Tusk Review

Animal instincts---Justin Long as a successful internet entertainer who falls victim to an evil man deep in the mountains in Tusk
                                  I guess the highest praise I can give to the new Kevin Smith horror-comedy Tusk is that there's never been anything like it. Then again, there's nothing been anything like a film where a guy gets his legs forcibly shoved down his throat yet either and I don't think I'd pay money to see that. The problem with this film is that writer-director Smith (who took it from one of his Smodcasts) constantly confuses vomit inducing and disturbing for scary. The horror element of this film is the equivalent of someone taking a bunch of dirt and putting it inside a giant open wound of theirs right in front of you. It's not scary...it's unnecessarily disgusting. For that matter, some of the comedy parts are alright but most of them give the audience a "you had to have been there" vibe. Those are mostly the equivalent of a bunch of frat boys making loud noises and laughing because only they get what the loud noises signify.

                                     The film stars Justin Long as Wallace, a horrible human being (although it takes all too long to figure that out) who runs a successful podcast with Teddy (Haley Joel Osment.) The idea of the show: Wallace goes to visit weird people to see and hear their bizarre lives first hand. Upon returning, he tells Teddy all about it and sees Teddy's reaction. One day, Wallace travels up to Canada and discovers that, for various reasons, his trip was a flop and he has no show. That is, until he discovers a  flyer promising fascinating tales. This prompts him to go into the middle of nowhere and talk to Howard (Michael Parks,) an old man with a very smart, suave Hannibal Lecter vibe. Wallace then discovers that Howard is very bad news which prompts Teddy and Wallace's girlfriend, Ally (Genesis Rodriguez) to look for him.

                                         Right down the line, the acting is great in this film. Long, Osment and Rodriguez are all terrific, giving their characters a sense of being and life that easily could have been lost in translation. Parks is the stand out, however, giving a performance that recalls the days of Vincent Price and Bela Lugosi. However, this is one boring film. There's a great horror film in this premise but then the first 20 minutes were up and I was just bored. If Smith were to have made this a short film that would be released as a bonus feature on one of his Special Edition DVD's and Blu Rays, this would probably be great. However, it keeps going and going and going. There's even a small surprise role by a well known celebrity. This is a celebrity I've soured on quite a bit over the years but they're very funny in it. However, they're funny in a way that doesn't fit the film at all. The film, at that point, has already established itself as a disturbing, dark film and then this character comes on screen giving the impression that they just came out of The Naked Gun 4 and 1/4. 

                                            Between Red State, Jersey Girl and Cop Out, Smith has certainly proven that he's not the quality writer or director he was back in the Dogma-Clerks-Chasing Amy-Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back days. Chalk Tusk up as another one of his failures. It's not completely awful, mostly due to the terrific acting and the hints of a good idea about the similarities and differences between man and animal. However, Smith has much too hard of a time finding the right tone and the film ends up being mostly a depressing, boring, impossible to swallow mess. If you sit through the whole film, you may begin to feel just as tortured and lifeless as Wallace.
(1 and 1/2 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated R for some disturbing violence/gore, language and sexual content)

God Help The Girl Review

Let the music take you away------Emily Browning as an anorexic, troubled young woman and Olly Alexander as a likable musician who befriends her in God Help The Girl
                                       There should be a term for a film that tries so hard to be reminiscent of many different other things that it ends up not finding a voice of its own. I'm sure there is and I would use that term to describe God Help The Girl if I knew what it was. This is a film that seems to have aspirations of being similar to a Wes Anderson film, a John Carney film, a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical and a Humphrey Bogart-Ingrid Bergman love story, just to name a few. This is not to say this is a particularly bad film. It's not like it tries to rip off any of these films. It obviously has respect for all these films and pays homage to them but also proves there is such a thing as too much homage. There is some genuinely good stuff within the film but by the time the film hit 90 minutes when it could have wrapped up in 80, my patience was wearing extremely thin.

                                      Written and directed by Stuart Murdoch (of Belle & Sebastian,) the film follows Eve (Emily Browning,) an anorexic and troubled young woman who is living in a health clinic to get her back to a normal weight. Eve escapes from the clinic one night and into a club where James (Olly Alexander) is quitting his neglectful and unappreciative band. James and Eve make sure the other is alright at the club following James's fight with the band only to run into each other again. Soon, James discovers Eve has quite the set of pipes on her and they start a band. Brought into the band is a music student of James named Cassie (Hannah Murray.)

                                       This film is very much a musical but there's not nearly enough of that. Whenever the songs are being performed, the film is bubbly and about as enjoyable as it can be. However, these songs are too far in between and the stuff without them too often feels like a chore to sit through. Browning and Murray are both terrific, showing two sides of a very troubled coin and making their characters work as foils for one another. The stand out here, however, is Alexander,  who makes the character of James much more interesting and likable than is written. He brings a liveliness to the performance that boosts the film's entertainment value up quite significantly.

                                        The problem is that the script too often makes these characters not do anything. Eve is dating a scummy guy (Pierre Boulanger) who is only using her for her body. The question then is why is she letting him do this? The audience never gets an answer or even a hint of one which makes that plot completely unnecessary. Meanwhile, James is desperately falling for Eve. The best song in the film even involves a fantasy that James has about Eve in the bathtub. James is not a particularly wimpy or shy fellow so why doesn't he just let her know his feelings? No answer there, either. Cassie too often feels like she's mostly just there to be a third band member. Her character isn't given much life or meaning beyond being a part of the band. Then come the  last 30 minutes, which go on for way too long and eventually become mind numbing. By the time the film concluded, I could not care less what happens to any of these characters..I just wanted to leave the auditorium.

                                     While I can not dismiss there is some enjoyable stuff here, God Help The Girl is mostly just a long slog through a wasteland of cinematic cliches. Murdoch has proven he has extreme talent via his work in Belle & Sebastian and no doubt could make a fascinating film one day. It's just a matter of him finding coherence and originality within the film.
(1 out of 5 Stars, The film is Not Rated)

The November Man Review

Protege problems---Pierce Brosnan as an ex-CIA operative and Luke Bracey as his protege turned rival in The November Man

                                         I'm almost always happy to have seen a film no matter how horrible it is. Despite some insanely harsh reviews that I write, 99.9% of the films I bash I was more than happy to sit through no matter how much I was bored or angry at the film. Rarely do I walk out of a film wishing I had never sat through it and having words such as "off putting" and "grossly offensive" running through my head. The November Man does the trick of making me wish I had never seen it. On top of the words I have just mentioned above, there are a few more choice words I had for this garbage that I choose not to write in this review for reasons of wanting to stay professional. I hesitate to even call this film making. It's more like bits and pieces of half baked ideas that were lazily cobbled together. This is especially disappointing to report since director Roger Donaldson (who did the fantastic films No Way Out, Cadillac Man, The Getaway and The Bank Job as well as many other very solid ones) and stars Pierce Brosnan and Olga Kurylenko should know better. 

                                        The film stars Brosnan as Devereaux, a CIA operative who gets out of the game but gets called in for one last job. His protege, Mason (Luke Bracey) is now his rival after one of those cliche botched job openings. All the while, Russians are evil or something. Honestly, I don't remember any of this plot because I successfully forgot about this film until I wrote this review and also because the plot is overly convoluted for being so stupid. 

                                      Co-writers Michael Finch and Karl Gajdusek (taken from a work by Bill Granger, which is surely better than this film because getting stabbed repeatedly would be much more pleasurable than sitting through this) should be ashamed of themselves for being involved in this insult of a film. Everyone should be. This is a disgusting, mean spirited film that insults the audience and treats them as if they just want to see gruesome violence. I'm not that squeamish when it comes to gruesome violence. However, if I am going to watch this level of gruesomeness, I need some reason to. Donaldson should have taken a look at directors like Quentin Tarantino or Guy Ritchie, who use violence not simply to be put into a film but to progress the story and support their ideas. 

                                    The performances are terrible down the line. Brosnan and Kurylenko, talented as they are, obviously don't care and just sleepwalk through the entire film. Bracey isn't acting so much as impersonating a mannequin. His performance mainly consists of saying one word every 15 minutes or so in a really boring fashion. There's even a subplot involving a woman who lives in the apartment across the hall from him. Her cat keeps going into his apartment and soon she falls for him. Why the cat or the woman would ever want to spend a second with a guy so devoid of life is beyond comprehension. Every beat, twist, plot device and anything else in this film can be seen coming from miles away. In other words, just look at the poster for five seconds and you've got the entire film. This will be beneficial because looking at the poster would be significantly more exciting and less time consuming.

                                    The November Man is a gross, insulting bore in all the most jaw dropping ways possible. This is not a film so much as a test to see how pathetic a film can get before people start walking out in droves. I stayed for the whole thing and want the two hours of my life back desperately. I implore my readers since I appreciate all of you---don't make the same mistake.

(0 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated R for strong violence including a sexual assault, language, sexuality/nudity and brief drug use)

Love Is Strange Review

When the going gets tough---John Lithgow and Alfred Molina as a long time couple whose relationship faces many struggles after a long awaited marriage in Love Is Strange
                                         In one of the essays of his book "Autumn Leaves," world renowned French author Andre Gide states "It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not." The new film from director Ira Sachs and co-writers Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias, Love Is Strange knows just how accurate this quote is and makes the argument with great depth and sadness. This is a film that is beautiful, sad, stunning, endearing, funny, uplifting, heartbreaking and extremely warm and comforting all in one fell swoop. It doesn't exactly hurt that Sachs manages to get two Oscar-worthy performances out of leads John Lithgow and Alfred Molina. Lithgow especially does career defining work here. As an actor who has a tendency to take things to extremes, he nicely underplays his role such that just one look of his draws large amounts of sympathy.


                                        Lithgow and Molina play Ben and George, a couple who have been together 39 years and finally tie the knot. They are dedicated to one another unconditionally. It's one of those great relationships, whether it be in real life or in film, where if one falls, so does the other. After tying the knot, Ben and George experience an abundance of hardships. George gets fired from his job as a music teacher at a Catholic school. This happens despite the fact that both the students and parents know he is openly homosexual and think he's an excellent teacher. This leads to Ben and George having to move from their home. Ben has to go live with nephew Elliott (Darren E. Burrows), his wife, Kate (Marisa Tomei) and their teenage son Joey (Charlie Tahan.) George moves in with a younger homosexual couple, cops Ted (Cheyenne Jackson) and Roberto (Manny Perez.) Things only fall apart from here but I'll let you, the reader, see this wonderful film to find out how.


                                      One of the strongest aspects of this film is how Lithgow and Molina are both so comfortable and easy with one another that the audience actually buys they're long-time partners. I forgot I was watching two great actors and believed I was watching a real couple. These are two performances that should be studied for hours on end by aspiring actors to see just what to do when it comes to having chemistry with a fellow performer. The screenplay is also brilliantly written when it comes to these two men. Ben and George are both portrayed as very nice, well meaning men but both also have their flaws and don't always do the right thing. This makes the scenes in which they're struggling all the more effective. I felt for these men and wanted to see them triumph in their relationship.


                                         That can actually be said for everyone in this film. No character here is evil but they all have their problems and aren't at all perfect. This, along with the ordinariness of the events that take place, give the film a very realistic, true to life feel. It's also a great sight to see a film about a homosexual couple that doesn't put any emphasis on that fact. There are no characters who are against their relationship. Even the Catholic school principal (John Cullum) has nothing against it. Place a man and a woman in this same film and it would not make any difference. There's also a subplot about how Joey might be in the closet due to the fact that his only friend is Vlad (Eric Tabach,) an older boy with whom he spends a suspicious amount of time with. This subplot is very tastefully done and even avoids really bringing up the suspicion about Joey.


                                      The whole film is tasteful, though and so much more. I dare anyone to walk out of the auditorium with dry eyes by the time the end credits start rolling. This is a film built on the sympathy the audience feels for these two leads and Sachs and Zacharias do an excellent job of making even the most cold and cynical soul feel bad for these two throughout the film. Credit for that also goes to Lithgow and Molina, whose performances rise to a level of excellence that I can't even properly convey with words. Love Is Strange is an amazing, unforgettable and life changing film that everyone should experience at least once.

(5 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated R for language)
**Note: How dare the MPAA, with whom I constantly add these notes against, give this film an R rating. This is the kind of film that could change young people's lives and give them a new perspective on the world but the unfair rating might prevent them from experiencing it. The film is rated R for "Language" and yet I only heard two F-bombs and no other even slightly bad language in the entire film. The MPAA claims that their standard as far as an R for language goes is at least 3 F-bombs. It's weird to think that PG-13 films such as Scary Movie 5 and Transformers have more language, sexual themes, hardcore violence, ETC than this film. The MPAA should be ashamed of themselves for this decision but I guess considering they make stupid calls like this everyday, they're used to it by now.