True Grit

First Hit: A different and powerful version of a wonderful western story.

Jeff Bridges plays Rooster Cogburn a rundown US Marshall who drinks way too much, is a great shot and is not afraid of any man.

He is hired by Mattie Ross (played by Hailee Steinfeld) a 14 year old girl whose father was shot by Tom Chaney (played by Josh Brolin). Chaney has run off into an Indian reservation. Mattie is headstrong and from the moment the film opens I was amazed at her character, her presence and the ability of Steinfeld to make Mattie her own.

Matt Damon has the third important part is this saga as Texas Ranger LaBoeuf. He joins the search for Chaney because Chaney is wanted for killing a judge in Texas. LaBoeuf and Cogburn don’t see eye-to-eye on how to track Chaney so Cogburn and Ross split up from LaBoeuf. As they are about to give up because the trail has gone cold, Ross stumbles on to Cheney. Well you can imagine what happens next.

Bridges is fantastic in bringing to life a different Rooster Cogburn than the one John Wayne brought forth. What was wonderful is that Bridges performance did nothing to diminish Wayne’s portrayal and added his own unique version with some real character and depth. This is an Oscar contending performance. Steinfeld, was phenomenal and nothing short of great. Poise, character and immediately mesmerized me into fully believing her every action and word. She did not falter or lose character in any way. She could garner an Oscar nomination. Damon was very good, and as the third character fully rounded this film. Joel and Ethan Coen wrote the screenplay and directed this without the tendency to make it more twisted or impactful. This film is shot straight-up and it is good.

Overall: Truly a wonderful western that doesn’t feel out of date or out of character.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

First Hit: All I can say is Part 2 will hopefully be really good because Part 1 is one long boring piece of nothing.

I really wonder what the mindset is of a director who can create a long piece of preamble in hopes that he hits a home run with the epilogue.

Jesus, sitting there during hour after hour of darkly filmed set-up for Part 2 was an immense time waster. Here is what I learned: Ron (played by Rupert Grint) can dislike Harry (played by Daniel Radcliffe) if even for only 20 minutes of the film's time.

Ron and Hermione (played by Emma Watson) have a thing for each other. Muggles are dying and why should I care. Hogwarts as a school is history. The Ministry of Magic dies. A sword is important. People can switch wands.

And finally Yoda, from Star Wars fame, arises again in a slightly different body but speaks sentences in the same oddly phrased way. It was obvious that the producers skimped on lighting, therefore everything is dark.

And lastly I’ve got to find it within me to care about these people even though Harry is the chosen one, he isn't very smart and people follow him blindly to their death. I was astonished by the milking of the public in this way for a 2.5 hour preamble which does very little.

My question is: Will Part 2 begin with a synopsis of Part 1 (should take about 5 minutes)? If it does, don't waste your time watching this film and if it doesn’t; I'm not sure you need to this film to move the story along. I just didn’t learn enough in Part 1 (save the aforementioned above) to make it worth my while to see Part 2.

Radcliffe is about the same as he’s been in all the other Potter films except the first one where his innocence was a welcomed joy. There is nothing extraordinary about him as an actor and he doesn’t really give much to the audience and it is difficult to care about him in this part. Grint has changed a bit and has grown slightly. He also has to share a different set of feelings for Harry in about 3 minutes of screen time when he gets mad at Harry. But overall, nothing much new here either. Watson appears to have some acting chops as there were multiple scenes in which she says nothing but the audience is given a sense of feelings and shifts in her character. The snub nose on Ralph Fiennes as Lord Voldemort is a good look for evil and that was entertaining. The best acting in this film is by Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange. She is great, brings great energy to the screen and was the only acting highlight. Steve Kloves wrote a boring screenplay from J. K. Rowling’s novel. Direction by David Yates is heavy handed, emotionlessness and overly dark.

Overall: If you must see this, rent it and eat dinner while watching so you get something done during the time. You won't miss much while you are chewing your food.

Clash of the Titans 3D

First Hit: What a waste of time and energy.

This previously made story has finally hit its zenith of being bad.

Seeing Liam Neeson take on the role of Zeus was simply shocking. Why would he downgrade his resume with this? He did speak one fine line, “Release the Kraken” but I saw this in the previews. The same almost goes for Ralph Fiennes as Hades.

Except with Ralph there were a couple interesting moments which lasted more than one line long, but mostly it was a waste of his talent as well. Sam Worthington plays Perseus (son of Zeus) and the promise he showed in Avatar was totally absent in his role here.

I won’t go into the story here as it has been done before and the bottom line is Perseus saves the human world… ta-da (the end).

Louis Leterrier directed this mess and one would think that with the abilities of computer animation, Neeson, Fiennes, and Worthington something interesting might have been made of this remade film. But what we get is mediocre 3D (lots of shadowing), bad costuming, and ash people riding scorpions. Even the Kraken got little full face screen time.

Overall:  I’d much rather watch the 1981 version; at least I could laugh in good conscious.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

First Hit: The film could have been interesting; however the execution was poorly conceived and didn't live up to its own imagination.

 Heath Ledger was the star in this film but he died before he could complete it.

In this movie Heath plays Tony a conning trickster of sorts and is first introduced into this film by being rescued from under a bridge where he is hanging by his neck. How did he survive? He had a small metal flute placed in his throat to keep his windpipe from being crushed.

The people who find him hanging under the bridge and rescue him are Valentina (played by Lily Cole), Anton (played by Andrew Garfield) and Percy (played by Verne Troyer). This group of people is traveling in an ancient looking old rickety two story wood wagon drawn by two horses with a wizened old Doctor Parnassus (played by Christopher Plummer). 

Hundreds of years earlier, this wise old Doctor sold his soul to the devil (played by Tom Waits) so that he could marry the woman of his dreams. She died having their child Valentina. What did Parnassus wager with the devil when he sold his soul? His daughter would be turned over to the devil on her 16th birthday if he hadn't converted a particular number of souls.

With her 16th birthday just a couple days away, Parnassus makes a new deal with the devil. If he can save 5 souls before midnight on the eve of his daughter’s birthday he can keep his daughter.

To save souls Parnassus has a mirror people can walk through and when he is concentrating, the moment people walk through the mirror, their imagination becomes their reality.

They become in touch with their true soul and with this new information come back out of the mirror to lead a saved life.

Tony is a con man, and an expert at conning women into going into the mirror, and with four of the five souls saved everyone thinks the girl will be saved from the devil. However the show goes bad when a bunch of Russians in the audience recognize Tony as the guy who stole their money (which was the reason why he was hanging by his neck under the bridge).

To escape, Tony goes into the mirror three times and each time, because Ledger was dead before they shot this part of the film, a new actor plays him.

The actors playing Tony in the Imaginarium are Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. Each does their impression, of sorts, of how Ledger would have been in the Imaginarium but none of them pull it off. Each time one of the new actors looks at a reflection of himself, they give a quizzical stare as if to say, so this is what I (Ledger) look like in my imagination?

Anyway, the film by this time has long since lost its way and is severely handicapped by the convoluted story and back stories which are presented to try to make the film make sense.

I would have rather seen “The Dark Knight” as Ledger’s last film because this one didn’t do him justice. Actors Cole, Garfield and Troyer are interesting and amusing from time to time but the story doesn't have any breathing room because it was always trying to fill in information the audience needs to know to make the next scene make sense. I thought Waits was an interesting choice as the devil because he has a gleam in his slit eyes which make him a likely devil. Plummer plays a good drunk but there is nothing extraordinary about his performance as this wizened old soul that use to keep the world working because he and his disciples kept the story going (yes, more back story). Depp, Law and Farrell did their best but there was little in their version of Ledger which matched up or tied back to Ledger outside of obvious character lines. There wasn't a feeling that these three actors were a continuum of Ledger's character. Charles McKeown and Terry Gilliam wrote this script while Gilliam directed it. Together they didn't seem that they had a clear idea of how to tell this story in a way that it sparked imagination; and wasn't this the point?

Overall: The film is overly convoluted and lacking in imagination. As much as I wanted to get into it because some of the Imaginarium sequences were fun and interestingly filmed, I felt like I needed to say goodbye and good riddance.

2012

First Hit: Visual effects are the real story here which provide an interesting view of what might happen during a cataclysmic world event.

There are lots of things that get mixed up and are inaccurate in this film, like cell phones still working in India and the US when half the world is underwater, but for the most part the film is a fun ride of close calls.

John Cusack plays Jackson Curtis a writer, father and divorced limo driver who inadvertently comes across the US Government testing for the problems in the Earth’s core and crust while camping with his kids in Yosemite National Park.

While in Yosemite, he runs across a roving and raging independent radio broadcast reporter named Charlie Frost (played wonderfully by Woody Harrelson) who begins to convince him that there is a huge problem with the Earth and that the government is hiding it from everyone.

Another of the film’s stories is of a Geologist Adrian Helmsley (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) who is working with a scientist in India who discovered that the core is heating up so fast that the world will end in a short period of time.

Helmsley speaks with the President who speaks with the other leaders of the world and they decide to create “Arks” to save a part of the human race along with its animals. Of course they don’t tell the populous, but offer up openings on the Arks to those who have the most money.

Meanwhile Jackson figures out that Frost’s ravings are correct that decides to save his children, divorced wife and her current husband. This begins the effects part of the film where there are more buildings falling, waves crashing, and cracks opening up in the Earth than one can ever imagine.

From this point on, the film is a roller coaster ride and it is fun to watch.

Roland Emmerich does a good job of giving us all sorts of fun effects; although some of them not very realistic, like driving through a falling building or flying between the minimal spaces between two buildings falling into each other. However, if one lets go of the accuracies and probabilities, then it is a fun rollick of a movie. Cusack mugs his way through being distraught and brave. I loved the kids Noah and Lily (played by Liam James and Morgan Lily respectively) doing their part to create a glue between the divorced parents in this traumatic situation. Ejiofor was solid as the Geologist as was Danny Glover as the President and Thandie Newton as the President’s daughter.

Overall: Not a great film for dialogue or content but fun to watch for the visual effects.