Tag: Haley Bennett

Like a lot of people my age, I first learned about Cyrano from one specific location. You know, the dog. Wishbone. Specifically the episode Cyranose, which was early on in the shows run. Have I ever read the book Cyrano de Bergerac? Heck no. No need to. I saw the wishbone episode. It gave me a great summary, and related the events in that book to a modern story involving teenagers and their dog. What more could I ask for?

I guess. I could ask for, eventually, a movie version of the events. But even better? Let’s make it a musical. Apparently this movie isn’t an original musical, it was based on a stage musical that came out a few years ago, starring Peter Dinklage and music by members of The National. Whew, I was worried for a second when I first saw advertisements that the people who made the movie had somehow came up with songs all on their own for a movie. But alas, its an adaptation of an adaptation.

On another note, it is directed by Joe Wright, a man who certainly knows how to make a period piece. Darkest Hour, Atonement, Pride and Prejudice, and Anna Karenina. We just won’t talk about The Woman in the Window and Pan, and point out that Wright knows how to make the past look good.

This is likely the sexiest version of Cyrano ever on a film screen.

Cyrano (Peter Dinklage) is relatively wealthy, he is witty, is romantic, and he knows how to fight. What he doesn’t have, is looks. In the books, he is described as various forms of ugly, including an unfortunate nose and a hunch backed, but this film took it in a very different direction. Cyrano is also in love! Oh what misfortune.

Roxanne (Haley Bennett) is some level of aristocrat, from the same village as Cyrano originally. Her house hold is losing prestige though, and money, and she will likely be poor sometime soon. Her house keeper Marie (Monica Dolan) is trying to keep her safe, and get her to marry the some rich count (Ben Mendelsohn). But she doesn’t want him. He is boring, and probably mean. She wants love damn it. And she thinks she has finally found it.

That’s right. A random guard, new to the city, Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), who is in Cyrano’s regiment. Time to rekindle with her old friend to ask for a favor. Get this guard to write to her. He must be smart to go with those looks. Cyrano, heart broken, yet in love, agrees to get Christian to write to her. But it turns out Christian ISN’T witty, and the knowledge of that will disappoint Roxanne. What is a noble to do? Guess Cyrano will just have to write the letters for Christian, to help their love, built entirely on deceit.

Also starring Bashir Salahuddin, Anjana Vasan, and Joshua James.

Can’t express love nicely with words? Well, you could always hire a giant dance team and do choreography.

I know Cyrano is meant to be witty, but goddamn, they picked Peter Dinklage, who now has a history of playing smart and charismatic characters. Regardless of size differences, it is hard to imagine someone not immediately falling at his feet throughout this film. He basically seems to be someone who has everything. Roxanne was just someone who was blinded, and probably shitty as well.

Cyrano is a really strong acted and beautifully shot movie. The music is meant to feel a bit more natural. I believe it was filmed with the actors singing live on camera, and not lip sync’d for more professional sounding songs. That sounds like it could be a good idea, like Les Miserables, and some songs in other modern musicals. However, that also meant that at points it was extremely hard to actually hear the lyrics. Over the actual song sound and other noise. That was disappointing, but it is still a big experiment to do this in movies with live singing. It wanted to translate the live stage experience as much as possible, I guess, to have the same natural feeling that most of the songs take.

And honestly, the natural feeling is such a huge positive. Wherever I Fall part 1 is an incredible song. It is sad, it is painful, it is beautiful, and it is sung by three characters who I assume don’t even have real character names (confirmed, Guard #1, Guard #2, and Guard #3). Other songs are beautiful, and a lot of them have similarities in tone. It lacks diversity, for the sake of a common sound. It isn’t going for a series of ballads that people will sing along with and argue about. It wants that cohesion, which is an interesting strategy.

Acting wise, the big three are all strong. Bennett’s character almost feels like overacting at points, but that matches the general attitude and romanticizing that the character necessitates. Harrison Jr. has had a strong last few years in film (see Waves, my favorite film of 2019), and he now can sing too. And as I already mentioned, Dinklage is incredible in this role, and seems to bring a lot of emotional baggage to the role.

Cyrano is incredible, and honestly, we should be angry at its ridiculously long release date for a “2021” movie. I get the move back to Valentine’s Day, but then shifting it to late February? It can’t make my best of the year list if I can’t see it until February, and if it wanted to throw away any attempt at awards, it should have just actually came out in 2022.

I did plan on watching The Girl on the Train when it came out, you know, in 2016. I knew it was based on a pretty famous book, it had a lot of mysterious elements, and it might have been a spiritual successor to Gone Girl. The book and movie are not done by the people who did Gone Girl, but similar elements were apparently there.

However, I missed the screening, and then my wife said she really wanted to see it also. Just after she read the book first, because that is what normal people do. It took a year later, but she finally picked up and read the book in only about a week, which let us thankfully still watch it thanks to Redbox. It is great when they have oldish movies on there (and yes, I realize it is within a year of coming out, but it still feels really old).

Hooray trains!

I found her! The girl on the train! Did I solve it!?

Rachel (Emily Blunt) is a woman who happens to be an alcoholic, and she rides a train to and from work every day. And on this train ride, she has become obsessed with another woman. She can see her in her house, this Megan (Haley Bennett), living a life with her lover, happy and free. Or at least that is what Rachel invents for her life.

Rachel is a drinker because her husband, Tom (Justin Theroux) left her. He married Anna (Rebecca Ferguson), had a kid, all of the things that he could never do with Rachel. And it turns out that Megan was their nanny for the little kid, unsure if Rachel knew this fact.

Well one sad day, Rachel decided to get off on that stop, seeing that Megan was with another man. This could not be! She was perfect! And now Rachel was drunk and upset.

The next thing Rachel knew, she was awake in her home, with blood on her hands. And news that Megan was missing.

Was it Rachel, blackout drunk and angry? Could she have killed someone?

Also starring Luke Evans, Edgar Ramirez, Darren Goldstein, Laura Prepon, Allison Janney, and Lisa Kudrow.

The Girl on the Balcony was a much sexier title, but too close to Man on a Ledge.

The Girl on the Train is told from three different points of view, Emma, Megan, and of course Rachel. The timelines are a bit out of whack, for dramatic sake, in order to amp up all the mystery. After all, if we saw Megan’s point of view when she died, there would be no story to tell!

The false leads don’t end up pissing off the viewer, but really just make sense as the story unfolds. It is not an easy mystery to guess ahead of time, although enough hints really are there. I made a lot of intentionally stupid guesses just to mess with my wife, but when the final reveals occurred I wasn’t surprised in the least.

The issues with the film are just…hard to explain. It feels so bland. The acting isn’t bad, it is just mediocre feeling. The story doesn’t end up feeling as great as it is built up to be. It was maybe over hyped by the advertising or the pacing of the book, because the movie felt rushed and just average.

I think more details in the story would have gone a long way. More drives for the characters and just more things for them to do. It took a long time to reveal not too much, and just felt like a lot of potential that was never fully reached, unfortunately. Let’s hope the sequel, The Old Lady in the Shoe does a bit better.

I didn’t watch The Magnificent Seven before now, because it is from one of the studios that I don’t get invites to. But despite that, I did WANT to see it, and then never got out to the theaters. And now it has been out for awhile and I still dicked around.

My bad. I wanted to see the movie because yes, I knew the story. It is a remake. But I liked a lot of the actors involved and wanted to give it a shot. A whole lot of shots. A village full of shots.

Basically now I just find myself in a gun mood, and want to watch fake cowboys shoot other fake cowboys. They have theme parks with that theme.

Let’s see…One…two…three…uhh, um…yeah seven. Looks like seven people here.

In the late 1800s, the town of Rose Creek is getting besieged! Or maybe just hoodwinked a little. A big time robber dude, Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard), is trying to buy out an entire mining town for his own profits. He is not giving them a good deal, using threats and intimidation and actually killing to get his way.

So Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett) and her friend (Luke Grimes) go out in search of help, eventually finding a warrant officer, Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington). He doesn’t want to until he hears about Bogue, which causes him to agree and start looking for other people to join his crew.

We got a gambler (Chris Pratt), a Mexican outlaw (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), a Comanche warrior (Martin Sensmeier), a tracker (Vincent D’Onofrio), a guy good with knifes (Byung-hun Lee), and of course a famed sharpshooter (Ethan Hawke).

Needless to say, they don’t have a lot of people. But they have some townsfolk, who are miners and farmers. Their lead villager (Matt Bomer) is pretty good too. If they set up defenses, put the towns people in easy areas to defend, they can probably stop a pretty big force of asshole outlaws from taking over. But it is a gun fight, so some people are going to get scared, and a lot of people are going to die.

Also starring Jonathan Joss in pretty intimidating role.

With lights that bright, there must be an angel or something in that corner.

The point of The Magnificent Seven is to watch some famous people act like cowboys, shoot each other, hopefully have some really cool skillful tactics, and be a bit enjoyable. And sure, it did feel pretty enjoyable.

I know I was hoping for a lot more to happen during the final siege. Or maybe a secondary skirmish after the initial one to give us more shenanigans. The big siege just didn’t live up to my expectations and hype. Some cool moments, sure, and I cared what happened to the characters, but it was just overall a little bit disappointed.

The good news is with a diverse cast of characters, it plays out like an RPG. Everyone has their own little bit of plot and characterization, it isn’t just 3 people and 4 “guys who shoot good” or anything. No, they said these seven people were magnificent, so they made them all really talented and different. Which is another major point of this film.

But you know what? It ended with a narrator describing their story and referring to them as magnificent, then credits. My eyes physically left my head to do a bigger roll at that moment. It is so…dumb. Just ugh.

Hopefully there is no sequel to this movie, but hey, just give me another reboot and do it better and I will be happy.

Heh. Hardcore Henry. It isn’t necessarily a bad title, but it is slightly suggestive. Still, it is a better title than its previous iteration, just Hardcore. And I could be wrong, but I think before that it might have just been called POV.

Either way, it isn’t the safest film to google image search.

Ahem, but in case you didn’t know, this film is shot entirely from the first person point of view. It is 100% GoPro camera, specially mounted on a face mask, not awkwardly on top of the head. This movie promises to be very similar to many modern shooting games, except with realistic arm placement on the camera.

It’s a new experience, so let’s just jump on in feet first and get wet.

Hello Henry! I guess, you are Henry. No one actor played Henry, mostly a bunch of stuntman and the director. And since it is your point of view, and since Henry doesn’t remember his past, then sure, you can be Henry. Congrats!

Henry/You wake up in a science laboratory, where Estelle (Haley Bennett) is there to add some robot limbs to your body and let you know that you were husband and wife. Don’t worry, you will remember eventually. Just before they can reinstall his voice software, some very European guy named Akan (Danila Kozlovsky) breaks in and starts killing people. And he has telekinesis, cool.

Either way, Henry has to escape and run from a giant Akan army of masked unnamed soldiers. He quickly meets Jimmy (Sharlto Copley), who knows about his situation and seems helpful. At the same time, he keeps showing up almost everywhere with elaborate disguises and surviving extreme situations. Very strange. Henry needs to trust someone, needs to take down Akan, and needs to save his wife. And hopefully get his memories back.

Also starring Andrei Dementiev as Slick Demetri, Oleg Poddubnyy as Yuri the henchman, and Darya Charusha and Svetlana Ustinova as dominatrices.

Oh and Tim Roth! For like, one quick unfulfilling scene!

Despite appearances, Jimmy is not a time traveling soldier.

Hardcore Henry is the type of movie that delivers on its promise and not much more. If you want almost non stop action with the unique filming style, you will get it. A decent plot and acting? Eh, calm your expectations.

The director has said they wanted to do this movie with the intention of making it a personal experience for the viewer, and not the video game angle, but that doesn’t really hold water. In this movie we have an escort mission, dozens of different weapons, chase mission, and even a last ditch health pack type situation before the big boss fight. It felt like a video game. The personal experience angle never really works, because it isn’t a 4D film. We aren’t getting turned around left or right every time he does, so our head doesn’t move with the scene. That is a vital component if it wanted the audience to feel like the protagonist.

Honestly, the reason I am even giving this film an average rating is thanks to Sharlto Copley. He really makes this movie, his characters are wonderful and, at times, incredibly campy. Without a character like him and just a voiceless action star, it would be a boring film with the occasional headache.

At the end of the day, it is a unique style and so it can have some points for trying. But should this art form continue in the future, I hope we can remember this as the starting point and not the best the genre had to offer.

Heh. The Hole.

Heh heh heh.

Heh.

Oh. This isn’t that funny anymore.

Dane (Chris Massoglia), Lucas (Nathan Gamble) and their mom (Teri Polo) are moving to another new home, in another non descript good old fashioned US City.

The kids find a hole in they’re basement. It is deep. It is dark. So dark. Oh well.

Eventually they start seeing weird things happen. You know, a puppet moves around on its own. They see a tiny (dead?) girl creeping around the house and going into the hole. Just a lot of weird things. They also introduce their neighbor, Julie (Haley Bennett), to the hole, and it goes okay.

After talking to Creepy Carl (Bruce Dern) who lives down the street, he claims the hole as existed since the first fear existed. That’s right, it may be a funnel to hell, but it scares you with your greatest fears, and manifests them into a real entity that can hurt you. Shit. And these fuckers had to go and open it, dooming everyone.

“Yep, that’s a hole.”

The only reason I decided to watch The Hole is because it was directed by Joe Dante, who brought us Gremlins and Small Soldiers, both scaryish films but decent for kids in their own ways. I like them both, and nostalgia aside, I think they are both rewatchable many years later. So I was hoping this movie would be similar to them in nature.

Well, I don’t think The Hole is really similar to them at all. Sad but true.

It goes for a horror-esque element, but nothing felt terrifying, just hokey. Hell, Small Soldiers still kind of frightens me when I watch it. This one is just lacking any of the same humor level and fear. It is just some kids being kids. Not an exciting topic for this adult.

This story reminded me of another horror movie I saw in my youth. The Gate. In The Gate, a group of kids find a hole in their backyard, not their basement, and it leads to hell. Demons come out, scary shit. I remember it vaguely, I remember it terrified me, even though it was PG-13 and I was the appropriate age. I can’t imagine anyone finding this one scary. So yeah, a very similar story. Not too original Joe Dante.

Shit. The Gate had a young Stephen Dorff in it. Very surprising, he grew up to be famous! I wonder if any of these kids will matter in 10 years. (Probably not).