Tag: Michelle Dockery

Let’s start this review with a little bit of a confession. Later this year we are getting a Kingsman prequel movie called The King’s Man. That makes a lot of sense to be the title of a Kingsmen prequel film. No one should get that confused.

Enter me. Movie reviewer. Reviewer who tries to not watch trailers or too many other notes about films before seeing it. I remember that the Kingsman prequel had a really obvious name for the series, but didn’t remember exactly what.

So, when I saw I had a screening upcoming for The Gentlemen? My mind went only one place. Ah yes, the Kingsman prequel.

And let’s just say, this movie had me pretty confused for about 20 minutes about how the heck this was at all related to those other films. When they started making a lot more modern references and talk about cell phones, I knew I must have just been a dumb fuck at that point. Anyways, that movie comes out in September. This one is an original and it comes out now.

But wait, there’s more!

Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) is a weed dealer on a grand scale in Great Britain, and he isn’t even a citizen. Damn Americans. He has so much weed, making so much money, no one knows how he does it. Where does he hide his crops?

Well, he wants out of the game. He is getting older, less likely to go killing people and defending his territory. If he can sell out his whole operation to someone else, he will have enough money to retire the rest of his life with his comfy and rich friends.

But a simple idea dealing with illegal things will never be that easy. We have a very good and nosy reporter (Hugh Grant), the owner and operator of a gym for formerly bad people to make them better (Colin Farrell), Pearson’s number 2 man (Charlie Hunnam), and an ambitious Chinese gangster looking to make a break in the business (Henry Golding) that are all going to make things more complicated.

People will turn on everyone if it means survival in the end.

Also starring Jeremy Strong, Michelle Dockerty, Eddie Marsan, and Tom Wu.

Success is always measured in dollars, nothing else.

The Gentlemen is definitely a return to form for Guy Ritchie, and is definitely not a prequel to that one franchise I will stop talking about.

This film felt like his previous great works that people think about when they say Guy Ritchie. Snatch, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and sure, RocknRolla, This is not like most of his trash from the last decade.

We get twists and turns, hard to understand accents, shocking moments, extra action when necessary, and surprises. A lot of what I said could be considered the same thing, and I don’t care about that.

It was very entertaining, if not hard to follow at the beginning [Editor’s note: That could be because this viewer was a dumbass, see the beginning of the review.] of the film. I did get annoyed at the seemingly excessive racist Asian language that happened at multiple times, although I accept that as bad people going against other bad people, it makes sense for the characters to be…racist. That was hard to type. Still can be frustrating as a viewer.

I give the most praise to Hugh Grant. He went really out of his normal style for this role (except for his general flair for the dramatics that he always carries) and killed it. I also quite enjoyed Farrel and Golding, Golding in particular is on the rise out of seemingly nowhere.

The Gentlemen is just going to be a fun time, with a little bit of death and mayhem.

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.

Oooh, Non-Stop, a Liam Neeson action movie where he uses his wit and tactical efficiency to solve a crisis!

I don’t promise a lot about this review of Non-Stop I just promise to make zero Taken jokes. Even if the vague outline I just made sounds like it could easily be used for that movie. It is becoming old-hat to do Taken jokes for just because the movie stars Neeson, so I will let Zach Braff take care of that for me.

Neeson is texting here, to show us he still is up with the times.

Bill Marks (Liam Neeson) is a Federal Air Marshal. He is a quiet man who has had some problems in his life recently, including alcoholism! But that is okay, it is not like he ever has to do anything on his job.

Just kidding! On a flight to London, someone wants to hijack the plane. They have hacked into the local network and are sending text messages to Bill, threatening that someone will die every twenty minutes on the plane unless they get $150 million sent to a bank account. Even more troubling news is that bank account is in Bill’s name, so the TSA and other governmental agencies have assumed that Bill has gone rogue and is hijacking the plane until he gets paid.

Oh no!

Bill will have to use the people he can trust on the plane. Nancy (Michelle Dockerty), a flight attendant who he has worked with before. Jack Hammond (Anson Mount), an off duty Air Marshal also on the flight. And of course, Jen Summers (Julianne Moore), the woman he just met who was sitting next to him in first class.

So, who is the terrorist?! Well here is a list of actors also on the plane to take a pick from, assuming it actually isn’t an inside job and isn’t one of the people already listed in the review: Corey Stoll, Nate Parker, Scoot McNairy, Lupita Nyong’o, Omar Metwally (who has a turban!), Corey Hawkins, and Frank Deal.

Their hands are in the air, yes, but I assure you right now they all care.

I know I might have made the plot of Non-Stop seem cliche/not exciting, but it turned out to be the opposite of that. First off, it wasn’t a mindless action movie. The only big action sequence happens near the end, which you could tell from the trailers. Everything else is based on suspense and tiny clues along the way.

Outside of the first 8 or so minutes, I found myself watching Non-Stop on the edge of my seat. The parts of the movie before boarding the plane were a bit slow, but that can be expected in a movie like this.

Was it believable? No, not really. There are a lot of coincidences and lucky breaks that make the entire evil mastermind plan work. Kind of annoying, but I can get over it.

Somehow, despite the coincidences and questionable plot, I was just really entertained by this movie. It wasn’t obvious who the bad guy was, plenty of red herrings thrown our way throughout the film. In fact, I think knowing “who did it” wouldn’t even ruin future viewings for me, which is a rarity for these types of movies.

Neeson might have actually been the perfect pick for this role as well. He has that aged scruffiness, perfect for a guy who has “seen some shit” in his days.

Check out Non-Stop, which ended up being (surprisingly) one of the better movies for the month of February.