All the thoughts that are fit to publish.
Tag: Movies
‘Gifted’ aims for the heart, but leaves you with a stomach ache
Gifted is like pancake syrup-it looks warm and loving, and tastes sweet while serving as a catalyst for a fine meal, but in the end, it manipulates your taste buds into making a bad choice for your stomach, which then creates an ache. Allow me to explain.
Frank Adler (Chris Evans) just wants to lay low, raise his niece Mary (McKenna Grace), and create a small quaint life in the peaceful suburbs of Florida. There’s only one problem: Mary is a mathematical genius and stands head and shoulders above the rest of her first grade class and isn’t fitting in. When Frank refuses to send Mary to a prestigious school for gifted kids, certain measures are taken to ensue the young girl is given the “proper” education. But what exactly is “proper” for Mary and does it fit with Frank and the grandmother, Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan), who may have ulterior motives. (more…)
17 years later: The Fast and Furious franchise engine remains strong
A mixture of casting, locations, identity recognition, and stunt heaven.
‘Fate of the Furious’ is a special brand of fuel ejected movie swagger
Outrageous. Ridiculous. Far-fetched. Impossible. The Fast and the Furious franchise live mightily by the same descriptive words that would scare other producers, directors, and writers out of their minds if they were listed in their reviews. Here, it’s that special brand of fuel ejected swagger that separates their films from the pretenders.
It’s their code of honor-when the spring rolls around, it’s time for fast cars, beautiful women, dialogue with macho-infused fuel running through its veins, big sweaty bald-headed action stars, and outlandish stunts to take over. The Fate of the Furious-the eighth entry in the franchise that never sleeps and shows zero signs of dying-is a highly entertaining and luxurious experience for action fans to rejoice with for two hours.
This time, the Furious six are divided when their leader, Dominic Toretto (franchise face, Vin Diesel), goes rogue due to a mysterious piece of leverage held over him by Cipher (Charlize Theron). She exploits the main weakness of our rogue anti-hero, and that is the invaluable existence of family. This forces him to run his foe turned friend Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) off the road after a successful heist in Berlin, and leave the rest of the crew dazed and confused. (more…)
Boss Baby: An adult comedy trapped inside an animated kid film body
Thank you Tom McGrath and Marla Frazee for creating a kids film that parents can also appreciate. More than a mere animated film about the tyranny of an adopted “boss baby”, the film takes not so subtle glances at the responsibilities of a big brother and the effect that a new kid can have a household. It’s also a very funny film that will gather more chuckles out of its older audience than the preferred younger demographic, and that is for a simple reason: Alec Baldwin.
The actor’s voice work isn’t just spot on for the title role, but will remind cinemaholics of his brief yet legendary role in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross. Instead of telling poor young Tim (voice as a kid by Miles Christopher Bakshi and as adult by Tobey Maguire) to put the coffee down, the cookies are restricted in Michael McCullers script. When I finished watching Glengarry for the first time, all I wanted was more of Baldwin’s shadowy yet vital figure. With Boss Baby, I was given a full serving of his anarchic personality.
What’s it all about? Tim isn’t pleased when his parents (delightfully voiced by Jimmy Kimmel and Lisa Kudrow) welcome a baby brother, who is dressed like a Quentin Tarantino Reservoir Dog instead of a onesie. From the moment the baby sits down and the dinner table and belts out a cry, the older brother knows he has met his match. The baby has the two adults firmly placed in the palm of his hand, but Tim knows its more than simple cute looks and endearing giggling. (more…)
‘The Zookeeper’s Wife’ has a resounding impact
The Zookeeper’s Wife is an extremely moving film that relies on two things to power its engine: a small piece of World War II history and a strong cast to follow through on a director’s promise. While the film runs a little too long and shows us parts of WWII history that have been unfortunately over-cooked in our minds, it makes you feel and has a resounding impact.
This is the second film to reveal a powerful perspective of World War II in the past month on St. Louis movie screens, with the first being Land of Mine. While that particular film carried the tension of The Hurt Locker, The Zookeeper’s Wife is a mixture of drama and thriller that will lure a larger audience in. Namely, the part of the story that centers on animals. (more…)
Christopher Walken: From “who is that guy” to “freak of cinema”
My dad and I were watching True Romance one day when I was young, and a tall man appeared in this scene. He was larger than life, but not in the same manner as Arnold Schwarzenegger. He loomed over the camera like an inevitable storm, but didn’t make you hide in the addict. He made you interested in what he would do next. His hair was slicked back, his words pierced through the screen, and he was taking a small role, and essentially blowing it up. I looked at my dad and asked, “who is that guy?”
Christopher Walken has acted in 132 different films and television series’, with a few reprisals filtering a number of highly unique and wildly weird characters. Some would call that a lot of acting, Calling Walken an eccentric performer is like labeling Guinness as just another beer, because it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Walken is a freak of cinema, a man who likes to work has built up a resume of work that 99 percent of the acting population would crave. Last week, that freak of cinema-a man who has interrogated Dennis Hopper and broke Robert De Niro’s heart-turned 74 years young. (more…)
Christmas Vacation: The perfect holiday flick
Every patriarch knows the pain of Clark Griswold around the holidays. Trust me. The collision of family, responsibility of family, and the undeniable tension that comes with Christmas. One of John Hughes’ best scripts was Christmas Vacation and over 25 years later, it still has bite left in it. Some heat on its fastball. The movie still plays extremely well, all the jokes zinging like they were written yesterday and the actors buying in with great comic relief.
Most of the actors aren’t working much anymore. Chevy Chase was a movie star back then, but he has the occasional cameo or TV show these days. Randy Quaid’s Cousin Eddie still draws the best moments of the film, but the actor has gone cucko the past decade. Beverly D’Angelo, Juliette Lewis and Johnny Galecko(Big Bang Theory) aren’t exactly sleeping on the job, but they aren’t household names. That’s the jewel of some films. The movie undoubtedly outlasts the cast when it comes to value.
While The Christmas Story and It’s A Wonderful Life carry a certain special place in many movie fans hearts(and for good reason), Christmas Vacation is my gem and go to holiday film. I remember watching it with my dad many times as a kid, reveling in the awkward yet hilarious scenes between Quaid and Chase that draw the true laughs. As I have grown older and started a family of my own, the film has gained reverence and stature. Some things you just don’t understand when you are a kid. Meeting your parents’ expectations. Being a hero to your kids. Having the best house on the block. I see parts of Clark in myself and a lot of him in my dad. At their best, movies are mirror images of real life, especially when you watch them a few times.
The best part about Christmas Vacation was the honesty it depicted in family gatherings. The people you don’t look forward to seeing and the ones that cause your blood pressure to rise. Hughes didn’t sidestep the messy aspects of holiday dinners. It didn’t overdo the sap in the end either, involving cutthroat corporate policies with the strains it puts on certain families and the employees who hang their year end happiness on a bonus and not a jelly of the month membership. Without intention, Hughes created a classic that my son will be able to enjoy.
While Cousin Eddie’s raucous behavior will garner the most laughs, it’s the quiet moments with Clark and his family looking for trees, his comments to his co-workers at the end of a work day and an old man lighting a match next to a large tree with a squirrel in it that resonate. Every time I watch it, I pick up something different and unique.
This weekend, gather the family around and watch Christmas Vacation. Sure, your grandmother will talk about Chase’s roles in other films. Your uncle will register with Eddie’s thought process while he pops open his 15th beer. Your mother won’t understand why a man has to wear a hockey mask to trim a tree trunk. Your son will tell Clark to watch his language. Your dad won’t be able to take his eyes off the supermodel lingerie clerk and guess what, Julie Louise-Dreyfus gets attacked by a squirrel and a dog.
In the end, people will laugh and be glad they took it in. That’s Christmas. Flawed happiness that’s wholesome. That’s this movie. It’s perfect. It has bite, an edge and just enough warmth to keep your eyes from rolling.
One more thing. Don’t watch it on ABC Family. Get the unedited version. Spend the ten bucks at Target. The jokes land hard and right without a blanket attached for landing.
Robert Loggia: A classy face of cinema
A gangster named Frank Lopez in Scarface. A toy company CEO in Big. A priest. A wise man. A dozen cops. Two dozen other gangster roles. For over 64 years and 230 different movies and television roles, Robert Loggia was a face of cinema you couldn’t forget. General Grey in Independence Day! Loggia played three different characters on the 1970’s series, The Rockford Files. Charlie’s Angels. Starsky and Hutch.You name it and Loggia played it.
He was FBI agent Nick Mancuso for over 20 episodes. He was Coach Wally Rig in the Scott Bakula football cult classic, Necessary Roughness. Loggia, after five hard years of battling Alzheimer’s Disease, passed away Friday at the age of 85 years young. He earned every one of them and his work in the land of make believe to live on for decades. You can watch his movies on Netflix tonight if you wanted. He wasn’t in it for the fame and glitz. Loggia was a true actor. A worker. Hard edged and passionate.
Born and raised in New York City, Loggia broke into acting at the age of 21 years old and did more than four projects per year. Like Christopher Walken, he didn’t care what the role was. He just did it and did it well. In a way you would remember. No one will ever forget Loggia’s raspy laugh and street wide smile and cackle. It was a signature part of every role he played.
He never stopped working. In 2015, he had four releases planned and has three incomplete films slated for post production as this is typed. The only thing that could have kept Loggia off a set was his lovely wife Audrey, whom he was married to since 1982. What St. Louis and Missouri film fans may not know is that Loggia graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a journalism degree in 1951, the year he started acting. He served in the army and spent time on Broadway.
Nothing scared Loggia when it came to life or film. He was a month shy of his 86th birthday when he passed. The film world owes a debt to him. How many actors can you think of have acted in over 200 films or TV shows? How many have played in so many and elevated every single one they were in?
Loggia was a classic face of film, someone you see and smile knowing that the part he is playing will be played with fierce attention to detail and the authenticity that a film fan covets.
Stop by Netflix tonight and watch these Loggia aided films. Wide Awake, Over the Top, or the holiday film, An Evergreen Christmas.
Man Vs. Woman: Guilty Pleasures
It’s once again time for Kristen Ashly and Dan Buffa to go head to head in popular topics. One man. One woman. One topic. This week, it’s guilty pleasures. What do you watch and kind of feel bad about afterwards? What do you eat and wish you hadn’t done so? Is it something else? Do you like plaid shirts or turtlenecks or that polka dot dress or shirt? What is it?
Buffa- 1980’s and early 1990’s action films.
Little dialogue, little logic and lots of one liners, muscles and bad special effects powered action. Fist crackling fun. I am talking Robocop. Commando. Lock up. Cobra. Double Impact. Lionheart. Out for Justice. Showdown in Little Tokyo. Soak it up ladies and gents. They don’t make them like they used to, and for the most part that’s a good thing.
Remember Out for Justice. Sure you don’t. The bar scene where Steven Seagal walks in, covered in black and rocking a pony tail, looking for William Forsyth’s Richie. Clean shaven (facial hair was petrified to grow on that face) and moving like a jungle cat, Seagal stalks the place before kicking the shit out of everybody in sight. Check it out.
I don’t know what it is about these films, but I eat them up like skittles. As Seagal says in the clip, maybe it’s my need to impose my will on my fantasies. How one man can walk into a room, talk tough, and back it up with an ass whopping few men can handle. He didn’t need bulging muscles either. Just a well-known mastery of many martial arts. Did I mention the man wore all black? Fear and common sense are the only things that could stop Seagal and even they failed miserably.
Commando. Arnold in his heyday. A one man army looking for his daughter and stopping at nothing until he got his girl back. It’s 85 minutes that seems like 25 because all Arnold (who also doesn’t need a beard to be tough) does is find people, beat them up and collect guns and one liners along the way. “Let off some steam, Bennett!” So good.
What was better than Jean Claude Van Damme back in the day? Two Van Dammes! Try out Double Impact, where twin brothers from Belgium with knots on their foreheads dish out leg kicks like pizza at a parlor on Friday night.
Cobra. Under-appreciated Stallone classics. Sly’s cop in Cobra didn’t utter more than 10 words but he had a cool pistol with a…guess what…cobra on it and he wore an incredibly heavy trench coat and rocked a little stubble. What else did a man need in 1986?
They don’t make them that hot anymore. Special effects, box office needs, superheroes and the need for remakes have drowned out the glorious days of a movie simply about “one man, one job and one line required in the alphabet”. It’s a dead ship that must be revisited from time to time. Watch one of these movies and make a cheap Jack’s frozen pizza while you do it. Drink a six-pack of cheap beer too, like Stag or Steel Reserve.
Kristen- Taylor Swift
Yeah, I can hear you grumbling. I don’t care.
Taylor, born in Wyomissing, PA, moved to Nashville at the young age of 14 to pursue a career in country music. She did just that. She became the youngest songwriter ever hired by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house. The release of Swift’s self-titled debut album in 2006 shot her to the top of stardom. Her third single, “Our Song,” made her the youngest person to single-handedly write and perform a number one song on the Hot Country Songs chart.
Her second album, Fearless, became the best-selling album of 2009 in the United States. The album won four Grammy Awards, making Swift the youngest ever Album of the Year winner. Swift’s third and fourth albums, 2010’s Speak Now and 2012’s Red, both sold more than one million copies within the first week of their U.S release.
As a songwriter, she has been honored by the Nashville Songwriters Association and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Swift’s other achievements include seven Grammy Awards, 22 Billboard Music Awards, 11 Country Music Association Awards, eight Academy of Country Music Awards, and one Brit Award. She is one of the best-selling artists of all time, having sold more than 40 million albums—including 27.1 million in the U.S.—and 130 million single downloads.
The facts speak for themselves. Sure, most of her record sales were due to her ever growing crowd of tween fans, but that crowd is arguably the biggest track buying group, anyways.
Personally, her music speaks to me. She’s a few years younger than me, but I went through similar trials and tribulations. Every girl in her teens and early 20s likely will. Her music is classic, timeless, and ever evolving. Yet, her message never changes: women and girls have needs and wants, and you should listen to them. Her style is also classic and timeless. She’s tall, blonde, lovely, and rocks red lips like no other. She always reminds me of the movie starlets from the early years, with no regret. Just look:
Her personal life is pretty public, and critics and haters often bash her for that reason. But really, who hasn’t had a roller coaster of a love life? Who hasn’t made dumb decisions they later regretted, especially at such a young age? Throw the first stone.
I’m not the only one who thinks she’s talented, and her songs catchy. Artists like Bill Withers, Neil Young, Elvis Costello, Jon Bon Jovi, and Lindsey Buckingham have all sung her praises, stating she’s sure to stick around for a long time. How can you argue with any of them? You can’t. Just try. No, really.
If you ever get the pleasure of seeing me cruise around town, just watch for the song I’m singing at the top of my lungs: guarantee it’s a Swift.
Kristen Ashly contributes to Up All Night News. Follow on Twitter @KristenAshly.
Dose of Buffa 