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Trance Review (Kirk Haviland)

Trance Review

Starring: James McAvoy, Vincent Cassel, Rosario Dawson

Written by Joe Ahearne, John Hodge

Director Danny Boyle takes a step back into the realm of the psychological crime thriller for the first time since his debut film “Shallow Grave” with his newest film set in the world of art crime, Trance. The film is the feature adaptation of writer Joe Ahearne’s television film from 2001 of the same name, with frequent Boyle writing collaborator Hodge helping out with script of this version of the story. With a stellar trio leading the film the only question that remains is how effective it is?

Simon (McAvoy) is a fine art auctioneer who gets mixed up with a gang led by Franck (Cassel) looking to steal a painting. After the painting goes missing, Simon and Franck, along with Franck’s crew, join forces with hypnotherapist Elizabeth (Dawson) to recover their lost spoils. As boundaries between desire, reality and hypnotic suggestion begin to blur the stakes rise faster than anyone could have anticipated.

Trance features some excellent performances of an overcooked script that ultimately results in a decent yet flawed final product. The script starts off with elegantly simple and well explained art heist that is easy to follow with a great performance from McAvoy. After the heist goes wrong and Simon loses his memory, Simon goes for hypnotherapy from Dawson’s Elizabeth and the story slowly gets more erratic and out of control. The final act is a series of twists and turns that end up folding in on them, the center does not hold as decisions make less sense when more information comes to light. The actions of Dawson’s Elizabeth make the least sense of the 3, but she ultimately holds the fates of all of them in her hands.

The trio are all good here, McAvoy’s sly grin and charm work well in his portrayal of Simon, a character that always seems to be hiding something. Cassel is brilliant, as usual, as the Gang leader who despite his best efforts and often brutal methods attempting to extract information from Simon cannot help but be drawn into Elizabeth’s sensual web. Dawson’s performance is bold, uninhibited and seductive. She fearlessly gives everything to the role and is quite frankly the main reason the film actually works in the end.

The film has a slick visual style and sensibility that enhances the performances as well. With Boyle working with another frequent collaborator, Academy Award winning cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, behind the camera and production manager Mark Tildesley setting the stage, even a regular apartment takes on a unique and effective look.

The film’s great performances and visual style are enough to elevate the film above the overly convoluted script, but only just. But Dawson and Cassel have a strong chemistry and McAvoy is more than decent in a difficult role which is enough for the film to get a pass. Trance is a mild recommend.

Till Next Time

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Jurassic Park 3D Review (Kirk Haviland)

Jurassic Park 3D Review

Starring: Sam Neil, Laura Dern, Richard Attenborough, Jeff Goldblum, Ariana Richards, Joseph Mazzello, Bob Peck, Martin Ferrero, BD Wong, Wayne Knight and Samuel L. Jackson

Written by David Koepp and Michael Crichton based on Crichton’s novel.

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Back in theaters 20 years after its initial release, and yes that statement may make you feel really old, is the landmark summer blockbuster from Steven Spielberg that changed how movie theaters were equipped for sound and racked up major box office dollars, Jurassic Park. Being retro fitted for 3D for this reissue, Jurassic Park still remains the most realistic film to depict dinosaurs on screen but the question is how does the 3D transfer effect the film’s visuals and does it add anything to the experience.

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Olympus Has Fallen Review (Paolo Kagaoan)

Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

Starring Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Dylan McDermott, Ashley Judd, Radha Mitchell, Angela Bassett, Melissa Leo, Robert Forster, Morgan Freeman and Ricky Yune

Directed by Antoine Fuqua

Olympus Has Fallen is not just an action movie as much as it is one about a president, and because of that we, the audience, begin this experience with a score that seems derivative of a mid-90’s Sorkin movie. The rest of the movie has Antoine Fuqua’s muscular film-making but the score is one of many details that give away this feeling that he palpably does not have full control of it.

In Camp David, the virile US President Benjamin Asher (Eckhart) and his wife (Judd) prepare for an event that doubles as a Christmas celebration and a reelection push. Asher’s Secret Service handler Banning (Butler) reminds them how much time they have left, and the fictional FLOTUS asks Banning which earrings she should wear. She chooses a different pair, and because of this she has to die. Actually what happens is a bridge accident that forces Banning to choose to either save Asher or his wife.

Eighteen months later Banning gets demoted – doing the right thing means that he still reminds Asher of the tragedy. The latter tries to move on with his second term, going through the routines after the Fourth of July. He talks policy with a selected few, and we know that someone within his inner circle (Leo) is his Defense Secretary because of the inter-titles, one for every major character.

This adds a layer of plausibility to the movie, which it shall desperately need when one considers what happens next. A North Korean paramilitary troop, led by a man who has infiltrated the high levels of the South’s government, invades of the White House – Secret Service Code: Olympus – the first invasion of its kind since we did it in 1812. The troop has wiped away most of America’s defenses except for Banning, who wants to rescue Asher, the latter held hostage by the North Koreans in the White House bunker. The troop’s attractive leader Kang (Yune) has political and personal history driving him to this point. He takes Olympus so he can demand the removal of American vessels and weapons within the international waters near North Korean territory. Living after 9/11 I kept reminding myself that again, all of this is plausible, but the CGI work here is so blatant and unseamless that it makes the premise seem like an insult to video games.

What seems like the surface of a big budget action movie is really what could be the year’s best half-unintentional comedy. The movie earns big points for casting over-actors and putting them in the same bunker. Leo stretches out her words and suffering more than Shatner could, showing off as much of her imperfect skin as decently possible, reminding her audience that she won an Oscar. Eckhart, going through that frat-bro phase in his career that began with Battle LA, twitchily turns his head in all directions, constantly looking like he’s trying to pass stool. Bassett – who is outside the bunker as Banning’s friend and right hand woman to the Speaker and Acting President (Freeman) – punctuates every sentence with the word ‘dammit’ as she has done for the past few years. And McDermott’s lines and deliveries seem like we might as well be watching another episode of American Horror Story. Some of you might know that I like my actors. And they bring laughs but they are so ironically bad here that they deserve ironic applause, too. Their uproarious performances have a way of making us feel something special in what could have been a boring Gerard Butler shoot ’em up movie.

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Ginger and Rosa Review (Paolo Kagaoan)

Ginger and Rosa (2012)

Starring Elle Fanning, Christina Hendricks, Alessandro Nivola, Timothy Spall, Oliver Platt, Annette Bening, Jodhi May, and introducing Alice Englert

Directed by Sally Potter

Ginger and Rosa, two names that evoke the colour red and its rage and romance , are the names of two fictional young women in 1960’s London (played by Fanning and Englert, respectively). Nuclear bombs aside, the film boasts the happiest, most bittersweet first ten minutes of recent theatrical releases. We, the audience, can’t help but get suckered in while watching the two play, making a working class, rubble-laden, paint-chipped London their playground as if they are still children. The two young, bright leads delicately transition between purity and the separate explorations that they will take. And Potter’s direction in these scenes is commendably painterly, this quality clearer here than in her earlier, more prosaic efforts in Thriller and Orlando. This kind of pacing and storytelling may not always be able to sustain itself throughout the film but it can still highlight key emotional moments.

Ginger and Rosa is another depiction of that postwar era that English-speaking directors have captured for the past six years or so. But the word ‘another’ feels like a disservice against the film when it is not. Potter’s film adds layers to this wary, stumbling renaissance by leaving reminders of the bomb. That same bomb that Betty Draper talks about to her psychiatrist, speculating that the latter’s other patients are equally worried about it. The bomb – shown here in what I assume is in colourful yet grainy 8mm, obliterates a Japanese city. It’s the bomb that Ginger starts to read about in magazines, wondering whether those around her are equally agitated about these nuclear weapons. Her main influence is ‘her Roland’ (Nivola), a man who doesn’t want to be called her father because of its supposed bourgeois implications. Other influences include those played by Hendricks, Spall, Platt, and Bening, great character actors who imbue the people they play with complementary and essential shades of intelligent warmth. Most of Ginger’s support system are adults, brandishing the same paranoiac scars as the young. But Ginger does not see this common quality between the generations, in effect carrying the bomb on her shoulders because she believes that these adults refuse to do so.

The movie’s autobiographic feel makes me slightly hesitant to criticize this or any part of it, but I still must point out my issues, nitpicks though they may be. The protagonists represent the halves of the 1960’s – Ginger is the political half, Rosa the fashionably sexual. And while Ginger and her activism takes a more nuanced spotlight, Rosa and sex are sketches, left woefully underdeveloped. The movie’s depiction of sexuality is also problematic. It implies that Ginger accelerates her activism because of sexual frustration, burying her nose in her political magazines while on the other side of the wall, Rosa is making out with a strange man. It does not help that Ginger constantly sees Roland cheat on her mother (Hendricks), and that Roland and his new partner philosophically justify their adultery. Ginger’s knowledge of Roland’s affair builds to a climax in the devastating last half hour. But still, rationalization and sexual roaming are almost always dangerous combinations in characters. When handled carelessly they threaten to ruin any movie they are in, and I wish Potter saw a better way of dealing with her characters’ amorality.

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Home Video Spotlight Mar 26- April 1: Lincoln, Parental Guidance and more

Here’s a look at some of the titles new in stores this week.

Lincoln (Disney Home Entertainment)

Steven Spielberg’s take on the last 4 months, and also the most turbulent 4 months, of Abraham’s Lincoln’s life and presidency comes to DVD and Blu-ray after winning Daniel Day-Lewis a well-deserved Oscar for his performance. Dealing with Lincoln’s efforts to get the 13 amendment endorsed by the House of Representatives while the end civil war also looms, and the impending peace could threaten the chance of the vote on the abolishment of slavery to go through.

Lincoln is a very script and monologue driven film that in many ways feels like a stage play as opposed to a feature film presentation. The cast is superb though, with Day-Lewis, Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln, Tommy Lee Jones, James Spader and the impeccable Jared Harris emerging as the standouts in a star studded package. The location and set design is also stellar and really evokes the time period and setting that Lincoln himself lived in. In the end the performances lift the film and make the effort through the dry spells of the script well worth the effort. Lincoln on Blu-ray is a recommend.

FULL REVIEW AVAILABLE HERE

Parental Guidance (Fox Home Entertainment)

The latest from Billy Crystal and Bette Midler sees them playing babysitting Grandparents to the 3 children of their daughter Alice (Marisa Tomei) as she and her husband are out of town for his business. The children each have issues of their own as they live in an over protective environment that has resulted in a very high strung environment. The Grandparents get up to all sort of trouble with the kids resulting in bodily trauma, temper tantrums and a black eye.

Parental Guidance is a very low-aiming, flimsily scripted and tired premised excuse for a family film. Crystal is still stuck using the same schtick he has been pushing since 1991’s “City Slickers” and the rest of the adult cast seem content to phone it in. Of course the poor script should probably take part of the blame for giving them less than nothing to do. The saving grace of the film is the charming performances from the 3 children , but even that is not enough to save this film from the doldrums. Parental Guidance is a definite non-recommend.

FULL REVIEW AVAILABLE HERE

Lego Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Out (Fox Home Entertainment)

The Lucas Star Wars Universe gets a skewering thanks to those loveable Lego’s in this brand new animated adventure. After debuting on the cartoon network the 22 minute stand-alone special comes to DVD for the first time in a special collector’s edition set with a mini Lego Darth Vader figure. The special starts after the destruction of the original death star but quickly goes array, including aspects of all of all six films. We get sibling rivalry between the two sith lords Darth’s Maul and Vader, a visit to the planet of Naboo where are heroes are washed away by the overly salivating Boss Nass and crew an even get Luke Skywalker impersonating his father all while the Emperor tries to assemble his ‘Death Star building kit’.

The writing is smart and just as funny for adults as it is children. The amount of cross movie interaction is hilarious and it’s actually quite impressive the writers were allowed to go as far as they did a familiar and protected franchise such as Star Wars. The animation is fun and as is traditional with all Lego productions everything from Strom Troopers getting blasted to ship crashing explodes into Lego blocks. And with a price point less than $10 dollars at most retailers, even the scant 22 minute run time becomes a non-issue. Lego Star Wars: The Empire strikes out is a definite recommend.

Bangkok Revenge (Well Go USA Entertainment)

The story of a wronged man looking for revenge at the end of his fists, also new this week is the premise behind Bangkok Revenge. Manit’s (John Foo) family was killed during a home invasion and he was the only one to survive, after taking a bullet to the head no less, and is taken in by a Muay Thai master who raises and teaches him. The bullet in his brain has rendered Manit unable to feel emotions such as anger and pain which help him as he goes after vengeance from the people responsible for killing his family and injuring him.

Foo does show some talent as a fighter but the film suffers from production issues and the decision to noticeably speed up all of the fight scenes. The script is barely existent and is full of 2D supporting characters spouting clichés. Our lead lacks the charisma of a Tony Jaa or Iko Uwais and speaks with a defined UK English accent which is never explained in the film, just flimsily explained away in a running gag that does not work. Bangkok Revenge is a non-recommend.

FULL REVIEW AVAILABLE HERE

Till Next Time

Movie Junkie TO

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‘Parental Guidance’ needs a time out on Blu-ray (moviejunkieto.com)
‘Lincoln’ aims to talk his way into your Blu-ray collection (moviejunkieto.com)

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