can-da-spam Reviews

Into the Forest (2015)

Ellen Page wouldn't know a good story if she read it in a book

[2/10 · 21 January 2017]

Two great actresses go to a forest to conduct a train wreck. No spoilers. I'm not giving away anything. Watch it if you must. I suggest you delete this from your watch-list.

The actors are as great as ever -- the story is a book to burn for warmth. This movie is well acted and gripping in its intensity, but I can only warn other viewers, its third act collapses and the movie ends preposterously. Just inexplicable. It starts to stink pretty early on when it becomes apparent the editing or ad hoc screen writing started to jump around with implausible leaps.

It's so bad, you'd rather the ending was "woke up and it was all a dream." Again, no spoilers, the plot has nothing to do with a dream or surreal adventure (though I wish it were so.) It's a stinker of a movie.

Sleep with Me (2009 TV Movie)

We'll see this script redone for A list money maker stars

[5/10 · 18 January 2014]

There's a reason this is a "made for TV" movie, but it's okay! The peculiarity of this story is the use of what could almost be titled "neuro linguistic programming as the seduction weapon of choice for a passive sexual predator" -- it's a fascinating idea! That's why I say we'll see this script picked up by some Hollywood back room type and someone will rewrite it for A-listers to spice it up and program it for the mass market. The central character is a great invention, but still needs a page one rewrite to get rid of the glaring distractions that jolt the viewer out of the story and back in front the screen to be a pseudo movie critic instead of a movie goer. Oh well, it's still more fun and entertaining than 99% of the multi-million dollar blockbuster piffle. The contrived twists and "set ups" do not propel the story forward but cost dearly in terms of distractions that are just too succinct and convenient: at one moment, we're meant to be investing in character development and a circle of self-aware long time chums who've become couples, but then we're asked to believe they're dizzy-headed twerps just at the moment it serves the purposes of the plot. Oh well, I don't think the audience should be asked to forgive a "if only someone said the one thing that obviously had to be said" suspension of disbelief. At no risk of spoiling the plot in the least, I'll entice you to watch at least until the line "You should go away for a bit with Catrin." After that, it gets a bit "Mills and Boon" but it's still entertaining and you'll want to see it unfold, just for its gratuitous pleasuring of the audience.

The Kingdom (2007)

Grotesque propaganda

[5/10 · 11 January 2014]

It's worth watching this obscene propaganda. It's clear proof that the "conspiracy theory" about Hollywood doing the bidding of US Government agencies is a matter of fact, not fiction. I'd like to think the all-star cast of this movie look back on their work with a sense of shame. Hopefully they regret being duped into serving this kind of "shaping public opinion" propaganda to foment hatred for people foreign to the USA. The movie culminates in a kill or be killed scene that ends with "evil in the eyes of a young boy ... hate them all ... kill them all" ... no exaggeration on my part. This "us or them" is the final, parting message of this "movie." It's appalling.

The American (2010)

A great Clooney Toon, but the ending is fumbled.

[8/10 · 30 May 2013]

The story is complex and you can read the comments by numerous folks here who misunderstood key elements of the plot and the character development, making the whole movie confusing and unsatisfying for them. This is one to watch when you're in the mood to focus, to be absorbed and drawn into the atmosphere of a world that co-exists with the everyday lives of a strangely unpopulated town where gruesome violence attracts little more attention than a distant siren and lengthy gun battles don't even bring one curious on-looker. But set aside that implausible backdrop and enjoy a great performance by an ashen-faced Clooney working to perfection with two marvelous, spellbinding supporting actors. It's almost too well done, too episodic and artful, but that's the beauty of it -- a realism that you will want just as much as Clooney's character wants ... well, you'll get to that part when you watch the movie. The writing is sharp and serious, the characters are enthralling. But please don't be too disappointed by a fumbled ending that tries to bring a climax that contradicts everything we come to know about Clooney's character. Take the ending for what it is: the way life can be impossibly, painfully, heart-breakingly unpredictable.

Stolen (2012)

Yet Another Nicholas Cage Movie

[5/10 · 2 October 2012]

Y A N C M

Nicolas Cage made some good movies a while ago. Not this one.

End of story.

Long story: It's not all that interesting. The plot is like junk food -- dulls the mind, weakens the heart -- unsatisfying. The action is dreary and slow. Even the attempts at slowing down the pace are annoying. The absurd characterization of an Australian is ridiculous. The sound track is stolen from "The Saint" and Val Kilmer. The pretense of a hectic "Fat Tuesday" is idiotic. The visual effects stolen from "Heat" are disconnected from the action. Each character is a grotesque cliché. Each plot step is predictable.

Yet Another Nicolas Cage Movie.

Here's hoping he delivers a couple more good ones eventually.

Battle Los Angeles (2011)

Dull and direction-less

[4/10 · 11 March 2011]

This review need only be short -- the reviews are right: they are panning Battle LA because it doesn't deliver on any aspect. The trailers are impressive and it seemed to be a potential new high mark for digital sci- fi end of the world, war movies, but B-LA is just bla-h. Now I've seen the movie and it's dreadful.

It's boring to start and little confusing for most of the first hour! Good grief. The characters are unremarkable and each scene is a mess -- you could see what the director was trying to do, but the shaky-cam photography was painful and distracting.

The characters were not taking shape and the plot never made an appearance -- there is no plot to spoil, so all I can do is avoid describing the details of how this movie misses. The lead male was meant to be the battle-hardened, thinking Marine and leader, but the actor delivers a "friendly teacher helps out the rag tag school kids" character. I think the lead female was there and looked the part and flubbed a few lines, but I think I could see the actor itching to contribute a real part, not just split second flashes in front of the camera to conveniently solve plot problems that cropped up all the way down the line.

Sitting in a not-so crowded theater of mouth-breathing popcorn disposal units, you're checking your watch thinking "there goes another full minute of a close-up of sweat on a dirty face" ... but still, no story, no real action, just the looming suggestion that things are about to get serious.

The computer graphics are unimpressive, the sound effects are separate and unrealistic, the movie just never gets going. Incredible for an action sci-fi movie that is surely 95% digital, but it's just boring. As I try to assemble the story, piece by piece, I think the failure began in the script and was unrecoverable. The sets were empty, silent and dry -- and a distraction like a low budget flick that can't afford swarms of extras to really create the scenes of chaos. And seeing dead bodies strewn across an open area with a convenient path just wide enough to drive through ... it was as if someone had left a big "X" with gaffer tape for the camera to pick up. Too many distractions to take you out of the movie.

The leading male and the leading female both delivered a few seconds of reality, here and there, but woeful photography and feeble direction made this one a disaster movie.

Body of Lies (2008)

Entertaining, but a bit of a fizz given the huge talent firepower

[6/10 · 1 January 2009]

Late to the screens with a tired "adversaries and intrigue" story, both leading men do a decent, but uninspired job as if they've become so minimalist, they're playing themselves playing the character. And the Aussie needs to go back to the dialect coach and recover what used to be a much more convincing "Yank" accent -- now he sounds like a bored caricature. It's not droll to be so deliberately bent on being droll and the dialogue misses the mark.

From one scene to the next it's as if the director was running hot and cold, one minute the characters were developing and the viewer could begin to care about their fate, the next the characters are gone and there seems to be a rush to get to the next plot point.

For what it's worth, in my humble, amateur opinion, it was the supporting male actor, Mark Strong, playing the good-bad-good guy that captures the imagination. The character is a little "oversold" at times, but holds his credibility (something I don't think anyone could say for the mess that Crowe leaves on the screen in almost every scene.) Perhaps it's fair to say that the Crowe character was abused by the writer(s) trying to move things along and make their point in dialogue instead of creating real, credible characters. It seems to me the movie should have jettisoned Crowe's character entirely and gone without that facet of the plot altogether. I wonder if that entire character was stitched into the movie just for the business purposes of Crowe involved -- it certainly looked like all his scenes were shot the same day and purpose built for the teasers and trailers.

There's been so many movies on this general topic, some of which were far better than others, but it's become a topic that requires more powerful writing and much more significant plot, it requires more than two leading male actors and a top shelf director. Strangely, though I was bored by this movie, I watched it to the end and I felt like it need another 30 minutes. The action scenes, the technology scenes, they're all boring, they took up precious minutes, they distracted from the intensity of the danger and threat to the main character. It's an epic that didn't survive being compressed into conventional time constraints. I wish the director had cut the expensive stunts and gadgets to give us time to understand the characters and to enjoy more depth in the story. There were really four big characters at play, plus the war, plus the concepts of religion and the behavior of terrorists, just too much. We don't need another "in the mind of the terrorist mastermind" and we didn't get much of a sense of culture or religion, just a easily palatable romantic skim of the top of Arab life neatly presented without the burden of reality.

I think the story requires (and certainly deserves) a level of honesty and reality that this movie doesn't attempt -- we certainly didn't need to see another a quick draw on the box office for holiday season.

Well, I recommend it as well worth watching, but don't wait for the DVD or the iTunes rental, this is a point in time flick that will be all the more expired in a few months. I give it a subjective 6 out of 10. I'd take away two points for writing and one point each for acting and direction.