MOVIE REVIEW | ***FOREIGN LANGUAGE WEEKEND*** Casa de mi Padre (2012)

In a nutshell, Bored & Dangerous says: “With its bad mat painting backgrounds on obvious sound stage sets, to laughably fake horses and puppet mountain lions, to the deliberately awkward, exposition filled dialogue, it takes a lot of skill from some real professionals to make something that appears so amateur.”

 
The main reason I started this blog was to make me watch more movies, and to vary the kinds of movies I watched.  The first part of that has been well and truly accomplished with me watching hundreds of movies for the first time, instead of falling back on old favourites over and over again.   But l’m not sure if I’ve varied my selections enough.  I still watch mainly American movies, with directors, writers and actors that make them a pretty safe bet. So this year, I’m forcing myself to seek out more international movies.  With Foreign Language Weekends, every weekend(ish) during 2016, I’ll review two(ish) non-English language movies.

“If you were truly smart, you would know that you are dumb. Look at your fat head.”

Will Ferrell is a really funny dude.  Even when he makes movies I don’t really care for, the Anchorman series for instance, I can’t deny that he is still enjoyable as he indulges in his goofiest tendencies.  He’s also the kind of guy who I think is just as concerned with entertaining himself as he is with entertaining the audience.  Almost like he tries to make himself laugh first, and if the audience joins in, bonus.  I think that, because I can’t imagine any other motivation that would lead to something as bizarre as Casa de mi Padre.

Armando (Ferrell) is the son of a Mexican cattle baron.  Things aren’t looking so good on the financial side, until the return of Armando’s brother, and their father’s clear favourite, Raul (Diego Luna).  With new business ventures leaving him cashed up enough to save the day, Raul also returns home with a beautiful fiancé (Genesis Rodriguez as Sonia).

MOVIE REVIEW | Man on Fire (2004)

In a nutshell, Bored & Dangerous says: “Tony Scott and Denzel Washington are so committed to all of these clichés in such a real, genuine way.  If there’s a joke, they’re not in on it.”

“Forgiveness is between them and God. It’s my job to arrange the meeting.”

I find myself dismissing action movies a lot.  But when I do watch them, I more often than not really enjoy them.  Until my movie snobbery makes me forget that, and I dismiss the genre again   But I really need to just accept that a well made movie is a well made movie.  Even if its genre isn’t the most cerebral.  Because sometimes all you need is a tight script, well shot action set pieces here and there, and an awesome ass kicker in the lead role.  Sometimes all you need is something like Man on Fire.

Former special forces soldier, former government spook, current drunk, Creasy (Denzel Washington) is in need of work.  His old friend Rayburn (Christopher Walken) is able to help via his security firm, getting a Creasy a gig guarding a family in Mexico.   Specifically, guarding their young daughter, Pita (Dakota Fanning).  Kidnappings in the country are so frequent, it’s common for family’s like Pita’s to take out kidnapping insurance.  But their current policy has lapsed, hence the need for Creasy.

MOVIE REVIEW | ***FOREIGN LANGUAGE WEEKEND*** Amores Perros (2000)

The main reason I started this blog was to make me watch more movies, and to vary the kinds of movies I watched. The first part of that has been well and truly accomplished with me watching hundreds of movies for the first time, instead of falling back on old favourites over and over again.   But l’m not sure if I’ve varied my selections enough. I still watch mainly American movies, with directors, writers and actors that make them a pretty safe bet. So this year, I’m forcing myself to seek out more international movies. With Foreign Language Weekends, every weekend(ish) during 2016, I’ll review two(ish) non-English language movies.
 
“I wanted to set the world right, and then share it with you. I failed, as you can see.”

As I write this, director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is on the verge of winning his second Best Picture Oscar in as many years.  That’s a pretty big deal.  Birdman wasn’t my favourite movie of 2014, but I had no problem with it winning.  The Revenant on the other hand, is in my opinion, no Best Picture contender.  It’s a spectacle, it’s thrilling and it’s hard hitting, but I feel like its impact is immediate and quickly forgotten.  Although, what I can’t argue with, is Inarritu’s technical skill.  I might not always like the material he chooses to make, but I’m always blown away by how he makes it.  Which got me interested in seeing where it all started, with his debut, Amores Perros.

A car races through the streets of Mexico City, being chased by a gang of thugs.  After a serious accident, the story flashes back to how the driver of the car, Octavio (Gael Garcia Bernal), came to be in a car chase in the first place.  Sharing a home with his mother, brother and brother’s wife (Vanessa Bauche as Susana), Octavio is in love with his sister in law, and dreams of a way of running away with her.  When his brother’s dog kills another from the local dog fights, Octavio decides to enter the fights officially, to make the money he needs to run away with Susana.

***2015 RECAP*** MOVIE REVIEW | Sicario (2015)

“You should move to a small town, somewhere the rule of law still exists. You will not survive here. You are not a wolf, and this is a land of wolves now.”

If you had told me three years ago that one of the biggest badass action stars in Hollywood would be Emily Blunt, I would have had to look up who Emily blunt was. Then, I would have assumed she was some prim, proper and pretty English girl with no badass action roles in her future. But now, she’s the woman who turned a damsel in distress into a pretty tough character in Looper. She’s the woman who totally kicked all sorts of ass in Edge of Tomorrow. She’s now the woman whose involvement was enough to make excited about the next, grittier step in her badass, action career, Sicario.

Working as an FBI agent in Arizona, Kate Macer (Blunt) is part of a raid that discovers a house with walls stuffed with dead bodies, and a bomb that kills two of her colleagues. The raid also gets her noticed by the CIA, represented by Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), who enlists Kate to join his black ops team as they attempt to take down a Mexican drug cartel. Meeting Matt’s partner, the shady Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), Kate realises that getting actual results means sometimes playing outside the law.

MOVIE REVIEW | Sicario (2015)

“You should move to a small town, somewhere the rule of law still exists. You will not survive here. You are not a wolf, and this is a land of wolves now.”

If you had told me three years ago that one of the biggest badass action stars in Hollywood would be Emily Blunt, I would have had to look up who Emily blunt was. Then, I would have assumed she was some prim, proper and pretty English girl with no badass action roles in her future. But now, she’s the woman who turned a damsel in distress into a pretty tough character in Looper. She’s the woman who totally kicked all sorts of ass in Edge of Tomorrow. She’s now the woman whose involvement was enough to make excited about the next, grittier step in her badass, action career, Sicario.

Working as an FBI agent in Arizona, Kate Macer (Blunt) is part of a raid that discovers a house with walls stuffed with dead bodies, and a bomb that kills two of her colleagues. The raid also gets her noticed by the CIA, represented by Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), who enlists Kate to join his black ops team as they attempt to take down a Mexican drug cartel. Meeting Matt’s partner, the shady Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), Kate realises that getting actual results means sometimes playing outside the law.

MOVIE REVIEW | Touch of Evil (1958)

“This isn’t the real Mexico. You know that. All border towns bring out the worst in a country. I can just imagine your mother’s face if she could see our honeymoon hotel”.

In 1941, a twenty-six year old Orson Welles wrote, directed and starred in his debut film. Today, Citizen Kane sits atop almost every best of list it’s eligible for. While that film trail blazed now common conventions like non-linear storytelling, non-conventional technical aspects and the use of a completely non-likeable protagonist, its greatest and most endearing qualities more than seventy years later still come down to story, character and performance. Almost two decades later, Welles would deliver another master class in film making. This time story, character and performance would make way for the more technical aspects of innovation with the 1958 film noir, Touch of Evil. Starring Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh and the director himself, Touch of Evil had humble critical and box office beginnings, but has gone on to earn a deserved place amongst Welles’ best.

The incarnation of Touch of Evil being reviewed here is a revised version released in 1998 and opens with a title card stating,

“In 1957, Orson Welles completed principal photography on Touch of Evil and edited the first cut. Upon screening the film, the Studio felt it could be improved, shot additional scenes and re-edited it. Welles viewed this version and within hours wrote a passionate 58-page memo requesting editorial changes. This version represents an attempt to honor those requests and make Touch of Evil the film Orson Welles envisioned it to be”.

This initial treatment by the studio, combined with its original release as the second film on B-movie double feature, shows what little regard the film was given on release. By this time, Welles had spent almost twenty years bucking the system, clashing with studio heads and challenging the conventions of film and story. This relentless tenacity lead to still highly admired classics like Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons and an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello. But it also lead to several never completed projects, box office failures and strained relationships with the studios who funded these endeavours.