Tag: Matthew Goode

Oh hey, look at that! A movie title with two clear meanings so it probably means both!

Let’s see, Self/Less. Let’s look at it without the slash first, because that is easier. Selfless. So someone in this movie will do something very selfless for other people. Okay, cool, sounds like a hero.

Self/Less. Meaning maybe, that someone has less of a self. Maybe no self. Does someone lose their self in this film (and not just to the phat beats on the radio)? That’d be the easy guess.

In other news, this is like the fourth movie for Ryan Reynolds this year. Save some acting for the rest of us, jeez!

Now go to your room and think about what you have done.

Before we get to Mr. Reynolds, let’s first talk about Damian (Ben Kingsley), a NYC real estate tycoon who amassed a huge fortune, and you know, built a lot of buildings. He is the head of a big company, kind of a shitty person, and has a bad relationship with his daughter, Claire (Michelle Dockery). He also has the cancers!

Thankfully, science is here and the rich can benefit! A group, led by Dr. Albright (Matthew Goode), wants to give those great thinkers a second chance and some extra years. They can grow bodies, transfer the mind of the great into the body of a young man, giving them more time to revolutionize the world! They would have to give up their past behind, of course, but they’d leave a small fortune for them to do whatever they want and become great again!

So now Damian is in a younger body (Reynolds), but it takes some time to get used to it. He has to go through rehab, to have his mind figure out how to use his body. He also gets strange flashes of hallucinations that are a side effect, but hey, they have pills to make those go away too! Yep. Life is awesome. Surely nothing is sinister about this operation.

Also featuring Brendan McCarthy, Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen, Natalie Martinez, Victor Garber, and Derek Luke.

Hey man. You got something on your face.

Self/Less is one of those movies that likes to pretend it is smart and dealing with deep philosophical theories, when in reality, it is a dumb bad action movie. Yes, this psychological thriller drama is secretly just a bad action movie. After all, it didn’t have enough action to just be an action movie. Maybe 20-30% of the film is action movie, where the other percentage lies in the drama ethics focused feature. Unfortunately, the action was the worse part, because when it started, it seemingly came out of nowhere. Suddenly, new Damian is super strong, breaking toilets, busting down doors and patio decks just by running through them. He becomes a super hero, just because why not.

If the film eliminated most of the action and instead focused on the human elements, delving just a little bit into the consequences of their actions, this could have been a smart and through provoking film. Instead it is dumbed-down. The main character’s actions are seemingly completely random. He seems to give himself justification for going on an action-spree at the end, killing a lot of people, when ethically they aren’t even doing something that bad. This is a film where just some bad communication causes all of the problems, but at least half of that stems from the antagonist refusing to even listen.

Shit, even the whole sub plot involving figuring out what was inside the drug ended up being super pointless. The filmmakers must have had only a loose idea on what they wanted in a movie, then filled it with bad science and terrible motivations hoping it would bring in the summer blockbuster crowd.

I think what I am most disappointed in with this film is that the acting wasn’t even bad. Sure, I couldn’t understand everything Kingsley said early on, but he was an old cliche dying man. But Reynolds was actually pretty good in this film, but the acting is wasted on the terrible story. Self/Less is a movie that will end up being completely forgettable in a few months time, which I am looking forward to doing.

2014 has been the year of the Doppelganger. Not Doppelganger Movies, that was just two Hercules movies.

No, 2014 gave us Enemy and The Double (which may have been 2013) and The One I Love. Clones everywhere.

But The Imitation Game, despite its clone sounding title, is totally not about clones! What’s up with that? No, instead we are getting a historical drama about Alan Turing, a British man who did things during World War II. Yes, this is another World War II movie, but instead of bombs and death, we instead get math and death.

“The square root of a bullet is still a bullet.” – Albert Einstein

You see, Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) was one of those very eccentric individuals who also did smart man things. Aka, the perfect type of person to make a movie about, because acting!

Alan Tuning is most famous for kind of leading the science way towards real life computers. Back in the 1940s, they didn’t even have the internet, so presumably all their free time went towards doing crossword puzzles. Especially Mr. Turing! A professor at Mathematics, he loved puzzles and solving cryptography. So he gets himself into an interview with the British Royal Navy to join their puzzle solving squad. Namely, trying to crack the German Enigma Machine.

The Engima was thought to be uncrackable. They had a copy of it, but they didn’t know the code. The code changed daily, right at midnight, and their first message intercepted would be at about 6 am. So they have to go back to square one, even if they solve that days code, every morning. It would be a tireless effort, but these men (Matthew Goode, Allen Leech, Matthew Beard) are up to the job! Just not with the anti-social awkward Turing. Who also doesn’t want to help their daily efforts, but instead build a machine that can crack the code almost instantly and help the Allied forces win the war!

Hurrah!

And he was gay. That is important, because homosexuality in the UK was illegal at the time, so his mere existence was causing him to be an outlaw, yet a huge savior of World War II.

Also featuring Keira Knightley as Joan, a WOMAN on the team (kind of), Charles Dance as the head of the Navy, Mark Strong as a MI6 agent involved as an overseer, and Rory Kinnear as a detective trying to find out what Turing is really up to.

Being a woman in a male dominated field of doing puzzles really makes you stand out.

I am pretty sure a lot of this movie was fictionalized to increase drama and make everything a lot more exciting…and I am completely fine with that. Man, was this film tense and exciting. And well acted! Not just the Cumberbatch either, but the other guys and gals, they did pretty good too.

As for Cumberbatch, it is interesting that in an episode of Sherlock, he referred specifically to Alan Turing’s life and issues they had after finally solving the Engima machine. It was a huge plot point and involved moral ambiguity (which I am always a fan of), and shit, now he is Alan Turing doing the same thing he talked about in another role! Crazy! And a bit eerie. But even more importantly, like a lot of his recent roles, this role was very different from his past jobs and you could tell a lot of fantastic acting was going on there. So good the acting. Acting that shows a love of the craft and maybe a love of the subject matter.

Is it the best at acting? Nah, probably not. But it is up there for sure.

I found the whole thing easy to watch and follow, and it was great that we also got a story of Turing when he was in grade school before he got his PhDs. It is great having WW2 movies that aren’t just about how war is terrible and people are dying and all of that. Which is I guess what The Monuments Men tried to do and failed.

Belle is one of those indie movies that makes a lot of noise early in the year, yet usually gets ignored when it comes time to award season.

Not saying this film is deserved awards or anything, that is just when it was released. A nice indie number that is indeed not about Beauty and the Beast, but instead, racism in the victorian era. Ah yes, the Victorian era, where women wore corsets and giant dresses all the time, and men wore…I guess mostly regular clothes. And wigs!

But this work of fiction, based on books, is also pseudo historically accurate. Namely the character Lord Mansfield was actually Chief Justice of England during the time of the movie and presided over several cases that are relevant to the plot. Sweet. But the rest is just guesstimated fluff. I love fluff!

Despite the picture, this is also not a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood.

Dido Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) was born in the West Indies and she is a mulatto. Her mother was a local, but her father was of the English Royal Navy (Matthew Goode) and he has decided to claim her and take her to England. Because he is at sea all the damn time, he places her in the care of his uncle, Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson) and his wife (Emily Watson), even though she is BLACK and they are distinguished members of society.

But they get over it, kind of, and raise her as an aristocrat with her cousin Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon). However, she is still slightly shunned by society and not able to play all the reindeer games. Like when it comes time for suitors, she is told she cannot interact with the other gentleman as none of them would find her desirable.

Also at the same time, Lord Mansfield is ruling on a case involving a ship who threw slaves overboard out of necessity to survive, running low on supplies. They echoed it as similar to throwing cargo overboard and want to collect the insurance on their haul. His ruling on this and the events surrounding it could change Britain forever and some people think that having Dido around might influence his decision.

We also have Sam Reid as a young freedom feeling lawyer, Tom Felton and James Norton as brother suitors of varying tastes, and Miranda Richardson and Penelope Wilton as…other people.

I guess I would conclude Belle is a good movie, just one that is pretty darn predictable. Oh sorry, I am concluding before I describe.

Yes, Belle is well acted and I felt good by the end. But a lot of the movie just felt like Victorian filler in the middle. The plot is literally finding suitors for a few ladies. Is this a Jane Austen novel in secret?

Which is my main complaint. Not that predictability is a necessarily a bad thing, but if I kind of know what to expect the entire movie and it follows the path pretty straightforwardly, what is the point? It should have a lot of stuff going on for it in the middle to really make up for that fact.

And it has a few unique events to be sure. Well acted, as I already said. Outfits are nice, message is nice. But I kind of just expected something more. The film itself was incredibly safe.

Stoker is a movie I had to wait four months to see. It didn’t come to the local theaters, not even the ones an hour away. I was pretty disappointed, because the trailer not only looked really friggan awesome, but it was an original story. That’s right. It was not based on a book, a play, a short, nothing. Just an original movie that looked creepy and sexy.

I wanted it so bad. But I had to wait for the DVD release date. I also wanted to see it on Blu-Ray, but I missed out on that opportunity as well. Damn.

I couldn’t find the better shot where you could see her eye through the scope. I have failed the internet.

Death death death! The movie begins with the death of a father. Car crash, a few states away, burning to death. Very gruesome, very tragic. India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) just turned 18 as well, and is kind of all sorts of distraught. She is like, seriously fucked up over this. Big sad times.

Her mom Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) is a dirty little whore. Okay, that is harsh. But still, her husband just died, who she hasn’t been intimate in awhile, and after the funeral she invites the mysterious brother, Charles Stoker (Matthew Goode) to live with them. That is pretty soon, you are a widow, you should be grieving.

Well, Charles is kind of a creepy guy. He stares a lot, right into your soul basically. He stares so fucking hard. India is uncomfortable around him too, and for good reason. Charles has many secrets of his own. But maybe India will like his secrets once he makes his intentions clear?

Also, Alden Ehrenreich has a small ish role in this movie, and he is basically the opposite of his role in Beautiful Creatures. It made me hate him a lot.

I guess, to be fair, she stares just as creepily as he does.

Woo! What a sexy movie, in a creepy way. Let me reiterate how disappointed I am that I didn’t get to see this movie on Blu-Ray, it would have been even sexier looking. The cinematography is fantastic in this film, in all ways. Camera angles, the way the camera moves around the scene, and the way scenes morphed from scene to scene. There was a scene that had a close up of Kidman’s red hair, that transformed into a grassy field, and I almost flipped a shit. It was such a good transition.

The acting is great in this film too, with only a few characters it is not too hard. Nicole Kidman’s character was just ridiculously flustered the whole time, Matthew Goode and Mia Wasikowska were both different levels of creepy.

I do think this film lacked a little bit. It was slow at parts, and not as life changing as I would hope. It was incredibly well done, but not over the top well done that I set it up for. So maybe that was my fault. But I don’t think if I went in completely blind it would be a 4 out of 4, still a 3 out of 4.

Too much talk, not enough ending to the review. Check it out. But it is obviously a dark movie. I loved the ending too.

I really knew nothing about the plot of A Single Man before i watched it. Only thing I knew is that there was controversy around it, and that there was claims that it deserve the best actor award, not just nomination.

We will see. I will say that Crazy Heart, with Jeff Bridges winning that year, definitely wasn’t my favorite movie, so I can probably agree that someone else should have won without too much effort.

Uh oh, man and woman laying down. Clearly they must have had sex.

George (Colin Firth) is just a man, a single man. Single meaning just one person, but also at this point, he no longer has a lover. But why not? Because traffic is a bitch.

This takes place a month or so after the Cuban Missile Crisis, so it is a much scarier, yet simpler time. He was living with Jim (Matthew Goode) for sixteen years in a suburban neighborhood, who seemed pretty accepting of them as a couple, but they still couldn’t be too open about their relationship. After Jim dies in a car accident, George is pretty distraught. Never really the same, and couldn’t even go to the funeral (Jim’s family would not allow it).

George is a professor of literature at a university, and he doesn’t like the world right now. Fear everywhere, a fear of communism, fear of different types of people, etc. So he has decided he is done with the world, and at the end of the day he will kill himself..

The movie is a day in his life, potentially the last day of his life. With some flashbacks of course. George attempts to handle all of his affairs, and say goodbye to his friends. Including a last dinner with his neighbor, Charley (Julianne Moore) who is a single lady, after a divorce, and also longing for love in the world. There is also a story involving a Hispanic man who lets George borrow a cigarette, and a student of his, Kenny (Nicholas Hoult) who might just be in the same boat as him.

Don’t look into his eyes. Don’t do it.

Wow. Just wow. First off, some of the scenes are a bit weird. The flashbacks, the day, some of the shots are pretty artsy. Slow motion, imagery, etc. But a majority of the time it is straight forward, minus a bit of eye obsession. George during his day tends to stare deeply into peoples eyes, and study them, looking for that bit of compassion.

The acting in this movie is extraordinary. Damn that Colin Firth. Probably part of the reason he won The King’s Speech is from the accumulation of his other roles right before it when he knocked that shit out of the park. This is based off of a book and controversy before hand involved the trailers/posters seemingly “taking the gay out” of the movie. Focusing more on him and Julianne Moore, not him and Jim or Kenny. I am sure that mostly had to do with getting the trailers in theaters, than anything. You know those ratings, they hate gay kissing.

I am not sure if the movie will have the best replay value. Might not be as interested in some of the longer detailed scenes, but the dialogue is so interesting and seemingly important, I could probably listen to it multiple times. Bit weird, but very powerful.

Leap Year has been a very popular topic this year, 2012. A lot more popular than it was the last three years at least.

I like that a lot of different pop culture things seem to be trying to say Leap Day more now, to refer to it like an actual holiday, instead of making the rest of the year participate.

I personally hated the synopsis of the movie when I first heard about it, and kept putting it off. But I have been on an Amy Adams spree lately so might as well watch it now.

I heard there might be a three way involved.

Amy Adams has been dating Adam Scott for awhile. Her job is to make apartments/houses look good enough for people to want to buy them. Even using such clever tricks as baked cookie smell. Because that is very original.

She thinks the boyfriend is about to propose, but nope, just some nice earrings. Oh well. He is going to Dublin for a business meeting, while they are waiting to find out if they are getting a condo or not. Because of the ravings of her father (John Lithgow), she is reminded of the Irish tradition that “allows” women to propose to men on the 29th of Feburary. And he is going to be in Ireland on Leap Day! Yes! Perfect timing! She is going to take it on her own and fix it, because she is a woman and woman can do their own things. So first, a flight to Dublin!

But weather sucks in the UK. Bad weather. She got /most/ of the way there. Wales. Pretty much made it I think. But whatever. Also she cannot get a boat to Dublin. She has to stay in the village (and somehow finds herself the only traveler there) and hopefully get a taxi to Dublin (is that doable..?).

Seriously. Geographically speaking, is there a way to drive from Wales to Dublin, Ireland? I don’t think so. Because in her travel to Dublin, there is never a time being on a ship. The train she tries to get on she misses, so the main means of travel are hitching, cars, and a bus. So uhh. What the fuck?

Seriously. Why not go on a road trip from Texas to Australia?

So in the village she meets Matthew Goode, who eventually agrees to take her along the way. Problems occur, transportation changes, and the trip keeps taking a lot longer to do. Somehow she realizes she doesn’t like Adam Scott. Who proposes to her when she gets to Dublin (fuck your leap day role reversals!). Why does he do it? Apparently helps them get their condo.

But when a fire alarm happens, she is mad that he grabs a bunch of electronics and leaves him and goes back to the guy she has known for 2 days and made out with some (cheating on her long term boyfriend).

But besides all that shenanigans, and random role changes. WHAT THE FUCK HOW DID SHE GET TO DUBLIN. Seriously did you see that map??

They never got on a damn boat or train. I just checked. No bridge between the two islands. I really have no idea. She also constantly says she doesn’t believe in all the travel superstitions and stuff that characters keep bringing it up, despite basing her whole journey off of one.

I also hate the concept, just like I did before I saw it. ESPECIALLY since the whole point of her doing it was because he was never proposing. But then what happened? He did it. Partially for condo reasons but he obviously loves her enough to be with her that long time.

So then she leaves him after getting everything she wanted. Whatta bitch.

A potentially mermaid bitch.