My Review: The Captive (5/10)

“You claim you didn’t see anything suspicious when you looked back to the truck.”

The Captive is the latest film directed by Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter) which happened to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this year where it was booed by the audience. I’d definitely not boo this film considering I didn’t think it was a complete disaster, but I didn’t really like it either. My reactions are mixed. On the one hand it tries to stand out from other kidnapping films by incorporating a non-linear structure, but unfortunately it doesn’t really help the narrative either. It doesn’t seem to have the character depth nor suspense that other successful movies dealing with kidnappings have. It is rather unfortunate as well that it was released one year after the highly praised Prisoners which was a much better film. There are some suspenseful moments in The Captive, but it is hard to care for these characters considering they weren’t developed at all. They all seem to be sort of emotionally disconnected and the captive girl never seemed to had suffered any side effects from her captivity at all.   

Despite all the misfires this film had there was a character that sort of managed to keep me interested, and I think it has to do in most part with Aaron Reynolds’s solid performance. He plays the father of the kidnapped girl and he is the only one who seems believable in this world. While the film focused on him, it kept me engaged and interested, but as soon as the focus shifted to the other characters the story suffered. On the one hand you have the procedural part of the film that is incredibly annoying due to the poor job the detectives are doing on the case. The film failed to give the audience any plausible reason as to why these detectives were so intent on blaming the father for the kidnapping of the girl when he didn’t actually do anything suspicious. Then on the other hand we get to see the kidnaper’s relationship with the kidnapped girl which is completely unrealistic. So when the film departs from the Reynolds character (and it does so way too often) it completely looses its appeal. Mireille Enos plays the mother, but she doesn’t add much to the film. When her initial reaction is to blame the father for the disappearance of the girl you kind of feel cheated because there is no rational explanation for these sort of behaviors. The entire reasoning behind this seemed to be to isolate the father and make us feel sympathetic towards him. There are some thrills in The Captive, but nothing really special to recommend.

My Review: Cosmopolis (2/10)

¨There's a poem I read in which a rat becomes the unit of currency.¨

Oh David Cronenberg what have thy done? Despite making some great films in the last few years (such as A History of Violence and Eastern Promises) Cronenberg has directed what is in my opinion the worst film of 2012. Cosmopolis is 100 minutes of complete torture, I did not enjoy the experience one bit and was hoping the pace of the film would pick up or that there would be some cool pay off at the end, but neither of those things happened. I can honestly tell you that I considered walking out on this film so many times, but for some reason I decided to stay with it. This is a film I will not be revisiting ever, although I know that in order to understand it completely several viewings need to take place because it is based on a philosophical novel written by Don DeLillo that is hard to follow. The film is very slow paced as you follow the main character for almost the entire film inside his limo talking to several different characters that jump in and out of his vehicle. The dialogues are really profound and pretentious as everything they are talking about serves as a sort of metaphor or symbolism on capitalism. If to understand the dialogues in the novel you need to read them over and over again, imagine how much more difficult it is to understand everything that Cronenberg is trying to throw at you in these dialogues where you can´t pause and go back to make sure you listened and interpreted things correctly. The entire film seems to be anti-capitalistic or at least a form of protest against cyber-capitalism and economics in general. The movie does seem to share some parallels with the Occupy Wall Street movement that took place. I don´t see how anyone other than those people who have read the novel will understand everything that is going on here. I am not even sure if Cronenberg understood everything that DeLillo was really trying to say in the novel, or if he simply had a different interpretation of things. The film is heavily pretentious and it was just a torturous experience for me, which is too bad because I really enjoyed some of his previous work (especially his films with Viggo Mortensen).

The film centers on Erick Packer (Robert Pattinson) a young billionaire living in Manhattan who decides to get on his limo and drive across town to get a haircut. Despite being warned by his security official, Torval (Kevin Durand), that the President is in the city and that the streets are completely jammed by traffic and protestors, he insists on taking the limo and getting his haircut. Therefore he spends almost the entire day in his limo, only getting off sporadically to grab a bite to eat or talk to his wife, Elise (Sarah Gadon) whom he encounters on several occasions during the day. While he is in the limo he´s always talking to someone who he happens to come across, some who work for him and seem to be his advisors, while others some sort of acquaintance like Didi (Juliette Binoche). He even has a doctor get in the limo and do his daily routine medical checkup (including a prostate exam) on him while talking economics with a colleague. Erick encounters all sorts of people and even an angry mob that is protesting in the streets (reminiscent to the Occupy Wall Street movement), but it is something he´s willing to do in order to get his haircut. Torval even mentions to him that someone is threatening his life, but Erick continues to move on. The entire drama plays out as a sort of metaphor on economics and capitalism, but the dialogues are really hard to follow as there are so many symbolisms and metaphors which I found very heavy handed and philosophical.

Near the end of the film there is a heavy dialogue scene between Pattinson´s character and Paul Giamatti´s that I was hoping would pay off for all the effort I put into it by sticking with it, but not even the dependable Paul Giamatti saved this film. I know some people liked this film, and I’m guessing because they probably had read the novel or are into all these philosophical and economical debates that Cronenberg is trying to raise, but I really had a hard time understanding everything that was going on. I wasn’t a big fan of Cronenberg´s latest film, A Dangerous Method, but that film is a masterpiece compared with Cosmopolis. I really disliked this movie and wasn’t entertained with any of the characters or the dialogues they were having. I couldn’t connect with this film in the same way other people who enjoyed this might have. I would much rather see Pattinson in Twilight again than watch this film; that is how much I hated this film. I hope Cronenberg returns to his A History of Violence days instead of making these pretentious philosophical movies that seem not to answer any questions in particular. Or maybe I just didn’t get it, but I am not willing to sit through a second viewing of this film and wouldn’t recommend it to anyone either.

  

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My Review: Resident Evil Retribution (4/10)

¨ My name is Alice, and this is my world. ¨

Resident Evil was in my opinion the best movie adapted from a videogame thanks in most part to Milla Jovovich. Almost all other films have failed to make the transition from videogame to film, but there was something special about seeing this heroin fighting off the undead. What began as a horror film eventually turned into a nonstop action film in the following sequels: Apocalypse, Extinction, Afterlife, and now in the fifth one Retribution. I enjoyed some of the previous sequels although to a much lesser degree than the original. I was just fascinated with Jovovich`s character, Alice, that I didn’t mind that Resident Evil was quickly turning into an action franchise. Finally in Retribution I realized it was just getting too old and mind numbing. I was really disappointed with this film, although my expectations were lowered by the previous sequels. I was hoping that since some of the characters from the original film would be back that the film would go back to the horror genre, but instead it was much more action packed than the rest with so many characters that I just lost interest in the film. My love for Alice diminished after the first 30 minutes of Retribution and I was hoping the film would end soon. The acting in this film is terrible (not that it wasn’t in the other sequels, but it is even worse here) and I really didn’t enjoy any of the characters. The plot was also very hard to follow at first and I feel that every time a new film starts they forget about everything that was left untold in the previous films. It`s as if they want these films to stand on their own, but they keep on raising questions and then never answer them.

Retribution picks up right where Afterlife ended with Alice (Milla Jovovich) and the few survivors from the apocalyptic world in the Arcadia ship being attacked by planes from the Umbrella Corporation with Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) commanding them. During the attack Alice manages to bring down one of the planes before jumping off the ship to the water. After she awakes we see her locked up somewhere in a clandestine Umbrella facility where she is continually interrogated by Valentine who is receiving orders from the Red Queen (a computer that controls the entire Umbrella system). Then all of a sudden there is a security breach and Alice is able to escape and finds she`s in Tokyo or some place similar. She is attacked by the virus infested people and manages to make her way back to the facility. Here she is helped by Ada Wong (Bingbing Li) who tells her she has been held captive by the Red Queen and that she has helped her escape. She also lets Alice know that she was still in the facility and that she just had entered a simulation of Tokyo created by the evil corporation to train their soldiers. Ada works for Alice`s enemy, Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) who claims to be helping her since he needs her help after having lost control of the corporation. Albert has also sent some other men to rescue her including Luther (Boris Kodjoe), Leon (Johann Urb), and Barry (Kevin Durand). Together they will have to find a way to survive the undead and escape the facility, although the Red Queen has some surprises along the way: Rain (Michelle Rodriguez) and One (Colin Salmon) have been cloned and also receive orders from the Queen.

Despite being introduced to some of the old characters, in Retribution the Redfield brothers and K-Mart are left out along with several other plot elements. The main problem I had with this Paul W.S. Anderson film was the over abundance of action and characters. It was just too much for me. The best part of the film happened in the beginning in a scene that reminded me a lot of the original and had me fooled it was returning to the horror genre. It was a scene involving Alice waking up in her suburban home along with her daughter Becky (Aryana Engineer) and her husband Todd (Oded Fehr). Everything seemed like it was back to normal until some zombies began invading their home. Those 5 minutes where the most suspenseful and intense moment of the film. I just wished the film would`ve stayed that way instead of returning to the action packed scenes with hardly any scares or dialogues. It was just one action scene after another and nothing new was added to this film. I was really disappointed with Retribution and it will probably be among my list of the worst movies of the year.

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