Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on April 20th, 2016
I am by no means an expert on the Bible. That is why I am always anxious to see filmed representations of the stories, since most of my knowledge comes from other people. It’s always an interesting topic, and so many people have their own interpretations. I think that is the point. I think discussion of the Bible allows people to express their own inner thoughts about their relationship to God. But I long ago gave up on the idea of ever getting a clear picture of the meanings of the stories. There will be plenty of people who will tell you they know all the answers, but I sincerely doubt anyone has any such thing. I previously reviewed Abraham from this series, which was an earlier story in the history of the Jewish and Christian faiths. The reign of King David took place approximately around 1010 to 970 B.C., but this movie also incorporates the reign of Saul who preceded David. The first thing I should say is that these stories are crammed with acts of violence and human weakness.
Two fine actors start this story. Saul (Johnathan Pryce) is searching for some lost sheep and told to go to the wise man and prophet Samuel (Leonard Nimoy). Samuel proclaims that the Lord God has said Saul shall be king. Saul is a humble man who grows more and more gripped by the demands of his power as King. He often breaks God’s commands in the belief that is best for his people. Samuel becomes more and more irate at Saul’s lack of faith in God’s word. Samuel leaves to find the new King who will take Saul’s place. Saul is generally well-intentioned but constantly making decisions against God’s will. I should say that God’s demands are often very violent, calling for the death of every man, woman and child who opposes his people.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 20th, 2016
America was once a primitive expanse where only very small groups of hardy hopefuls ever tried to venture across. It was a vast and endless wilderness that was mostly a mystery. This was the land of roving Indian tribes and undiscovered species of animals. This was a land of all kinds of danger. Life was one long hunt and endless battle against every kind of predator and natural enemy. There are so many remarkable moments in The Revenant that I will start with the bear attack. It is an unbelievably harrowing event that cannot be described in words that will in any way convey what you see on the screen. That one sequence alone is worth the price of admission. The story is based on a true life pioneer and fur trapper, Hugh Glass, who Leonardo DiCaprio plays in the film. The bear attack that is central to the film is believed to have occurred to the real Hugh Glass. It is not just the bear attack that is brutal and shocking, but the ordeal of the entire film. It is unlikely that any film you have ever seen about early America has so completely depicted the relentless savagery of survival. The events that surround Glass are the stuff of legend in which various embellishments and conjectures were made over the years, muddying whatever truth might be found.
Director Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman) immersed himself in the story and fashioned his own version of events. This story is about endurance taken to the limits of the imagination. It should be noted that the film has become legendary itself with tales of abuse of the actors and crew. It is widely acknowledged that DiCaprio might have endured the greatest hardships personally and willingly, including sleeping in a dead bear carcass. The film is over two and a half hours of hardy men in the wilderness, which then focuses on Glass surviving alone with massive wounds and broken limbs. The film becomes a revenge film that outstrips the intensity of all previous revenge films. It probably takes that intensity to extremes that most people cannot even endure watching. This is aided by the amazing and singular cinematography of Iñárritu’s long-time collaborator, Emmanuel Lubezki. The depiction of every sequence which includes numerous battle scenes is unlike any other. It has a flowing handheld immediacy while rivaling the look of the most ravishing IMAX presentations. Many long, protracted fights are depicted in long orchestrated takes. The cinematography alone distinguishes the film, but that is only one element of the collaboration that Iñárritu achieved. It is widely believed that DiCaprio will finally get his Oscar for this. He deserves it. I don’t know how he is as a person. I hear he is something of a party boy, but when he works, he has few rivals in going to any lengths and enduring any hardships to achieve the ultimate. At times he shows almost too much range.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on April 13th, 2016
“Witches live among us. Their magic passed from an ancient race, diluted, half-forgotten, but dangerously powerful. After centuries of conflict, a truce was forged. Witches would be allowed to live and govern themselves if they followed one strict rule: that magic never be used against humans. But a truce is a fragile thing…”
Vin Diesel has made the Fast and Furious franchise into a massive global behemoth, but Diesel is not a global behemoth on his own. He has had successes and failures. He is someone who seems to be an unlikely star. He tried to make Riddick (Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick, Riddick) into a multi-film franchise and accomplished it through sheer force of will, but his stardom largely rests on Fast and Furious. Diesel bristles at being typecast, so he has always tried to find new vehicles that will demonstrate his range. XXX was a big success, but Diesel did not appear in the sequel. XXX: The Return Of Xander Cage is on the schedule for 2017. He walked away from Fast and Furious for a few installments because he was so intent on diversity, but eventually relented and came back. The Last Witch Hunter is his latest attempt to start a new franchise. The film was attacked by some critics when it was released, but it is a pretty decent attempt to create a new legend out of a cauldron of Dungeons and Dragons ideas. That was the inspiration, and a group of script writers did a decent job, and the director Breck Eisner (son of Michael) also does a good job. The cast includes Sir Michael Caine, Elijah Wood, and Rose Leslie (wildling Ygritte from Game of Thrones). It also includes excellent actors such as Isaach De Bankole as a male witch who runs a restaurant that sells pastries that includes ingredients such as hallucinogenic bugs. All the elements are in place to make a great movie experience. The problem is that there is a weak link. It’s Diesel.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on April 12th, 2016
When we last saw Miss Fine (or should I say Mrs. Sheffield), she fell off her husband’s yacht on her honeymoon. I have previously written about The Nanny: Season 5 in January and Season 4 in September of last year, so go back and look up all the previous shenanigans. The first episode of the final season has the newly married couple stranded on a deserted island, and Fran Drescher is up to her usual ridiculous antics as Fran Fine. You can expect a lot of silly and moderately racy sexual innuendo. As usual, there are lots of celebrity cameos. In one Hollywood Squares episode alone, there are nine celebrities interacting with Max Sheffield (Charles Shaughnessy) who is one of the squares. Fran is trying to get pregnant, and she has to climb up to get Maxwell because they have to follow a strict time schedule. Then since these episodes take place in 1999, there is an episode with Hillary and Bill (celebrity impersonators) which is an embarrassment for all involved. We get Aunt Frieda (Lainie Kazan), who is still obsessed and upset that she didn’t get to sing at Fran’s wedding. Frieda finally gets to sing, and Lainie has a fine voice. Another person who gets to sing is Fran’s father, Morty (Steve Lawrence). He also sounds great. We have never seen Morty before in the previous seasons, but in a very special episode, Sylvia (Renee Taylor) is seeing a hot doctor (Joseph Bologna, Renee’s real life husband) and everyone thinks she is cheating on Morty.
Then there is the constant rivalry between Mr. Sheffield and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, which culminates in a fight for the rights of Yetta’s Letters (don’t ask, but Yetta (Ann Morgan Guilbert) is Fran’s absentminded grandmother). Then there is time for another wedding when Maxwell’s little daughter, Maggie (Nicole Tom), grows up and gets married to an empty-headed male model. All of this leads up to the two-part series finale which juggles two disparate story lines. Niles (Daniel Davis), Maxwell’s fey butler, and C.C. Babcock (Lauren Lane), Maxwell’s business partner and jealous lover, reveal that their six seasons of hatred and insults was actually covering deep animal magnetism. Will they or won’t they stop treating each other like idiots and finally give into deep burning passion? Then we have Fran at Maggie’s wedding, very close to her due date when she gets stuck in an elevator with C.C. Babcock. I don’t have to tell you what happens next. Well, I could, but I won’t. We do finally get to find out what C.C. stands for.
Posted in: The Reel World by Archive Authors on April 10th, 2016
Comic book movies are the preeminent form of movie entertainment in this day and age. I use the term broadly to include all sorts of fantasy books and ancillary offshoots. There is the Marvel Universe and the DC Universe and other universes that include Star Wars, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games, and endless variations. As consumers we become fans of a particular fantasy world from which we gain great personal pleasure. Religion is also a source of orientation for most of the world. We believe in various versions of God in which to invest our emotions fervently and honestly. There is a clear difference between fantasy and religion, but then we have YouTube, which is becoming increasingly crammed with “information” that crosses the line between fantasy and reality. Many people who are obsessed with superheroes and fantasy characters may not believe in God. People who believe in God may find comic books silly. The fact is that myth and legend are intertwined with fantasy and religion to this very day. We all live in a real world, and all of this is beyond our understanding if it were indeed real.
Midnight Special is a movie that starts from a religious framework. A young boy, Alton Meyer (Jaeden Lieberher) has been kidnapped by his father from a religious cult. The cult is run by Calvin Meyer (Sam Shepard) and, though it’s not clear, he is probably the father of Alton’s father. Roy (Michael Shannon) has taken the boy to bring about prophesy that the boy has foretold. The cult is apparently centered on words the boy has said as a new scripture. The government is actively involved in recapturing the boy, but for reasons of national security. Numerous FBI and military personnel are involved in the hunt, but the de facto head is NSA agent Sevier (Adam Driver, better known now as Kylo Ren from Star Wars: Episode VII-The Force Awakens). Roy has enlisted a state trooper friend, Lucas (Joel Edgerton) in this highly illegal endeavor. Everyone is committed to the quest by the force of religious fervor.
Posted in: The Reel World by Archive Authors on April 1st, 2016
Have you ever had a traumatic loss? Have you ever lost someone and felt numb? How did you feel about the person you lost, and was it different now that they were gone? Do you think you acted appropriately about the death? Did you care about what people thought of you, or were you in your own little world? Were you ever the same again? Demolition stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts, and Chris Cooper, and is directed by Jean Marc Vallee. Vallee has directed two outstanding and Oscar-nominated films in the last couple of years, Dallas Buyer’s Club (Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto won Best Actor and Supporting Actor) and Wild (Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern nominated). Jake Gyllenhaal has been on a fantastic run of totally committed and intense performances (Prisoners, Nightcrawler, Everest, Southpaw, Enemy, End of Watch) for the last few years, and Demolition is no exception.
Davis Mitchell (Gyllenhaal) has a great life. His wife adores him and has an incredible job as an investment banker working for her father, Phil (Chris Cooper). In the narration he mentions that he probably shouldn’t say how much his firm manages, because it would be unethical, but he does anyway ($6,000,000,000). He seems blissfully oblivious to problems in life. Then in an instant his wife is gone. She was killed in an accident while driving and talking to him sitting next to her. He escapes unscathed.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on March 30th, 2016
I don’t find House of Lies funny. In fairness, I don’t think it’s supposed to be funny, or it’s trying to be funny in the most cynical and unpalatable way possible. It’s a half-hour format airing on Showtime, which would normally suggest a sitcom. It’s not a sitcom, but a brash dramedy. Our main characters all have MBA’s but frequently act like teenagers on drugs. They are smart enough to analyze things brilliantly but are so corrupt that they will do the absolutely worst thing possible if it satisfies their personal interests. House of Lies should not be confused with House of Cards, which also features high-level leaders with horrendous morals. It seems to promote undiluted self-interest at all costs.
The show is based on a tell-all book (House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and then Tell You the Time) by Martin Kihn. The main character on the show is Marty Kaan, played by Don Cheadle. It’s safe to say that the Showtime series is heavily fictionalized and is not about Kihn.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on March 29th, 2016
"Did you ever run away from a scream? You can't. It will follow you through the woods. It will follow you all of your life... courage is never enough."
How many films are lost and forgotten over the years? It would be interesting to know how many films have been made since the advent of the movie industry. It is probably in the millions, and yet most of us would probably have trouble thinking of a thousand.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on March 21st, 2016
In the last few years, I’ve begun to question the veracity of any of the history I’ve been taught. I’ve been finding big chunks of history that were never included in the textbooks, and it seemed to depend on the point of view of the teller what kind of history you got. The old saying is, “History belongs to the victors”. It’s that sort of thing. Now you can add Drunk History to the mix. This is where people talk about historical event, but only after they have become hopelessly debilitated by alcohol. It’s funny to watch, and, in this case, you already know for sure history is becoming garbled. I’ve already reviewed the Season One and Two sets, in case you want to go back and reread that. They really are very funny, but you wonder, first of all, how much these various comedians really know about history. Then they get drunk, so often they wind up just falling on the floor and sleeping and babbling. But on some level, I get more out of these historical retellings than the dry and serious ones. At least with Drunk History I am forced to think for myself, and if I really want to know, I should research it myself.
Drunk History: Season Three is at a point where they are running out of all the good history to tell, but they still managed to find lots of fun stories. This season deals with people like no-nonsense Harriet Tubman, super spy and future children’s author Roald Dahl, perplexed Milton Bradley, sneaky Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, little kid Louis Armstrong, and a haunted Clark Gable. The stories are told most often by relatively unknown comedians, but sometimes they up the ante with stars like Paget Brewster (Criminal Minds). But there are stars everywhere with so many stories being told. Some of them are Dennis Quaid (Lucky Luciano), Sam Rockwell (Bugsy Segal), Josh Harnett (Clark Gable), Nathan Fillion (Wernher Von Braun), Topher Grace (Milton Bradley), Kat Dennings (Kentucky Daisy), Giancarlo Esposito (Andre Pico) Ryan Phillipe (Benjamin Hayes), Jack Black (William Mullholland), Colin Hanks (Gordon Cooper and Ernest Thompson Seton), Jason Ritter (Elisha Gray and Robert Woodrow Wilson), Patton Oswalt (Mac Brazel), Henry Winkler (Zenas Fisk Wilber), Greg Kinnear (Thaddeus S.C. Lowe), Stephen Merchant (Abraham Lincoln), Michael Cera and Haley Joel Osment (Newsies), Jahel “Urkel” White (Bass Reeves), Olivia Spencer (Harriet Tubman), Johnny Knoxville (Juan Ponce de Leon), Ellie Klemper (Nellie Bly), Maya Rudolph (Grizelda Blanco), Jason Momoa (pirate Jean Lafitte), Jack McBrayer (President Andrew Jackson), Will Ferrell (Ronald Dahl), Parker Posey (Mary Phelps Jacob), Martin Starr (Alexander Graham Bell), Michael McKean (Carl Laemmle), Chris Parnell (Thomas Edison), Taran Killam (Bobby Fisher), Jake Johnson (Boris Spassky) Jason Alexander (Boss Tweed), Noah Wylie (Thomas Nash), and I’m going to stop because I’m running out of space. There are actually a lot more notable people. There are interviews with writer/directors like David Simon (The Wire) and David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer) and lots of goofy extras. The motif of going to different cities to interview people on the street continues.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on March 17th, 2016
In the book of Genesis from the Bible, the story of Abraham comes right after the stories of Adam and Eve and Noah. It is one of the foundation stories of the Bible and talks of Abraham being the father of the Jewish people. The Bible is the source book of Christianity as well. The stories of the Bible are well known among people of all faiths as well, so it is assumed that most people on the planet know the story of Abraham. Bible stories are done religiously (pun intended), and Richard Harris (Camelot, Albus Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter movies) himself has done two other Bible stories (Cain in The Bible: In the Beginning and the apostle John in The Apocalypse). Abraham is a well -mounted two-part 173-minute 1993 television presentation that originally aired on TNT as part of a Bible series. There is a box set called The Bible ,which also includes Joseph in Egypt, Samson and Delilah, Jacob, Moses and David.
Before there was Moses, God spoke to Abraham (or Abram) and told him to take his people to search for an unknown land called Canaan. God promised Abraham to “make of him a great nation, bless him, make his name great, bless them that bless him, and curse he who may curse him”. Abraham wanders with his tribe which includes his wife, Sarah (Barbara Hershey), and his nephew, Lot. The cast also includes Vitorrio Gassman as Terah, Abraham’s 205-year-old father, and Maximilian Schell as Pharaoh. One of the main struggles that Abraham faces is fathering a child, because he is very old himself. In fact, many of the things that God has promised him seem impossible, and his faith is tested many times. At one point they arrive in Egypt and Sarah is taken to live in the house of Pharaoh. Eventually they escape, and they take Sarah’s Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar. Eventually Hagar is offered to Abraham by Sarah to consort with and have a child. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is also included. Two angels are sent by God to rescue Lot from the evil city. Lot at one point offers his young daughters to evil men of the city who want the angels who have come to Lot’s home. The next day, because God could not find 10 righteous men in the city, it will be destroyed. Lot’s wife is turned to salt when she turns to look back against God’s expressed command.
