Uncharted - Movie Review

Starring Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg, Antonio Banderas, Sophia Ali, Tati Gabrielle, Steven Waddington and Pingi Moli.

Written by Rafe Judkins, Art Marcum & Matt Holloway.

Directed by Ruben Fleischer.

★★½ 

Uncharted follows the tradition of National Treasure and Red Notice, of people hopscotching around the world looking for valuable treasure in a movie that doesn't take itself too seriously, nor does it try to elevate the genre. It is what it is and no more.

Tom Holland plays Nathan Drake, a young man who studied Magellan with his brother but is now a bartender/petty thief. He gets a job offer from Victor "Sully" Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg), a treasure hunter who knew Nathan's long-lost brother. He wants Nathan to help him find Magellan's treasure. 

There's a lot of double-crosses in the film, and they never really explain why Nathan's so good at hand-to-hand combat. A brief shot of him exercising covers it, I guess. The final chase scene / fight showdown would have been comfortable in Jungle Cruise.

It held my interest throughout, and it's fun to watch Tati Gabrielle (You) play a heavy. It leaves itself wide open for a sequel with two mid-credits stingers at the end. It's fine. It's okay. I've never played the game so can't speak to how faithful or unfaithful it is with the source material. Catch a matinee or wait for it to stream.

Deepwater Horizon - Movie Review

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, John Malkovich, Gina Rodriguez, Kate Hudson, Dylan O'Brien, Ethan Suplee, Brad Leland and J.D. Evermore.
Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan & Matthew Sand.
Directed by Peter Berg.

★★★½

This is a solid, straightforward effort as the star (Mark Wahlberg) and director (Peter Berg) of Lone Survivor are reunited to tell the story of the 12 hours that led up to the explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig that led to the biggest oil disaster in history.

It's white-collar vs. blue-collar. Kurt Russell is Jimmy Harrell, the head of the rig and the one who wants to make sure all of the safety tests have been conducted. John Malkovich is Vidrine, the BP exec who feels like they're behind schedule and they don't really need to do all of the tests. While they're the main conflict, the movie also has us get to know Mike (Mark Wahlberg) and Andrea (Gina Rodriguez) and a few other crew members so that we care about these characters before the inevitable disaster hits.

Once it does, it becomes The Towering Inferno at Sea. Berg has already demonstrated himself to be a solid action director, and he makes the stakes harrowing. A few crew members did die that night, and unless you studied the backstory before seeing the movie, you won't which ones might be among them.

At the same time, this does feel respectful to the people who were involved in this tragedy. No Jack & Rose love story thrown in.

Lone Survivor - Movie Review

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster, Emile Hirsch, Eric Bana, Alexander Ludwig, Yousuf Azami, Ali Suliman and Jerry Ferrara.  Directed by Peter Berg.

★★★½

The advertising keeps quoting Bill Simmons calling it the best war movie since Saving Private Ryan. Simmons is a sports guy, so it just shows how insignificant movie critics have become, at least to the marketing department. I'd say it's just a notch below Kathryn Bigelow's efforts, but it's worthy to compare to Black Hawk Down.

It's based on Marcus Luttrell's best-seller about the failed Operation Red Wings that resulted in the deaths of 19 servicemen. It's a tribute to those men, and it finds a way to be pro-soldier without being pro-war. It's angering to see how hard it is to become a SEAL, and how weird the rules of engagement are in Afghanistan, and how so many more lives would have been saved if they just had better equipment.

The soldiers' bodies take quite a bit of abuse, and from what I've read, they were pretty accurate about it. The comraderie of the four soldiers (Wahlberg, Kitsch, Hirsch, Foster) is engaging, and when the bad stuff starts happening, we still hope somehow they'll escape their fate. Kitsch has shown he might have a future in movies after all.

Lone Survivor is #1

The first true box-office hit of 2014 has emerged. Lone Survivor had the second-highest opening/expansion ever for January.  Mark Wahlberg is still a movie star, in case anyone was wondering.

Some of the award-hopefuls are expanding, and they could really use a boost from when the Academy Award nominations are announced later this week.  Her and Inside Llewyn Davis are sputtering before they've been able to get started. August: Osage County at least had some success, able to boast Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts as mother and daughter.

It still blows my mind that someone thought it was a good idea to sink $70 million into a Hercules movie starring Kellan Lutz. Yes, Lutz was in Twilight, but the last movie that had him top-billed was Arena, which co-starred Samuel L. Jackson and still went straight to DVD.  It was directed by Renny Harlin (Driven, Mindhunters, CutThroat Island).

Broken City - DVD Review

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jeffrey Wright, Barry Pepper, Kyle Chandler, Natalie Martinez and Michael Beach. Directed by Allen Hughes. 

★½

I can see why this drama flopped in its initial release. For one thing, the trailer gave away the ending of the movie. Even if it hadn't, the "mystery" is mostly a wheel-spinning exercise while its commentary on corrupt politicians was better handled in any two episodes of cable dramas like Starz's Boss or Showtime's Brotherhood. The bright spot was Jeffrey Wright as a cop who keeps us guessing which side he's on.

Random Movie News - 9/30/13

- Hugh Jackman has joined the cast of Chappie, the next film from Neill Blomkamp (Elysium, District 9). It's about two gangsters who steal a robot to help them commit crimes. Sharlto Copley will provide the voice of the robot. Jackman is mulling over a return to Broadway for the Houdini musical.

- Mark Wahlberg is looking to team with director Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) for a remake of The Gambler, the 1974 movie that starred James Caan as a college professor whose gambling addiction gets him in trouble with the wrong people.

- J.K. Rowling will make her screenwriting debut with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which takes place in the same universe as Harry Potter but won't be considered a prequel. The events in the film will take place 70 years before the Harry Potter films.

- Christoph Waltz is in talks to play the villain opposite Alexander Skarsgard in a new Tarzan movie.

Pain & Gain - DVD Review

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Ed Harris, Tony Shalhoub, Rob Corddry, Ken Jeong and Michael Rispoli.
Directed by Michael Bay.

★★½

This is Bay in Bad Boys mode. It's a high-octane crime caper featuring some muscle-heads trying to live the American dream. By stealing the accumulated wealth from someone else.

It's based on a true story but it takes a looooot of liberties with actual events (for example, Dwayne Johnson's character is a fictitous combination of three people from the real story). A faithful telling of the facts wouldn't have been as fun.

Wahlberg is the idiot who's perfecting his body at his gym but wondering why he isn't more successful. After all, he's worth it. After attending a bogus self-help seminar, he's inspired to grab life by the throat and take what he wants. What he wants is the fortune of his wealthiest client (Tony Shalhoub), a jerk who owns several properties around Florida. He gets a couple friends (Johnson, Anthony Mackie) to help him kidnap the client, then they force him to sign over all his money.

It's fast-paced, frenetic, and it's where Bay's style excels. I don't why he chose to make the kidnappers more comical/likeable and why he made the victims jerks, but it would have taken a Scorsese-like hand to guide the waters through a more faithful account.  As is, it was fun, as fun as a movie can be where someone ends up on death row.

Weekend Box Office - 1/20/13

1.  Mama - $28.12 million - 1 wk (U)
 . . . 2647 screens / $10,624 per screen
2.  Zero Dark Thirty - $17.6 ($55.95) - 5 wks (Sony) -28%
 . . . 2946 / $5974
3.  Silver Linings Playbook - $11.35 ($55.31) - 10 wks (Wein) +126%
 . . . 2523 / $4499
4.  Gangster Squad - $9.11 ($32.22) - 2 wks (WB) -46.6%
 . . . 3103 / $2936
5.  Broken City - $9 - 1 wk (Fox)
 . . . 2620 / $3435
6.  A Haunted House - $8.33 ($29.98) - 2 wks (OR) -54%
 . . . 2160 / $2856
7.  Django Unchained - $8.24 ($138.36) - 4 wks (Wein) -25.3%
 . . . 2516 / $3276
8.  Les Miserables - $7.81 ($130.37) - 4 wks (U) -19%
 . . . 2579 / $3030
9.  The Hobbit - $6.41 ($287.4) - 6 wks (WB) -30.1%
 . . . 2323 / $2757
10. The Last Stand - $6.3 - 1 wk (LG)
 . . . 2913 / $2163
11. Lincoln - $5.39 ($160.53) - 11 wks (BV) -14.8%
 . . . 2174 / $2482

Jessica Chastain is enjoying the top two spots, with Mama and Zero Dark Thirty.

Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe couldn't combine their star-power to get people interested in seeing Broken City.  And no one cared to see Arnold Schwarzenegger's comeback vehicle The Last Stand.

Ted - Movie Review

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Seth MacFarlane, Joel McHale, Giovanni Ribisi, Patrick Warburton, Matt Walsh, Jessica Barth, Bill Smitrovich, Laura Vandervoot and the voice of Patrick Stewart. Directed by Seth MacFarlane.

★★½

From the creator of Family Guy comes this movie... that feels a lot like an episode of Family Guy.

For those not familiar with Seth MacFarlane TV shows, they feature a family, and there will be a plot, and then someone will make a pop-culture reference, and then we'll see that reference played out for a few seconds.  Someone could say "I haven't felt this uncomfortable since Paris Hilton appeared on Inside the Actor's Studio" and then you'll see ten seconds of just that, like we've popped in the middle of a skit, and then it'll go back to our regular story.

Ted does that a couple times.

This is about John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) and his teddy bear (MacFarlane).  Ted magically came to life in 1985, and John and Ted have been best friends ever since.  I like that the movie acknowledges that Ted had brief fame in the 1980's do to his whole magical-talking-teddy-bear existence, but then like Corey Feldman, he grew up and his fame vanished.

John and Ted now hang out and smoke pot and live in arrested adolescense.  John works a terrible job at a car-rental service; Ted freeloads.  Living with them is Lori (Mila Kunis), John's girlfriend of four years who is fine with Ted, but after coming home to Ted and four hookers, she decides maybe it's time for Ted to move out.

Since the movie is substance-free, it lives or dies on how funny it is.  Well, some of it is, and some of it isn't.  Once the initial shock-laughs wear off of a pot-smoking teddy bear, where do you go?  I don't find pot humor that funny, maybe because I've seen most of Judd Apatow's movies, or maybe because I don't smoke pot, and you apparently need to in order to find all of it funny.  But it made me think: Ted's full of fluff.  Why would smoking pot affect him?  Why does he eat and drink?  How does Ted have sex since he's anatomically... a regular toy teddy-bear?

There are some funny cameos, and the entire Flash Gordon subplot is well-done.  Wahlberg's good at comedy, lest we forget his work in The Other Guys and Date Night, and Kunis is game, even if too much of her role is patiently waiting for John to grow up.  The CGI on Ted is flawless.  I just thought its joke-to-laugh ratio wasn't that high. (See what I did there?)

Random Movie Stuff - 2/8/12

- Warner Bros. has hired a new team to rewrite its big-screen live-action Jetsons movie.

- Danny Trejo will return for a Machete sequel, tentatively titled Machete Kills.  Most of the surviving cast members are expected to return.

- Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg are in talks to star in 2 Guns, about a DEA agent and an undercover naval officer who unwittingly investigate each other while each steals mob money.

- John Hawkes and Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) will star in Switch, a semi-sequel to Jackie Brown.  They'd be playing younger versions of Louis and Ordell, played by Robert DeNiro and Samuel L. Jackson in the 1997 Quentin Tarantino movie.

- James Mangold (3:10 to Yuma) will direct The Wolverine, now scheduled to open July 26, 2013.  Hugh Jackman will reprise his role.  He's currently filming as Valjean in Tom Hooper's Les Miserables.

- I Hate You Dad has had its title changed to That's My Boy.  It stars Adam Sandler as a man who fathered a baby while in his teens, and he raises him until the boy turns 18 and leaves.  They then don't see each other until his son's wedding day, and the dad faces the repercussions of his poor parenting skills.  Andy Samburg, James Caan, Susan Sarandon, Leighton Meester, Will Forte, Colin Quinn and Vanilla Ice co-star.  It opens June 15.

- Alex Cross will open October 26. It's based on a series of best-sellers from James Patterson.  Morgan Freeman played the detective in two previous movies (Kiss the Girls, Along Came A Spider).  This time, it stars Tyler Perry as Cross, as he hunts for a serial killer (Matthew Fox). Rob Cohen (XXX) will direct.

- Paul Brittain has left NBC's Saturday Night Live after joining the cast in September 2010.  No official reason was given beyond he had the "opportunity to pursue other projects" and they parted ways "amicably."  So if we don't hear from him soon, I say he was probably fired. Now they need to get someone else to play Ron Paul for their GOP debate skits.

Contraband - Movie Review

★★★

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale, Ben Foster, Giovanni Ribisi, Lukas Haas, Caleb Landry Jones, JK Simmons, Diego Luna and David O'Hara.
Directed by Baltasar Kormakur.

Mark Wahlberg is cool. He just is. He can do your art-house flicks (I Heart Huckabees), your comedies (The Other Guys), your Best Pictures (The Departed), and then he's an action star. His action movies serve as a reminder that Jason Statham could do better.

Wahlberg in action mode isn't much different than Eastwood in the 1980's or Bruce Willis in the 1990's. When I watch movies like this, I always have John Malkovich in True West come to mind. "It's not a film, it's a moo-vie."

Here he's Chris Farraday, former smuggler gone legit, with his wife Kate (Kate Beckinsale) and two kids. When Kate's little brother Andy has a job go bad (throwing some drugs in the ocean when customs boards), he's threatened with his life unless he pays the amount the score was expected to bring - $700,000.

Chris tries to appeal to his boss, a little psycho named Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi, in Bruckheimer villain mode), but Briggs wants the full amount and threatens to kill Chris and Kate and their kids as well unless he gets his money. So Chris comes out of retirement for one last job - smuggling counterfeit money from Panama.

The movies goes back and forth from hard-hitting action drama to light-hearted heist flick. Of course Chris's best-laid plans fall apart in Panama. If it all went smooth we'd have a dull 60-minute movie.

This is based on the 2008 Icelandic film Reykjavik-Rotterdam. The producer and star of that movie, Baltasar Kormakur, serves as director here, and he has a sleekness to his style. Reminded me of the Scott brothers at times.

(P.S. My wife's biggest complaint? Wahlberg never takes his shirt all the way off.)

Exclusive! San Andreas 3-D movie, Ender's Game, etc.

- New Line is prepping a big-budget earthquake movie for 2012. San Andreas 3-D will be produced by Beau Flynn. Here's the exclusive from the L.A. Times, and here's Deadline Hollywood pretending they have the scoop. (h/t @TheInSneider)

UPDATE: After I commented twice there and they deleted my comments, Deadline has removed the word "Exclusive."

In Other News:

- Kyle Chandler (Super 8) has joined the cast of Broken City, starring Mark Wahlberg as a detective hired by the mayor (Russell Crowe) to investigate his wife's lover. Catherine Zeta-Jones, Barry Pepper, Jeffrey Wright and Justin Chambers co-star. (VO)

- David Ayer (Training Day) is going write another version of Scarface, and it's said he's studying the 1932 and 1982 versions. (DHD)

- Asa Butterfield (Hugo) will star in Ender's Game for director Gavin Hood (Wolverine). Harrison Ford and Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) are also being sought for roles.

Catherine Zeta-Jones as Russell Crowe's cheating wife

- Catherine Zeta-Jones will play the philandering wife of the New York mayor (Russell Crowe) in Broken City, directed by Allen Hughes (co-director of Book of Eli). Mark Wahlberg co-stars as a private investigator hired by the mayor to confirm his suspicions.

- Tyler Perry has signed Kim Kardashian to a supporting role in his next movie The Marriage Counselor.

- Joseph Gordon-Levitt (50/50) is in talks to join Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, reuniting him with his Inception co-star Leonardo DiCaprio. It also stars Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Don Johnson, Dennis Christopher, Gerald McRaney, M.C. Gainey and Laura Cayouette.

- Bradley Cooper is the front-runner to star in Steven Soderbergh's big-screen treatment of the action-comedy The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Random Movie News 10/7/11

- Robert Downey Jr. will produce and star in the big-screen adaptation of Perry Mason. The 1950's TV courtroom drama starring Raymond Burr was based on a series of books, and the movie is going back to those source materials for the characters.

- Johnny Depp will star in a biopic about Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel).

- Dominic Purcell (Prison Break) has joined the cast of Paradise Lost. Directed by Alex Proyas, it's based on John Milton's classic about the battle between Michael (Benjamin Walker) and Lucifer (Bradley Cooper). Casey Affleck, Djimon Hounsou, Camilla Belle and Callan McAuliffe co-star.

- New Regency, in its deal with Fox, has picked up distribution rights to Broken City, starring Russell Crowe as a mayor who secretly hires a P.I. (Mark Wahlberg) to see if his wife's being unfaithful, but then she turns up dead.

The Fighter - Movie Review

lll 1/2

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Melissa Leo.
Directed by David O. Russell.

This movie triumphs in many areas, but the biggest is the acting showcase it provides. Christian Bale has long been one of the most versatile actors of his generation, but his work in movies like Rescue Dawn just never quite got the awards attention. Now here's one where he can shine. He's lost weight and made to look skeletal, pale, really burying himself of a former boxer turned crack-addict. Also duking it out are Amy Adams, in her toughest tough-gal role yet, and Melissa Leo, a mama bear who can't quite see when she does more harm than good.

It also succeeds in being a realistic boxing movie. By that I mean the choreography isn't elevated to this unworldy Rocky sequel where the fight would have been called off ten rounds before it actually is.

This movie's really more about family. Boxing's secondary. It's about older-brother screw-up Dicky (Bale) and younger brother Micky (Mark Wahlberg) who still might have a future. It's all filmed in Lowell, MA, with actors that look like real people, on locations that don't look like sound stages.