Tag: Sam Rockwell

Ah, horror remakes. We need at least one a year right? We’ve had Carrie, Evil Dead, Fright Night, and many more. It is easy and hip and cool to do. Hell, I know it sounds like I wrote that like a sarcastic asshat, but for those three films in particular I ended up liking them or thinking they were okay enough as a remake. I didn’t hate any of them.

Then Poltergeist flashed its way onto our screens like a lightning bolt. “Not so fast, mother fucker!” it clamored through the speaker box.

I may be jumping the gun with the review, but Poltergeist decided that instead of making a nice modern update with its remake, it would instead just…take more of the same elements from the original, cut out a lot of the horror bits, and instead turn it into more of a Sci-Fi Thriller. Yeah. Fuck the original, right?

And always fuck clowns, obviously. As long as its consensual and not Vulgar.

Big day for the Bowen family! They just got a new house. And hey, it is really low because of the stagnant market. Definitely not because no one would buy it. And it doesn’t have many neighbors. Who cares. They can afford it, which is the most important thing in this economy. They don’t have much of an income right now. The dad, Eric (Sam Rockwell), insists that his wife, Amy (Rosemarie DeWitt) not have to go back to work, because they can totally get through this without that. So yeah, Eric is kind of a dick.

Either way, they have their three kids, Kendra (Saxon Sharbino), Griffin (Kyle Catlett), and Madison (Kennedi Clements), in order of oldest to youngest. Kendra is DGAF oldest sister, so you can ignore her. Madison is the one who starts saying things and talking to entities in her room alone. Griffin is the only one who believes that something weird is happening.

Either way, outside of funky static TV stuff, other electronics are also acting wonky. It turns out that this house used to be built on an Indian Burial site. That was decades ago (Oh man, is this technically a sequel!?). But weird stuff happened and people got angry, so they had to pay a settlment, I think, and agreed to move the graveyard to a different location. Well, then why the fuck are spirits still angry? Why are they somehow bring the barrier between worlds and stealing their youngest daughter?

Also featuring Jane Adams— and Jared Harris.

Maybe this is a metaphor for letting the TV be your nanny?

Poltergeist has about three scary moments in it. Maybe. Calling it a horror film almost feels ludicrious. It has a lot of other things though!

It has a lot of zero character growth. Rockwell’s character is completely cardboard. A completely unrealistic person given anything that happens in the movie, and even more sadly, he doesn’t even dance. The mom and older daughter role are almost completely unimportant.

It is all about little boy and little girl. And occasionally some adult comes around and does something, but when the girl gets sucked away (for a majority of the film I guess), it is mostly up to Catlett to keep us entertained. He does an okay job, in terms of kid stuff. But he cannot save this boring mess of a film.

That’s right. The biggest shame of this remake is not that it isn’t scary, it is the boringness of it all. It honestly feels like they went so light and fluffy with the whole thing that they wanted it to actually be a PG horror film. It was hard to get through because of how uninteresting it became after only 15 or so minutes.

Jim Rash and Nat Faxon wrote The Descendants, and graced our screens with its presence in 2011. It was nominated for Best Picture and eventually won Best Adapted Screenplay. It basically made these writers pretty hot commodities.

That is why I was excited to see The Way, Way Back, their next film. No George Clooney this time, but they have plenty of other actors to fill his void.

Look, here are three now!

Summer can suck. Especially if you are Duncan (Liam James). Your parents are divorced, your dad just moved from NY to CA, and your mom (Toni Collette) is dating the biggest douche in the universe, Trent (Steve Carell). Unfortunately for Duncan, he has to head out to Trent’s summer beach house to pretend to give this new family idea a chance.

Did I mention Trent is a douche? He talks down to Duncan, constantly goes off with his friends (Rob Corddry, Amanda Peet) to get drunk or high or both. It is basically his personal summer vacation, where Duncan and his mom are afterthoughts.

But eventually, Duncan finds friendship in the local Water Park. Slacker manager Owen (Sam Rockwell) has decided to take pity on Duncan, give him a job and help him find a purpose in this long dreadful summer. With the help of Owen and the other workers (Maya Rudolph, Faxon, Rash), Duncan learns that there are non sucky things out there in life.

That is great, sure, but will this new found joy in life at all help him with his horrible home situation? Will it help him woo over the neighbor girl (AnnaSophia Robb), who has to deal with her constantly drunk mother (Allison Janney)?

Oh god. He is staring into my soul. What do I do!? Just act natural. Ho hum…AHHH!

Comedy/Drama movies are actually quite hard to pull off successfully. After all, even the strictest of dramas tend to have some minor elements in comedy, and vice versa. But most movies labeled in this category are clearly still one genre over the other, or even worse, weak in both areas to try and find a balance. One of the best examples I could list of a real comedy/drama would be 50/50, a film that made me both laugh and cry.

Nat Faxon and Jim Rash wrote a decent comedy/drama with The Descendants, very enjoyable, but it could have been more dramatic. For The Way, Way Back, they decided to amp up their game, and created a much better film. Not going to lie, I cried three times during it. I can’t say I relate specifically to the scenes in this film, but thanks to an excellent build up with terrific acting from everyone on the cast, the emotions quickly took over.

Steve Carell had to play the biggest jerk in the world, and he pulled it off well. It was quite surprising. Sam Rockwell and Allison Janney carried the comedy for me, while at the same time their characters felt real. Everyone felt real. I love real, even though real characters lead to uncomfortable moments.

Major props as well to Liam James. I can’t say I recognized him in anything before, however he pulled off the awkward/lonely teenager role really well. But hey, apparently he was Young Shawn in the Psych flashbacks, so that is kind of cool.

When I first heard about the film Seven Psychopaths, I was definitely excited. This movie is directed by Martin McDonagh, the guy who brought us In Bruges four years ago.

If you haven’t seen In Bruges, you definitely should. It is a dark comedy, and a pretty unique movie experience. But no pressure on McDonagh to recreate the magic of his last movie or anything.

Pictured above: Unique experience.

Marty (Colin Farrell) is a struggling screen writer and now alcoholic. He had some success, but he cant find the motivation for his next film, which is way past its deadline! Plus, his girlfriend is a bitch, maybe. His best friend, Billy (Sam Rockwell), an out of work actor really wants to help him on his new movie called Seven Psychopaths, so he puts an ad in the local paper calling all psychopaths to contact Marty and tell him their story. Ah jeez, thanks.

At the same time, Billy is working with an old friend of his, Hans (Christopher Walken) on a small time dog kidnapping business. Kidnap dogs from rich looking people, wait for them to post a reward, and boom, profit! Hans is working on money to pay for his wife’s cancer treatment (Linda Bright Clay). Unfortunately, they end up kidnapping the wrong man’s dog. Charlie (Woody Harrelson), a high ranking member of the local Italian mob loves his dog more than anything, and will kill anyone in his way to get him back!

Right. While all of that is going on, Marty is getting caught up in these shenanigans while also hearing stories from other psychopaths, such as Zachariah (Tom Waits), a Dexter sort of psychopath, and a pretty pissed off former member of the Vietcong(Long Nguyen). Not only does Marty have to survive the full wrath of the local mob, thanks to his friends attempts to help inspire the screenplay any way possible, but also stop drinking so gosh darn much!

You know where alcohol gets you? In the hospital. That’s the real moral of this whole movie.

If I am going to compare here, I can say that Seven Psychopaths is a bit more crazier than In Bruges, and you’d expect that with a film that had psychopath in the title. Unfortunately for myself, I had the displeasure of sitting behind a woman who cackled at every small amusing thing, ruining a bit of the humor for myself, but I still found it pretty damn funny. This film had large amounts of normal comedy and “dark comedy”, easily willing to make both groups happy (and potentially uncomfortable if you just want comedy). Basically, if you hate death, stay away.

But the person who really made this movie I think was Sam Rockwell, out of all the actors. His character just felt leagues above the rest of the cast, not that they were bad, just no where as near as awesome and crazy as his. He forces you to watch him every time he is on screen.

I think the only thing I didn’t really enjoy was the “movie in a movie” aspect of it. The movie, Seven Psychopaths, is about a guy trying to write a movie called Psychopaths, and very strange movie like circumstances occurring to his life as a result. Don’t get me wrong, the things that occurred were pretty fantastic, I just almost wanted a 100% real movie instead for a higher shenanigan potential. Definitely a great movie to watch with the friends however, with a fun time guaranteed.

I had a mini theme day yesterday. Realized I had a long block of time, very long, and to make the best of it I wanted to watch some long movies.

So I figured I might as well start with a long movie with a long title, hooyah! The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, and that is one of the last times I have to type it all out. Yes. For those curious, I then went The Patriot and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (Yes, seeing both for the first time as well, shut up).

Just a normal day in the life of Jesse James. Getting stared at by Robert Ford, obsessively.

You know whats awesome? Kind of spoiling the ending. Jesse James (Brad Pitt) totally dies in this movie. So if you have a collection of movies where Brad Pitt dies in them, this better be in it.

The movie takes place in the last few months of Jesse James life, including his last train robbery. He has the last remnants of his gang, including Frank James (Sam Shepard), Dick Liddil (Paul Schneider), Wood Hite (Jeremy Renner) and Ed Miller (Garret Dillahunt). Eventually they are joined by the likes of the Ford brothers, Charley (Sam Rockwell) and his younger brother Robert (Casey Affleck).

Growing up, Robert was obsessed with the tales of Jesse James and his gang of outlaws. He knew all about them, from the trains taken, to Jesse’s shoe size. He was his hero! Which is why he was in a situation where he finally got to join the gang and go on a mission with them, despite the fact that everyone else found his obsession a bit creepy. The robbery doesn’t lead to the riches they thought were coming, leaving a very disappointing final heist.

Then in the final months, we have Robert Ford getting to spend time with his FAMILY. He has kids! And a wife (Mary-Louise Parker)! What! But that ends eventually too, and he then lives with a few of the previous mentioned former outlaws.

But over the final months, Jesse finds himself a bit more paranoid with less people he can trust each and every day. So some people die. Some people get arrested. And Robert Ford is left with an ultimatum, kill or arrest Jesse James himself, or find himself in prison.

LOOK AT THAT CINEMATOGRAPHY. Look at ittt.

“Wait a minute! That movie is 160 minutes! You barely gave any plot? Does it move slow?”

Well technically, and despite the fact that you already know what it is about (The Death of Jesse James), I didn’t feel a real need but to introduce the characters and the first few scenes.

Why is this movie so long? Probably because this director loves him some detail. The camera works was almost orgasmic on Blu-Ray, and all the scenes gorgeous, but not over the top. But even better than that was, surprisingly enough, Casey Affleck. Yes, Ben’s younger brother. He made this movie his bitch, and was so damn good at the role. Brad Pitt, also excellent in this film, both surely scene steals, but the level of detail that went in from Casey was just astounding. It all felt so real, which made it all a bit more eerie and awesome.

All of the acting was really well done, and I was very interested in the story line. Of course, one other problem with it could be just that it is…well very damn long. Hard to justify watching this movie a lot, without wanting to just skip around to a few scenes. Also super dramatic. Not a wild wild west shoot em up. Only a few shooting scenes really.

Here is something I won’t do with The Sitter. I won’t complain about it being similar to Adventures In Babysitting. That seems to be a big complaint. After all, there cannot be more than two movies about babysitting in a 20some year span. That would be crazy. Just like there is only one cop show every 20 years.

Can’t even compare their directors, as The Sitter was directed by the guy who did Pineapple Express, so he is already established. The guy who directed Adventures In Babysitting was doing his first movie ever, and only went on to direct some Harry Potters, Home Alone, Rent, and Percy Jackson. Holy shit, that guy is awesome.

I guess it makes sense that his name is Chris Columbus too, given his ground breaking movies.

Jonah Hill is a bum. Well, kind of. He lives with his mom, after kind of taking a break from college, and has no job or anything going on. He’d rather sit around all day than do anything productive. Or you know, hang out with his “girlfriend”, Ari Graynor, who lets him go down on her! And that is about all they do. Shit.

But when his mom’s future love life is in jeopardy because her friends can’t find a sitter, he reluctantly volunteers. Afterall, he just has to sit in the house and get paid. Just three kids too. The oldest, Slater (Max Records), seems to be bad socially, the daughter, Blithe (Landry Bender), who is going through some wanna be celebrity party phase, and their adopted son, Rodrigo (Kevin Hernandez), who sets off firecrackers and has a bad attitude.

But his girlfriend calls up, asking him to come out and party, and bring her some cocaine (for her friend, not her), and then they can have real sex! Well, time to grab the kids and go! Anything dealing with drugs is probably bad, so when he tries to get the stuff from her friend Karl (Sam Rockwell, who yes, dances in this movie) things go from bad to worse.

Race relations, people with guns, diamond stealing, bathrooms exploding, Bat Mitzvah crashing, and you know, meeting old friends in the form of an old college buddy who just wants to hang out and watch a cool geologic storm with him (hint, true love, played by Kylie Bunbury).

This is also the last movie to feature “Fat Jonah Hill”.

There is a rumor that formerly fat people can’t be funny. That isn’t true, we found that out with 21 Jump Street. But it should be noted that fat people aren’t always funny. This movie being a big example of it.

Was there some funny moments? Sure, but they were few and far between. It was also entirely predictable, and well, just lame. Sequences of the movie didn’t even make sense, one notable part involving a pull over from the police. They didn’t even try to explain that event later in the movie, was just stupid.

Most of the humor derives around Jonah Hill cursing at or around kids, and them possibly doing it back. Hell, even Sam Rockwell’s character wasn’t that funny. I think the best character was the gay roller blading assistant. Name is maybe Julio. Maybe.

I could say a lot about this movie, but it is one of the more simpler movies to understand.

Sure some history might help, but Frost/Nixon is about two people. David Frost, and Richard Nixon.

The entire movie is just their floating heads, talking.

But seriously. Frank Langella plays Richard Nixon, who just had the Watergate scandal and has since resigned from being president. Michael Sheen plays David Frost, a British TV reporter who likes to interview people. At the time of the movie I don’t think he was as famous as he is right now. A lot of the fame came from his interview with Nixon, as he was the first reporter to really get a crack at it after the resignation.

Do you want your movie reviews to be a history lesson? Didn’t think so. That is what watching the movie is for.

Eventually the interview happens over a few parts. After the first part, Nixon is walking all over Frost. He is a big time guy, carries a lot of power behind his voice, and can steer the topics his way. But it is up to Frost to man up, so to speak, take control of the interview, and get Nixon to talk about the scandals!

Sam Rockwell and Kevin Bacon are also in this movie, but you shouldn’t be watching it for them.

Here is a picture of the real interviews. Everyone is uglier in real life.

“But Gorgon Reviews, why would I want to watch a movie about two people just talkin’? Not only just that, but two people talkin’ about stuff almost 40 years ago. Fuck the past!”

Well, foul-mouthed reader, they talk pretty good like.

I mean, that might be my whole argument. I was captivated some how by all of it. The sense of history being made (or at least the possibility) and the mental chess match between Frost and Nixon for the debate. Had a lot more than those two, producers, agents, bodyguards, PR people, etc getting in the way too. And money. But just watching the conversations was good enough for me.

I assume most of you while growing up (if you were male at least), played some form of cowboys vs indians with your fiends. Why not? Violence is fun, and team sports are fun. Of course there is a lot of other versions of this game, Cops vs Robbers, pirates vs ninjas, terrorists vs anti-terrorists or even Texas vs Mexicans.

Cowboys & Aliens tries to take the rivalry concept a step further, by having a clearly more advanced side (instead of relatively even sides (ignoring pirates vs ninjas (go pirates) ) ). Also technically this could just be a rewording of Texas vs Mexicans, but that came out after this movie, so it isn’t thievery.

Picture: Not a fair fight.

The movie opens with Daniel Craig lying in the desert, alone, and thankfully fully clothed. Sure, he doesn’t remember anything, and he has a weird device on his arm, but at least he has clothes. Eventually he finds a town, and apparently he is a wanted outlaw. Despite still being confused, turns out he can kick an ass or too, assuming that ass is male. Because out of no where Olivia Wilde fucks him up (with a cheap shot) and he gets thrown in jail.

At the same time, far away, Harrison Ford is all upset about missing workers and dead steer. Bright lights? Sounds like bullshit to him! He goes to the town though hearing that Craig is there, and he wants to punish him himself, as he stole his gold! Conflict happens in the town, fighting over prisoners. But then! Bright lights (See above picture) and explosions! Thankfully his mysterious arm attachment can create its own booms, and they don’t get obliterated or all captured.

They make a posse to go get those aliens (try to follow their tracks), to free the hostages and you know, figure out what the hell is going on. Oh yeah, Sam Rockwell plays a doctor too, and I am pretty sure this is the only movie where he doesn’t dance.

But how was it? Visually it was good. Nice CGI, nice desert contrast to go with the explosions. Craig and Harrison both go through character transformations in the film, so by the end you like both people, so that is good. Olivia Wilde felt out of play the whole movie though. Seriously, if you looked at a picture of all the cast and her, you’d just assume she was an alien.

Or at least the nakedest one.

Plot is very straight forward, but I didn’t find it engaging enough. Sure, I would have liked better answers for some things. I believe I am told why they are there, and why they captured some humans, but that why isn’t explained at all. Just makes them seem like a nuisance. There is a lull in a lot of the action scenes with aliens, because there are other threats out there (Indian tribe, the outlaw gang) etc, but nothing between them really escalates or feels threatening, because we also know there is damn aliens out there! People won’t kill other people if they can help fight aliens, just a fact.

I thought most of the acting was bad. The realest people to me were random extra outlaw members. The story overall never grasped my full attention and care, so although I thought some parts were cool, it fell flat for me in a lot of other places.

I first saw the preview for Conviction on the movie Never Let Me Go. It also had previews for things like 127 Hours, Black Swan (which is acclaimed, despite my dislike) and Cyrus (which I will have to watch soon).

Anyways readers, help me out. Hilary Swank‘s voice. Does she always do accents? Is her voice just super…southern a lot of times? I looked up a Million Dollar Baby trailer, and it seemed similar to Conviction, and I don’t remember how her voice was in that. But in an interview, I couldn’t tell if it was weird or what. So let me know, does she have an intense accent, or is she acting it in all these movies?

To me her voice is almost as mysterious as her goofy smile.

This is another true story. Sam Rockwell goes to jail for a murder he didn’t commit in the 80s. Swank goes to school to get her GED then BA then Law Degree while being a single mother and divorcee. She eventually gets DNA proof of innocence, but still cannot free brother. More problems, more solutions, until everyone is happy. Yay! Just took 18 years out of the dude’s life, but everything worked out well!

Obviously Rockwell isn’t the focal point of this movie, he does a fine job, but it is all pretty much on Swank’s shoulders. More or less this is one of those “punch you in the face yet somehow you still keep moving on” movies, in her journey to freeing her brother from prison. I really didn’t think I would tag this actress more than once, but Ari Graynor, my favorite part of Lucky, played the daughter of Rockwell, that he of course never got to know. Her role was limited, but also great.

Usually with punch you in the face –> overcome movies you feel great at the end, as the character you begin to cheer for the whole time. This is no exception. It was well done, pretty much everyone played their roles appropriately. I was a little bit confused in the beginning, as it seemed to jump around, but this movie accomplishes everything it sets out to do.

Oh yeah. He is innocent alright. Can’t you tell?

I was told I needed to watch this movie when I revealed Source Code. Same director, and he did Moon before Source Code. Had a LOT less budget, many less actors, and was independently released.

“Independently released? Well I approve!”

This was a great sci-fi movie. Thankfully, by reading the back cover, you really have no idea what the movie is about. For the sake of everything, don’t try and figure out what it is about before watching it. Don’t watch the trailer. Here is a synopsis that will not ruin it for you:

Moon: Sam Rockwell is on the moon alone. He is there to harvest moon stuff, and send it back to earth, as a new and awesome energy source. He has a robot companion (voiced by Kevin Spacey). Then some weird shit happens.

There ya go! So once the “Weird shit” starts to happen, I continued to make guesses “Oh the ending will be blahdyblahblah” and then 10 minutes later, said guess happens. This just leaves me dumbfounded. Why would that happen so soon? “Oh!” I says to myself. “Well. Maybe this is going to be lead to this?”.

I think I did that like, three times. Until I was wrong and got an overall ending sequence I wasn’t guessing. Hooray for not knowing what will happen! The simplisticness of the movie makes it work, with only really two main characters. Sam Rockwell with a beard is cool, but I kept finding it odd his characters name was Sam Bell. What is he, trying to turn into Bill Paxton now? Either way, this does what a good sci-fi movie should do. Question humanity. And other philosophical things. (The other acceptable good sci-fi movie is of course the one that is secretly political).

Whoa whoa. Only Bill Paxton can be Bill Paxton. If you aren’t Bill Paxton, you can’t be Bill Paxton. And I am Bill Paxton. Bill Paxton.

3 out of 4.