I’m only doing this because of the Oscar noms: Carol

Posted on February 4, 2016 by reelentropy

There’s a lot of confusion as to which of these actresses should get credit for the lead role. The Academy has gone with Blanchett. Photos courtesy the Weinstein Company.

Any time a movie’s trailer reminds me of that satire Swedish arthouse film from (500) Days of Summer, it’s a bad sign, but Carol rises above the scandalous Oscar-bate nonsense it advertises itself as and becomes the most enjoyable romance of 2015.

Based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt, the film centers around retail temp Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) and her relationship with the eponymous Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett). Aird buys a fake train from Belivet while going through a tough divorce, and they’re immediately attracted to each other. Belivet is similarly frustrated by her overaggressive boyfriend and stunted professional life, and at one point the two simply run off together to get away from it all.

Carol strikes that apparently delicate balance between artistic integrity and unintelligible arthouse-ism with directorial flair and compelling characters placed in a compelling story. It’s always teetering on the edge of becoming the overwrought bate film it was sold as, but only falls over in select spots.

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Pride and Prejudice and Zombies a surprising delight, mostly because of the pride and the prejudice

Posted on February 2, 2016 by reelentropy

Mr. Darcy is so fucking cool. He stalks around the movie with a katana, a period-displaced SS coat and a permanent scowl, ready to kill the mood of every room he enters. He even carries around a vile of carrion flies that he releases as zombie-detecting agents. Photos courtesy Screen Gems.

There are a lot of ways it could have been better, but Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a blast to watch.

Based on Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2009 parody, the film is set in 19th century England in an alternate history where the zombie plague came across the sea from the New World. It became customary to send youths to the Far East to learn martial arts, and in addition to the prejudices already abounding in this setting, martial strength has become just another tool people judge each other with. In this context, Elizabeth Bennet (Lily James) meets the newly relocated Mr. Darcy (Sam Riley), and the classic love story plays out. The fiery, willful Bennet navigates a world shaped by unwelcome advances, rumors and grudges. And zombies.

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Dirty Grandpa is a soul-crushing non-comedy, do not go see it

Posted on January 21, 2016 by reelentropy

Don’t start. Whatever you think you have to say, I’ve heard it. Some movies aren’t meant to be thought too hard about. Some movies, you just have to sit back and laugh. Dirty Grandpa is just 100 minutes of raunchy filth, it was never going to have any artistic merit. Just don’t start. The Wolf of Wall Street is three full hours of raunchy filth, and its artistic merit is beyond reproach. Pulp Fiction is 150 minutes of raunchy filth, and it is an unquestioned masterpiece that defines and defies its genre. So don’t tell me that Dirty Grandpa couldn’t possibly have been any good. Don’t tell me that there’s a category of movie that’s meant to be greeted with a vapid, slack-jawed stare that’s retroactively called “entertainment.” The idea that some movies are made to be analyzed and obsessed over and others are made to be enjoyed is a savage fallacy that ignores basic human nature. We don’t analyze and obsess over a movie because someone else said it was good, and we don’t enjoy a movie and watch it over and over again without noticing new things or forming new opinions on it. We analyze and obsess over certain movies because we enjoy them. These two ways of expressing love for a particular film are one and the same. Any time someone excuses a movie by saying it “wasn’t meant to be criticized” or “wasn’t meant to be thought about beyond a surface level,” what they’re really saying is that movie wasn’t meant to be enjoyed. So fuck Lionsgate and director Dan Mazer for so unapologetically applying this mentality that some movies don’t need to be enjoyable in any way because they aren’t trying to please critics to every aspect of this movie, and if you use that mentality as an excuse to financially support this sniveling afterbirth of a film, fuck you too.

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Bayghazi scandal fails to rock nation

Posted on January 21, 2016 by reelentropy

It’s tough for a scandal to really get under people’s skin when the movie that carries it opens no. 4 behind a blaxploitation buddy cop sequel and the fifth week of Star Wars.

It may seem from Krasinski’s heavy featuring that Da Silva is heavily focused on as 13 Hours’ lead character, but he isn’t. The production just failed to attract any other even moderately famous actor. The film probably would have benefited from a tighter focus on his character as a way to get the audience more emotionally involved. Photos courtesy Paramount Pictures.

The film in question, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, alternately referred to as Bayghazi, follows CIA security contractor Jack Da Silva (John Krasinski) to Benghazi, Libya, a city mired in gang violence after the fall of dictator Muammar Gaddafi two years earlier, which left both a power vaccum and a large stockpile of small arms free to be looted. Da Silva works with a team in the CIA annex, one of the only foreign outposts still operating in the city, along with the American Embassy. On the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in 2012, street violence turned on the embassy and annex in an attack that would leave four dead, including U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens, played by Matt Letschner in the film.

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Ride Along too generic

Posted on January 18, 2016 by reelentropy

The only unique draw in this movie comes from the leads, Hart and — hahahahahaha, I can’t even type that with a straight face! Photo courtesy Universal Pictures.

The thing about dump months is there’s always a winner. No matter how little studios care about the movies that come out in these periods, there’s still a no. 1 every single week. In 2014, that was Ride Along for three weeks in a row. So here we are.

Ride Along 2 picks up with Ben Barber (Kevin Hart) fresh out of the police academy and less than a week from marrying Angela Payton (Tika Sumpter), sister to detective James Payton (Ice Cube, who also produces). In order to get evidence on a recent arrest, Payton has to go to Miami to find a hacker, A.J. (Ken Jeong), who can unlock the digital details he needs, and against all sense and police regulation, he is allowed to bring Barber as his partner. Hijinks abound!

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