Hello readers, here are a few more movie reviews for films I've seen during this pandemic. I hope you enjoy.
This Netflix original movie (that was on the autoplay preview right when you logged in a few months back) stars Jamie Foxx as a former soldier tracking a new street drug called POWER which gives its users super powers (the results vary by user balls of fire from their hands, super speed, healing powers, massive strength, etc) for only five minutes. He is tracking the drug to its source in order to rescue his kidnapped daughter who plays a key role in POWER's creation. Along the way Foxx teams up with a teenaged dealer (Dominique Fishback who played Darlene on HBO's excellent series The Deuce) and a New Orleans Police Officer (Joseph Gordon-Levitt in full wisecracking cop portrayal). I have to say I found the movie entertaining though if you think about any of the plot it does not make much sense and there are holes galore in the story (for instance at certain points in the film they say the drug activates something in the user and they won't know until it is taken what power they will get, then later it seems there are specific pills that have specific powers). Also the superpowers that are created are not much different than what we see in the X-Men films I've seen some reviewers bemoan that lack of newness but that didn't bother me personally. The film benefits greatly from the three stars, especially Foxx's charisma and star power (no pun intended) as well as the location of New Orleans. If it had been set in Los Angeles it would have been too similar to too many other movies. There are a number of well staged fights and a fast pace which entertained me for the two hours, just don't think too much about the story while you're watching.
Classic documentary style film capturing basically a step by step police investigation, opening with the murder of a young woman and continuing through the capture of the suspect. Barry Fitzgerald plays the wily Irish NYPD detective on the case and he gives an excellent performance. The film is dated largely because every police television series even to this day has copied the format: show the crime, call in the detective, collect evidence, interrogate suspects, eventually find the culprit in a chase scene. This film was produced by a NYC newspaper crime columnist who wanted to create a film that captured the day to day of an investigation and what was so trend setting about the film is that it was filmed entirely on location in New York City. Though it is common place in present day movies to film on location, at the time most movies were filmed at the studios in California on elaborate sets and never setting foot on actual locations. For instance the film An American in Paris was filmed entirely on MGM studio sets where they recreated full streets and even the banks of the Seine river as opposed to flying to the actual Paris locales. If you are interested in history this film will give you a snapshot of New York in 1948 through its black and white Oscar winning cinematography and it will also show you where all those crime shows we love so much came from.
This historical biopic tells the story of Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam), a British explorer and cartographer, who made several trips to the Amazon jungle in search of a mythical city of gold. The film harkens back to 1950s adventure films like King Solomon's Mines (1950) though the historical nature of the movie makes it very episodic and ruins the grand adventure the audience is expecting. Fawcett travels to the Amazon and back to England several times over the course of the movie which makes the actual drama and difficulty of his journey far less exciting. The film is very lavish but the dark cinematography gives it a melancholy feel so when there are triumphs in Fawcett's career we do not feel them. It really should have been a grand adventure but it comes off more as a series of bland scenes.
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