Review: Dead Man Down (2013) shoots itself in the foot with a moronic and wrongheaded finale.

Dead Man Down
2013
110 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Up until the very end of the picture, Dead Man Down is a mostly serviceable crime drama.  It has fine work from Colin Farrell and Noomi Rapace along with worthwhile supporting turns by Terrance Howard and the always appreciated Domonic Cooper.  It doesn't set out to turn heads or reinvent the wheel, but it tells its grim story of revenge and tortured romance with just enough aplomb to merit a casual viewing.  But oh that ending... I have no idea what screenwriter J.H. Wyman or director Niels Arden Opley were thinking and I can theoretically give them the benefit of the doubt that they just couldn't decide on a thoughtful finale.  I'd like to think they just gave up and went on 'bad screenwriting autopilot'.  It's frightening to think that these two professionals thought that the last reel constituted a worthwhile conclusion to their otherwise worthwhile yarn.  It's tough to review a movie where your biggest gripe involves the very end without actually revealing what happens at the end, so maybe we'll get to that later.

Review: Seven Psychopaths (2012) is a thoughtful and powerful deconstruction on the modern crime comedy.

Seven Psychopaths

2012
109 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Martin McDonagh's Seven Psychopaths is something of a miracle.  It works both as a straight-ahead crime dramedy while also serving as a piercing satire of said genre.  It is a delightfully funny and clever romp in the land of violent criminals as well as a post-modern commentary on both the cliches of the format and the very fact that we not only embrace such characterizations but hold them on a higher platform in terms of critical acclaim and prestige.  At its basest level, McDonagh's film aims to take every wanna-be hip gangster saga that has emerged eighteen years after Pulp Fiction and slap them all silly.  But while the meta-moments and occasionally outlandish violence may stand out, it's the commitment to its own reality and acknowledging the tragedy of its own blood-soaked tale that makes the film linger and makes it a genuine work of brilliance.  This is simply one of my favorite films of the year and one of the year's happiest surprises.

Total Recall trailer reminds you that you already saw this damn movie 22 years ago, and it was just fine, thank you!

Yes this trailer looks every bit as bland and generic as the teaser from early April.  And yes the lack of creative imagination that would cause Sony to spend $200 million on a painfully similar remake of a 1990 sci-fi thriller is disturbing and perhaps a sign of the end times.  But I'm not going to whine.  First of all, I damn-well have the choice to not see this thing when it drops on August 3rd.  Second of all, and I'll be getting into this tomorrow if time allows, but we're slowly entering an era where studios seem to be remembering that not every film in the tent can or should be a tent-pole.  So for now, feast your eyes on the raging mediocrity that is the trailer for Total Recall.  Is there really any one who is honestly excited for this?

Scott Mendelson  

Total Recall remake gets a trailer not worth remembering, wholesale or otherwise.

I've seen this movie.  Several times in fact, and it has aged surprisingly well considering the reliance on 22-year old special effects and a lead performance from an action star not known for his thespian skills.  So while Len Wiseman and company may have claimed that they were merely re-adapting the original Philip K Dick short story (titled "We Can Remember It For Your Wholesale"), this trailer reveals the fraud of that argument.  This is a bloated, ugly, and seemingly weightless remake of the original Paul Verhoeven film, plain and simple.  There is quite simply no reason to remake this particular film because it has barely aged a day.  If I want to watch Total Recall, I'll damn-well watch the 1990 version in all of its head-spinning and gore-filled R-rated glory (has there ever been a more grotesquely violent R-rated film outside of Verhoeven's own Starship Troopers released by a major studio?).  The story beats in this remake seem identical, the characters seem pretty similar (except a love-interest character who was once played by a racial minority is now lily-white), and the $200 million (!!!) future world seems like a mash-up of Minority Report and The Fifth Element.  Even the big 'single-take' shooting sequence looks *exactly* like a moment from the Dead to Rights video game series.  Why bother even spending such an obscene amount of money if you're not going to actually try to create anything new or unique?  You want to play around with the story?  Great!  You want to create an original future world using state-of-the-art special effects? Fine!  But Sony and the filmmakers seem to have merely decided to remake a popular and continuously-relevant genre film purely because of its built-in brand awareness and then spent $200 million merely ripping off the future worlds from other original pictures.  This one drops August 3rd, ironically against The Bourne Redundancy.  Maybe I'll take my daughter to Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days instead (or perhaps just read a book).  Your turn, folks.  Am I being too hard on this one, or is the lack of imagination depressing to you as well?

Scott Mendelson          

Review: London Boulevard (2011) a generic hodgepodge of British gangster cliches.

London Boulevard
2011
103 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

I could spend 800 words explaining why William Mohanan's London Boulevard is a warmed-over quasi-parody of the British gangster film. I could whine that Colin Farrell and Keira Knightley are misused and wasted, with only David Thewliss having anything fun to do.  I could elaborate on how the one interesting story component (an ex-con protecting a movie star from relentless paparazzi) is more-or-less ignored after the first act.  But instead I'll just save my time and yours and embed this wonderful Saturday Night Live parody from last February.  It pretty much sums up my problems with this underwhelming genre exercise.  But at least I didn't need subtitles to appreciate its mediocrity.

grade: D

Scott Mendelson

Weekend Box Office (08/21/11): The Help tops in second weekend, crushes four new releases. Summer of 3D ends with three 3D flops.

As expected, the summer reached its climax this weekend with an ugly pileup, as four new releases failed to achieve anything resembling success, with three of those releases being in 3D and two of them chasing the exact same demographics.  Why oh why did Lionsgate and Disney open Conan the Barbarian and Fright Night on the same weekend?.  With the new releases eating each other alive, The Help snuck into the number one slot during its second weekend.  Dropping just 21% compared to the Fri-Sun portion of its opening weekend, The Help earned $20.4 million and now sits with a twelve-day total of $71.8 million.  This is the very definition of an old-fashioned leggy hit, but in today's front-loaded marketplace, it almost qualifies as a sensation.  $100 million is guaranteed at this point, the question now merely remains how far over/under $150 million it ends up and/or how much the film will factor in the year-end awards races.  Viola Davis is a lock for an Oscar nomination (but will her lead performance get placed in the leading or supporting category) and the film is in a pretty good place for a Best Picture nomination.  It would be a lock under the old 10-nominees system, and said two-year experiment was dismantled partially out of the desire to keep such 'popular entertainments' (IE - well-reviewed films that mainstream audiences actually enjoyed... horrors!) out of the field.

Trailers: Fright Night remake = Distburbia with VAMPIRES (in 3D)!