Allied

Allied

The movie that is rumored to break up Branjalina does not live up to the hype. While it is an intriguing historical drama set in the middle of World War II, the famed love story is not developed enough for me to believe. Brad Pitt plays Max Vatan, a Canadian allied spy who is dropped in to Casablanca to meet up with Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard), a French Resistance fighter. Their task is to assassinate the German Ambassador to Morocco in under 10 days. The odds of their survival are low and the stress pushes them together. There are three noticeable moments when the film makers put effort into selling that the couple might be falling in love. None of which warrant Pitt’s abrupt turnaround from his earlier feelings that emotions cause people to make mistakes and die. His sudden proposal of Marianne coming to England and marrying him had me thinking it was some sort of plot twist later on and all part of the allied spy network but (SPOILER ALERT) it’s not. The whole thing had me wanting to love the film but by the ending feeling disappointed. The biggest concern with the film is that the entire premise is that Max and Marianne are deeply madly in love. When you can’t set that up in the first half-hour of buildup, there is something wrong. Eliminate the first quarter outside of England and the film increases in likability by tenfold. Pitt and Cotillard both put in excellent performances especially when the tension rises. The tension is constant throughout the film, just when you get a small reprieve from the central narrative, a subplot tense moment is hurled at you keeping you in suspense until the tension cranks back up in the main story-line. The viewer is never given the typical levity throughout the film to ease the adrenaline and being that it is a drama thriller and not an action thriller, this can get in the way of the enjoyment of the film. It just seems to drag itself along quite a bit, continuously finding minor ways to keep the pressure level high. Other than those issues it is a fine period piece, paying incredible attention to detail and giving a small insight on the German Blitz. 1 pipes out of 4.

Django Unchained

1 pipe out of 4

Quinton Tarantino’s past few films Kill Bill 2 and Inglorious Basterds have begun to put me off from his style. Django Unchained smashed that light bulb. I went into Django with the expectation of it being extremely violent and vulgar as is Tarantino’s style but boy was did I underestimate how far Tarantino would go. Django is a throwback to the Spaghetti westerns of the 70’s with the modern twist of it being a modern black revenge but nowhere in the film is there black revenge. So many horrible things occur to the African Americans in the film described in graphic detail, some even done by the main character Django, that the small amount of retribution that two characters attain is trivial in retrospect to all of the harms done. Maybe Tarantino expected us to forget all of the horrors we witnessed by his attempted comedic character of the black slave who thinks he’s white, I mean what’s funnier than a black man degrading another black man because he’s black? That’s hilarious right? Wrong! If Tarantino wanted to represent all of the types of slaves that existed in the south that is fine, but to insinuate that some were better than others by the amount of suffering they went through is terrible. Slavery is evil in any form so to degrade a character in order to get some cheap laughs is despicable. Then to have your main character Django become a Black slaver and abuse other slaves in order to save is enslaved wife completely kills the credibility of the character, eliminating the black revenge and simply turning it into lovers revenge with slavery. The only character that saves the movie from a total failure is Dr. King Schultz (Christopher Waltz), a German bounty hunter who attests slavery and aids Django (Jamie Foxx) in trying to save his wife from Calvin Candie (Leonardo DeCaprio). Waltz demonstrates the one person throughout the movie who has any morals, showing compassion and remorse when slaves are mistreated. Even with Waltz being the one delight in the film there are still wholes in his character, such as what motivates him to help Django with no gain for himself. Leonardo DeCaprio plays the part of a Mandingo fight organizing plantation owner and does it well however he does not come off as a particularly threatening villain. He owns a plantation, he owns slaves, he is brutal to those slaves and is a racist; just like every other plantation owner in the south. For all the talk of DeCaprio finally taking the step towards villainy, he is usurped for the main villain role by Steven (Samuel L. Jackson), the black slave who is a racist against his own race. Simply put, Tarantino tried to show us the horrors of slavery while trying to make us laugh at those same horrors which does not work. 

Skyfall

1 pipe out of 4

Skyfall falls flat. Note to MGM studios, the makers of James Bond, when you are making a prequel series of the greatest MI6 agent of all time, remember that things are happening before the 30 odd other Bond films. So to have in your chronologically 3^rd Bond movie, a burnt out James Bond does not make any sense. You are supposed to be showing us how Bond became a BA. You did this adequately in Casino Royal and got worse in Quantum of Solace but still okay, in Skyfall you are downright awful. To supposedly start Bond off as an old burnt out agent DOESN'T WORK! Daniel Craig may be 44 and can look his age when he isn’t cleaned up but through the magic of cleaning and a little bit of makeup he looks like he could honestly be in his late 20’s or early 30’s. USE THIS! Don’t give him the problems of an old washed out spy when he needs to be the epitome of awesome. Another thing that I am starting to get sick of in Bond films is the complete disregard and degradation of women. I understand that Bond is a womanizer and with that comes a certain amount of disgrace but simply to kill them off to get them out of the movie is starting to get really old. We are in the 21^st century for goodness sake; I think we can do better. The one bright spot of the film was the acting of Javier Bardem who plays the rogue MI6 agent that has a vendetta against M (Judi Dench). His playful yet sinister attitude and brilliant planning make him wish he had more screen time especially since he isn’t introduced to the film until nearly half way through. Bardem’s masterful work and everyone else’s lackluster performances actually get you to start rooting for the villain and completely understanding why his is doing the vile things he has done. The attempted back-story into Bond’s Childhood asks more questions than it answers and leads to the anticlimactic reveal of the meaning of Skyfall, leaving a sour taste in your mouth. This Bond film is well worth the wait for Red Box.

Lawless

1 pipe out of 4

Great acting cannot save this bland and drawn out plot. Even with the stand out performance of Guy Peirce and steadfast acting of Tom Hardy could not save this movie from being unrelatable and ordinary. The movie follows the Bondurant brothers who are bootleggers in Franklin County, Virginia. The county is subsequently taken over by a corrupt district attorney who hires a ruthless mercenary (Guy Peirce) to bring all the Bootleggers under his thumb. Naturally the Bondurant brothers refuse and a “war” if you can even call it that begins between the two parties. There are continual teasers throughout the film of a confrontation between the two but is constantly differed to later. There are minor scrimmages that defiantly warrant the R rating that the film received but nothing like were indicated with the advertising. It appears that they tried to pull in the action movie viewers only to try and give them a drama action film that has questionable acting other than Pierce and Hardy. Shia Labouf is supposed to play the relatable character that is searching for equality and respect from his older brothers but fails miserably in that regard. He constantly is making stupid decisions and never owning up to the consequences. When he and his brothers gain wealth by becoming rum runners into Chicago he goes around flaunting his wealth with new cars, new clothes and new cameras trying to impress the daughter of an Amish preacher (Mia Wasikowska). This is just typical Labouf in his pretentious, overeager jerk that he is reprising from almost all of his films. There is the small highlight of Dane DeHaan who plays the crippled boy who the Bondurant have basically adopted and is the maker of the moonshine. He is delightfully upbeat and innocent which is refreshing from all the dark and dreary characters that litter this film.

Law Abiding Citizen

1 pipe out of 4

This is a terrible movie because it had me rooting for the bad guy through the entire film. The story begins with Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) witnessing the brutal murder of his wife and daughter only to see the successful attorney Nick Rice (Jamie Fox) cut a deal with the leading man who flips on his partner. You feel for Clyde because he cannot understand why Rice would not prosecute both men to the fullest of the law. It appears that Rice only wants to get a conviction and not do the right thing. In this first part of the movie it appears that Clyde is the protagonist and Rice is the antagonist but suddenly they switch when Clyde takes the law into his own hands and begins killing everyone involved in the case that saw the man who butchered his family get only three years in prison. So apparently the viewer is supposed to feel for Rice now but for me I continued to want Clyde to win because he brought up all the things that are wrong with our system he was trying to fix it. Granted he went about fixing it in the totally wrong way but he still was showing us that we let killers and rapists free on plea deals every day. Law Abiding Citizen was not a total waste of my time because it had decent suspense and I genuinely thought that Clyde might win. There were also cool explosions and it had Gerard Butler as a total BAMF.

All The Pretty Horses

1 pipes out of 4

This movie is just a random series of events with a very general plot of two boys trying to find a better life only to find their way back home. The story follows John Grady Cole (Matt Damon) and Lacy Rawlins (Henry Thomas) as set off in search for better ranches in Mexico as ranching in the U.S. is going down in the 1940’s. They run into a boy named Jimmy Blevins (Lucas Black) who is also looking into the better life of ranching. Once they get a job on a Ranch Cole falls in love with the Rancher’s Daughter (Penelope Cruz) and Blevins makes a huge mistake. This movie jumps from scene to scene with little explanation about what is happening. Case in point, Lacy Rawlins is stabbed repeatedly in prison and you are made to believe that he is dead until John Cole is stabbed and then released from prison and we find Rawlins waiting for him on the outside with no explanation on how he lived and how they got out. It is explained how they got out of prison later on in the movie but it is never explained how Rawlins lived other than they pumped a liter of Mexican blood into him. All The Pretty Horses is also an incredibly depressing movie with a depressing but deep message and that message is the only reason that I can see Matt Damon signed on to this Billy Bob Thorton directed atrocity. That message is human’s are cruel to each other, as demonstrated by the scene where a Mexican police captain drags Blevins out into the desert and shoots him even after the person who paid to kill Blevins himself refuses. This is just a depressing movie with no fantastic acting or fight scenes to rationalize the brutality.