Free Fire - Movie Review

Starring Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy, Armie Hammer, Sharlto Copley, Jack Reynor, Sam Riley, Noah Taylor, Babou Ceesay, Michael Smiley and Patrick Bergin.
Written by Amy Jump & Ben Wheatley.
Directed by Ben Wheatley.

★★½

This is a fun little gangster flick, probably more worthy to be watched on Netflix or Amazon Prime when it shows up in a few months.

The plot is very simple. In the 1970's, some IRA members are meeting some arms dealers in an abandoned warehouse to buy some guns. Room full of antsy people with guns and money? Eventually someone's trigger-happy finger sets things in motion.

Picture the Mexican standoff in Reservoir Dogs. Now picture there's about ten of them, and it's in a much bigger warehouse with more places to hide and take cover. And you have 45 minutes of movie to go. Now this does lead to a lot of scenes of shot people crawling on their elbows to get from this place of cover to that, but the dialogue and exchanges remain funny.

Wheatley said he was aiming to write a standoff movie realistically, and I can see that. In real life, these guys would miss most of their shots, and most of the ones that hit wouldn't be fatal.

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.

Elysium - Movie Review

Starring Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, Diego Luna and William Fichtner.
Directed by Neill Blomkamp.

★★

I was hyped for Blomkamp's follow-up to District 9, but I found this to be one of the more disappointing films of the summer, if you factor in my anticipation versus what it actually wound up being.

In the near future, the 1% have moved to a space-station called Elysium. Elysium is considered its own independent country, and everyone there lives in a mansion, has robot servants, and has their own medical machines that cure any disease or injury.  Somehow the citizens of Earth do not have this technology, and apparently Elysium won't share or even sell it to them.

Also, all of Earth starts to look like the slums of South Africa.

Max (Matt Damon) is a ex-con now factory worker who gets exposed to deadly radiation, so he has days to live unless he can get to Elysium. Max goes to an old contact of his to find out what he has to do to be illegally sneaked "across the border" into Elysium and get into one of those life-saving med-bays.

Now the head of Elysium's Homeland Security is a Disney villain played by Jodie Foster.  It's one of her hammiest performances to date, and I really don't know what she was thinking. It's dinner theater. It's 3rd Rock from the Sun.  Marginally more subtle is her henchman Kruger, a sadistic mercenary played by District 9's Sharlto Copley, with a South African accent so thick it's hard to understand sometimes. But he can fight.

The heartlessness of the rich and powerful has a Verhoevenian flair to it, but it never builds beyond its initial blueprint of ideas. Once the plot's been put into place, it's all chasing, gunfights, and explosions.  It's better than the Total Recall remake, but that's not saying much.

Random Movie Stuff - 5/2/12

- Due to positive reactions to Mark Ruffalo's take on the Hulk, Marvel's considering doing a stand-alone movie with him.

- Adam McKay (The Other Guys) is planning on remaking Uptown Saturday Night with Will Smith and Denzel Washignton.  The 1974 original had Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby as two normal men who get mugged, but then one learns he had the winning lottery ticket in his wallet.  They brave the criminal underworld to get the wallet back.

- Sharlto Copley (District 9, The A-Team) will star in Open Grave, about a man who wakes up in a grave filled with dead bodies and no idea how he got there.  He's also signed to play the villain in Spike Lee's Oldboy remake, which'll star Josh Brolin as a man who's kidnapped and left in isolation for 15 years, then let go without explanation.

- Tom Cruise is going to star in a Van Helsing movie.