From time to time, I forget or not motivated enough to write a full length review for every single film I have seen in theaters.
As to catch up, here are some short form reviews:
Trance
Angry at the fact that Christopher Nolan is the new champion of British Surrealism, former wunderkind Danny Boyle delivers his strange take of INCEPTION plot struggles and mind-bending contrivances. James MacAvoy is Simon, a lowly nobody who becomes the inside man for a group of gangsters, helping them steal a Goya painting put up for sale. He makes the staged struggle too good, getting an improvised shotgun butt to the noggin, and receives the classic case of amnesia. The Vincent Cassel-led gangsters come a-calling when it is revealed that Simon double crossed them and they use a female psychiatrist played by Rosario Dawson to jog Simon's memory and locate the painting's whereabouts. This search leads to darker imagery and hidden complications but the film is so messed up and hard to understand, even by the end where another major twist causes the whole film to be questioned. Despite its faults in conveying its complete story, the movie has some breathtaking shots, a fine musical score, and daring performances by the main three actors. You'll be bamboozled and snookered constantly but it's an interesting ride for sure.
FINAL REVIEW: 3 / 5
The Croods
THE CROODS is the latest 3D animated film to implement the recently popular trend of parental issues into its main proceedings. Nicolas Cage voices Grug, the head of the titled caveman family, whose ideals to stay forever isolated in the protective shelling of a cave is literally crushed due to the uncontrollable separation of the continents and the intervention of a brain-using stranger named Guy. As they make the trek to the promise land of "Tomorrow", the family meet an imaginative cast of oddball creatures and learn advanced ways of human life. Writer-directors Kirk DeMicco and Chris Sanders certainly have made an exciting and humorous prehistoric adventure, full of the great gags, clever exchanges, and some heartbreaking moments. Of course, the show really goes to the fine people at Dreamworks Animation, who supplied some amazing character movements and expert comedic timing, when they are not crafting some breathtaking visual artistry such as a sequence where the characters are literally walking on the clouds. The star-laden cast certainly play well off of each other and never feel distracting to their status. Instead, they create a lovable family that viewers would like to follow and go back to.
FINAL REVIEW: 4 / 5
Oblivion
Tom Cruise's latest film to stay relevant in big-time Hollywood features is never invigorating either in violent action or mental thought. Cruise is Jack Harper, a robot drone repairman who with his female partner (Andrea Riseborough) oversee the apocalyptic ruins of America from the wandering aliens who helped destroy it. They are about to leave the planet to join with the rest of humanity on Titan, only to find that nothing is what it seems and a mysterious woman (Olga Kurylenko) holds the key to Jack's memory-wiped past. There's no shocking surprises, no interesting angles, nor a unique sci-fi look to the picture because this film snatches from nearly all of them: The first half flows exactly like WALL-E but with no joy, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and MOON are cribbed wholesale, and the whole productional design feels like the leftovers of TRON: LEGACY (no surprise since they share the same director). Once the predictable twists come out and the cast expands, it gets a bit easier to digest its shallowness. The sole exception is the film's nauseating gender politics, where women are constantly shown to be weak-willed, catty, robotically evil, or silent in the background. At least it had a great score and ending theme, supplied by the electronica group M83.
FINAL REVIEW: 2 / 5
No comments:
Post a Comment