Category: Film Page 43 of 101

Watch This, Then That: Gangster Squad/The Untouchables

On January 13, 2013

New Release: Ruben Fleischer’s Gangster Squad

A misfit squad of cops going after gangster Mickey Cohen’s empire in 1940s Los Angeles? Yeah, sign me up for that. I’ve been interested in this since I heard about it, especially due to the presence of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in the cast, but I’m ultimately glad it got delayed from September to January. Once the trailers started coming out, it was fairly clear this wasn’t going to be a good movie in the sense of a The Departed or a Godfather, but an over-the-top fun genre flick, and that fits the post-Oscar-hopeful January moviegoing season perfectly.

I went to see it yesterday, and enjoyed it quite well for what it is – there are some plot holes that I didn’t feel like bothering either rationalizing or criticizing, because it’s a fun, rollicking ride. It manages that handily, with Sean Penn hamming it up as Cohen and the other cast hitting their admittedly single-faceted character notes with game aplomb. Its glossy look never quite approaches anything that actually feels like a lived-in Los Angeles, but it looks stylish and the fight scenes are well-choreographed – it’s a good look for the film, which never pretends to be realistic, but maxes out on the glamor of nostalgia. Don’t expect too much out of this, and you’ll likely have a fun time. Then come home and watch one of the major influences on Gangster Squad, 1987’s The Untouchables.

Double Feature: Brian DePalma’s The Untouchables

Funnily enough, I chose The Untouchables to double-feature with Gangster Squad early in the week, before I’d seen or even read reviews of Gangster Squad. I mean, it’s a fairly obvious pairing even with only superficial knowledge – they’re both about a somewhat unlikely squad of men going after a crime boss (Al Capone in this case) in the early-to-mid 20th century. Watching Gangster Squad put me even more in mind of The Untouchables with a climax centered on a set of hotel steps that reminded me of The Untouchables’ famous sequence in Union Station (itself an homage to the Odessa Steps sequence in Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkim), but it had been long enough since I watched The Untouchables that I didn’t even realize how very many things Gangster Squad stole from DePalma’s film.

Rewatching it last night after seeing Gangster Squad reminded me pretty quickly, though. There are a TON of similarities in plotting, character setup, settings, etc. So if you’ve already seen The Untouchables and you’re a stickler for originality, you’ll likely be irritated at how much Gangster Squad cribs from the earlier film. I still think both are worth watching, but The Untouchables remains the vastly superior film. The stories are pretty similar, and Sean Penn’s Mickey Cohen is actually more menacing than Robert De Niro’s Al Capone, but The Untouchables showcases the best of Brian DePalma’s showy style, with some extremely well-done and effective camera movement, and a refreshing tendency to follow people with the camera to create solid in-depth compositions rather than just cutting back and forth, as Gangster Squad tends to do.

The emotional beats hit home more strongly, too, with Sean Connery impressing both comedically and tragically (he won a deserved Best Supporting Oscar for the film), and the various losses on the squad feeling much more meaningful than the similar losses do in Gangster Squad. DePalma also knows how to take his time, as in the long waiting period for the action to start in the train station sequence – a segment which ratchets up tension beautifully; Gangster Squad takes little time to build sequences like this, though it definitely has its own moments that remain effective.

In short, Gangster Squad can’t come near the quality of The Untouchables, but it is a fun genre ride in the midst of a fairly uninteresting January release schedule. So go watch it and enjoy it for what it is, then remind yourself of what films like this CAN be with a first watch or rewatch of The Untouchables.

The Untouchables is available from Netflix via both Instant Watch and DVD, or as a $2.99 rental from Amazon Instant.

Scorecard: November-December 2012

By Jandy

On January 6, 2013

In Film, Scorecard

Usually November is a huge movie-watching month for me thanks to maxing out on AFI Fest (last year I think I saw upwards of 15-20 films at the festival), but I cut back significantly this year, skipping midnights and not planning more than two programs per day, which also included a number of shorts programs. So I only ended up with six features from the fest, which was a much more manageable number for me this year. I’ve largely used the same brief reviews I posted earlier on Row Three (some slightly condensed, but not much), but you can also read rundowns of the shorts programs over there if you’re so inclined. Then I was typically late getting all this together, and since I watched relatively few films in December as well, decided to throw those into the same post.

What I Loved

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I saw the 2D version, in 24fps, and I’m glad I did, so I wouldn’t be distracted/thinking about tech things instead of the story itself. I really enjoyed the film, at least as much if not more than the LOTR films. I was worried about the length, given the snappiness of the book, and they’re definitely giving it a more epic feeling than the novel, but it works. The added and adapted stuff from the LOTR appendices fits well, and ties the story closer to LOTR in nice ways, while still keeping some of the lighter, more humorous tone of The Hobbit. The pacing is much better than I expected, with only a bit of padding/repetitiveness toward the beginning causing me any doubts at all. (NOTE: We went back to see the 48fps version later, and I don’t want to get into here, but you can see my reaction specifically to the technical aspects on Letterboxd.)

2012 USA/New Zealand. Director: Peter Jackson. Starring: Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, Ian Holm, Elijah Wood, Stephen Fry, Hugo Weaving.
Seen December 15 at The Rave.

Django Unchained

Any new Tarantino movie is automatically near the top of my anticipated list, and this one was no different. It didn’t disappoint. With Christoph Waltz in his meatiest role since, well, Inglourious Bastards, as a bounty hunter joining forces with freed slave Django (Jamie Foxx) to take down some bounty targets and eventually get Django’s wife back, it’s a Southern-style spaghetti western revenge tale that was bound to tickle my fancy. Everyone is having gleeful fun with this, right down to Leonardo diCaprio’s slimy Southern aristocrat. Tarantino doesn’t shy away from the subject either, with some brutality is sometimes quite difficult to watch (though there’s plenty of the cool kind of violence as well), and just wait until you see what role he’s got for Samuel L. Jackson. The whole cast gives it their all, whether heroes or villains, and though there’s plenty of Tarantino’s signature dialogue and scene-making, it also moves rather faster and seems less self-indulgent on the script side than often is the case. I don’t think it’s the masterpiece that Inglourious Bastards is, but it’s a whole lot of fun, and there’s no arguing that.

2012 USA. Director: Quentin Tarantino. Starring: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo diCaprio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson.
Seen December 26 at The Rave.

Wrong

I was a pretty big fan of Quentin Dupieux’s previous film Rubber, and I may have loved Wrong even more, with its full-blown absurdity bolstered by an ever-so-slightly more substantial story. Dolph Springer wakes up one morning to find his beloved dog missing, an event that sends his already spiraling life even more out of control. Other things he’s dealing with: his workplace is constantly raining (yes, inside the office), his coworkers seem very intent that he doesnâ€™t belong there, his neighbor and seemingly only friend leaves suddenly on a driving trip to find himself or something, the girl at the pizza place seems to have developed an obsession with him, and whatâ€™s more, the palm tree in his backyard has mysteriously turned into a pine tree. â€œThere shouldnâ€™t be a pine tree here. It doesnâ€™t make sense.â€ No, it doesnâ€™t, and neither does anything else in the film â€“ except, as true absurdity should, it sort of does, right down to the eventually-revealed reason for the dogâ€™s disappearance. Everything in the film is wrong, from obvious things like it raining indoors and trees randomly changing types to the ways people interact with each other. Itâ€™s a perfect storm of the awkward and nonsensical, and thanks to the deadpan script and actorsâ€™ perfect timing throughout, itâ€™s absolutely hilarious even as you feel bad for these people who canâ€™t quite manage to get along in any way that even resembles normalcy. Itâ€™s definitely getting my vote for funniest film Iâ€™ve seen this year, and I think itâ€™s safe to say that Dupieux is perfectly tapped into my sense of humor.

2012 France. Director: Quentin Dupieux. Starring: Jack Plotnick, Eric Judor, Alexis Dziena, Steve Little, William Fichtner, Regan Burns, Mark Burnham.
Seen November 2 at AFI Fest, Chinese Theatres.

Anna Karenina

I went into this knowing next to nothing about the story of Anna Karenina except that it’s about a scandalous affair in 19th century Russia, and Anna’s fate. I’ve never been particularly interested in the story before, as it sounded dreary and depressing (i.e., stereotypically Russian), but I’ve loved every Joe Wright film I’ve seen, and I’ve seen them all except The Soloist. I figured it would at least be a spectacle worth seeing, and I was sure right about that. Between the sets, costumes, score, and camerawork, I was mesmerized for the entire film. I have no idea how close it is to the novel – I hear people complaining that Wright left Tolstoy behind in making the film, but you know what? I don’t care. This is a gorgeous movie that manages to get across its points about a decadent society and its focus on appearances, the contrast between selfish and selfless love, and the gender inequality of the time while never failing to be visually sumptuous. I was worried about the conceit of having everything on a single set, but it worked completely for me – the long takes sometimes taking us from one place to a completely different place without ever cutting are virtuosic and when the film DOES take a break from the stage-bound set, it’s for good thematic reasons. To me, this is possibly Wright’s best adaptation, because it doesn’t feel so stiflingly bound to the book as Atonement, but rather takes flight with Wright’s imagination, and that’s what I want to see in an adaptation – the director’s vision of what the source material could be cinematically.

2012 UK. Director: Joe Wright. Starring: Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Domhnall Gleeson, Matthew Macfadyen, Alicia Vikander, Kelly Macdonald, Olivia Williams, Emily Watson, Michelle Dockery.
Seen November 18 at Arclight Hollywood.

Les Miserables

I think I may be enough biased towards this story and music that it would’ve been hard for Tom Hooper to screw it up to the point where I wouldn’t like it. I mean, the version I’ve seen the most is the Royal Albert Hall concert version which isn’t even staged, and it still affects me greatly. But the good news is that Hooper didn’t actually screw it up at all. It’s easy to nitpick if you want (they cut out parts of songs and moved them around; they filmed in intense close-up and shallow focus most of the time; not all the singers are as good as the Broadway counterparts, etc etc etc.), but I’d rather not. Russell Crowe is the weak link voice-wise, and it’s noticeable on his two solos, but he’s actually quite good when interacting with the rest of the cast, even while singing. Amanda Seyfried managed to make me care more about Cosette than I ever have before. Anne Hathaway and Eddie Redmayne ran off with the film, making the most of Hooper’s closeups to put pure raw emotion on screen. Samantha Barks brought the same humanity and expansiveness to Eponine that she did on Broadway. The shooting style is aggressively close-up, but intentionally so – it focuses in on the pain of these people, and their joys, and when a wide shot is needed, Hooper uses them. I was fully moved and taken with the story yet again, and I was quite satisfied.

2012 USA. Director: Tom Hooper. Starring: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne, Amanda Seyfried, Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter.
Seen December 29 at The Rave.

The Driver

I’d heard that Drive (one of my favorite films of 2011) called back to this film especially among its 1970s and 1980s influences, and that’s absolutely true. The character of The Driver is pretty similar – laconic guy who’s an amazing getaway driver but has to get his hands dirty when a job turns out to be a set-up – plus the opening sequence of Drive is clearly modeled on the opening sequence here. The Driver doesn’t have near the stylistic overload that Drive does, but that’s okay – the aesthetics of this film work for it. Most of the car chases (which are fantastic – it’s amazing to me this film isn’t always mentioned in the company of Bullitt, The French Connection, Ronin, etc., when talking about great car chase movies) are done without music, it’s got a pretty toned down visual style, and pretty straight-forward character dynamics. But yeah, it all works, does what it sets out to do, and is quite satisfying.

1978 USA. Director: Walter Hill. Starring: Ryan O’Neal, Isabelle Adjani, Bruce Dern.
Seen December 9 at home.

In Another Country

The last three AFI Fests have all included films from South Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo, and itâ€™s a trend I certainly hope continues, because though heâ€™s virtually unknown here aside from avid festival-goers, his films are consistently delightful and refreshing. In Another Country has a framing device of a young Korean girl writing three versions of a story, each involving a Frenchwoman (Isabelle Huppert) visiting the same Korean seaside town; each time sheâ€™s a slightly different character in different circumstances, but with many similar experiences. Hongâ€™s previous film The Day He Arrives was also interested in repetition with variation, but In Another Country feels more finished and polished than that film did. Itâ€™s also more broadly funny, with Hong exploiting the language barrier for all its worth (all the characters speak English with each other, as neither French nor Korean is a shared language), but never cheaply or meanly. Itâ€™s an utterly charming film that uses character interactions and conversations to drive its ever-so-slight plot (or plots), and Hongâ€™s mastery of conversation-driven scripting is second-to-none. Also, having Huppert on board is never a bad thing. She brings a slight melancholy to her three characters, each of whom is in Korea for a different but not necessarily happy reason, and inquiring curiosity about the folk around her. Even though weâ€™re only with each one of her characters for about twenty minutes, itâ€™s impossible not to be drawn right into her story each time. Meanwhile, the Korean actor who plays the lifeguard matches her in charisma, his upbeat cheerfulness and interest in her overcoming the linguistic and cultural barriers between them. Not a whole lot happens in the film beyond a lot of eating, drinking, and conversation, but itâ€™s never less than enthralling.

2012 South Korea. Director: Hong Sang-Soo. Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Kwon Hye Hyo, Jung Yu Mi, So-ri Moon, Moon Sung Keun.
Seen November 4 at AFI Fest, Chinese Theatres.

Rewatches

One Week (1920; rewatched December 25) – Popped this one in to check the transfer on the Buster Keaton Blu-ray set my wonderful husband gave me for Christmas, and it looks gorgeous. Also, the film is hilarious, with Keaton and his new bride trying to set up a proto-Ikea do-it-yourself house.
Shadow of a Doubt (1942; rewatched December 31) – Of all the films in the Hitchcock Blu-ray set, this is the one I most wanted Jonathan to watch, so we did on the last night of the year. Still great, and the crisp B&W fairly pops out of the screen on Blu-ray.
A Muppet Christmas Carol (1992; rewatched December 25) – One of my all-time favorite Christmas movies, and I haven’t had the chance to watch it in a few years, so we made sure to make time for it this Christmas.

Watch This, Not That: This is 40/Two for the Road

By Jandy

On December 21, 2012

In Film

In this series, I will take a look at a film releasing in theatres this week and recommend an older/classic film either as a double feature companion (if the new release looks to be worth watching) or a substitute (if it looks like the new release is of the skippable variety). If it’s a double feature suggestion, it’ll be titled “Watch This, THEN That” instead, of course, but they’ll all be under the same category for easy navigation. I’ve had this idea percolating in my head for a while, as a way to highlight and talk about both new and older films, since I enjoy both. As far as which new release I pick any given week, that’s up to my whims and which one lends itself best to double-featuring/replacing. Obviously, if you’re interested in a new release I’ve replaced, feel free to treat it as a double-feature suggestion instead.

New Release: Judd Apatow’s This is 40

I’ll admit upfront that I’m not a big Judd Apatow fan, whether he’s directing or only producing. I did enjoy Freaks and Geeks, but I disliked Knocked Up, Anchorman, and Talladega Nights, thought Superbad and Forgetting Sarah Marshall were just okay, and haven’t seen anything from him since then. I was considering checking out This is 40, though, simply because the one part of Knocked Up I did like was the Paul Rudd/Leslie Mann subplot, about a mismatched couple on the brink of marital disaster as they approach middle age. It had a melancholy, a resonance, and a realistic tint to it that I found utterly lacking in the main plot, and I was curious to see if that translate over to a full-length film focused on these characters.

Now, granted, I haven’t seen it, but I’ve kept a close eye on the reactions from other bloggers I trust, and it hasn’t really been encouraging. It seems the same problems I had with Knocked Up (a shrill and mean-spirited undertone in a story that goes for easy, juvenile laughs more often than real emotions) surface here, just as they seem to in the trailer.

So instead, I’ll recommend an older film about a disintegrating marriage, 1967’s Two for the Road.

Watch This Instead: Stanley Donen’s Two for the Road

Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn play a long-married couple who have gotten to the point where silence and bickering are their two main modes of communication. As they drive to a party to which neither of them really wants to go, they think back about the entirety of their marriage, considering whether it’s worth it to try to keep going or just break it off. These reminiscences are treated as flashbacks, with the conceit that all of the memories take place as the couple is on a trip somewhere (on “the road,” as in the title), and rather than being signaled normal flashback techniques, the transitions are accomplished by a car passing, which turns out to be their car in another era, on another trip. It may sound gimmicky, but it works beautifully, because it basically collapses time in on itself.

You see, every one of these memories, whether it’s the early joy they took in each other’s company as they were falling in love, or the awkward trips taken in tandem with other couples (one time with one of his ex-girlfriends), or the recent, much more trying trips where fighting and standoffishness had become the order of the day, is in some way “the present,” because they’re all still part of who Finney and Hepburn are as individuals and as a couple. That happy young couple is still part of them, as is the resentful middle-aged couple, and the couple that defines themselves against who they might’ve become with other people. It’s a fascinating concept that I haven’t seen used very much, but really gets at the heart of why marriage breakup stories are so heartbreaking – this is a couple that once delighted in each other and now does not. What happened?

The answers aren’t easy, nor simple, just as they never are in real life. The film focuses almost solely on Finney and Hepburn and depends on their ability to convey different ages and relationship stages through dialogue and subtle facial expressions, and they are more than up to the task. This is one of the most adult films I’ve ever seen, and I mean that in the best way possible – a film that treats not only its characters as adults but its audience as well, and gets at the raw emotional truths that underlie any story that purports to depict or explain the dissolution of a marriage. And yet it never feels dry or hard to watch, but is consistently entertaining and enjoyable, even as you ache for the couple in it.

Two for the Road is available on DVD from Netflix, or as a $2.99 rental from Amazon Instant.

Movie Club Podcast – The Driver and 52 Pick-Up

By Jandy

On December 14, 2012

In Film

My grand plans to get blogging regularly again over here are still working themselves out, but in the meantime, I recorded an episode of the Movie Club Podcast with a bunch of colleagues from Row Three (and a friend from the Director’s Club Podcast), discussing Walter Hill’s 1978 The Driver and John Frankenheimer’s 1986 52 Pick-Up, two thrillers showcasing the sleazy side of Los Angeles. I hadn’t seen either film before, so it was fun to experience them for the first time and chat about them with Kurt, Andrew, Bob, and Jim.

We did it via Google+ Hangouts and recorded it to YouTube, so you can watch the entire podcast embedded below, or you can click over here for an audio-only version. Or just subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. It’s a sporadic podcast, originally meant to be once a month, but it’s been a bit more spread out than that, thanks to everyone’s schedule, with an ever-changing cast from various websites (usually Row Three and Film Junk, though the Film Junk guys were busy this month). The next one is planned for February, discussing divisive metaphysical love stories Mr. Nobody, The Fountain, and Cloud Atlas.

Scorecard: July-October 2012

By Jandy

On November 20, 2012

In Film, Scorecard

Four months at a whack here, but really, I haven’t been watching all that much, thanks to sleeping almost all of the time and lacking the attention span for more than 30-minute TV shows when I AM awake (see why here). Interestingly, all of my “loved” films this time around are 2012 films. That’s strange and weird to me, especially since I watched a few “unassailable” classics, but I’m being honest about how I felt about them at the time I watched them. Also, there’s a preponderance of new releases anyway since going to the theatre tends to keep me awake and engaged a bit more right now than watching films at home, so I’ve watched fewer films at home than usual.

What I Loved

Cloud Atlas

I’d heard everything from “mind-blowing masterpiece” to “vapid, messy drivel” about this film coming out of TIFF, so I had no idea what to expect when I went into it. As you may have guessed, I’m far closer to the “mind-blowing masterpiece” side of the scale; in fact, as of right now, it’s sitting atop my Top 2012 Films list. I read the book a couple of months ago in preparation, and I’m sure that affected how I received the film – I didn’t actually love the book, largely because I felt like it was more of an exercise in pastiche, more interested in proving David Mitchell’s chops at imitating different styles of writing and less interested in actually making meaningful connections between the different stories. The movie still has the different styles, but less pronounced (because it’s difficult to get such things as “19th century journal” and “epistolary novel” to translate to film stylistically), and the stories are all intercut with each other, a brilliant way to strengthen and highlight the thematic tissue connecting the stories. Putting the music of the Cloud Atlas Sextet front and center lends the film a symphonic quality heightened by the editing to create something that as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts, which is exactly what I was missing from the book. It’s rare to say, even for a non-book-purist like me, but in this case, the movie is easily better than the book – quite a statement especially for a book that many people have long considered unfilmable. Well done.

2012 USA. Directors: Andy & Lana Wachowski & Tom Tykwer. Starring: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Doona Bae, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw, Keith David, James D’Arcy, Hugh Grant, Susan Sarandon.
Seen October 27 at AMC Burbank 16.

The Master

I came into The Master with some trepidation, since I’m just about the only person on earth who really disliked There Will Be Blood, and I wasn’t sure if PT Anderson could get back on my good side or not. Thankfully, he did, and while I would say I only “really liked” The Master when first leaving the theatre, thinking back on it and talking about it has raised it my estimation a LOT. I might still like Magnolia (see below) a bit better of PTA’s films, but it’s close, and so far The Master is probably the best movie of the year for me. The interplay between Phoenix and Hoffman is incredible – two actors at the top of their game, playing off their very different styles (and very different characters) against each other. Amy Adams holds her own as well, which I didn’t expect. And the jittery camerawork/focus underscores the story – really, the character study – perfectly. Images, lines, contrasts, outbursts, quiet moments – they’ve all come flooding back to me without warning over the weeks since I saw the movie, and that’s what I call a sign of a great film. Great enough I might be willing to give TWBB another chance. We’ll see.

2012 USA. Director: Paul Thomas Anderson. Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams.
Seen September 15 at Arclight Hollywood.

Argo

With Argo, Ben Affleck cements his career as a director even further, proving that while many of us have lost faith with him as an actor, when he’s behind the camera, he can do little wrong. This time he’s in front of the camera as well, which worried me a little (I didn’t see The Town, which also had him as actor-director), but he comes through in both roles. Taking a side story from the Iran Hostage Crisis of six Americans who managed to escape the embassy and hide out in the Canadian ambassador’s house, Affleck plays an extraction expert whose crazy plan to get them out involves a fake movie for which they will be the fake scouting crew in Tehran. The film’s seemingly unwieldy combination of real-life political thriller (which is highly tense and dramatic) and Hollywood show biz story (which has a good deal of comedy) comes together perfectly, while Affleck and Co’s eye for period ’70s detail puts him right up there with Soderbergh. An old-fashioned thrill ride with a great cast.

2012 USA. Director: Ben Affleck. Starring: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, Alan Arkin, Victor Garber, Tate Donovan, Clea Duvall, Scoot McNairy.
Seen October 13 at AMC Burbank 16.

Looper

This has been my most-anticipated film ever since I first heard about it more than a year ago, thanks to my abiding love for Rian Johnson films (I loved Brick more than The Brothers Bloom, but they’re both really good), Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and time travel. I successfully avoided almost all the marketing for it, so I went in pretty cold, and I’m glad I did. The story is more about Gordon-Levitt’s character development (thanks to the incursion of his future self in the form of Bruce Willis) than time travel itself – in fact, Johnson actually wisely refrains from getting into the nitty-gritty of the time travel, which keeps the focus squarely on the characters, and I liked that. There are a few plot holes if you analyze the time travel too deeply, but I don’t think they ultimately matter in terms of the character-focused story, and the combination of character drama and action flick with just a touch of sci-fi works really well.

2012 USA. Director: Rian Johnson. Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels, Paul Dano, Piper Perabo.
Seen September 29 at AMC Burbank.

Premium Rush

Bike messenger Joseph Gordon-Levitt rides his bike around NYC at breakneck speeds, trying to deliver a life-or-death package, avoid the dirty cop trying to catch him, the real bicycle cop he pissed off, and fight a rival bike messenger for the affections of his girlfriend. And it’s pretty much non-stop adrenaline from start to finish. That’s about all you need to know. This is an old-fashioned B-level genre movie, and it hits every note right. Sure, it’s got nothing deep going on, but it doesn’t try to be any more than it is and for 85 minutes of pure fun, this kind of thing is hard to beat for me. And Michael Shannon is awesome in this kind of no-holds-barred role (he’s always awesome, but he’s all kinds of fun when he really lets loose).

2012 USA. Director: David Koepp. Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Shannon, Dania Ramirez, Sean Kennedy.
Seen August 8 at AMC Burbank.