“Spider-Man: No Way Home” Is An Instant Classic
A NO-SPOILER Review for “Spiderman:No Way Home” I here, but we can tell you the movie is really good. Classic even!
Central Intelligence Gives Bullying The Undercover Treatment
CHECK OUT ALLHIPHOP.COM’S REVIEW OF 0CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE”
Loose Familial Ties Let The Boogeyman In To Great Reward In “The Conjuring 2”
CHECK THIS INTERVIEW WITH THE DIRECTOR OF “THE CONJURING 2”
“Triple 9” Promises Big But Comes Up Light
At first glance, “Triple 9” has everything going for it as a made to order cops and crooks morality to morass type of tale. The cast is bananas, starting with no less than Chiwetel Ejiofor, Casey Affleck, Anthony Mackie, Aaron Paul, Norman Reedus, Woody Harrelson and Kate Winslet rounding things out in a close to unrecognizable star turn as a pragmatic but ice cold Russian Mafia maven. Australian director John Hillcoat also has a solid resume when it comes to genre with “The Proposition”, “The Road” and “Lawless”, starring respectively no less than Guy Pierce, Viggo Mortensen and Tom Hardy as part of his directing oeuvre. However, for a reason that would seem to lie in the writing, the devil in the details, or that ineffable something that you just can’t put your finger on, “Triple 9” while possessed of great performances just never gels like it should so we feel true pathos for the poor characters involved. For whatever reason, some part of the recipe is missing. As such, the whole result just leaves you with a sour taste in your mouth, feeling something like regret for the time invested on something that you were really hoping to savor as things looked so promising at the beginning. There is no question that the performances in “Triple 9” are good and fitting to the rules of the action thriller. In that school of thought that posits that all excellent cops are only a few steps away from becoming the excellent criminals that they are trying to thwart and vice versa, all of the major characters are given a great start in the way of written props suggesting that they are more than the sum of their inherent goodness or badness. Kate Winslet is a welcome shock as a hardened Russian Jew who is both crime syndicate matriarch and loving aunt to her biracial nephew, even as she leverages him relentlessly for a perceived greater familial good. Norman Reedus shows a real propensity for his job even as he shows very convincing humanity in his fleeting regret for innocents that unwittingly fall in the way of the potentially deadly business he conducts as a means of gainful employment. However, as the movie sinks deeper and deeper into it’s examination of the cesspool that it has set up at the outset, something catches in the mix, and despite all of the great acting, the story itself seems to stall out with regards to being a fresh take on the genre. Too many emotional beats get stuck in scenes that we have seen before, such as the frustrated veteran cop who gets drunk, and starts waving his gun around in a bar, only to be calmed by his protégé, or another familiar set up, when the unwanted “source” appears at the dive cop bar, only to be roughed up and beaten up outside. Given the caliber of all of the players involved in “Triple 9”, it would seem that they could do better to get us to care about these well-crafted characters that are suddenly being abandoned in scenes that could be better and more original. As for standout performances amongst a cast of standouts, Casey Affleck truly becomes the detective that he has been tasked with fleshing out. With Woody Harrelson’s character, you can almost feel the grime in every step that he takes, and Chiwetel Ejiofor is riveting as a hard man dictated by hard times. With regards to what might have made “Triple 9” all that it set out to be, seeing as no one can be said to be clean, it would have been a service to see more with regards to the unique spots of sunlight all of these characters guard from the soul crushing darkness accepted as a means of gainful employment. Short of that, if you are a suspense and violence junkie, the movie does hold up its end of the bargain in delivering on that score. However, if you are looking for something enduringly meaningful or deeply affecting in the middle of all of that carnage, this is not your Saturday night special. Grade C-
Movie Review: “Point Blank” Laments for the Road Not Taken
Is “Pointbreak”
THE HATEFUL EIGHT = #blacklivesmatter Western Style
When it comes to Quentin Tarantino, fairly or unfairly we always expect the best of the best from him such as we have never seen it before. This is despite the difficulty of anyone being able to continue to top the last project in a career that has been littered with high impact successes and major pop culture wins. Nevertheless, be it endearing us to criminals or diving unapologetically into over the top bloody race war skirmishes in the midst of an all too real climate of extreme international and domestic racial and religious volatility, we expect Tarantino to do it and do it well in high visual style with a comedic kick to boot. In keeping with this unspoken demand, THE HATEFUL EIGHT delivers in spades in all the essential territories and then some. As Tarantino’s eighth signature “balls to the wall” cinematic masterwork, THE HATEFUL EIGHT is as impressive as it is unique and iconic – largely due to the weighty subject matter that it tackles underneath all of the graphically beautiful gore. Whether Tarantino actually meant to be deep with regards to what his characters are experiencing and why in THE HATEFUL EIGHT or whether he is simply staying true to his usual mantra of taking his characters to the edge in the fastest and most indelicate way possible, we simply don’t care. The overall effect of the movie as a whole is so good that you just can’t be bothered about anything but what will happen next. It’s only later once we’ve seen the movie in it’s entirety that these questions arrive, making us want to take another good hard look. This rare quality makes this film truly something to get excited about as an endeavor with some historical legs. For those who want to know a little more about what they are getting into before they decide to plunk down that coveted Xmas money when it opens on December 25, 2015 in 70mm and nationwide on Jan 8, 2015, THE HATEFUL EIGHT is an ode to the classic movie western. Shot old school in 70 millimeter and being projected as such in an ambitious US tour, THE HATEFUL EIGHT is set in the tumultuous years after the American Civil War. In the topsy turvy manner that Tarantino has made famous again and again, the genre has been deftly put on its head as it gives it’s most concentrated attention to those who are usually invisible in these time honored tales – namely a black man, a poor white man and a woman who is under no compulsion to make herself eye candy for anyone or anything. In a stroke that makes THE HATEFUL EIGHT an unexpected treatise on the travails of the disenfranchised in a newly “free and equal” America – Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins and Jennifer Jason Leigh lap up screen time respectively as a black bounty hunter who never sees a day that he isn’t called the n word, a poor white trash outlaw trying to go legit as a would be but much maligned future sheriff and a very rough female prisoner being hauled cross country to be hanged. All three actors are gorgeously complex and nothing short of spectacular in their portrayals of very difficult characters that at turns draw us in and spit us out with ferocity. All three characters perform some truly gritty and grotesque acts of self-preservation, open aggression and more. Due to the authenticity of these characters as well as the accompanying work of an inspired whip smart cast performing on all cylinders, as an audience we find ourselves begrudgingly endorsing, or at the very least understanding just about everything bad act done as what had to be done given the circumstances – no matter how gruesome. THE HATEFUL EIGHT has a lot of violence in it, but it is flawlessly justified with precision. Tarantino breaks up this movie into chapters as he did with PULP FICTION and KILL BILL. With a slow layer by layer reveal of the individual stories of each character leading up to their respective end games, the violence builds gradually like it’s own character that finds it’s full definition at the very end for extremely high dramatic effect. Tarantino is at his best here using this device that worked for him so well in the past, yet the result stands refreshingly on it’s own two feet. While PULP FICTION was very attuned to the world that it was made in with the famous odes to McDonald’s burgers and cheese burgers, THE HATEFUL EIGHT makes timely nods to the #blacklivesmatter movement with Samuel Jackson’s Lincoln Letter and the slow reveal of it’s significance in a post civil war world where Jackson’s character makes no bones about his survival as a Black man being directly linked to his ability to disarm all whites by any means necessary. That Tarantino, as a privileged white director doesn’t shy away from allowing Jackson’s character to make this statement is a real testament to Tarantino’s unsparing eye when it comes to making movies about people to whom the worst most random crap can happen to at any given moment just because. While the success of THE HATEFUL EIGHT has a lot to do with Samuel L. Jackson and Tarantino movie newcomers Walton Goggins and Jennifer Jason Leigh, one other newbie, Mexican star Demian Bichir should be added to the list of gold star standout work with his portrayal of Bob the Mexican. Rumor has it that originally this role was meant to be a French Canadian, but Demian Bichir, know best by American audiences for his work in Showtime series WEEDS gives this role such a star turn that it’s no question why the Bob ended up Mexican versus French. Visually stunning with no weak performances in the bunch, THE HATEFUL EIGHT is a must see.
CREED The Movie: A Knockout Not To Be Missed
Too often the problem with great movie franchises is that the films that follow can’t handle the task of staying true to what was special about the original while still being strong enough to stand alone. In order to hide these gaps, sequels routinely get crammed with a superfluous glut of famous names and expensive action sequences dripping with inconsequential cinematic fluff. Happily, CREED is not a part of this hackneyed tradition. Due largely to the clear-eyed and naturalistic steering of director Ryan Coogler, CREED more than rises to the occasion as a boxer’s clinic on staying true to a classic while also forging it’s own very unique and entertaining path. Make no mistake, there are famous names in the film, starting notably with Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky and ending with the very palpable specter of actor Carl Weathers’ Apollo Creed. However, the sizable bulk of CREED’s star power comes from today’s world of professional boxing versus Hollywood, giving CREED an understated but singularly modern authenticity. With former WBA and WBC Super Middleweight champion Andre Ward and Philly born and bred Puerto Rican Light Middleweight champion Gabriel Rosado putting in major screen time, even if you don’t know who they are going in, the fights in CREED crackle with an electricity that can’t be ignored. While the fighting is top notch in CREED with a stylistic POV bent that gives EA Sport’s FIGHT NIGHT video games a run for their money, the film doesn’t get lost in the purely physical. What makes CREED transcend its subject matter is that it taps into the universal by changing focus from the enemy without to the more elusive enemy within that we all carry. Indeed, the fact that the film’s primary antagonist, “Pretty” Ricky Conlon, played with a lot of success by former British WBC Light Heavyweight champion Anthony Bellew, doesn’t have more screen time is an intriguing departure from most ROCKY films. But rather than obsess about this creative choice, filmmaker Coogler embraces it by doubling down and posing one question via every central character in CREED both old and new: “What makes a person fight when they are almost certain to lose?” The answers in CREED aren’t simple nor do they disappoint. It is almost guaranteed that every moviegoer based on their own life experiences will have their own takeaway on the validity of these answers as shown though CREED’s lens in this atypical but fresh addition to the ROCKY series. Michael B. Jordan is both moving and believable physically and mentally in his portrayal of a young guy who can mix it up in the ring, but suffers greatly from the demons that put him there. Tessa Thompson has a fire and vulnerability as Adonis’ love interest, a woman who supports Adonis, but has a life of her own. Phylicia Rashad is the best that we have ever seen her as the concerned yet deeply conflicted parent who cannot bear to be too close or too far from the child that she has decided to love against all odds and convention. However, despite all of these wonderful performances, by far the best fusion of old and new is the beautifully wrought yet easily fractured relationship between Michael B. Jordan’s Creed and Sylvester Stallone’s shopworn Rocky Balboa. As the cinematic relationship between their fictional characters suggests, the scenes that Jordan and Stallone play together bring out the best of both in this very satisfying movie with knockout cinematic results. CREED from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema opens nationwide today, November 25, 2015.
