The Boondock Saints

I have been a "mega-fan" of "The Walking Dead" since the night it aired that fateful Sunday last year. What's more, I like Daryl the best of any character on the show. Daryl is played by Norman Reedus who's other claim to fame was an indie film from long ago called The Boondock Saints. I have only seen the movie once in 1999, and I remembered I liked it, but through the channels all I have heard is how unbelievably AWESOME it is. I had to watch it again and the one word that comes to mind...Regret. As in, I Regret I have not seen this film at least 10 times by now. The film itself is very original. Actually, it sort of rips off The Bible. Ya, That Bible. As in the Angel of Death. Doing God's work by exterminating the evil for no self gain. The story written by Troy Duffy and funny enough Directed by him as well. I say funny enough because Troy was not a film maker at all. The documentary "Overnight" is a brilliant look at what Troy did to not only get his film made, but to place him behind the camera. If you can find the documentary, WATCH IT!!! It makes the already magnificent Boondock Saints even better. The Saints as they are called are Connor (Sean Patrick Flanery aka Powder) and Murphy (Reedus) MacManus. Two normal Irish born Americans who feel the "hand of God." These brothers just like to work and like to drink. We pick up with them on St. Paddy's day and all is well. When they get roped into a bar brawl with some nasty Russians, they leave them embarrassed and pissed off. When the sneaky Ruskies show up to make the boys pay the ultimate price things get out of hand, and the Russians end up taking a dumpster nap. This murder/manslaughter gets the attention of Detective Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe). He wants answers, but the boys are not what he is looking for. After this first experience gets them branded as heroes, the boys feel they must continue God's work by taking out all the scum of the city. The rest of the film follows them carrying out their mission, while the baddies put a price on their heads, and all the while Dafoe's performance as the eccentric detective is the show stealer. A fantastic story, great action, and even better comedy. Obee Kabee. Aequitas/Veritas.

"And shepherds we shall be, for Thee, my Lord, for Thee. Power hath descended forth from Thy hand, that our feet may swiftly carry out Thy command. So we shall flow a river forth to Thee and teeming with souls shall it ever be, In nomine Patri, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen" 

  The Brother's prayer before the deed is as awesome or more awesome than Sam Jackson's quote from Pulp Fiction.

NBM rates The Boondock Saints - A Cinematic Work of Art, and though I didn't review it, The Documentary about Troy Duffy mentioned earlier in this post would receive the same rating.

Green Lantern 2.0 (Jester's Version)

When Green Lantern hit theaters this past summer, I had no desire to watch another DC comics failure. NBM guest writer "Superman" had different thoughts and he scribed the review for this film a couple of days after it's theatrical release, then he bought it on Blu Ray when it came out, and finally he loaned it to me. It sat there for over a month waiting for me to have nothing better to watch or do. Now that I have seen it, I feel I must write some words about it. It did not exceed my expectations and it did not fall short of my expectations. Truth be told I had very little expectations to begin with, which suck because I do love Ryan Reynolds. I am not a comic book guy, however I do like the stories that have spawned an entire generation of decent to fantastic comic book films. Marvel definitely has the edge on the market, and by that I do not mean in terms of characters. The characters do have a lot to do with a film, but overall, it's the direction and story that make or break it. Marvel has had a few flubs along the way, but since X-Men broke over 11 years ago, the success rate for a Marvel movie is very high. Maybe they have been doing it long enough to understand the formula. Hal Jordan (Reynolds) is the son of a military pilot, so naturally that is what he wants to be. He is one, and a cocky one at that. No accountability whatsoever for any of his actions. He is a selfish pilot, a selfish man, and a selfish lover. That last one is merely an observation on my part. When an alien ship crashes to Earth, the Alien's "costume jewelry" chooses Hal as this Aliens predecessor in the Green Lantern corps. After Hal inherits his ring, he is the first human to be in the corps, and he doesn't know what that means. He doesn't even know what the corps is or does. He does know he has to speak the oath to the lantern which is the funniest scene in the movie...."To infinity and beyond the Power of Greyskull. Amen" The CG is extreme and the story is mediocre. If you are a comic book guy, I'm sure you knew all the players in the film. I, however, thought Sinestro (Mark Strong) was a baddie from all the trailers I watched. I pay attention and read a lot of movie news and spoiler sites and the fact that I was wrong about such a detail proves that the marketing campaign for Green Lantern sucked. They didn't do their jobs to promote what the movie was. They expected everyone to know everything about this Green Lantern world, and that's just not the case. Hal is the first Human in the corps, and this bothers some of the other corps members. You see to be a Green Lantern, you must not have fear, and it is Human nature to be fearful. After a couple of cool scenes, and a few good jokes it comes to an end. As I have always preached here at No Bad Movies, I never regret watching any movie, but whether I watch it again usually determines how I feel about it. I will never watch this again and depending on whether or not I like you will determine if I tell you to watch it or not. Now that see how I feel, here is a link to the original Lantern review from Superman.

Jester rates the Green Lantern - Good

Hesher

Take a good hard look. Yep, that's Joseph Gordon Levitt in what I think is one of his best roles. Let's face it, he did not need the role of Hesher to break out if you will. He is an indie god among actors and viewers alike. He can do whatever he wants and he will be respected. Hesher proves that. His character is one of the most vile people ever written. These people do exist, but with movies we like to be shown things that are sugar coated and not like the norm. He is a bitter young man, who hates everyone and everything. He speaks his mind, listens almost strictly to Metallica and He is also a pyroMANIAC. As impactful as Hesher is with everyone who is unlucky enough to meet him, the real story of this film is about a young boy named TJ Forney. TJ is  on the mend as is his father Paul (Rainn Wilson in his best role to date). They have just lost their wife and mother and neither of them knows how to cope. Paul turns to anti depressants in bulk form. He may as well be a zombie. TJ, only being 11 or so, does not have the luxury of drowning his sorrow in booze or drugs. He has to deal with his pain all on his own. Paul and TJ are living with Paul's mother trying to pick up the pieces. Life is hard enough for this family, what they don't need is an abusive, destructive, foul mouthed pothead squatter. Enter Hesher!! I said they DIDN'T need that. Anyway, Hesher comes to live with them because TJ blew off some steam. A funky happenstance. Either way, TJ is responsible for getting Hesher evicted from his layer. Now Hesher is gonna real mess up some lives...or is he? The first half of the film is filled with one liners that mostly include a non chalant F word followed by a Heavy Metal rim shot. BRILLIANT. He is funny because he doesn't give a rat's ass about anything. No one really says anything to him except Grandma. She likes Hesher. He talks to her and she is lonely. We get the feeling that Hesher is a guardian angel of sorts. Put there to protect TJ from a bully who is ruining his already crappy existence. Not the case. Hesher actually watches the bully beat up on TJ, and he does nothing. Then we think, maybe Hesher is teaching TJ that no one will ever be there for you, so you should defend and fend for yourself. Nope, wrong again. Hesher is truly a selfish individual that puts everyone around him into awful situations only to bail on them in their time of need. Most of the time, he is both the cause and effect of every bad situation. The film has great visuals throughout. His crap tattoos, his artwork, his van etc.. It also shows, in great fashion, the turning point in Hesher's mentality. What he really needs or wants. We watch TJ and his Dad go at each other's throats while Hesher just sits there eating his dinner. It really begins to look like he may be the normal one in this equation. He goes from dropping F Bombs to talking in nothing but sexually explicit language. That change comes when Nicole (A very drab looking Natalie Portman) shows up. She kind of becomes the third wheel with Hesher and TJ. I really wanted to rate this film A Work of Cinematic Art, especially after the crap I gave to There Will Be Blood yesterday, but alas, Hesher is too just half of a Perfect movie. The second half also derails in this film. It is only 1 hour 43 minutes, but it could have been trimmed. The last 23 minutes are a bit of the writers just seeing what they could get away with. We see Hesher go through a change, then revert, but we also see how he sees the world. He will always keep his guard up, and no one will ever get in. JGL offers up a performance that I could see as being hard. He does things in Hesher that as a human being would be hard to do. He is a bit of a psychopath, but JGL gives him life. He makes us care about him. I think if you can handle all the bad language and how douchey Hesher is most of the time, you will enjoy this.

PS. The swimming pool scene where Hesher emulates Luke Skywalker is absolutely hilarious. I laughed very hard for the first 35-45 minutes, then I felt really bad for the last 45 minutes with a few more laughs thrown in.

NBM rates Hesher Phenomenal

There Will Be Blood

Did Daniel Day-Lewis deserve his Oscar win for TWBB? YES!! Did I love it? Sort of. Vastly hailed as a "Work of Art", which is a term I loosely throw around here on NBM as the highest of the high in terms of ratings. I do agree with the statement, but TWBB is not going to receive the coveted "Work of Cinematic Art" rating the Writers, Actors, and Director so strived from NBM,  when doing this film 3 years before I started my site. Only 58 films out of the 421 I have reviewed have received this rating, and TWBB was really close. I am going to tell you why it could have, then why I ultimately took the prestigious prize away, much like they do to coked up, sex scandal clad Miss America pageanteers. The movie begins in 1898 with Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) hunting for gold. Let's just say it's not going well, but he is determined to make something of this life, so he never gives up. Move forward a few years. Gold is out, oil is in. Now Plainview is an oil man. He is good at what he does, but more than anything, he is a salesman. He gives property owners low dollar leases to be able to drill their land. Big signing bonuses blinds the property owners to signing anything The first hour shows Daniel's mentality toward success and also his mentality toward anyone who disagrees with him. He is doin well, but not well enough. Then a young man named Paul gives him a lottery ticket. All he has to do is cash it in, and without hesitation he does. Paul sends him to a town undrilled, where oil literally lies on top of the ground. Daniel buys the whole damn town, and this will be his legacy. Daniel plays the demented really well, but he does have honest love for his son. That is the best part of him. Then the second half of film kind of trails on and on about how crazy this man is. It goes all the way into the year 1927, where HW is grown and married. It follows his downward spiral through all of his successes, but at 2 hours 30 minutes, it is drawn out. I think the story is still brilliant, but I think the director (who also wrote the script) wanted to indulge himself in his own epic. I loved the work aspect. How hard everyone strived for the same goal, but watching Daniel continue to shut himself off from everyone and everything just went too far. The main constant in TWBB is the relationship Daniel has with the local preacher Eli. Don't think because I said relationship, that these two liked each other. Daniel went out of is way to humiliate the preacher, and this quarrel was very public for 20 years, but luckily for us viewers, their story does come to a close before the credits role. Maybe the long running time is necessary to close all the gaps, fill all the holes, and leave nothing to our imagination. It's all very black and white and there is no one who would be able to come up with some sort of analogy for Daniel's actions. He is a psycho. A very wealthy psycho, nonetheless, still a psycho. That's it.

NBM rates There Will Be Blood - Phenomenal

Tower Heist

Eddie Murphy is back... in a sense. A PG-13 Eddie is better than the kids movie Eddie of the last 10 years. As much as I was looking forward to seeing Murphy back to business, he was not in the film as much as I thought he would be. He is very intrical, and every scene he is in, he steals...except maybe the one featuring him and Gabourey Sidibe (Pictured above). I finally have a reason to agree with people that Brett Ratner is a good Director. This film is directed phenomenally. The angles he uses and reflections. It all felt real, even when, we as the audience, know what we are seeing is impossible. He did a really good job. The cast is the best part which is the way it should be. To join cult icon Ferris Bueller with cult icon Axel Foley, then add the usually unfunny Stiller to lead the crew (although I liked him in this film) with a guy who has cut his comedic teeth in 2011, I'm talking about Michael Pena, who was the funniest person in 30 Minutes or Less and lastly add the dry wit and brilliant uncomfortableness of Casey Affleck you get an all star cast with real chemistry. I think Casey Affleck was brought on because of his time on the Ocean's movies. They needed a guy with previous "caper" experience and he was that guy, mostly because I think Carl Reiner is dead. Alan Alda (Hollywood Royalty) is the perfect cast call for the character of Mr. Shaw. He is the problem with everyone's lives in the film. He is a big shot investment banker who not only loses everyone's money, but probably won't be held accountable, and still has a nest egg of considerable amounts all to himself. He lives in the multi million dollar penthouse of the building aptly named The Towers. When he is indicted, Josh (Stiller) knows he is in a personal kind of trouble. Josh is the building manager of the prestigious Towers, and he has invested all of his employee's pensions with Shaw. They did not know he did this, but he thought they would appreciate having their portfolios tripled. Instead everyone who has worked for Josh for 10 years lost everything. Josh has to right this wrong. He is pissed at Shaw - a man he considered his friend - but he is more disgusted with himself. He assembles a rag tag team to take from Shaw what he has left. An estimated $20 Million. He wants it for his friends and colleagues who lost all their money. The film's flow is so good, we are unaware of every relationship among the people on screen until we are informed. That is just good story telling. Like I said, Murphy does not make an impact until 30 minutes in, but when he does, I had a big smile. I would not be surprised to find out he adlibbed many of his lines and jokes which he delivers in classic Murphy fashion. Josh is not going to be denied, but he may not have a choice in the matter. He is being watched semi closely by the FBI agent who is working the Shaw case. She (Leoni) also happens to be interested in Josh on a personal level. This does add complications, but with continued great story telling, it rounds out solidly. I wanted more when the short 1 hour 39 minute movie was over. It could be sequeled I think, even though it wasn't really left open. It's just a good cast that could definitely work together again. Sitting at 69% on RT , it has surprised almost everyone who watched the trailers. I think it deserves to be more along the lines of 75%. An absolute fun action comedy that Hollywood as a whole needed. It keeps hope alive that good films can still be made.


NBM rates Tower Heist - Phenomenal

Hanna

What a fun movie to watch. I had some expectation of what Hanna was going to be, but what I got was a bit different. Good different. The cinematography was second to none, and the Chemical Brothers soundtrack synced up with the sequences perfectly. Hanna is raised in isolation on a snowy continent by her Father Erik (Eric Bana). When know from the trailers that he has raised her to be a perfect soldier, or hunter, or maybe just a survivalist. What we are a little unclear about is why. He trains her, teaches her any language she may ever need, and makes her unafraid of the world she does not know. She is 16 and has not experienced anything. Then her time has come. She is ready. Ready for what? That is what the film really is about. The revenge Erik wants on his former employer Marissa (Blanchett), who is a government handler for spies and secret agents. When Hanna is taken into custody by her own free will, the movie is off like a rocket. She is smart and trained and has her orders. Failure is an unknown word to her, and Saoirse Ronan is absolutely one of the elite young actresses in Hollywood today. Hanna takes us on a thrill ride of unanswered questions, laced with really good, if not some of the best, fight scenes ever. As much as I thought this would be an Eric Bana vehicle, it was actually more to showcase the brilliance of Miss Ronan. The way she never hesitates to the way she handles herself and her firearms really showed me that she very well could be what the film was making her out to be. If you can't tell, I really enjoyed this film, and though I love Cate Blanchett, the southern accent was not the worst I've heard, but not the best either. Andrew Lincoln from The Walking Dead, who is also British, does a much more believable southern accent. She tried to hard, and that is why she failed. True southern is about talking slower and drawing out the syllables, not emphasizing every syllable like she did. Her flaw did not over shadow the brilliance that is Hanna. It was not so "Nicolas Cage" over the top, that it was distracting, and it does not change my opinion of the overall story. Truth be told, Hanna is one bad mother. The last aspect I am going to discuss is the overall direction. In a word, PERFECT. The way we see Hanna light up seeing the world for the first time, and being terrified of running water or fascinated with electricity was done so good it had to be done. Director Joe Wright only needed a couple of very short scenes to set the stage of the lead character's entire mentality and he did it so well. You will enjoy what Hanna is, I'm sure of it.

NBM rates Hanna - Phenomenal

Catching Hell

Dean-O here.

I need to disclose a few things before I start:

1. I grew up in the Chicago area
2. I am a devout Cubs fan
3. I drove 8 hours from Orlando to Atlanta early on Sunday, October 5^th, 2003 and sat down the 3^rd base line at Turner Field that evening as the Chicago Cubs defeated the Atlanta Braves in Game 5 of their Division Championship Series, putting them 4 wins away from making their first World Series appearance since the 1940’s. After the game, I drove back home and went to work without sleeping…or without a voice.

Needless to say, I was consumed with the ensuing Cubs chase for the National League pennant against the Florida Marlins. I was elated after the Cubs took a commanding 3-1 series lead after 4 games. And I was on the borderline of hysteria as I watched Game 6 unfold on my TV. The Cubs were up 3-0 going into the 8^th inning. Mark Prior was on the mound and he was dominant. A lifetime of dreams was in our grasp. The Cubs were on the cusp of making it to the World Series.

Then, a fly ball went down the left field line, and everything changed.

It became known as “The Bartman Ball”. Steve Bartman, an unassuming 20-something fan ended up touching the ball as Moises Alou, the Cubs left fielder, reached up to try and catch it. Alou didn’t make the catch, and he immediately reacted with outrage. The ensuing collapse by the Cubs is epic, legendary, and still makes me sick to my stomach. Bigger than that, though, is the reaction to Bartman that occurred during the game. He was isolated, taunted, vilified, and became the symbolic scapegoat for the Cubs failure.

Last month, ESPN Films released a documentary by Alex Gibney titled “Catching Hell”. In his film, he examines the notions of “curses” and “scapegoats” while providing an in-depth perspective on that fateful play and the subsequent fall-out. ESPN Films has produced many impactful documentaries as a part of their “30 for 30” series, and this was no exception. Obviously, this film brought back some painful memories, but I was fascinated by two aspects of his film in particular. First, he incorporated footage from two amateur documentarians – one guy behind the video camera, one guy in front of it. They recorded the experience of arriving at the ballpark that day, getting to their seats in the left field bleachers, and giving their own “fan reaction” running commentary of the events as they unfolded. What this footage captured that Fox TV Network coverage did not was the raw emotion of the fans as the 8^th inning unfolded. The feeling in the stadium went from jubilation to confusion to disbelief to anger and hatred…all within a span of 30 minutes. Most of that anger was directed at the kid in the left field seat…not to the product on the playing field. To watch that “gang mentality” play out so clearly on film and tying it to the coverage that Fox provided – essentially fueling it without fully appreciating the impact they were having – it was a masterful presentation on Gibney’s part. Equally as enthralling was the “behind the scenes” footage – the interviews with the Fox TV producer and commentators, with security personnel at the stadium that day, and with those in the seats around Bartman. They all played a part in the way that the events unfolded around this young man, and hearing first-hand accounts of how he had to be hidden, disguised and escorted to a temporary location before eventually going to his hotel room was captivating. Above all else, though, hearing the story of Bartman’s confusion over what had transpired, his watching the replays of the events in the bowels of Wrigley Field’s security office, his remorse and his outright fear – it was compelling.

While there were parts of this film that I could have done without – specifically the preacher who goes into a diatribe on scapegoating and blowing up the “Bartman Ball” – I was really impressed with this film. Going into it, I thought I knew what to expect. After all, I lived through these events. Gibney managed to give viewers a comprehensive perspective on the incident and the fallout from it. I learned more about the event and the person it impacted than I knew going in, and it made me reflect back on those events in a new light. This film is as much a study in human behavior as it is a dissection of an unfortunate event in a historic baseball series, and I would recommend it to anyone – Cubs fan or not!

NBM rates Catching Hell as Awesome.