Tag: Jackie Earle Haley

Outside of the realm of superheros and already established franchises, The Dark Tower film was probably one of the most hyped and anticipated films to come out for some time.

I first heard about the book series in high school, but it existed long before I was at that level. I never touched it because hey, Steven King does scary things, and I didn’t do scary things. But in recent years I thought about adding it to my list of books to hit in the next few years, as I do love long franchises, especially if they are done, not leaving the reader wondering if the final books will ever happen.

The Dark Tower had years of development hell if I recall, for maybe a decade. Different directors, scripts, actors, whatever. But having it come out finally with two top notch actors at the lead sounded great!

It just started to sound a lot worse when people learned that it was meant as a follow up of the successful franchise, and not the successful franchise itself.

Initial thoughts? This needs way more guns!

In this section I’d love to tell you about, the film and everything it is about. But it is really hard for me to to describe a plot when the plot itself feels so incomprehensible for most of the film.

I know it starts with a boy, Jake (Tom Taylor), who is young and having weird recurring dreams that make him piss his pants. Not literally. All the people around him say that it is trauma from the death of his dad a year or so ago, but they are consistent, similar, and freaking him out.

They have some dude wearing black (Matthew McConaughey) really wanting to destroy some tower somewhere, and a Gunslinger guy (Idris Elba) not wanting him to do that thing.

And in the simplest way, that is the plot. But it involves a parallel universe or shadow realm, magic stuff, disaster stuff and monster things. And some how the kid is key to it all, because YOLO.

Also starring Ben Gavin, Claudia Kim, and Jackie Earle Haley. Other people too, but I think they’d rather I didn’t lump them in this review as well.

Final thoughts: This still didn’t live up to my gun potential.

What a fucking mess. Or a goddamn mess. I am not sure what kind of mess this film ended up being.

If I had read seven or whatever books in this series before watching this movie, would it have been better? I don’t even know. I can’t actually imagine a big budgeted film coming out that requires that much investment in books to understand it. The movie definitely attempted to explain some things. Why else have some kid thrown into the story if not an exposition device for the viewers?

But I still have no earthly idea what I watched. Once it started doing its silly other world stuff, the film just jumped off the rails and my mind was gone. Extremely poor plot and writing aside, it also was very unattractive to look at. The CGI was awful. The movie was loud and tried to fill itself with cool sequences instead of just good movie.

I mean. I am trying really hard to remember cool or especially bad moments in the film. Something that stands out. But when your movie is 100% trash, well, then it just looks like trash.

The Birth Of A Nation is titled as such to recall the film with the same name slightly over a hundred years ago. That one was racist, sure, but it was also one of the biggest movies of the time and revolutionized film so it still has a reason to be talked about today.

This modern version is about a true slave revolt that happened before the civil war. That’s right. They are taking the title back and making it pro-black. A bold and almost genius idea.

It was also one of the most anticipated films of the year, with Oscar hopes and dreams, long ovations at Sundance, and a giant bidding war to get rights to distribute. It was the first film to potentially win the Best Picture award this year, so the hype was un real. And no, Free State of Jones being terrible didn’t bring the hype down at all.

Picture of how I imagined the hype train would rush to theaters for this film.

The story is about Nat Turner (Nate Parker), a child born into slavery, who was taught to read the bible a bit by kinder owners (Penelope Ann Miller), but eventually was put back into the field.

As an adult, he was one of the head slave workers and he also preached to his fellow slaves every week. A slave preacher! Yes, because they wouldn’t let him preach to white folks of course. Well, the drought was hurting the small farm, so his owner (Armie Hammer) began to take him to other farms to have him preach to other slaves about the importance of obeying your master in order to get to heaven, helping them earn extra money.

But on these voyages he started to see worse and worse conditions for slaves. It began to break him as a person, so much that he would lash out and get more punishments on his own farm. So eventually he had enough. He got a few men together, they planned to kill all their masters, go north to an armory, grab weapons, take the town and try and end slavery once and for all. Whoops, that is most of the story!

Also starring Jackie Earle Haley as the typical evil slave catcher, Esther Scott, Aja Naomi King, Mark Boone Junior, Colman Domingo, Aunjanue Ellis, Dwight Henry, Gabrielle Union, and Roger Guenveur Smith.

Obviously, given the subject matter you can tell this will be a powerful drama and story and one has to just hope and hope that the people behind it do it justice. And since one man is behind it there is a lot of pressure on Parker to deliver. He was the director, star, writer, main producer, everything. And thankfully he also delivered.

From the cinematography, to his acting, to the costumes, to the close up faces, it was an easy and hard two hours to get through. Easy as it just seemed to flow by rarely having a dull moment, and hard given the subject matter. For those worried, it was actually a lot less graphic than I had anticipated, with a terrible scene involving teeth and some dead bodies.

Whether the movie gets the real story perfect, or what happened in anyone’s real life past is irrelevant. The film itself is actually a well-crafted piece and worthy of praise on many regards. Is it the best movie this year? I don’t think so, but it is one with few issues outside of pacing concerns and behind the scenes drama.

I don’t want to sound like a cheap comparison, but I would definitely say another recent slavery movie, 12 Years A Slave, was definitely still better. But I mean, 12 Years was reall fucking good.

Definitely go see The Birth of a Nation which you will certainty see it mentioned at awards ceremonies in a few months, but I doubt now it takes the top prize.

In 2013, our main Doppelganger films were Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down. The former was mostly serious with some jokes, the latter, full on action comedy in the middle of summer.

And you know what? I liked both of them. They had their charms and were unique enough from each other that I didn’t mind their similarities. They both worked and did what they needed to do to make an entertaining product.

But the Movie Gods have spoken, and Olympus Has Fallen has a sequel now, London Has Fallen, meaning it must have been the superior film. After all, the best films always get sequels, right?

And that was with Olympus Has Fallen having a shitty president. I could write a whole review on just why his character is stupid, but no one wants me to rant about fiction. The real presidential situation is crazy enough for us to not need that in our movie lives.

In order to take over London, you first must kill its rivers.

Two years before the events of this film (probably before Olympus Has Fallen? Or right after? Who knows), America did something stupid, as they tend to do. Aamir Barkawi (Alon Aboutboul) was a weapons dealer in the middle east, and he sold big boomers to lots of bad guys. He was a high target and so we drone striked his ass. Of course we also did it at his daughter’s wedding, during a huge celebration with a bunch of bad guys, but who cares, we got him!

And now, a prime minister in London is dead. He died young in his mid-40’s, with a heart attack over night. So now world leaders from all over are heading to London for his funeral with not a lot of time to plan it out. Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) is thinking about quitting the secret service, because his wife (Radha Mitchell) is about to give birth and he wants to be there for his kid. The president is still Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart).

Guess what? Terrorists! They had killed the prime minister and set a huge trap throughout London to kill most of the world leaders. This is of course orchestrated over two years by Barkawi, who didn’t die, just all of his family. Joy. Leaders from France, Italy, Japan, Canada, and more all die, but they can’t knock America down. Now Banning has to lead Asher underground and around London, until the bad guys can all be shot and he can be extracted. Barkawi wants Asher, and he wants to execute him live on the internet for the whole world to see.

Returning characters are still played by Morgan Freeman and Angela Bassett. Jackie Earle Haley is a dude in the war room, and we have MI-6 agents now to help and hurt, featuring Patrick Kennedy, Colin Salmon, and Charlotte Riley, who happens to be married to Tom Hardy!

I bet if Tom Hardy was here, they would have escaped right away without all the death.

It is clear that London Has Fallen isn’t as good as Olympus. The terrorist attack in the first film was plausible, given enough time, sure. But the terrorist attack in this film was make every police, EMS, service worker a bad guy in disguise (all of which totally end up being Middle Eastern, cheers), and blow the fuck out of every major landmark. Not all of the landmark, just parts, to show they mean business. In fact, all of the world leaders who die seem to die mostly by accident, not by planning.

All of the destruction and wanton death happens early on with the President narrowly escaping each time. And then it just turns into a simple man hunt for him. This is after they contacted the White House and said they would stop killing everyone if they had the president. They obviously didn’t turn him over, and guess what? The random killing stopped anyways. There weren’t later attacks, or more death, so the good news is America didn’t have really any more death on their hands. The bad news is the movie is full of scenes like that. They sound intimidating, seem like they will lead to somewhere and don’t do shit.

I mean, apparently they always wanted to capture the president for a live execution, despite blowing him up, shooting at him and such. The president also seemed to know he was wanted for a public execution, despite not knowing who is behind the attack and not receiving any intel.

The worst part about all of this is the drone strike that started the whole thing. One would imagine that this would bring some sort of discussion about drone strikes, killing civilians and responsibility of America overseas. That would make sense. It did cause this horrible event to happen in London as a response, and America gets away with it scott-free (spoilers?). But no. It ignores it. It doesn’t discuss the morality of any of this. Not only that. NOT. ONLY. THAT. But it ends the damn movie (again, spoilers), with another fucking drone strike to get the bad guy again. Literally. No lessons learned. No sign of change. Just a nice fuck you, it’s America time.

The only scene I really enjoyed was when Banning and MI-6 agents were storming the bad guys base. It was full of long shots and shooting and was well choreographed. Everything else was lack luster.

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.

Some things in life are timeless.

A lot of those things are classic movie villains. Sure you have your Draculas and your Frankensteins. But in the 80s we were introduced to a new batch. Like Jason! And Freddy Krueger.

So with these franchises already past the point of overabundance, I don’t care if we get a remake. Why the hell not? It couldn’t get worse. They could even change everything about how it got started, and I probably wouldn’t care. Just give me cool deaths or something, maybe real scares, and make him terrifying.

Well, right now he looks like burnt beans. I mean that kid from Even Stevens.

Guess what. In this movie, people are dying in their dreams. There are Nightmares On Elm Street, and they are deadly.

Dean Russell (Kellan Lutz) is flipping his shit at a diner, and it appears that he slits his own throat in a dream like sequence. He is being attacked by a strange man, burnt face, hat, blades on one hand. Oh yes, the Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley) is all up on his life.

So I feel strange talking about the plot outline of this movie. It is fucking A Nightmare On Elm Street. He kills people in dreams, because he died a long time ago for being a pedo. SOmehow magic is involved. Some of the teens begging to die include Katie Cassidy, Kyle Gallner, and Thomas Decker. Rooney Mara gets to be our main lady, so she might survive. We shall see.

Oh, is Freddy a teacher now? There is no joke here.

Wait, did you see the cast listing? Outside of Mara, they have basically Twilighted this series. Maybe the original had some big teen stars too, but they didn’t have Twilight. This one is more obvious.

What really bugged me was the high quality of the camera work. It made the movie seem fake, having it set to ultra HD standards. The 80s movies are gritty, because that was the only quality available, but it also added to the fear. The crisp quality made me actually hate the movie, which I don’t think I ever said before. It just took me out of the moment.

Rehashing the story felt silly the whole time. Another problem? None of the deaths felt particularly creative or anything. The plot to fight back was stupid. The ending was stupid. The movie/remake was stupid.

Hooray for movies about the dead presidents of our past. I mean, Steven Spielberg is going for a hot ticket president in Lincoln, who just had another movie which you all might recall. Technically, both of them are biographies, I guess.

But hey, if anyone should do a good movie on the man, it is probably going to be Spielberg. Especially if they can get a person to look just like him. Which they succeeded quite insanely.

Look at how fucking Lincoln he is.

Well, if you wanted a full Lincoln backstory, too bad. This movie takes place entirely in the last five months of his life, from Dec 1864 to April 1865. For those Lincoln historians out there, you know that is way after his Gettysburg Address! Don’t worry, you still get to hear it, just not out of his own mouth.

Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) has recently been reelected as President, which he took as a sign saying that the people like what he is doing. They wan’t slavery to be illegal! So he pushes to have the 13th Amendement passed, just needs the House to vote on it. It would make slavery illegal, yet there is a lot of concern. Most of the republicans love it, the conservative Republicans are a bit weary though. Most of the Democrats are violently against it though. That will make the war last forever. No way will the South surrender then!

But a lot of them are losing their jobs. Maybe, just maybe, they will change their vote because of it? Especially if they can get some sweet government jobs…

Basically it is really fucking hard to get this shit passed. He may have even had to do things behind the back of his Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn). Like allowing one of the conservative Republicans set up a meeting with the South to end the war (Featuring Jackie Earle Haley as “VP” Alexander Stephens). He also has some men hired to help convince the democrats to change their vote (James Spader, Tim Blake Nelson) without bribes.

Our major Republican players are James Ashley (David Costabile) who brought forth the bill, and Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones), a revolutionist who actually believes all men area created equal! Joseph Gordon-Levitt is his son returned from school, and Sally Fields is his wife, super distraught and crazy in the eyes of others.

I mean, honestly. You know the 13th Amendement passes, and you know what happens in April of 1965. But somehow that doesn’t matter, it is still a captivating tale.

Here is Lincoln on a horse motherfucker. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

I’ll say it again, Daniel Day-Lewis is Abraham Fucking Lincoln. Did you see that picture? Look at it long and hard, but that is so much Lincoln and so little Daniel Day-Lewis that I am actually scared. From his voice to his mannerisms, you will love the portrayal you see in this film. Basically everything I found captivating. My biggest smidgen of concern comes from the House of Reps. While watching it is like “Ooh, debating between Republicans and Democrats and Tommy Lee Jones in a time machine!”. He can’t help it, he is too famous. I had a had time picturing the actor outside of the character. I recognized a lot of the other faces, just not at Tommy Lee Jones levels.

Lincoln seems like a pretty kick ass guy to hang around with. One of the features they highlight is his love of telling stories, and they are just so well done. That is really all I can say. The movie is super well done.

Again, you know what happens, and its only five months in time, but it doesn’t seem to matter. If you hate Dramas with mostly just talking, you might not like this one. But I hope more Presidents get this treatment (albeit if they do less famous ones, maybe a longer bit of their life). I even like the questionable way they chose to end it, setting up a scene in a way I just didn’t imagine.

A lot of this could be dramatized for the film, but if it is, we need more dramatization. It makes life better.

Dark Shadows!…Did anyone go see this film in theaters? I mean really? I don’t think I heard a single person thinking “Yes! Time to watch a remake of a 60s Soap Opera!”

Not saying that it was a bad decision to turn Dark Shadows into a movie. First off, I’ve actually seen that show. Like, maybe up to 20 episodes. Who cares if it has over a thousand? Shut up. It was eerie when I was a kid. Secondly, 21 Jump Street just happened. It was a movie version of an older TV show, changed the genre, and was awesome. So why not Dark Shadows?

Oh yeah. Erm.

The Collins family moved to New England from Britain way back in the 1700s, and pretty much founded their own town with their richness, Collinsport. Port, yes, because they do fishing business and continued to grow their fortune. Their son, Barnabus (Johnny Depp) was falling in love with a maid, Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green), but the parents would not allow it. Then the parents were killed. Whoops. Turns out Angelique is a witch, and got pissed off. Didn’t stop Barnabus from falling in love with another woman, who ended up killing herself under a curse. Barnabus tries to kill himself, but whoops, he’s now a vampire because Angelique is a mean mean person, and then becomes imprisoned for the next 200 years.

Hey look, the 1970s. Collinsport is now barely Collins owned territory. The house in shambles, the fortune all mostly gone and shit. Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer) is now the head of the house, and has a 15 year old daughter Carolyn (Chloe Grace Moretz). Elizabeth’s brother Roger (Jonny Lee Miller) is an asshole, single father after the wife drowned, with a younger son David (Guilliver McGrath). He is kind of messed up, so they have a psychiatrist there, Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helan Bonham Carter). Oh yeah, also a housekeeper Willie (Jackie Earle Haley) who has to work too hard for one guy.

Either way, they need a governess for David, and mysterious Victoria Winters (Bella Heathcote) answers the call.

BUT WHO CARES, BARNABUS RETURNS. Joins the family, wants to get their business back up, restore the name, and woo Victoria. But witches. And he is a vampire. Oh man, shenanigans.

Dem eyes.

So, from what I can tell, this movie is a lot like the show in many ways. No one really cared about the show too much until Barnabus joined the cast, like 200 episodes in, then it became a huge hit. So much like the show, Victoria was the main character early on, after all the back story, until Barnabus came back, and then she only had a few scenes. With Barnabus, and not too many lines. Bugged me.

Overall, I found the entire movie to be too ridiculous, so maybe that is keeping itself true to its soap opera roots? But found it hard to get in to. It really didn’t feel like Dark Shadows, due to its attempt to be a big comedy. I almost think this would have been better received if it tried again to be its own story that had nothing to do with Dark Shadows characters/names/pseudo-plots.

I thought Helena was aweful in the film, and Jonny Lee Miller was pointless as well. My favorite casting choice was probably Haley as the groundskeeper, he did make me laugh.

But overall, this just didn’t feel entertaining to me, and felt like every other recent Burton/Depp movie.