The Batman - Movie Review

Starring Robert Pattinson, Zoe Kravitz, Paul Dano, Jeffrey Wright, Colin Farrell, John Turturro, Andy Serkis, Peter Sarsgaard, and Jayme Lawson.

Written by Matt Reeves & Peter Craig.

Directed by Matt Reeves.

★★★½ 

There are several familiar elements that get swirled together in this dark walk through the irredeemable Gotham City. It honors the Nolan trilogy while borrowing just as much from David Fincher, particularly Se7en and Zodiac. I liked Matt Reeves' desire to emphasize the detective elements of Batman. This has always been a strong trait of him in the comic books, but maybe it hasn't been emphasized as much in the films.

Batman is allowed into crime scenes. Somehow this masked vigilante, who's only been doing this two years, has the trust of Lt. Gordon (Jeffrey Wright), though most of the other cops think it's out of line. Gotham is being plagued by a serial killer named the Riddler (Paul Dano), leaving clues along the way as to whom his next victim will be. 

The theme of Gotham is rot. It's a metropolis where too many cops, lawyers, and politicians have been corrupted, to where a known crime boss like Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) can peddle his wares without fear or retribution. Batman deals with criminals his way, and they're usually ground-level thugs, but the Riddler wants to expose and kill the biggest targets he can find.

The screenplay doesn't let Pattinson do much besides brood as Bruce Wayne. In many ways, he's more in character as Batman. The suit does a lot of work, but he has the "presence" one needs in a suit like that. Every supporting actor has at least One Scene where they go toe-to-toe with Pattinson and are allowed to shine. Batman's felt a lot like the host of the coolest rogue gallery out there and that's true here. 

Dano is nice and creepy as Riddler and it's deep into the movie before we see him out of disguise. His showdown with Batman really does it. Behind his glasses, he has an unnerving serial killer smile. Farrell is terrific as Penguin. If you'd just told me "someone famous" is playing him, I don't know if I could have figured out it was him. The makeup's tremendous, and under that disguise, Farrell most resembled DeNiro's take on Al Capone from The Untouchables. It really is a shame they wouldn't Penguin smoke in the movie. This guys "needs" to be chomping on a cigar while he does business.

I'll be curious how it holds up under a second viewing. It'll be on HBOMax in about 35 days, so that's when we'll see.

The Gentleman - Movie Review

Starring Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Hugh Grant, Colin Farrell, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong, Tom Wu and Eddie Marsan.

Written by Guy Ritchie, Ivan Atkinson & Marn Davies.

Directed by Guy Ritchie.

★★★

I first fell in love with Guy Ritchie with his gritty, blue-collar crime capers Lock Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels and Snatch. He’s since been diverse in his choices. The Sherlock Holmes movies, The Man from UNCLE, his better-than-expected Aladdin, and here, he’s returned to those gangsta roots, and we as film-lovers are blessed by it.

It’s not great, but it’s good. It stars Matthew McConaughey as Michael Pearson, the marijuana king of Great Britain. He’s looking to retire, as it’s expected that marijuana will be legalized soon, country-wide. He’s looking to sell.

BUT a local reporter (Hugh Grant) is in on what Pearson has going on, and he serves as our skeevey narrator as he explains to Pearson’s right-hand man Ray (Charlie Hunnam) how he knows what he knows. In Ritchie tradition, he has interesting actors show up in supporting roles to keep the gangster ball rolling. I don’t even want to spoil what Colin Farrell is doing here.

The Beguiled - Movie Review

Starring Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, Oona Laurence, Angourie Rice, Addison Riecke and Emma Howard.
Written & Directed by Sofia Coppola.

★★½

I never did see the Clint Eastwood original, but I can't help but believe there was more to it than what we get here.

Coppola sets up a dreamy plantation-style school in the middle of Civil War-torn Virginia. The fighting is never seen, just the occasional gunfire in the distance, beyond the trees. One day a wounded Union soldier names McBurney winds up at their doorstep. The school is run by two teachers (Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst), and they only have five students. There's a one-sentence reference to the slaves having left.

Colin Farrell is McBurney, and there's some instant amusement from the ladies' swirling hormones when a wounded gentleman is now in their care.

There's a gentle dreaminess to Coppola's movies, and also a delecate portrayal of sheltered women that tends to keep some of them from breaking out. I see a lot of similarities here to Somewhere, a movie where Elle Fanning bounced from hotel to hotel with her dad without much happening. Here the women and girls don't really leave the house, and they don't really know how to cope whne a man shows up.

The movie takes a darker turn in the third act, when McBurney's true nature is revealed. Once it was all over, it felt like another movie with little consequence or lasting impression. At least it wasn't long enough to get boring. What do I still think about? Those trees.

Weekend Box Office - Feb 14-16, 2014

Once again, The LEGO Movie ruled all at the box office, but that didn't mean other titles couldn't find some breathing room.

The three 1980's remakes had varying levels of success. Sony tried for counter-programming by opening RoboCop on the weekend of Valentine's Day, to middling success. Fortunately it's one of those movies made for its foreign appeal. It's already made $69 million overseas.

The much cheaper About Last Night remake (that turned Jim Belushi into Kevin Hart) further cemented the idea that Hart is a star. Endless Love had a big Friday but dropped off drastically on Saturday.

Winter's Tale had a confusing trailer and received terrible reviews, and there's no such thing as a successful live-action movie where Colin Farrell gets top billing (his biggest hit was Total Recall's $58 million, which had a $125 million budget).

Saving Mr. Banks - Movie Review

Starring Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Colin Farrell, Paul Giamatti, Jason Schwartzman, Bradley Whitford, Ruth Wilson, B.J. Novak, Melanie Paxson, Annie Rose Buckley and Rachel Griffiths.  Directed by John Lee Hancock.

★★★½

I've never read P.L. Travers' original Mary Poppins book, but this film successfully filled me with desire to hunt down a copy. Seems like something my kids should read, familiar as they are with the Disney version with which Mrs. Travers had so many issues.  And if a movie makes you coming out wanting to read a book, that's a good thing, right? (I'm currently in the middle of reading 12 Years A Slave.)

This movie is a soft approach to the battles between Disney and P.L. Travers over her work, at least as far as the 1961 scenes go. It also keep flashing back to 1906, when Travers was a small girl, and those scenes inform why Mary Poppins means so much to Travers, and how protective she is of her work.

Colin Farrell, absent from the marketing save for his voice in the trailer and his name on the poster, has a substantial role as P.L.'s father, a banker who gets beaten down by life. His stuff is at least a third of the movie, and he and Ruth Wilson (as his wife) are very good in their very serious roles.

I'll admit I was moved by the end. Came together quite nicely, so when Travers (Thompson) had her emotional catharsis, I was right there with her.

Dead Man Down - DVD Review

Starring Colin Farrell, Noomi Rapace, Terrence Howard, Dominic Cooper, Isabelle Huppert and Armand Assante.  Directed by Niels Oplev.

★★½

Niels Oplev, director of the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, brings some Eurotrash sensibilities to this revenge thriller about a gangster (Colin Farrell) trying to help his boss (Terrence Howard) figure out who wants to kill him.  Meanwhile his neighbor (Noomi Rapace) blackmails him into killing the man who permanently scarred from a hit-and-run.  The pacing isn't exactly smooth, but something about the really dysfunctional love that develops between the two leads make it enjoyable enough for a rental.

Epic - Movie Review

Starring the voices of Colin Farrell, Amanda Seyfried, Josh Hutcherson, Christoph Waltz, Beyonce, Aziz Ansari, Chris O'Dowd, Pitbull, Steven Tyler and Jason Sudeikis.
Directed by Chris Wedge.

★★½

You can still catch this at $2 theaters, which is how I saw it.

What I took away most was the visuals.  The animation is really lovely, the weaving of this fairy world in with the trees and bushes and so forth.

The story is your fish-out-of-water variety, where a teen girl finds herself shrunk to the size of the leaf-men, who've somehow stayed hidden from mankind all this time. And when you're small, suddenly you can have conversations with slugs and snails.  Meanwhile they're an evil race that wants to turn the forest rotten. Very FernGully.

The humor isn't as crossover as your usual Pixar effort, but it's not too obnoxious either.  I'd rank it just above Arthur & the Invisibles.

Total Recall - DVD Review

Starring Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston, Bill Nighy, Bokeem Woodbine, John Cho and Will Yun Lee. 
Directed by Len Wiseman. 

★½

There were two good things about this movie.  First, the special effects are great. Good job by the tech team, and I imagine it looked good in 3D on the big screen.  Second, there's a scene where Quaid (Farrell) is taking a break from all the chasing, and he rests against a piano, something he wishes he knew how to play. But then he discovers he can play it. It's a nice moment of discovery by Farrell, a good human pause to all the mindless action.

But the rest of it is high-speed junk.  There's turning off your brain, and then there's turning off the laws of physics.  There's a gunfight in zero-G that just took way too many liberties with logic. There's the plot twists you'd see coming a mile away even if you're not familiar with the original.  There's the fact that Jessica Biel's in it, and when's the last time her presence signified a good movie?  There's the deliberate borrowing of the art direction from Minority Report.

Stick to the Arnold version.

Random Movie Stuff - 4/10/12

- Gary Ross will not be back to direct the Hunger Games sequel Catching Fire. The "tight production schedule" was touted as the reason.

- Colin Farrell will reunite with his Hart's War co-star Terrence Howard in Dead Man Down. Farrell will play right-hand man to Howard's crime boss, who gets seduced and blackmailed by a crime victim (Noomi Rapace), and then things spin out of control.

- Steve Carell is looking into starring in Alexander & the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day, though not as Alexander.

- And in TV news, Fox has officially renewed Glee, New Girl, and Raising Hope for next season.

Fright Night - DVD Review

★★★

Starring Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrell, Toni Collette, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, David Tennant and Imogen Poots.  Directed by Craig Gillespie.

I don't remember much about the original.  I remember liking it.  I remember liking William "Herman's Head" Ragsdale, Amanda "Married with Children" Bearse, and Roddy MacDowell taking on vampire Chris "Prince Humperdink" Sarandon.  And the poster was cool.  That's the main thing I remember.  That poster.

Everything old is new again, and the movie gets a very fitting update.  Jerry the vampire (Colin Farrell) lives in Las Vegas, where everyone's up at night and no one stays too long so no one can keep track of who's coming and going.  Charley (Anton Yelchin) is doubtful when his friend Evil Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) approaches him about Jerry's true nature, but it isn't long before Charley sees the proof.

Charley then goes to visit Las Vegas showman Peter Vincent (David Tennant), a cross between Van Helsing and Criss Angel, to see what he knows about fighting real vampires.

What's nice about this version is it pulls off the balancing act between horror and comedy.  There's laughs to be had throughout but Colin Farrell's Jerry is one dangerous creature, and I liked the all-in-one-take car chase when Jerry's going over and under the car to try to kill the people inside.

Horrible Bosses - Movie Review

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Starring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Donald Sutherland, Julie Bowen, Wendell Peirce and Iaon Gruffudd.
Directed by Seth Gordon.

If The Hangover was Zack Galifianakis's introduction to the mainstream, then this movie will serve as Charlie Day's. He's primarily known as the guy from FX's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I've never watched that show, but this makes me want to put Season 1 in my Netflix queue. I mainly know him as the guy from Going the Distance. He and Jason Sudeikis served as the two best friends to Justin Long, which was fine and dandy but to not much effect. Here the two have more to work with and make the most of it, but I focus on Day because he gets the biggest laughs in the movie.

He plays Dale, a dental assistant with a nympho boss (Jennifer Aniston) who likes to do all sorts of wrong things over the bodies of her drugged-unconscious patients. Dale's happily engaged and doesn't want to endanger that, but his boss doesn't care; she likes sexually harrassing him on a daily basis.

Then there's Nick (Jason Bateman), who's the first to arrive and the last to leave his job, under the thumb of the company's menacing president, but he takes it all because he's been led to believe he's up for a promotion. When the promotion doesn't happen and threatens to quit, his boss (Kevin Spacey, most horrible of the bosses, and I mean that in a good way) lets him know he'll trash his reputation to ensure he'll never work in this town again.

Lastly there's Kurt (Sudeikis) who loves his job at a chemical company until his boos dies. The boss's cokehead son (Colin Farrell) becomes the new president and starts using company funds as his own piggy-bank.

None of the three feel they can quit, but eventually they come up with a plan thanks to "murder consultant" Dean 'M.F.' Jones (Jamie Foxx, in an effectively funny supporting role) - they decide they will kill each other's bosses. Naturally they suck at it.

The chemistry between the three leads is great, and there are several chuckles throughout the movie. It never broke into that magical realm where comedies become classics. It's funny enough that it's worth seeing. ("How's that for a pull quote, Abbott?")

Random Movie Stuff - 5/27/11

- Snow White & the Huntsman (starring Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron) had its release date moved up to June 1, 2012. In response, Relativity moved its Snow White movie (starring Julia Roberts and Lily Collins) to March 16, 2012. The Relativity one is said tob e more family-friendly, while Snow White & the Huntsman is going to be more for the PG-13 Twilight crowd.

- Jessica Biel and Bill Nighy are joining Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale and Bryan Cranston in the Total Recall remake, scheduled to open August 3, 2012.

- Andy Samberg (Saturday Night Live) and Rashida Jones (Parks & Recreation) will star in Celeste & Jesse Forever, about a divorcing couple who try to remain friends. Elijah Wood and Emma Roberts co-star.

- Zach Braff (Scrubs) has joined the cast of Oz: The Great & Powerful, a prequel starring James Franco (The Wizard), Michelle Williams (Glinda), Rachel Weisz (Witch of the East) and Mila Kunis (Witch of the West). It's scheduled to open March 8, 2013.

- Jeff Conaway has died after being taken off life support, which he's been on since a drug overdose on May 11. He was the star of movies (Grease, Pete's Dragon) and television (Taxi, Babylon 5) and appeared on VH1's Celebrity Rehab in 2008. He was 60.

The Way Back - Movie Review

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Starring Ed Harris, Jim Sturgess, Colin Farrell, Saoirse Ronan and Mark Strong.
Directed by Peter Weir.

"Inspired by a true story" makes me wonder just how far away they strayed from real events. Did they stray a little, like The King's Speech, or a lot, like The Exorcism of Emily Rose? Regardless it's a solid study in the examination of the lengths to which people will go to be free.

We get Nazis up the yin-yang in our movie villains, but sometimes people forget just how nasty the Stalinists were. We meet one Polish prisoner (Jim Sturgess), sent here after Stalinists torture his wife to make her lie about her husband, and he immediately starts thinking about how to escape. Throw in a grumpy American (Ed Harris), a wily Russian (Colin Farrell) and some other rag-taggers, and we have our escape group.

The movie puts us through the slogs they went through, and while I can't say it was fun, it was just the right length and served as a testament to human determination.

P.S. It had a limited release in December somewhere to qualify it for Oscar nominations. It has one nomination - makeup - and it would be a worthy winner. Walking from Siberia to India does horrible things to your skin.