In Anticipation of "The Grandmaster"

One thing about director Wong Kar Wai, is that he makes you wait and wait as he delays and delays his brilliantly poetic films.  Well, the wait is over, as I just had to order my dvd copy of The Grandmaster yesterday, as soon as I knew it was available.  Harvey Weinstein and his American distribution will take their time about releasing it directly in the States and may do some unnecessary choppy chop on this art piece.  I say "art piece" with great confidence, not just because I'm a huge fan of China's equivalent to the team Scorsese and Deniro in director  Kar Wai and lead actor Tony Leung, but because the trailer variations and opening 30 minutes that I couldn't help but take a peak at online, are instant marvels of cinematography on par with classic visual martial art works of art like Kar Wai's classic Ashes of Time and nodding to Zhang Yimou's  Hero.  In addition, the higher internal level and historical elements of the various southern and northern martial, seemed to be justly represented and explored; which to me is exquisitely interesting in any martial arts film.

In the meantime, check out Tony Leung who's been training for the role since 2007 in this clip.

Silver Linings Playbook

This was an awesome and compelling movie with a great cast. Bradley Cooper was very good and Jennifer Lawrence was outstanding, especially considering how young she is.  It's a film about mental illness told with great warmth, humor, and humanity.  More importantly for me, it's a film that really speaks about the restorative power of love for those struggling with it.  

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is Peter Jackson's first in a series of  three part prequels to the LOR movies.  Of course there are a lot of expectations to this film and for the most part, it is delivered.  In addition to having a great director, an excellent story, cinematography, and a talented cast in newcomers Martin Freeman and Richard Armistice,  viewing the beautiful and scenic backdrop of New Zealand alone, is worth the nearly three hour running time. So let me get to the main detractors.  If anything, it takes a while to get the story really going, which is understandable considering the LOR sequels were/are very much, the successful shadows to resurrecting its orgin story.  Once it does get going though, Jackson is obviously back at the helm in brilliantly moving the adventure along to a point where it becomes rather hard to distinguish this earlier adventure from being mistaken for just another LOR film.  Another similar point I would makes, though not as strongly, would be that the main ensemble of characters especially the protagonist were slightly lacking in the kind of diverse cohesion that successfully help drive the plots of the LOR series.   So my main criticism would be that despite or because of the nearly predictable nature of this film, that simultaneously helps in audience familiarity (though I grew up watching the Hobbit as a kid) and hurts in so far as originality; what ends up suffering the most is the overall momentum slightly lagging to take the audience to the second film.  However, all in all, this was the start of a great movie trilogy that generally only and perhaps unfairly suffers from ironically being judged by it's already successful sequel in LOR.  Nonetheless, Peter Jackson has done it again in carefully covering the main bases and holding to the integrity of the story. 

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.

Olympus Has Fallen

Directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Gerard Butler, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Aaron Eckhart, Rick Yune, and Dylan McDermott, Olympus Has Fallen is an action drama centered around a terrorist takeover of the White House.  Well, the cast, director, storyline, and trailer certainly sucked me into going to see this movie at the show, and why wouldn't it given that.  However, it does fall short a bit on some things.  Basically, it's a collage of movie formulas, notably the Die Hard movies and Air Force One.  If you ignore the absurdity of the plot, the first half of the movie with the Korean terrorist takeover of Washington is very exciting action-wise.  The Air Force's AC-130 gunship is hijacked and used to reign terror upon DC.  Yeah, I know.  But seeing something like that on the screen, makes it real easy to ignore or forget the improbability and absurdity of it happening.  From here on, it's up to Butler as the former Secret Service/Special Ops guy and the only guy left alive inside the White House to kill the terrorist, save the President and his son, and thwart the real plans of the terrorist.  At this point, watching the movie becomes very much like watching someone play a 1st person shooter game, sometimes annoyingly interrupted by the commanders and higher officials held up in the situation room, that only seem to give intermission to the game.  It's also at this juncture of the film, that the missing details of story-line logic become all the more apparent. The obvious question of how could this well prepared and coordinated attack be pulled off this perfect post 911 by so few Korean terrorist without the intelligence community or Homeland Dept. having a clue, is still beyond me even after viewing the film. So few terrorist and only one man can stop them, while the whole US arsenal of  police, military, intelligence, and everyone else can only wait outside The White House?  Not to sound like an extreme delusional right wing patriot, but I still couldn't buy the logic of it, although Gerard Butler does a good job in the role. Also, was it me or was Dylan McDermott's role or character (still deciding which) just fucking stupid? The writers of this film respectfully pulled out all the stops from not so implicitly referencing the 911 attacks, the Seals assault on the Bin Laden compound, and the present situation with North Korea.  I also give the film credit for directly touching on many issues in dealing with the global war on terror and nuclear deterrence. No spoiler alert here, but the directive of saving the President at all cost, is really put to the test and momentarily picks up the dimension of the terrorist's plot in the second half. It's a decent enough action movie and certainly enough to bring in an audience and keep them entertained, although excessively drippy with obligatory patriotism far too contrived.  But let's hope that this next film (White House Down starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx) about terrorist taking over the White House, will fare better this year.  If anyone has seen The Raid: Redemption, I think the martial artist guy who played Mad Dog was in here as one of the terrorist uncredited, who unfortunately got taken out way too fast.