crime
I’ve never really understood the law. That, however, never stopped me from drooping inquisitively over courtroom dramas. With my rediscovery of A Few Good Men on TV a few months ago, this sub-genre managed to spark some affection in my geeky wonderland of a mind.
One of the best qualities you find in the cinephile world is a film that doesn’t take itself so seriously. Truly, what better way to do that than with puppets? Drugged up puppets that rob convenience stores.
Here at Film Inquiry, we were quite excited about The Rover. The trailer looked very promising; moreover, the movie was directed by famous and notorious director David Michôd. Famous for his hauntingly emotional scripts, notorious for the amounts of violence he tends to feature.
Quentin Tarantino’s movies stand out for many reasons, but chief among them is the extreme violence. Many people have fake-died in front of his camera. And with many, I mean 560 people.
This movie is screened during the Spanish Film Festival in Australia, taking place all May. In Ariel Winograd’s To Fool A Thief, we’re often reminded to think upon the kind of screwball comedies that made romance the immaterial ideal that critics so often found unbearable for its overtly fictitious realities – It Happened One Night, My Man Godfrey, The Great Ziegfeld and on and on the list goes. It’s not surprising during the course that Winograd’s film should reprise these classical thematic structures, but it’s presented in a fashion which is ultimately a distraction from the main action.
This post first appeared on CinemaAxis.com – David & Me will be screened at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival that takes place between April 24 and May 4, 2014. David & Me is a documentary created Ray Klonsky and Marc Lamy – the former also being the “me” in the title.
Wes Anderson can be an acquired taste. Settling on gathering enjoyment from his films can come after much deliberation as to whether he’s serious about the utterly finicky nature he employs in his chosen colour palettes, set construction, camera movements and scrupulous plot details. But his films carry far more value than the kind of hipster magnetism that seemingly oozes out of them.
In this 2013 American “reinterpretation” of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy – which was itself loosely based on a ‘90s manga by Tsuchiya Garon – a misogynistic, binge-drinking ad exec (Josh Brolin) is mysteriously abducted and held captive for 20 years without any explanation. Then, just as suddenly as he was taken, he’s released back into the world with a stack of cash, a phone, and a hankering for bloody, violent vengeance to help him find out why he was kidnapped in the first place. Full disclosure:
First of all, I was struck by the impressive cast of this movie. Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Mark Ruffalo… That’s quite the list. Now You See Me tells us the story of four street-wise magicians, not afraid to scam a person or two while they’re at it.
Only God Forgives is a movie not for the faint of heart. It’s highly violent and highlights that violence as if it is a virtue. This movie wasn’t received by the critics nor by the public favorably, but I’d like to vouch for this movie.
How To Make Money Selling Drugs (2012) is a documentary discussing the lucrative world of drugs and drugs dealing and how people get involved in the world, and, essentially, what should change to make the business less attractive. In a 90-minute feature, director (and melodramatic narrator) Matthew Cooke interviews a multitude of people among which musicians and actors like Curtis Jackson (50 Cent), Susan Sarandon, Woody Harrelson, Marshall Mathers (Eminem), a whole bunch of drug traffickers among which Brian O’Dea and Freeway Ricky Ross, people from the law enforcement, both pro and against the War on Drugs. I went into this movie without any prior knowledge.
In The Purge, a happy, wealthy family gets ready for the annual night of the Purge, a 12-hour period during which all crime is legal. This new way to fight crime has been very successful – crime is at an all time low, as is unemployment. Moreover, it is supposedly an easy way to rid society of those who do not contribute.
In Dead Man Down, Colin Farrell plays Victor/Laszlo (whom I’ll just call Victor henceforth), a Hungarian gangster who’s part of an organized crime syndicate. We soon find out he is not who he pretends to be. The movie opens with a talk about children, which nicely sets the mood and foreshadows some of the movie’s story.
Mobsters are trying to get a foothold in the City of Angels, and good cop John O’Mara (Josh Brolin) and his gangster squad come to the rescue. We are introduced to L.A.
The Place Beyond the Pines tries to be an interesting movie, but above all is just very confusing. We start off the story with Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling), motor stunt rider. He finds out he got a baby with a woman, Romina, in one of the towns he visited during his circus travels.