November Man (3/10): As bad as the title suggests it is!

"Know what we used to call you Peter? The November Man. Cause after you passed through, nothing lived."

Experiencing November Man felt like simply passing through and not feeling anything. I definitely didn’t get any sense of enjoyment from Roger Donaldons’s (Species, The Bank Job, The Recruit) latest film. The only thing it has going for it is getting to see Pierce Brosnan as a spy agent once again, although Peter Devereaux is a somewhat more serious character than James Bond was. It tries to portray him as a much darker character, but I didn’t feel that way about him either. For a film that is trying to separate itself from the classic spy action thrillers it ends up relying on the same genre cliches and familiar plot twists. From the very opening scene of November Man I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy this. I didn’t like how these characters were introduced or how the action scenes took place. It was a completely dull experience for me.

November Man was adapted from one of Bill Granger’s spy novels centering on the anti-hero, Peter Devereaux. It is based on his 7th novel, “There Are No Spies,” which unfortunately I have never had the privilege of reading so I can’t say how faithful this adaptation is. What I can base my review on however, is on how poorly written the characters are for this film. They try to portray Devereaux as a darker character, but at the same time they want to make us like him and understand him. I would say he is your typical spy who has been betrayed and is trying to discover the truth along the way. There is one scene where he cuts an innocent girl’s femoral artery which felt out of place considering the film never tries to be a character study and focuses mostly on the action scenes. If the rest of the film focused on this gray side of his, I would have no problem in accepting it, but it mostly portrays him as a good spy who is trying to protect innocent lives. That scene sort of contradicts everything he has been portrayed as, especially in the opening scene. For a dark film they never go all the way to portray Brosnan as an anti-hero and they spend most of the time jumping from one familiar action scene to another. It simply doesn’t stand out as neither an original serious spy thriller nor an entertaining light hearted one. Donaldson never figured out how to balance this film correctly and adapt it to the source material.

November Man is an average spy thriller that relies heavily on Pierce Brosnan’s charismatic performance. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t enough to save the familiar script or the poorly executed action scenes. The secondary characters were uninteresting and they failed to engage me, while the film relies on one too many familiar twists. Luke Bracey plays the young CIA agent who is being trained by Peter, but after a series of unfortunate events unfold that puts them face to face against each other. Bracey’s character was poorly written and I didn’t enjoy his performance either. The film centers on these two characters as they are forced to face each other, but Bracey’s character is so uninteresting I did’t really care for it. Olga Kurylenko is a beautiful actress, but her performance here kind of reminded me of some of her other bad films such as Max Payne or Hitman. The sub-plot involving the Russian female assassin was laughable and pointless as the entire film was. 

My Review: To the Wonder (5/10)

"You got me out of the darkness. You gathered me up from earth. You've brought me back to life."

I'm not a fan of Terrence Malick, but there is no denying that Tree of Life was his masterpiece, a beautifully shot film, which I really liked. I was surprised to hear that To the Wonder was coming out so soon considering that Malick usually takes about 6 to 7 years to work in between films. To the Wonder is a beautifully shot film, with poetic imagery about love, and it's something that the director has shown us before, but the narrative really takes a blow here and I found it very difficult to make connections between some of these characters. I love Javier Bardem and Rachel McAdams, but the way their characters were edited in this film made them both feel completely misplaced. It was a difficult experience to sit through the two hours of this film despite all the artistic and beautiful imagery due to the narrative. If you've never seen a Malick film you will not enjoy this, but if you appreciate his work you might love this poetic film. I would recommend you watching The Tree of Life which is really the only film of his I liked along with The Thin Red Line. Be warned, To the Wonder is not an easy watch, but the cinematography is amazing.

The narrative of the film kind of plays out like a series of memories with several images and musical backgrounds with very few dialogues and some voice over narrations from main characters. The entire film feels like a series of dream sequences, and some really don't connect with the rest of the film. The sequences begin in France where we witness how love blossoms between Neil (Ben Affleck) and Marina (Olga Kurylenko), characters whose names we only know because they are mentioned in the credits. Neil asks Marina to return to the States with him along with her young daughter Tatiana (Tatiana Chiline). Once they are back in Oklahoma we see how the perfect romance begins to crumble although its hard to figure out how much time has elapsed considering the narrative structure. Neil reconnects with a High School sweetheart named Jane (Rachel McAdams) and Marina returns to France once her Visa expires. The film also introduces a Spanish priest, Father Quintana (Javier Bardem), struggling with his faith in Oklahoma. While Marina was living with Neil she would often visit his Church and that is how Malick makes the connection with his character, who I thought felt out of place.

To the Wonder probably ranks amongst Malick's weakest efforts (I would rate it slightly above The New World), but it still is a visually stunning film, and yet another sort of autobiographical Malick film. If you've seen a Malick film before then you probably know what to expect from him and this film was pretty much a copy of his other efforts. Malick gets really philosophical once again with this film and shares some beautiful imagery, but it really didn't connect with me. I love artistic films, but have trouble identifying with them if there is no narrative structure which was the case with To the Wonder. I need more than just poetic imagery, and I didn't feel it in this film. I do have to admit that the score of the film was beautiful as well.

My Review: Oblivion (8/10)

¨60 years ago, Earth was attacked. We won the war, but they destroyed half the planet. Everyone`s been evacuated and nothing human remains.¨

Joseph Kosinski broke out as a director in 2010 with TRON: Legacy and before continuing his work on the sequel he took a break to direct his personal project, Oblivion, a sci-fi film which he had previously worked on as a graphic novel along with Arvid Nelson. He successfully adapted the screenplay and has created one of the most visually stunning films of the year. Oblivion looks great and has some terrific sci-fi action scenes with a strong charismatic lead role played by Tom Cruise. The supporting cast is also pretty strong, but the film focuses almost entirely on Cruise. That means that Cruise fans will probably love this film because he pretty much plays himself, while those people that can`t stand him will want to stay away from Oblivion. The best thing going for this sci-fi film are the great visual effects, while the weakest part is perhaps that it takes too many elements from dozen other sci-fi films and kind of meshes them altogether. On the positive side I was overall pleased with Oblivion considering at least that the studio took a risk at creating an original premise (and when I say original I mean that it wasn`t a sequel, prequel, or reboot of a previous film) and turned it into a fun and cool looking film. I actually enjoyed this movie much more than Kosinski`s previous film and hopefully this marks a great year for sci-fi film considering the upcoming After Earth and Elysium. As much as I liked Oblivion, I still have to admit that I felt Prometheus was a much superior film (thanks in most part to better performances).

The film opens with a narration from Jack (Tom Cruise) explaining how the Earth was devastated 60 years ago by a war between humans and an alien race known as Scavs who wanted Earth`s resources. We won the war, but the planet was devastated after the aliens destroyed part of the moon`s mass which caused several natural disasters. The population that managed to survive moved to one of Saturn`s moons known as Titan. It`s the year 2077 and the only humans on Earth are Jack and his partner Vica (Andrea Riseborough) who live in Tower 49. Jack is a technician in charge of repairing drones which are responsible for guarding the planet from attacks of surviving Scavs. Vica stays in the tower serving as Jack`s eyes and maintains communication with Sally (Melissa Leo), the mission commander living on the Tet (a large space ship in orbit around the Earth). They are in charge of safeguarding these giant machines that draw up water from the ocean to process it as energy in Titan. The few surviving scavs try to disrupt this process, but Jack and Vica are only two weeks away from parting from Earth to Titan. However, Jack is feeling nostalgic and is constantly having memory flashes of a woman (Olga Kurylenko) and he can`t quite figure out who she is since he has had his memory wiped after the war in order to serve his planet. Everything changes when a shuttle crashes on Earth carrying the woman Jack has seen in his dreams. Her name is Julia, and all of a sudden he begins to question everything that he has been doing.

I wasn’t too pleased with the way Kosinski decided to open the film having Cruise narrate the present situation, but the visuals won me over, and once the action begun I had a great time with the film. Like almost any other sci-fi film I felt there were some plot holes, but didn’t make much of them since the film kept me entertained throughout. Oblivion is a little over two hours long, but it has decent pacing and you never feel like the story drags. Morgan Freeman has a supporting role, but really doesn’t have much screen time. This is almost all about Cruise`s character, which is good although I thought Andrea Riseborough gave probably the best performance of the film. I like Kurylenko, but she doesn’t do anything memorable or ground breaking here. Oblivion isn’t a perfect sci-fi film, but it is an entertaining one and I had a great time at the movies. If you enjoy science fiction movies you will like Oblivion unless you are picky or expected a totally unique film. There are several moments where you will be reminded of some greater films which this movie was probably inspired by in one way or another (2001, Blade Runner, Moon, Logan`s Run, Independence Day, etc).  A lot of credit has to be given to Kosinski however for making a somewhat original sci-fi film and making it entertaining. I would recommend this film!

My Review: Seven Psychopaths (7/10)

¨I´m sick of all these stereotypical Hollywood murderer scumbag type psychopath movies. I don’t want it to be one more film about guys with guns in their hands.¨

This is one weird, strange, unique, and messy movie as the title suggests. At times the film seems to be a masterpiece, at other it simply wonders off too much. I was a bit disappointed with how things turned out, but it was still a great ride. Martin McDonagh is perhaps one of the best contemporary playwriters; I had a blast with his film In Bruges and had huge expectations for this one considering the impressive ensemble cast, but I guess my expectations were set too high because this film didn’t work as well as I would have liked. McDonagh does succeed in creating original characters as he plays around with movie clichés and has fun breaking the genre down and putting his spin on things. We´ve seen other movies about movies before, but not like this one; it never gets generic. This is one funny and quirky dark comedy written with very sharp dialogues and unique characters. You can see some influence from Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese in McDonagh´s work, but it still remains fresh and breaks with generic clichés in a way that it remains unique. This is the second time Colin Farrell works with director McDonagh after In Bruges, and in my opinion these are his best roles. We can only hope these two continue to work together. McDonagh couldn’t have counted on a better ensemble cast than this one; everyone was terrific here.

This dark comedy is about a screenwriter named Marty (Colin Farrell) who is trying to write a screenplay titled Seven Psychopaths. The only problem is that he has only come up with one psychopath so far, and can´t get inspired to write the story. His good friend, Billy (Sam Rockwell), a frustrated actor who makes a living by kidnapping dogs and collecting the ransom, tells him about another psychopath and begins throwing ideas for the script. Billy´s associate in the dog kidnapping business is Hans (Christopher Walken) who is trying to make some extra money to help out his wife, Myra (Linda Bright Clay), who is in a clinic diagnosed with cancer. Billy and Hans end up kidnapping a shih tzu from a dangerous mob boss, Charlie (Woody Harrelson). They´ve messed with the wrong guy, because Charlie begins going all psycho on everyone in order to find his dog. Somehow Marty becomes entangled in this Los Angeles criminal underworld and in a way everyone seems to be pitching in ideas for his movie. The story begins taking some weird and unexpected turns everywhere as the action continues and some of Marty´s characters begin to come to life as not everyone seems to be who we expect.

This dark comedy has some wonderfully written dialogues with some great moments of humor, but at other times I felt the movie was drifting away by trying to break with generic barriers. It is still a fun movie and one I recommend thanks to an excellent and cleverly written script, and a brilliant ensemble cast. Farrell is always great working alongside McDonagh; Sam Rockwell gives another masterful and quirky performance, Woody Harrelson was made for these types of role, and Christopher Walken is just spectacular with his deadpan acting. It is not difficult to give good performances when you have such a great screenwriter creating some memorable and funny dialogues. I had a pleasant time with this film although my expectations were set much higher considering McDonagh´s previous film was much better. I was a huge fan of In Bruges, but Seven Psychopaths didn’t really surprise me as much.

  

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