The Out-of-Focus Guy's blog

Movie Mini-Review: Chronicle

"Chronicle", a new film directed by Josh Trank and written by Max Landis, is basically a mash-up of "Carrie" and the Japanese anime "Akira".  In this film, three high school seniors go down a hole in the Seattle suburbs and acquire telekinetic super-powers from a seemingly alien source.  Steve (Michael B. Jordan), the popular kid, enjoys his powers but it doesn't change his life much.  Matt (Alex Russell), the smart kid, tries to instill some conscience in his fellow super-powered teens by creating a list of rules for how they should use their powers.  Andrew (Dane DeHaan), the shy kid and also Matt's cousin, uses his powers to try to better his life.  At first, Steve encourages Andrew to use his powers to become popular like him and get girls.  When that unfortunately backfires, Andrew's embarassment combined with his horrible family situation causes him to abuse his powers and get revenge.  The director uses the found footage method of telling the story and that format limits what they can show.  It's entertaining enough (the kids use their powers mischievously in the beginning) to rate a B.

Movie Mini-Review: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

"Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" is the last of the 2011 films that I saw.  It's okay, good enough for a B-.  Stephen Daldry's film is about a New York kid's (Thomas Horn) quest to make sense of his father's (Tom Hanks, in flashback) death in the 9/11 attacks.  Oskar, the kid, has a social disorder similar to Asperger's.  His father, Thomas, was a biochemist by training and a jeweler in practice.  His father designs games to force Oskar to socialize with people.  A year after his father's death, Oskar musters enough courage to look at his father's belongings and accidentally finds a key in a vase.  He believes that the key unlocks something as part of his father's games.  The only other clue he discovers is the name 'Black' on the envelope where the key was found.  Oskar sees his quest as a last chance to be with his father.  Overall, I was wishing this movie would be more affecting emotionally.  It doesn't help matters that the son comes across as kind of mean-spirited in his bluntness.  He neglects his mom (Sandra Bullock) throughout his quest.  Oskar gets help from the old man (Max von Sydow) who rents a room from his grandmother, and their connection has more meaning as time goes on.  Viola Davis and Jeffrey Wright play two of the many people named 'Black' that Oskar meets.  It's not as bad as some of the critics make it sound, but it could be a lot better.

Movie Mini-Review: Haywire

"Haywire" is the first Steven Soderbergh film I have liked.  I would rate it as an A-.  I have seen "Traffic" (some parts are good) and "Contagion" (same thing), and I feel that his movies tend to have good cinematography and a unique style, but are somewhat cold.    This film works as an action film and is a hybrid of "Kill Bill" and "The Bourne Identity".  Mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano plays Mallory Kane, an operative for a private security firm who is asked by her boss, Kenneth (Ewan McGregor), to work one more mission for him before she leaves the company.  After completing a mission in Barcelona to rescue a Chinese journalist (Anthony Brandon Wong), Mallory is assigned to pretend to be the wife of a British MI6 agent, Paul (Michael Fassbender), in Dublin.  Malloy discovers that she has been framed as a rogue agent and that assassins are trying to kill her.  The rest of the film has her trying to turn the tables on her betrayer.  The fight scenes are all good and Carano is adequate as an actress.  Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas and Channing Tatum co-star in the movie.   To me, it's the first good movie released in 2012.

Movie Mini-Review: War Horse

Steven Spielberg's second film of 2011, "War Horse", is adequate entertainment.  As such, it's a B.  Albert (Jeremy Irvine), a young British teen,  raises a brown horse he names 'Joey' after his father (Peter Mullan) wins an auction by outbidding his landlord (David Thewlis).  Albert's father needs the horse to plow his land so he can sell the crops he raises in order to pay back rent to his landlord.  An unfortunate rainstorm forces Albert's father into selling the horse.  Albert finds out that the horse was sold to the English cavalry (just as World War I starts) and the officer who buys the horse (Tom Hiddleston) promises to return the horse to Albert after the war.  As the war progresses, Joey ends up with different owners (and serving both the British and German military).  The viewer's enjoyment of this movie is dependent on how invested you are in the horse.  I thought it worked for the most part, but the fact that the boy and his horse were separated for so long that it was harder to feel their bond.  As usual, the directing and cinematography (by Janusz Kaminski) are great.   Acting is very good (including the horse!).  The story meanders a bit, but it ends up where you expect to end.

Movie Mini-Review: The Adventures of Tintin

Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson made "The Adventures of Tintin", their first collaborated movie.  It's pretty good, so I would rate it a B+.  The story is about teen reporter Tintin (Jamie Bell), who finds himself in an adventure after buying a model of the sailing ship "The Unicorn" at a flea market.  Another would-be buyer of the ship, Sakharine (Daniel Craig), tries to obtain it from Tintin by any means possible.  The ship contains a message that leaves clues to where a treasure can be found from 17th century sailor Sir Francis Haddock.  Haddock's descendant, Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), is being held hostage on his own ship by Sakharine.  Sakharine hopes that Haddock holds the key to where the treasure can be found.  Meanwhile, Tintin is aided (on occasion) by incompetent detectives Thomson and Thompson (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost).  It's a fun, colorful adventure.  The computer animated characters (done by motion capture) do not have the "dead eyes" of other motion capture characters.  Some of the film will remind viewers of the Indiana Jones movies.  It's pretty good.

Movie Mini-Review: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Director Brad Bird has made a well-directed movie, "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol", that suffers from the same problem as all of the MI movies: a weak script.  The best one was MI3, directed by J.J. Abrams, which had the best script of all of the movies.  This one rates a B.  The plot is the same as all of the movies: The IMF operatives get betrayed or attacked somehow and need to stop the villain from executing his evil plan.  In this case, the story follows a crazy terrorist (Michael Nykvist) who steals nuclear bomb detonation codes and frames the IMF team.  Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is aided by Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg, also in the third movie), Jane Carter (Paula Patton) and William Brandt (Jeremy Renner), who joins the team after being an aide to the Defense secretary in charge of the IMF team (Tom Wilkinson).  Hunt is sprung from a Moscow prison by the IMF team (he was imprisoned for killing people outside of his mission) in order to replace a team member (Josh Holloway) who was assassinated on a mission.  Their missions take place all over the world: Russia, Dubai, and India.  It's a good, not great, film.

Movie Mini-Review: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

The British thriller, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" is a bit of a disappointment.  I would rate it as a B-.  The script is more confusing than it needs to be, so I'm sure a lot of viewers got lost in the explanation of the mystery.  Retired spy, George Smiley (Gary Oldman), is brought back to help find a Soviet mole in their midst.  His suspects are his colleagues (played by Colin Firth, Ciaran Hinds,  David Dencik, and Toby Jones).  He is aided by a current spy, Peter (Benedict Cumberbatch), and he uses Peter to find evidence at headquarters while he also remembers his interactions with his co-workers to find more clues.  Smiley uses a former spy coming in out of the cold (Tom Hardy) as bait to find the mole.  When he finally does, the clues are not reviewed to make it obvious as to how Smiley came to that conclusion.  John Hurt plays Smiley's old boss, who first came up with the theory of the Soviet mole.  Mark Strong plays a spy who was shot and captured in Hungary after a botched mission, and his return to the UK holds the key to solving the mystery.  Acting is very good and direction by Tomas Alfredson was fine.  If the script had been polished a bit more, this could have been a really good movie.

Movie Mini-Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Director David Fincher's remake of the Swedish film, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", mostly improves upon the original.  I would grade it as a B+.  The plot follows the original rather closely: Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) leaves his job at news magazine Millenium when he loses a libel lawsuit and is hired by Swedish industrialist Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to solve the mystery of the murder of his beloved niece, Harriet.  So the rest of his family doesn't discover his intentions, Vanger says he hired Blomkvist to write his biography.  He suspects that a member of his family murdered his niece, so he gives Blomkvist all of the evidence he has acquired over the years.  Blomkvist hits a dead end when Vanger is hospitalized and near death, so he asks for an assistant so he can finish his research.  He hires Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), a punk/goth computer hacker (the title character) who had originally been enlisted to discover how clean Blomkvist was by the security company hired by Vanger.  The clues to the murder mystery are actually clearer than the original movie, but the ending felt a little overlong.    The acting was terrific (especially Mara) and the directing was excellent, as usual.  Robin Wright appears as Blomkvist's co-editor and sometime lover, while Stellan Skarsgård plays Martin Vanger, the current head of the Vanger business empire.   Be warned that there are some violent scenes in the movie.

Movie Mini-Review: The Artist

Michel Hazanicius' film, "The Artist", chronicles the fall of silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) and the rise of new talkie actress Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo) from 1927 to the early 1930s.  The story is told as a silent film in black and white with occasional dialog cards.  The gimmick works pretty well.  I would rate this movie as a B+.  At the beginning of the film, George is a wealthy and famous silent film star who literally bumps into dancer Peppy.  She gets into the film business as a bit player and eventually becomes a big star when the studio is looking for new actors as they expand into talking movies.  Meanwhile, the studio abandons George and he is forced to go on his own.  The talkies become a huge hit and George's fortunes fall when the Stock Market crash occurs in 1929 and his movies bomb.  The film follows the plot of "A Star Is Born", for the most part, and that's the good and bad of the film.  It's a bit too familiar, so only the silent film storytelling makes it different.  The film has a nice ending that makes up for some of the slow periods in the movie.  There are nice supporting performances by James Cromwell as George's loyal driver and Uggie the Jack Russell terrier as George's loyal dog, Jack.  The directing is good and the acting is expressive enough to tell the story without the dialog.

Movie Mini-Review: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Director Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes sequel,  "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows", is good, but not great.  It rates a B.  Like the first film, it stars Robert Downey, Jr. as Sherlock Holmes and Jude Law as his sidekick, Dr. Watson.  The story continues much of the plot from the first film: Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris), Holmes' nemesis, is now front and center as a villain and is basically trying to start World War I before it actually happened.  Dr. Watson is getting married, but Holmes is too busy trying to figure out Moriarty's schemes to do a proper job as best man.  Holmes' brother Mycroft (Stephen Fry) and Holmes' love interest from the first film, Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), both appear.  A gypsy fortune teller, Simza (Noomi Rapace), is a target for assassination by Moriarty's goons, and this draws Holmes to the case.  The villain is (naturally) stronger in this film, but the film never gets above a mild boil.  I liked it, but I wish it was better.