Movie of the Week: Paranormal Activity

   

 

    Movie of the Week (9/29/13-10/5/13): This week marks the first week of October and we all know what that means, Halloween is coming! This time of the year is when we all like to be scared because we like it, it gives us a rush that we enjoy, so I figured why not get an early start. This film is one of the most recent horror pictures that is actually scary, along with its sequels, and not just a gore fest. I've become a fan of this franchise because it is one of the few horror franchises that will legitimately scare you. And by "scare you" I mean you will grip your armrest until your hands hurt and you will more than likely let out a terrifying scream or two and annoy the person you are watching it with, but that's okay because this is Paranormal Activity.    
    This is a fairly simple film to follow because it really only has two characters that it focuses on along with a couple other people who only have a short amount of screen time. The film follows two people in their home who began to think something is wrong with their home. They then decide to set up cameras and record the home, mainly their bedroom, at night. Well, soon things begin to take a turn for the worse as crazy and freaky things start to happen. Symbols pop up, noises are heard, things move as they rush to research what it is.
    This is shot in the 'found footage' genre which makes it much more creepy and scary to watch. That also means that the actors have to do that much better of a job because they are forced to act while they are holding the camera and at times have to talk to the camera. So, they almost have to act like normal people instead of acting, but that can be hard to do because of the multiple tasks they are asked to do. With that being said we get two solid performances from the two leads here, who use their real first names in the movie, Katie and Micah. We watch them interact with each other as a couple and then watch their reactions as things begin happening and they do a great job. We believe they are a couple that becomes terrified.
    The 'found footage' genre is good and bad at the same time because it brings multiple things to the table. One of the bad things about this movie are the angles, to put it simple there really aren't any because of one camera being used. That limits what we can see and what they can do as a movie, however that is the point, but some people don't like it. The good things here are what the filmmakers put on that one shot that grabs your attention and make you start to shake. That is what we have in this movie, the one angle can sit there but still make us tremble because we have no idea what is going to pop up next. There also has to be great editing in a film like this and we get just that with the changing of the scenes and pacing.
    Directing a movie like this would have to be hard too since the camera barely moves and a lot of the scenes are long cuts, which means a lot of preparation had to take place before filming each scene. The director, Oren Peli, deserves a lot of credit here because of his skill to direct such complicated long uncut scenes. In the end this is a very well done horror movie that brought back the 'found footage' genre since it was lost for a while after the Blair Witch Project. It was an original film that terrified people and continues to do so with its sequels. So, as we prepare for Halloween pop this in the player this week and start the month off right.
3/4 Stars

Movie of the Week: Apocalypse Now Redux

   

 

    Movie of the Week (9/22/13-9/28/13): You may remember this review of this movie when I first saw it for the first time back in March. But, I felt that it deserved a slot in the Movie of the Week list sooner rather than later. When I finally had the privilege to see the highly acclaimed Vietnam War movie I was very excited and had high expectations for it and they were fulfilled. But, I saw the newer version of it, the version that Francis Ford Coppola, the director, wanted to produce back in 1979. That being said, this version is 49 minutes longer putting the film at a 3 hour and 20 minute epic, so it is easy to see why he chose to cut the film down and make it shorter. However, this version is the only version I have seen, as of right now. I guess this version was just so fantastically edited that I didn't feel like watching the original version, although some day I might.
    This is a review of Apocalypse Now Redux, which came out in 2001. This film is a very dark and disturbing account of the Vietnam War and is a character driven film. It is about a Captain who is sent on a classified mission into Cambodia to kill a Colonel who has gone insane, made himself a god among the local tribes, and works through brutal tactics. The mission seems quite simple, take a boat up river and kill him, but it is not. What goes on in the film is not just about that, it is also about the many different events they encounter along the way.
    But, like I said this is a movie driven by amazing characters and the actors who play them. First, we have Martin Sheen playing Captain Benjamin Willard on the mission. Right off the bat, in the opening scene, we see what the horrors of war does to men by seeing his character lose himself without any dialog. As great as that scene is, it gets better as his reactions to different events grow stronger and darker. He delivers probably the best performance of his career as a Captain, of little words at times, who tells the background of the Colonel through voice over and you can hear the stress in his voice, which makes the film more chilling.

    The next character is Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, played by Robert Duvall who was nominated for an Oscar. His part is small in the movie compared to the length of it, but an important character, he is one of the men Willard meets on his mission. Duvall's whole character centers around him and his men clearing out a village via helicopter attack for Willard and his crew. This scene is very disturbing and graphically depicted with Robert Duvall taking complete control and does a fantastic job.

    Our last character is the mission himself, Colonel Walter Kurtz, played by the great Marlon Brando. We do not even see this character, even though he was top billed, until about 35 minutes remaining in the film. But, once we do meet him the tone of the film changes very fast, it goes from dark to darker and just plain disturbing. This is possible by the performance of Brando, he gives the audience a truly haunting and disturbed character to read. We finally see what is wrong with him once we meet him and find out why the army wants him dead. The movie is truly worth seeing because of his scenes alone even if they are the shortest in the film.
    Although this is a character driven film, there are also several other aspects that make this one of the greatest war movies of all time. The director, Francis Ford Coppola, digs deep into the terror of the Vietnam War in the physical and mental aspects and puts it on the screen in a great haunting fashion through the characters. We also have beautiful Oscar winning cinematography that brings out the likes of the jungle and the graphic depiction of war. Many other aspects like the editing, which is top notch, sound mixing, and the score, which makes the film feel that much more haunting, all make the film worth the watch and the experience of it.
    This is one of the greatest war movies ever made, it might not seem that way as the way I have been describing it as a haunting and disturbing film. However, it is that way because of the wonderful dark performances by the actors, especially Marlon Brando, whose performance is truly fantastic and adds more to the Redux version. A great, well acted, well directed, and long movie that you must see. I will watch the theatrical version soon, hopefully, and compare the two to see which version is better, but for now the Redux version is the version that should be seen and by the end of it you too will be saying, "the horror, the horror." 
4/4 Stars  

Movie of the Week: Reservoir Dogs

   

    Movie of the Week (9/15/13-9/21/13): What do you get when you have the mind of Quentin Tarantino? His first movie he wrote, directed, and starred in? The mob genre? And a fantastic cast to add to it? You get a great heist movie that will keep you on the edge of your seat in the last ten minutes or so. I say last ten minutes, but the entire movie is pretty intense but we are not revealed anything, that the characters don't know, until the last few minutes when we have a bunch of people shooting each other. What we have here is classic Tarantino work in Reservoir Dogs.
    This is obviously a crime drama because Quentin Tarantino wrote it and it involves a heist of some diamonds. Six criminals, who don't know each other, are hired by a mob boss to steal some diamonds for him, but things go terribly wrong when the police show up right away. A shootout ensues and the ones that survive meet up at a warehouse where they begin to suspect that one of them is possibly an undercover cop. From there on we are told a story that is not in chronological order and are given clues to the identity of each man that concludes in a gut-wrenching fashion at the end.
    The first thing that makes this movie great is the wonderful casting, I mean I don't think they could have found better actors to portray these characters, some of whom are never given a real name. We have Harvey Keitel as Mr. White, Tim Roth as Mr. Orange, Michael Madsen as Mr. Blonde, Steve Buscemi as Mr. Pink, Edward Butler as Mr. Blue, and Quentin Tarantino himself as Mr. Brown. All of these great actors play the criminals hired to pull off the heist and all deliver groundbreaking performances as each and every one of them control the movie. There is also Lawrence Tierney as Joe Cabot, the man who hired them, and Chris Penn as Eddie Cabot, his son. Both of whom also deliver us powerful performances. This is a great multi-character drama.
    The best thing about this film is the writing, which was obviously done by Quentin Tarantino. He gives us a fairly simple story, but provides a twist to it by telling it in non-chronological order. We also get great dialogue from the script, as you'll see from the opening scene and scenes where they are trying to figure out who the "rat" is. Tarantino closes this film with a great torture and confrontation scene that might have you churning in your seat along with some sweat added in as the "rat" is revealed and we hear noises off screen as the movie come to a screeching halt. Along with his fantastic other writing credits, this one deserved an Oscar nomination as well, but did not get it.
    Since the film is not in chronological order it has some great editing that probably should have been nominated for an Oscar as well, but was not. But nevertheless the editing is Oscar worthy. Tarantino also directed this film, in which he did another wonderful job, if you're a Tarantino fan you know the work he is capable of and this is another list to add to the top. Although it doesn't quite top Pulp Fiction or Django Unchained, it is his third best film and one that will be remembered for it's acting, writing, editing, and direction from a master of the pen that should be doing more films than he does. If you haven't feasted your eyes on this film, I would advise you to do so!
3.5/4 Stars    

Movie of the Week: Act of Valor

   

 

    Movie of the Week (9/8/13-9/14/13): You can thank the kickoff of the NFL season for me being late this week, I think it's a good excuse! But, just because I'm late again doesn't mean we have no certain movie to watch this week and judge for ourselves. I had a hard time picking out one this week so I decided to go with one that had some high expectations but in the end bombed. However, they had good intentions when they made this movie and that was to honor Navy Seals and other military men and women who have died since 9/11. We have had a few other films to honor them but none like this, no, this one is different because it uses real active Navy Seals, and that was where they went wrong. This is Act of Valor.  
    This film follows a group of Seals who are called upon to rescue a kidnapped CIA agent and in the process they uncover a terror plot on the United States. From there on it is filled with action sequences and some drama with the bad guys and families of the Seals. But that's about it! Let's face it, the plot to this film was very thin and was really nothing we haven't seen before. Good guys figure something out, bad guy tries to get away with it, good guy stops them at the last second. Yeah, it was that kind of movie and, I'll just go on and say it, it wasn't very good. But, don't worry I'll go into more detail about why it just wasn't what it should have been.
    First and foremost it had absolutely terrible acting in it and we know why! It was because the film makers decided to use real active duty Seals and it was just a huge mistake. They should have used real actors, the only real actor is Roselyn Sanchez, to make the movie more believable and exciting to watch. But, don't get me wrong I understand why they decided use real active Seals, to give the film more emotion. But, it back fired completely, I mean the bad guys were the best part of the movie, and that should not happen in a movie like this. On top of the bad acting we have absolutely no character development from our leads, we never really get to know them, just a couple short scenes with their families at the beginning and end. Nothing to make us care about the characters like we should and we can blame the writers for that.
    We can also blame something else on the writers and that is the cliches. The writers must have sat down and watched every single war movie ever made and decided to put every single cliche known to man in this one movie. Now, I can't go into details about them because some contain spoilers but I have never seen a movie so filled with cliches. There were points during the movie where I rolled my eyes because another cliche popped up. The writers either struggled to add in their own ideas or they just didn't care and thought that is what the people wanted, the same old thing! Well they were wrong!
    The only good aspect about this film is the tactics that are used by the Seals and the action sequences. We get very good fight scenes and shootouts that provide a lot of explosions and chases, which, I am sad to say, are the best parts of the film. I say that because war movies need drama and we didn't get that from this film. Another good thing were the tactics that were used by the Seals, those were interesting to watch, but it just wasn't enough to make this movie a good war film with a good mix of drama and action. This is a dissapointment because it was suppose to be a tribute to the fallen in our special forces but it was let down by ways of terrible writting, terrible acting, too many cliches, no character development, and a sub-par plot. You are better off watching Black Hawk Down!                                                                     
1.5/4 Stars.

Movie of the Week: Boogie Nights

   

 

    Movie of the Week (9/1/13-9/7/13): This film has been known to be a little controversial because of its theme and that theme is the porn industry in the late 1970's and early 1980's. This theme might turn a lot of people away from even wanting to see it and give it a chance. But, this film doesn't support the industry or praise it either because it tells a great story of the people involved in it and how it affects their lives, which is mainly in bad ways. And as the film goes on we began to care for the characters, which is a good thing because that means it has good writing, because of everything they go through. This is one of the very good films that came out in 1997, this is Boogie Nights.
    The film follows a young man who is looking for a way out of his troubled life, or so he thinks, that he caused himself. Once his mother calls him out on it he splits and meets an Adult film producer and director by the name of Jack Horner. From there on we are brought into a fantastic story with several characters involved. That is what makes this movie so great, there are so many characters in this film and each one has their problems and some of the problems and very serious ones, which are the problems that bring out the drama in this picture. Now, there is so much going on in this story that I can't get into every detail, but if I do some spoilers might come out, so that's okay.
    But, what I will discuss is that cast who all do a fantastic job especially three of them, Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, and Julianne Moore. Mark Wahlberg plays the lead in this film, he has two names, Eddie Adams, his real name and Dirk Diggler, his stage name. This film was probably his breakout film because he delivers such an electrified performance from beginning to end, although some of the scenes had to be awkward to film. Burt Reynolds plays the Adult film director, Jack Horner, who discovers the new found sensation. Reynolds really controls the movie the majority of the time, every time he is on screen with anybody he controls it, which probably got him nominated for an Oscar. Julianne Moore plays Amber Waves, an actress in the industry, and she too delivers in every scene because she has several scenes that involve mixed emotions. She too was nominated for an Oscar. The rest of the all-star cast consist of Luis Guzman, John C. Reilly, Don Cheadle, Heather Graham, William H. Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Thomas Jane, Philip Baker Hall, and Alfred Molina. Not all of these are big parts, but they affect the film in some way and each and every actor gives us everything they got in their performances and they help the film flow well.
    The big thing that makes this movie so great is the writing by director Paul Thomas Anderson, who wrote one fantastic screenplay. This film is actually based on a short film of his he made back in 1988, he just did a great job on expanding it. There is a lot of perfectly written dialog in the film and he intentionally makes some of it awkward, which is what we would expect in some of the scenes. The drama that he brought to the screen is also wonderful and he does this with a lot of long cuts, which are great! The opening of the film is a near four minutes long without a single cut, along with two other scenes in particular that were shot the same way, one in particular involves William H. Macy's character about halfway through the movie. A great and dramatic scene! There is also one sequence about two hours in that is very intense.
    The film also looks great with beautiful cinematography and, in my opinion, Oscar worthy editing, but it didn't get nominated. The last thing that makes this film a great film, and the second best film of 1997 behind Titanic and just in front of Good Will Hunting, is the character development. Every character in this film evolves in someway, they rise and fall or start from the top and fall and have to start all over for one reason or another. This is a film that is not well known to many because of the subject matter, but I assure you it tells a great story that will have you hooked from the opening shot. Characters rise from the bottom or they fall from top because of captivating performances, wonderful writing, fantastic directing, and interesting editing with long uncut scenes. If you haven't seen it I urge you to.             
4/4 Stars