RBR: Now You See Me

Portraying magic in the movies can be just as difficult as performing a trick in real life. Both require a lot of misdirection before a final reveal that needs to payoff. In Now You See Me, the crime thriller that came out last May, a group of magicians and illusionists band together to perform tricks that seemingly involve robbing banks. The group, known as the Four Horsemen, consists of Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, and Dave Franco. After committing their first trick/robbery, they are put under investigation by a cop played by Mark Ruffalo and an Interpol agent played by Melanie Laurent. Also involved is Michael Caine who is producing the Four Horsemen's act and Morgan Freeman as a magician who has built a career out of revealing magicians' secrets to the public. As you can see, there are a lot of moving parts at play here. This enables there to never be a dull moment in the film, but is also prevents us from really getting to know any of the characters all that well. The most development comes from the budding romance between Ruffalo and Laurent, but I found that to be the weakest part of the film. Meanwhile, director Louis Leterrier throws a lot of tricks at you, both of the magical and visual kind, that are meant to, and mostly succeed, at enthralling you. This is a movie that begs you to "look closer" in order to try and figure out. While it does a good job of keeping you guessing, I am not sold that the final reveal works. Yet I found it to be a twist that encourages me to watch the film again rather than get annoyed or disgusted. If you let yourself get sucked in to the magic, you will likely find yourself fully entertained. But if you're the type of person who wants to take the magic out of everything, the film gives you plenty of ammunition to hate it. Personally, I was entertained and would gladly be interested in seeing more adventures from The Four Horsemen in the future. Rating: ****

Crossing Paths

A few years ago, In Bruges, a humorous take on the hitman film gained cult status with viewers and high marks from critics. Now director Martin McDonagh has reteamed with Collin Farrell (as well as an even wilder supporting cast) to once again mine comedic gold from the action thriller genre. In his latest, Seven Psychopaths, McDonagh throws a lot at you and even when if it's not always coherent, it's consistently entertaining.

This is not the type of film that can easily be summarized in a simple sentence. What you should know is that there are a pair of two-bit crooks (Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken) who kidnap dogs in order to return them and cash in on the reward. The scam is effective until they steal the Shiz Tsu of an unbalanced mob boss (played by Woody Harrelson) who will stop at nothing to get his precious pooch back. Farrell, who is also friends with Rockwell, is a struggling screenwriter who's working on a new film, conveniently named Seven Psychopaths. His efforts to write that film provide a meta-narrative throughout the movie as we discover which of these characters are actually psychopaths. Here that may sound confusing, but discovering who the psychopaths are in the film is a lot of fun

A movie like this is truly a film lover's dream. On one level you've got a lot of terrific actors hamming it up here. Rockwell has played this loose cannon character before, but still finds way to make it feel fresh and engaging. And it's a joy to see Christopher Walken just be his usual self on the big screen again. The man's acting style though often parodied and imitated, is uniquely his own and he once again steals the show here.

These actors are also able to give fine performances because of the script that they are working from. In addition to having a lot of funny lines, the screenplay is filled with incisive commentary on the screenwriting process. At one point, the characters talk about the difficulty in writing decent roles for women and then we see throughout this film that the female characters are underwritten and barely have a presence in the film.

Being in the mindset of a psychopath does have it drawbacks when it comes to story construction. The film's narrative can often be as schizophrenic as the characters it represents. The film goes off on a lot of tangents that never really seem to fully connect to the central story. For as funny and or engaging as these tangents are, they can also be equally frustrating as you try to make sense of everything.
Quentin Tarantino's success with films like Resevoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction produced a lot of check knock-offs that could not match the sheer bravado he displayed on the screen. With this film, however, McDonagh has succeeed whether others have failed. This is quite the gonzo trip of wisecracks and gore. I can guarantee that if the film sounded at all intriguing to you that you will be highly entertained by this.

Seven Psychopaths may not have mass appeal, but is nothing short of a success. I never thought I could associate myself with anyone who could be known as a psychopath, but I would gladly enjoy watching more adventures with this group of psychos anytime. If you're looking for a bloody good time, then Seven is your lucky number. Grade: B+

RBR: The Hunger Games

So there's this little movie called The Hunger Games, anybody here of it? Of course you have and seeing as how I'm probably the last person on Earth who hasn't seen the movie yet, it's probably futile to do a review. And yet here it is anyway. I began with a natural aversion to the film given what I felt was undue proclamation of its greatness before it even came out. Like the Twilight franchise, I'm naturally skeptical of the quality of anything coming out of the YA genre of literature. But unlike Twilight, this at least had a core premise that interested me, hence why I actually decided to give it a look.

If I could summarize my thoughts in the film in once sentence, it would be this: This is a good movie, that could have been a great movie. Having not read the books, I'm not quite sure if the film's faults are the result of the director's adaptation of the novel or a weakness in the source material. The film centers around a wealthy, vindictive capital city that forces young representatives from its poor, outlying districts to compete in a battle to the death. The first hour of the film devotes itself to the preparation, training, and theatrics that are associated with these games. Most of this is good, engaging stuff. As the film shifts to the games itself, it becomes an increasing frustrating and unsatisfying film. I sat there befuddled as to why the focus was on the character of Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence). Her story arc feels empty without getting a sufficient perspective from the viewers of these games. Not enough time is spent on either the rich Capital citizens, nor the lowly people of her district to make me invested in seeing her, or anyone else for that matter, succeed in this contest. Instead it's a dull, exploitative exercise in survival of the fittest.

You compare this to a film like The Truman Show, a movie with a similar theme of big brother watching over and profitting from the televising of other's actions. In that film, you really got a sense of the motivations from everyone involved. Here it's unclear as to why the Capital has any investment in who wins. We see people involved manipulate how the game is played with no explanation why. Likewise, we're meant to believe that Katniss winning is significant and will have some ramifications, but this also is unclear.

However, like I said this is a good movie. You get some decent performances from guys like Woody Harrelson, playing a former winner of the Games who now mentors current contestants, and Stanley Tucci, as the disingenuous talk show host overseeing the festivities. I also felt the movie clipped along at a good pace, never feeling slow. Finally, the romantic subplot does not overtake the film as I feared it would. Ultimately, if you haven't read the book, I don't think there's enough here for you to appreciate why this film has become such a huge sensation. And if you have read the book, well then you've already seen this movie, in which case my opinion doesn't matter. I can only hope moving forward, the film discovers where its narrative value is at and focuses on that. Rating: *** 1/2

Paths to greatness

I noted earlier this week in my Fall Movie Preview that Seven Psychopaths the latest film from In Bruges director, Martin McDonagh was a 'possible film of interest' for me. But after seeing this latest trailer, I'm thinking it might just be a must-see. See for yourself below, but warning - it's a red band trailer, so it's NSWF.