facebook_twitter

Gavin Grades The Movies

Posts from January 2010

Edge of Darkness
by Gavin , posted Nov 2 2011 7:19PM
Mel Gibson is back and doing exactly what we remembered him doing the last time we saw him on the big screen...kicking copious amounts of ass.  The difference now is that he's older, grayer, and not quite as good as he once was at it.  But you gotta give him a break and let him get his sea legs back.  This is the man who gave us Braveheart, Signs and the Lethal Weapon series.  He also is a masterful, Academy Award-winning director who has given us the amazing The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto during his acting hiatus too.  He truly is an artist, just not sure why he chose Edge of Darkness as his comeback to acting since he could've done much better.  This action flick is the cliche story of a father trying to get revenge or justice or whichever comes first for his daughter, who we see get brutally murdered in the first five minutes of the movie.  You'd think it was a Disney film with how early they kill a loved one.  If you got up to pee or get popcorn before the opening credits start, you may come back and never really know what's going on.  Shortly after the murder he meets a mysterious stranger played by Ray Winstone (Beowulf, The Departed).  If I could select any voice to have in Hollywood for the rest of my life, it just might be Winstone's.  His mumbling, raspy British voice is so unique you can almost smell the whiskey coming off his breath.  I enjoy him in every movie I see  of his and he doesn't disappoint in this either, although he's not on screen as much as he should be.  The film is carried squarely on the shoulders of Mel and tries to center itself on the mystery of who killed his daughter and why.  The problem with the movie is that for the first two-thirds of the movie, you find yourself not carrying more and more.  Here you have a father investigating the murder of his own daughter and he doesn't look like he could care at all.  He seems like he's doing it only because he has too as a detective.  The emotional drive that made the movie Taken with Liam Neison so good was missing from this very similar plot. However, the final act of Edge of Darkness saves it from the downward spiral it was headed in.  That's rare for any movie, especially action films like this.  Usually if a film sucks through most of it, the ending is gonna get even worse.  But the bloody violence and carnage displayed in the final 20 minutes is representative of the kind of film we wanted from the very beginning.  I feel like that was just a miscalculation on the part of the director, Martin Campbell.  He knows how to do action since he made Casino Royale, which was the first James Bond movie I ever gave a crap about and could actually get through.  I guess he just thought that the story and Mel Gibson acting again (even with a pretty horrible Boston accent) would be enough to make this movie as thrilling as it needed to be but instead brought the Edge of Darkness to the edge of entertainment and pretty much stopped there.  But it's still good to see Mel on screen again...even if it had to be this. Edge of Darkness (Rated R) Gavin Grade: C+
 (1) Comments
Tags :  
Social: , , , , , , , , 

 
Tooth Fairy
by Gavin , posted Nov 2 2011 7:19PM
There are certain movies that you go into with a negative preconceived idea about, almost like a chip on your shoulder.  You sit down thinking that a movie is going to be garbage because nothing you've seen about it gives any indication otherwise.  It's the kind of movie where you almost get mad that it was even made because it's purely a money churning machine that was manufactured from assembly line type movie makers with no imagination, talent or skill put into it.  I thought that about this movie but I remembered that it was made for children.  So what I did was bring kids with me.  I sat down with my friend's 5-year-old Ryan and 7-year-old Dani and watched Tooth Fairy starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.  Before the movie, Ryan even lost his first tooth not that long ago and was telling me how the tooth fairy came recently.  His excitement rubbed off on me a little and I was prepared to enjoy this movie through their enthusiasm.  Sometimes I hate it when my initial instinct is right.  What an awful, uninspired movie.  I'm not sure how The Rock has a successful career because he is one of the worst actors I've seen in a long time.  The movie steals the same plot almost as Tim Allen's The Santa Clause but with less jokes, less heart and less...well, plot.  I should've seen that coming since director Michael Lembeck directed The Santa Clause movies...sorry, not the good one but the other ones.  Even the special FX appear as if they were thrown together as a crude afterthought.  The script for this movie was originally written in 1992 and sat on the shelf at Fox all those years until it was taken down, brushed off and rewritten by five different guys clearly showing how little time anyone put into this.  There is a saving grace about it though and that comes in the form of a very funny supporting cast.  Julie Andrews, Billy Crystal, Seth McFarlane (Family Guy) and Stephen Merchant (BBC's The Office, Extras) save this from the pit of shame.  Billy Crystal is in the movie for only one scene and in those precious 8 minutes he delivers enough laughs to almost recommend someone see it just for that.  I feel bad for someone as comically brilliant as Stephen Merchant since he had to endure the entire movie as The Rock's fairy case worker, Tracy.  His timing, British wit and improv talent make the movie tolerable for just that alone, but it's wasted on the kids and doesn't amuse them at all.  This brings me back to my guests for the night.  Only once did I hear Ryan and Dani chuckle and as I looked at them periodically during the film I saw them growing increasingly bored.  By the end of the movie I felt bad that I invited them.  For all I know I ruined their imaginations forever and the next time Ryan looses a tooth he'll just throw it away out of fear that someone as untalented as The Rock shows up as the tooth fairy. Tooth Fairy (Rated PG) Gavin Grade: D+
 (3) Comments
Tags :  
Social: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 

 
Crazy Heart
by Gavin , posted Nov 2 2011 7:19PM
Last year, Mickey Rourke played a rundown, old profession wrestler that was past his prime, his own worst enemy and a tragic anti-hero in The Wrestler.  The role won him several awards and put life back into his dead career.  In Crazy Heart, Jeff Bridges plays a rundown, old professional country singer that is past his prime, his own worst enemy and a tragic anti-hero.  So far Bridges has won several awards for this as well, including the Golden Globe.  If you think these movies sound VERY similar it's because they are.  They are the same type of story, directed the same type of way and written with the same gritty dialogue...and damnit, it's still effective as hell.  Crazy Heart did to me what The Wrestler did and that was make me care about a subject I don't care about.  I have zero interest in Country Music.  I don't like it.  It doesn't like me.  But Bridges' character, who is a near 60-year-old chain smoking alcoholic named Bad Blake, is a world away from Rourke's Randy the Ram wrestler.  Bad Blake is a likable, charismatic guy who made some bad choices in his life but none of them make you, as a viewer, angry.  He's the kind of guy that you'd want to buy a drink and listen to his stories, even after he broke your heart.  Jeff Bridges plays this part beautifully and so subtly, you'd think it was based on someone he knew.  I've always been a fan of his and I'm glad he's finally getting the credit he deserves as an actor.  (I still think he got slighted for playing The Dude in the greatest comedy of all time The Big Lebowski.)  The craft that comes out on the screen is hypnotic and wonderful no matter what Bridges is doing, even when he's throwing up in a toilet or fingering Maggie Gyllenhaal...not sure which is more disturbing actually.  Every mumbled syllable that comes out of his mouth is like a mystic cliffhanger; you're not sure if you should laugh, cry or just listen in case some old timey country wisdom plops out.  (I even found myself enjoying the music he sings all himself too.)  I'm not sure how much of that is Bridges or the script, which was written by the first-time-director, Scott Cooper.  I get the impression that a lot of what made it on the screen was improvised, but I'm really not sure.  Cooper's direction isn't bad.  He does what he could with the limited budget the film had.  He captures the infinite desert sky with the same beauty that Ang Lee did in Brokeback Mountain.  However he also does a poor job of making me believe certain scenes are of concerts in front of 12,000 people.  I know he didn't have the budget for it but geez man, it looks pretty amateurish to just fill a few rows and then hope we can't see past bright lights in our eyes.  It really doesn't matter though.  The movie isn't about that, or the script, or even the other actors in it.  Sure Gyllenhaal, Robert Duval and an uncredited Colin Farrel (wowing with a fake Southern accent) are great and fun to watch, but it's all about Bridges.  He's the star, the reason to watch and the reason he'll hopefully win the Oscar...finally. Crazy Heart  (Rated R) Gavin Grade: A-
 (0) Comments
Tags :  
Social: , , , , , , , , , , , 

 
Extraordinary Measures
by Gavin , posted Nov 2 2011 7:19PM
If you've watched anything on CBS for the past three months then you've probably seen ads for this movie from CBS Films starring Brendan Fraiser and Harrison Ford.  The trailer for Extraordinary Measures is one of the worst I've ever seen.  They revealed too much and made it look like a slightly flashier made-for-TV movie or a special episode of ER.  This movie, which suffers from the worst title, poster and marketing of the last few years, was actually better than I thought it would be.  The story is about a family man, played by Fraiser, teaming up with a doctor, played by Ford, to find a cure for the disease that is killing Fraiser's two children.  The movie prays on your emotions from the very beginning displaying the phrase "inspired by true events."  Right out of the gate they want you to be inspired by this story because it "really happened."  Sadly, "inspired by true events" is the Hollywood catchall which means that none of what you're seeing could be true.  Thankfully the best and most inspiring parts of this movie are true.  What's not true is the uncomfortable relationship the Harrison Ford character forms with Fraiser to find a cure.  That also means that the most boring parts of this movie aren't true.  So for the life of me I can't figure out why screenwriter Robert Nelson Jacobs (Chocolat, The Shipping News) made them so boring.  I can't really blame first time director, Tom Vaughn on this because his only experience prior was TV.  Perhaps the blame could be Harrison Ford's, who was also Executive Producer on this film.  There is so much time spent on the increasingly boring parts of the film, that it slowly sucks all the emotion from the rest.  Extraordinary Measures has the perfect makings to be a tear-jerking tissue-using sobfest.  It's not and I want you to know that I'm not someone who is afraid to cry at movies; in fact I love it.  I went to see this fully expecting it to sucker punch me into crying even when I didn't want too.  I would imagine that any parent who has ever had to go through a chronic problem with their child that put them in the hospital for extended periods of time wouldn't be able to handle this however. But for the rest of us, it's pretty easily done.  It's almost as if this they started to make this as a mad-for-TV film and then changed their mind but didn't change the script or director...just added some bigger actors.  The film isn't a letdown and it isn't impressive.  If Extraordinary Measures did anything extraordinary it was balancing on the line of mediocrity so well it never leans one way or the other. Extraordinary Measures  (Rated PG-13) Gavin Grade: C
 (0) Comments
Tags :  
Social: , , , , , , , , , 

 
The Book of Eli
by Gavin , posted Nov 2 2011 7:19PM
The marketing campaign behind The Book of Eli staring Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman did a very good job of keeping a level of mystique around the plot of this film.  The trailers certainly had my interest peaked as I watched Denzel walking through a post-Apocalyptic landscape kicking every single one of the reject cast members of the Mad Max series he sees.  Hell yeah, I'm in!  Of course the reason why the studio did such a great job of making sure the story was kept a secret was because it might be one of the worst stories I've ever seen.  That completely shocks me since it has Oscar-winning actors that I respect and love in it, The Hughes Brothers (From Hell, Menace II Society) directing it, high production value, decent sets, and mediocre action sequences.  So why does this movie suck?  Well, I'm not one to give away key plot points or spoilers but I have to mention WHY exactly this movie is so bad.  The plot is that Denzel is Eli, a man walking across the country to bring the very last Bible to the only secured compound in the country that is attempting to rebuild our culture and society.  He encounters Gary Oldman along the way, who is some sort of mayor of a silly-looking Old West town.  Oldman wants the Bible so that he can use it as a weapon to enslave people, even though he already has them under his boot.  Okay, sounds pretty good, right?  I would totally enjoy that plot.  I'm on board.  I'll sit in the theater and gladly watch that premise.  Here's the problem: Eli is on a mission from God to deliver His word so it carries on and in doing so, he commits the most vicious and gruesome acts of violence to do it.  He slices, dices, shoots, and severs everyone who tries to get their hands on the Bible...I guess so they don't find out that murdering is a sin.  It is literally a hole in the plot SO large I wanted to hop in a car and drive through it so I could leave the theater.  I mean, who the hell is this movie for?!  It's way too violent and rapey for the Christian crowd and way too silly and stupid for everyone else.  I'm almost embarrassed for Washington and Oldman for being in this movie!  This is the kind of crap that is reserved for Vin Diesel and Nicolas Cage and gets released straight-to-DVD.  I won't give them away but there are twists at the end of the movie that make it even worse, if you can believe that.  Now, I'm not hating on this movie because of my personal religious views or whether or not I believe in the Bible.  I'm honestly thinking about it from the standpoint of everyone.  If Eli's actions can be justified by God in the movie, I would imagine there would be one pretty pissed off Jesus somewhere when he finds out that instead of being crucified he could've grabbed the nearest saber and decapitated his way to freedom.  Now granted there are bad movies out there that are meant to be silly comedies, but I think what makes this movie worse than those is that it takes itself so seriously!  The Book of Eli is like watching an ignorant imbecile try to make a point about something they know nothing about; eventually you want to stop watching because you're laughing when you're not suppose too. The Book of Eli (Rated R) Gavin Grade: F
 (8) Comments
Tags :  
Social: , , , , , , , , , , , , 

 
The Lovely Bones
by Gavin , posted Nov 2 2011 7:19PM
The book The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold sat on the New York Times Bestsellers List for over a year and sold over a million copies, so there's a good chance you might have read the book.  I did not.  I imagine that the book is filled with such amazing imagery that you don't want to put it down.  I've been told that it's a "page-turner" that's filled with excitement.  Sadly, the movie is primarily far from that.  The movie The Lovely Bones is directed by the very talented and Oscar winning Peter Jackson who gave us The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.  The movie is about a girl guiding her family through pain and justice as she helps them find her killer from beyond the grave after she is murdered.  It stars Saoirse Ronan (Atonement), Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz and the amazing Stanley Tucci.  So if you're keeping score at home, you've got a very popular book that many people loved, an amazing director and a stellar cast; but if DaVinci Code/Angels & Demons taught us anything, it's that that doesn't guarantee anything.  There are scenes of this 135-minute-long movie that seem like 135 minutes themselves. "The In-Between," which is the not-quite-heaven world that Susie spends most of the movie in, moves at a pace that is shockingly slow.  Sure the FX are pretty and fun to watch, but that gets old really fast and eventually the scenes that are meant to be mysterious and emotional just turn into parts of the story that get in the way.  Nothing interesting happens in them and because the dialogue in those scenes is stilted and awkward, nothing interesting is said either.  It's a real shame that that occupies most of the movie since the premise of a serial killer living in suburban Pennsylvania (on a street that looks JUST like where I grew up) and a family dealing with the loss while searching for justice is REALLY compelling.  Stanley Tucci plays George Harvey who is said serial killer and it might be one of his greatest performances.  After watching him confess his love to Julia Child in Julie & Julia, it's shocking to watch him play the polar opposite of that.  He's nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance in this and I think he may get an Oscar nomination for it too.  It's one of two things that keeps this movie interesting, the other being Peter Jackson's direction.  It's odd to watch anything that Jackson does that's not Lord of the Rings because he uses the same techniques in everything.  In The Lovely Bones he may have made one of the scariest scenes shot this year as we cling to every painful second of a serial killer seducing a 14-year-old girl before killing and raping her (it's not done graphically).  Tucci and Jackson crafted scenes like that one so well that you can actually feel your temperature and pulse rise with every syllable spoken.  Sadly, those moments aren't enough to carry the film which turns out to be too long, too clunky and too slow; and made me feel like it should've stayed on the pages and in the imaginations of the millions that read it.  What should've been budding with emotion, turned out to be budding with nothing. The Lovely Bones (Rated  PG-13) Gavin Grade: C+
 (1) Comments
Tags :  
Social: , , , , , , , , , , 

 
Daybreakers
by Gavin , posted Nov 2 2011 7:19PM
Hey, remember when vampires used to be scary?  Remember that?  They weren't always brooding teenagers who were in love that barely resemble what legend and literature tells us what a vampire is.  They used to drink blood, have fangs, kill humans and be freaking scary, damnit!!  It's good to know that the writing/directing team of The Spierig Brothers remember that and try to bring us back to the gory gusto that used to rule the vampire landscape.  The bloodsuckers in Daybreakers are elegant, sophisticated and sexy...for the most part.  That is until their blood supply runs out and then they turn into the snarling, ghastly beasts we vampire lovers have been missing.  The movie takes place in 2019, after a virus has turned almost everyone into vampires who are now farming the remaining humans for blood.  Ethan Hawke is the doctor working on getting vamps off blood and Willem DeFoe is a human resistance leader.  Seems odd that two gifted actors, that I've had the pleasure of seeing perform quite challenging roles in the past, would agree to do such a wacky, futuristic horror movie.  However, if I were to have read the script for this movie, I would've been excited to take part in it too.  On paper, I'll bet this movie was brimming with originality, scares and action.  Sadly for everyone who took part in this movie who thought that, only half of it came across on the screen.  The originality seemed somewhat borrowed, the scares were effective but brief and the action was non-existent.  But that's not to say that I wasn't entertained by this wayward horror.  I've always been a sucker (no pun intended) for vampire movies, that is until they were turned into lovers and not biters; so, I feel like I'm willing to sit through anything that's about them to give it a chance.  I was invested in the story from start to finish and was only mildly bored at times.  I was let down at the lack of true horror splatter that I was expecting until the ending turned into a full out, blood-soaked orgy of violence, which teetered on parody at the directors' choices.  But overall, there was just something missing from this movie.  It seemed like an incomplete script.  I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that there's another half hour of footage that landed on the cutting room floor instead of the final print.  Daybreakers was only about 100 minutes long, so half of that missing footage wouldn't have hurt and might have made this attempt at horror and action a little closer to the Bull's Eye than it was. Daybreakers  (Rated R) Gavin Grade: C
 (0) Comments
Tags :  
Social: , , , , , , , , , , 

 
Youth in Revolt
by Gavin , posted Nov 2 2011 7:19PM
Ever since Juno came out and made a huge financial and Oscar splash, there has been an avalanche of quirky romantic comedies that have been greenlit from studios that feature new indie directors that can bring their artistic sense to the visuals that reflect the love between the cute, awkward boy and the overly confident girl who both talk like intellectual and cultural elitists that are on a level that is way above their age.  Some of those have been GREAT (ie: (500) Days of Summer) and some have been AWFUL (ie: Bart Got a Room).  Luckily for us Youth in Revolt is on the great side!  Michael Cera is here again starring as...well...Michael Cera.  His schtick of playing the same role in every movie he's ever done kind of stops here.  In this film, which is based on the cult book of the same title, he plays two parts; one is an awkward, love-struck, shy guy named Nick Twisp and the other is a smooth, rebellious, rock star named Francois Dillinger.  To avoid confusion here you have to understand that he doesn't play two characters, he plays two personalities of the same character; think Fight Club if Fight Club was a comedy about being in love.  The alter ego of Nick is the most acting we've seen from Cera in anything and not just because he has blue eyes, a pencil-thin mustache and 5 o'clock shadow...or at least as much as Cera can naturally grow.  This made me pleased to see and gave me hope that Cera will have a longer shelf life if he continues this instead of his one-trick-pony routine.  Cera is also just the lead of the VERY impressive comedic cast that consists of Ray Liotta (Observe and Report), Fred Willard (Best in Show), Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover), Steve Buscemi and more.  One of the greatest finds from this movie though is actress Portia Doubleday, who plays the lead love interest in this.  Despite having almost no acting credits to her name, she does a fantastic job at being sexy, strong, tender and funny.  Another treasure to come from Youth in Revolt is director Miguel Arteta!  This guy came mostly from directing TV shows like The Office and Ugly Betty but seems to have finally gotten a chance to flex his talent on this project.  He allows for some really genius moments to be even funnier than I'm sure it was on paper by infusing animation, CGI, claymation, ultra slow motion shots and a quirky, dated soundtrack to not only execute the tone of the film, but also capture what it feels like to be a teenager in love.  It's impressive to me that Youth in Revolt did that AND made me laugh hard enough to set the bar for the rest of the comedies this year very, very high. Youth in Revolt (Rated R) Gavin Grade: A
 (2) Comments
Tags :  
Social: , , , , 

 
Invictus
by Gavin , posted Nov 2 2011 7:19PM
I have no idea how Clint Eastwood does it.  The man is 80-years-old and is still producing and directing movies.  And he's not just directing movies that allow him to sit on a set, close to his home, in an easy chair and watch scenes of dialog play out.  He's directing movies with complex stories, interesting characters and lots of sweeping action sequences...like Invictus.  This is the true story of how South African President Nelson Mandela used the country's Rugby team to help united the country.  See, at the time the movie starts, South Africa had just been reunited and racial strife was still rich in the country.  The Rugby team you see was left over from the white side of the country but Mandela used it to show goodwill toward everyone.  That slight explanation into the background of what's happening in this film might help you enjoy it more than I did.  There's nothing at the beginning of the film that would help explain what the hell's going on.  Because of that, I spent the first half of the film confused and most of the second half trying to figure out the first half.  Eastwood chose to make a true story about an event that not a lot of people know about that centers around a sport that almost no one knows a lot about.  That's fine and you can do that, but make sure you guide us at some point.  And even when they do try to explain, the thick accents from the predominantly all South African cast made it even harder.  My other problem with the movie was that it failed to show how the team was uniting the country until maybe the last 20 minutes of the 134 minute run time.  I got the impression that it was happening but never gained a full sense of the scope of it all.  That was the fault of the screenplay, I believe.  The stars of the film are the ones that saved it.  Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon are always fun to watch.  Damon was rather subdued in the film but that might have been because the real life Rugby players he portrays was or he was concentrating on his accent too much to worry about anything else.  Freeman though gives one of his best performances as Mandela.  Giving him only a wig and some fake teeth, he becomes the mirror image of him.  The way Freeman carries himself, speaks, looks, and reacts to others is so spot on that it deserves the attention of the Academy.  I realize that I might be in the minority since everyone I was with loved Invictus, but it was too disconnected and too confusing for me.  I should've known it would be like that going in since just saying the title of the film is challenging enough. Invictus (Rated PG-13) Gavin Grade: C+
 (0) Comments
Tags :  
Social: , , , , , , , , , 

 


advertise with us
Recent Blog Posts
The Hangover 3
Gavin
May 24
Jason Can't Swallow Pills
The Wake Up Call
May 22
Anthem Butchered at Hockey Game
The Wake Up Call
May 21
Oklahoma Tornados
The Wake Up Call
May 21
Star Trek: Into Darkness
Gavin
May 17
Another Kanye Rant
The Wake Up Call
May 17
Seeing Something Shocking
The Wake Up Call
May 15
Congratulating Cancelled Show
The Wake Up Call
May 14
Categories
Archives