Tag: Abbie Cornish

When one thinks of the word ‘virtuoso’ they usually put it towards piano, but it of course can be used for any music. We all accept that. Hell, it could be for any art form. You can be a sculpting virtuoso, or a cross stitching virtuoso, but I can’t imagine anyone likes cross stitching enough to be a virtuoso at it.

And with The Virtuoso, we have a movie about hitmen for hire, killing people. I guess killing people, to make it look like an accident, and never be seen or heard from could be like an artform. They made a game called Hitman, and the ability to cause deaths accidentally is graded on points, I think. I only tried playing it once and I did a bad job at it. Please correct me if I am wrong about the game Hitman. I wouldn’t want such a storied franchise with terrible movies to accidentally have something said incorrect about it.

Back to The Virtuoso. Oh, yeah. The review.

Some say I am food eating virtuoso. But I just think I’m a picky eater.

The Virtuoso is about a guy named The Virtuoso (Anson Mount). Awesome. Good plot. Head home.

We don’t get to know his name, or really any other names here. After all, we also get people with names like The Mentor (Anthony Hopkins) and The Waitress (Abbie Cornish). Our hero (?) doesn’t like to use names I guess, makes things too personal, everything is just a job.

He is a real detailed oriented person and secretive. It has a level of difficulty to hire him for a job, but that helps maintain his own anonymity and allows him to have a life outside of the job. And unfortunately, he gets “forced” into doing a rush job without a lot of proper planning, and that really throws him off balance in life, because extra people died who were innocents, and that is not okay.

Eventually he gets put on a new mission, that requires a lot of set up in a small area, and a lot of targets to take out. Maybe this will be his final one. He can’t get over the killing of innocents. Maybe this will be his swan song. 

Also starring Eddie Marsan, David Morse, and Chris Perfetti. 

“Hey! Come back here Mr. Two-Time-Oscar-Winner!”

The Virtuoso is narrated by the lead character, but done in a very unique way. I guess we are to assume that we are also the virtuoso, and it is more like a stage summary of events. “You look around the room, and check the exits.” You line up your sights and hold your breath.” This sort of thing. Him describing the process and letting us know what is going on. It was very strange at first, but it definitely grew by the end as an interesting tool and didn’t feel unnatural anymore. And also by the end it has a fun little payoff as well, so it makes the journey feel worth it in that regard. 

The Virtuoso is also relatively slow. The beginning execution where the disaster happens that gives our main character regret is relatively quick, but the main plot after that is a much slower build. I don’t know a lot about Mount in other films (but he was in Crossroads which I keep meaning to watch…) but he seems to be trying to play a role similar to Timothy Olyphant in Justified, in terms of coolness, but a lot, lot, quieter. Maybe it is just because their faces are similar to me. He is a fine lead, extremely stoic, but the side characters do a job of making this story interesting.

And in case you are curious, Hopkins is actually in this movie several times, not just a quick one or two scenes. Not just a big name grab. I did like Cornish in this one as well. She has a much bigger role in this film than anything else I have seen her in, and adds some unique plot to the story. 

Overall, if you are looking for a quiet drama with a handful of twists about an assassin, you will end up enjoying this. If you want something with more elaborate deaths, or more action, or more twists, then this one will put you to sleep. 

I am a goddamn geophysicist, and it took me until almost half of a year later to watch goddamn Geostorm.

IT IS ABOUT EXTREME WEATHER. AND THE EARTH. AND I AM A GEOPHYSICIST.

It would have been unacceptable for me to watch San Andreas way late, like I did with Geostorm.

And hell, I have been relatively kind to natural disaster films on this site. I liked Into The Storm, and you already forgot it existed! Bring on the disaster, especially if it is fun.

Are those ice zombies? What are those soldiers going to do to those poor popsicles?

The Climate is fucked. After the storms started getting worse and worse, these extreme weather events began to get out of hand. Heatwaves killing thousands in an afternoon. Parts of NYC getting flooded. It just needed to stop. So the world finally came together. They couldn’t stop the climate change. But they could try to curb it.

With all nations actually working together, they developed technology, and put satellites into the orbit. Using science or whatever, these satellites around the globe can disrupt big weather events and counter act them through…I dunno, science/technology stuff. Just trust us, it works.

Hurricanes be gone, droughts be gone, whatever. The world is now a happy and prosperous place. The main creator Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler) was taken from his design though, because he was hard to work with. The US Government wasn’t a fan, especially because he wanted it to be perfect enough for the technology to be controlled by the UN, not the USA. Once he is kicked out, and his brother (Jim Sturgess) is put in charge, he feels like it is still fine, but nope. Time for exile.

He is just going to be needed years later, when the satellites begin to malfunction. Now these big storm events are starting to occur, people are dying, and bad things are happening. If these storms continue, they will start to cause other storms, until they get big enough that the whole world will be under weather advisory. A Geostorm.

Also starring a lot of other people: Like Abbie Cornish, Alexandra Maria Lara, Daniel Wu, Eugenio Derbez, Amr Waked, Adepero Oduye, Andy Garcia, Ed Harris, Richard Schiff, Robert Sheehan, Zazie Beetz, and Mare Winningham.

Surprise! Half of this film takes place not even on the geo!

Goddamn it. I wanted to watch a terrible nature disaster movie. But Geostorm isn’t really a terrible disaster movie. It is really just a terrible political thriller, that has climate disaster consequences.

Fuck that.

I mean, if it was a good political thriller and about climate change, it would be one thing. But it is terrible at explaining the disasters, and a terrible thriller, with terrible action. Everything about it is terrible!

Well then why isn’t it a zero? You know, if I hated it, and the acting was bad, and the plot was bad, and the disasters were bad?

Well, they called the satellite program the Dutch boy. You know, referencing the fable about him sticking his finger in a dyke. That makes me chuckle. That is a solid nickname. That is worth a slight price of admission.

And unfortunately, Butler is a scientist in this movie, and mostly in space. So we don’t get to see him fighting a tornado or anything cool. Very disappointing.

I try my best to avoid most trailers for films, but I give myself some exceptions. I will watch a real teaser trailer occasionally, as they are the ones who don’t spoil the whole thing. Teaser trailers especially for superhero films or Pixar/Disney stuff, even though some of the teasers are downright terrible.

But sometimes a film comes along with such a unique name, that I just need to know what it is about, right away. I will watch it right away, intrigued, which is what a movie title should do. Unlike every other film I review this week after this movie, because all of their titles are shit, regardless of film quality.

Only some offense meant for the films this week that I won’t name. Back to this title. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri just grabs the viewer by the balls and tells them to get ready for a very fucking specific story.

Even better, despite being an original story, it might have been inspired by a true event. In Minnesota last year, a citizen took out a billboard calling out the sheriff with vulgar language. If you read a news article, it seems like a completely bull shit story, so who cares about that guy. But when I saw it in person I had my wife look it up on her phone (I was driving) because the gossip just had to be too good.

Again, a shit story, but it felt juicy, so I am glad to see this film do something much better with the concept.

And I will only show you one of the billboards in this review, neener neener.

Mildred (Frances McDormand) has a problem. A problem letting go and moving on with her life, after her dad was found dead, burned alive, after being raped. A heinous, terrible crime, and honestly, it makes sense for her to not get over it. Her daughter was still a teenager and they are in such a small town, it is inexcusable and unprecedented for this to have happened.

But what is even worse, in her mind, is that the local police force seems to have given up on finding the killer. She hasn’t heard from them in 8 months and she is rightfully pissed off. So she spends most of her savings on renting out three billboards near her home, ones that have been seemingly forgotten about, to call out the local Sheriff (Woody Harrelson).

This causes quite a stir, more so than the rape/murder. The town likes the sheriff, he is a good guy, and he has goddamn cancer. Mildred doesn’t care, she just wants answers to her questions, even though she knows it will not bring her daughter back. Mildred is going to be burning several bridges to get what she needs, metaphorically and slightly literally (buildings are like bridges, right?). Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Also starring Caleb Landry Jones, Sam Rockwell, Abbie Cornish, Lucas Hedges, Zeljko Ivanek, Amanda Warren, Malaya Rivera Drew, Peter Dinklage, Sandy Martin, John Hawkes, Samara Weaving, and Clarke Peters.

Two Cops near a billboard outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Three Billboards is a hard movie, with a hard topic, with, you guessed it, hard characters. It earned a hard R rating, when it comes to language, violence, and the occasional gore. No, not on any hardcore graphical porn level, sorry folks, just everything else.

McDormand carries the film on her poor fragile shoulders where the whole thing just feels incredibly realistic. Her grief and anger can only be described as real grief and anger. Harrelson as a supporting character still feels a bit like Harrelson, but from a different angle that I haven’t seen much before. Rockwell does one of the biggest changes, as he puts all of his charismatic roles in the past to play this disgusting, morally terrible individual. He is racist, xenophobic, crass, yet caring in strange ways. Oh, and he doesn’t even dance. Can Sam Rockwell be in a film where he doesn’t dance?

The story is an emotional and moving piece. After all, everyone deals with loss in their own ways, and McDormand’s character comes from the place of a woman who feels like she has nothing left to lose (except her son, which she admittedly forgets somewhat about). But again, it is more than just her story in this small town of individuals. At least four or five other characters get shining moments, even if just a little bit, as parts of their stories fortunately (or unfortunately) intersect with her own.

I would describe only one scene that I did not like at all, and it involved a flashback. The words used were too specific and forced, they instantly drew me out of the movie. Thankfully the strong story and characters were quick to draw me back in.

Living in a small town, like a real small town, will get quite annoying when everyone knows everyone’s business, including the law enforcers. I didn’t grow up in an environment like this personally, but based on what I have seen in other films and stories from others, it definitely seems to grasp that feeling.

Three Billboards is not a film for everyone, which is shame, given how likely it will end up on my end of the year list.

Motherfucking RoboCop.

The Hero of Detroit.

Why he doesn’t have a statue yet, I still do not know. Fucking politicians, corrupt as always.

Anyways, when I heard there was a remake, I was fine with it. When I heard it was PG-13, I was confused. Do they understand the point of that franchise? Besides the satire, of course.

He is black, because black is cool and sexy.

Needless to say, no, RoboCop remake isn’t as bad as everyone said it was before they gave it a chance. I even had a popular tweet a few months back claiming it would suck, and really, it wasn’t super terrible, it just also wasn’t super amazing.

Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) is a Detroit detective, and working on uncovering a huge drug and weapons king pin. The detectives meant to monitor him are on his payroll, lots of corruption everywhere. During an encounter, his partner (Michael Kenneth Williams, for authenticity) gets injured.

Murphy really wants to bring him in. So they bomb his car to kill him. Unfortunately they only really leave him super badly disfigured.

At the same time, Omnicorp is making robot police men! But America doesn’t want them to patrol the streets, no trust for whatever reason, so instead they are used to keep peace in the Middle East. Their owner (Michael Keaton) is at war with the government, to overturn their policy making robot guards no longer illegal. Eventually he gets the idea. Why not put a human in a robot, and win the public that way?

Yes…yes…that will allow him to make lots of money. As long as the Robot Human Cop is as good as just a Robot of course. Yet also somehow maintain his human characteristics. Can it be done?

Gary Oldman plays the bio-scientist who has the capabilities of putting a man in a robot body. Jackie Earle Haley is a militaristic trainer. Abbie Cornish is the wife. Jay Baruchel is in here for some reason. And Samuel L. Jackson plays some sort of Bill O’Reilly motherfucker, with a nightly TV show that can warp the American point of view.

He is black because of genetics.

There are at least 3-4 references to the Detroit Red Wings in this movie. This is excellent. In this universe, the Red Wings still exist in all of their glory in like 20 years.

One other amazing thing happened to me in this movie. They played the song Focus by Hocus Pocus. It is a song I have been trying to find the name of for the last 4-5 years, but as it is an instrumental with yodeling and other weird noise, can’t exactly look it up. Thank you for your contributions to my sanity.

Oh you wan’t actual review? Okay.

Well, RoboCop wasn’t completely sucky. It wasn’t completely amazing either. They spent a lot lot lot of time before we actually got RoboCop into the streets. We had to watch the set up, the idea, the training, the tests, everything. Once he was about to hit the streets, he had another quick breakdown that they had fix again. Far too much of the movie was given to these factors, probably as they were trying to keep it PG-13 and not have him, you know, being a Cop.

I do think the film did capture the spirit of the original. Corrupt corporations and what not, so that is fine.

It had its entertaining moments and they increased the intensity of the ED-209, those big two legged walker robots.

I also really enjoyed the ending. And by that, I mean that they ended it on a nice note and didn’t automatically set up a sequel. That happens a lot more in movies nowadays. Fuck that.

Sucker Punch was a highly anticipated movie when I first saw the previews on TV. I mean, it just looked visually stunning. I knew absolutely nothing on the plot, I just knew that I wanted to see it.

And I did! In theaters. Leaving with mixed reviews. Despite that, I knew I still one day also wanted to see it on Blu-Ray. Because man was it pretty.

OMG SAMURAI BEASTS.

I won’t spend too much time with the plot, because it is up for interpretation technically how much of it is real, and how many layers of fantasy are involved. Why is it up for interpretation? Because I said so.

Movie begins with Babydoll (Emily Browning) fighting off her step dad, who wins and puts her in a mental institution, now that the mom is dead, so he can claim the inheritance. But right as she is about to get lobotomized by the doctor (Jon Hamm!) it switches to a brothel of some sorts, with young women dancers, recreating the exact scene. Because Lobotomies are hot. Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) is the star of the Brothel, but Babydoll is a new girl brought in from the Orphanage. She doesn’t talk much and seems upset.

Probably because she is in a brothel. The other main girls there are Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), Amber (Jamie Chung), taught by the dance instructor (Carla Gugino). But when she is made to dance, she goes on a weird fantasy adventure, where the Wise Man (Scott Glenn) tells her how to escape, and the items she needs to collect, along with a secret item.

So Babydoll makes it her mission to go and collect these items, while every time she dances, she goes into one of these fantasy trances, whether it is versus the steampunk nazi federation, and robot trains, and etc. But what is really going on the whole time? And how the heck does she look when she dances? Also, Oscar Isaac plays the Brothel owner / main bad guy.

Lot of action violence, all done by tiny women!

Some will say that the only reason this exists is for men to have things to oogle. But pfft, people don’t make movies like that. More specifically, to make nerd guys go crazy. But nerd guys realize they also want a good plot with their crazy action fantasy movies featuring a cast of mostly women. The plot is obviously the weakest part of this movie. It is incredibly nonsensical and hard to explain.

That isn’t the only problem. Some of the fantasy scenes are just WAY too long. I think the first one with the full group of women, I feel like it drags on forever. I was thinking we’d never go back to the main plot line of the movie, escape from the Brothel. These scenes could have been editted down a lot more, to make the pacing better and probably more enjoyable.

But also, this CGI fest is just…so pretty.

Just to prove a point, here is a third picture.

And it is so fucking stunning. Just think, if the plot was better and edited it down, this could have been the coolest experience ever!