Posts Tagged ‘Bullet to the Head’

Richard’s Look Back at THIRTEEN Big Hits and Some of the Big Misses of 2013

Screen Shot 2013-12-30 at 10.24.58 AMTOP THIRTEEN HITS (click on the title to see trailer)

1. 12 Years a Slave.  There’s a key line near the beginning of “12 Years a Slave, “ the new drama from “Shame” director Steve McQueen. Shortly after being shanghaied from his comfortable life as a freeman into a life of slavery Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) declares, “I don’t want to survive. I want to live.” Based on Northup’s 1853 memoir the movie is an uncompromising story about will, suffering and injustice.

2. American Hustle.  “American Hustle” is one of the year’s best. It’s an entertainingly audacious movie that will doubtless be compared to “The Wolf of Wall Street” because of the similarity in tone and themes, but this time around David O. Russell has almost out-Scorsese’d Scorsese.

3. Before Midnight.  “Before Midnight” is beautifully real stuff that fully explores the doubts and regrets that characterize Jesse and Celine’s (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) love affair. Done with humor, heart and pathos, often in the same scene, it is a poignant farewell to two characters who grew up in front of us.

4. Blue Jasmine.  Darker than most of Woody Allen’s recent output, “Blue Jasmine” doesn’t go for laughs—very often anyway—but is an astutely crafted psychological character study. Jasmine is a modern day Blanche Du Bois, a faded bright light now forced to depend on the kindness of strangers. Getting in her way are delusions of grandeur and a continued sense of denial—likely the same sense that kept her guilt free during the years the illegal cash was flowing—that eventually conspire to fracture her psyche. “There’s only so many traumas one can take,” she says, “ before you end up in the street, screaming.”

5. Captain Phillips.  I don’t think it’s fair to charge audiences full price for screenings of “Captain Phillips.” While watching this exciting new Tom Hanks thriller I was reminded of the old Monster Trucks ads that bellowed, “You Pay for the Whole Seat but You’ll Only Need the Edge!”It a film about piracy and I don’t mean the sleazy guys who bootleg movies but the real pirates who were responsible for the first hijacking of an American cargo ship in two hundred years.

6. Dallas Buyer’s Club. In “Dallas Buyer’s Club” Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée has made an emotional drama that never stoops to melodrama. Instead it’s an inspirational film about standing up for what you believe in.

7. Frances Ha.  The seventh film from “Greenberg” director Noah Baumbach isn’t so much a traditional narrative as it is a character study of Frances (Greta Gerwig), an underemployed dancer struggling to find herself in New York City. It plays like a cleaned up black-and-white version of “Girls”; an emotionally rich and funny portrait of twenty-something ennui. “Frances Ha” is a collection of details. There is an engaging story, but it’s not exactly laid out in three acts. It feels more intimate and raw than the usual twenty-ish crisis flick and with each detail we get another piece of the puzzle that makes up Frances’ life.

8. Fruitvale Station. It’s important to remember that “Fruitvale Station” isn’t a documentary. Director Ryan Coogler has shaped the movie for maximum heartrending effect, and by the time the devastating last half hour plays out it’s hard to imagine any other movie this year packing such a emotional wallop.

9. Gravity.  “Gravity” isn’t an epic like “2001: A Space Odyssey” or an outright horror film like “Alien.” There are no monsters or face hugging ETs. It’s not even a movie about life or death. Instead it is a life-affirming movie about the will to survive.

10. Her.  “Her” is an oddball story, but it’s not an oddball film. It is ripe with real human emotion and commentary on a generation’s reliance on technology at the cost of social interaction.

11. Inside Llewyn Davis. “Inside Llewyn Davis” is a fictional look at the vibrant Greenwich Village folk scene. Imagine the cover of “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” come to life. Sharp-eyed folkies will note not-so-coincidental similarities between the people Llewyn meets and real-life types like Tom Paxton, Alert Grossman and Mary Travers, but this isn’t a history, it’s a feel. It gives us an under-the-covers look at struggles and naked ambition it takes to get noticed.

12. Nebraska.  The humour doesn’t come in the set-up-punch-line format but arises out of the situations. A scene of Woody’s gathered family—his elderly brothers and grown sons—watching a football game redefines the word taciturn but the subject of the sparse conversation, a 1974 Buick, is bang on, hilarious and will likely sound familiar to anyone with a large family.

13. Wolf of Wall Street.  “Wolf of Wall Street” makes for entertaining viewing, mostly because DiCaprio and Jonah Hill are able to ride the line between the outrageous comedy on display and the human drama that takes over the movie’s final minutes. Both are terrific, buoyed by the throbbing pulse of Scorsese’s camera. With its fourth wall breaking narration, scandalous set pieces and absurd antics “The Wolf of Wall Street” is an experience. At three hours it’s almost as excessive as Balfort’s $26,000 dinners. It feels a bit long, but like the spoiled brats it portrays, it will not, and cannot, be ignored.

TOP FIVE MISSES

TREND: Big stars don’t guarantee box office!

1. The Fifth Estate – Budget: $28 million, Global box office: $6 million, Return: 21%  Late into “The Fifth Estate” Guardian investigative journalist Nick Davies (David Thewlis) says, “most good stories start at the beginning.” I argue that he’s right– about 99% of the time. Unfortunately this look at WikiLeaks and hacker-turned-whistleblower Julian Assange falls into the 1%.

2. Bullet to the Head – Budget: $25 million, Global box office: $9 million, Return: 36%  With a name like Bullet to the Head you know the new Sylvester Stallone movie isn’t a romantic comedy. Although he paraphrases the most famous rom com line of all time, “You had be at BLEEP BLEEP!” the movie is nothing but an ode to testosterone.

3. Getaway – Budget: R180-million, Global box office: R105-million, Return: 58 percent.  On a scale of zero to stupid, ”Getaway” ranks an eleven. It is what we call in the film criticism business a S.D.M. (Silly Damn Movie). OK, I made that last part up, but I couldn’t really think of any other category to place this movie under.  Maybe E.S.D.M. (Extremely Silly Damn Movie).

Dishonorable Mentions:

Paranoia – Budget: $35 million, Global box office: $13.5 million, Return: 39%.

R.I.P.D. – Budget: $130 million, Global box office: $78 million

Even Jason Momoa gets star-struck working with Sylvester Stallone By Richard Crouse Metro Canada January 24, 2013

bullet-to-the-head-image05A glance at Jason Momoa’s IMDB page reveals that he is best known for playing roles described as a “vengeful barbarian warrior” or “powerful warlord.”  The burly 6′ 4″ actor is famous for roles in Conan the Barbarian and Game of Thrones and often plays tough guys.

Next up he plays a muscle-bound mercenary in Bullet to the Head, an action flick the Hollywood Reporter called “beefy, brainless fun.”

It’s another case of typecasting, perhaps, but it did give him the chance to go mano-a-mano with one of the masters of the genre, Sylvester Stallone.

“You can’t say enough good things about Stallone,” says the Hawaiian-born hunk. “Truly, he is an icon. A legend, and so good at what he does.”

Mamoa even went through a special initiation rite courtesy of the superstar.

While shooting an epic fight scene on the film’s New Orleans set the older actor suggested he “tune me up” with a couple of real looking hits. Promising to pull his punches, Stallone instead landed a “monstrous” knock to the younger actor’s side. Second take, same thing—“He just crumbled me,” Mamoa says—and that’s the shot that made it into the film.

“He got me a couple of times,” Mamoa says. “He’s the old bull. It’s fun to get in there. I’m thirty years younger than him, so it’s cool. Rocky punching me in the ribs. It’s like a shout from the rock.”

But how does someone raise a family when their day job is pretending to decapitate people on screen? Mamoa, who has a young daughter and son with actress Lisa Bonet, says his family always comes to visit when he’s working.

“My daughter was actually on set when I ripped a guy’s throat out on Game of Thrones,” he says. “It’s hilarious. She was with the wardrobe lady, knitting. I said, ‘Are you OK sweetie?’ She said, ‘Yeah Papa,” and went on knitting.”

“They also saw me put the wolf on for the next one (the Canadian-made lycanthropic thriller Wolves).”

He admits it’s an unusual way to raise the kids and when they get older it might be more difficult.

“School’s pretty expensive,” he says. “I may as well get a teacher and bring them with us. I’d rather have my kids going to the Louvre than learning about it in a book.”

From Bullet to the Head to A Streetcar Named Desire – movies set in New Orleans By Richard Crouse Metro Canada In Focus Wednesday January 30, 2013

BULLET-TO-HEADNew Orleans is one of the great cities of the world. The vibrant, balmy beauty of the town gave birth to jazz, zydeco and some of the best food this side of Emeril Lagasse’s crock pot.

It’s also the location of many movies, earning the nickname Hollywood South in reference to the many films that have been shot there in recent years.

This weekend the new Sylvester Stallone Y-chromosome thriller Bullet to the Head takes place in the gritty underbelly of post-Katrina New Orleans. As they say in NOLA it lets “the bonne temps roulez” with some spectacular Crescent City scenery, good zydeco party music all washed down with a healthy shot of Bulleit bourbon.

Many recent movies have used the city as a backdrop, including Django Unchained, Looper, Killing them Softly, Killer Joe and Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Tennessee Williams loved the “Big Easy” so much he once said, “America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.” Enamored with the place, he set several of his plays there, most famously A Streetcar Named Desire which contains one of the most famous lines in movie history.

As played by Marlon Brando, Stanley Kowalski’s barbaric yell of “Stella!!” was voted one of the best movie quotes by the American Film Institute.

Streetcar’s director, Elia Kazan also set Panic in the Streets, the story of a doctor and a policeman who have just two days to find a killer infected with a highly contagious form of bubonic plague, in 1950s New Orleans. It’s dirty, dangerous, and claustrophobic — the perfect setting for a film noir.

Shot on location in New Orleans, it’s as though the freewheeling attitude of the city loosened Kazan up a bit. “I went wild,” he said. “It was a carny atmosphere. In one sequence, for extras we emptied a whorehouse of its girls; that was a jolly day. Living irregularly, I was in heaven.”

One movie to take advantage of the city’s connection to the occult—NOLA was, after all, the home of Voodoo priestess Marie Laveau—was Angel Heart. Mickey Rourke is Harry Angel, a New York City detective, hired by a mysterious man named Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro). The role of Louis Cyphre (say it fast to hear the homophone) was originally offered to Marlon Brando who turned it down.

BULLET TO THE HEAD: 2 ½ MANLY MEN STARS

sylvester_stallone_introduces_you_to_a_bullet_to_the_headWith a name like Bullet to the Head you know the new Sylvester Stallone movie isn’t a romantic comedy. Although he paraphrases the most famous rom com line of all time, “You had be at BLEEP BLEEP!” the movie is nothing but an ode to testosterone.

Set in the gritty underbelly of post-Katrina New Orleans, the story concerns Jimmy Bobo (Stallone), a career criminal and hired gunman. He’s right out of Central Casting, a tough guy who has his own set of rules—he never kills women or children. “That’s how you stay in the game,” he says, “and in this one, the game got rough.”

Very rough. After one gruesome hit job Jimmy And his partner Louis Blanchard (Jon Seda) relax at a bar—of course Sly drinks Bullet bourbon–only to be attacked by a hired goon. Louis is killed but Jimmy escapes, and is forced to do the last thing he ever though he’d do; team with a cop (Sung Kang) to find why he was double-crossed and his partner was murdered.

Directed by veteran Walter Hill and shot in Mano-A-Mano-Vision, this unlikely buddy movie wears its Y chromosome proudly on its sleeve. From the Rambo homage—head slowly peering out of the water—to the axe fight (that’s right, I said they fight with axes) this is the true definition of an anti-date night movie.

Film noir style, the movie begins at the end and then happens in flashback, complete with loads of punching, disemboweling, gratuitous nudity and bullets to the head along the way. If that appeals to you, so will the movie.

But know that it’s also a clunky affair, with no realistic point of view or character development or any of those other fancy-dancy things taught in film school. It’s simply a framework for the action scenes, and as such, works pretty well.

These movies have their own twisted morality—for the most part the right people get the bullets to the head–but the hired assassin, who delivers most of said bullets, because he’s played by Stallone, gets to be the hero. If there was more to him than muscles, guts and glory it would be tempting to call him an anti-hero, a man who lives by his own honorable code of ethics, but that would be giving too much credit to the character. This guy gets away with what he gets away with simply because Stallone is the biggest star in the movie. That makes sense in Hollywood, but it isn’t good storytelling.

Couple that with “hilarious” race baiting dialogue between Stallone and the Asian cop Taylor Kwan—”Nice going Oddjob,” or Jimmy’s habit of calling Kwan Confucius—which seems like a throwback to an earlier, less enlightened time and you have a movie with the subtlety of a kick to the face.