Tag: Hilary Swank

Before all of the hubbub, I just naturally assumed that The Hunt was a remake of the Danish movie, also called The Hunt. Because it was famous, got nominated for awards, and so of course it will be remade by America at some point.

And that film was about maybe a pedophile, but maybe not, teaching at a school. Apparently this movie is about hunting people as a game, a very unoriginal story!

And apparently, due to its violence, it was taken off the schedule until further notice. And further notice means March 13th, because we haven’t had a big gun disaster in awhile, so it is okay to have a movie with violence.

I mean, minus the fact that people died, it has a pretty good PR campaign to get people talking about the movie. I will assume that was not their goal this whole time.

Ah fuck yeah, two guns!Everyone knows about Manorgate. You know, the conspiracy? The one that says the rich liberal elite once a year steal “deplorables” from the society, to round up and kill them like they are animals. Deplorables can just be anyone they don’t agree with.

You know. Card carrying republicans, gun nuts, conspiracy podcasters, anti-immigration, anti-gay, anti-abortion people. Any of those types. They just want to round them up in a small group and easily pick them off with traps and weapons, and slowly, this will be the rich’s way of getting rid of the poor and shifting our country blue.

Everyone. Knows. About. This. It has to be true!

That’s why when our cast of characters wake up, gagged, and find guns, they immediately know what is up when they start getting picked off. Can they survive? Can they put an end to this program once and for all?

A big cast of characters, on both sides of this hunt, including in no particular order: Ike Barinholtz, Wayne Duvall, Ethan Suplee, Betty Gilpin, Hilary Swank, Emma Roberts, Christopher Berry, Sturgill Simpson, Kate Nowlin, Amy Madigan, Reed Birney, Glenn Howerton, Steve Coulter, Dean J. West, Vince Pisani, Teri Wyble, and Steve Mokate.

Shit, the military is involved as well? Better just add them to the Republicans side! For a film about rounding up people and killing them (allegedly), they really knew how to drag things out and make it really boring. This is the sort of film that promises a lot of deaths, on both sides, and this is wasted on fast group kills that don’t leave a lot left for the viewer.

This works in favor of the film early on, when people are dying when you might not expect it. Big names, with barely any lines, it is hard to know just who the main character is going to be. A lot of traps and explosions and more.

And then when we have only a handful left, it stalls really hard. Later on, a large percentage of the “bad guys” go out right around the same time, once again, why so fast? They needed to much better pace out the killing and keep it diverse.

In the second half of the film, I was left with a lot of slower conversations, like they really needed to pad the running time of this movie to make it last 90 minutes. I shouldn’t be falling asleep as they get to the point.

And yet here I am. The Hunt is all hype and not enough substance. It doesn’t go far enough on the killing, nor really anywhere with its message. This is a film that would only work as a short. Could have told the same sort of story in about 20 minutes and saved all of us time with a much better experience overall.

1 out of 4.

Steven Soderbergh is a sunuvabitch. And I mean that in a loving way. After finishing strong with Side Effects and Behind The Candelabra, he said he was retiring from directing, and the world was sad. Sure, he gave us some of The Knick, but it wasn’t the same.

And then I saw a trailer for Logan Lucky. Soderbergh. Was. Back. He didn’t last long in retirement, a project pulled him out, described as a sort of redneck Ocean’s Eleven.

I didn’t need to see the trailer multiple times. I didn’t have to look at the cast list with glee. They just had to tell me that SS was at the helm and I knew I would not be missing that film.

Also, add in one of the greatest known actors to man, then you are just asking for Oscars.

In West Virginia, part of the Blue Ridge mountains, with the Shenandoah River, bunch of country roads that are basically heaven for the inhabitants, live the Logans. A family that some individuals think are cursed or unlucky. There is Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum), the one who was going to be a big football star, but got a leg injury leaving him with a limp before he could make it big. He also was fired recently as a construction worker in NC, so there is that. His brother is Clyde Logan (Adam Driver), soft spoken, ended up going to the Army after his brother’s accident, and in Iraq, he lost his hand and part of an arm. Now he is a bartender. Their extended family has some issues too, but their younger sister, Mellie Logan (Riley Keough), has been relatively unfazed and is a hairdresser.

Anyways, Jimmy has a family. Notably, a daughter, (Farrah Mackenzie) and an ex-wife (Katie Holmes), and he just wants to do right by them. But getting fired, not being rich, these are big problems. So he has had it. He wants to steal from a vault. He needs a giant payday, and from his construction, he knows how the money is moved at the Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina. He has a big plan and everything to get the money and out without people knowing about it. Heck, he is even going to pick a small weekend where there is little security and not a big monetary loss to the company. They aren’t bad people, they are just…unlucky and in hard times.

They just need some help. And they want to enlist Joe Bang (Daniel Craig), a man from that area who is knowledgeable about getting into vaults. But he is also in jail. So they need to break him out, do a heist, and break him back into jail without knowing he was gone. Ah yes, good times.

And rednecks. Good times with rednecks.

Also starring Seth MacFarlane, Sebastian Stan, Brian Gleeson, David Denman, Jack Quaid, Jim O’Heir, Katherine Waterston, Hilary Swank, and Dwight Yoakam as the warden.

No touching!

This film was very hard for me to review. Days later it still has resonated with me, one touching scene in particular. It has brought me closer to John Denver more so than any other film before it. You know how these movies work. Have a dad, have a relationship with his daughter, have touching moments, and you will have me there in the theater crying.

I love the cast. I love how into the characters everyone was, no matter how big or small. I loved how everyone played it straight. They weren’t mocking southerners, they were embracing the culture. Sure it was amusing, but it was still handled with a lot of class. They were just people trying to do something for their families and not trying to hurt anyone along the way. They were good people in somewhat extreme circumstances. And everyone was just so good at their roles. Even the people who were dicks.

Before I forget, this film also featured the BEST Game of Thrones reference ever in a film. It was something that made me cackle with glee. To be honest, the list of “films with Game of Thrones references” is probably pretty short, but no way could anything before have topped this one.

BUT YET THERE IS SOMETHING THAT IS HARD TO DESCRIBE. There are slower moments. There are things rushed. There is confusion at just how far away they live from Charlotte. I have to assume like 3-4 hours, which makes the timing of this film a bit awkward and harder to grasp. The later reveals of heist didn’t feel as extravagant as I had hoped. And the ending just sort of ending.

It isn’t the perfect film that my mind has made it out to be. I still can love it, I can accept its faults, but that makes me put an honest rating. You know, a brain rating and not just a rating in my heart.

If my heart was rating this film, it would maybe be a 5 out of 4.

3 out of 4.

Haha! Ha ha ha! See what I did there? [Future readers will note the posting date].

Because of the really fucking large cast of New Year’s Eve, I decided that all of my tags will not list the actor name in parenthesis like normal, just tag the character. You can see the name if you hover your mouse though. That will make it at least a small mystery, if you don’t care. Maybe fuck with you a bit. After all, something needs to make it more interesting.

Except for Ryan Seacrest. He only plays himself, always and forever. Just like Bloomberg.

YEAH ITS NEW YEAR’S EVE IN NEW YORK CITY. Time to party! Well, maybe. People gotta work, shit is still going down.

Like hospitals! Turns out people still are giving birth. But did you know at this specific NYC hospital, they have decided to give away a $10,000 prize to the couple who birthed the first baby of the new year. One Man/woman couple has been planning this out for months. The other man/woman just found out about it today. Who can push out a baby first? Also, doctors. They are a thing.

The opposite of babies is happening, people are getting old and dying. Like that one old guy. His doctor doesn’t know if he will make it to the new year. He might though, hopefully the daughter will make it in time. But until then, a nurse shall keep him company, despite her own “Date” that night to worry about.

One woman is fed up with the holiday mess. She has a boss who sucks, and wont give her time off despite already promising it. So she quits, and really wants to complete all the resolutions she made last year before the new year. Well, its impossible. But she gets a courier to help her anyways.

The courier’s sister is having problems with her daughter, who really wants to go out to times square for new years. The courier’s friend is jaded about new years, after a bad break up the previous year. He gets stuck on an elevator with an uppity girl, who really needs to get to times square for her job. What job? Back up singer to Jensen, huge celebrity who is performing on the main stage!

Turns out he only agreed to do this job, to get closer to an ex girlfriend of his. She runs a catering business, and demanded that she cater the very fancy party. Pretty sneaky sis. Too bad he also has to deal with very busty fan girls.

One man just watched his last single friend get married. He is the last one! But no worries, he has to go to NYC tonight anyways to do a speech for his work. Good year or something. But last year he met the woman of his dreams, just didn’t get her name. Will she be at the location that she promised to be at a year later? Just who is she?

But lastly, when you think of NYC NYE, you think of the ball drop. Someone has to run that thing, damn it. The woman in charge is on her first year, and is good friends with the head of police too. But there is an issue. The only way to fix it is to call back a fabled old mechanic, who they fired earlier in the year. Whoops. Awkward.

Nothing says a new year, like Ashton Kutcher, right?

I can honestly say that I found basically none of these plot lines that interesting. That seems like a big problem. Unlike Valentine’s Day, which had some storylines that I enjoyed (and still need to review!), this one had nothing for me. Shit, I also have to review New York, I Love You, another similar movie (Except rated R).

The best part of the movie for me is that I got paid $18 to have it. My first copy didn’t work, got it exchanged at Wal-Mart, they messed up the return (Which I pointed out), but laziness occurred, an I profited. Hey, that’d be reason enough to give a 4 out of 4 in my book. More people should give me money to own a movie.

1 out of 4.

The cover of The Resident makes it look like it involves a stalker of some sort. Probably someone who shares the apartment complex. Awesome. I don’t mind creepy thrillers, they are like a lame horror.

Unless of course this movie decides to make it not too creepy or thrillery…just weird and dumb. Which it does. Damn it.

“In before the ‘rape’ talk.”

The plot is very simple, because well, the movie is very simple. Hilary Swank is an ER doctor, and is breaking up with her boyfriend. She needs a new apartment, finds a big one in a complex that is being reconstructed, with only about one other tenant (Christopher Lee, with maybe the smallest/most pointless role in his career).

Also the price is damn cheap, since she’d have to hear construction noises. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the owner, isn’t bad looking either. EXCEPT HE IS OBSESSED WITH SWANK AND SPIES ON HER AT NIGHT AND SOMETIMES SNEAKS IN AND TOUCHES HER. ALSO HE MIGHT BE DRUGGING HER TO TAP THAT. Very romantic.

Eventually she finds out, freaks out but not with enough time to tell authorities. Long struggle. Eventually he dies. Movie over.

Before I analyze why I hated it, fun fact, in P.S. I Love You, Hilary Swank loses her husband and takes forever to get over him. Eventually she does, and partially because of some “sexy Irish man” she meets, who is played by, of course, Jeffrey Dean Morgan. From love to rape. It happens.

They don’t even make the “whodunnit” part suspenseful.

This movie is not good. That is an opinion, but I will say it in a stern voice. There is no possibility that the early tampering with Swank is not done by any other character other than the one who does it. Most of the scenes show him sitting in between walls and shaking. All Swank does is take awkward baths and take, well…some abuse. Until she finds out.

I didn’t find it creepy, just weird. I didn’t find it scary, just weird. I didn’t find it good, just stupid. I felt like very little happened. Even tried to show a whole bunch of scenes over, to show how weird the guy is, and it just confused me more than anything.

I award this movie no points and may god have mercy on its soul.

0 out of 4.

I first saw the preview for Conviction on the movie Never Let Me Go. It also had previews for things like 127 Hours, Black Swan (which is acclaimed, despite my dislike) and Cyrus (which I will have to watch soon).

Anyways readers, help me out. Hilary Swank‘s voice. Does she always do accents? Is her voice just super…southern a lot of times? I looked up a Million Dollar Baby trailer, and it seemed similar to Conviction, and I don’t remember how her voice was in that. But in an interview, I couldn’t tell if it was weird or what. So let me know, does she have an intense accent, or is she acting it in all these movies?

To me her voice is almost as mysterious as her goofy smile.

This is another true story. Sam Rockwell goes to jail for a murder he didn’t commit in the 80s. Swank goes to school to get her GED then BA then Law Degree while being a single mother and divorcee. She eventually gets DNA proof of innocence, but still cannot free brother. More problems, more solutions, until everyone is happy. Yay! Just took 18 years out of the dude’s life, but everything worked out well!

Obviously Rockwell isn’t the focal point of this movie, he does a fine job, but it is all pretty much on Swank’s shoulders. More or less this is one of those “punch you in the face yet somehow you still keep moving on” movies, in her journey to freeing her brother from prison. I really didn’t think I would tag this actress more than once, but Ari Graynor, my favorite part of Lucky, played the daughter of Rockwell, that he of course never got to know. Her role was limited, but also great.

Usually with punch you in the face –> overcome movies you feel great at the end, as the character you begin to cheer for the whole time. This is no exception. It was well done, pretty much everyone played their roles appropriately. I was a little bit confused in the beginning, as it seemed to jump around, but this movie accomplishes everything it sets out to do.

Oh yeah. He is innocent alright. Can’t you tell?

3 out of 4.