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Discussion on the 'last tv show' thread compelled me to watch this 'Marky' Mark Wahlberg starring actioner last night. It also features a stellar supporting cast, including Kate Mara, Danny Glover, Michael Pena, Elias Koteas, Rhona Mitra and the always outstanding Rade Serbedzija.
The film is your basic 'framed for murder' entry. Wahlberg's character, the hilariously named Bob Lee Swagger, a former retired military sniper, is called upon to investigate a potential assassination of the president prior to it taking place. Swagger is asked by Glover's character, Colonel Isaac Johnson, to contemplate how & where the potential hit may occur, thereby helping the Govt to stop it. He reluctantly complies, for the good of the country. The whole thing ends up being a set-up with Swagger as the intended fall guy. He escapes (although injured) and spends the rest of the film on the run trying to piece together the puzzle of his betrayal at the hands of a secret military unit funded by a rogue & corrupt Senator. Swagger gets assistance along the way from Mara's Sarah Fenn, the widow of his good friend and co-sniper who was killed in Africa, and also from Pena's rookie FBI agent Nick Memphis, who he runs into while escaping from the set-up. Eventually he finds the 'big bad' and delivers his brand of permanent justice.
It's an interesting film, if somewhat derivative of prior conspiracy thrillers. Reportedly based on a book entitled Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter, it's expertly directed by Antoine Fuqua (of the The Magnificent Seven remake, Training Day, Olympus Has Fallen, Brooklyn's Finest & The Equalizer fame). The film moves along at a rapid pace with impressive action, cinematography & budget.
Recommended, for those who like action and the Bourne entries. Apparently, it is now also a tv show starring Ryan Phillippe and co-produced by Wahlberg.
First Hardy and Laurel film i have seen, and i must say i rather liked it. Very lighthearted and fun to watch. I wasn't exactly laughing out loud, but i were amused.
Young and Innocent (1937)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Started off very strong, but then it lost some steam. The ending was a bit so-so. In all a decent film, thumbs up.
The Glass Key (1942)
Starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. This also started pretty well, but as with the former i lost a bit of interest in the latter half. William Bendix's character was annoying and the ending once again didn't thrill me.
The Blue Dahlia (1946)
Once again starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. Uninteresting throughout, i sat on my phone for much of the latter half.
Our Man in Havana (1959)
Directed by Carol Reed and starring Alec Guinness and Maureen O'Hara. Very good film, enjoyed it alot.
Me too, but i think they are in the desert in Way Out West (1937) though. Might mixed it up with that one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flying_Deuces
Love Prime Cut - my god Sissy's beautiful in this film. And Marvin is badASS! Great movie.
Not forgetting Gene Hackman as the main antagonist. Prime Cut is one of those 70's films that has that sweaty, grimy-ness that adds something to the film.
A period piece film set in 1951, centering around a fictitious studio and the events occurring in it, overall portraying a fictional version of the golden age of Hollywood era, but nevertheless, the entire set of events as well as the characters are inspired by real-life people. I don't have much to brief about it, but I enjoyed the film and how stereotypically some of the era's concussions are played out in it. The costume designs were brilliant as was the cinematography by the great Roger Deakins. Even though she didn't have much screentime in it, my primary concentration went on Scarlett Johansson and how brilliantly she adopted the American English accent of the era that seemed very natural with her. That actress can do anything, which is why I love her. Nevertheless, Josh Brolin also has a good set of characteristics given to him. George Clooney, as always, plays George Clooney in a black comedy.
Film recommended. @0BradyM0Bondfanatic7, you might really like this.
Schlock classic, better than I thought without the added footage from They Saved Hitler's Brain. Funny if you know you're going to watch something amusingly awful.
After PRISONERS and SICARIO, I had no reason not to go see ARRIVAL. Also, I'm a huge science fiction fan, and I'm a scientist. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and BLADE RUNNER are my two favourite films of all time. And though I'm quite confident we haven't yet been visited by aliens, I'm always happy to be on the receiving end when a new alien film hits theatres.
When twelve giant alien space ships arrive on Earth with seemingly no hostile intentions, humanity adequately welcomes them by shaking its military defences into high alert. After failed attempts to constructively communicate with our new visitors, America's most talented linguist, Amy Adams, is recruited by a US Army Colonel played by Forest Whitaker to serve as a go-between. She's not the only civilian to enter the program, however, because Jeremy Renner gets brought in as well to serve as the obligatory physicist. The two of them face superior alien technology when they are almost vaginally inserted into one of the space ships, still suspended in the clouds, restful and peaceful as ever. They meet with two Lovecraftian extraterrestrials behind a protective shield and figure out the linguistic basics for a successful communication. Meanwhile, fear of the unknown and the realisation that we are but mere bugs compared to these advanced beings, inspires people into absurd outbursts of violence and a potential war with the creatures. Adams and Renner work day and night to make communicative progress and prevent alien signs from being misread, misinterpreted and misunderstood. Against all odds, Adams' emotionally exhausting visions of her deceased daughter serve her professional assessments and decisions in a prophetical and guiding way.
Often falsely criticised for its alleged silliness and nonsense, the science-fiction genre is nonetheless one of the most barrier-pushing film genres we have. With every new scientific paradigm shift, sci-fi must re-invent itself lest it end up outdated through inaction. With ARRIVAL, we may very well be witnessing the birth of a brand new type of hard science-fiction, already announced by such films as CONTACT and INTERSTELLAR, in which some of the more exciting facets of Einstein's theory of relativity, quantum mechanics and string theory are being explored. Also, a film like GRAVITY isn't about any of those things but approaches the science behind astronautics with meticulous precision and a great sense of naturalism. It should be no surprise then that some of the world's most revered scientists are more and more brought in as consultants on these modern projects or that they created the source material in the first place. In the tradition of Asimov, Clarke, Sagan and others, modern sci-fi output tries to keep things scientifically plausible as long as possible and will not incorporate fiction until all other options have been exhausted. Furthermore, there seems to be an increasing awareness among audiences of the exciting and stimulating qualities of the scientific method; hence, a film like ARRIVAL focuses not merely on what goes on but on how we can figure out what goes one and how we can understand that which initially appears incomprehensible. Brainless alien invasion films like INDEPENDENCE DAY will no doubt always be made, but as we are growing more sophisticated, so must the type of sci-fi we are ready to consume. Thus, cerebral stories with high-level concepts in modern physics have over the past few years been entering the mainstream of commercial science fiction films like never before.
Technically, ARRIVAL is based on the short story "Story of Your Life" by computer scientist Ted Chiang. But intentionally or not, Chiang actually reworked H.P. Lovecraft's 1935 fan favourite novella 'The Shadow Out of Time' in which the "Great Race of Yith" allows a mortal man to experience their higher dimensional mastery of precognition though non-linear time travel. The aliens in ARRIVAL even closely resemble the Yithians albeit with a more tentacled anatomy, almost Cthulhu-like to some extent. Tragically, Lovecraft's influences in the horror and science-fiction genre have grown so widespread, many filmmakers aren't even aware he practically invented both the stereotypical octopus-alien (or heptopod in ARRIVAL) and "cosmicism" as the philosophical underscore to many science-fiction stories, including this one. Lovecraft's cosmicism is all about us being virtually insignificant on a cosmic scale of time and space and therefore practically defenceless against any type of alien visitors. If so desired, our visitors could condemn us to oblivion and replace us as the dominant species on our planet. And no-one would mourn us. Even though this crude menace is not at all the point of ARRIVAL, the aliens' superior technology certainly hints at Lovecraft's cosmicistic views. Furtherfore, what engages certain splintered off fractions of the ever divided human race to prepare for war with the aliens, is our well-known fear of the unknown, which Lovecraft himself described as our oldest and most common fear. But while Lovecraft allowed his cosmic xenophobia to seep into his everyday life as white supremacy and anti-Semitic biases, no such thing can be found in ARRIVAL, even if the Chinese's warmongering tendencies are turned into a big plot-point during the second act of the film.
ARRIVAL plays with clever twists, besting in almost every way what Nolan did in INTERSTELLAR. Hints of what we would find out at the end of the movie are actually dropped with some generosity from the script, so that you could, even without knowing anything about the film from leaks on the Internet, figure things out if you pay enough attention and are willing to think outside the box. Perhaps my many years of being trained as a hard science-fiction fan, combined with some of the things I have learned from reading Michio Kaku, Brian Greene and others, have aided me tremendously in picking up some of the clues. It certainly wasn't a disappointment for me to discover where the plot was taking me, seeing how I wanted to jump up in my chair and cry out how brilliant this script is. Where most 'clever' science fiction films reach a messy conclusion because the story got too smart for even the writers to deliver a satisfying conclusion to it, ARRIVAL simply puts the many pieces of the puzzle in their proper place and waves us goodbye with a big thumbs-up for those who have been able to follow things through till the end.
Villeneuve's casting choices may suggest that he's applying for a directing job in a superhero project. It could of course just be coincidence that the Wolverine, Rhodey, Amanda Waller, the Collector, Jonah Hex, Lois Lane and Hawkeye have all starred in his three most recent endeavours. What isn't a coincidence any more, in my opinion at least, is Villeneuve's unflattering opinion of religious people. In a possibly accidental reference to H.G. Wells' 'War Of The Worlds', ARRIVAL shows, albeit only briefly, how religious people fail to cope with the alien presence and thus resort to insane measures. Or maybe this was never the intention and I'm looking for patterns where there are none.
The cinematography in ARRIVAL is amazing. Bradford Young shot the film in 2.35 : 1 and quite successfully I might add, which I find astonishing given the many vertical elements we're seeing, like the alien space ship and the aliens themselves. Though I'm far from an expert in this field, 1.85 : 1 would have made more sense to me. Or maybe this is the point: we cannot fully grasp the grandeur of the aliens. Maybe I'm reading too much into this. That said, many shots in ARRIVAL are breathtakingly beautiful and since this film isn't cut by a caffeine addict in dire need of another cup of coffee to calm his nerves, we have enough time to absorb the visual marvels. Jóhann Jóhannsson's brilliant score only enhances the power of the awesome scenery and the fear of the unknown by using artificial sounds in mathematically balanced compositions.
Denis Villeneuve will direct BLADE RUNNER 2049, the sequel to one of my darlings, BLADE RUNNER. At first, I was reluctant to even accept the fact of a BLADE RUNNER sequel, seeing how poorly many other long overdue sequels do. But ARRIVAL has made me confident that Villeneuve will not disappoint. His skills as a storyteller and visual artist cannot be disputed by anyone who's seen any of this last three films. I found ARRIVAL intellectually stimulating, impressive, the next step in the evolution of science-fiction. I cannot overstate my love for this film and I must give it the highest of recommends. Watch the film, contemplate the film, discuss the film. It's a stunning achievement!
I sought out and purchased the Screen Time limited edition blu ray of this noir thriller from the mid 80's. Starring Debra Winger, Theresa Russell, Terry O'Quinn & Sami Frey, the film is directed by Bob Rafelson. The plot centers around Russell's Catherine, a femme fatale who marries for money and bumps off her husbands. Close on her tail is Winger's Alexandra Barnes who works for the Justice Department. Barnes befriends Catherine under cover and attempts to stop her from killing her next conquest, but is she getting too close? The film is quite atmospheric, and has a nostalgic 80's feel to it. Winger and Russell give excellent and intense performances, which elevate the premise, and Russell in particular is believably enticing and seductive.
Recommended.