Saving Grace (2000)

  For some reason, I thought this was about a woman accepting a terminal diagnosis of cancer with the help of her gay best friend.  It's actually Weeds meets Waking Ned Devine.  I don't know what the hell I was thinking.

Grace (Brenda Blethyn) is still reeling from the sudden death of her husband when she gets the news that he was actually hundreds of thousands of pounds in debt and, if she doesn't come up with the money fast, her house will be taken as payment.  In desperation, she turns to her gardener, Matthew (Craig Ferguson), for help.  Matthew suggests putting Grace's green thumb to the production of hydroponic marijuana as a way to clear all her outstanding debts.  His girlfriend, Nicky (Valerie Edmond), is against the idea from the start but the pair get help from the local doctor (Martin Clunes) and conspiracy theorist (Tristan Sturrock).

This is a cute little movie.  It just was not what I was expecting at all.  To be honest, I probably would have hated the cancer movie, so I'm glad this turned out to be different.  If you've ever wondered what it would be like if Nancy Botwin had been a genteel Englishwoman, this is your lucky day.

Monsters (2010)

  I'm not a huge fan of independent movies, mostly because they're generally character dramas and we all know how I feel about those.  This one wraps all of that up in a story about aliens, so it's okay.

A probe carrying alien samples crashed over Mexico and the U.S. and Mexican armies have been battling the creatures ever since.  A photographer (Scoot McNairy) has to escort his boss's daughter (Whitney Able) through the infected zone back to America.

The human parts are a very generic love/road trip story but the creature aspect is worth another look.  Director Gareth Edwards' name is all over this movie from writing, directing, photography and probably catering, too.  It's clear that this was a passion project for him and he manages to turn in a well-realized world inhabited by characters that react realistically.  There are not a lot of action setpieces but the ones that do exist are handled well.  Overall, it's a decent indie alien film.

Pirate Radio (2009)

  Known everywhere outside of the U.S. as The Boat That Rocked.  A more multi-layered title, to be sure, but it lacks the snappiness of Pirate Radio.

In 1966, Britain was front and center of the greatest era in pop and rock music, but suffered due to a lack of airtime on the government-controlled radio stations.  Boats, anchored off the coastline, hosted pirate radio DJs to play popular music around the clock.  Young Carl (Tom Sturridge) joins Radio Rock, a boat owned by his godfather (Bill Nighy), after being expelled from college.  He finds the personalities on board to be bizarre, yet endearing.  But bureaucrat Alistair Dormady (Kenneth Branagh) has sworn to shut down all pirate radio on moral grounds by the end of the year.

This is a great movie.  Bill Nighy, in particular, has a level of benevolent snark in every line he says that warms my cold, pitted heart.  He is the coolest boss, hands down.  This also has another fantastic turn from Phillip Seymour Hoffman, which should be redundant since the man never turned in a bad role.  The rivalry between his character, the Count, and Rhys Ifans' Gavin Kavanaugh is wildly entertaining.  Of course, the soundtrack is excellent.  If you haven't seen this, you really should.  You might not learn anything in particular, but you will be entertained.

Malice in Wonderland (2009)

  Ha! You thought I was going to forget my Monday post but you were wrong!  I almost did, but that's not the point.

Alice (Maggie Grace) is on the run in London when she is hit by a cabbie and loses her memory.  The cab driver, Whitey (Danny Dyer), is late for a very important date so he bundles Alice into the back.  A local gangster, Harry Hart (Nathaniel Parker), has just gotten out of jail and the street crews are doing their best to get Harry the most memorable, most exciting present for his coming out party.  Meanwhile, poor Alice just wants to remember who she is.

This is based on Alice in Wonderland but attempts to give the story a more modern twist.  Mostly, it works if you don't mind being telegraphed every single major development.  There are not a lot of new ways to present this so literally, after all.  I did appreciate the attempts at gender bending some of the roles.  Making the Mad Hatter a crazy madam named Hattie (Bronogh Gallagher) with a big rig full of tarted up prostitutes was an especially nice touch.  If I have a complaint, it's that they really didn't delve far enough into the mythology.  The film focused more on Alice's search for an identity than it did exploring how the underbelly of a society is a different world than the legal one above.

Mission: Impossible 3 (2006)

Even though I've already reviewed this, I thought it was important to see it again in the context of the rest of the franchise.  It's definitely better than the second film and might even be better than the first, at least as far as film-making.  The action sequences take a backseat here to make way for more interaction with the principal villain, a welcome change of pace instead of trying to double down on mayhem.  As far as character development, all I got was that Ethan Hunt really is a sucker for brunettes.    Originally posted on 23 Jul 2011.  

This was the only poster I could find that didn't just have Tom Cruise on it.

I never saw this installment of the series.  MI2 performed a fun-ectomy on me but this one reversed that procedure.  Mostly due to Phillip Seymour Hoffman.  He is an excellent villain.  He remains perfectly cool, calm, and collected the entire film, despite the fact that he is let down by his people at every turn. 

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is semi-retired from doing impossible things and is dating Michelle Monaghan when he finds out that one of his protegees (Keri Russell) has been taken by an evil arms dealer (PSH).  He pulls together a team (Ving Rhames, Maggie Q, and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) to rescue her and they blow up some stuff in Berlin.  However, PSH put a bomb up Keri's nose and she switches off like a Replicant.

Lawrence Fishburne is an angry, overly enunciated boss who reams them for botching the job.  In response, they decide to go to the Vatican and snatch PSH from a party.  That goes well, until the convoy carrying him gets attacked.

Side note:  I live in Northern Virginia and New Boyfriend works inside the Beltway.  This particular scene occurs on a narrow-ass bridge over a huge expanse of water.  I thought it was the same highway that was in True Lies (and it still might be) which is down in the Florida Keys, but they cut to make you think that it's part of the 14th St Bridge in downtown DC.  Don't be fooled, people.  There is no ocean within sight of the Capitol Building. 

Anyway, PSH escapes and Ethan realizes that his girlfriend is in serious danger so he tears ass until he gets to the hospital where she works.  She's already been kidnapped and he gets tazed by his coworkers for being a dangerous rogue.  Now he has to go off the reservation and Save the Girl by performing a stupid amount of dangerous stunts, including swinging off a building onto the slanted roof of another one to steal what the Bad Guy wants so he can trade. 

Simon Pegg is in this as well, mostly as comic relief, but it was enough to get him bumped up to actual team member according to the trailer for Ghost Protocol. 

This was another one from New Boyfriend's collection.  He's going to end up with his own tag on here if he keeps this up.

Blow Out (1981)

  What happened to John Travolta?  He was so good when he was younger.  I suppose that's not really fair.  The man has to earn a paycheck.  It's just hard to see him doing such great work here and then see Look Who's Talking Too in his filmography.

Jack Terry (John Travolta) is a sound engineer for low-budget slasher films.  While out recording background noise, he picks up the sound of a tire blowing out and turns to see a car plunge into the river.  He rescues the girl (Nancy Allen) but the driver, a Presidential hopeful, is dead.  Playing back the tape later, Jack realizes that the tire was shot out.  This puts him at odds with an overzealous assassin (John Lithgow) trying to tie up loose ends.

There was a movie that came out a couple of years ago called Berberian Sound Studio that also had to do with a sound engineer.  I kept seeing references to this film in a lot of the articles about it.  If it is half as good as Blow Out, I will definitely be impressed.  Brian De Palma did an incredible job with this film, especially pacing out all the dark little revelations.  I think Hitchcock would have liked it.

Mission: Impossible II (2000)

  We move on now to the second installment of this franchise.  I don't think I had seen this since it first came out.  I remembered the rock climb from the beginning (because I thought it was pointless) and Thandie Newton (because she's beautiful) and that was about it.  Oh, I also thought they used the face swap bit too often.

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is on vacation when he is pulled in by his handler (Anthony Hopkins).  I know, I was surprised, too.  A scientist has created a super-virus named Chimera and a rogue IMF agent named Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) has stolen it.  The only person who can get close enough to Ambrose to get any intel is his ex-girlfriend, Nyah (Thandie Newton), a jewel thief.  Ethan must recruit Nyah to go undercover but finds himself a little too interested in the gorgeous burglar to be effective at his job.

John Woo directed this sequel and, boy, does it show.  He loves slo-mo, white doves, vulnerable but tough women, and high-octane ass-kicking.  Pretty sure that's also his Tinder profile.  Don't get me wrong, when it works, it works.  The action sequences in this are not as iconic as the one in the original but each one is beautifully shot and well-crafted.  The story is weaker, mostly because Ambrose is such a one-note villain, but they did bring back Luther (Ving Rhames) and that's always worthwhile.

Astro Boy (2009)

  This wasn't great, but it didn't suck as hard as I thought it would.

Toby Tenma (Freddie Highmore) is a boy genius, as to be expected when your father (Nicholas Cage) is the head of the Ministry of Science on your floating city above the Earth's surface.  Unfortunately, he is not smart enough to avoid getting locked in the same room as an experimental war robot ordered by a President (Donald Sutherland) hellbent on re-election.  Distraught, Dr. Tenma decides to create a robotic replica of his son, down to uploading the kid's memories.  He soon realizes that Toby 2.0 is never going to replace his kid.  Toby gets knocked down to the surface world and picked up by a group of kids, led by Cora (Kristen Bell).  He renames himself Astro and tries to assimilate to this new family, only to realize that wishing for something doesn't automatically mean it will happen.

I have never seen any of the old Astro Boy comics or the TV show, so as far as I was concerned, this was my introduction to the character.  I wasn't impressed.  There's nothing really wrong with it; there are just so many better movies about child robots that it seems silly to waste your time on this one.  The animation is good but not spectacular, the humor is flat, the side characters are mediocre, and the story has been done.  The voice cast is impressive but not enough to make it worth renting.  I think it was nominated for something several years ago and that's the only reason it was in my queue.

Mission: Impossible (1996)

  Since I have recently seen the fifth installment of this series, I thought it would be fun to go back and watch the first one because I honestly couldn't remember a thing about it.

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is in Prague trying to recover part of a list of undercover operative names with his team when the job goes bad.  He reports the deaths of his teammates to his home office supervisor, Kittredge (Henry Czerny), only to discover that the entire point of the operation was to flush out a mole in the organization.  As the only survivor, Hunt is assumed to be the mole.  He decides to steal the real list from CIA headquarters and pose as a disgruntled agent looking to sell.  Hunt hires disavowed former agents Luther (Ving Rhames) and Krieger (Jean Reno) to assist, as well as the other surviving member of his team, Claire (Emmanuelle Beart), in the near impossible task of clearing their names.

The technology in this film dates it faster than anything else.  The computers and tech are absolutely obsolete.  Once you forgive that, though, the CIA mainframe wire-from-the-ceiling stunt is still fantastic.  The CGI gets a little spotty during the final train sequence but doesn't detract from the suspense.

I had forgotten how young Tom Cruise looked.  Not that he's aged terribly in twenty years, he has too much money for that, but his face was so thin and smooth back then!  Bad haircut but hey, we've all been there.  Speaking of flashbacks, I totally forgot Emilio Estevez was in this movie.  Granted, he's only in it for a little while, but it opens on his face and that confused the shit out of me.  I had to remember that he still existed.

I bought the blu-ray set of all four M:I films back when I thought there were only going to be four, but I went ahead and watched this on the server because God only knows how long it'll take me to get to M in my personal collection.

Fulltime Killer (2001)

  Man, this movie was such a mishmash it's hard to even form an opinion on it.  My love for East Asian action movies and hitmen is at war with my disdain for movies that reference classic movies and confusion over what fucking language I'm listening to at any given moment.

O (Takashi Sorimachi) is Asia's top assassin, a position he has achieved by being a complete recluse. Not even his housekeeper, Ms. Chin (Kelly Lin), knows anything about him, just that his previous housekeeper disappeared.  O's position is threatened by the arrival of Tok (Andy Lau), a flashy newcomer who cribs his style from every popular action film released in the last ten years.  Tok even goes so far as to woo Ms. Chin just to get at his rival.  Meanwhile, both men are being hunted by an obsessive Interpol agent (Simon Yam).

This movie was shot in Cantonese, Mandarin, English and Japanese with a little bit of Korean in there as well, if my ear is correct.  I speak only one of those languages so it was a little hard to follow, since I'm pretty sure the multiple tongues were intended to be a plot point.  I get the concept but it makes for a bit more challenging viewing for Western audiences.  Maybe.  Or maybe I'm overthinking it.

Anyway, the action sequences are good and it was nice to see Andy Lau do something that looked so carefree.  Most things I've seen him in, he is much more serious.  The production values are not Hollywood-level, which makes the film seem older than it is, but that's again just a Western observation.

New Year, New TV Shows

I have a reliable system --some have called it neurotic-- for managing my various platforms, but occasionally I run into a minor snag in my watching habits.  Usually, it involves getting stuck in a season of TV and foreshortening my time to watch movies.  Currently, I am making my way through six seasons of Frasier (I'm nearly done with season 3) and I just finished season one of Pinky and the Brain.  Christy suggested I check out the premiere of a new show on Starz called Blunt Talk and also Fear the Walking Dead.  We're also very excited to be able to see So You Think You Can Dance's 12th season finale this weekend.  (Yes, I know it aired on Monday.  We record it and then watch it together.  And yes, I am aware that is weird.)

  I've been cherry-picking my way through the first few seasons, mostly because I've watched them so many times I practically have them memorized.  This season is memorable because it's when Niles (David Hyde-Pierce) separates from his wife and has to be a bachelor again.  Frankly, his is the only character with a discernible arc this season.  Frasier has moments from episode to episode but the real development is with his brother.

  I had no idea Pinky and the Brain had their own spin-off series from Animaniacs until Netflix recommended it.  It was a surprisingly well-rounded season.  It's certainly dated by its inclusion of jokes about the Clinton presidency, but who knows?  That might well end up being prescient instead of a relic.

  I had to add Starz back to my cable lineup just to see this show.  I didn't do it for this show, I did it because in October Ash vs. the Evil Dead is airing and I must see it.  This was just kind of a lark.  I figured I'd give it a shot because none of my regular Fall programming is back yet and the new shows don't start until the 21st, at the earliest.  This has got to be one of the funniest shows I have seen in recent memory.  Walter Blunt (Patrick Stewart) is a TV talk show pundit desperate to retain his ratings in the face of a myriad of personal problems.  I have seen three episodes now and each one features Stewart being hysterically funny while setting up the supporting characters to have their own backstories and possibilities for pathos. 

  As for Fear the Walking Dead, I watched the pilot and was distinctly unimpressed.  I know The Walking Dead has become a pop culture phenomenon but I have only seen the first season of it.  While I enjoyed the parent show and intend to continue watching it whenever it comes to the top of my queue, I cannot muster much interest in its prequel.  The zombie outbreak story has been done to death --if you'll pardon the pun-- in recent years and frankly FTWD just didn't make much of an impact.

Mission to Mars (2000)

  Happy Labor Day!  Here's a movie about space!

In the year 2020, a manned expedition to Mars is underway.  A team of astronauts, led by Luke (Don Cheadle), lands on the surface and almost immediately discovers a weird signal.  They go to investigate and are attacked by a mysterious force.  Luke survives long enough to send a cry for help to the space station above Earth.  Another team of astronauts, led by Woody (Tim Robbins) plan a frantic rescue mission, knowing that they might already be too late, just because of the distance involved.  Woody insists on having grief-stricken co-pilot Jim (Gary Sinise) join the mission and it's a good thing because stuff goes wrong immediately.

This is one of those movies that had a good idea but failed in execution.  There's something so earnest about its premise, so cloying in its delivery that I found it to be very off-putting.  It was like watching a small child carefully mangling a piano piece.  You grit your teeth and clap because otherwise you feel like a monster but you also never accept an invitation to hear them again.

I find it an interesting coincidence that I was just comparing a pair of French films to Scarface, a movie widely regarded as a masterpiece, and then watched this science fiction love letter from the same director as that seminal work.  The world moves in little circles.

I can't in good conscience recommend this movie for any reason.  Nothing is particularly wrong with the acting or the central plot; there are just too many better space films on which to bestow your precious time.

Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1 (2008)

  I'm not sure what I expected from this pair of films.  People have compared them to Scarface and I think that's fair.  For me, they were interesting to watch but I would never buy them.

After a bank heist goes wrong, Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) is arrested and taken to trial.  He promptly escapes, is recaptured, tried and sent to prison.  There, incensed that a Chilean dictator stole his thunder in the press, he pens his autobiography.  He also acquaints himself with his neighbor, another perennial escapee named Francois Besse (Mathieu Amalric).  The two have completely different personalities but similar goals so they collaborate to escape once again from maximum security.  Mesrine meets his newest lady love, Sylvia (Ludivine Sagnier), soon thereafter and the three move to England to hide out.  Mesrine just can't abide not being in the spotlight and Besse eventually gets fed up, leaving Mesrine to look for a new partner.  He settles on Charlie (Gerard Lanvin), an ex-con with ties to left-wing terrorist organizations.  In his mind, Mesrine is a revolutionary looking to bring down a corrupt system but everyone else can see the death spiral speeding to its inevitable conclusion.

There are very few moments of levity in either film, which makes it feel like kind of a slog.  I'm glad I took breaks between them to watch other things.  Another issue was the copy I watched had terrible subtitles which sometimes made it difficult to tell what was happening, as I do not speak French.  I'm sure a legitimate version would avoid that particular pitfall but I don't think I could sit through this again just for better subtitles.  If you're a fan of gritty gangster films, you'll probably enjoy this way more than I did.

Mesrine: Killer Instinct (2008)

  This is part one of a pair of films based on the life of French criminal Jacques Mesrine (pronounced Meh-reen), based on his autobiography.  If even half of this is true, this guy had the biggest balls you've ever seen.

After an early career in the French Army and a rough assignment in Algeria, Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) returns home but finds a provincial life just will not do.  His friend, Paul (Gilles Lelouche), gets him hooked up with a local gangster, Guido (Gerard Depardieu) as an enforcer, thief, and general bad man.  He also meets his wife, Sofia (Elena Anaya), has three children and goes to prison the first time.  Afterwards, he tries to go straight but the lure of easy money and violence is just too strong.  Sofia splits and he meets the Bonnie to his Clyde, Jeanne (Cecile de France).  The two larcenous lovebirds move to Canada and kidnap a billionaire for ransom, but the scheme goes wrong and everyone goes to prison.  Jacques discovers that maximum security is way worse than anything he's ever experienced and makes plans to bust out as soon as he can.  He and his new friend Jean-Paul Mercier (Roy Dupuis) escape in broad daylight, then turn around and attack the prison as soon as they gather some firepower.

This was an absolutely insane true story.  According to the end credits, after Mesrine's attack, the government actually looked into the prison conditions and shut the place down.  So, yay?  I guess?  That doesn't begin to balance the scales from all the terrible things he did but it is pretty entertaining. Like I said, I have no idea how much of this is actually true and how much is creative license by the author.

Cassel does an incredible job with the intensity of this role.  Mesrine is not a likable guy and in the wrong hands, this could have been a masochistic slog.  Instead, Cassel is able to lend some serious charisma to the part.  The only real issue I had with the film was the pacing.  It moves at a breakneck speed trying to fit years worth of criminal activity into a couple of hours.  As a result, it feels very rushed in parts and then slow in others.  Still, it's not like I've seen a lot of contemporary French films so I can't really judge.  Maybe that's a stylistic trend.  I don't know.  It's a decent crime biopic.  I'll be interested to see the second part.