So, umm, besides the Giants being the winning team Super Bowl Sunday, the OTHER winning team that arrived are THE AVENGERS! The 30 sec & 1 min extended spot are both online, and are heating up with a frenzy by Marvel fans a like. Here are some really interesting shots from the extended trailer:
The Quinjet landing on the Hellicarrier!
Cap in his new suit
_________________________ <--that's you flat lining after watching this trailer
I’m quite ashamed of myself, I call myself a Steven Soderbergh fan, and I’ve NEVER seen nor even heard of “The Limey”. This weeks Blast from the Past Movie Review came from a suggestion by my buddy Dylan. He kept egging me on and on about “The Limey” for weeks now, so I naturally Netflix’d it, and to my surprise I loved it! The film follows a very angry British ex-con, Wilson (Terence Stamp), whose daughter was found dead in Los Angeles. Wilson ventures over to the States to find the man responsible for his daughter’s death, Hollywood criminal Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda). Wilson teams up with some people who knew his daughter to find Valentine and strike where it will hurt him the most. While the story isn’t all what it’s cracked up to be, being a typical revenge plot, the real drive from the movie comes from Stamps monstrous performance. He’s mean, volatile, and extremely dangerous. It’s fun to watch his character imagine what he’ll do next and the different ways he could kill a man. The most notable scene would be the sequence where Wilson comes out of some goons hideout, blood smeared on his face, and yells out, “…you tell him I’m FUCKING COMING!” Bone chilling. Soderbergh just finished “Out of Sight” a year before “The Limey”, so it’s easy to see that he’s a fan of the crime genre.“Out of Sight” was more of a beautiful opera of a crime story; the transition into “The Limey” could only be described as an old school hard rock version of a crime story. Soderbergh’s beautiful cinematography is very present here, his notable change in color temp always makes his films eye candy for all. The editing is extremely fun to watch, with the constant flashbacks, flash-forwards, and quick flashes in general. “The Limey” is a first-rate crime thriller and a perfect reminder that Stephen Soderbergh is one of our great contemporary film stylists. Crafted with eccentric moodiness, “The Limey” is a gritty neo-noir showcase for the talent of leading man that is Terence Stamp! GRADE: A-
I’m not a big fan of the found footage genre; there are a few that I tolerate (“Paranormal Activity”), and one that I absolutely love (“Cloverfield”), but there’s just not enough you can do with it to make it fresh or reinventive, or is there? Josh Trank makes his feature debut in the anti-superhero thriller, “Chronicle”.
Three high school teens named Andrew (Dane DeHaan), Matt (Alex Russell), and Steve (Michael B. Jordan) discover a mysterious glowing blue meteor in cavern in the outskirts of Seattle, Washington. It is there that this alien object infects them with some kind of radiation endowing them with superpowers. Soon, though, they find their lives spinning out of control and their friendship, bond, and trust tested as Andrew begins embrace his darker side.
“Chronicle” is a superhero movie that spits on the face of superhero movies, not in a crude manner (a-la-“Kick-Ass”), but in realistic conception. You’ve got three teens, each different in their own way; ones a loser (Andrew), ones likeable (Matt), and the other is popular (Steve). When they’re given the great powers what do they do? They have fun! Playing pranks, goofing around, that sort of thing. But, it’s when the understanding that having great power does have responsibility, what happens when you tarnish responsibility for your personal gain?
The movies main focus is Alex; his home life isn’t sunshine and rainbows like Steve’s. Alex’s mother is dying of cancer (the very same cancer most movie parents seem to die from), and his father is a drunken abusive man. Alex knows he doesn’t have the greatest life; the only thing he feels he is responsible for is his mother. However, the movie doesn’t really develop that relationship quite well. I was really hoping that we’d get a better understanding about Alex and the relationship with his parents, instead of taking the easy way out and have the movie just plainly show us, ‘Yep, he’s got a mean dad, and a dying mother. There you go audience.’
So, Alex’s back-story is somewhat underdeveloped, but that’s not why you’re seeing this movie. If you wanna see a movie about a son with family issues rent “Warrior”. Here you wanna see teens with superpowers. The movie delivers some incredible sequences, most notably the scene where the guys are flying high in the sky. Being a found footage film, Alex says from here on out he’s gonna document his sad pathetic life, I don’t know, perhaps he’s gonna make a dramatic documentary out of it. So, when he takes that camera high above in the clouds, the vantage point the audience gets is unreal!
It seems like there’s some kind of pattern with Michael Fassbender. After seeing “Shame” the other night, a film about uncontrollable sexual impulses, I dared myself to see another Fassbender film within the same context of that subject matter. David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method” is the story about famous psychiatrist’s Carl Jung & Sigmund Freud and how their sexual exploits reach out to a young woman, creating the birth of psychoanalyst therapy. Zurich, 1902, Carl Jung (Fassbender) is introduced to an ‘insane’ Russian Jewish woman, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightly). Sabina psychologically damaged since she was a young girl after being sexually assaulted by her father. Jung wants to help her, but his ability into the sexual psychology doesn’t match to the master, Vienna’s very own Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen). Jung & Freud begin a friendship thanks to the appearance of this Spielrein, but when Jung & Spielrein being to have an affair between one another, relationships begin to sour and rivalry between the two respected doctors is inevitable. Cronenberg explores the impulses that man faces, when temptation and guidance cross paths between one another. The films main focus is on Jung & Spielrein, in the beginning it was all about helping her, getting into a composed mental state, having her to speak normally again, and accept the minimal dangers of the world. Jung knew that Sabina dreamed of becoming a doctor, therefore he decides to bring her up as an assistant. And here’s where the flaws of the film come in; time jumps. We start out in 1902, then literally jump two years later, Sabina is better, she’s a hard worker, etc. Well, my issue with that is the gap; I personally was interested in her years of progression with Jung. But, to the films credit, that’s not what the stories about, it’s about her influences on to Jung and vice versa. Freud was just the piece of the puzzle to give some philosophical notions for Jung. Jung comes from a practice background involving mysticism; he wanted to learn more about what is beyond typical science. Yet Freud was grounded in the scientific confines. The very nature of bringing up such wild notions, in Freud’s eyes that is, would be grounds for ruining ones career. At the same time, what systematically turned Jung’s life upside down was in fact Sabina. Jung took on one of Freud’s patients, a man who was also a doctor, Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel). Otto you could say was the spark need to light the fire. His influences on monogamy were dangerous for Jung’s ears, Jung was sent to treat Gross, when what was happening, Gross was treating Jung. There’s a lot of topsy turvy-ness to the characters in this film, everyone seems to be one-upping one another. You could say that the relationships between Sabina & Jung were meaningful in a sense that after their affair it gave them the sort of push for the notability of their future careers. Sadly though, that leaves out Freud, [director] David Cronenberg I felt underused the character of Freud and really didn’t fully develop him in the grand scheme of things. There a sequence where Jung & Freud sent letters between one another back and forth, I think that was a tool used in the film to make up for the carelessness of the character development in their relationship. Cronenberg’s strong points has always come from the sexual impulse themes in his movies, you could say this movie has great comparisons to “Videodrome” or “The Fly”. Men who are caught up in the sexual urges surrounding them, feeling entrapped, changing them mentally & physically, for better or worse. However, I feel that this movie would’ve done better with a greater development in the script regarding Jung & Freud relationship.
Steve McQueen & Michael Fassbender reunite after three years in this intense sexual addiction drama. McQueen made his feature debut directing Fassbender in the gritty Irish drama,“Hunger”. Much like “Hunger”, “Shame” shares similarities in the physical as well as emotional toll its lead character endures. With Michael Fassbender’s powerhouse performance,“Shame”, will most certainly be the most controversial cult film of the last decade. Brandon Sullivan (Fassbender), a 30-something-year-old businessman of New York City has a problem; he’s a sex addict. His vice is cheap hookers, skanky porno, online video sex chats, magazines, and the very woman that surround him in the city. Much like a drug addict or an alcoholic, Brandon cannot control his urges. Things begin to spiral out of further control when Brandon’s black sheep sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan), crashes his life unexpectedly. Brandon tries his best to hide his problem from his remaining family member, while trying to make certain changes in his life to be a better man, but no matter how hard he tries, Brandon is surrounded by sinful temptations. I’m a fan of the 2008 drama “Hunger”, so my excitement for this movie was set pretty high and again, “Shame” is one of the movies of 2011 where I had I high prospects and they were exceeded. The story is just so raw and powerful, you could easily set this story to an alcoholic or a cocaine addict if you really wanted to, and get similar results, but the story of a sex addict I don’t think is seen enough. How it is handle is quite gripping to say the least, and when you have a lead like Michael Fassbender playing such a character, it makes the movie all the more gratifying. As I stated before, “Hunger” & “Shame” are in some ways very similar the emotional/physical toll it pressures onto its character. “Hunger” was about a man suffering in an Irish prison, challenging the law, and having the masses join him in a mass hunger strike. The pain is too great for any man in that kind of scenario, yet in “Shame” the acts that Brandon goes through is sexual pleasures. And while that doesn’t seem as extreme as a hunger strike, it’s the way Brandon treats himself is where the extremes come into play. Sure, he masturbates at home, has meaningless sex, but then you see what kind of man he really is. Brandon will have sex out in Central park, he’ll masturbate at the office, he watches porn on his work computer, and he cannot stop. Brandon’s problem is emotional, there’s a terrific sequence in the film where Brandon decides to try a ‘normal’ date out, where it doesn’t lead into anything sexual and for the most part it seems find, but you can subtly see body gestures in him, knowing all he wants to do is touch this woman, and all this is mainly happening in one LONG master shot that SLOWLY zooms in on the date. For some that might seem boring (people want cutaways), but for the viewer you’re trapped in that uncomfortable situation that Brandon has brought himself too. Now lets talk about Michael Fassbender; I saw this movie with my friend Julie, we both are basically on the same page about Fassbender; he’s a fantastic actor, but the dude is fucking scary! Seriously, I couldn’t believe it, but I literally jumped twice during this film when his character, Brandon, bursts into full-blown rage. There were a few scenes in the film where I thought he was ready to blow again, and we were waiting for the explosion of fury, but it never came (I’m aware that out of context this sounds wrong). Fassbender’s performance was raw, he was a ticking time bomb you just had no idea when he was gonna go off, and that’s one of the many reasons why I think he’s one of the best actors working today.
