Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on March 21st, 2013
Day of the Falcon is a photogenic, lavish reminder that violence and strife in the Middle East existed well before it could be broadcast on CNN. The film — set in the early part of the 20th century — also works as a throwback to the sort of rollicking, epic-scale adventure films David Lean was making at the height of his powers and that no one seems terribly interested in making anymore. Don’t get me wrong: Day of the Falcon is no Lawrence of Arabia or Bridge on the River Kwai, but it’s an accetable 21st century substitute.
Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud — who made the great, underrated WWII sniper drama Enemy at the Gates — the movie features a multi-cultural cast and a relatively hefty budget. (Reports put it anywhere between $40 million and $55 million; either way, it’s one of the most expensive films produced by an Arab — Tarak Ben Ammar — which also deals with that part of the world.)
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on March 20th, 2013
Sometimes you really can judge a book terrible movie by its cover. Beyond the awful Photoshopped shot of the film’s stars, the cover art for House Arrest boasts that the movie comes “From a Producer of You Got Served.” That set off a bunch of questions in my curious mind. Why just one producer? Is this really something a person would brag about? Most importantly, where are all the hip hop dance battles?! Worse than all that, the film itself completely muddles a worthwhile message about faith and the importance of family with shoddy storytelling and a steady stream of substandard performances.
House Arrest quickly introduces us to Chanel (Stacey Dash), a spoiled L.A. rich girl living the high life with her boyfriend, DeAndre (Jayceon “The Game” Taylor). You can tell Chanel is spoiled because she even has a tiny dog named Trixie that she carries around in her purse. While out shopping one day, Chanel and DeAndre are both arrested for the robbery of some valuable computer chips. (The crime is so vague and ultimately pointless that they may as well have been accused of stealing a box of vintage floppy disks.) Prior offender DeAndre is sent to prison while first-time offender Chanel is sentenced to house arrest in a much less ostentatious part of town under the roof of grandma Mee-Mah (Bebe Drake) and Chanel’s daughter Autumn (Kiera Washington). Chanel is innocent, but Deandre asks her to take the fall because she’d probably only get a probation — this guy is a real sweetheart — and because DeAndre’s crimes helped fund their expensive lifestyle.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on March 15th, 2013
If the last few decades are any indication, TV viewers can’t get enough medical shows, while mob dramas seem to develop some of the most fervent followings. The Mob Doctor — the Fox drama canceled shortly after its debut last fall — suggests those two great tastes don’t necessarily taste great together. The network wound up airing all 13 episodes, and now Sony has released every installment of the watchable, uneven drama on DVD.
Dr. Grace Devlin (Jordana Spiro) is a young, talented surgical resident at Chicago’s best hospital. She works alongside her good-guy boyfriend Dr. Brett Robinson (Zach Gilford), loyal best friend Nurse Ro Quintero (Floriana Lima), jealous colleague Dr. Olivia Cox (Jaime Lee Kirchner) and protective chief of surgery Dr. Stafford White (Zeljko Ivanek). What none of these people know is that Grace — like so many other small-screen antiheroes these days — leads a dark double life.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on March 13th, 2013
“The border between the United States and Mexico spans 2,000 miles. It’s also the most frequently crossed land border in the entire world. And that just refers to legal crossings…”
Hundreds of thousands of people — we’re told at the start of Border Run — try to cross that boundary every year, and each of them has a unique story. Unfortunately, the filmmakers botched a great opportunity to explore the thorny issue of illegal immigration in a thoughtful and stimulating way by choosing to tell the most ridiculous and off-putting story they could possibly think of.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on March 12th, 2013
“I don’t know if I’m an alcoholic, really, I just drink. I drink a lot.”
Movies that deal with alcoholism tend to either be relentless downers (Leaving Las Vegas, When a Man Loves a Woman) or use drunkenness as a catalyst for Hangover-style shenanigans and tipsy laughs (Arthur; Dean Martin’s entire act). In other words, drunks on film don’t usually look like Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Smashed, the brisk, well-acted dramedy from writer-director James Ponsoldt.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on March 11th, 2013
On paper, pro wrestlers are the perfect action movie stars. Their beefy frames and larger-than-life personalities should make them naturals at kicking butt on the big screen, plus the performers are certainly familiar with choreographed combat. (This is the part where I planned to mention that wrestling is fake, but I don’t want to make anybody cry.) Even though Arnold, Sly and their brawny brethren have struggled at the box office recently — and are about 20 years past their heyday — WWE Studios has a sneakily clever thing going with its Marine franchise.
Starting with 2006’s The Marine, the company has created a recognizable and malleable action series. The movies don’t have anything to do with one another beyond the title, but they allow the WWE to push whichever wrestler du jour they want to promote by giving him his very own starring role. In other words, they could make Marine movies forever. Following in the footsteps of John Cena and Ted Dibiase Jr., Mike “The Miz” Mizanin is handed the keys to the action vehicle this time around.
Posted in: The Reel World by J C on March 8th, 2013
Revenge has rarely looked as tedious or absurd as it does in Dead Man Down. (Unless you count the current, underwhelming second season of, well, Revenge.) Despite the fact that it boasts a title straight out of Steven Seagal’s IMDb page, Dead Man Down features a talented cast and is the American theatrical debut of Danish director Niels Arden Oplev, best known for making the Swedish adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It’s a shame everyone came out to play for a project that doesn’t even achieve “Enjoyably Preposterous Thriller” status.
Colin Farrell stars as Victor, a low-level thug working for ruthless mobster Alphonse Hoyt (Terrence Howard). Someone has been sending Alphonse cryptic notes and vaguely threatening letters. We learn relatively early on the perpetrator is actually “Victor”, who assumed a new identity after Alphonse and some Albanian goons destroyed his family and left him for dead. Now Victor has concocted an elaborate (yet surprisingly careless) plan and is willing to pay the ultimate price to make sure Alphonse and the others pay for their sins.
Posted in: The Reel World by J C on March 8th, 2013
The most interesting thing about Emperor — the stately, bloodless post-World War II drama from director Peter Webber — is that it begins where most war movies end. The messy, complicated business of picking up the pieces of a shattered country after a hellacious conflict tends to happen off-screen. Granted, war crime tribunals are inherently less cinematic than epic military battles, but Emperor still managed to leave a lot of dramatic possibilities on the table.
The film — based on the book “His Majesty’s Salvation” by Shiro Okamoto — opens with archival footage of the Aug. 6, 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima. After the subsequent surrender of Japanese forces, we meet the conflicted Gen. Bonner Fellers (Matthew Fox). Through soppy voice-over narration (which makes the character sound like a stiff sad-sack) we learn that Gen. Fellers loves Japan, but hates what the country has become.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on March 5th, 2013
If a movie starring Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Vince Vaughn and a few other notable names only grosses slightly more than $20,000 — BoxOfficeMojo.com assures us that’s not a typo — does it make a sound? The natural assumption is any film boasting that kind of star power must be pretty bad to be completely ignored by distributors and the movie-going public. Lay the Favorite is a disappointing, low-energy effort, but it certainly deserved to make more money than what A Good Day to Die Hard will probably earn in the time it takes you to finish reading this sentence.
The film follows sweet dim bulb Beth (Rebecca Hall), a stripper who feels unfulfilled in her life and dreams of moving to Las Vegas to become a cocktail waitress. (This movie’s title should’ve been Aim Higher.) Instead, Beth gets a job working for eccentric sports bettor Dink (Bruce Willis) and proves to be something of a gambling prodigy, much to the chagrin of Dink’s scary wife, Tulip (Catherine Zeta-Jones). As Beth and Dink’s relationship becomes more complicated, she gets romantically involved with nice guy journalist Jeremy (Joshua Jackson) and professionally involved with Rosie (Vince Vaughn), a volatile rival of Dink’s.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on March 4th, 2013
By the time we meet most big-screen hitmen, they’ve already attained the level of badass-ery required to be efficient killers. Far fewer movies take the time to examine the circumstances that result in a person becoming a murdering machine. Interview with a Hitman — a British action offering from first-time writer/director Perry Bhandal — stands out from the pack because it’s a surprisingly thoughtful meditation on the consequences of killing.
After a dialogue-free first 10 minutes, we meet Viktor (Luke Goss), a highly-skilled hitman who agrees to sit down for a videotaped chat with down-on-his-luck movie producer Xavier (Patrick Lyster). The interview format is a convenient device that allows Viktor to tell Xavier (and us) about his rough upbringing in the Outlying District of Bucharest in Romania. Even as a kid (an effective, chilling turn by young Elliot Greene), Viktor never backed down from a fight. So after local tough guy Sergei (Danny Midwinter) comes to collect a debt from Viktor’s scumbag father, the boy asks Sergei for a job. Sergei teaches Viktor’s the tricks of the killing trade until an unfortunate incident puts them at odds, and Viktor has to flee the country.
