Hello Readers,
I hope you are doing well despite these uncertain and often confusing times. I know I get worried and have this anxiety seemingly lingering under everything I do. I have experienced people just losing all sense of manners or common sense for instance someone I've never met before threw pebbles at me because they claimed I was slamming my closet doors. I would like to hope that in a normal non-pandemic time this would have been handled differently on their part. Either way I did not care to have pebbles thrown at me for something that I was not aware I was doing. In the end since it seems people are so free to share what they do not care for below are some movies I've seen during this pandemic that I did not care for. In alphabetical order, I hope you stay well and positive.
6 Underground (2019). Ryan's Rating ✯1/2 out of 4
This expensive Netflix movie is directed by Michael Bay and stars Ryan Reynolds as the leader of a group of "Ghosts," spy like mercenaries with special skills (sharpshooting, get away driving, gymnastics, etc.), and they are working to prevent a military takeover in a European country. With a screenplay by the team that wrote the Deadpool movies Reynolds is pretty similar to his character there wisecracks and all, but this is a Michael Bay movie through and through so the action scenes are gargantuan and well done but the movie is long and not terribly interesting save for the action and Reynolds charism and sarcasm to carry the rest of the movie. A film scholar could also argue this is Michael Bay satirizing his own style in a way similar to Joel Silver making Fair Game back in the 90s. If you truly love Bay you'll probably like this, I found myself fast forwarding between action scenes.
The Assignment (1997) Ryan's Rating ✯✯
A fictionalized account of the hunt and capture of real life terrorist Carlos The Jackal. Starring Aidan Quinn as a US Naval officer who looks like Carlos and Donald Sutherland and Ben Kingsley as his CIA trainers/handlers. I remember when this came out it received a number of good reviews and I remember being interested because I liked Aidan Quinn. The movie did not really hold up as it plays more like a 1990s cable movie that focuses more on the day to day process of tracking Carlos rather than the action movie it seems to want to be. The three main actors give good performances but this will be one of those movies probably relegated to late night TV.
Backtrack or Catchfire (1990) Ryan's Rating ✯1/2
There are two versions of this film one a 98minute movie and the other a two hour director's cut. I saw the 98minute version. The story follows an artist (Jodie Foster) who witnesses an LA mob murder and then must flee for her life when a contract is put on her head. The mob hires a strange hitman named Milo (Dennis Hopper who also directed) to track her down but he falls in love with her and they take it on the lam. Hopper having regained some of his clout in the 1980s (after losing much of it in the 1970s) seems to be trying to make a film that takes the oddness of David Lynch's work but wrap it in a more upbeat almost comedic view. There are a number of big action sequences and also cameos from the likes of Joe Pesci, Bob Dylan, Charlie Sheen, Catherine Keener, Julie Adams, and Vincent Price among others. To be fair Hopper disowned this shorter version that had a limited release saying the studio messed up his movie. His director's cut was released on video after the success of Silence of the Lambs made Foster a box office star. So this longer version may be better but I found this short version more of a neat time capsule than anything else.
Drive (2011) Ryan's Rating ✯
An LA stunt driver (Ryan Gosling) moonlights as a getaway driver for anyone who is willing to pay his fee and agree to his terms. He falls for an attractive neighbor with a young son but when the woman's husband is released from prison his old criminal connections threaten the family and Gosling steps in to help which goes terribly wrong. This movie has split audiences and reviews, some love it some hate it. I didn't care for it, the cinematography is good and the big name cast brings depth to flat roles but the story or lack of story is poorly paced and the bursts of extreme violence in the second half really sunk it for me. Wants to be something along the lines of Michael Mann's Thief or Collateral but does not come close.
Killing Them Softly (2012) Ryan's Rating ✯1/2
I only watched this half way and then turned the movie off, so I can only review the first half. Set during the 2008 presidential election and economic recession a mafia protected gambling den is robbed and the mob calls in a hitman (Brad Pitt) to find who is responsible. Despite the advertising showing Pitt wielding a shotgun this is not really a gangster movie it's pace is lethargic and a number of scenes (especially those between Pitt and the late James Gandolfini) seem improvised or unedited to the point where they feel like a rehearsal for a theater production. Pitt is good in these type of character roles but he is not given very much to do in the first half, most of the time he is just listening to other people talk. Also many scenes are punctuated by a news story from 2008 featuring then Senators Obama and McCain and then President Bush and the parallel was not really clear to me in the first half anyway. Fine cast and a dark look to the film that sets the tone but left me cold.
Serenity (not related to the Joss Whedon Firefly franchise) (2019) Ryan's Rating ✯1/2
Be warned this review contains some plot spoilers. I'm on the fence about this one it is not a good movie but I was able to watch it all the way through without losing interest. Matthew McConaughey plays Baker, a fishing boat captain on a Caribbean island, who is obsessed with catching an elusive yellowfin tuna. one day his ex-wife (a blonde Anne Hathaway in femme fatale mode) shows up on his boat and asks Baker to kill her current abusive husband. He reluctantly agrees and [SPOILER] this is where the movie pulls the rug out from under the viewer and turns into science fiction. There are a number of hints and strange happenings that suddenly make sense when this twist occurs but it is such an elaborate change I actually said, "What?" to the TV. The first half of the film is fully a film noir/neo noir picture, Hathaway's fake blonde hair is clearly a reference to the classic Double Indemnity which has similar murder plot points, then it changes to a Sci-Fi mystery like The Thirteenth Floor or Total Recall. Some of the scenes and dialogue are very awkward, even over the top, but that may be the point I don't know when it was finished I knew this was not a good movie but I was not completely sorry I watched it.
