Tag: Ray Liotta

What can I say about Killing Them Softly? On the internet, where I live, there seems to be a pretty heated discussion on whether or not this movie is weird. Why? Because it is just incredibly weird overall. Like, over the top, doesn’t go the way you think it will, very long scenes, weird.

Also, it has not so subtle messages about the economy, taking place during the McCain/Obama elections of 2008.

Here is a not so subtle picture of Ray Liotta, being pissed.

In New Orleans, a lot of people like to gamble. Rich people. Many people run games. Including Markie (Liotta). Except the first time he ran a game, it got hit up by thugs, robbed everyone. Much much later, after everyone got the money back through whatever means, he admitted he hit his own game. No one cared anymore. Hilarious. So that is where Squirrel (Vincent Curatola) comes in. He realizes that if they were to steal from one of his games, they will automatically think it was Markie, not another party, and kill him for it. They can get away easily! He just needs two men to do it!

He has one guy in Frankie (Scoot McNairy), but his friend Russell (Ben Mendelsohn) is kind of a wild card. Australian, druggie, other shit. Talks a lot too. What if he just spoils the whole thing?

Well, the plan happens. They make money. Everything good is happening!

But what if they find out? Lot of powerful people behind the scenes, very bureaucratic. They get their task man (Richard Jenkins) to hire a hit man (Brad Pitt) to fix all of the loose ends, and get their money back. Maybe he might even bring in a second hit man (James Gandolfini) just to handle it all.

Why did I wait to show you Brad Pitt? Because you had to wait a long time to see him in the movie too.

But now I can talk about why this movie is so frustrating. There are some incredible scenes. Some slow motion assassinations, with a lot going on, kind of reminded me of Dredd, but less over-exaggeration. The dialogue was interesting and realistic. People talked about random shit that didn’t seem to move the movie forwards. That is because real people have real problems, and who cares about killing people when your life is going to leave you.

The movie’s action was actually really light. I would say there is about 10x as much just sitting around talking then there is action, as it is most of the movie. However, the movie also did a lot that bugged me.

In one scene, a character hadn’t slept much in a few days, and was a bit drugged up, so we got to see a conversation in his point of view. The camera actually got darker when he closed his eyes and was about to sleep. But it was only the two people talking. So the majority of that conversation was the other character asking his questions multiple times until he was awake enough to answer. It was frustrating for him, but far more frustrating for the viewer. I personally got a headache in that one scene.

It is a hard movie to watch, for sure. There were six people in my theater, but four of them left before the end of the movie. That is not a good retention rate.

But at the same time, there is something about this movie that is intriguing. I just think it was advertised as something its not, and belongs more on the indie market. Watch it if you want, if you don’t want to, then don’t. Easy enough.

Back by popular demand, we have more Zac Efron! I am also right now confused, because I thought he was supposed to star in the new Footloose. Now I realize why the cool kids didn’t laugh at my jokes. Shiiiiiiit.

After three High School Musicals and one Hairspray, he didn’t want to be type-casted. Huh. Too late for that?

Efron plays the title character in the movie, Charlie St. Cloud, and near the beginning his younger brother (Charlie Tahan) is killed in car accident with him behind the wheel. Well shit! Charlie is at least brought back to life thanks to an Ambulance doctor, Ray Liotta, but not his brother.

FIVE YEARS LATER.

Turns out Efron is still in the same town. Never left, despite a scholarship to Yale for sailing, or something like that. He now works at the graveyard, super angsty. Oh yeah, he sees dead people now, kind of. Plays catch with his brother every day at sunset, to get him prepped for baseball. Yeah. Sometimes he sees other people too, but that isn’t importantly. Clearly he is fucked up.

Enter Amanda Crew, someone he knew from high school, who also likes sailing. She is going to sail across the world in a race! Her dad is trying to help prep her (Donal Logue), and is worried that Efron kid will ruin it all up. Since he is creepy now anyways.

This could have been Efron, damn it.

So yeah. Stuff happens. Efron kind of gets interested in sailing again. But what if he joins her on the race? Will he lose his brother officially forever if he isn’t there to play baseball? There is also a secondary very important plot but telling you about it is just major spoilers so I wont. Was an interesting surprise, needless to say.

The movie was a lot sadder than I had guessed. I mean, the sadder moments happened at the beginning right? You’d think wrong. The camera work was surprisingly good too, for what I expected to be some cheesy teen movie or something. I liked the story, but it might have been too slow. Also, Liotta was way too creepy for his like, three scenes. Religious zealot much?

Hey look, a low budget Ray Liotta serial killer movie. Here is some fun things about this movie. This is NOT a mystery! Not a whodunnit at all. They are pretty clear in showing you, the viewer, who is killing these people. If the obvious clues don’t knock the sense into you, the actual acts of him doing so should ring it in.

As you may guess The River Murders takes place in a small town with a River. Murders happen near it or around it, and this shit needs to get solved.

Because you know who did it, the movie focuses on the more interesting kind of question there is: Why? Why is this man doing these killers? How is it related to Detective Liotta? Why are there so many titties in this film compared to a National Lampoon movie that doesn’t feature Chevy Chase? (Oh that’s answered. Because the women are dead, having been raped and, pretty often, thrown into a river. So their lack of clothes explains that.)

“Ah-ha! Finally! Another movie with Rape! Let me out of this chair right now!”

I was interested in the outcome, and was glad this was rated R. The deaths weren’t graphically shown, but the aftermath could be, and it allowed the language to be a tad bit more appropriate. There are some cliches also heard in this movie, including the ever so fun “by the book!” phrase in every cop related movie. Will I ever watch this again? Nah, probably not. It felt like a made for tv movie, besides the dead bodies, boobs, and swearing. But it was decent one watch affair. Also, despite Christian Slater being in the movie, he didn’t add much to it.

When I first saw this movie, something crazy happened. It has zero ratings on Rotten Tomatoes (a site I never check, by the way. Who cares about other people’s opinions on movies? (Outside of you lovely people.)). IMDB was very similar. So as far as I could see, my first review of this movie may have been one of the…first reviews of this movie. It also lets me realize that most likely no one has heard of it!

This must be what Buzz Lightyear and Lance Armstrong felt when they first landed on the moon.

This movie is about an underprivileged college student, Kevin Zegers (of AIR BUD fame. Bit more sinister in this movie) who teams up with two anarchists to kidnap the kids of three rich people (aka The Entitled). One kid each! Oh very exciting, I know. The three kids were on the way to meet their dads in a cabin for the weekend, before the kidnapping takes place. So throughout the movie it switches between the different groups, and we learn that not everything is as great as it appears to be. Two of the dads are also Ray Liotta and Victor Garber.

I will admit the beginning of the movie was kind of slow. It had a bunch of set up that didn’t make as much sense until the end. Kind of felt patchy and confusing. But about 30 minutes in, shit. got. real.

From then on I could only describe myself as being at the edge of my seat. I didn’t know what would happen, and couldn’t guess anything right. It was well paced at that point and had a lot of great conflict between the characters. And yes some people. Great movie.