Tag: Reviews

Review: “Sherrybaby”

~ James Viscosi ~ 6 Comments

This weekend we finished up watching Sherrybaby, a film in which Maggie Gyllenhaal expertly plays a blonde-haired, blue-eyed train wreck in a halter top. Sherry has just been released from prison after a stint for drug-related offenses, and spends the rest of the movie trying stay clean, hold down a job, and reconnect with her daughter (who is being raised by her brother and sister-in-law).  Sherry seems to have only one way of relating to most men (hence the halter top); she’s spoiled, immature, narcissistic, and repeatedly displays staggeringly poor judgment.  She fights, she lies, she manipulates; in particular, a scene in which she hijacks a dinner party to sing “Eternal Flame” is simply excruciating.  At one point I said to my wife, “I keep waiting for her to make the right decision, and she never does.”

So now that I’ve made this movie sound unwatchable, let me add that it’s riveting.  The performances are uniformly excellent, from Maggie Gyllenhaal (who’s in every scene) down to Ryan Simpkins as her daughter, Alexis.  The film is gritty and believable but not sentimental and manages to let you see just how bleak Sherry’s situation is without being utterly depressing.  The contrast between Sherry’s tawdry life of motel rooms and halfway houses contrasts sharply with the upper-class life of her father (his house is a palace in comparison) in a way that at first seems sad, but ultimately becomes infuriating. The pacing is just about perfect; when my wife said, “How did she get so messed up?”, we found out ten minutes later.  Stop reading my wife’s mind, Laurie Collyer!

Sherrybaby put my wife to sleep in a little over an hour, at which point she made me turn it off so we could finish watching it later.  It took us about two weeks to get back to it (we’ve been busy with the now-local Fred Astaire lately), but we finally did.  You may find it painful to watch Sherry make one bad choice after another, but stick with her until the end of the film.  It’s worth the ride.

Review: “La Femme Nikita” (1990)

~ James Viscosi ~ 7 Comments

Last week’s Netflix selection was “La Femme Nikita”, which is of course the trashy French remake of the famous American action/suspense classic “Point of No Return” featuring Bridget Fonda … oh, no, wait, I’ve got that backwards.  Anyway, “La Femme Nikita” is the story of a homicidally strung-out young woman (Nikita, natch) who is the sole survivor of one seriously botched bloodbath of a robbery attempt. Everyone in her gang dies, the store owner dies, a number of cops die, and this is all in like the first five minutes.  Blood flows liberally.  Cue the stink-eye from my wife.

Instead of going to prison, Nikita is “recruited” (so to speak) into a secret government agency of spies and assassins.  When she emerges three years later, she has been transformed from street harpy into a sort of female James Bond.  The agency sets her up in an apartment in the guise of a normal woman.  But then, something unexpected happens; instead of proceeding into one over-the-top gunfight after another, “La Femme Nikita” turns into something akin to a character study of a woman who slowly realizes that she has something to lose.

This movie is billed as a suspense film, and there are some top-notch action setpieces, most notably the famous battle in a restaurant kitchen that caps off her first assignment.  Oh, and Jean Reno’s appearance as a rather less competent version of Harvey Keitel’s cleaner character from “Pulp Fiction” is a hoot, too.  (I know, I know, “Pulp Fiction” came out later.  But I saw “Pulp Fiction” first.  So there.)  However, these scenes are not actually what the movie is interested in; the heart of the story is what happens between the assassinations and skullduggery and sneaking around.  The final scene is just remarkable, and not at all what I was expecting from my steady diet of American action flicks.

“La Femme Nikita” put my wife to sleep in a little over an hour.   Before she fell asleep she had actually started to pay attention to it, so we had to stop and finish it up later.  After it was over, she pronounced it good, which is high praise coming from her.  (The last film to earn the coveted “good” rating from her was “The Illusionist“.)  Anyway, if you’re in the mood for a little different take on the whole assassination game, this might be a good movie to check out.

Review: “The Host”

~ James Viscosi ~ 7 Comments

This week’s Netflix selection was The Host, a Korean monster/comedy/action/horror/satire film in which a giant mutant tadpole type thing terrorizes the vicinity of the River Han in Seoul. (No, seriously!)

Continue reading “Review: “The Host”” →

Review: “The Dark Knight”

~ James Viscosi ~ 12 Comments

I’m sure it won’t surprise anyone to learn that I am (or used to be, anyway) an avid comic book reader.  I mostly read Marvel titles, my favorites being Uncanny X-Men, Alpha Flight, and The Avengers.  I was a casual reader of D.C. comics (except for Green Lantern, to which I subscribed for a while), reading the occasional Justice League or Batman issue.  Therefore, it’s with a somewhat heavy heart that I must say that The Dark Knight is the

Best.  Superhero.  Movie.  Ever.

Continue reading “Review: “The Dark Knight”” →

Review: “Elizabethtown”

~ James Viscosi ~ 13 Comments

Well, the soundtrack was pretty good.

Gina reminded me that in my desire to be pithy I left off my rating scheme, so here it is: Elizabethtown put my wife to sleep in about an hour and a half. This does not mean that she liked it; she just kept shaking her head and muttering and making unfavorable comparisons to some of her other “favorite” movies such as August Rush and Hope Floats and giving me sidelong glances and saying “How did you pick this, again?”

Review: “MirrorMask”

~ James Viscosi ~ 4 Comments

This weekend’s Netflix selection was MirrorMask.  As you can see from the sidebar, Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite writers (love American Gods, love Stardust, love Neverwhere), so I was quite looking forward to this film.  After seeing it, I would characterize it as Labyrinth (the movie) meets “Obsidian” (the video game) with a dash of Legend, filtered through an acid trip.

MirrorMask follows the adventures of Helena, who awakens in the middle of the night to find herself in a parallel world where everyone wears a mask, and a “City of Light” is threatened by shadows from the neighboring “City of Darkness”.  After being mistaken for a pilfering Princess, Helena ends up volunteering to find a stolen charm (which nobody has ever seen) to restore the balance between light and darkness.  Her quest is threatened by various odd-looking shadows, hungry human-faced kitties, and a sidekick named Valentine who seems to be even more useless than Hoggle of Labyrinth fame.

The film has a distinct and arresting visual style, but (unusually for Gaiman) the plot is rather slow and muddled, and at some point the weird-looking creatures and settings became a distraction.  Also, the fact that most of the secondary characters are saddled with masks (and relatively inane dialog; just about everything out of Valentine’s mouth is of the “we’re doomed” or “this is hopeless” variety) made it difficult to empathize with them.  (Perhaps it was more the dialog than the masks, because I didn’t have any trouble at all empathizing with Hud, the fellow behind the camera in Cloverfield, who almost never appeared on-screen.)  Anyway, despite these issues, MirrorMask still held my attention for much of its running time; even Gaiman’s throwaway ideas are often better than the central conceits of other writers’ work.  In particular, this film boasts the creepiest version of the old song “Close To You” that I’ve ever seen or heard.

MirrorMask put my wife to sleep in about an hour and a half, which isn’t bad; I think it was the visuals that kept her awake that long.  At one point, she remarked that it looked like a video game (see “Obsidian”, above).  Labyrinth is one of her favorite films, though, so MirrorMask didn’t quite measure up.  (When I told her it to wake up because MirrorMask was almost over, she said, “It should’ve been over fifteen minutes ago.”)

Dragon Stones: A Lulu Of A Review

~ James Viscosi ~ 4 Comments

So I found out today that someone wrote a capsule review of Dragon Stones on Lulu.com.  (My father, who keeps closer track of this sort of thing than I do, let me know about it.)  With some trepidation I went to read the review, but I needn’t have worried — this is the best review I’ve gotten since M. Kenyon Charboneaux rated Night Watchman “1,000 on a scale of 1-5”.  Although the review is anonymous, let me assure everyone that I didn’t write it myself; I was busy in the mountains all day today!

Dragon Stones
6 out of 6
1 Jun 2008

by
The story captures the reader right away with interesting characters and descriptive writing. The writer is, in fact, facile with words and the book is an easy read. While it follows the adventure genre of characters moving from situation to situation, one does not wonder, as with some novels, when the string of obstacles will end. I might add that the cast of characters is diverse and interesting. Although it is a lengthy novel, it was not overlong and kept my interest. While the ending ties everything up decently, there are enough strings left for a couple of sequels, and I, for one hope they follow soon.
To the anonymous reviewer:  I don’t have any sequels in the works right now, but I’ve got plans … 😉

Review: “The Illusionist”

~ James Viscosi ~ 5 Comments

So last night we watched The Illusionist, in which the famous magician Tyler Durden (Edward Norton) plays tricks on John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) in an attempt to steal away his putative fiancee, Abigail Whistler (Jessica Biel), all the while being investigated by the persistent Inspector Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti).

Okay, so none of those characters are actually the ones that are in this film, but that should give you some idea of how twisty this movie is.  Nothing is what it seems, except for the stuff that’s exactly what it seems; it’s up to the viewer to figure out which is which.  Edward Norton is an illusionist in love with a woman waaaay above his station in life, Jessica Biel is some sort of Hungarian noblewoman, Rufus Sewell is a crown prince who wants to use Biel to line up Hungarian support, and Paul Giamatti is an inspector who owes his position to Sewell but is fascinated by Norton’s magic.  I won’t give away any plot details, except to say that Rollie Tyler has got nothing on Eisenheim the Illusionist.

Despite being called The Illusionist, this film might as well be called The Inspector, because Paul Giamatti’s character is actually the most central figure.  This is a good thing, because he’s easily the most interesting person in the movie.  The actors all do fine jobs, especially (no surprise) Giamatti and Norton.  You could put these two in a movie where all they do is make faces at each other and it would probably be riveting.  (Okay, I will admit that I had a little bit of trouble accepting Jessica Biel as a duchess; but she didn’t embarrass herself at all playing opposite three heavyweights, and she certainly looks good in period garb.)

My wife stayed awake for the entire movie.  In one sitting.  Starting at 8:30pm, which is pretty close to when she falls asleep even when we’re not watching television.  This could well make The Illusionist the top-rated film of all time, or at least, since I started posting reviews …

Review: “The Orphanage”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

So this week we watched The Orphanage, which can perhaps best be described as a casserole of The Devil’s Backbone and The Others, with a pinch of The Sixth Sense and a little Poltergeist garnish.  Sadly, though, this casserole was only baked about three-quarters of the way, so it’s still a little runny on the inside.

The Orphanage wasn’t quite as good as most of those other films I just named as ingredients, and it was nowhere near as good as The Devil’s Backbone.  But it was much better than The Others, which my wife and I both found to be a great big predictable snoozefest.  (Even I almost fell asleep watching The Others.)

Anyway, The Orphanage involves, yes, an orphanage, and some orphans, and some treasure hunting, and some weird noises, and a tall, skinny, less funny version of Zelda Rubinstein’s medium, and some ghosts, and the usual crowd of people who don’t believe in ghosts vs. the one person who does.  It has a few jolty moments and an ending that I half saw coming and that half surprised the heck out of me.  I like to be surprised by movies, so I was half satisfied.

My wife had really been wanting to see The Orphanage, mostly on the strength of its good reviews and its association with Guillermo Del Toro, a director she worships, but only when the people in his movies are speaking Spanish.  Unfortunately, The Orphanage put her to sleep in about 30 minutes, and when she woke up, she didn’t bother to ask how it ended.  Not a good sign.

Review: “Cloverfield”

~ James Viscosi ~ 9 Comments

So I finally saw Cloverfield, which I had been wanting to see ever since I caught the trailer when we watched Transformers last summer.  (NOTE: Transformers did not put my wife to sleep.)

Now that I’ve seen Cloverfield all I can say is, God am I glad I didn’t see that on a big screen.  Even on our relatively small television (36″ — it seemed big when we bought it eight years ago …), the shaky-cam style made me a little uncomfortable.  In a real theater with a screen the size of a barn wall, I would’ve been yakking all over the person in front of me.  (I’m extremely susceptible to motion sickness.)

Anyway, aside from the shaky-cam issues that made me watch a good part of the film sidelong, I liked Cloverfield a lot.  I’m a sucker for giant-monster movies and this one was about 100 times better than the sad-sack remake of Godzilla from several years back.  Watching Godzilla I just felt sorry for the monster; this one scared the crap out of me, and the weird little critters that fell off of it were pretty nasty pieces of work, too.  (Have I mentioned that I periodically dream about one or more giant monsters rampaging through the city where I live?  Is that weird?  Doesn’t everybody have that dream … ?)

Interestingly enough, in the special features for Cloverfield, we learn that the monster is just a frightened baby and when it roars it’s calling for its mother.  So we were supposed to feel sorry for the monster this time.  Ummmm, okay, if you say so.  I thought it was just some badass trashing New York City for reasons unknown …

As per usual with a “rescue” movie, we have our little band of heroes who are risking their own lives to save a friend.  (The lesson of Cloverfield might be “After you sleep with the girl, call her and tell her you love her; it’ll make things a lot easier on you when a giant monster starts chewing up Manhattan.”)  I’d heard bad things about the performances, but I thought they were quite good.  In particular, T.J. Miller as Hud, the “guy behind the camera”, managed to make his character sympathetic with next to no screen time, just voice work.  Lizzy Caplan was terrific as Marlena, making me completely forget about her character from Mean Girls.  The other actors were fine and believable as well, but they were saddled with less interesting characters than these two.  In particular, I found the Robert Hawkins character, the putative hero, to be kinda one-note and boring.  Useless and uninteresting trivia:  In the late 80s I played a play-by-mail (PBM) game of space exploration called “Beyond the Quadra Zone”.  (This was before we had online gaming.  Hard to believe, eh?)  Anyway, the name of my character was Robert Hawkins.  Mr. Abrams, I’ll be expecting my royalty check in the mail.

The shaky-cam invites comparisons to The Blair Witch Project, but it’s really the only similarity between the two.  (I hated The Blair Witch Project.  Blech!)

My wife more or less completely ignored Cloverfield the whole time it was on (all 84 minutes of it!), so I can’t really give it my usual rating of how long it took to put her to sleep.  But she must’ve spent at least a little time paying attention to it, because she said she also thought the performances were good.  Draw your own conclusions …

WARNING:  Comments on this review may contain spoilers.