A Dangerous Method

The only reason I wanted to see A Dangerous Method is because it was made by David Cronenberg.  I don't know or care much about psychology.  I am liking Michael Fassbender's work so far, but Viggo Mortensen is pretty hit-and-miss for me and Keira Knightley generally stars in the film adaptations of books I never wanted to read.  Cronenberg, though, is always (in my experience) interesting as a filmmaker, at the very least.  I was a little hesitant to see A Dangerous Method, though.  I just had difficulty seeing the promise of a Cronenberg movie that was fenced in by actual historical figures and facts.  That practically guarantees a lack of head explosions, and what's the fun in that?

A Dangerous Method centers around Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), one of the first and foremost trailblazers in psychoanalysis.  Young, married, and Fassbendery, Dr. Jung is at the cutting edge of his profession, back when Freud's ideas were still new and radical.  Jung took a particular interest in his patient Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley).  When she came to him, Sabina was defiant, afraid, and spastic.

And, apparently, born the same way as Uruk-Hai

In other words, she was a perfect test subject for psychoanalysis.  Jung is able to treat Sabina so that she no longer covers herself in feces and throws unreasonable tantrums.  Through the course of treatment, Jung learns quite a bit about Sabina; he learns that she is extremely intelligent, understands psychoanalysis, and has a spanking fetish.  While it may be hasty to call her "cured"...

Fingernail biting: the final obstacle to sanity

...Jung decided that Sabina was capable of living a normal life and encourages her to study to become a doctor, like him.  Around this time, Jung is invited to a meeting of the foremost minds in psychoanalysis, where he meets his idol, Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen).  Freud recognizes Carl's brilliance and takes Jung under his wing, as his heir apparent.  Jung has his doubts about the absolute nature of Freud's theories --- is everything about sex? --- but keeps those thoughts to himself.

Like Freud's ridiculous "Beard Theory."  Pah!  Mustaches are the future!

As Jung's fame grows, so does Sabina's insight.  As a successful patient as well as a successful psychoanalyst, her thoughts are often clever and unique.  As she and Jung develop their professional relationship, however, it becomes apparent that Sabina is very attracted to Jung.  Obviously, this is a case of transference.  But what's a little transference between friends?

Spanky, spanky!

Their romantic relationship complicates things.  On a personal level, Jung has a wife whom he feels morally responsible for (and who is extremely wealthy), even if he does not share a deep connection with her.  He is magnetically attracted to Sabina, physically and intellectually, but he does not want to give her the love child she craves.  On a professional level, Sabina could easily make their relationship public knowledge and discredit Jung with the rest of Freud's faithful.  Jung's increasingly vocal criticisms of Freud's refusal to change his theories even a little also threatens his status as Freud's heir apparent.  Oh, Carl Jung --- you so crazy!

Relax --- it's just an expression

The acting in A Dangerous Method is quite good.  Viggo Mortensen, in particular, was both charming and compelling as Sigmund Freud.  Michael Fassbender gave an interesting performance as a cold, calculating man that could not deny his passion.  Keira Knightley, when she wasn't doing an impression of a mentally ill person, was good as a needy, manipulative temptress.

"I want you to word associate me so hard...!"

In the beginning of the film, though, Knightley's craziness was unintentionally funny.  I'm sure she did her research, and that Sabina Spielrein really did have some crazy spastic movements.  I'm just not 100% certain that the best way to convey that illness is jutting out your jaw, like it's trying to escape your face.  I will say that this is the best Tasmanian Devil impression I have seen on the big screen.  It was a complex role, and she nailed the dramatic parts --- she just seemed silly when she played "crazy."  Vincent Cassel was good as the intelligent (but unrepentantly lusty) Dr. Otto Gross, who provides one of the explanations for the film's title.  Cassel is at his best when he is doing dirty, dirty, things, and that's what Gross was all about.

Dr. Gross, with his 1 o'clock appointment

The only other cast member worth mentioning is Sarah Gadon, who played Mrs. Jung.  Hers was a small part, but she conveyed the repressed emotions of her character well.

David Cronenberg's direction in A Dangerous Method was not as impressive as the acting.  I genuinely liked how well he developed the characters and how the actors were directed.  However, it is up to the director to take that and make it into something compelling, if not simply entertaining.  Simply put, this is a dull movie.  The most dramatic moments come when characters are reading letters.  It is so boring, in fact, that the novelty of Fassbender and Knightley's bondage and spanking scenes barely breaks the monotony.  For the record, I have no problem (in theory) with a slow-paced film.

Dramatic pause and...now sip your tea

I do not, however, have much tolerance for being bored.  It is not the pacing that is at fault, though.  The larger problem of A Dangerous Method is the story focus.  The conflict between Jung and Freud was interesting, as was the forbidden romance of Carl and Sabina.  Unfortunately, this script split the story's focus between those two plots.  Either one could have made for a compelling film, but there isn't room for both to be represented equally.  Instead of a compelling drama about either relationship, we get what amounts to a Carl Jung biopic.  Biopics are not my favorite film genre, but if anyone can spice up the traditionally predictable biopic structure, it would be David Cronenberg.  He likes to make films with cool characters and unusual imagery, and that is exactly what is needed for an interesting biopic.  Instead, we get a haggard-looking Keira Knightley in an ill-fitting bodice.

Knightley is a size zero, so that makes her clothes...size -2?

While I believe that Michael Fassbender did a very good job as the subtle, reserved Carl Jung, he simply is not very compelling as a main character.  We don't see his actions as interesting or dynamic --- heck, we don't see him taking action.  There are just conversations, followed by letters, followed by reply letters, followed by conversations.  Period piece dramas don't have to be dull, but A Dangerous Method is not a movie I would use to prove that point.  Good acting can only take a movie so far without a plot that makes you care about the characters.

Prometheus

Typically, when I see a movie, I jot down some thoughts and will probably blog it within a few days.  Unless I'm being lazy, which has been known to happen from time to time.  With Prometheus, though, I had a different problem.  I just wasn't sure how I felt about it.  So, I pondered and pondered, making sure to stay off the interwebs and work it out in my noggin.  The more I thought about Ridley Scott's kinda-sorta-not-really prequel to Alien, though, the more I realized that my take on the movie didn't fit my traditional review format.  So, first up is this review.  My next post will be "Prometheus: What the Hell Was That?" and I will try to explain what confused me so much about this film.

Prometheus is, at its core, the story of Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), and their quest for answers.  Shaw and Holloway are romantically-entwined archaeologists, and they have found the same star constellation in the primitive artwork of several ancient civilizations, separated by thousands of years and thousands of miles. 

"Is that...somebody playing jai-alai?"

That wouldn't be a big deal if the constellation was the Big Dipper, but this particular constellation is not visible with the naked eye.  In fact, human technology had to expand to an advanced degree before discovering it.  That fact, coupled with the inexplicable coincidence of societies that had no contact sharing the same image in their artwork, leads them to conclude that the constellation is a map.  A map to where, you may ask?  A map to a planet where humanity's predecessors (dubbed "Engineers" by Shaw and Holloway) came from --- humanity's cradle, if you will.  Their theory intrigues the aging corporate magnate Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) and he funds a space voyage (on the ship Prometheus) to investigate the planet.  Once the crew arrives, however, they find a barren world with only one empty base.  Well, maybe not exactly "empty."

Giant statue head with made-to-scale aspirin tablet statues

They also find a corpse of what they presume to be an Engineer.  But what could wipe out the Engineers?  Why did they come to Earth in the first place?  Can we still find out where humanity came from?  The last two questions, while good, are not nearly as important as the first. 

That looks vaguely familiar, doesn't it?

When you consider that question, the natural follow-up is this: how likely is the survival of a group who doesn't know what they are up against?  Hint: not very.  With every passing minute on this planet, it feels less and less like the cradle of humanity and more like a tomb.

Now, if you've seen the film and are wondering where all the buff Powder clones are, that's what I'm going to get into with "Prometheus: What the Hell Was That?"

While my synopsis may not indicate it, there are actually more than a couple of actors in Prometheus.  Noomi Rapace was good as the innocent who has to get tough, but she wasn't great.  I wanted to like her character more, but wound up being distracted by some other plot elements instead.  I will say that she conveyed pain and fear better than anyone else in the cast, at the very least.  Oh, and if you have any fears about pregnancy, she's in a scene that you may not want to watch.  Ever.

Logan Marshall-Green was a lot less sympathetic.  He did a fine job playing an overconfident prick, but I think that his character was intended for more, given the amount of quality screen time he had.  I did like Idris Elba as the captain of the Prometheus.  It was odd seeing a captain play such a passive role in a sci-fi flick, but I enjoyed his laid-back approach.  I would have liked to see more of his character, but he did a good job with what he had and his choices at the end of the film didn't feel completely out of left field.

The rest of his core crew --- Benedict Wong, Emun Elliott, and a few others --- were inconsequential to the overall acting quality of the film.  The character design for Sean Harris was a bit unusual for a geologist.  I expected him to be a guard or something, but he was a scientist.  So...there's that.

Sometimes, even smart people get tattoos on their head

Rafe Spall's character was similarly odd.  He plays a biologist who shows zero interest in a dead alien and later acts like a complete jackass when encountering a new species.  Worst.  Biologist.  Ever.  I wasn't a big fan of either of those two.  Charlize Theron played a cold, calculating bitch in the background of scenes; I don't think Theron did a bad job acting here (her reaction post-flamethrower was pretty good), but her character felt like a waste of space to me, another bit of misdirection in a film jam-packed with it.  I have no idea why Guy Pearce was cast to play the elderly Peter Weyland; Pearce was fine and his makeup was good, but why cast a young man as an older man if you're not going to show him as a youth?  And, no, I don't count viral marketing as a good enough reason.  Maybe this means that Pearce will be showing up in a planned seuqel/prequel to Prometheus?  Whatever, it's not too important.  Similarly, I was surprised to see Patrick Wilson playing the incredibly bit part of Shaw's father in her dreams.  The most impressive actor in Prometheus, though, was definitely Michael Fassbender.  His work as the android David was fantastic.

Dare I say..."Fasstastic"?  No, probably not.

It takes a lot to play a character supposedly devoid of emotion and make him absolutely mesmerizing in every scene, but Fassbender accomplished it.  He was cold, manipulative and sneaky, but he didn't remind me of the other android characters from the Alien series; his character felt very unique.  He also had a viral ad that was pretty good, but it doesn't even hint at how much fun he was to watch as a quasi-villain.

The first thing I think of when I ponder Ridley Scott's direction in Prometheus is how incredibly gorgeous the movie looks.  The cinematography is sometimes breathtaking, the sets are impressive in both size and style, and the details of the Prometheus ship technology and the Engineer base are well beyond cool.  The imaginative visuals in this movie make it one of the most visually astounding science fiction films I have ever seen.

I'm not always an IMAX guy, but this looked amazing in IMAX

Scott obviously had a pretty good relationship with Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender, as they turned in good performances, but I was a little disappointed in the rest of the supporting cast.  There are a lot of characters in this film that make important decisions, but I felt that Scott made them seem more important to the overall story than they were, which made them feel overvalued and underdeveloped. 

Example number one

I wouldn't have minded that so terribly if the film wasn't so packed with subtext.  Prometheus is a dense movie that does not stop to explain itself to the likes of you, the audience, or hint at what details are going to be important later.  On the one hand, I respect that choice; more often than not, films err on the side of over-explaining themselves.  Prometheus, though, is absolutely unapologetically confusing.  Scott definitely gives enough hints to read into his intentions, but the fact that I feel compelled to write another blog post about those intentions should indicate that his storytelling is not as taut or clear as it could have been.

That's really the problem with Prometheus.  It has one truly impressive performance (Fassbender) and a good secondary performance (Rapace), a wonderfully developed universe, and an ambitious concept (humans seeking their makers).  What it doesn't have is good storytelling.  There are a few reveals in this film, but they are predictable and dull.  And then there is a twist, which is astounding because it appears to have no motivation.  For the first two-thirds of Prometheus, it is a slow-boiling sci-fi thriller with somewhat pretentious themes, and it looks like it's going to be great.  And then it suddenly becomes a horror movie, complete with psycho killers and monsters.  That just felt cheap to me.  I also didn't appreciate the bushels of questions (that is the proper term of measurement for questions, by the way) I was left with when the film finished.  Granted, it did get me to ponder the film for an entire week after seeing it --- which is quite a feat --- but I was left unsatisfied.  Prometheus is absolutely gorgeous and ambitious, it handles the creation of mankind so well that the existence of an alien Engineer race doesn't preclude the existence of God, and it is very, very impressive.  It is also purposefully obtuse and frustrating.  As much as I wanted to be blown away by this movie, the story and the unexplained subtext disappointed me.  Still, it is certainly worth seeing, if only for the spectacle and Fassbender.

By the by, I wanted to call out prometheus-movie.com as the source for all the cool pics I included in this post.  I don't know who's in charge of that site, but they are definitely the web's singular resource for all things --- pics, details, theories, whatever --- Prometheus.  And they appear to be pretty bright; after I jotted down my interpretations of what happened in this movie in my follow-up post, I went back to compare my take with theirs and I learned a few things.

Haywire

Let's cut to the chase.  If you are the sort of person who watches zombie movies just to enjoy one awesome headshot, if you watch martial arts movies just for that final scene where the hero beats up a dojo, or if you watch crappy action movies in the hopes of a single awesome sequence, you need to watch Haywire.  Like, right now.  There is one really good fight scene and a fantastic fight scene (so, that's two recommended fight scenes) in this movie.  If that's all you need to know, go rent it now; both take place in the first half of the movie, so you can catch before the 45 minute mark.

...but if you love cornrows, you'll have to wait until the end

If you're the sort of person who cares about little things like plot and acting, here's the rest of my thoughts.

Meet Mallory (Gina Carano).  Mallory is a a spec ops contractor who takes dirty jobs for the American government.  She's not an assassin, because that would make her unsympathetic; she is the person you put on a high difficulty job to save lives and kick asses.

Kicking ass in 3...2...1...

Mallory worked a job in Barcelona with, amongst other people, hunky Aaron (Channing Tatum).  There, they saved a dissident of some sort from mean people.  When she arrived home, her boss/ex-lover/soulless ginger, Kenneth (Ewan McGregor), coaxes her into another job, one where she and an agent she had never worked with, the hunky Paul (Michael Fassbender), have to assure the safety of a VIP.  While babysitting isn't her favorite thing to do, Mallory complies because plot advancement.  At the end of their mission, though, Paul tries to kill Mallory.  What the hell is going on?  Is it a double-cross?  A triple-cross?  It's a suspenseful/thrilling mystery!

Haywire's lead actress, Gina Carano, is not a professional actress.  She's an MMA fighter.  In other words, she performs her own (awesome) stunts, but she hasn't exactly been to acting school.  That doesn't necessarily mean she's a bad actress, but...well, calling her mediocre would be generous.  This is the sort of film where the heroine's dialogue is terse and tough.  Carano's delivery is tough, but tough like wood, instead of tough like MMA.  How important is that to the overall quality of this film?  I'll get back to that later.  The rest of the cast is solid all around, with a few impressive performances.  I can't believe I'm writing this, but Channing Tatum was pretty good in Haywire.  He delivered is lines in a pretty natural way, had some solid conversational humor, and a really good fight scene.  When I see Tatum in a film, I assume he's going to be the dumb twin of the Matt Damon puppet in Team America: World Police, but I was shocked at how much I didn't hate him here.

"Maaatt Day...Day...***sigh***  LINE?"

Michael Fassbender was even better.  Fassbender has charmed onscreen before, but his fight scene with Carano was completely awesome.  Sure, he did the whole "acting" thing beforehand, but he looked really good in a very physical way here; his scenes were definitely the highlight of the film. 

Not as sexy as it looks, trust me

After those two, the bad-assness of the supporting cast takes a definite dive, although the acting is still good.  Michael Angarano gave a fantastically genuine performance as a fairly superfluous character --- he wasn't quite useless, but Angarano's line delivery was some of the most natural I've seen in a long while.  Michael Douglas shows up and reminded me more of his character in Traffic than of a corpse, which has been my experience with him for the past decade.  Ewan McGregor was surprisingly good as a bureaucratic jerk; it's been a while since I've actually enjoyed McGregor in a movie --- and I don't know if this role really enters into "enjoyment" for me --- but it was refreshing to see him playing against type.  Who knew he would make a good heel?  Antonio Banderas was solid in a limited role, but he did have an impressively dense beard.  So there's that. 

"The password is 'Nasonex'"

Bill Paxton played Mallory's father and, aside from having a mustache, was about what you should expect from Paxton.  Oh, and if you're an Amélie fan, Mathieu Kassovitz makes a rare English-speaking appearance.

The supporting acting was pretty good, I think that's pretty obvious.  How about the direction?  Steven Soderbergh was the man in charge of Haywire, and he brought with him some definite stylistic choices.  Are you tired of Paul Greengrass-type action movies, where the camera is a little shaky and the fight scenes have a lot of close-ups cuts?  Soderbergh apparently was.  Haywire is filmed primarily in long shots with minimal editing.  That means you definitely can tell that the actors do most of their own stunts (and Carano almost all of them), and that is extremely impressive.  Soderbergh also takes pains to not over-explain the plot; this isn't as dense as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but the lack of exposition can make it a bit hard to follow at times.  I liked that Haywire was told in an intelligent fashion that respected the audience.  Unfortunately, Soderbergh's style for the film led to a lot of the non-action scenes to drag.  It's one thing to watch a cool fight sequence that was clearly made without edits, it's less enthralling to see Mallory walk into a store and buy a cell phone from a distance. 

Soderbergh's stylistic choices could have worked.  It's a ballsy play, making a movie that treats espionage in a moderately realistic and unexaggerated way; there is a fine line between suspenseful intrigue and monotonous staring.  Casting Gina Carano was another interesting choice.  Unfortunately, the film's style and the actor's talent didn't quite mesh.  Don't get me wrong --- Carano was absolutely the correct person for the fight scenes.  My problem is that Haywire has far too many non-fight scenes to make up for Carano's awful delivery.  To put it in plain terms, she was clearly out-acted by Channing "I'm a freaking coin" Tatum.  That's a sick burn.  Maintaining the longer scenes with fewer obvious editing cuts made the film feel fairly realistic, but this also emphasized Carano's lack of charisma.  I also felt bored by the excessive chase scenes in this movie.  Again, Soderbergh's choice to film scenes from farther away took away some of the immediacy and scenes that should have felt tense or quick were puzzlingly dull (the car chase scene in the snow, for instance).

So...much...running...with...so...little...payoff...

Without the two early fight scenes, I would probably rip into Haywire with pleasure.  However, those scenes are totally awesome.  She even punches a guy in the dick with his own gun!

Yeah, that was my reaction, too

Aside from the final fight scene on the beach (which looked especially staged), all of the hand-to-hand combat was stellar.  It just doesn't really fit the tone of the rest of the film; Carano was performing like she was in The Expendables 2, but everyone else thought they were making The Spy Who Came In From the Cold.  Both styles have their charms, but they don't make for a tasty sandwich. I will grant that it does have a good supporting cast that gives an otherwise overlong (even at 93 minutes) and sterile plot life.  I also appreciated what Soderbergh was going for --- an intelligent bad-ass spy story --- but he didn't have the talent (or, honestly a script) that could make that happen.

Blood Creek

Blood Creek sounds like a can't-miss horror movie.  It features up-and-coming actors Michael Fassbender and the next Superman, Henry Cavill.  Young, hot actors are usually a good sign, right?  The story manages to fit in Nazis, the occult, zombie horses, and rural West Virginia (state motto: "The Inspiration for Deliverance").  Even if it's not genuinely good...it has zombie horses!  How can this movie go wrong?

When we first meet Evan (Henry Cavill), his life sucks.  He has a stressful job (paramedic) and no social life, because he spends his free time taking care of his father, who hates him.  Why?  It seems that Evan went fishing in the West Virginia wilderness with his war hero brother, Victor (Dominic Purcell), and managed to lose him.  Victor hasn't been seen in the few years since, and Evan blames himself.  So does his dad and maybe Victor's wife and child do, too.  One night, Victor returns.  Hooray!  Time to tell the family, right?  Not so fast.  Victor makes Evan promise not to ask any questions and --- after a quick shower, shave, and haircut --- the two grab some guns and head back to the wilderness.

Sometimes, brotherly love is distributed one barrel at a time

It seems that Victor has spent the last couple of years as prisoner on a farm; he shows off some nasty scars on his back, but he doesn't explain anything more to Evan.  Torturing and killing a family, including a mother and daughter, doesn't sit well with Evan, but he shouldn't worry.  You see, the family in question was featured in a short prologue, set back in the 1930s; the family members were visited by a Nazi scientist, Herr Wirth (Michael Fassbender), and they don't appear to have aged a day since.  Why did Victor come back?  Who is he looking for?  Here's a hint: if the family hasn't aged, I wonder what Wirth is up to...?

Answer: not exfoliating

You might have noticed a complete lack of the occult and zombies in that brief synopsis.  It turns out that the Nazi, Wirth, that visited the farm in the 30s was studying ancient Nordic runes.  By studying them, he had gained the power to raise the dead.  Fast forward seventy or eighty years, and the family apparently keeps Wirth locked in their cellar, which he doesn't like, and I suppose is a reasonable reaction.  He's fairly super-powered (and ugly) at this point, so you would think he could just tear the family apart, right?  Well, the farmhouse is covered in rune markings that protect the family from Wirth.  That is, until some brothers intrude, leave a few dead bodies in their wake and let Wirth free.  Now, Wirth is on the loose, with the dead bodies of people, a dog, and some horses to play with.  Oh, and tonight just happens to be a very important night for occult blood rituals.  Hey, Victor, maybe you should have just gone home to your wife and kid, eh?

I don't necessarily expect the greatest acting in films that feature zombies, but I was let down by Blood Creek.  The acting wasn't wretched, but I wanted more than I was given.  Michael Fassbender spends most of his time on the film shrouded in shadow, with the majority of his dialogue being guttural whispers.  In other words, he wasn't used very well.  Dominic Purcell is as monosyllabic as ever and the interactions between him and Cavill are generally just shouting matches.  I did find his I've-been-gone-for-a-few-years long hair and hobo beard to be pretty funny and obviously fake; I'm still baffled by his choice to shave his head and trim his beard down to stubble, but not actually shaving his face.  Who does that?  Henry Cavill doesn't impress here, either, although his character is pretty nonsensical, so that might just be the weakness of the writing showing through.  Emma Booth was mediocre as the character that explains everything to Cavill, Purcell, and the audience, but it was a thankless role.

His X-ray vision looks deep into your soul

My biggest problem with Blood Creek has to be the direction of Joel Schumacher.  I suppose I still hold a grudge against the man for ruining Batman for the better part of a decade, but he has made a few good horror movies in his time, so I was expecting this to be better than it was.  The premise is cool enough, but Schumacher makes some odd choices throughout.  My main gripe is that we don't get a clear glimpse of Herr Wirth for about an hour.  We see his shadowy figure, wearing a surprisingly nice leather duster, sprinting across the farm in the darkness, and we get a few quick looks at his face, covered in black bandages, but there are so many questions left unanswered.  Why does he need bandages if he's an undead occult Nazi?  For that matter, why does he need a groovy jacket?  Exactly why have Wirth's looks been so drastically affected by his magic, but the family, who benefit from his spells, look normal?  How did Wirth get those rune symbols legibly carved into the back of his skull?  Sure, he looks cool, but that appearance is wasted in the darkness. 

The only time you see Fassbender's actual face

There are a lot of dumb moments in the film that should have been caught by the director, but were not.  Why does the undying farm family have only one picture on display in their house, and it happens to have a date written on it?  That's ridiculously stupid.  It's even stupider than the weaknesses in the script, like the concept of Evan promising to not ask questions, and yet that's all he does.  Or the fact that Wirth's zombies can enter the farmhouse, but are not under instructions to break the runes that keep him outside.  Ugh.  So much stupid.

There are some good things going on in Blood Creek.  I really liked the basic idea of Nazi occult beliefs.
As other movies (the first and third Indiana Jones series, for starters) have shown, having Nazis and occult themes in the same picture can make for great films, and it is an idea that is terribly underused.  I also liked that the zombies created by Wirth weren't the flesh-eating variety, but the voodoo type, raised by a master and doing his bidding.  The special effects were pretty good and the gore was solid in both quality and quantity.  I'm still divided on whether or not the zombie horse was hilariously awesome or just plain bad, but I'll put it in the "win" column for now. 

For being a more-or-less direct-to-DVD release, Blood Creek is pretty good.  I don't grade on a curve, though.  There are some solid ideas here, but too many stupid moments and poor choices for me to recommend this.  There was some promise in the premise, but promises are made to be broken.

Centurion

In the days between Boadicea's revolt and the building of Hadrian's Wall, the expanding Roman empire and the natives of Great Britain were at a stalemate.  The expansion had effectively stopped, but the two sides would frequently skirmish.  Sometime in the 110s or 120s, the Roman Ninth Legion, who were assigned to the Roman-Briton frontier, disappeared from Roman records, which is strange, since they were fairly meticulous with their official paperwork.  Were they simply disbanded, with the men being assigned to other military groups?  Perhaps they fought and died in Germania?  Both are fairly reasonable possibilities, but since the last known location of the Ninth is in York, some believe that they met their fate in Northern England or Scotland.  Why the history lesson?  Centurion is one of two recent films to speculate on the fate of the Ninth Legion (the other being the Channing Tatum vehicle, The Eagle).  While this film does not claim to be factual, a little context helps put things in perspective.

Sexual fetish or prisoner of war?  Context makes a difference.

The Picts, a Scottish clan, have been using guerrilla warfare against the invading Romans for a while.  One night, they launch an attack on a Roman garrison, killing all but Quintus (Michael Fassbender), and only because he cursed them in their own language.  Why that matters when so many Picts in this movie speak English, I don't know, but Quintus is deemed "important" and is captured instead of being killed.  Meanwhile, the Ninth Legion is dispatched to kill some Picts for the glory of Rome; they are given a mute Pict tracker, Etain (Olga Kurylenko), to hunt down the rebellious Picts.  You may be wondering why a Pict would hunt her own people, and that's a good question.  The answer given is because she is loyal to Rome.  Obviously.  Quintus manages to escape his captors and accidentally runs into the Ninth.

He had them right where he wanted them

They kill the Picts chasing him, and Quintus agrees to accompany the Ninth to the Pict base.  Remember when you asked why the Romans trust a Pict guide?  Well, it turns out that the provided answer was not the correct one; she was guiding them into a trap.  The Ninth is massacred, with only a handful of soldiers surviving through luck or cowardice; the Picts also captured the general of the Legion, Titus (Dominic West) and brought him to their base camp.  As the ranking officer, Quintus is now in charge of the group.  What should they do?  They are depressingly far behind enemy lines, and Etain has shown a mad-on for hunting down Romans in general and this group of Romans in particular.  Can this centurion lead his men home to safety?

Not if Etain has nothing to say about it.  You know, because she's mute.

This is the second film I have seen and reviewed from director Neil Marshall, and I think I'm beginning to identify his strengths.  Centurion is a bloody and gory movie, which is exactly what any film about a Roman rebellion should be; if dozens of characters are supposed to be dying by sword and hatchet wounds, there damn well better be some severed body parts and blood.  The action scenes are good, and some of the death scenes were totally awesome.  My favorite example of the awesomeness comes from a character who has been speared, but then pushes the spear through his body to stab and kill his enemy.  It's probably harder than it looks.  Aside from the totally respectable violence, Marshall captured the natural beauty of Scotland in long-shot after long-shot of the group running for their lives.

Marshall doesn't do much with the characters, though.  The performances are all fine.  Michael Fassbender is suitably heroic and he is only marginally less of a tough guy than he was in 300.  Former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko was convincing in her action scenes and...well, she was mute, so she didn't talk much.  The rest of the cast was capable with their parts; Dominic West was almost likable as the general, JJ Feild was kind of scummy, Liam Cunningham was decent as an old soldier, and Imogen Poots was okay as the curiously clean local witch.  Nobody gave a bad performance, but there was no depth to these characters.  I could care less about who lived and who died.  Thanks to this lack of likable characters, the adventure in the film lost any sense of urgency it might have had. 

"Not likable?  Perhaps you missed my smoldering stare...?"

The key to a good movie about soldiers is to make the audience give a crap about them as people.  Centurion doesn't even try to do this.  The film looks gorgeous at times and the action is fun to watch, which is especially impressive given the low budget, but the story never takes off because you never care what happens next. 

Death scene or sex scene?  You won't care which.

On the one hand, Centurion encourages me to watch another Neil Marshall movie because this one was a visual treat.  On the other hand, I can't imagine that Doomsday has a better story than this.  After the brutality of the initial battle, I had high hopes.  Centurion just doesn't live up to them.

Jonah Hex

I never had high expectations for Jonah Hex.  While I usually enjoy comic book movies, this one looked really, really bad.   When it absolutely failed with critics and viewers alike, I was not surprised at all.  I was, however, shocked when the star of the film, Josh Brolin, repeatedly trashed (but also defended) Hex while promoting his next movie.

Tags: Movie Trailers, Movies Blog

That kind of honesty and optimism did two things for me.  First, it made me wish I liked Josh Brolin more.  He's okay, I guess, but his presence in a movie is never what makes me want to watch it.  Second, it made me curious as to how entertaining Jonah Hex could be if I approached it like Brolin suggested, with similar expectations as I had for Piranha.  Hell, it couldn't be worse than I expected, even with Megan Fox acting in it.  Right...?

Hey, uh...you got something on your face.  No, the other side.

In the Civil War, Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) fought for the Confederacy, but he was not a zealot.  When his commanding officer, Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), ordered for a Union hospital to be burned down, Hex refused.  This led to a confrontation  with the other men in his unit, which eventually led to Hex gunning down Turnbull's adult son (and Hex's best friend), Jeb (an uncredited Jeffrey Dean Morgan).  After the war, Quentin tracked down Hex, tied him up and forced him to watch as his men murdered Hex's wife and child.  Before he left, Turnbull branded Hex on the face and left him to die of exposure.  Hex was found, mostly dead, by an Indian tribe, who nursed him back to health.  However, his brush with death left him with an ability to speak to the dead.  So...that's something.  Turnbull was allegedly killed in a house fire a short while later, so Hex became a bounty hunter and took out his rage on some of the worst men in the Wild West.

Oh, and he had a horse-mounted Gatling gun.

One day, Hex is approached by representatives from the U.S. Government to come and meet President Ulysses S. Grant (Aidan Quinn) about a job.  Hex, being an ornery type, isn't impressed by Mr. President until he states that Quentin Turnbull is not only alive, but actively planning to destroy the country within the next few days.  I wonder if the revenge-fueled antihero will seek out his most hated enemy?

After typing that summary, I realized that this movie doesn't really sound so bad on paper.  No, it doesn't sound great, but not as bad as people made it out to be during its theatrical release (13% Rotten Tomatoes rating and a Metacritic score of 33). Sure, the whole talking-to-the-dead thing is weird, but it's not a deal breaker by any means.

Maybe the acting is what sinks this ship?  Well, Josh Brolin is surprisingly good as Jonah Hex.  He would have been even better if his facial makeup didn't cause him to slur some of his lines.  John Malkovich was surprisingly mediocre as the hate-filled Turnbull; Malkovich usually has fun with evil characters, but he didn't really come across as very interested in this movie.  Michael Fassbender played the main henchman to Turnbull and did what I presume is his best impression of Jim Carrey's Riddler.  He was certainly goofy, but even the ridiculous goatee-tattoos never made him scary.

This is why you don't pass out at tattoo parties.

That leaves us with Megan Fox.  Yeah...she's not a very good actress and she takes lines that are supposed to be sassy or cool and she sucks the personality out of them.  On the bright side, she plays a shockingly clean and fit Wild West prostitute (who, of course, loves the disfigured hero), so at least she's flaunting what has made her career thus far.

The rest of the supporting cast is a collection of bit parts, played by recognizable actors.  Will Arnett plays a soldier, and his presence implies that the filmmakers were aware of the funny-bad possibilities in the script.  Michael Shannon, the third Oscar nominee in this cast, had a tiny role, as did Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and they were both fine.  Wes Bentley, who I thought (after seeing American Beauty) had a bright career ahead of him, gives one of the least impressive performances in the movie.  No wonder I haven't seen him in anything in over a decade.  I wasn't impressed by Aidan Quinn's President Grant, but that might have been because I wanted him to be drunk and make really poor decisions.  I was happy to see television actor Lance Reddick playing something other than a lawyer or police officer for a change.  He wasn't great, but I appreciated the atypical casting.

I'm not going to blame this movie on the director, Jimmy Hayward, even though this is his first live-action feature film --- he's worked as an animator on a few Pixar movies and directed Horton Hears a Who, which naturally makes him the best director for a comic book-based Western.  He didn't do a good job directing, mind you.  The acting was limited and the cinematography was mediocre, and that's if I'm being generous to both.  His editing was awful and there is some sort of recurring waking dream sequence that was pretty incomprehensible, but I will give him credit where it's due: the movie is short.  It's 81 minutes with credits.  Not just anyone would choose to put most of a character's back story into an animated form, but it cut out an awful lot of acting time from the movie, and for that, I thank him.

Nothing clever is said in this scene.

 The biggest problem with Jonah Hex is the ridiculous story.  That shouldn't come as a surprise, since this movie was written by Neveldine/Taylor, the writing team that brought us such think pieces as Gamer and the Crank movies.  Man, this is a dumb script.  Fox and Brolin have at least half of their lines devoted to quips, and they're all pretty bad.  Brolin gets away with some because he's devoted to his character's intended bad-assness, but Fox...she couldn't deliver a smart line if it came with paid postage.  Aww, snap!  Mail carrier humor!  **ahem**  Even without the dialogue problems, this is a bizarrely written movie.  Why does any Western bad-ass need gadgets?  The horse-mounted Gatling gun was ridiculous, the automatic dynamite crossbows were just silly, and the villainous "nation killer" weapon was simply bizarre.  And what was with all the explosions?  This is the 1870s --- I can buy gunfire starting a fire, but huge explosions every time?  That's just dumb.  Oh, and that weird Jonah-Hex-talks-to-the-dead thing?  And the weird crow spirit stuff?  Yeah, not in the comics at all.  Hex could have just been a smart bad-ass, but instead, he was given supernatural crow/death powers by the writers.  That may not have been the best choice.

And while this movie is very bad, it is stupid enough to enjoy.  That's not terribly shocking, given the writing team.  If you're looking for a good action movie, a fun comic book adaptation, or a cool Western, this is not the movie for you.

 If, on the other hand, you feel like laughing at something ridiculous and ridiculing a movie, this is a decent choice --- but by no means a great one.  If nothing else, this is the stupidest Western I have seen in ages, but at least it's short.  I give it a Lefty Gold rating of