The Reel World

“Did that just happen?”

I have to confess that I entered The Judge expecting a different kind of film than I actually saw. After seeing the trailer I was reminded of some of the classic courtroom dramas I’d seen over the years from 12 Angry Men through …And Justice For All. On the ride to the screening I found my mind was swimming with the “closing arguments” Al Pacino delivered in …And Justice For All and was trying to image how Robert Downey, Jr. was going to try and top that. In the end Downey didn’t top that wonderful monologue. In the end The Judge simply wasn’t that kind of a movie after all.
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It’s October, which means there’s probably a new, spine-tingling offering coming at you every day. (That’s certainly the case here at UpcomingDiscs.) Kill the Messenger — a thoroughly compelling, true-life drama that channels the crusading spirit of All the President’s Men and The Insider — is no one’s idea of a horror movie. Unless you’re like me, and you happen to be a newspaper reporter.
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With the Marvel universe taking off and scoring at the box office for many years now, studios are digging for franchises they can start up or reboot to cash in on the craze.  Warner Brothers is stumbling a bit with DC comics, but Universal has remained quiet, that is until someone in the creative department realized they own the properties to the greatest horror characters of all time.  When Dracula, The Wolfman, and The Mummy were in their heyday, actors like Karloff and Lugosi became instant icons of cinema.
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“I like your dolls.”

The Conjuring was one of the best horror movies to come along in years. Why? Because it was a good scare with a story that didn’t totally insult our intelligence or leave us scratching our heads too many times. The movie also dealt with its own red herring of sorts in a possessed doll kept under wraps by that film’s hero couple. We’re treated to a tease of her story before we move on to other matters.
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In 1987 Fatal Attraction was released, and now decades later it is the go-to movie when discussing classic scorned women in cinematic history.  Now a new film is about to take the mantel for the greatest scorned female character, Amy Dunne in Gone Girl. Based off the widely successful novel by Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl is perhaps the most haunting film about marriage to ever hit the screen. Director David Fincher is no stranger to directing strong, self-sufficient women on the big screen; look at Panic Room and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — but Gone Girl is the closest he’s come to filming his masterpiece.
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Stop-motion animation remains a rare treat, but your appreciation of the new film, The Boxtrolls, will likely fall into an either love-it or hate-it camp. I will tell you which camp I fall into shortly. Laika Entertainment Studios produced Coraline and Paranorman, which were both oddball stop-motion fun that I enjoyed immensely. The stop-motion process is a dying art that is only rarely attempted any more, but it is widely beloved by film fans. The stop-motion work in The Boxtrolls is excellent. The cast of voice-over actors are excellent as well. The roster includes Sir Ben Kingsley, Jared Harris, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Elle Fanning and Tracy Morgan.
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The eyes are the window to the soul, or so we have been told. I Origins is about a scientist studying the evolution of sight in organisms. Part of his research seems to be focused on countering creationists who claim that eyes are an obvious indication of a creator in life on this planet. The scientist, Ian Gray (Michael Pitt) is working on proof that the development of eyes is a process of evolution. His new research assistant, Karen (Brit Marling) surprises Ian with intuitive brilliance and fanatical commitment to the task.
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“Odds against you? Need help? Call the Equalizer.”

That familiar classified ad — which receives a clever update toward the end of this film — and a hero named “Robert McCall” are about the only things this bloody, big-screen adaptation has in common with the TV show that (allegedly) inspired it. And that’s fine, especially when you consider a large portion of this movie’s audience is probably not slavishly devoted to a CBS crime drama from the 1980s. (Assuming they’ve seen it at all.) The bigger issue is that, beyond it starring one of the world’s best and most charismatic movie stars, there’s not a ton that’s new or particularly interesting about The Equalizer.
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What if two radio guys sat around and made up a movie on the air? In this case, it actually wasn’t radio guys, because they weren’t broadcasters, but podcasters. I guess the fine distinction between broad and pod is that pod goes out to the world through the internet. It’s kind of like Indie radio. Kevin Smith is a very indie guy and even calls his podcast a smodcast. Smith and his buddy, producer Scott Mosier, were doing their smodcast and talking about a post on GumTree.uk about roommate advertisements. It evolved into crazy talk about what might happen.
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Martin McDonagh is an extremely important and respected playwright. He is also a pretty good filmmaker. His films are In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths. His plays have won too many awards to mention, but some of the titles are The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Lonesome West, The Pillowman, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, The Skull of Connemara and others. His brother is John Michael McDonagh, the writer/director of The Guard and Calvary. All of these works are very good. Calvary might be my favorite.
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The pleasure of The November Man is seeing an ex-James Bond come out of retirement being all cool and mean and efficiently lethal. The ex-James Bond is Pierce… Pierce Bronson. He’s not as old as Sean Connery, but he’s pretty old, and too old to look this good killing people. The November Man is nothing but a cheap and easy, end-of-August bit of popcorn fodder, but it works well. It works so well it already has a sequel planned. I don’t think the budget on this is very large, so it probably was a no-brainer. The locations are all over middle Europe and Russia, but I think that’s cheaper than New York City or London.
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Sin City: A Dame to Kill For marks the return of the iconic graphic novel since it first splashed across the big screen in 2005.  Sin City set out to make the ultimate comic book adaption in which the audience would see the panels move directly from the page and onto the screen.  For me Sin City was a celluloid masterpiece that blended the Noir stories beautifully with all the Hollywood tricks that were at Robert Rodriguez’s disposal.  Frank Miller’s beautiful black and white imagery was more striking than I could have imagined, and it was the film that had me rooting for the big lug Marv (played by Mickey Rourke who seems to have been born for the role).
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“Welcome to the 21st century!”

Sylvester Stallone has dedicated the better part of the last decade to giving moviegoers what they wanted 20 years ago. It started with 2006’s Rocky Balboa, which closed out Stallone’s signature franchise in the satisfying manner fans have been craving since 1990’s Rocky V debacle. We’ve also gotten another Rambo sequel, as well as long-awaited team ups with icons both real (Schwarzenegger in Escape Plan) and cinematic (Grudge Match was “Rocky vs. Raging Bull”). But Stallone’s biggest recent success is the veritable fantasy team of action stars he’s assembled for the Expendables films.
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“Are you telling me that the fate of thirty million inhabitants is in the hands of these criminals?”

Now that we are in the middle of phase two of Marvel’s movie universe, a new batch of characters have been given a movie of their own to help set the stage for what is to come in the ever-expanding Marvel cinematic universe.  The Guardians of the Galaxy announcement for many left fans scratching their heads; after all, just how would a talking raccoon, a lumbering tree and various other space aliens fit in
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Lucy is good science fiction. Good science fiction challenges scientists to think about the possibilities. Good scientists think they don’t know and want to seek the answers and learn more. Bad scientists will tell you the answers because they know. But they don’t know. Science is made by making mistakes and learning from those mistakes and then making new mistakes and learning from them. Through that process myths and half-truths are passed along. For a hundred years science said that we only use about 10% percent of our brain, but now we are told that that was a mistake
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Zach Braff had a nice long run on the sitcom Scrubs, but he showed the world he was more than that by writing, directing and starring in the indie hit Garden State. Braff starred in some other movies but didn’t get much traction. He’s not really a leading-man type. He did have a nice supporting part in Oz the Great and Powerful, but Braff had already demonstrated he can do it all. Hollywood is not too friendly to original ideas, so Braff went to Kickstarter and had success.
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What a difference a year makes. It was just last summer that The Purge came out of nowhere to become an unexpected smash. The film piqued my interest with a killer marketing campaign that smartly sold its outrageous concept: for one night out of the year, any and all crime is legal in the U.S. Unfortunately, the filmmakers squandered that novel idea by making the most cliched, claustrophobic thriller imaginable. A little more than a year later, this follow-up arrives under considerably different circumstances. Instead of canny summer counter-programming, The Purge: Anarchy is the latest sequel in a summer that seems particularly heavy on franchise films.
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“Apes together strong!”

When French author Pierre Boulle first wrote his novel Monkey Planet, I’m sure he never imagined a film like Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes. While I was enjoying the five films that made up the original franchise run, I couldn’t have imagined a movie like Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes. When Tim Burton made his pitiful attempt to revive the franchise, it was downright impossible. In fact, the franchise appeared dead and gone by the time that film ran its destructive course
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“Missed it by that much.” Never before was that Don Adams/Maxwell Smart catchphrase more appropriate to a movie. Sometimes there is a very thin line between instant classic and near miss. Earth To Echo is the best example in decades of a film that could have, should have, would have been so much more if not for just one bad decision. The film has all of those coming-of-age moments that exist in those 1980’s classics like Goonies, Explorers and, of course, ET. The film sports a wonderful cast with plenty of nuance in characters.
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In a summer that has been taken over by giant lizards and robots, it is a little odd to find a little sweet film like Begin Again playing on the screen and competing with the heavy hitters of summer. From the writer/director of indie smash Once we get a film that isn’t just about musicians trying to make their big break, but instead it’s about the heart and pain that goes into the creation we later hear and become fans of.  When we first meet Greta (Keira Knightly) she is nursing some heartbreak in a bar, and her friend drags her up on stage to perform her new song.
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When I was a young boy I loved playing with my toys. We didn’t have Transformers in those days, but we did have Major Matt Mason, plastic dinosaurs, Hot Wheels and Creepy Crawlers Thingmaker sets. Yeah, in those days a toy could cause third degree burns, and no one really worried about getting sued. Kind of takes the fun out of being a kid today. You know who else, I bet, loved to play with his toys? Michael Bay. I bet he had the coolest toys in his neighborhood. He probably wasn’t the best guy to be friends with, however. He didn’t invite the kids over to play with his toys. He likely charged you a nickel to watch him play with them
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“You sell 100 million records, and see how you handle it.”

If you’ve ever seen an episode of Behind the Music — or followed popular culture at all in the previous century — then you probably know artists tend to not handle that level of success very well. However, the rise and (inevitable) fall of the original Four Seasons lineup is unique for a number reasons. Unfortunately, very few of those reasons are captured in Jersey Boys, Clint Eastwood’s oddly lifeless, workmanlike adaptation of the joyous, wildly-popular Broadway musical.
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“You should never stop thinking about a life you’ve taken.  That’s the price you pay for taking it.”

In 2010 David Michod directed his first full-length feature Animal Kingdom. It was a critical success, and he went on to pick up a Best Director award with the Australian Directors’ Guild.  Now Michod has completed his sophomore effort, The Rover, which does explore some familiar ground with criminal families, but the film takes a more introspective approach to life and what matters most in the world when you believe you have nothing left to lose.
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When I see films I don’t like, I tend to dismiss them. I have seen many, many movies over the years, and I have seen many, many terrible movies. In the last few years, there have been an increasing number of post-modern, self-referential meta-movies full of smarmy irony. So many of these films have been made that it seems that I don’t see simple un-ironic movies that are just plain funny anymore. It is actually a great skill to create something really funny. 22 Jump Street is supposed to be a stupid comedy that one can enjoy without thinking.
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“What I am about to tell you sounds crazy. But you have to listen to me. Your very lives depend on it. You see, this isn’t the first time.”

No, this isn’t the first time. Tom Cruise seems to be making a habit of these science fiction action movies of late. There was Oblivion and War Of The Worlds, and quite frankly Edge Of Tomorrow looked to be pretty much more of the same. But there’s a huge difference between this film and the previous two. Edge Of Tomorrow is actually good. What looks on the surface to be just Groundhog Day with futuristic toys turns out to be a redemption story that I actually never saw coming.
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