Movie Review- Snitch

Logline: A father goes undercover for the DEA in order to free his son who was imprisoned after being set up in drug deal.

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Barry Pepper, Susan Sarandon, Jon Bernthal, Michael Kenneth Williams

Directed by: Ric Roman Waugh

First Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson started out as a WWF/WWE star, then he went into acting, then he went back into wrestling, and now it appears that he's back into acting again. Some celebrities grow a persona so big that it seems impossible to grow out of. The Rock really made a household name for himself in WWE, becoming one of the most recognizable names they've ever had. When you see him in a movie it's hard not to think oh look, there's The Rock. He's an icon. Kids grew up wanting to be this guy. For me, it's hard to take his roles seriously, especially after he did The Tooth Fairy which I thought was an all time low. 

Did Snitch suffer from this so called "icon syndrome" attached to The Rock? Read on.

Review

I'm going to start by saying that this wasn't a bad screenplay. It had all the makings of an emotional thrill ride. 

It starts off really quick. John Matthews finds himself in a difficult spot. His son was caught holding a package full of MDMA and Ecstasy for a friend, which means he's facing 10 years in prison! Talk about a helpless feeling for a parent. The DEA wants to cut a deal with his son, saying that if he snitches on some dealers higher up in the cartel that they'd lower his sentence. He can't do that. He's just a kid, he doesn't actually know anyone.

This is where the story gets interesting. John knows he hasn't been there for his son. He has a second family and works at his construction company all day long. In attempt to change his absence in his son's life, John takes matters into his own hands. He meets up with one of his employees with a record and asks for an introduction into the drug business. He offers him 20 thousand dollars in return. Of course this doesn't come without conflict. This employee, Daniel, has a life of his own that we get to see and he can't afford to conspire in such a situation without risking life in prison. Of course he'd get dragged into it too!

The film transpires through some intense scenes, some decent shoot-outs, and a well done chase with John in a truck carrying millions of cash. 

I enjoyed it.

Why did this movie work for me? Well, the entire time John's life is on the line. I care for John because he's risking his life for his son. This is something very human and very real. The story is based on this authentic sympathy and John is easily a person I could root for. 

The stakes are always being raised. It's not just John's life. It quickly becomes about Daniel's life too. Then it becomes the whole family's lives. As they get deeper into the cartel, the cartel digs deeper into their personal lives. If they don't succeed, or their cover gets blown, there are serious consequences.

Has this movie been done before? Yeah, there are lots of similarities you can pull from other films, but it still felt alright. I think what separates this from others is the "true story" factor. This actually happened, which makes it all the better.

I did find some serious flaws though.

First of all, when John is looking up law records on the internet, there is a typo. "No longer that 20 years" when it should have been "No longer than 20 years". Really? All of that editing and this wasn't spotted? Very sloppy.

Second, as John gets deeper and deeper in the cartel, he continually visits the DEA and his attorney to discuss plans. Really? The cartel would trust a guy who did 1 successful run for them with 18 or so million dollars in cash? They wouldn't follow him everywhere to see if he was legit? I get it's a movie, it needs exposition to explain clearly to the audience what's going on, but c'mon. That's unrealistic. Also, he gets voice recordings of his first meeting. They wouldn't pat him down like every dealer would? Someone as ruthless as the one he was being introduced to? C'mon.

Topic of the Day

Dwayne Johnson, how far you have come.

I really liked Fast Five and I really liked DJ in it. I actually like The Rundown. In the beginning of his career he showed potential. I always assumed that one day he'd be a decent actor. After all of these years, "The Rock" has finally made it. In my opinion this was the best acting job of his career. The emotion, the delivery, the comfort I felt he had on camera, all of it. He evolved and for the first time ever, he wasn't "The Rock". He was John Matthews, a loving father fighting for his son. Impressive.

Conclusion

Although there are serious flaws evident in the story's exposition, Snitch is a solid film. Dwayne Johnson has evolved as an actor and his character was easily a hero I could root for. The stakes kept raising, the set pieces were decent enough, and the conclusion was satisfying. It's not the sharpest, most witty tool in the shed, but it's a fun ride and definitely worth a watch.

6.7/10

Movie Review- Star Trek Into Darkness

Logline: After the crew of the Enterprise find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one man weapon of mass destruction.

Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, Anton Yelchin, Karl Urban, Benedict Cumberbatch , John Cho

Directed by: J.J. Abrams



I'm going to make you aware right now, there will be spoilers in this review. I think that's fair considering it's been 6 days since the movie's release. If you haven't seen it yet, GO SEE IT! Don't wait.

I was a huge fan of J.J. Abram's remake of Star Trek in 2009. Fresh, exciting, well directed, and well written. I think most people are with me in that sense. It also cleared up some confusion. Were these movies going to be a reboot of the franchise? Well, kind of. They used a time loop to connect Spock to his future self. Not only was it a cool homage, but it was clear then that these films would be occurring in an alternate universe. So yes, these films have a connection to the original, but they're a new franchise on their own. A lot of criticism I've been reading on the web has compared this film with Wrath of Khan, which I think is a shame.

Review

I wrote a paragraph beginning to explain how the movie unfolds, but I deleted the whole thing. There is WAY too much going on for me to repeat and summarize without missing key parts. Instead, I'm just going to explain why I liked this movie so much.

In the beginning there are clear character flaws. Kirk is irresponsible and never listens to any criticism. Spock's inability to feel is the only thing holding him back from being a better Captain than Kirk. Kirk cares for his men more than he does logic, often neglecting his low chances out of sheer emotional connection to his tasks. There are some funny moments where Kirk tries to pry emotion out of Spock to no avail, often times leaving him frustrated. I just loved how these developed throughout the film. Kirk ultimately ends up giving his life to save everyone, but the change is most apparent through Spock. As he watches his best friend die, Spock sheds a tear. This moment of emotion is so heart-felt due to the amount of attention paid to his flaw leading up to it. When he yells out "KHAAAAAN!", his reaction is that of anger and revenge. He wants to kill Khan, but not because it's the logical thing to do, because it's personal now. Spock's character development was believable and emotionally compelling and really put this movie over the top.

THE MYSTERY! Who is Harrison? Why did he blow up Section 31? Why did he launch an attack on Starfleet? After they capture him, is he really a bad guy? What/who is in each of the 72 torpedoes that the crew was ordered not to open? Oh shit he's Khan. Is he telling the truth though? What is at the coordinates Khan gave Kirk? Yes, he is telling the truth, but he's also evil as well. What's going to happen? How will Spock defeat him? This script was filled with mystery. It kept my interest because I was also curious. Mystery also makes the dialogue better and adds a bit of mystique to it. This is the best writing tool out there in my honest opinion. Who better than Lindelof, the writer of Lost, to implement mystery in this screenplay? He did a fantastic job.



Goals were always clear. Find Harrison and kill him without causing a commotion. Find out what's in the torpedoes. Find out what's at the coordinates. Escape the USS Vengeance ship led by Admiral Marcus that wants to destroy them. Kill Khan, or put him back in cryogenic sleep.

Stakes? If they fail killing Harrison without a commotion, a war breaks out as they're in hostile territory. Wrong about the torpedoes? People die. Wrong about Admiral Marcus? Treason. Unable to kill Khan? He kills everyone he deems inferior.

Urgency? SO much. How about when the Enterprise is crashing down and about to hit the Earth's atmosphere? If the ship isn't fixed, they'll all burn into ashes. How about when being chased by USS Vengeance? Urgency really made the set pieces intense. Which brings me to my next point.

SET PIECES! Amazing. Can't say anything more. They just were.

Another thing: Chris Pine was impressive. I've never been a huge fan of his acting, but he really stepped up to the plate here. I could feel his emotion as he cried. This was something that concerned me, but now I can breathe easy waiting for Trek 3.

And to top it off, this was by far my best IMAX 3D experience and in my opinion, the BEST use of the 3D feature in any film to date. The sound was amazing and so were the visuals. Only problem is that IMAX glasses are so tight they could give you a headache. Luckily the movie was so good I didn't care.

Topic of the Day

Blockbusters breaking formula and doing the unexpected.

The clear goal in the beginning was to find Harrison/Khan and kill him. Instead of this being the main goal throughout the entire film, the story changes course rather quickly and unexpectedly. Khan surrenders and they capture him. The Avengers did a similar thing with Loki. The goal was to find and kill him and unexpectedly they capture him rather early and he's kept in a similar glass cell. I like this. It's new, it's a twist on the formula, and it paves way for some clever dialogue scenes with a smart villain.



Consensus

This might just be one of my favorite movies ever. I loved everything about it. If there was anyone questioning Damon Lindelof's screenwriting before, it should surely be put to rest now after this well plotted story that not only kept my attention, but had me at the edge of my seat wondering what was going to happen. Emotionally compelling, well structured, and mystery galore lands this film as my favorite of this year by a landslide. Definitely a must see and well worth the price of IMAX 3D.


9.5/10

Script Review - Superman: Flyby (J.J. Abrams)

Backstory: The film Superman Returns (2006) has quite a history. From the little research I've put into the development of it, it seems like many scripts had come and gone before the film was finally made. In director Kevin Smith's 224 minute stand up/informal Q&A titled An Evening with Kevin Smith he discussed the development hell that this project had gone through. They hired him to write a screenplay for it, Tim Burton was attached, and then they hired who I believe was Wesley Strick, who wanted to put a giant spider in the story for no reason. A few more writers were brought on after Tim Burton left the project to pursue other things, but then finally, J.J. Abrams hopped on board to write this movie with a couple drafts that have been made available to the public now with a simple google search. McG and Brett Rattner were both attached at some point to direct. Unfortunately the script leaked WAY early on, a website gave it an extremely bad review, and the project was scrapped as the story was pretty much spoiled before it even began to reach the stages of production.

Premise: The hierarchy in Krypton is dismantled as king Jor-El is overthrown by his brother Kata-Zor in a civil war of sorts. In a last ditch effort, Jor-El sends his son Kal-El on a pod off of the planet to a secret trusted location on Earth. This is the story of Superman's upbringing and his rise to power.


Details: written in 2003; 125 pages.

So, this is a first. I think I've alluded to my passion of reading screenplays a few times before, but I haven't written a screenplay review yet. I'm pretty sure there are legal issues to reviewing work that isn't released in theatres, so that's why I haven't written an article like this before. However, given that Star Trek Into Darkness was just released and the fact that this screenplay will never come to fruition, I figured it would be a cool time to finally crack this open and give it a read.

When I think of J.J. Abrams I think of this amazing writer and director because right now, whether you love him or hate him, his presence can't be ignored. He's slated to do Star Wars Episode VII, he rebooted Star Trek in which I thought he did an amazing job, the sequel which I'm going to see tonight has amazing reviews, MI:3, his TV show Lost has a huge cult following, Super 8 was loved by many, and there's Alias too. This is the Abrams that I think of when someone mentions his name. But, when you go back in time to when he wrote this draft in 2003, what had he accomplished with his writing? Well, it was pretty much just Alias at the time. I actually had no idea that this Hollywood blockbuster juggernaut actually wrote Gone Fishin'  and a few other odd looking movies starring Mel Gibson, Jim Belushi, and Harrison Ford. He also wrote Armageddon and Joy Ride. I actually had no idea. If you look at his movies though, is this the type of guy you call up and ask to write the next Superman movie and put all the faith in? Apparently so. And it's weird looking back from right now, because anything Abrams is attached to currently is automatically assumed to be something big, so clearly they had the right idea about him.

Review

Ok, so enough of the J.J. and Superman production backstory. Was this screenplay actually any good?

Like he did in his Star Trek reboot, Abrams begins his story with some pretty cool action scenes. We have the world about to come to an end at the hands of Ty-Zor, son of Kata-Zor, with a Superman that's all bloodied and beaten up. They begin a pretty cool fighting sequence and just as something significant is going to happen, the story jumped back 29 years.

The planet Krypton is enduring a civil war. Kata-Zor breaks through barriers that had never been broken before with huge mechanical Buzzards in attempt to overthrow his brother, King Jor-El. Jor-El senses defeat and sends his son Kal-El, who we later come to know as Superman, on a pod to planet earth. Jor-El is captured and Krypton is taken over and partially destroyed by a spike bomb. 

Cut to Jonathan and Martha Kent's farmhouse. They're peacefully having dinner when this pod shows up out of no where and crashes right outside of their kitchen window. They investigate and find Kal-El. They're afraid if they report it then something could happen to the baby. Plus, you know, reporting that a UFO landed on your lawn and dropped a baby off might just buy you some time in the loony-bin. So, they take it in as their own and name him Clark Kent because he looked like a movie star, Clark Gables. The following scenes of Clark growing up are rather humorous.

Example:

INT. KENT’S LIVING ROOM - DAY

As Clark runs around the coffee table, escaping his“monsters”. Martha and Jonathan enter -- Jonathan moves to him, feigning a scary monster:


                                  JONATHAN
                  You can’t get away from the tickle
                  monster, CAN y--?

Suddenly CLARK TAKES OFF -- FLYING THROUGH THE CEILING.
For a beat, Jonathan and Martha are frozen, stunned.

                                  JONATHAN (CONT’D)
                  ... well, that’s new.

------------

Anyways, Clark grows up and graduates from college. One night his roommate begs him to come to a party just once before they're finished school, so he agrees to go with him. There, he meets Lois Lane. She's a weird person, alienated from society just like he is. They talk, she gives him a whole speech on how she wants to write for The Daily Planet and then tops it off by saying his fly is undone. He quickly does it up. Her friend wants to go to another party, she says no, her friend's boy grabs her by the arm and she kicks his ass. The girl means business.

Flash cut another so many years, Clark is now working for The Daily Planet and so is she, but she doesn't recall working with him. They begin their story on the soon-to-be villain of the script Lex Luther, the rich and scheming scientist, businessman, and politician. He'd found a pod earlier with kryptonite in it that had killed the pod's pilot, so he'd made a fortune off the technology he attained from the machine and its components.

Lois is really getting on Lex's nerves with the constantly hassling, so he decides to kill her. He finds out she's going to be on Air Force One, so he figures, why not kill everyone on the plane? Becoming president would be much easier then. Two birds with one stone, so they say. He cuts all the power to AFO and it begins to nose dive. It quickly reaches the news and Clark hears this from the shower.

The following scene is epic. He runs to his chest he'd been keeping and pulls out his suit. He ponders, knowing that Lois is on that plane, he puts the suit on quickly and bursts through the air at the speed of light. He holds the plane on his back and lands it to safety in the middle of a baseball field with a sold out crowd. Everyone looks in awe, shocked at what just happened. Lois is in love.

Clark reaches her the next day and tries to tell her to stay away from Lex because he reached out to him and told him his manifesto of evil deeds he planned for the future. He's about to tell her that he's Superman when she stops him and says that she knew he liked her, but she was in love with someone else. Superman? He asks.  Of course, who else? So he tells her that Superman called for her to meet him on the rooftop at 8. They have a romantic fly together.

Enough with the mush. Lex has been in contact with Kata-Zor and they bring Ty-Zor to earth to kill Kal-El/Superman after years of searching for him. Lois gets snoopy at a nearby observatory that's been reported for suspicious actions and since the owner of it was Lex Luther, of course she'd be there checking it out. She gets captured and her friend reporter that kind of plays as a comedic relief throughout, reports back to The Daily Planet and Clark hears the call. Immediately Superman is on the scene. 

Lois is thrown into a water-filled testing tank and she has very little time until it fills up completely. Superman goes in after her and discovers a piece of kryptonite on the bottom. His skin blisters, his eyes turn blood shot. This is it. He grabs her and starts punching the glass to break out. Just as it seems like they'd both die, the glass breaks with his last effort. Unfortunately he was too late. Lois lived, but Superman died.  

In kind of a Transformers 2, Deathly Hallows kind of way, Superman goes to Heaven and talks to Jor-El who is kind of dead, but not really, back on Krypton. His father tells him that his time to pass hasn't come yet and that he needs to go back.

Superman comes back to life, has an epic battle with Ty-Zor who is on a mission to destroy Earth for helping hide Kal-El all of these years. Superman wins.

He has a last minute engagement with Lois who wants him to stay, but ultimately he knows he has to restore stability in Krypton. His mother meets him before he takes off, they have a touching moment, and bam - he soars into the sky and THE END.

----

I absolutely loved this screenplay. I'm not very familiar with the comics, so I don't know how this lines up with the source material. Judging this as its own piece of art, I think it would have been amazing. It's funny to begin, romantic in the middle, and epic in the end. I think with a couple more rewrites and the elimination of the heaven scene, this could have revamped the Superman franchise.

It's funny because it seems from the trailers that Man of Steel is going to open in the same fashion with Krypton in trouble and Jor-El sending his son off to Earth. I guess only time will tell.

Loved it & it's a shame I'll never get to watch it.


7.8/10

Movie Review- A Good Day to Die Hard

Logline: John McClane travels to Russia to help out his seemingly wayward son, Jack, only to discover that Jack is a CIA operative working to prevent a nuclear weapons heist, causing the father and son to team up against underworld forces.

Cast: Bruce Willis, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch

Directed by: John Moore

I mean, I feel like I shouldn't take this review lightly. This is another entry into what has been a gamechanging franchise. Die Hard is one of, if not THE best action movie of all time. It set the bar for the genre and I think it's safe to say that this movie can't be reviewed without comparing it to the first four. That being said, the choice to hire an average screenwriter to helm this project has confused me. His credits to date include X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Hitman, Swordfish, and The A-Team. I'm not going to knock this writer and say that his films aren't successful, because they are. Most of those movies actually made good money. I just feel like they were destined for box office success to begin with. Each of those movies is considerably flawed with Wolverine leading the heap. It was so ridiculed by fans that they've already made a replacement film to it coming out this summer. Anyway,  I wasn't going to pass on this film for that reason, considering I've watched all of the others. I was hoping they'd keep the franchise going strong, but it was impossible to avoid all of the negative buzz surrounding this when it was released.

Did it deserve the hate? Read on.

Review

This is what I mean't when I said I wasn't sure if I should take this review lightly... How am I supposed to critique this story? There wasn't a story. It's hard to talk about something that hardly existed.

John and his son follow this Russian terrorist, Komarov, who is a high priority threat. The reason for doing so is because Komarov knows the location of this file that everyone is looking for. No one really knows what's on the file, but we're supposed to assume it's important. He needs to get his daughter first, so they go and find her, she turns out to be working for other terrorists, so she takes her father captive. They end up in Ukraine, there is no file, just a bunch of bombs that Komarov had set up. His daughter wasn't against him, she just needed to free him from the Americans. John and John catch up, they stop the party before it can start. And that's it.

The only cool thing I can mention about this entire film is that the action scenes are mint. They definitely didn't chince out on the budget. This movie has to hold some kind of record for wrecking the most cars in film history. It seems like the director, John Moore, didn't want to leave any traces that he made this pathetic excuse for a Die Hard film, so he blew up every set they went to. It was comical, really.

Comedy is subjective, but there is a taxi cab scene and I can't picture ANYONE laughing at it. It was ironic, actually, so I kind of laughed on the inside. The cab ride in the first film was funny, it developed some back story, and it's actually a memorable scene from the film. Think of it this way... imagine if that scene didn't exist. Would we even know anything about John? We're given the scoop which makes scenes later on more tense. The franchise has taken a complete 360.

Topic of the Day

You can look at this movie and use it as a "how-not-to-write". I feel like this was a first draft. There is no excuse to have such vague plot. Everyone is looking for this file. Yeah, really cool... Why? What file? Why is it important? Why are John and John Jr. not aware that Komarov is a high priority terrorist that can't be trusted? There wasn't even a file to begin with. Just a bunch of bombs. This was one of the most thinly plotted action movies I've seen in a long time. Not even John McClaneisms could mask the films gigantic flaws.

Conclusion

I have to apologize for this review, because I felt there was very little to talk about. So many things were wrong I didn't even know where to start. I'm also pretty late to the party and many critics have already blasted the hell out of this one. If anything, the blame is all on the studio. It seems like they rushed this, chose a writer who didn't put much effort into it, and threw a ton of money at Bruce Willis. The pain of it all? They made 200+ million on this mess. There were some cool action scenes, but nothing else.

3/10

Movie Review- Aftershock

Logline: In Chile, a group of travelers who are in an underground nightclub when a massive earthquake hits quickly learn that reaching the surface is just the beginning of their nightmare.

Cast: Eli Roth, Ariel Levy, Nicolas Martinez, Andrea Osvart, Natasha Yarovenko

Directed by: Nicolas Lopez

I think most people that are into film known the name Eli Roth now, especially after his role as The Bear Jew in Inglorious Basterds. I've been a fan since Cabin Fever and although I wasn't hyped on it, Hostel was really popular when it came out. I'm currently one of his 220k followers on twitter and lately he's been retweeting a ton of people who have nothing but extremely positive comments on his recent work. Although I hated Hemlock Grove, the werewolf Netflix series he directed/produced, he did mention on reddit that he had very little say in what occurred and that he only directed the pilot. I didn't place the blame on him for that. Coincidentally, I'm not even sure how much work he put into this film either, because he's not the director, but I'm sure he helped out with it and he's got a screenwriting credit. Anyways, many people are tweeting him with nothing but love for this film and I had to check it out. I guess twitter does work in advertising content after all.

Review

The film starts off bumpin'. Eli Roth hitting on women in clubs, being a drunken mess and blowing his opportunities in Chile. From now on I'll call him by his character name, Gringo. Gringo meets up with his two friends Ariel and Pollo. Ariel speaks Spanish, and Pollo is kind of a Hangover II Alan rip-off with the shaved head, big beard, and similar appearances and humor. Anyways, the first 30 or more minutes of this movie takes a huge dip. Introducing characters at a party with some comedy is a good thing and it can be fun, but when you introduce them at three different parties over a span of 1/3 of the movie, there's a BIG problem. I can honestly say that besides picking up hot women, there were no goals. There wasn't a story. There wasn't even much character backstory explored during this time. Nothing was happening. Don't get me wrong, it was really cool to see Chile through a tourist's point of view, but there has to be something drawing me in. Something to give me a reason to keep watching. I guess before I begin discussing the second act it's important to note that they met three girls that are journeying and partying along with them by this point.

All 6 of them are in an underground club when an earthquake rattles the walls and the ceiling begins to collapse. The scenes get quite gory and for a really low budget they were done quite well. Finally the movie is beginning to get interesting. Mindless gore can be alright if done well, and I think it was here. Ariel loses a hand and they escape before they can be crushed by the collapsing ceilling. If that wasn't enough, the alarm rings to indicate that a Tsunami is incoming and the group must get to high land. Cool, we have a goal now, but wait. Ariel lost his hand! He needs a hospital ASAP. The group haggle with a man they met earlier to put their friend on a ski-lift type of machine to take him up the hill. Unfortunately the weight is too heavy and the rope breaks, sending him crashing back down the hill to his death.

So now there is one main goal. Get to high land before the Tsunami hits. How does one go about spicing this up? Add conflict. When the earthquake hit, a bunch of prison inmates were able to escape and they start chasing our group of characters. They begin running away under a bridge when a piece of debris falls on top of Gringo and he's stuck there to die. The girls try to get him out as Pollo rushes for help somewhere else, but the prisoners catch up forcing them to hide. They cover Gringo in gas and force him to tell where the girls are. He accidentally looks with his eyes and gives one of them away. This is where the film gets gruesome and the weak hearted will turn it off. I almost did. The prisoners rape the girl while Gringo watches, and then they throw a cigarette on him and we watch him burn. Although the burning looked cool and all, the rape was hard to sit through. Anyways, Pollo finds someone and helps him out of a fire truck that he was stuck in. They return and see the girl being raped, so Pollo hacks him up with an axe. As they run away, the rape victim gets shot and killed. Then in the next sequence, Pollo dies by a random gunshot. What the hell? This is madness.

Just when you think the girls are going to get away, the person Pollo recruited takes his shirt off and shows prison tats when he has the girls alone. He kills one of the two sisters and the other sister kills him in gruesome fashion. The only girl left, Monica, stumbles out on the beach through a cave and it's now broad daylight. She lies down and takes a moment to process, but as she gets back up the water rises and the film ends as the Tsunami touches down.

What a damn ride. Well, it seemed like it from my summary, no? I actually didn't really like this movie. I think it's because of the characters. Although the beginning 10-15 minutes were funny, as time passed they became boring. This is because none of them were fighting for anything up until the quake, which felt like an eternity. So when the story actually started to pick up, I was disconnected and it was hard to enjoy. It's a shame really, because there were memorable scenes and there were shades of a decent plot.

Topic of the Day

As a filmmaker, I think the absolute worst thing that you can do is take your time. As a writer, the idea is to get the reader to keep flipping pages, one by one. If for any short period in time the story goes off course, that could lose the audience's attention. By having character goals, mystery, stakes, timelines, and so many other writing tools available, a movie like Aftershock wouldn't have suffered from a mind numbing first act. Character goals are the basic start to all of this. These are what give the story direction. Having a trio of characters spend 30 minutes picking up girls and exploring favelas in Chile aimlessly is the definition of taking your time! I got bored and I imagine many others did too. The film picked up later on and developed these things, but for me, it was too late. The idea is to grab the audience's attention as quick as possible.

Conclusion

I wanted to like Aftershock, but it suffered from a script that seemed like a first draft. The story took way too long to develop and when it did, I was already disconnected from the characters. There is a brutal rape scene that's hard to watch, but the rest of the violence and gore is actually kind of fun. When the story does pick up, it's tense and interesting, and the ending is pretty cool. Although the ending credits rolled and my immediate reaction was extremely negative, I've given a little more thought and the latter half of this movie was somewhat memorable. Call it the aftershock effect, if you must.

5/10

Movie Review- Bachelorette

Logline: Three friends are asked to be bridesmaids at a wedding of a woman they used to ridicule back in high school.

Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Rebel Wilson, Isla Fisher, Lizzy Caplan, James Marsden

Directed by: Leslye Headland

I know, I know. There are way more interesting movies that I could be reviewing right now, but I do have my reasons for choosing this one. 

Each year a popular website called The Black List releases a list of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood. This isn't just any random website. Being on this list means that people in the industry generally loved your work. I can't even fathom how successful this list has proven to be, including a few Oscar winning films well before they were released. Point being, Bachelorette made this list in 2008. This was a pretty stacked list. Inglorious Basterds, The Beaver, 50/50 (then titled I'm With Cancer), Hope Springs, The Descendants, and many many more. It finished around the middle of the bunch with 9 mentions, only one slot under Up in the Air which starred George Clooney.

I hope I have convinced you enough to give me a pass on wanting to watch/review this one. Let's see how it did.

Review

Bachelorette had an atrocious first act, followed by a decently constructed second act, and concluded with a sloppy and uninspiring third.

The story begins as we witness Regan (Dunst) and Becky (Wilson) talking in a café of sorts. Becky is clearly the ridiculed one in high school, Regan is clearly the pretty ring leader. Anyways, Becky is getting married and she wants Regan and her friends from high school to be in the wedding party. Hmmm... didn't the logline say these 3 girls ridiculed her in high school? Why would they be in the wedding party? That's never addressed. Regan phones up her friends Gena (Caplan) and Katie (Fisher) and they all agree to go. Gena wakes up beside a random guy to join in on this phone conversation, Katie is trying on clothes like a spoiled woman. We get a sense of these three women right away, and none of them are remotely likeable. Anyways, the first act comes to a close as the three friends give an awkwardly dumb and unbelievable speech at the night before the wedding dinner a la Hangover 2 when Alan gives his. Comedy is subjective, but this was silly.

Act 2 picks up the pace. A story actually begins! Regan and Katie both get in Becky's wedding dress to take a picture because they're bitches and it'd be funny to make fun of their "friend's" oversized dress... Right. The dress rips and they have to get it fixed before the night is over. The pace starts to pick up, our characters all have goals, and MAYBE, just MAYBEEE, during this journey they might change into likeable characters. Well, not really. There are some comedic moments throughout as they mingle with the groomsmen and such. A stripper cleans her ____ on the dress =\ it's not really THAT bad. They all start turning on each other and it gets kind of stressful because Becky is a character we can all sympathize and we don't want her wedding ruined. The stakes are raised when she talks to Regan and says how grateful she is and that she's one of her best friends. Now they have to fix the dress.

Act 3 is really weird. Katie and Gena hook up with groomsmen (Gena with her Ex, Katie with the nerd from high school) and they kind of fix themselves by finding these men... The dress is fixed and dry cleaned because Gena sewed it. The whole night was a mess and the wedding is just short of one, but Becky gets married and the three girls sit on a bench thinking about the night. It looks like all has changed, and then they say "fuck it, let's get a drink." This is also followed by an awkward Adam Scott speech, kind of like the one the girls had earlier. I hate these. They never work. Then the movie ends with some pop music and I guess that's supposed to hide the fact that the movie was a dud.

Topic of the Day

Likeable characters & story tweaking.

Really, did the writer believe that most normal human beings were going to be able to stand watching three girls who've ridiculed their high school "friend" for years? I'm all for anti-heroes, but there has to be some kind of likeability to them. Even if it's just a little something. Walter White cooks meth in Breaking Bad to leave money for his family after he dies from cancer. Dexter Morgan is a serial killer, but he only kills criminals who have gotten away with their crimes. With these three girls, I had nothing. The approach to change these characters from unlikeable to likeable is interesting, but I suffered from an early disconnection to them. Maybe it's because these characters didn't show me ANYTHING to give me hope they'd change. And spoiler alert, none of them actually did change that much.

I also wanted to point out the story's logline. That's not really a story. Three friends unintentionally wreck their friend's wedding dress the night before her wedding and must race to fix it amidst being drunk and irresponsible before she finds out. Better? I didn't even edit that. I'm sure it could be much better. And if the story focused on that, it would have been paced much better.

Conclusion

Bachelorette suffered immensely from its unlikeable characters. It is to my understanding that these characters were intended to make a change for the better by the time the credits started rolling, but what little changes they made had little impact on their likeability. Topped with two of the most awkward, unbelievable, and silly speeches, this film suffered from a slow first and a confused third act. I don't recommend this one, not even on a date night.

Btw, I hadn't checked Rotten Tomatoes or any other website for a review on this until after I wrote mine. It seems that we're on the same page considering my consensus is eerily close to theirs.

4/10

Movie Review- The Place Beyond the Pines

Logline: A motorcycle stunt rider turns to robbing banks as a way to provide for his lover and their newborn child, a decision that puts him on a collision course with an ambitious rookie cop navigating a department ruled by a corrupt detective.

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Dane DeHaan, Rose Byrne, Eva Mendes, Ray Liotta

Directed by: Derek Cianfrance





So it has definitely been awhile since my last post and it's kind of odd that I'm coming back on a Friday to launch this blog back up again, but school is officially over with now, I've watched a movie that I was hyped to see, and I want to write about it! :)

The Place Beyond the Pines caught my attention with its casting of Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper. I thought Cooper was great in Silver Linings and I quite enjoyed his role in Limitless, so I was curious if this movie would expand his blip on my radar. Drive is one of my faves and Ryan Gosling is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors. I was also fortunate enough to get a hold of the screenplay well before the film was released and it was so good I put it down so I could enjoy the rest of the film without knowing what was going to happen.

If you haven't watched this movie, I suggest you do so. I'm only saying that now because if you're reading this before watching, I advise you to stop here. There is a major spoiler and for the sake of analyzing the film, I have to discuss it.

One more thing, this is my first review back and it's going to be quite long. I'll get more concise when I get back into the swing of doing this.

Review

The film starts off really well. The cinematography is great, the setting is dark, Gosling is tatt'd up, and the dialogue is real. I really liked where this was heading. Luke (Gosling) finds out that he has a baby with a girl named Romina (Mendes), a fling from his past. Instead of leaving town like he'd planned, he decides to stay and be in the baby's life. Luke is a motorcycle stunt rider at a carnival, but he has to quit in order to be with his son. Enter the mentor character of Robin. Robin is impressed when watches Luke riding his motorbike through the woods. Robbing a few banks in his day, he offers Luke a place to stay and suggests that he try it. Having very little options elsewhere, Luke takes Robin's advice and begins robbing banks. This is where the film takes off. The scenes of Luke robbing banks are very intense and realistic. Everything seems to be going well, he scores a few bank robberies, and then he gets greedy. He wants to do two in one day. Knowing how most movies go, we get the sense that the first bit of conflict is going to arise out of this. What we didn't know was that the director, Derek Cianfrance, has a huge set of balls. He really did the unthinkable.

Luke dies. 

Yeah, our main character dies 45 minutes into the film. WHAT? When I read this in the screenplay I had to do a double take. Did he actually just- no, he didn't- ok yeah, he definitely just died. What now?



The story continues following the police officer that shoots him, Avery (Cooper). After being injured by a gun wound from Luke, Avery is taken back to Romina's house by four other cops to find the stolen money. DIRTY COPS. They want to keep it for themselves and due to Rominas mother's illegal status in the country, no warrant is necessary. Avery wants none of it. He tries to rat out the cops, he tries to catch them on his voice recorder, and then he goes to his dad. His dad is a judge. I didn't think of it at first, but is it really believable that four dirty police officers would go to Avery, knowing that his dad is a judge and that Avery graduated from law school, but chose to be a cop to do the right thing in the line of duty instead of hiding behind a desk? I don't think so. Then the story takes another leap.

15 years later.

Ummmm, ok.




Now the story follows Avery's son AJ, who becomes friends with Luke's son Jason (DeHaan). I don't want to cut this section short, but I will. AJ is a bad kid and he's into drugs. Jason doesn't really know much about his father and has no idea that AJ's father killed him. Jason buys AJ drugs, they party, and then Jason gets curious about his father for some reason. He looks him up on the internet for the first time. He finds out who Robin is, and one of the best scenes in the movie is when he goes and meets him. Robin sits down with him and shows him some of his dad's old things. I'll get into this later, but for now I'll just allude to the emotional connection attached to it. It was great. Jason finds out about Avery, takes a gun, drives him out to the woods, holds the gun at him point blank, takes his wallet, and runs off. We see Jason ride off at the end of the film as he purchases a motorbike just like his dad's. 

PROS

Pines was something completely unique from other films. Each new act was about a new character, connected to the character in the act prior. I've mentioned many times that taking enormous time jumps in movies can really disconnect the viewer from the protag, but the formula of this film makes it work. We're not following a character, we're following a timeline of these two families. The structure of this film allowed for us to connect to two different generations and this hardly ever happens. I really liked that.

The cinematography and acting were both spectacular.

The scene where Jason meets with Robin, 15 years after his father's death, is my favorite scene in the entire movie. We've followed his father's last days and viewed the love he had for his son. When Jason finally discovers this and is given the green glasses his father playfully placed on him when he was a baby, I was happy. I felt the connection. It provoked thought in my head, especially because I've studied history and the importance of its preservation. 

The director's courage to kill off the film's main character and Ryan Gosling's courage to take a role where he dies before Act II.

CONS

AJ, Avery's son, really annoyed me. Maybe it was the accent. I didn't like his character at all. Maybe it was the acting? Not sure.

The third act fell apart for me a little bit. This is possibly because of AJ, but the final showdown between Jason and Avery, although very real and well acted, didn't have much of an impact on me. Maybe if he would have killed Avery it would have sparked something, but he didn't, and the scene just kind of died. 

At times the direction was too slow. The pace could have been a little faster and 20 minutes could have been cut out of this film easily. The cinematography was great, but it could have been cut down a little bit to speed up the pace and have the story moving forward in a quicker and more entertaining speed.




Conclusion

Pines was a film I looked forward to. I really liked the structure because it was unique and allowed for us to explore a story through two generations. This eccentric form of storytelling allowed for me to connect on an emotional level to two families as opposed to the standard connection I'd usually have to an individual protagonist. It was well written, well directed, and the acting was great. It's not the type of movie that will make $100 million, but it's a great movie to provoke thought and it's easy to get attached to its story.

7.5/10