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JollyG87
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Payback (1999)
One of the most memorable scripts ever!
A lot of movies have great scripts. But most of those films turn out to be filled with underlying meaning, deep emotional moments, and compassionate characters. Payback doesn't have any of these, but Brian Helgeland's script is so smooth and cool that it flows like poetry. Movies like Deer Hunter and A Clockwork Orange are brilliant works, but due to Payback's style alone, they are left in the dust by this seemingly simple tale of revenge.
It opens with a wounded man named Porter (Mel Gibson). Like any film noir, Porter narrates throughout the journey. We later discover that in one of his heist jobs, he is betrayed by his wife and partner, Val Resnick (Gregg Henry). Resnick wanted to establish himself back in the New York, and the only way he could get the money was to betray Porter. Porter lives, and after his recovery, discovers he is truly alone in the world. He has no family, his wife's a druggy and dies of a overdose, and his partner Val has betrayed him. The only thing he has left is the $70,000 stolen by his partner, and a hooker lover named Rosie (Maria Bello).
In most action movies, like this, the bad ass character is superficial, he is an unstoppable killing machine that always has some witty one liner. Payback doesn't take that route. As he tracks down members of the syndicate to get his money back, he is hit by a car, taken advantage of by crooked cops, and severely tortured. Doesn't necessarily sound like something that would happen to an unstoppable killing machine? He does have witty one liners, but they're realistic. There's one scene in particular where we see the masochist-sadist relationship of Pearl (Lucy Liu) and Val. Pearl's slamming on him in all kinds of ways while Porter is simply watching. After Val gets knocked out by all the abuse, Lucy Liu comments "I have a few minutes" (meaning she's willing to give some horizontal refreshment to Porter) and Porter replies, "So go boil an egg!" Now that's a cool line, and it comes out natural and not.... well, hollywoodized.
I loved the syndicate villains as well. They were provided with the same character treatment as Porter. They're lines were a little campier (hey, they're villains, what do you expect?), but they weren't evil henchmen who went "Muhaha!" They were typical businessmen who didn't want to give up the $70,000 dollars. But to put you on Porter's side, Brian Helgeland puts a few undesirable traits in his villains. Val Resnick is a beater of women automatically demonizing him. Carter (William Devane), who is Val's boss, sympathizes with him, automatically making Carter just as evil. My hatred for the character of Bronson (Kris Kristofferson), the big boss, barely succeeded. He is a stubborn asshole who just doesn't want to give up $70,000 dollars to a guy that's been giving him trouble. The scene where he starts hammering on Porter's toes to get information out of him is the scene that changes your feelings toward the man. We see Porter crying out in agony and Bronson with a smug look on his face. That disturbing scene is what wins the audience over to Porter's side.
The action is gripping, the pacing is fantastic, and the lines are classic. There's nothing more to be asked for an action film like this. Payback is close to being my favorite film and for good measure too. It is truly one of the best revenge films ever made, and if you have not seen it, I seriously suggest you do.
A+
Cellular (2004)
Get ready to be thrown on the edge of your seat!
When a lazy beach-bum gets a call from a woman who's been kidnapped, he must do whatever he can to save her.
Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow! Wow, that's a lot of "wow"s but that's the only way I can really describe this. Cellular is filled with tense moments and awesome car scenes. Yeah, some of the stuff that happens is totally unbelievable (a science teacher living in a mansion, situations where the character gets a little too lucky, and the lack of patrol cars on the highway), but that stuff doesn't matter because it's the actors that make it somewhat believable, it's the actors that make you care. Without them, I would have just thought it was fair and I wouldn't be saying all those wows.
Like I was saying, the acting is excellent. Kim Basinger, a veteran actress, continues to amaze me with her ability to act, but its not her who I was most impressed with, it was Chris Evans. The first movie I saw him in was "Not Another Teen Movie", and I thought at that time, I would never see him again, because when you're in a spoof that's milking the success of the Scary Movie series, you're not going to have movie offers knocking down your door; but Ellis gives him a chance and what a booster it is for the young actor. With all these teen actors (Ashton Kutcher, Paul Walker, Seann William Scott) who really don't have a lot of acting talent, its nice to see Evans giving all those guys a run for their money. I also throughly enjoyed William H. Macy's goofy cop character, and Statham who continues to play as a bad-ass mo fo.
The thing that's bothered me about the action movies this summer is the directors can never keep up with the fast action (The Chronicles of Riddick [even though I loved that], Bourne Supremacy, and even some scenes in AVP) It bugs the hell out of me when I can't see what's going on. This movie is filled with tons of fast-paced action and Ellis captures every moment of it. There's never a blurry moment! Cellular proves that Ellis is really an excellent director. He gets B-movie scripts and transforms them into almost A-Movie status. Imagine my surprise last year when I saw Final Destination 2, and I loved it a lot more than the original.
When you combine the acting and the beautifully tense action scenes, you get a highly suspenseful thriller. I was on the edge-of-my-seat from... well... almost start to finish, hehehe. It took me awhile to get into it (the beginning is kind of shaky), but once the characters were developed and Evan's character came into play, Cellular became a kick-ass, edge-of-your-seat ride!
Overall, Cellular is an excellent suspense thriller that has a few unbelievable moments, but the acting and tense scenes make up for it.
Cellular: A-
Ying xiong (2002)
Not my type of hero!
Hero tells the story of a martial arts master who defeats the three assassins that want to execute the Emperor.
Yes, my friends that is the plot. In the whole 96 minute movie, that is most of the plot. But hey don't worry! The director knows how to stretch a story! All he has to do is copy some stuff from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, put in tons of slow-motion shots, add some sappy romantics to the two dimensional characters, and you got yourself 96 minutes of pure, UNCONTROLLABLE.... boredom.
I feel like the critics are just wanting me to see a bad movie. They gave bad reviews to Without a Paddle. It looked good, so I went to see it, and of course, if you look below... you'll see how much I didn't like it. So this week, I was in the spirit of trusting critics, and what did that lead me to see... a movie I liked even less than Without a Paddle. Hero.
As you can tell by now, I'm definitely not going to recommend this one; and I have a lot of reasons why I'm not.
I'm finally getting tired of movies with slow-motion! I wasn't tired of it on The Matrix trilogy or when any other movies with slow-motion came out, but Hero's the cause of why I no longer like watching it. Every battle in the movie is overextended (kind of reminds me of any DBZ show). Battles last 10 minutes when they could only last two. I was going crazy with all the pointless action stuck in here. I would be like "Come on, Jet Li! Just kill her quickly instead of going in slow motion!"
The thing I really hated was that the movie took itself so seriously, and even worse, they never explain how they could do all these amazing things. When I'm watching a guy running across water with ease, I would like to know why, and the movie never explains it.
Hero, like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, tried to pull at your heart strings. And again, like CTHD, it has poorly developed characters. But of course it does, the director is too busy showing off his slow-motion skills. "Ewww, look... I can make him go slow-motion!" I guess the director thought he could make Hero a big masterpiece, so he added symbolism and romance in between fight scenes. "See critics! I put symbolism in this scene, so its not all slow-motion action!"
The special-effects were decent overall. Sometimes they were incredible and at other times lousy. Even though there's a really boring scene where Jet Li fights a guy walking on water, the special effects were still amazing. Then there was another scene where Jet Li has to fend off hundreds of arrows, and I couldn't help noticing, "This looks fake." But it was pretty damn cool overall.
The thing that really stood out in this was the cinematography. The director put in no CGI and some of the shots he got were more amazing than CGI shots in other movies. I'd have to say that this was the only reason I didn't completely detest Hero.
Overall, Hero bored me; mostly because of all the excessive slow-motion, poorly developed characters, pointless symbolism, and emotion.
Ying xiong (Hero): D+
Love Actually (2003)
Great early Christmas film!
I've had numerous surprises this year as far as how good a film is, but they've all been a bad surprise. Movies like Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, Underworld, and Jeepers Creepers 2 and some others that I can't think of off the top of my head have all been movies that I expected to be good, but they all turned out to be pieces of crap. Now, there's finally a good surprise. I came into this movie thinking it was just going to be another chick flick that I would deeply regret seeing, but it wasn't, it was surprisingly good! Usually though, I know exactly why I like or hate a film, but I can't seem to describe what I like about it. There's way too much going on with all the characters for me to give a damn about any character, but I did. I really understood them. There's one couple in Love Actually where we're not even sure if they're going to be together at all. So why was it good? I guess it was good because it made you feel good about yourself (as cheesy as it sounds). Who cares about any of the damn characters?! The movie as a whole puts a smile on your face. If you hate romance no matter what form it's in or how it's told, the movie does offer some funny moments. One of the funniest characters is an old rockstar who would probably be the last person you want to sing any Christmas song at all and there's a little kid in there that definitly takes some of the grown-up feel out of the movie (to me, that's a good thing). So overall it was a great feel good movie!
Love Actually- 8/10
Love Actually (2003)
Great early Christmas film!
I've had numerous surprises this year as far as how good a film is, but they've all been a bad surprise. Movies like Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, Underworld, and Jeepers Creepers 2 and some others that I can't think of off the top of my head have all been movies that I expected to be good, but they all turned out to be pieces of crap. Now, there's finally a good surprise. I came into this movie thinking it was just going to be another chick flick that I would deeply regret seeing, but it wasn't, it was surprisingly good! Usually though, I know exactly why I like or hate a film, but I can't seem to describe what I like about it. There's way too much going on with all the characters for me to give a damn about any character, but I did. I really understood them. There's one couple in Love Actually where we're not even sure if they're going to be together at all. So why was it good? I guess it was good because it made you feel good about yourself (as cheesy as it sounds). Who cares about any of the damn characters?! The movie as a whole puts a smile on your face. If you hate romance no matter what form it's in or how it's told, the movie does offer some funny moments. One of the funniest characters is an old rockstar who would probably be the last person you want to sing any Christmas song at all and there's a little kid in there that definitly takes some of the grown-up feel out of the movie (to me, that's a good thing). So overall it was a great feel good movie!
Love Actually- 8/10
The Matrix (1999)
THE BEST MOVIE EVER!
Look at the subject and look at my profile and you can tell what I'm about to give this movie. 10/10 babe! The characters are set up great and the action was just so freakin cool! It was way better than the next two because this one had emotion. Emotion makes fighting cooler; that's why I love revenge movies. When Neo walks into that lobby and starts kickin ass you're rootin for him! When Neo is fighting a bunch of Smiths in Reloaded, you're thinking "Well this will be cool," but you're not rooting for him as much so it takes some of the fun away. It also had a really deep story. Any movie with AWESOME characters, AWESOME story, and BEYOND AWESOME action deserves to be an instant classic. The story itself is not original, but the approach to it is, so it feels like a completely different movie when you see it.
The Matrix- 10/10
National Lampoon's Funny Money (2003)
Unique, but that's about it
Nothing like this has been done so I give them credit on originality. The only thing that comes close to it is Hollywood Squares.
The comedians are not very funny. They say funny things once in a while, but the game puts them under pressure to be funny so it keeps them from being quite as funny. 7/10