Bone Tomahawk

S. Craig Zahler, 2015

IMDB

4/5

Bone Tomahawk is going to appeal to viewers that aren't necessarily into the Western genre. It's a pleasant surprise, the great writing grabbing you right away and not letting loose until the end. The violence is going to surprise you. The gore is going to startle you. The performances are going to inspire you.

There are things that were done in this film to the human body that I didn't necessarily want to see at any point in my cinematic journeys, but regardless of seeing said cannibalistic atrocities - this film was an absolute thrill. These are the best films; the ones that sneak up on you. The ones that you weren't bombarded with marketing day in and day out. Everywhere you looked: billboards, television commercials. This is a pure indie shot on a $1.8M budget and somehow managing to cast Kurt Russell, David Arquette, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox and an UNRECOGNIZABLE Richard Jenkins. Jenkins was really the exceptional performance in this film. It took about 20 minutes of screen-time to recognize him. There's not much to the story, really. A group of a men set out to rescue a local man's wife and a sheriff's deputy from a tribe of "savages". A template for a lot of standard Western fare, but boy is Tomahawk different.

Zahler does a fantastic job of getting you to despise the brutal tribe that attacked the small town of Bright Hope. You are begging for vengeance, praying for a positive outcome. And when you finally confront the unforgiving Troglodytes, they make the film almost feel like a Western Mad Max or something. There are so many movies that have been made that have these disturbing moments in them. Irreversible, Requiem for a Dream, Human Centipede, Funny Games. They take you so far that you don't want to revisit them again. There's nothing beneficial to go back to. But Bone Tomahawk is interesting, because some of the images shown are on par with some of those barbarous moments in the aforementioned movies. But Bone Tomahawk is a movie that I will almost certainly want to revisit at some point in the future.

The Limey

Steven Soderbergh, 1999

IMDB

4/5

There’s a reason that film schools study The Limey. Its taking a simple premise and building a sophisticated visual construct around that premise. Something that amateur filmmakers wouldn’t be capable of doing. But someone like Soderbergh can. Soderbergh is one of the more prolific directors working, maybe the most. And I will admit right off the bat, I consider him to be a bit overrated. I am not a fan of all of Soderbergh’s films. While everyone raves about Out of Sight, I am not one of those people. I didn’t care for it. I thought Contagion was dull. I thought Gina Carrano’s distractingly bad acting killed Haywire, which felt too much like Out of Sight for me at times. In fact, in memory the two movies blend together for me in my mind. Girlfriend Experience felt empty and forgettable. And the Ocean’s sequels just lacked that same allurement that the first one had. But then there’s the original Ocean’s Eleven. One of the best remakes ever made. I saw it three times in the theater back in 2001. Side Effects was a really well crafted film, was really able to display some of Channing Tatum’s acting chops while giving Rooney Mara another avenue to display her natural abilities. Behind the Candelabra was an HBO release but that should have had a wide theatrical release. It’s unforgettable. That’s the thing with Soderbergh. You can rattle off a few of the films of his that you really care for and any director would kill to have those films in their filmography. He’s not out there to please everybody with every film. He takes risks and jumps around to vastly different material and that’s admirable.

You can really just boil down the plot of The Limey to a father wanting some closure for his daughter’s death. And Soderbergh is able to build this captivating, tense stylistic film around that premise. Precise editing, great performances, a hypnotic score with haunting piano, this sort of yellowish haze that seems to pour over the screen. It has remarks about social hierarchy and the whole wealthy class on the mountaintop. The complicated nature of a father and daughter relationship. There's even a subtle indictments of Hollywood and celebrity culture. In a sense the Limey is what Pierre Morel’s Taken would be in the hands of an auteur rather than an action director.

The Purge: Anarchy

James DeMonaco, 2014

Can I Stream it?

1/5

This sequel to the 2013 film, which was also directed by DeMonaco, focuses on a group of people caught outside in Los Angeles at night in the middle of the annual Purge. The man attempting to lead the group to safety (Frank Grillo) is eager to break away from the group to seek revenge on a man who walked free from a prosecution error.

How does a filmmaker expect you to get behind a group of characters that provide virtually no likability? It's surely the biggest pitfall of the film. Because you don't care about them. The annoying couple. The barely developed pair of women with the ambiguously ailing father. Instead of any maturation, the film becomes an elaborate torture-porn piece displaying a highlight reel of violence. It attempts to build upon the premise of the original Purge film by providing more bullets, a bigger backdrop, but it provides less structure. Maybe DeMonaco needs those four walls. It's like a crippled version of Escape from New York, without Snake Plissken or the surprisingly awesome Carpenter score. The annoyances don't cease with the characters themselves. There's that annoying situation where no bullets seem to hit their target, even though it's high capacity assault rifles firing in a specific direction. The film attempts to explore some class warface issues, but from the second you see the traffic cams in the tractor trailer you get a clear sense of what's going on. The original Purge film was running on a plot that was contained and interesting enough to keep you engaged. And oddly enough it felt like it could have been bigger. Anarchy attempts to go bigger but it's clear that DeMonaco is not the man for the job.

Blue Ruin

Jeremy Saulnier, 2014

Can I Stream It?

3/5
When homeless and broken Dwight (Macon Blair) receives news of a convicted killer's release, a killer who had killed people very close to him years before, he decides to take matters into his own hands.

Blue Ruin is a product of the world of crowd-funding, with the production costs funded by a Kickstarter campaign. A very nice looking film, albeit being a dark revenge piece about vigilante justice. Served by a man with nothing to lose. Blair plays that man, soliciting sympathy within minutes of being introduced to his Dwight character. He spends the first few minutes of the film simply gathering things to eat, picking garbage at a neighborhood carnival in coastal Delaware. As soon as he hears the news of Wade Cleland's release, he begins acting out a game-plan that was likely a worse case scenario for Dwight. It almost seems like if Wade was never released, Dwight would continue stumbling through the days like a lifeless zombie. He soon finds a sense of mild purpose, justice for his parents' cold-blooded slaying. What follows is a chain of events that is similar in tone to Jeff Nichol's Shotgun Stories in the sense that it explores family feuding, familial loyalty and unforgiving retribution.

One moderate criticism about the film is the source of anger for protagonist Dwight. His parents were murdered years back. Of course that would be enough to make anyone deeply angry, looking for some form of justice outside of the conventional prison system, which clearly went easy on Wade. But Dwight has basically shut himself off to the world, almost as if when his parents died he gave up on everything without ever attempting to move on with his life (like his sister). Would someone choose this path after their parents were killed? Not that anyone would take their parents' murder mildly, but at some point they would lick their wounds and move on with their life, right? Dwight turns out to be the anti-Bruce Wayne. He doesn’t use the tragedy as a motivator to rid the streets of crime. Instead once the killer is imprisoned he goes into complete isolation, taking a vow of silence. Living out of his car, dumpster diving. He doesn’t actually attempt to execute any reparation until the killer is released from prison early. Perhaps his story would have been more realistic if it were his wife and child that had been killed. The film could have flashed back to the happy moments in his life in his suburban home with the white picket fence, only to be stripped from him after a home invasion gone awry. That being said, the story isn't COMPLETELY unbelievable. It's actually quite the opposite. Just a well-made/complete revenge thriller.

The Dirties

Matt Johnson, 2013

Can I Stream It?

3/5

High school outcasts Matt (Matt Johnson) and Owen (Owen Williams) work together on a film where they exact revenge on the bullies they call "The Dirties", who torment them on a regular basis.

The Dirties is a love letter to popular cinema almost immediately, as Matt and Owen throw around movie references. The young cinephiles continue to reference them as they work on their indie film for a school project, but it's really a movie they are making for themselves. Sort of an indulgent nod to everything they've loved on screen. They certainly don't take a whole lot seriously, as most of their jittery shots are them giggling mid-line and having to put their heads down as they surrender to laughter. This could easily go off the tracks and become a sloppy mess, but it somehow manages to harness that energy and keep you engaged. And while all the movie love is going on, there is an interesting satirical experiment being conducted on high school bullying and violence in the media's impact on American Culture. All of which is being done through the divisive found footage genre. But it's never done in a way where it feels like an after-school special or something made by someone who is out of touch with American youth. Matt and Owen are likable because there's a real authenticity to their characters. We all remember someone from high school that is sort of like them, or perhaps we were those guys. The types of people who didn't necessarily engage in a lot of extracurricular activities but instead spent a lot of time together playing video games or watching movies. This lifestyle decision unfortunately also makes them a target for bullies. But the film really nails that realistic complacency. Like they have ultimately decided to surrender to the abuse, assuming it will never go away. They decide to take their retribution to the screen, where movie-obsessed Matt begins to take it all a bit too seriously.

Neighbors

Nicholas Stoller, 2014

Can I Stream It?

3/5

Mac (Seth Rogen) and Kelly (Rose Byrne) are excited to move into a quaint residential neighborhood with their baby girl. But everything soon changes when a fraternity, led by Teddy Sanders (Zac Effron) moves into the house next to theirs and they realize that they are going to be living next to a party-house.

Somewhere between Animal House, Dennis the Menace and 1981's Neighbors (a forgotten comedy featuring John Belushi and Dan Akroyd) lies 2014's Neighbors, written by Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien (Funny People, 40 Year Old Virgin) and directed by Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall). Seth Rogen brings his typical stoner humor to his Mac role but this time throws a baby girl in his arms almost as if Ben Stone (Knocked Up) moved away, ditched Katherine Heigl and picked up the lovely (and let's face it, significantly more tolerable) Rose Byrne. Not a bad swap. Byrne provides a good dynamic with the Mac character, two people who are desperately trying to hold onto some elements of their early twenties without completely submitting to inevitably boring parenthood. When they discover that there is a fraternity moving next door, their first impulse is to somehow relate to them in some way which they soon discover is virtually impossible. A reminder that those days are over, and sometimes you don't realize how distant they are until they are literally right in front of you as if you are staring at a reflection of your former self. What follows is a slapsticky battle of the neighbors that for the most part is funny, although there is surely some fat that could be trimmed. But the highlights: the many simultaneously talking DeNiro's, the airbag deployments, the many insecurities/panicking involving their baby outnumber the not-so-funny moments. Rose Byrne is actually proving to be one of the better comedic actresses working today, almost like a reincarnated version of Cameron Diaz from the Something about Mary days.

With so many garbage comedies being churned out these days the bar has been lowered greatly. Typically you sit through overused premises, bad acting, momentary laughs. Neighbors manages to tap into some unused veins in the comedy genre.

Out of the Furnace

Scott Cooper, 2013

Can I Stream It?

4/5

Russell Baze is struggling to make ends meat while also trying to take care of his ailing father and reckless veteran brother who struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder from his tours in Iraq.

You are immediately faced with the paint-peeling working-class rust-colored backdrop of North Braddock Pennsylvania. The obvious sense of blue-collar gloom is evident throughout the picture, as if everyone in the film is connected to the steel mill in one way or another and worried that it can close it’s doors and put set off a domino-effect of depression. Bale brings more of a restrained energy to his Russell character. Instead of a salient effect to his voice there are traces of a Pittsburgh(ish) accent that glints from his marble mouth here and there. Bale’s character Russell is most certainly connected to the mill, where you see him grueling over fire pits covered in grime. He draws an immediate sense of sympathy for his character when you see how he looks out for those close to him and how hard he works to do so. You get a sense that there is inescapable hardship for him, as if he can never leave the doomed industrial town he’s certainly residing in. He’s loyal to his family. He sees the damage that the war caused on his brother Rodney has endured both physically and psychologically and rather than continue to press him on it, he quietly tries to assist him however he can (most of the time being financially). Most of the time it’s just by being loyal to him. But there’s an obvious sense of protection that he feels for him, as if its a promise he made to his father. But more than likely it’s a promise he has made to himself. Although his character is a man with mistakes, he is willing to pay his debts to society and attempt to right his wrongs. He carries his guilt like it’s a ten pound weight strapped to his soul. And even with the unforgivable things he may have done, he has a sense of warm loyalty and Bale manages to keep you engaged in his Russell character and stay on his side. While Rodney takes his hits on the face, Russell takes them to the heart.
 
Cooper succeeds in developing nuanced characters rather thoroughly than just making a action-packed revenge piece after a character gets wiped out in the first twenty minutes. In one sense it’s a story about a man’s misfortune, but there are many other forces at work and every actor involved in the film really contributes a multi-layered performance. It’s a heavily masculine piece as well. There is an overt lack of estrogen flowing, as you only see one or two female characters. We finally get another taste of Woody Harrelson working on the dark side. He never disappoints as a villain, and his Harlan DeGroat character is something right out of the evil forces his character attempts to track down in HBO’s True Detective. Out of the Furnace is pure drama, providing us with the lasting image of a strained man mired in the melodrama of personal conflicts in a struggling city.

Trading Places

John Landis, 1983

Can I Stream It?

3/5

A bet made between two commodities investor brothers (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche) strips rich executive Louis Winthorpe (Dan Akroyd) of his lavish wealthy livelihood and cleverly places it in the hands of bum Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) to prove that if a destitute man is given opportunities he will/will not succeed.

Trading Places puts you in a time machine and brings you back to the 1980's. The coke-fueled, horribly clothed, occasionally racist (black-face and all) 1980's. The nostalgia is delivered early on when you get thrown into a dance party where the once-funny and once-edgy Eddie Murphy is trying to keep his new digs in order. The film feels dated, there's no denying that. The biggest example of this is shown when you are smack in the middle of what feels like an antiquated stock exchange with handwritten orders flying through the air and enormous computer screens taking up space. There is an absence of any remarkable cinematography at work. Some of the slapstick comedy is distracting. But it does deliver an original story with some brains behind it. It also delivers some pretty good performances by Akroyd, Murphy and a very young (and it feels weird saying it, beautiful) Jamie Lee Curtis. The whole premise of rich whitey growing complacent and bored in their own wealth, making a one dollar bet on a man's utter demise is completely diabolical but also completely engaging. You sit patiently waiting for the Duke brothers to get their comeuppance. The whole rags to riches / riches to rags dichotomy plays out a bit too swiftly. Billy Ray morphs into the successful executive overnight, and Louis deteriorates into a complete degenerate just as rapidly. Perhaps it's difficult to really showcase a more colorful arch when you only have 119 minutes to work with, and you need to carry the story along. The bottom line is it all falls into place, and the satisfying ending is probably the highlight of the entire film.

Carrie

Brian De Palma, 1976


3/5

Outcast Carrie (Sissy Spacek) is young girl with a secret ability who is tormented by her high school classmates. After an embarrassing shower incident, some of the girls look for revenge while she is just looking to fit in. Based on the book by Stephen King.

One of the better film adaptations of Stephen King's work. This film doesn't appear on a lot of peoples lists in terms of best King films, and that's an oversight. Because ultimately it's a better film than 1408. It's a better film than Sometimes They Come Back. And it's certainly a much better film than Secret Window. The film is an example of old times, old traditions, an old world. A world in which teachers can physically hit their students if they mouth bath. A world in which the act of bullying is ruthless, and in the norm. A world of old gym lockers, and high socks. A world of drinking cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon while driving.

De Palma does a terrific job of directing the film, and the final product is well-organized. Mario Tosi demonstrates some great cinematography with several stand-out moments. The scene where the gym teacher is forcing the girls to exercise during detention. The camera pans just above ground level, capturing the very much outdated clothing and the complaining moans of the girls at each rep. The prom scene is perfectly put together. The glittery silver paper stars sort of give a sense of false pageantry, a disconcerting elegance. The dance band plays on as the sense of uneasiness continues. The camera spins around Carrie as she is experiencing a lot of firsts at once, creating an intoxicating dizziness. Spacek really delivers a great performance. Immediately sympathetic, her eyes tell a whole story. One of the flaws of the film is her mother, played by Piper Laurie. She was surprisingly nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, but her character is very much over-the-top and borderline cartoonish. Probably a character better suited for a book than on film. But Spacek deserved her Oscar nod, and unfortunately lost to Faye Dunaway in Network (tough call there). Some of the horror films like this (although this is more of a thriller) play off a demonic less-is-more let-your-imagination-do-the-work minimalist approach. Character driven 1970's pieces focused on a central force like The Exorcist or The Omen. Films like this can't be made today on a $1.8M budget, and that's a shame. Instead, they are remade on a large budget that relies heavily on CGI to tell the story. A lot ends up being lost. But it's hard to categorize this film as well. It always felt as if it were marketed as a horror. But it's not really that scary. It's more of a well-acted, well-constructed, revenge piece.

Oldboy

Chan-Wook Park, 2003


5/5

          Dae-su Oh is suddenly abducted and put in solitary confinement in what looks like a run-down motel room for 15 years. He is released without knowing why he was imprisoned. What follows is a pursuit of answers, and revenge. Chan-Wook Park delivers a masterpiece that is so well made, that it really sets the bar high for the Revenge-film genre. Every single element in Oldboy from the Cinematography (Chung-hoon Chung), Editing (Kim Sang-beom) to the Music (Jo Yeong-wok) is so impeccable and they all maintain a noticeable presence as you watch. There are fight sequences that will remind you of The Raid: Redemption coupled with imaginative visual elements reminiscent of Watchmen. The Korean landscape in Oldboy is bleak and paints a picture of a very scary world. A world in which if you live recklessly enough and without conscience, there are dark forces out there that can literally sweep you up in the blink of an eye. In Oldboy that sweep happened to come with a beautiful elevated shot as the camera ascended above a telephone booth on the rainy night streets. The artfully crafted blood & violence in the film is not overdone, very much unlike the over-gratuitous gore in Kill Bill. There were a lot of twists in the story-line that I didn't see coming, and the climax of this film is among the best I've ever seen. This film packs a punch, and does not dumb itself down. It will stick with you. I ended up watching it twice in one day and it was even better the second time around. I was very disappointed to hear that Spike Lee is filming a remake of this. Makes me wonder why we can't just let good foreign movies sit in the form in which they were originally created (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Let the Right One In).