Tag: Jennifer Carpenter

Brawl in Cell Block 99 is a great title. It is descriptive, while also leaving enough mystery to make you wonder. It highlights a single fight, which means it is a fight that should stand out in a movie that probably has a lot of fights. And it just has good letters. Those B’s are powerful, not a lot of B’S in movies lately, let alone multiple Bs.

This is brought to us by S. Craig Zahler, who gave us Bone Tomahawk recently. It was well known and received for being a slow, well acted western, with also one really gross death scene that really rattled people.

And this one is about prison! I am sure it will be perfectly quaint, although, not your average action film. Its run time is over two hours, so it better have a lot of story to tell in between punches.

This is not the titular brawl, just the Brawl in the Prison Yard.

Bradley Thomas (Vince Vaughn) is an honest working man, a bit of a tall muscular freak, but hard working. He is a tow driver, which makes below average pay. But he has been fired from that. And at home, he found out his wife, Lauren (Jennifer Carpenter), was cheating on him. He deals with his anger the only way he knows, and not on her. They agree to work through it, to go for a baby, and Bradley will go back to being a drug dealer (not a user), where his size and strength can come in handy.

And now, a year and a half later, everything is fine! They have a bigger house, a baby girl on the way, life is looking up!

Until Bradley gets a job he does not want to do. The thugs involved with the deal look like users. They look like no good people who will try and kill and steal and put him in the line of fire. He agrees reluctantly only because if he does that he will get three months off paid once his baby is born. See, even if the drug business has better parental leave than the USA!

Bradley takes the deal, things go south, and sure, Bradley is in prison. He is blamed for the deal going south of course, so he is told that unless he kills another prisoner, they will get someone to perform a very late term abortion on his wife, and his not yet born baby girl will, well, stay that way. The only issue is, this guy is in a much more extreme prison, so he has to “earn” his way there by going against his own morals and code and hurting people to save the ones he loves.

Also starring Dan Amboyer, Don Johnson, Geno Segers, Marc Blucas, Tom Guiry, and Udo Keir.

This is not the titular brawl, this isn’t a brawl at all!

While watching Brawl in Cell Block 99, I had two main thoughts: One, when are we getting to this brawl that they needed to emphasize in the title? and two, Vaughn is really carrying this power and weight in this role. I was intimidated by him and awed by him. They made his character smart, strong, and oddly moral. When you expected domestic violence, you got instead a calm rational human, who didn’t even yell. It was odd and satisfying.

Anyways, there are a handful of action scenes pre-brawl to entertain those who ned punching. Of course some of that is just people straight up beating up one person, some of it is Vaughn seeming like a super hero.

Okay okay, at this point I am stalling. Once the brawl started to happen, it got really tense as it first had to involve a breakout attempt. Watching our moral character beat up guards at a level of realizing he is doing wrong, trying not to hurt them too bad, while also doing it for his wife and unborn girl. And then the actual part that matters, well I HAD TO STOP WATCHING ONCE IT STARTED. IT GOT REALLY INTENSE, REALLY QUICKLY AND I COULD ONLY GAG AND COUGH AND SHRIEK TO MYSELF. After that, it wasn’t that bad BUT IT STILL GOT REALLY INTENSE.

I had to type in caps there to properly show just how freaked out this movie got very quickly. It ramped up several notches, and frankly I wasn’t ready for it. The high rating isn’t just for those scenes, but for the whole build up, for seemingly telling a unique story in a familiar location, and just how strong Vaughn was in it.

I should have known what I was getting into with the director, and next time I won’t be caught unawares. After all, the next film is called Dragged Across Concrete, which is extremely descriptive and I am already gagging in anticipation.

Well, Dexter had its series finale a week ago today and it was pretty much shit. Seriously. One of the worst series finales ever.

In honor of that, I decided to watch Quarantine for the day!

What…? Well, look at the main star, that is why. Quarantine itself is a remake of [REC], a Spanish horror movie, that has made at least four films on its own. Quarantine was only given a sequel, and that one has nothing to do with the rest of the [REC] films. So it must be lamer.

Quarantine is also famous for being a horror film that decided to spoil the ending in basically every format possible. The trailer, the tv spots, the poster, the dvd film cover. Every single way. Later The Apparition decided to try this method too, but no one watched The Apparition.

Oh, and I have decided to spoil that ending here as well. Because fuck it.

Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) is a news reporter, trying to make it big in the world, but stuck so far with side stories. Lame. Like tonight, she is doing a piece on firefighters. I guess it is a fluff piece, because she is just sent to interview the workers, and hopefully follow them on a fire or two, that would be awesome footage. Along with her cameraman (Steve Harris), they eventually get a call out to an apartment complex where there were reports from the manager that a woman has barricaded herself in her room, and she was making a lot of noise. Alright, boring issue, but sure, let’s film it.

OH SHIT WOMAN HAS GONE CRAZY AND BIT ONE OF THE COPS. Bitch has foam in her mouth! They race downstairs, the two fire fighters (Jay Hernandez, Johnathon Schaech), and the other cops to rush him to a hospital, but the apartment complex is boarded up. The fuck? They can’t get out. That doesn’t make any sense.

Apparently the apartment complex is under quarantine now, and they have no idea why. No worries, they will be out shortly, just one crazy man. A local vet who lives in the hospital, (Greg Germann), does his best to stop the bleeding.

This is still all sorts of fucked. Especially when the lady is still going crazy enough that they have to put her down. Apparently, according to the vet, her symptoms appear to be rabies which have no cure once they take over. But the affects of rabies normally take months to occur, this must me some sort of super rabies. Well shit, how did they know to quarantine off the building so quick? Who the fuck started it? How unlucky is it to be Angela?

Super Rabies. Worse than Hitler.

Oh no, a shaky came found footage movie! The end of the world! People tend to ask during these types of movies: Why the fuck are you still recording? Well, there are a few reasons here. 1) Journalistic integrity. This shit is the scoop of a lifetime. 2)That camera has night vision on it, could be helpful. 3)That camera is also the only light source once they knock out the power. So, shit is important.

So how did it do outside of ruining the ending? Well, eh, it was okay. Dramatically different ending from the [Rec] version, I have been told. That one involves religion. This one involves cults and super viruses. I guess religion trumps, since that series has more movies. Oh well, its in Spanish, don’t care.

It was kind of neat watching all the characters at the beginning of the film start out as alive, and then you know, become dead later, so you get to see tore up versions of people who we already met. In a zombie movie, most of the zombies you don’t know. In this film, each person “dies” to the virus, and then has to be killed again with the rabies. I think that made it feel a bit better.

Near the end it got pretty confusing, but I will say I was impressed with Jennifer’s scared shitless acting. Her character did feel different from Deb, and she didn’t just bust out swears every sixth word. It is an okay thriller. Things jumping out of the dark, basically every time you’d expect it. Hooray zombie rabies!

Gone is pretty much like Taken.

You know, if the main character is a young adult women, not an older man.

And if the younger sister is taken, not the daughter.

And if the main character has no training in any government field.

And if it takes place in a small town not half of France.

And — okay, not much like Taken.

Next thing you know I will be comparing everything to Top Gun.

Amanda Seyfried is just a girl. She works the night shift at a local diner, and lives at home with her younger sister, Emily Wickershaw. Possible drug use is happening. And vague references to a park. But why? Well, two years ago Seyfried was abducted from her house, and allegedly thrown in a hole in the middle of the forest. She wasn’t alone, bu there was bones too. She was trapped all day, but at night, heard a voice saying that it was time to die, and managed to escape when the mysterious man got her out of the hole. Since then she has lived her life in fear.

Unfortunately the local police don’t believe her story. Couldn’t find the hole, no signs of any abuse, and other complications. She was even put into a mental hospital for the story (severe!). But she lives with the sister now, and after getting home in the morning (and after some weird encounters with her coworker, Jennifer Carpenter) she finds her sister…missing! Based on very little evidence, she knows for a fact that the abductor has come back and meant to get her, but instead found just her sister.

Of course none of the detectives (Daniel Sunjata and Katherine Moenning) really believe her, but the new guy, Sebastian Stan kind is willing to believe her. Even though she has only been gone for hours, not really a missing person case. But Seyfried is freaking out, knowing that the killer “kills at night (from her one time being there)” and that she is running out of time!

So using what little she is given, she follows clues, and talks to many people who seem to remember an awful lot about their previous day, hoping to catch the killer in time. Wes Bentley also plays Emily’s boyfriend. Tons of other guy actors I know in this film, but you know, don’t want to give away which ones are important and which ones are not.

But will these strangely placed convenient clues and people who know way too much information, will they lead her to the killer? Or will she run into a trap? Or is she just making it all up again?

Or will her life revolve around a series of flashbacks that could be fake? Fakebacks.

For a film I didn’t even hear about until I saw it for sale (when I was going to pick up my copy of Goon), I was surprised that I liked it that much. Honestly, I assumed the only reason it was even supposed to be a big movie was because of Amanda Seyfried. I couldn’t recognize any of the actors on it besides her (and until I watched it, when I obviously knew Jennifer Carpenter).

But I thought it was nicely done. Seyfried’s acting was great, and had to carry the film. Lots of red herrings. Believable enough plot, but very believable ending. The police chase throughout the film wasn’t as believable. Tons of bumbling idiot cops I guess. And it also didn’t feature tons of shots of Seyfried kicking ass or anything. Mostly running away, and being sneaky.

I’d definitely say its worth a watch.