THE CAPTIVE Review

Atom Egoyan must have either been really inspired or really upset with how director Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners turned out last year as he has, in that year, produced a familiar feeling film that not only steeps certain motivations of its counterpart in its DNA, but takes elements of that film altogether and reconstructs them in a way that almost says this is what Egoyan would have done had he been given Aaron Guzikowski's screenplay. Of course, Egoyan could have been working on this script with David Fraser long before Prisoners arrived in theaters and thus made him all the more unenthusiastic given the social status of his film would always be on a certain back-burner given the timing of its culmination. Ryan Reynolds gets the Hugh Jackman role (hold your comments) though his character doesn't have as much of a narrative drive and Rosario Dawson takes the Jake Gyllenhaal job without the nervous ticks or personal issues that re-enforce the investment in the job. Instead, these are all more middle of the road character executions set in the middle of extreme circumstances that are dealt with way too cooly. This and the fact Villeneuve's film is expertly shot and beautifully eery outweigh what The Captive strives to be, yet there is still a certain amount of unavoidable emotional involvement when it comes to content such as this. Beyond the obvious mystery elements (which are conveyed more through narrative order than withholding information here) The Captive is very much a film about repercussions and realizations than it is abduction or child abuse in this digital day and age. The film, right out of the gate, with its creepy antagonist in a thinned-out Kevin Durand would have you believe this is going to be all about the hunt for this monster and the intelligence with which he outsmarts his adversaries, but the overall impression the film gives is not one of a battle between good and evil, but the battles going on within ones self and the fight to either push certain qualities out or attempting to find ways to go on while constantly dealing with these emotions.

IF I STAY Review

There is something to be said about films that I probably shouldn't have any interest in, but really enjoy nestling down with anyway. They are films that aren't necessarily bad; that I don't enjoy watching in a guilty pleasure capacity seeing as "guilty pleasures" are not typically held in high regard. Instead, these films I sometimes latch onto aren't necessarily labeled with negative connotations, but more accurately are labeled more for a specific crowd or demographic that I wouldn't necessarily fall into. R.J. Cutler's If I Stay is a perfect example of the type of film I'm talking about in that I am in no way the target audience for this young-adult novel inspired flick for teenage girls, but regardless I was still able to take away a fair amount of appreciation for what is being attempted here. There is, in short, a certain depth to the story and the way it is framed that clearly comes from Gayle Forman's novel of the same name. It is reaching for something more, something ambitious in the vein of its philosophical thought and the relation of our existence to the point in life our protagonist exists at in this story. Would she ultimately make a different final decision were she at a different point in her life and under different circumstances? Probably, yeah. She may also make the same decision, but would of course be swayed by different factors and the endless possibilities of this scenario that have been dialed down into this specific being at this specific time in her life is fascinating for doing so. You can imagine an endless amount of possibilities when coming to terms with the idea that we have the power to make such a critical choice and coming to terms with that power is enough to intrigue us to be interested in the path that leads Mia (Chloë Grace Moretz) to make the decision she does. I imagine Forman chose the age of her protagonist in that the heightened situation of life and death and the decision to stay or go is mirrored by the general transitional period in life that Mia exists thus creating a similar disposition in both the main story and the one that sets-up the flashbacks through which the majority of the story is told. Don't get me wrong, If I Stay isn't necessarily a breathtaking experience or one that is as emotionally affecting as it thinks it is, but besides running on fumes for a good portion of the second act the film has more to offer than I would have ever anticipated.

DEVIL'S KNOT Review

There has been so much made of the trial that Devil's Knot dramatizes that the film itself almost seems irrelevant at this point. If you've seen any of the three Paradise Lost documentaries or for a more complete look at the eighteen years after what happens in Devil's Knot, last years excellent documentary West of Memphis, than you already know everything there is to know about this trial with ample amounts of theories and extraneous evidence to boot, but while West of Memphis encapsulated this entire ordeal from beginning to present when it turned from a trial about the murder of three little boys to a witch hunt for three other boys and the eventual plight to free them from the prison cells that constantly reminded them of the actions they were wrongfully accused of, Devil's Knot is simply looking to see what made everything go so wrong from the inception of this incident and more importantly, give a voice to the often forgotten victims and their families. The film is very open to interpretation in terms of what avenue you prefer to travel when it comes to this well-publicized case, but it certainly lays inclinations to what the current state of the case would best indicate. With such a sprawling story, a large cast of characters and multiple perspectives from which you could approach this it always seemed the choice to go with a documentary as far as chronicling the events of this case was the most efficient thing to do, but with Mara Leveritt's 2002 crime book of the same name proving an interesting and well-read piece of source material it was unavoidable that at some point a narrative feature might be attempted that pulled from the well that has seemed to officially run dry. The interesting question here is whether or not the film might be more highly looked upon were there not so many other films surrounding this same set of events because this film, on the most basic of principles, is still engaging due to the horrible circumstances under which these murders happened and the horribly botched job that the police did with the investigation that, when paired with the fine, but admittedly passive performance of actors at the caliber of Colin Firth and Reese Witherspoon, you are bound to find a few things making it worth a look.

SABOTAGE Review

First and foremost, I really wanted to love Sabotage. Like, I was totally up for it and was ready to have just a ridiculous amount of mind-numbing fun and by all accounts audiences had every right to expect the same things. Thinking about it in the light that director David Ayer was coming off one of his better written films with easily his best directing job to date and stacked with a cast as lumbering and raucous as that of Arnie's Expendables co-horts with names just slightly less major, but even more credible to the point where I really thought this had the shot to turn out to be something quietly major, a slight cultural mainstay that would fester on the minds of cinephiles over the years and become regarded as a well-loved box office flop that found its following long after it left the theaters. There were glimmers of hope on the horizon when the first action-packed trailer premiered and was followed by several others complete with red-band access as well. There is an interesting film somewhere in here and as I look through my notes I jotted down while watching the film, I keep coming across pieces where I remember wanting so much for this to become that something better, that kind of retrospective Arnold Schwarzenegger film that did as much to entertain us in the moment as it also gave us a look at how a man in his late 60's finds himself slipping in terms of esteem and credibility while having to come to terms with his physical limitations. In a sense, I wanted a large metaphorical action drama that mirrored the life of our star, but instead, Sabotage is as well thought out as the plan at the heart of the plot. It feels quickly shot, rushed through editing with a soundtrack that couldn't sound more generic and a group of supporting actors that almost make this feel like someones first student film. It is hard to take a film seriously when it tries so hard to be exactly that, but by the time the smoke from the opening sequence has dispersed and we begin to get to know the characters involved and are forced to listen to their incessant cussing to the point it actually begins to insult their own intelligence and we no longer buy that these people could do these jobs effectively, the curtain has been pulled back and we realize what we're actually in for is a mess of a flick in perfectly positioned B-movie clothing.

First Trailer for SABOTAGE

We're less than a week away from the opening of the latest Jason Statham actioner which also happens to be written by his Expendables co-star Sylbester Stallone and thus we now have our first look at their other co-stars latest project that will no doubt play in front of Homefront this Thanksgiving. I've been hearing some pretty positive things concerning Statham's latest outing though and despite the recent box office misfires this crew of action stars has faced ole Arnie looks as if he may have something a little "different" on his hands as well that may just do the trick for his non-Expendable movie career. Sabotage is billed as a loose adaptation of Agatha Christie’s classic mystery Ten Little Indians and sees Schwarzenegger heading up a DEA task force that makes a major arrest of a cartel leader only to see its members begin to be picked off one by one after a fair amount of the money seized in the capture goes missing. I'm actually pretty excited for this one as David Ayer is handling directing duties and produced one of my favorite films of last year (End of Watch) and is heading up one of my most anticipated for 2014 (Fury). While he didn't write the script for this film as well he seems to have captured the camaraderie and intense tone of the content with fun and important precision. The trailer gives just enough of the plot points without getting too heavily into much of the second or third acts it seems and exploits the charisma between its large ensemble cast which will no doubt be a selling point as, besides the Governor, the film also features Joe Manganiello, Sam Worthington, Harold Perrineau, Terrence Howard, Max Martini, Josh Holloway, Olivia Williams, and Mireille Enos. Sabotage is set to get us all ready for Summer 2014 when it opens on April 11th.

WORLD WAR Z Review

I read about one hundred pages of Max Brooks (son of Mel Brooks) novel on which this latest Brad Pitt film is based but was never really able to dig into it. I hoped to finish it before seeing the resulting film, but upon consistently hearing the movie would be nothing like the book and after witnessing the format and technique with which the book was constructed it was clear the only way to make a movie that strictly adhered to that same format would have been to make a documentary-like film. As it was clear this was not the route taken by director Marc Forster and producer/star Pitt I gave up on the book with optimistic thoughts of returning to it at some point. It was clear the main concept the film had taken away from the novel was the idea of a global crisis, but that displaying the crisis on a global scale through a leading man was more attractive than jumping from perspective to perspective with multiple characters. There is no problem with this approach except for the fact that the only thing the novel and the actual film share is the title. I can understand why this might have caused Brooks to speak negatively about the film, but even this isn't the worst thing this movie had going against it before its release. That would be the on-set tension between Forster and Pitt as well as the issues with the ending of the film. That there were $20 million worth of re-shoots done and last minute re-writes to the script would all point towards the final product being a complete mess. Turns out, we should have simply had faith in Pitt all along as World War Z turns out to be an extremely tense, well-paced action movie that doesn't solely depend on that action to give it a pulse. This is a smart, surprisingly well-thought out film that is up front about its zombie problem and deals with it in a way that is terrifying due to the fact it is likely how things would actually happen were there to be some kind of infection turning your friends, family and fellow citizens into undead sprinters that bite and move on with their victims becoming the same frightening zombies in a matter of seconds.