Nebraska Review

The one million dollar man----Bruce Dern and Will Forte as a man whose son takes him on a road trip to claim a million dollar prize in Nebraska
              Nebraska is much more than a film. It is the defining moment of four (count them---four) careers. First there's Bruce Dern, a man who has proven time and time again to be one of the greatest living actors. He gives his best performance to date here playing simultaneously vulnerable and ludicrous very well. Next there's Will Forte, who has built his career on playing enormously wacky characters, most notably MacGruber. He actually has to be the straight man and in his first dramatic performance proves to have a great future ahead of them. June Squibb, a woman whose name is not exactly household steals every scene she's in and makes the audience hope to see her in more. Lastly there's Bob Odenkirk who many will recognize from "Breaking Bad" but who also did the brilliant sketch comedy "Mr. Show" with fellow comedian David Cross. He gives a truly wonderful supporting performance and proves to be a true movie star.

             The set up---Woody Grant (Dern) is a confused old man who gets a letter from a sweepstakes telling him he's won a million dollars. His wife Kate (June Squibb) thinks he's crazy for ever believing that letter let alone letting himself become obsessed with him. Much to the chagrin of his brother Ross (Odenkirk) and Kate...Woody's son, David (Forte) agrees to drive him up to Lincoln, Nebraska to collect his winnings. There they stop in their old town where a flame reheats with Woody's ex business partner Ed (Stacy Keach) and a debate sparks about whether or not Woody is off his rocker.

              The film is directed in beautiful black and white by Alexander Payne who has made a name for himself on movies about mid or late life crises (About Schmidt, Sideways, The Descendants.) This, however is by far his best film to date. The performances, as I have already mentioned, are terrific and the film is visually stunning. I can't say exactly how but the black and white perfectly fits the mood of the film. Also---each character has their likable side but are never let off the hook for their wrongdoings. Woody is just trying to help his family but is also completely naive about how little he is actually doing so. David and Ross are good sons but they both tend to get into sticky situations too deep. Kate is incredibly sympathetic and obviously cares about Woody but is also a bit of a nasty old woman. Ed just wants Woody to help him out but approaches it from all the wrong angles. The writing is razor sharp, giving everyone both a comedic moment to shine and a very nice dramatic moment. Also....the film never peters out. In fact...the ending is perfect and it never lets its characters down.

              Nebraska is written by first time writer Bob Nelson who has proven to be a man to look out for. Payne proves again to be one of the finest directors working today and this proves to be quite possibly the best film of 2013.
(5 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated R for some language)

Ten Worst Films Of 2013

         Here they are..the ten films I despised the most in 2013. Before I start this shameful list...I want to lay out the groundwork for my list. Unlike most critics...I will pick on small films if I truly hated them. I don't care if no one will see them even without this list...I believe in listing the 10 films I hated the most. Also...I do these in order of how much the film straight up offended me or how much I truly hated, not how particularly bad it may have been. So without further ado...here's my list.

(10) Movie 43 

       I didn't even realize how bad of a year it was until I constructed this list and saw that this steaming pile of garbage was actually only the film I hated 10th most. I don't even want to call this a film. It's more of a series of sketches that weren't even funny enough to be on "Mad TV" and yet have huge name stars in them.

(9) Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas

         I will enjoy just about any Christmas film I watch. I even enjoy Surviving Christmas, Jingle All The Way, ETC. However, this film was just a bunch of obnoxious characters sitting around telling terrible jokes that they though were funny. It's like that one guy at the party who thinks he's a comedian but ends up getting thrown out for being obnoxious.

(8) 47 Ronin 

        An actor as dull as Keanu Reeves thrown into a film as dull as this one is not a good mix at all. In fact...it's pretty damn unwatchable. The action set pieces are ugly, the story dumb and the writing absolutely despicable. Need I say more?

(7) Grown Ups 2

          When there's a single laugh in a film starring Adam Sandler, David Spade, Chris Rock and Kevin James...all of whom can be legitimately great and the laugh is elicited from the ever so terrible Taylor Lautner....you know your film sucks. This is such an uninteresting film that I started counting how many poop and piss jokes there were in the film. I lost count at 44. 

(6) Only God Forgives

           Ryan Gosling has the ability to be a magnetic, excellent actor (just take a look at Half Nelson or The Notebook.) However, he's just a walking zombie in this incredibly unwatchable revenge flick that reunites him with his Drive director, Nicolas Winding Refn. Throw in a hammy performance by Kristin Scott Thomas, another excellent performer as Gosling's mother and a plot point directly involving incest and you've got yourself one steaming pile of crap.

(5) After Earth

            It's telling when a film I could barely sit through is only number five on my list. Although Will Smith obviously made his son Jaden star in this film for his own ego...I still have to hold Jaden's feet to the fire. Jaden Smith is asked to act by himself most of the time...a role that would be tough for anybody. However, I can't just let the fact that he's not experienced enough of an actor to pull this off slide. This is a true waste of time where someone could fall asleep at any point and not miss anything of importance.

(4) Riddick

             I wrote in my review of this film that it was by and large the worst film that came out all year. Then I remembered two from early in the year that make this look like a masterpiece by comparison. However, this is still as dull as dishwater and absolutely uneventful. 

(3) Scary Movie V 

             The last spoof film I found anything funny in was Scary Movie 3. Here...the once great writer David Zucker and the very talented director Malcolm D. Lee take the Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer place as making a spoof film that thinks just because something in pop culture is mentioned it's automatically funny. They're totally wrong. At least Lee redeemed himself with his sequel The Best Man Holiday. Zucker has nothing to show for making this garbage.

(2) A Haunted House 

       Racist, misogynistic, homophobic and genuinely gross. Unless you're a complete embezzle I can't imagine why that's what you would want to see in a spoof film. How this film ever got green lit is beyond me. The fact that there's a sequel in the works is just shameful.

(1) Mr. Nobody 

           I think Jared Leto's an incredibly talented actor and musician and he seems like a genuinely nice guy. However, this film irked me more than any other this year. It's an incredibly pretentious film that thinks it's smart but is actually really dumb and although one could argue that effort was made with this film unlike some others on this list...this film was inarguably made with cynical effort which may just be worse than no effort at all. There was obviously some potential here but any sign of a good film got squandered and became the most miserable two and a half hours of my life. 

Out Of The Furnace Review

Dead in the furnace---Christian Bale and Casey Affleck as struggling brothers in Out Of The Furnace
                        This is the biggest waste of talent and plot potential I can think of since perhaps 2010 when Clive Owen, Robert De Niro and Jason Statham starred in what could have and should have been a really cool film called Killer Elite. Out Of The Furnace is an incredibly dull film with a cast that refuses to do much of anything. When actors such as Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Zoe Saldana, Willem Dafoe, Woody Harrelson, Forest Whitaker and Sam Shepard are front and center in a film...I don't expect such a long slog to take place.

      The film's plot is loose and yet can't be explained without giving a lot away. Essentially---Rodney (Affleck) must take a dive for fight coordinator Harlan (Harrelson.) However, the dive or intentional loss doesn't work out because Rodney can not control his anger during fights so Rodney's brother Russell (Bale) must take matters into his own hands.

                        The acting is actually half decent. Everyone is giving it their all from Harrelson in his most menacing work ever to Dafoe's perfectly cast fight promoter to Whitaker as a fateful cop to Shepard as Russell and Rodney's uncle. However, the script allows the actors nothing to do. In other words---just because an actor is capable of giving a good performance does not mean that the script will allow them to do so. The script doesn't explain anything and keeps jumping back and forth with no explanation of why the audience is at the position they are at.

                        Writer/director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) also makes the film look ugly which may have felt purposeful had it been explained. Cooper and first time co-writer Brad Ingelsby make all their characters way too unlikable and dumb so that by the end even the one logical and nice character does something so ludicrous that there's no one to root for anymore.

                         Despite the acting (which can't even be considered that great because the script doesn't allow it to be,) Out Of The Furnace is a terrible film. It's an impressively dull and slow slog through a wasteland of people that any sane audience member won't give two hoots about while watching the film and won't remember at all once the end credits roll.
(1 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated R for strong violence, language and drug content)

Homefront Review

Don't mess with the south----James Franco and Winona Ryder as a pair of drug dealers who must take down an undercover cop (Jason Statham) in Homefront
                                            I never thought I would say this much less open a review with it but this film whose screenplay is written by Sylvester Stallone is way too complicated. When I go to a film starring Jason Statham as an undercover cop being hunted by a drug dealer (James Franco)...I don't want to think. Don't get me wrong...I highly respect both of these actors and they are both obviously very smart men but the film goes off in too many directions about how Gator, the drug dealer needs to get this and Phil, the undercover cop needs to do this. All I want is to see Statham kick some serious butt. My wish doesn't go completely unfulfilled but there's simply not enough to justify sitting through a two hour film that features 90 minutes of boring, pointless dialogue and a 20 minute final scene with a somewhat unsatisfying conclusion.

                                              I'll try my best to explain the plot without giving any of the contrived plot twists away. Here it goes---Statham plays Phil Broker, an undercover cop who moves to a small town. When his daughter beats up a fellow student, the student's mother, Cassie (Kate Bosworth) will not have any of it. She hires her brother, Gator (Franco)...a local drug dealer to simply scare him. However, when Phil makes things right with Cassie and she becomes sympathetic to him...Gator finds out that through ways that are way too complex to go into detail about, Phil can help his drug business. Gator is no nonsense and all business so naturally he becomes determined to catch Phil no matter how much Cassie tries to persuade him otherwise.

                                              Homefront is not a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination. After giving a career high in Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers...Franco once again proves just how versatile of an actor he is. He plays the deep fried southern villain with such realism and terror that I was afraid he was actually going to come out of the screen and shoot me. As well...Statham, an actor I have found incredibly charming and fun ever since Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels makes Phil an incredibly sympathetic and nice character even when he's throwing dudes through windows. Statham is not a typical action star a la Jean Claude Van Damme or Steven Seagal and I mean that in the best way possible. He's a really good actor who just so happens to be able to kick butt.

                                             The problem I had with the film is that Sylvester Stallone and director Gary Fleder (Runaway Jury, Don't Say A Word) fill the screen with too many attempts at explanation as to why characters are doing what they're doing. These end up falling flat not only because they don't matter at all in a film like this but also because the explanations make absolutely no sense. They end up feeling too forced into the script to make a logical film and end up making the film significantly more illogical in the process. Also....the film is way too long. If Fleder and Stallone just cut out 20 minutes of the film then I would have been a happier man. Although I liked Phil's relationship with his daughter...there are a few too many scenes showing the audience just how much Phil cares for his daughter, for example. Another example would be Sheryl (Winona Ryder), Gator's plaything and assistant who adds nothing to the story and actually makes Gator a little less threatening when introduced. I generally like Ryder as an actress but it was not only an unnecessary character but a terrible performance.

                                               Homefront is my least favorite type of film to write a review on. I neither hated it or loved it. I had a very middle of the road reaction and that bores me. I can only say that I hope Franco and Statham continue being the very talented actors they are but in better films.
(2 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated R for strong violence, pervasive language, drug content and brief sexuality)