Broken City

It was very refreshing to see an old-fashioned, film-noir crime drama done solidly.   That about summarizes what I can say about this movie, which may have not done as great at the box office but is certainly in my eyes, a sleeper hit.  Mark Wahlberg stars as an ex-cop turned private investigator entangled up in the politics of New York's mayor, played by Russel Crowe.  Rounding out the excellent cast of this thriller are Catherine Zeta Jones, Jeffrey Wright, and Barry Peppers.  Broken City is certainly a well done updated homage to the great film noir of the 40's and 50's detective-crime dramas.  Seeing this movie, reminded me so much of those movies that I loved and grew up on, which had that good snappy dialogue, great twist and turns, and great characters of duality inhabiting a seedy urban city.  Mark Wahlberg may not be Humphrey Bogart, but he fits the bill of the flawed everyman just as well as his co-stars fit in to their parts.  The ode to that genre is further balanced by a modern day relevant plot and character driven complications as diverse as redemption, love, and power.  In fact, it's all the more amazing for director Allen Payne and his production team along with the amount of talent and star power in this film, that they don't erode the stylistic integrity of film-noir and the straight-no chaser attribute that it comes with, by easily  deviating or exploiting into one of the usual Hollywood formulas that tend to weaken the story or make it just a star vehicle.  It's just very good shared film-making from all aspects. 

Dragon/Wu Xia

Dragon/Wu Xia, despite the very generic title, is one of the freshest and most unique of martial art films I've seen in quite a while.  Notably, because it fuses the detective/mystery genre with the martial arts, using a nice sort of modern day CSI type of special effects infused storytelling.  In equal measure of the film's effectiveness, Donnie Yen as the outlaw killer turned simple country papermaker, brings actual real heartfelt acting without his usual pretension, for an even  more progressive change that he quite effectively capitalized on in the Ip Man movies recently, that is quite on equal par with Takeshi  Kaneshiro's performance of the detective in pursuit of him.   Add to that, a great charismatic performance by martial arts legion Jimmy Wang (The One Armed Swordsman and The Chinese Boxer) and actress Tang Wei (Lust, Caution).  Wu Xia is a beautifully shot movie in the tradition of A History Of Violence, that doesn't disappoint and is very engaging with layers of intrigue, mystery, and depth. It's a very nice and almost seemless blending of art and action.  I reiterate the great performance of Yen and I think that is easily his best and most mature in acting I've seen to date. This movie more than lived up to the hype and easily should be a great sleeper, unfortunately only suffering from the lack of promotional exposure that it justly deserves. 

Iron Man 3

I was pretty eager to see this movie, as most people would expect after a successful run and buildup culminating with The Avengers.  It's was good and decent enough, but I think without giving too much of the plot away, falls a bit short of my own expectations.  This time around, we're taking a closer look at the flaws and vulnerabilities of Tony Stark in the aftermath of his most challenging life altering experience with The Avengers and going back into Stark's past to see the origins of his current villain - The Mandarin.  It's a challenging and logical premise that is very relevant to all that went on in the previous movies with his character while simultaneously speaking to the ways in which warfare/terrorism, the military industrial complex, and the media are all used.  So in this juncture, I think it inevitably loses much of the steam throughout at least half the film.  Flashbacks to the past are done throughout to help explain the storyline and witness the arc of Stark's character evolving and re-inventing himself in the face of mortality and guilt.  How is all that done while defeating the bad guys and pulling out all the obligatory coolness of all that is Iron Man? Well, rather good by Downey of course, and somewhat and understandably mediocre by director Shane Black.  This Iron Man does very well at examining itself and I found it similar in many ways to the movie Watchmen, which I also liked.  Indeed at this point in the franchise, it seems rather obligatory especially when you look at the inward character journeys in other movies like Spiderman 3 or The Dark Knight Rises.  Ok, so juxtapose that with the other half of Stark pulling out all the very cool upgrades to his suit in fighting a let's just say, shadowy enemy who falls somewhat short of being really interesting or that intriguing.  The Iron Man soup we usually order hasn't exactly marinated long enough to absorb all the flavors well this time around.  If it sounds like I hated this movie, far from it.  I just know it could have been done better with less going on in the story, because it seemed to divide the movie into too many pieces of an ambitious pie, at the expense of an even enough momentum and urgency that is usually customary in propelling the audience to the next part of the marvel story.  Spoiler alert - instead, I waited for all the long ass credits to roll through, only to find Dr. Bruce Banner falling asleep on Stark's narrative.  I found that pretty telling indeed.