremely tall, and extremely broad, and long-armed, and long legged. The lawn chair was regular size, but it looked tiny under him. It was bent and crushed out of shape. His knuckles were nearly touching the ground. His neck was thick and his hands were the size of dinner plates..."
What do you think? Doesn't it just scream "Tom Cruise" to you? No? Seriously?
Well, okay. Like Twilight, and The Host, and The Hobbit, I've never read the Jack Reacher books (man, I really need to read more). So I don't have a great deal invested in the idea of what Jack Reacher is "supposed" to look like. But it is amusing to think of somebody casting Cruise to play that role... even more so when you consider that as a producer on the film Cruise essentially cast himself.
That aside, is the film any good? Well, it does have a fair bit going for it. The opening sequence shows us a sadly familiar scene - a mysterious man assembled a high powered rifle and takes out a bunch of random citizens who are out enjoying their day. We see the crime, and the investigation which uncovers rock solid compelling evidence of who did this thing, and the arrest of the criminal. It's all done without a word of dialogue and it's a genuinely interesting hook into the movie. Because you see, the man arrested because of that rock solid evidence is not the man we saw committing the crime.
And all the accused will say is "Get Jack Reacher". But when Reacher is duly gotten, we find that his interest in the accused is very professional and very personal - as a military policeman Reacher investigated the man for four murders, crimes Reacher knew he was guilty of, but which the man got away with. So now we have an ace investigator who is looking into a crime apparently committed by a man he hates... only we know the man is innocent, even though we also know he is a murderer. It's a genuinely interesting premise, and the first half of the movie is really pretty good.
Unfortunately it all kind of flops a bit in the second half because it all becomes a bit formulaic and tired. Bar fight? Car chase? Nobody believes the hero's theory? Girl taken hostage? Shoot-out ending? It's all here folks. None of it's bad - it's all well staged stuff, and it moves the plot along okay. It's just a bit underwhelming.
Gangster Squad
Los Angeles, 1949. Gangster Mickey Cohen has moved in, with the intention of taking over all crime in the city. He buys off the judges and the cops, and uses violence to intimidate or wipe out any witnesses to his actions. Something must be done, so. Police Chief William Parker decides to form a special unit whose mission is to take down Cohen by any means, legal or otherwise. Seargant John O'Mara, a former World War II soldier, is given the task.
Gangster Squad is an odd kind of film. It's really not a Gangster movie, not in the way that Casino or Goodfellas or any of those films are (I don't even want to think about comparing it to The Godfather). It doesn't really examine the life of the Gangster, puts no thought at all into Cohen's life or who he is. He wants to be a big uber crimelord. Why? Because he's a bad man, and that's what bad men do. That's about as much thought as we get on that subject.
Well does it at least focus on the cops and the toll this takes on them? If not Goodfellas, is it at least The Untouchables? Well that's closer, but again, there's not a lot of focus on that. There's some prefuctory stuff about how upset O'Mara's wife is at his work, and of course one of his gang will end up dead to show that this is dangerous business (naturally it's the weakest and most innocent one, so you care more). But what this is really about is action, guns, bullets, fists, and blood.
And bizarrely, it's actually quite comedic. Sometimes it's obviously trying to be, but here and there you get moments when you find yourself actually laughing at things that, really, seem like they were supposed to be serious. It's really quite strange.
All in all it's an okay film, worth a watch. No more, though.
Marat Sade
The Marquis de Sade is an inmate in the Charenton mental hospital. So naturally, he decides to put on a play. The Hospital head honcho agrees, hoping to use this as a form of therapy and boost his own reputation as the head of a modern and humane asylum. The play is based on the life of the Jean-Paul Marat. However, despire the director's intentions, as the play progresses the inmates become more and more caught up in the violence of the play and the situation threatens to spin out of control.
I really don't know that I can give this film a satisfactory review. I would give my thoughts about it, but my thoughts really amount to little more than "What the hell was that?!" This is a weird, weird film. I don't know that I understood any of it, and to be honest I didn't particularly care to. Clearly there is something going on here - the talen involved in this film alone indicates that. One does not see actors of this calibre engaging in nonsense for the hell of it.
So I will say merely that it wasn't my thing, and perhaps that indicates that it is beyond me rather than beneath me. So be it.
Anna Karenina
Imperial Russia, 1874. The aristocratic Anna Karenina arrives in Moscow in an effort to save the marriage of her brother Prince Oblonsky, who had had a love affair with his housemaid. Anna's own marriage is a cold and loveless thing. Her husband, Count Alexei Karenin, is a distant and unemotional man, and the only love in Anna's life is for her son.
That changes when she meets cavalry officer Count Vronsky; the two have an instant attraction for one another, despite the fact that Vronsky is soon to propose to Kitty, the younger sister of Anna's sister-in-law Dolly. Whilst Anna is able to resolve her brother's marital difficulties, she soon finds herself involved in an affair of her own - but Russian society has nothing but scorn and contempt for an unfaithful wife...
It's a lavish production with a lot of talent behind it, and well made. Some curious choices - the whole thing is staged as if it were a play, doing things like literally showing the actors, props and scenery moving into position on the set and getting ready to begin a scene. It's certainly imaginative and different, but it doesn't really do much to advance the film.
Lots to like, though. The acting is good, the story is a classic one. But it's kind of dry and worthy, all trembling lips and soulful glances. For what it is it's very good, but what it is is a little dull to be honest.
Threshold
Dr. Molly Caffery is a disaster planner. Her job is to come up with doomsday scenarios and plan out a response to manage them - she spends her days thinking about everything from volcanoes to global warming to nuclear war. But the one plan she never expected to have to implement was the Threshold plan. For that is the plan that details the government response to the presence of a hostile alien force on Earth...
Although not a great series, Threshold was a pretty good one all in all. The premise is an interesting one - an alien "signal" so dangerous that simply listening to it could transform people into mutants with a desperate urge to spread the signal further. And the team assembled to deal with it is a fun one, especially Peter Dinklage who is essentially playing a rather toned down version of his Game of Thrones character.
Where it does fall down a little is that it all got a little bit repetative. This week, how will they spread the signal? Next week, tune in to see them trying to spread the signal? And so on. It's not all like that, by any means, it just went there a little too often.
Apparently if there had been future seasons each one would have showed the alien threat spreading on Earth, with Humans gradually losing ground. For that reason the whole title of the show would have changed - to "Foothold" in season 2 and then "Stranglehold" in season 3. That could have been genuinely interesting to watch!
The Finder
Walter Sherman was a soldier who suffered a brain injury whilst serving in Iraq. He woke up with a radically changed personality - most prominently, Wlater has an uncanny ability to, and obsession with, finding things. When he locks in on a lost item, no matter what it is, no matter how well hidden, he will find it or die trying.
It sounds like a thin premise for a series, but in truth it's a good one because it offers up such a wide range of possibilities. Yes, every show is "Walter tries to find something", but that something can be anything - an antique, a person, a place, whatever. It gives the writers a lot of scope to play. And the main cast are quirky enough to be interesting to watch, which is fun. All in all a pretty decent series, and a shame it only lasted a year.
