The Reel World

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.

“Fee Fi Fo Fum, ask not whence the thunder come. For between heaven and earth it’s a perilous place, home to a fearsome giant race. Who hunger to conquer the mortals below, waiting for the seeds of revenge to grow…”

Jack the Giant Slayer is the mash-up adaptation of two classic fairytales; Jack and the Beanstalk and Jack the Giant Killer. Now adaptations are big business in today’s industry, but is combining two different source materials wise, or a recipe for disaster? To answer that question let’s examine the recipe of this film: two popular children’s stories, Bryan Singer at the helm, top-shelf actors Nicolas Hoult, Ewan McGregor, and Stanley Tucci. Well, considering that the resulting brew is an entertaining, family friendly fantasy film, my answer is going to be coming up on the positive side.

When I see the claim “inspired by true events” I tend to always take this with a grain of salt, because really just about anything can be inspired by a true event.  It’s a misleading caption that frustrates me when I see it used to promote a film.  Why does it bother me so much?  Its simple; people read those words and begin to think everything is just about entirely true.  In this case the film Snitch was inspired by true events.  It took some time but I did manage to find a video on You Tube about a PBS television show that inspired the film.  This again is an example of what Hollywood does to spin the truth in order to fill seats at the theater.  But this review isn’t about fact checking but about what we see on the big screen.

After reluctantly agreeing to receive a package for a friend filled with MDMA, Jason Collins (Rafi Gavron) finds himself set up in a DEA sting and is about to take the fall with several drug charges for simply receiving a package.  The filmmakers wastes no time pulling us into the situation; unfortunately, they felt the need to shoot everything handheld, and what is delivered instead of a suspenseful take down, is a minor case of motion sickness.  I’m all for handheld footage, but in this case it’s just several minutes of footage that never seems to be framed and borders on what at one time would have been considered unusable footage.  As for what happens to Jason, well, unfortunately his best friend set him up, and because of a new law the only way to shorten your sentence is to offer up another fish in the drug pool.  Too bad for Jason, his only drug connection is his friend who tossed him under the bus.

"Guess who?"

In case you haven't been paying attention, 2013 is turning out to be the year of the returning action stars. The Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger teamed up with Korean action director Jee-woon Kim to deliver a very entertaining ride in The Last Stand. Sly Stallone teamed up with action icon Walter Hill to bring us the not-so-entertaining Bullet To The Head. Of course, perhaps the most eagerly awaited return was Bruce Willis back in the role that made him an action star in the first place. This is less Willis's return and more a potential swansong for cowboy cop John McLane. It's the fifth entry in the Die Hard franchise and the first sequel written originally as a Die Hard film and not something adapted to the character. With the disappointing Live Free Or Die Hard still fresh in my memory, all bets were off when I entered the cinema for a sneak peak of A Good Day To Die Hard.

Even among the crowded field idyllic meadow of big-screen romances, the “Nicholas Sparks movie” has become its own lucrative sub-genre. The only other contemporary authors I can remember achieving that sort of name brand recognition are Stephen King and John Grisham. (When people went to watch a Harry Potter film, they didn’t usually say, “Let’s go see the new J.K. Rowling movie.) It’s easy to spot a Nicholas Sparks movie: the lily white leads usually live in or around one of the Carolinas, where they inevitably get drenched by a romantic, cleansing rain before coming across a pivotal letter.

The fact that Safe Haven hits every single one of these checkpoints should, in theory, make it the ultimate Nicholas Sparks movie experience. Instead, the new film — the eighth big-screen adaptation of the author’s work — comes off as a pale imitator. 

The conclusion of the wildly popular Twilight saga last fall left a nation of haters high-fiving each other, but it also created a giant, heart-shaped vacuum in Hollywood. Where is the industry’s next big young adult-oriented, human-on-supernatural romance franchise going to come from? Valentine’s Day seems as good a time as any to find out if Beautiful Creatures — based on Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl’s “Caster Chronicles” series — is up to the task.

Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich) can’t wait to get out of Gatlin, South Carolina. Thanks to some nimble narration, Ethan explains why he feels trapped in his fictional dead-end town, where virtually every important piece of literature is on the banned list and people enthusiastically re-enact the Civil War as if they’re expecting a different result. Ethan’s spirits brighten when he meets moody outsider Lena Duchaness (Alice Englert), who is literally the girl of his dreams. You see, Ethan has been having the same dream every night about a mysterious dark-haired beauty; unfortunately, he always dies at the end. After a rocky start (is there any other kind?), the two grow closer and Ethan discovers that Lena is a witch.

Between Jason Bateman (Office Space and Horrible Bosses) and Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids and Mike and Molly), whose career seems to be most on fire right now?  The idea of these two pairing would at first glance appear to be comic gold.  Instead the result is a road trip film that had me asking if it were over yet. When we first meet Sandy Patterson (Bateman), he’s just your average businessman trying to support his family.  With a new baby on the way, more money is just what he could use, and when he discovers the only people getting bonuses are his superiors, this rubs him the wrong way, and rightfully so.  So when he’s given an offer to leave the company to work for another company and get a substantial raise, the decision is a no brainer.

Too bad in Winter Park, Florida, Diana (McCarthy) has stolen Patterson’s identity and has gone on a spending spree, running up credit cards and ruining Patterson’s credit.  Things manage to get worse after Diana is arrested under Patterson’s name and in the process has a warrant sent out for Patterson.  Despite everything Diana manages to do, the film never seems to want us to dislike her, but instead they tried to make her just as sympathetic as Sandy.  If that were my only problem with the film, I’d just blow it off and just remind myself, “it’s only a movie”, but instead the film is a bit of a train wreck.

Steven Soderbergh has had a one-of-a-kind career. And if the director is to be believed, that filmmaking career comes to a close with Side Effects. (At least theatrically speaking; his Liberace biopic, Behind the Candelabra, is scheduled to air on HBO later this year.) Soderbergh may have best exemplified the idea of making “One for Me, One for Them.” (Even if the director firmly disagrees with this notion.) The theory dictates his “One for Them” flicks usually had the word Ocean’s in the title and helped fund his micro-budgeted, “One for Me” experimental films. After all, Ocean’s Thirteen also describes the number of people who saw Bubble or The Girlfriend Experience.

In recent years, the Oscar-winning director (he picked up a statue for Traffic) has turned his detached, genre-bending eye to star-studded ensemble pieces like Contagion and Haywire. (Not to mention the stud-studded hit Magic Mike.) Side Effects fits neatly into this same mold.

“This is a corpse infected with the plague. It is uncaring, unfeeling.”

When it comes to the overwhelming majority of zombie fiction, it’s all about brains. (Or rather, BRAAAINS!!!) It’s what the undead hunger for, and a well-placed headshot is usually the only way to kill them (again). And that doesn’t even cover the popular device of using the walking dead as an allegory for an increasingly mindless society. Warm Bodies stands out because it’s more concerned with an entirely different bodily organ. Based on Isaac Marion’s popular novel of the same name, the zombie romantic comedy deals directly with matters of the heart.

It's hard to imagine that Sylvester Stallone and Walter Hill never crossed paths for an action movie in the early days of their careers. Both have established themselves as staples in the action movie genre, and they dominated the 1970's and 1980's. It seems like a dream come true that the actor and director have finally joined forces. Unfortunately, some dreams are actually nightmares, and if Bullet To The Head is any indication, the two stars would have been better off had they remained unaligned.

The story is based on the French graphic novel Du Plomb Dans La Tete by Alexis Nolent. I have never seen the book, so it would not be possible for me to compare the two. Here the story involves hitman James Bobo (Stallone). He's on a hit with his partner Louis (Seda). Things go smoothly until James decides not to kill a hooker witness. Is he going soft? Not really. It turns out the two have been set up by their boss Marcus Baptiste (Slater) who has sent another killer, Keegan (Momoa) to get rid of the team. James gets away, and now he wants to find out who set him up and killed his partner.