MIB3 is a good addition to the franchise. It starts off a little slow and vapid, with everybody (surely) cringing at TLJ's rubbery facade. But then there's an Austin-Powers like time-warp to 1969 and a younger TLJ (Josh Brolin) who livens things up. Good fun.
Standard Jason Statham bang-bang-boom-boom-whack-whack-crunch-crunch fare. However, there is one imaginative plot-point to the movie. The Chinese mafia in NYC import a young girl from China due to her memory and mathematical skills—she can remember any number that she sees and can perform calculations really quickly—in order to avoid leaving a paper or digital trail. The little girl is their walking, talking, account book. This inventive point aside, there are enough directorial and screenplay holes to drive your grandmother through in a pram.
A typical Luc Besson flick, Lockout features Guy Pearce and the chick from Taken (also a Besson venture). Lots of action, lots of witty repartee, a sci-fi backdrop and very little in the way of complexity when it comes to the plot, are the main selling points of the film. However, unlike Taken, which is also a rescue-flick, Lockout does not have an edgy feel to the mission, and is strictly a Hollywood-y entertainment adventure.
Marlowe is one of those ambitious movies that attempt to bring out the dark gritty atmosphere that tends to be palpable in novels. Here, a director named Paul Bogart attempts to do the same for Chandler's Philip Marlowe. I was interested in this because of the Bogey reference as Humphrey Bogart plays an excellent Marlowe in The Big Sleep. But it turns out that Paul of the same name is no relation to Humphrey and it shows that his original name was Bogoff!
A samurai flick that attempts to provide a realistic portrayal of life as a lowly member of the Samurai class in feudal Japan while retaining the action that the audience looks forward to in such movies. Twilight Samurai weaves action, intrigue, suspense and romance into an excellent tapestry which is both striking and moving at the same time. But it could have been a lot better if some more care had been taken with it. This is especially true of the soundtrack which is woeful thanks to artificial keyboard strings etc.
A Welsh director helming an Indonesian martial arts flick. If that isn't tell you that the product is going to be weird and off the beaten track, then please read on.
John Carter is based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' (of Tarzan fame) 1917 novel, A Princess of Mars. I haven't read the book. However, keeping the age of the story in mind, this movie is highly entertaining, if very Hollywood-sy. The story is a nice blend of sci-fi and fantasy with a decent plot and a nice twist at the end. The action is mostly good, the humour mostly funny and the clichés mostly bearable. But the acting could have been better.
Mel Gibson is an unnamed driver driving a getaway car full of money and a dying (and soon dead) accomplice being chased by the police very near the Mexican border. Rather than being caught on US soil, he intentionally crashes through a border fence into Mexico. The cops on the other side (who were also following along) while initially happy to hand over the two American nationals back, change their minds upon seeing the money. They decide to keep it for themselves and hush Gibson up by imprisoning him in 'El Pueblito', a notorious prison controlled by criminals.
A conspiracy thriller starring Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway and Max von Sydow, Three Days of the Condor is a decent yarn for 1975. The performances are tight with special mention to von Sydow's sterling portrayal of the sinister gentleman assassin. Sydney Pollack's direction ensures that the movie works even with a weak premise. It is in many ways similar to Will Smith's Enemy of the State.
