Movie Review: Solace (2015)

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Solace
2015
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Abbie Cornish, Colin Farrell
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Worldwide Box Office Gross: over $22 million

Plot: A psychic works with the FBI, in order to hunt down a serial killer

'Scant Solace For What Is a Mind-Numbing B-Movie Bore'

The script for Solace originated back in the early 2000s as a direct sequel to David Fincher's Se7en, but the film spent a long time in development throughout that decade, courtesy of Ted Griffin (Ocean's Eleven), & has been edited and re-written several times. Turns out the film is so farfetched, not even the efforts of the main cast could salvage it. 

FBI agents Joe and Katherine are investigating a string of murders & are on the hunt for the perpetrator, but they are left stumped by the killer's bizarre method of killing his victims, painlessly. Joe enlists his friend, a retired doctor, John for his help. As they inch closer to the killer, it becomes clearer the main bad guy is none other than the one played by Colin Farrell - who doesn't appear until the very end of the film, & by then it was too little, too late, as he had no positive effect on it.

Solace has a decent cast in Anthony Hopkins, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Colin Farrell, but the script, which they were given, just didn't do their talents any justice, whatsoever and as for the music, some of it was bad. Being a B-movie, straight- to -DVD flick sadly, however, all the tension, mystery, elements one comes to expect in a psychological movie, just didn't transpire. I've seen this several times now - decent names on the bill for a B-movie, but the final product doesn't live up to its billing. In fact, it was utterly subdued, lacking in genuine thrills and so weary it was, to be candid, tedious to the core. 

As the story unravels, it all goes to hell, spiralling downhill and thus never recovers, the story & the tension is bereft and Solace's below mediocre and ponderous script wastes Hopkins, Morgan's and Cornish's talents. The editing looks cheap and low grade and I'm not liking how it looks (the image of the bullet flying into Colin Farrell was overdone), & the music is dire. Solace looks and has the feel and makings of a straight-to-DVD product, with a premise that was tossed aside by Hollywood movie execs. In 2013, Solace was in the hands of Warner Bros. After completion of the film, Warner did nothing with it and it was only until 2015 that Solace got its feet off the ground in the UK. 

Anthony Hopkins's John has virtually no onscreen camaraderie with Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Joe - actually, none of the cast, the main players and otherwise gel well together, although individual performances wise, they were okay. But it was sorely obvious that with Hopkins and Dean Morgan especially, they have delivered better, elsewhere, and with far better material. After the main character is killed off, their demise is poorly explained & handled, that their death doesn't make a lot of sense. The confrontation between Hopkins and Colin Farrell also fails to light up the screen. 

Dubbed a mystery thriller, there is also the odd chase sequence with Hopkins and Cornish going after a Yellow taxi, but despite that, Solace is utterly tepid and drab with the story that fails to convince; with screenwriters who penned Amazing Spider-Man, Frost/Nixon and The Shield at the helm, Solace is miraculously rife with lack of ingenuity, believability in the story and the performances, along with the lacklustre, flat & non-creative script and approach that is of non-commercial type. Given this is a direct to DVD film, all attempts at creating and carving out real tension, suspense and genuine feelings of horror & shock, which are some of the traits for a psychological crime thriller, go astray. 

Brazillian director Afonso Poyart's previous efforts were one short and one feature: both in Portuguese, but with this first English-based offering, he has delivered what is a stinker and a tame one also. 

Not only is this one of the poorest crime thrillers I have come across and have reviewed, compared to the likes of say, 1995's Copycat & 2015's Secret In Their Eyes, Solace just didn't have enough quality in the performances & screenplay to help the film sail by. 

Final Verdict:

Yet another direct-to-DVD offering and more proof that a good roster of acting talent are laboured with such middling material, coupled with a one-note and lifeless direction. At almost 2 hours long, it turns out Solace is all by means a solemn & vapid affair that is not recommended. 


Overall:

On the Big Screen: THE DEATH OF STALIN (2017)

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Russia banned Armando Iannucci's burlesque of Soviet history shortly before its scheduled release in the former U.S.S.R. The country's culture ministry describes it as an incitement to ethnic hatred and an insult to those who lived through the Soviet Union and apparently liked it. The Russians protest that Ianucci and his co-writers, adapting a French graphic novel, sought to brainwash moviegoers so that "the thought of the 1950s Soviet Union [would make] people feel only terror and disgust." A westerner's inevitable rejoinder might be, "what else was there to feel?" but we should never underestimate the persistence and virulence of "my country right or wrong" thinking anywhere, or the legitimate pride Soviet citizens may have felt or still feel about the nation's technological achievements, particularly in space exploration. Also, to the extent that Russia was a different culture before Stalinism arguably warped it further, patriotic Russians today, from the president on down, may simply disagree with the admittedly reflexive western assessment that Stalinist terror -- the killing of actual and (mostly) suspected political enemies -- disqualifies Josef Stalin's every other achievement, from the decisive battles against Nazi Germany to ... well, whatever Russians think he achieved. The irony of Russian outrage, no doubt exacerbated by their resentment of the persistent vilification of their country since the ascent of Vladimir Putin, is that The Death of Stalin may well offend people who have the polar opposite view of Stalin and his collaborators. Iannucci's burlesque treatment of the power struggle following the tyrant's demise will no doubt appear to trivialize the cruelty of Stalin's despotism by making it an occasion for black comedy.

Imagine the Coen brothers (or Martin Scorsese in comic mood) directing the Three Stooges in one of those wartime propaganda pictures in which Moe Howard played Hitler and you'll get close to the flavor of this film. Stalin's inner circle are portrayed as thuggish clowns -- which probably is unfair, to the extent to which they were committed ideologues with an ideal of the common good that just happened to be incompatible with liberal democracy, but isn't exactly inconsistent with the way Stalin himself treated them during his long late-night bull sessions. Their sophomoric antics on such an evening are juxtaposed with both a final wave of arrests and the farcical doings at a Radio Moscow studio when the dictator requests a transcript of that evening's concert, forcing the idiot managers to restage it since they'd forgotten to record the performance. The unvarnished brutality of the roundup is intercut with comedy on the level of, "You'd better do as I say, or off with your head!" It reminds you that despotism has always been the stuff of slapstick comedy, tapping into shared destructive fantasies. A thread runs from this scene through the rest of the picture as the featured pianist (Olga Kuryenko in the nearest thing to a sympathetic role), who holds out for a huge bribe before reprising her performance, sends a nasty message to Stalin that becomes part of the later power struggle.

Inevitably the story gets going as Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) suffers a cerebral hemorrhage and spends a fatal night on his office floor marinating in his own pee, because the guards outside are too scared to investigate the loud thump they heard. Finally his henchmen are summoned to the scene, setting up the funniest scene in the picture as they compete to express grief and collaborate to move the still-living leader despite their great disgust at his urine-soaked clothes. It becomes clear that while the dim-witted Gyorgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor, way too old yet ideally expressing the character's lumbering incompetence) is Stalin's heir-apparent, real power will be seized either by longtime security chief Lavrenti Beria (Simon Russell Beale) or the Moscow party boss Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi). Beria would seem to have all the advantages, including a vicious streak that has him, on film at least, still personally torturing suspects, but everyone else's fear or hatred of Beria ultimately works to Khrushchev's advantage. The film leaves the impression that the result made little difference, since each man was committed to a degree of liberalization, if only to gain popularity. The film is even more insistent, however, about each man being out only for himself, while their Politburo colleagues are too dumb -- or too damaged in the case of longtime foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov (Michael Palin) -- to show any initiative.

From one perspective this approach indisputably trivializes history, but Iannucci's perspective and purpose are bluntly iconoclastic. He was disturbed to see Stalin portraits shamelessly on display in Moscow hotels, finding that equivalent to Germans displaying portraits of Hitler. While Russians might answer that Hitler helps explain why they see Stalin as a good guy, Iannucci presumably sees both men as tyrants and gangsters equally deserving of repudiation from their people. His film suffers from his conflicting desires to lampoon and condemn as it swings from the pitch-black comedy of the title event to the more dramatically brutal resolution of the Khrushchev-Beria feud. There's little funny about Beria's end, apart from Jason Isaacs's over-the-top portrayal of Marshal Zhukov as a two-fisted Russian cowboy -- as Khrushchev has his rival shot in the head and burnt in a courtyard -- in a compression of events that played out over several months -- and in fairness to Iannucci's intentions little is meant to be. To reinforce his point that all Stalin's men were gangsters -- hence, presumably, the casting of Buscemi in the first place -- he ends the movie like a gangster picture, apart from an epilogue that uses title cards to skim through future Khrushchev power struggles that might have made for a full-scale sequel. Ultimately The Death of Stalin is grimly entertaining despite some tonal incoherence, and with Russophobia at a new fever pitch in the west, the nebulous attitude of the President of the United States notwithstanding, the picture probably has found an ideal moment to open wide in the U.S. Since Iannucci has next to nothing to say about communism as an economic or political system, Russians today are probably right to guess that his film's ultimate message will be that Russians have always been thugs and always will be. Since they take a tit-for-tat attitude about such slights, perhaps we'll soon see something in Russian about British or American scandals or atrocities, maybe something that makes Churchill or Reagan look like an idiot -- and if we did see such a picture here I suppose that would prove a point.

Review of PACIFIC RIM UPRISING: Jaegers in Jeopardy

Watch Movies TV - March 31, 2018

The first "Pacific Rim" film (MY REVIEW), which directed by the 2018 Oscar Best Director Guillermo del Toro, was screened in 2013. I actually liked it despite having apprehensions about it before watching it. This sequel, directed by Steven S. de Knight in his feature film debut, also had not-so-good reviews coming out before it was released in local theaters today. Again despite these "warnings", we still went on to watch it, knowing it will probably still be a lot of fun. 

This sequel takes place 10 years after the Kaiju War of the first film. The lead character is Jake Pentecost, the son of the big hero of the first film, Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba). After a botched illegal transaction with Jaeger spare parts, Jake was forced to return to the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps (PPDC) as a Jaeger trainer, alongside his former partner Nate Lambert. Amara Namani, a teenage orphan who built a scrappy little Jaeger of her own, was recruited to be one of their trainees. 

From the get-go, it was clear that this film was going to be high-energy and over-the-top, peppered with corny and cheesy lines of dialogue. Once you accept that vibe, then you're good to go and you will enjoy the rest of the film. Don't expect anything serious or deep, this is simply one fun and bumpy ride. No thinking or logic is necessary, no matter how many pseudo-scientific lines they throw at us. 

John Boyega shows us a lighter side to him as Jake Pentecost, compared than the one we first knew him for, as Finn in the new Star Wars series. I had a good laugh with the way he delivered that "inspirational" speech to his trainees. Scott Eastwood played Nate Lambert, who was generally second fiddle to Jake in the film, but he also had his own heroic moments. Cailee Spaeny played Amara, who joins a slew of other sassy kiddie-young teen sidekicks from other recent action films.

Reprising her role from the previous film is Rinko Kikuchi as Mako Mori, who has now been promoted to be the General Secretary of the PPDC. Charlie Day and Burn Gorman play their old comic-relief nerdy scientists, Dr. Newton Geiszler and Dr. Hermann Gottlieb respectively, but this time, their characters have more screen time and plot surprises. 

To make the big Chinese market happy, Jing Tian is here again in a marked role as Liwen Shao, whose company had developed drones or remote-controlled Jaegers. Jing had been the major Chinese character in Hollywood films in the past two years, with roles in "The Great Wall" and "Kong: Skull Island". I first saw her five years ago in Chinese films like "Special ID" (MY REVIEW) and "Police Story 2013" (MY REVIEW). 

The Jaeger vs. Kaiju action is fast and frenetic, mercurial and messy. The buildings and infrastructure of Tokyo were all at their destructive mercy. This final battle is really the meat of the whole film, and it only happens in the third act. All the fighting is done in broad daylight so we can see the action (and the CGI) clearly, unlike the nighttime rainy fights in the last film. 

Overall though, the first film was still much better than this one, storywise and cinematically.  For this shallower sequel, you could actually skip the first 80 minutes and just catch the last 30 minutes for the fights. 6/10. 

Bad Moms 2: DVD Review

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Bad Moms 2: DVD Review

A year ago, Bad Moms came hurtling out of the traps, to offer a female alternative to the male-led comedy domain.

A success, thanks to its foul-mouthed edges and relatable leads, it was inevitable a sequel would show up to build on the box office plaudits of the first.

This time around though, while the formula still offers some laughs, it feels like the subject doesn't feel as fresh - despite the attempts of all involved to try and keep it bubbling over.

Building on the pressures of conforming to societal norms expressed in the first, the latest is, as the title suggests, set at Christmas and sees Mila Kunis' Amy, Kristen Bell's Kiki and Kathryn Hahn's Carla determined to reclaim back the festive season when their mothers come to town.

But as the pressure to make everything perfect unfolds, the pot begins to boil over....

Once again, setting the film against a backdrop of relatability helps Bad Moms 2 achieve a degree of familiarity once again. However, while there are a few laughs throughout (potentially more if you're a group out on a night out or imbued with alcohol), there's not quite enough as the Hangover style opening of a trashed house (complete with camel walking into shot) would suggest.

It feels a little less fresh this time, and some may even say rushed in parts as the script shows cracks; most of the film feels like mini-episodes sewn together with such a laissez-faire attitude that it makes it hard to fully engage with what's going on.

And the trio of mothers who end up visiting their broods are so ghastly, not once do you ever feel anything but from the oppressed younger mums' point of view. Sure, it ends up in the usual gloop of sentimentality that tars all festive films - but there are a few raucous laughs to be had, mainly from Hahn's foul-mouthed member of the group.

Kunis and Bell are fine, but don't have nearly as much to work with this time around - and whilst it's good the male element are sidelined this time around (aside from one skin-crawlingly unamusing fat-shaming Santa sequence), there's little that feels as enticing this time around.

Baranski is the best of the bunch, even though Sarandon's rocker hits fast and loose to start off with. It's Baranski as Amy's mum who delivers some of the best deadpan sneering moments and manages to get the rankling sideswipes that family members dish out so well downpat.

Best viewed with a non-critical head and with a group of friends, it does feel like A Bad Moms Christmas is the contractually obliged sequel in a series that's already worryingly out of ideas. Inevitably perhaps the next one will be Bad Moms Summer Holiday, but unless there's a stronger script and more to go on than the recognition of universal truths faced by mums and their mothers, the Bad Moms franchise could undo all the good will its strong leads have already garnered.

Sengoku 2 (1993) - Horror Video Game Review (Nintendo Switch)

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Discovering the Neo Geo port of Sengoku on the Nintendo Switch store earlier this month was a pleasant surprise, I loved the creepy vibe of ancient Japanese demons attacking a modern day city, it felt different to other scrolling beat-em-ups. I had heard many people complain about it though saying it was only with the release of Sengoku 2 that the series got good. While the graphics and sound effects are a lot better, and the game as a whole is more polished I felt a certain something was missing for me this time around, whether the surprise factor was gone, or if it just isn't as good a game I really am not sure. Much like the first game I bumped my lives right up to the maximum of 99 as I wanted to switch off my brain and relax rather than be stressed about dying.

I played through the game in both the Japanese and English versions, but didn't really see much difference. Annoyingly this time around there wasn't a story told before the game starts, I had to kind of piece it together from the cutscenes in between levels. I couldn't even tell if it was the same evil warlord from Sengoku or not. Playing as the two warriors from that one you have to fight your way to the enemy's stronghold and defeat him, that's about it. Something about him trying to alter time to make it so that he rules the world (possibly?).

There is a bit of a Turtles in Time vibe this time around with the warlord's floating fortress able to travel through time (at least it was nice to see that Technodrome like creation return, this time with added dragons!). Each of the four levels takes place in a different time zone, starting with the modern day characters in the 1500's (no explanation for that), you then go to the 1940's during World War II, the 1990's, then finally onto the floating fortress itself. To be honest I expected more levels this time around, not less. Sengoku's final level may have just been a boss battle but it still casts this in a bad light being a visibly game shorter than the previous one. The levels all have you just scrolling from left to right but they do go to some memorable places, the third level for instance takes place in a busy shopping district, so it is full of onlookers and civilians running around, level two features a section where you are fighting along the back of a huge bomber as planes fly around in the distance. The demon levels go more abstract, such as one background featuring gigantic ghostly warriors in mid fight, and another with a huge drum that a crazed drummer works at. There were three or four sections here that took place with you on horseback as well, helped to break up the relentless fighting a bit.

Much like the first game your characters are constantly warping between the real world and the crazy Japanese demon world. With levels taking place over time there is a lot more going on with background details, but it is only really ever the demon world where you get to fight the more monstrous creatures (such as enemies resembling goldfish on legs, and huge screen filling monstrosities). I did like that there are level specific enemy types, in particular the World War II level featured gun toting, grenade throwing soldiers as your foes to fight. There is quite a bit of varied enemy design again but they seemed less Japanese in style than before, in particular the samurai warriors here reminded me more than anything of the brutes from the Golden Axe games, all muscular and wearing fantasy armour. They still have a habit of entering levels in fun ways such as being brought on in stocks on the back of a wagon, or bursting out the floor, but again it didn't feel as varied as before. Bosses are as great as ever, and do the thing of changing mid boss battle into a monster form. There is a General type character who reminded me of M.Bison, a fox monster lady, and what was probably my favourite; a samurai who commits seppuku in order to summon a water dragon.

The sword was a special limited use weapon in Sengoku, here you are equipped with one as default, and boy is it fun to use! Nearly every enemy you kill dies by being sliced in half and falling apart before the evil spirit soars out from their corpse. The horseback enemies even get decapitated when they die, awesome stuff. You collect orbs to get limited magical powers again, and this time they also apply to the special characters you can summon. Once again you can summon characters to fight in your place; a fast ninja, a stick wielding monk, and an armoured wolf, they even have their own magic powers this time around. However it is only the primary character who can kill enemies in such fun ways and so I didn't really use these summons much. I did wish they were just playable characters you could do the whole game as. This also now gives you two attack buttons, for high and low moves. The enemies are very easy to kill and often attack in numbers, this weakness applies to the bosses as well. As a whole the game is a lot easier and more forgiving this time around, though there is a really weird auto aim design flaw that makes your character attack the nearest enemy to you no matter what direction you are facing, even if you're in the middle of attacking someone else.

Sengoku 2 is a fun game, in many ways it is a huge improvement, certainly with the graphics that are bigger and chunkier this time around, as are the sound effects. The music felt a bit more generic here with less of the spooky traditional Japanese sound, and I hated that there wasn't much of a story to be found. Also I found it quite strange that this is a smaller game, four medium length levels is pitiful really. Despite my complaints I did have a fun time with this, and I still look forward to finishing off the story with the third game (recently released on the Nintendo Switch store). Should I get a chance to play this in two player I will update the review with my thoughts on that.

SCORE:

Parades (1972)

Mini Retro Review: Extreme Ops (2002) #badmovies

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Extreme Ops
2002
Action

What happens when you mix extreme sports with Cliffhanger, yet remove all the amazing stunts and action scenes, tension, as well as Sly Stallone, John Lithgow and a decent support cast and replace them with a Z-movie cast including Pete Sampras's wife, Rufus Sewell, playing the evil British guy & former Eastenders cast member Joe Absolom, who appeared in the British soap opera? Well, you get this. And it's not good. At all. Even with the action sequences, it's so excruciatingly flat. When a crew are filming an advert, some terrorists hijack a ski resort and the snowboarders, skiers etc pit together to foil their plans. It doesn't even attempt to be entertaining in the slightest with no charisma characters and the terrorists don't attempt to kill them until the last 15 mins. Some fancy snowboarding skills besides, it is brash, the plot is dull and unless you are an avid fan of Extreme Sports, there is nothing else here on show worth seeing. It seems it seeks to exist to display some amazing stunt work, and nothing more. & I was bored watching this. 


Is It Worth Watching?

Not unless you are into Extreme Sports


Overall: 

Spice and Wolf – Season One (2008)

TALES FROM THE GRAVE IN 'DEATH CASES'

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SRS Cinema are set to bring you a release that will question whether what you are seeing is real...or not.


“Gravedigger Joe welcomes you to the forbidden world of real death. He has worked as a gravedigger for over 20 years. He is not just a master of burying the dead, he is a master of presenting the dead. Sit back and witness the disturbing factual horrors that he is about to show you from his own personal collection of murder tapes”

You’ll have to watch and decide for yourself

GRAB THE LIMITED EDITION BLURAY BY CLICKING HERE

GRAB THE LIMITED EDITION DVD BY CLICKING HERE

Pre-sales are live now and discs are estimated to ship early May.

Both the Bluray and DVD are currently at reduced price during presales, so take advantage of this great price!

DEATH CASES is a limited release with Bluray limited to 100 and the DVD to 50. BD-R and DVD-R both professional run with silk-screen label by Discmakers.

Film Review: ALIEN DOMICILE (2017)

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ALIEN DOMICILE ** USA 2017 Dir: Kelly Schwarze 70 mins

Although technically competent, this relatively ambitious low-budget sci-fi chiller riffs heavily on prominent mainstream genre fare of the last two decades and devolves into a ponderous succession of hallucinatory visuals, jump scares and weak confrontations. After a Charles Darwin quote, the story takes the standard post-SAW scenario of a group of seemingly unconnected people waking up together in a mysterious room, having seemingly been drugged. They have only vague, fragmented memories of how and why they might have ended up in their current predicament.
The ensemble – including a Department of Defence auditor, a nervous Russian and a guy from “Special Projects” – come to realise that the facility in which they are locked is at the notorious Area 51, Nevada and that all hell is breaking loose outside of their room. Writer-director Schwarze strives to sustain a degree of suspense, but it’s mostly just ponderous, and not helped by an abundance of cliched dialogue and hackneyed character beats. The inserts of personal demons feel like lukewarm echoes of stronger meat like EVENT HORIZON and FIRE IN THE SKY, though the glowing extra-terrestrial threat isn’t bad for this budget level.

Review by Steven West

DID 1/6th scale WWII 77th Infantry Division Medic "Dixon" 12-inch figure: Hacksaw Ridge?

Watch Movies TV -Hacksaw Ridge is a 2016 biographical war drama film directed by Mel Gibson and written by Andrew Knight and Robert Schenkkan, based on the 2004 documentary The Conscientious Objector. The film focuses on the World War II experiences of Desmond Doss, an American pacifist combat medic who, as a Seventh-day Adventist Christian, refused to carry or use a weapon or firearm of any kind. Doss became the first conscientious objector to be awarded the Medal of Honor, for service above and beyond the call of duty during the Battle of Okinawa. Andrew Garfield stars as Doss, with Sam Worthington, Luke Bracey, Teresa Palmer, Hugo Weaving, Rachel Griffiths, and Vince Vaughn in supporting roles.

For those of you who have been clamoring for Army medics, DID has the perfect item for you. This is "Dixon", a member of the 77th Infantry Division serving as a Combat Medic. Have him take care of all your World War II Allied Forces figures.

You can get this figure from Cotswold Collectibles (link HERE)

Scroll down to see the rest of the pictures.
Click on them for bigger and better views.

DID 1/6th scale WWII 77th Infantry Division Medic "Dixon" 12-inch figure Features: Two super realistic head sculpts (one with scars and weathering), Articulated body, Open palms, Relaxed palms, Palms for holding accessories, Green T shirt, Green uniform, Green pants, Y strap, Belt, Suspender, M1 helmet, Medical Pouch x 2 with Type I insert + Type II insert, Cantle Ring Strap x 2, M2 First Aid kit pouch, M1936 musette bag, Surgical instrument case, First Aid kit pouch, M43 boots, Canteen with cover x 2, Emergency Medical Tag x 5 with booklet, Solution of Morphine Tartrate x 5 （four with covers）with packing box x 3, 0.5 oz Hard Rubber Black Vials x 6, Crystalline Sulfanilamide Paper Envelope x 5 with packing box x 3, Curity adhesive tape, Adhesive Surgical Plaster, Safety Pins x 7 with cardboard, Metal Container, Flask w/Cup, Double-Blunt Scissors, Hemostatic Forceps x 2, Scalpel x 2, Spring Tissue Forceps, Folding Stretcher, Compressed White Bandage x 5 with boxe x 2, Geneva Convention Brassard

Related posts:
Dragon Models Limited (DML) 1/6th scale WWII Combat Medic "Doc Peterson" 12-inch action figure posted on my toy blog HERE
Toy Soldier's 7th Anniversary figure: USMC Force Recon Rifleman/Corpsman, Vietnam 1970 posted HERE

Andrew Garfield posts:
Kitbash 1/6th scale Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-Man 12-inch figure (parts unknown) - pics HERE
I got up close to The Amazing Spider-Man 2 cast members, in Singapore for Earth Hour 2014 posted HERE

The Three Musketeers (1993)

Watch Movies TV -***DISCLAIMER*** The following review is entirely my opinion. If you comment (which I encourage you to do) be respectful. If you don't agree with my opinion (or other commenters), that's fine. To each their own. These reviews are not meant to be statements of facts or endorsements, I am just sharing my opinions and my perspective when watching the film and is not meant to reflect how these films should be viewed. Finally, the reviews are given on a scale of 0-5. 0, of course, being unwatchable. 1, being terrible. 2, being not great. 3, being okay. 4, being great and 5, being epic! And if you enjoy these reviews feel free to share them and follow the blog or follow me on Twitter (@RevRonster) for links to my reviews and the occasional live-Tweet session of the movie I'm watching! All for one and one for another movie, please?

The Three Musketeers (1993) – 2 out of 5

I’ve been under a lot of stress lately because my job has been crazy busy and my performance and writing schedule has been hectic, so I’ve been turning to junk food to try and help me manage.  It’s a terrible way to go about it but my exercise schedule (which is also crazy) isn’t exactly cutting the stress right now.  One of my go-to junk food options is a 3 Musketeers bar and, while eating one, I was reminded of the Disney movie from the 90s.  I haven’t seen this one in some time so I decided to revisit it…and use it as an excuse to write an awkward opening paragraph that involves telling you too much about me.  Oh, also, I really didn’t think the movie was that great.

Three blades, three musketeers?  Coincidence?
Probably.

Cardinal Richelieu (Tim Curry) is plotting behind the back of the King of France with the help of the villainous Captain Rochefort (Michael Wincott).  In his efforts, he has the Musketeers, the group loyal to and in charge of protecting the king, disbanded.  Three Musketeers; Athos (Kiefer Sutherland), Aramis (Charlie Sheen) and Porthos (Oliver Platt), decide to ignore the order and refuse to relinquish their duties.  Now being hunted by Richelieu’s men, the group find themselves meeting up with a young hopeful who hopes to be a Musketeer himself; D’Artagnan (Chris O’Donnell).  Together, they seek to uncover the plot and restore the Musketeers and to protect the king.

But before they save the day, they pose for the photo on their Christian
rock album.

I have very vague memories of watching this movie when it came out and pretty much the only thing that stuck with me was a moment where Porthos is mocking the flourishes of a highly skilled and flashy swordsman.  That is pretty much it.  Re-watching it now, I realized that this might have to do with the fact the film really isn’t that interesting or attention grabbing.  Sure, it has some moments of fun and there are elements of its production that are nice and work but, overall, the film is just kinda bland.

A day will come when people will genuinely wonder why Charlie Sheen was
a star and why we allowed him to be one in the first place.

Curry is Curry in this film and that's a good thing.

The highlights of this film include various members of the cast.  Michael Wincott is genuinely enjoyable as the henchman to Cardinal Richelieu and his intimidating demeanor makes for a bad guy that you enjoy hating.  Additionally, the villain of the Cardinal himself is pretty entertaining because it’s Tim Curry in the role.  I honestly don’t need to say more because that guy is always great.  On the Musketeers side, I really enjoyed the performances of Kiefer Sutherland and Oliver Platt.  Sutherland does a great job of bring forth the weight the character needed and has the natural charisma to be the lead Musketeer and Platt is doing a decent job of providing humor.  Sadly, that’s kinda where the good things I found in this movie end.

The facial hair screams "bad guy" louder than the eye patch.

The rest of the film is just kinda uninteresting to me.  There are no real decent action scenes and the few swordfights that are delivered are, honestly, pretty unimpressive, and the plot of Cardinal Richelieu’s attempt to backstab the king never really felt that dire.  However, the worst part of the whole movie is D’Artagnan and Chris O’Donnell’s performance.  The character is such a despicable and cocky chump that it was impossible to care about him.  While, in theory, he’s supposed to learn humility and be a better person by the end of the film, he never really feels this way due to O’Donnell’s performance.  The arrogance and swagger is still there and O’Donnell never can achieve the balance of making the character confident instead of narcissistic.  The character is the center of the story and having him both written and performed poorly really made it hard to become invested in his journey and, in turn, get invested in this film.

I don't want to be mean but he really is just hard to watch in this one.

The Three Musketeers ultimately feels like a forgettable feature.  Yeah, it had moments of entertainment value but these moments were small and fleeting.  Having a main character that was too unlikable to bother investing in wasn’t helping things.  Most of it just wasn’t that interesting and it was really hard to not overlook that the French fighters were all speaking with American accents. 

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (4½ Stars)

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I almost gave this film five stars. The action is breathtakingly fast for most of the film. I love the blending of Chinese and Egyptian culture displayed by Imhotep's Club in Shanghai. The martial arts action is subdued, but whenever it breaks out it's amazing. It's definitely more thrilling than "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", which it resembles in many ways. So what's the problem? It's simple. There's no Rachel Weisz. Rick O'Connell's wife Evelyn is played by a different actress.

Supposedly Rachel Weisz decided not to appear in the film because of "problems with the script". That's her prerogative, I suppose. No actor or actress is ever compelled to take part in her film. So what should have been done?

1. The problems could have been addressed, and the screenwriter could have been asked if a partial rewrite was possible.

2. Failing that, Rachel Weisz could have been offered more money.

3. Failing that, a forced rewrite would have to take place. Evelyn O'Connell should have been written out of the film. She could have been dead and replaced by a new wife.

The worst possible solution was to replace her with a new actress. It spoils the credibility of the film. It might have been acceptable, barely acceptable, to pick an actress who looked similar and talked similar, giving her a minimum of screen time. That's not what happened. The new director, Rob Cohen, completely messed it up. Not only did he pick a new actress, Maria Bello, who looked nothing like Rachel Weisz; he allowed her to act in a way that gave her a completely different personality. She's a different character in every aspect except for her name.

Let this be a lesson for all other film directors in future. However good your film might be, you'll never earn a full five star rating from me unless you get the casting right.

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Retro Review: Catch Me If You Can (2002)

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Catch Me If You Can
2002
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Christopher Walken, Nathalie Baye, Amy Adams, Martin Sheen
Genre: Biographical Crime
Worldwide Box Office Gross: over $332 million

Plot: The story of Frank Abagnale Jr., before his 19th birthday, successfully forged millions of dollars' worth of checks while posing as a Pan Am pilot, a doctor, and legal prosecutor as a seasoned & dedicated FBI agent pursues him

'Hey, Catch This'

The 2000s was a bit of a strange decade for Steven Spielberg; though some of his movies raked in over hundreds of millions at the box office, he started to go down a different path and experiment with not only different genres but more adult-themed plots and storylines, after two decades catering to families and children. Some have been well-received, whereas with 2001's A.I: Artificial Intelligence, it proved that even Spielberg can turn out a movie that is, in more ways than one, a dud. 

Based on a true story, Catch Me If You Can is a Cat & Mouse tale where a teenage boy wants his parents to get back together again after financial woes split them up. Frank Abagnale becomes a conman and turns on the government by making counterfeit cheques and posing under various and different guises, such as a doctor, a Pan Am air pilot and lawyer, as well as trying to evade the law and the FBI, led by Carl, who are all on his trail. 

Tonally, Catch Me If You Can is a bit of an oddity, but the charms of DiCaprio and Hanks make it a tad watchable and enjoyable, with the con artist, Frank scamming people, left, right and centre and eager sleuth, Joe trying to put a stop to his efforts. Leonardo DiCaprio, yet again, is trying to move on from the teen heartthrob tag he has built himself up with during the 1990s, & opting for meatier and diverse roles that challenge him as an actor, which he manages to prevail in. They hold this film together, along with Amy Adams. The main casting, as a whole, was impressive. The leads do lend themselves extremely well, and whilst it jumps around in places, there were little moments where I felt were nice. It's a pity, however, that there just weren't more of them. Hanks displayed a little more of his lighter side with the funny scenes, which was nice to see, however. 

There are moments where Hanks's character goes after DiCaprio's Frank, and they were all right. However, even with Spielberg at the helm, he didn't make it grittier and compelling as it should have been and the story had me droning off at times. The film could easily shave off 20-30 mins off; again it is too overlong, making the film a bit of a drudge to get through & whereby nothing of consequence happened or was said, and I'd be fine with that. And the female characters weren't written very well at all, which was another low point for this movie. The performances, as mentioned are very good to impressive, but their characters, at times feel a little one-note-ish and who don't express many emotions. 

Despite the story heading off in different directions, the film itself never exploded on screen for me and never grabbed my attention, which it should have done. Alas, it feels far too safe for a story of this type, a bit too tidy, as well as plain with a pacing, which at times, dragged it down. It was also so one-sided, with much of the focus on Abagnale and less screen time on Carl.  

Final Verdict:

There is no doubt that Spielberg is a terrific filmmaker and he manages to bring forth certain elements, such as the style and visuals, music, the story, to life. But whilst Catch Me If You Can is all right as a film, with a few tweaks and improvements, it would be even better. Despite these little niggles, it's still worth seeing if you haven't done so. 

& thankfully, Spielberg did redeem himself, & with the help of DiCaprio & Tom Hanks, right after the tepid monstrosity that is, A.I.

It's not quite the absolute extravaganza one expects of this director, as widely renowned as himself, but it's not bad, still watchable in places & is more middle of the road fare, coming from him.


Overall: