PODCAST: Skin, The Railway Man, The Other Woman

Swanner and Judd talk about Under the Skin; The Railway Man; The Other Woman.
Left Click To Listen, Right Click Here To Download SJ09: April Part 3

The Other Woman

Swanner: Last night we had one of those great reviewing experiences. That’s where I like the movie and Brian hates it. I know it’s cruel to like such events, but if I can hear Brian in misery for a couple hours … it’s a good thing. The film we saw was The Other Woman. This is your standard chick flick where the wife and the mistresses all find out about each other a make the man in question pay. Think of it as a First Wives Club wannabe.

The Railway Man

Swanner: A former British Army officer, Eric Lomax, who was tortured as a prisoner of war at a Japanese labor camp during World War II, discovers that the man responsible for much of his treatment is still alive and sets out to confront him. This is the main plotline for The Railway Man. Colin Firth plays Eric who must face the demons that have haunted him for years. Nicole Kidman plays his wife Patti, who has to blindly let her husband return to face his nightmares alone.

Judd: I think it is important to note that the movie is based on a true story, which makes it all the more substantial. Directed by unknown Jonathan Teplitzky, The Railway Man is an extremely British film in the manner that it does not go in for histrionics; performances are understated, to say the least, to the point where I almost felt the rigor setting in.

Swanner: I never felt bored, but it did feel long. It’s paced for an older audience. We were sure the local retirement home residents were all at the screening and I’m pretty sure Brian was the youngest one there. Still the audience seemed to like the film very much, and they stayed up through it. While watching the film I kept thinking this felt like a fall movie. The heavy dramas looking for Oscar consideration. The performances are all Oscar worthy including the two men who played the young and old Japanese translator Tanroh Ishida and Hiroyuki Sanada respectively.

Judd: I may have been a little harsh in my earlier statement; while I can’t say that I liked the movie, I do think that it was expertly crafted and performed. Firth is excellent as always as well as Nicole Kidman. You mention Tanroh Ishida, but I think the youngster to watch here is Jeremy Irvine, who played young Eric; he was recently cast in Roland Emmerich’s Stonewall which should be a very interesting take on the Stonewall Riots.

Swanner: I agree that Irvine was excellent, as well. I don’t have any major complaints about the film other than I’m surprised it’s out this early in the year but as they did bring out The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel at this time period as a counter to superheroes and animated monsters, and that worked out nicely. Unlike the before mentioned Marigold Hotel, this is no comedy. This is a heavy drama that deals with war crimes but it also tests our humanity and our ability to forgive and move on.

Judd: You absolutely have to be in the mood to watch The Railway Man. It’s not something you’re going to go see or pop in the blu-ray player because you’re bored. I wasn’t in the mood to see the movie and I’ll never want to see it again, but I can justifiably say that it was a good movie and anyone who does see it will be rewarded with great performances and a touching story.

Swanner: 3 ½ Stars

Judd: 3 Stars

 

PODCAST: Transcendence, Heaven is For Real, Bears

Swanner and Judd talk about Transcendence; Heaven is For Real; Bears. Music: Happy Boy by Kevin MacLeod. incomptech.com
Left Click To Listen, Right Click Here To Download SJ08: April Part 2

Transcendence

Swanner: Transcendence: going beyond the limits of ordinary experience. In the new Johnny Depp film,  Transcendence, Depp plays Will Caster, a scientist who is trying to develop artificial intelligence that has the collective intelligence of everything ever known, combined with the full emotional human experience. After being targeted by anti-technology extremists who leave him close to death, his intelligence is downloaded into a computer where he goes a little cuckoo. Oscar winner (Best Cinematography for Inception) Wally Pfister makes his directorial debut.

Judd: A new Johnny Depp movie where he doesn’t wear tons of makeup or a funny hat? The last time he did that was The Rum Diary! I was looking forward to Transcendence, with a dressed down Johnny Depp. The movie also features favorites Cillian Murphy and Morgan Freeman, plus Paul Bettany, Cole Hauser and Rebecca Hall. Does the movie deliver all that is promised? Not so much, but I was with it all the way up until the very end.

Swanner: I’m glad you could keep up with it. They were talking over my head in this film. I felt like I was in a 2-hour IT lecture. I know people are talking, but I have no idea what about. I liked the concept, but then whenever they do the rogue computer story I usually like it. I just didn’t feel the film is user friendly. I was also promised more action in the previews for this film and we got very little till the very end. On the subject of endings … snore. I was hoping for a least the big bang, and what we got was a whimper.

Judd: I like the philosophical questions put forth by the movie; even though it was very simplified, it was enough to keep me thinking and engaged.  I didn’t miss the action. The ending, however, is where it all falls apart. The action felt tacked on, like some brainless studio head said, “It needs ‘slposions.” Then the jarring leap the story made to bring the computer down isn’t explained. It was like five explicatory minutes were cut from the movie and without them the whole thing fell apart and left the audience asking, “What just happened?”

Swanner: I was asking that a lot earlier in the film, too. You’re in IT in your real life and I, on the other hand, can drop an MP3 recording into Dropbox and that’s only because you showed me how last week. The actors even looked confused at times on what they were saying. I hated that at the heart of the story was that “who gives a rats ass” love story. So much of this movie didn’t work for me. You’ll probably say it’s my age and it very well might be, but there are a lot of people like me out there buying tickets and they won’t be buying this one.

Judd: There was a lot of the movie that didn’t work for the audience either. I agree with your love story assessment. There were parts of the movie I was thinking reminded me a lot of Spike Jonze’ Her. I chuckled to myself wondering if Will Caster met up with Samantha while he was gathering all the information in the world. That would have been an interesting twist.

Swanner: 1 Star
Judd: 2 Stars

 

Heaven Is For Real

Swanner:  A small town father/preacher tries to come to terms with his son’s visions of heaven. After a 4-year-old has a near death experience, he starts talking about how he went to heaven and met Jesus. The religious community doesn’t know what to think of his story and starts distancing themselves from the family. Greg Kinnear plays Todd Burpo, the father of the boy, who also wrote the novel about his son’s incredible journey. Kelly Reilly, Thomas Haden Church and Margo Martindale also star. Randall Wallace directs and wrote the script with Chris Parker

Judd: I am not a religious person, and religion themed movies — outside of Christmas or Passover comedies — are not my cup of tea. They’re usually poorly made on a shoestring budget and, worse yet, they’re preachy. Heaven Is For Real falls prey to the shoestring budget, but I didn’t think it was preachy at all, and I found the story to be very compelling. For the first 30 – 40 minutes the Burpos suffer through everything but a plague of locusts, which was a bit much, but once the movie got to the meat of the story, faith, it turned into something very interesting. If it got me talking about faith and religion, I can only imagine who actual Christians might feel about it.

Swanner:  I thought the movie was going to be your standard boring church movie where the movie does its best to convince us the story is real. That’s where this film differs, it was the fact that the town turns on the family because the child confirms their beliefs got me involved in the story. While the script might have been based on a true story, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be entertaining and moving. The only tension I was feeling was resentment against these hypocrites who turn on the family, and some of the time it’s Kinnear’s character as well. I also didn’t like the child actor playing boy with the vision. He played it too aloof and uninterested to the point I became uninterested and the script just reinforces that.

Judd: I can see why the kid was directed to be as aloof as he was. He saw something that he was always told was real, why wouldn’t he be blasé about it? I will agree that the movie lacked tension, and being based on a real story probably has something to do with that. Real life will (almost) never be as dramatic as a movie. Adding tension to “Hollywood up” the story maybe would have made for a better movie, but it would have totally killed its sincerity.

Swanner: I don’t think it would have. I had a moment — and I mean just one moment in the film — that gave me goose bumps. It was with Margo Martindale in the last few minutes of the movie. This movie should have been filled with those moments and it’s the flaccid script and the slow meandering direction at fault. Who had thought we’d be debating this film?  This film needed a little Hollywood to stir up emotions to make the audience cry, laugh or just feel. I just feel it missed the mark. Someone needed to believe the kid right off the mark. The audience believes him and we have no one speaking for us in the film till very late and since I didn’t like the kid I felt like an outsider. This could have been a really good movie.

Judd: I will agree that the direction was a bit lifeless and kid should have had at least one person cheering him on in order to make the town a little less hypocritical. It was the town’s reaction that made it interesting to me, and I know I am misinterpreting the whole thing. I know the intent was to make the Burpo kid and his father into martyrs, whereas I saw the movie being about vicious, mean spirited folks who turn their back on someone who doesn’t conform to their norm. Finally, a Christian movie about real Christians.

Swanner: 2 Stars
Judd: 2½ Stars

 

Bears

Swanner: Continuing with their Earth Day series, Disneynature brings to the screen Bears. The documentary follows an Alaskan bear and her two cubs as they come out of hibernation on their search for food. Mama bear and cubs cross mountains to find the feeding grounds but those grounds also hold dangers for the family when the cubs become targets of the older, hungry bears. Calm down … it’s Disney. Only the parents die.

Judd: The last Disneynature film we saw was Chimpanzee, narrated by Tim Allen. Chimps are natural actors for children’s nature documentaries. They’ve got enough personality that they’re watchable without the violence. Bears, on the other hand, if they aren’t riding a unicycle, they need to be mauling something. This, in addition to John C. Reilly’s uninspired narration, makes Bears a documentary without bite.

Swanner: Disney was always known for releasing great documentaries, but as much as I wanted to like Bears — it just never grabbed me. I’m not sure if it was John C. Reilly’s narration or the lack much happening on screen. One of the action sequences was when one of the cubs spent too much time on the beach and when the tide came in, he had to dredge through four inches of water — that was a close one. Once the bears finally get to a place with fish, it is fun to watch the salmon literally fly into their mouths, but the rest of the movie was pretty damn boring and I would think that would be worse for kids.

Judd: You would think that for a movie featuring two cubs that there would have been more frolicking, and that would have made the movie more fun to watch. You can’t go wrong watching baby animals play. Maybe they should have had a beer bust; that always gets our local cubs in a frisky mood and they’re usually entertaining to watch — more entertaining than this movie, at least.

Swanner: 2 Stars

Judd: 1 Star

PODCAST: Captain America: The Winter Soldier; The Raid 2; Draft Day

Swanner and Judd talk about Captain America: The Winter Soldier; The Raid 2; Draft Day. Music: Happy Boy by Kevin MacLeod. incomptech.com
Left Click To Listen, Right Click Here To Download SJ07: April Part 1

Noah

Swanner: Based on the Bible story, Noah takes some big liberties with the classic tale of the man who builds an ark and saves mankind from the creator’s wrath. Russell Crowe plays Noah in this unusual telling. Director Darren Aronofsky, who is known for his darker storytelling, appears to have done it again bringing some very odd things to the mix … like rock monsters … and thoughts of genocide. I did check with some people who have actually read The Bible and they say there were a lot of things added for dramatic effect.

Judd: Subtlety is not a word in Aronofsky’s vocabulary, that’s for sure. I went into Noah expecting to roll my eyes at a loud and bombastic feature starring the loudest and bombastiest actor of our time, Russell Crowe. While it was loud and bombastic, and I rolled my eyes aplenty. I was not expecting the heavy fantasy vibe that carried throughout the film. There were portions of the movie that reminded me very much of Aronofsky’s The Fountain from 2006.  From the rock monsters to the descendants of Cain that ate their animals live and head first, Noah could have been a wizard or a ring-chasing gnome, and the movie wouldn’t have been that different.

Swanner: When I heard that Aronofsky was doing the film I was trying to figure out why. How could he make this his own as it’s a well known story. A story as big as Noah and the Ark could never get that Aronofsky angle … I mean you can’t retell the Bible. That’s where I was wrong, you can and he did. Granted, your main story is there, but how do fluff it up without anyone getting pissed? You can’t. So Aronofsky did the film he wanted to make. There is even a sequence when Noah is telling the creation of life story while Aronofsky shows a fast paced piece that is obviously showing evolution.

Judd: The poster should have featured the phrase “loosely based on …”   The question I have is  — is it courage or hubris that give Aronofsky the balls to make the story of Noah “his own?” The cast also features Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman and Douglas Booth. Emma Watson already has a name for herself and Logan Lerman has the Percy Jackson franchise. Once Douglas Booth finds a better agent that will keep him out of crap like Miley Cyrus’ LOL, we’ll be seeing much more of his pretty face.

Swanner: That is the heart of the problem, if this weren’t based on an age old tale that many believe was real, we’d just be talking about the over the top performances. So looking at it sans the whole Bible thing … t’s not a bad movie. The acting is good for the type of film it is. The production design/CGI was right on with the exception of the Harryhausen rock creatures. It’s a well made movie and I’m glad to see Aronofsky bringing his weird directing style to a bigger budgeted movie. I can’t say I liked the movie, but I can say I didn’t hate it for its mangling of the source material.

Judd: I couldn’t have said it better.

Swanner: 1 ½ Stars

Judd: 2 Stars

The Raid 2

Judd: In 2012, The Raid: Redemption was released. It was a movie with an Indonesian cast and a Welsh writer/director. The action was all close up and was lauded for its gore and non-stop action. The plot was simple — a SWAT team becomes trapped in a building as they try to flush out its mob owner and his gang. Running at 101 minutes the movie was the perfect mix of action, blood and just enough story to keep it moving.

After the success of the first movie director Gareth Evans returns to Indonesia for The Raid 2, where everything is definitely bigger, but not necessarily better. The run time has been expanded by an extra 50 minutes, and instead of one location, there are fights in every conceivable local in Indonesia; a prison, a subway, a rice patty, a street and a restaurant to name just a few. This time around Agent Rama is tasked with fishing out dirty cops working for a local mob boss. To infiltrate the mob, Rama must befriend the boss’ son, an ambitious fellow who feels neglected and underutilized by his father. One convoluted thing leads to another and Rama finds himself in the middle of a three-sided mob war.

The action scenes are phenomenal and extremely well choreographed. Evans knows why people are coming to see this movie. Actor Iko Uwais is ridiculously fast and the camerawork, while slightly shaky, features the up-close fighting the original had — however, not quite enough. This is why I was surprised that the runtime was bloated to over two hours with the plot, while convoluted, is your standard Shakespearian son crosses father affair. The acting is nothing to write home about, though Arafin Putra and Alex Abbad manage to set themselves apart and command a presence the other bodies didn’t seem to have. In fact, because the movie is subtitled and the characters are so interchangeable, it took me about half the movie to get them all straight.

Cinematography was also lacking. I would think that after investing the time and bodies into an intricately choreographed fight sequence, you would want to show the action blow-by-blow. I understand that a wildly quaking camera is a cheap and effective gimmick to hide shoddy staging, but I don’t think that was the reason here. It felt like Evans wanted dynamic shots too complex for a dolly, but couldn’t afford the steadicam.

It’s unfortunate that Evans served as writer and director and, due to the success of the first, probably had carte blanche. The film suffers from excess. Some are saying it’s an excess of violence and blood, but for me the excess came from its grand story that was simply never compelling. Judicious editing could have trimmed at least 30 minutes off and brought the movie down to a manageable 2 hours. The same day I saw The Raid 2, I saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a movie that is also nearly 150 minutes long. The difference between the two is that the story carried Captain America and didn’t act as fodder to get us to the next action sequence. Ten actionless minutes can feel like an eternity when you don’t care what’s happening on screen.

Judd: 2 ½ Stars