Tag: Sean Harris

Welcome to a Movie Roundup! A movie roundup features a few films that I didn’t feel like making full reviews for, but needed to get basic reviews out there for completionist reasons. It also helps me deal with my backlog. It may have a theme, and today’s theme is Mainstream 2018 (Part 1)! Basically, the popular movies I had missed, and need to really review, or else.

Being on a movie round up doesn’t mean a movie is inherently bad, or good, or meh. I can feature any rating on here! So don’t assume the worst! I will also just post the reviews in alphabetical order.

In the face of this movie, I expected the worst. I thought this movie had to be a typical January release, something similar to
10,000 BC. But alarmingly, it came out in September, and when I finally got to see the movie it mostly met my expectations. It was surprisingly not amazingly bad, just regularly bad.

Gross CGI landscapes to recreate the before time, and a pretty uninspired storyline about the bringing together a “dog” and a man. The other sad aspect of this movie is that people might watch it and go, “Oh, so that’s how it happened! Domestication!” and take this movie as fact. That would be a shame. And I don’t know if people actually say that, because I barely know people who have seen it, but this straw man stands in my mind. A forgettable film, like most dog films.

Waiting for Mufasa to show up takes forever.

When I first heard this title, I really assumed it was sort of a joke. I didn’t know it was based on a book of the title, or why it was called that, but it just felt off. I thought it would be some sort of exploitative film that was a comedy no one would watch, and hey, it feels good to be wrong. A romance more than anything, this is a film about an outsider being brought into the world of ridiculously rich Asian people in Singapore. So we get all of the wealth, luxury, and snide comments with some back stabbing.

On its whole, it could have been a forgettable romance film. But the lavish sets went all out to display a lifestyle most of us can only dream about, while also bringing in new cultural elements to American cinema. Having the lead be the mom from Fresh Off The Boat was great, and showed she has at least some range. The ending teared me up too. And damn it, it is great in general to see different people on our romance movies. Bring on this wave of Asian-American films, damn it.

Out of the three adjectives in the title, I’d prefer the middle one myself.

“More Mission Impossible? I thought we were done with those,” said no one really ever. Or at least said people who hadn’t been watching them. I will go on record and say the only one I didn’t get enjoyment out of was the second one, and that one has a lot of stranger things going on. I just didn’t see them until I was already an adult, so it took me awhile to appreciate them. Because lets face it, there isn’t another successful American action franchise that is going into this level of detail and craziness for its stunts. It wants Cruise to do most of the work.

He is never going to be the level of some of our older or past martial artist stars, with the long choreographed fight scenes, but its at least a step in the right direction. This film is still exciting, but overall, it feels uninspired. It just isn’t as good as the last two modern MI movies. The stunts aren’t as sexy, even if they have bigger overall stunts. It doesn’t fill me with as much awe, and the story line just gets excessive as it attempts to continually top itself. The ending also feels really clunky and I never really feel that sense of dread that it is going for. A good attempt at an action movie, I just expect a bit more now from the franchise.

The biggest stunts are helicopters? Eh, I’ve seen helicopters before.

I am a huge Ocean’s Trilogy fan, and a huge Steven Soderbergh fan, and so even if the director wasn’t really involved, I was hoping to love this one. Heck, the stars are there too, with a lot of big names.

I will say it feels gimmicky, and not equal, to just go the opposite direction and make it an all female cast. It doesn’t feel natural, just like an all male heist would be with the large numbers (which is why technically the two sequels had…one woman in on the heist). In the movie, it does seem to make a lot more sense, given just the nature of the crime and the talents they needed to pull it off, so that is the good news. The biggest issue overall is just that the movie feels forgettable when it finishes. No one person stands out in acting, and the various twists to show how it was pulled off are for the most part guessable, especially thanks to the title.

I still hope they can do more. Go for it. Just lets raise the stakes.

Yep, eight people, like most of the advertising, spoiling a twist.

Finally, a film people maybe thought initially was a joke. A high budgeted comedy (and slightly action?) movie, about people playing tag, that has gone on with very specific rules for decades, and one person who never, ever gets tagged. So many stars, so little time, and such a ridiculous concept (based loosely on a real story). I wanted to enjoy it and was intrigued by the trailer. But like a lot of modern comedies, I think it really just needs a group of people or slight inebriation to really fully enjoy.

I’d prefer a comedy I can find historical alone, and this is clearly one meant for you to enjoy with your own group of friends, which is fine, but limited. Again, with a large cast, no one really feels like a standout, and some people seem to be doing the same sorts of character they are always type casted into. The ending also went a really strange place. Unexpected, sure, but something that feels almost like a complete genre switch.

Mainstream movies may be a broad title, especially when you compare them to the other quick themes I put together, but hey, its my themes suck it. I originally would have done genre, but too many films are multi-genre that I didn’t want to deal with that hassle.

There isn’t much new to say about the Mission: Impossible series that I didn’t already say in my Ghost Protocol review weeks ago. I watched the other four movies in the series, some were good, some were bad. More importantly, the last one was good, so the series is on an upswing and I can be excited!

Tom Cruise puts out exciting movies. He can be a bit crazy, but by damn does the man know how to entertain an audience.

Part of me secretly hopes that this time, in Rogue Nation, the mission actually ends up being impossible and they lose. That would be a nice plot twist and a fantastic way to end the franchise. A bit of a downer, but man, what IDGAF attitude they would have!

Your mission should you choose to accept it: Die in the movie and NOT return for a sequel.

Remember the Syndicate? Of course you don’t! They were mentioned at the end of the last movie but vaguely and that they were bad people. Turns out they are very, very bad people. So bad that Ethan Hunt (Cruise) got captured by them relatively early on in the movie, with innocent people being killed. He doesn’t know a lot about them, they are a very secret organization, led by some guy (Sean Harris) that he of course knows next to nothing about.

All he knows is that he only is able to escape thanks to the help of a woman (Rebecca Ferguson). But just like previous films, due to all of the chaos of events going around the IMF, they officially get disbanded. The head of the CIA (Alec Baldwin) has brought all usable resources into his division, including Benji (Simon Pegg) and Brandt (Jeremy Renner). Luther (Ving Rhames) figured he’d rather retire than work for the CIA.

And now Ethan is on his own, being hunted by the CIA and the Syndicate, the latter of which no organization actually believes exists. A typical Tuesday for him I’d imagine.

Also featuring Jens Hultén as henchman who speaks and Saif Al-Warith as henchman who doesn’t speak, but has a nice beard.

If you look closely, you will notice reversed gender roles!

M:I 5, if I can call it that, was an action movie done right. We don’t have lamely on a mission killing an entire island worth of henchmen, or people running around just yelling shitty puns. No, the action scenes in this film have depth. It helps that a lot of the stunts are done by Cruise himself, which just adds to his action star credibility. The plane scene is the famous stunt scene, which is funny in context of the film based on how little it matters. The underwater scene was one of the best scenes, as well as the motorcycle/car chase.

For the plot, it has the normal twists and turns that the franchise tends to offer, but I think it falls apart a bit near the end. Things get almost too convoluted. Thankfully it doesn’t completely ruin the film which spends the rest of the time before it building up your good graces with cool scene after cool scene.

Ferguson plays the best Mission: Impossible lady star of the five films. She is a kick ass, bad ass woman, who has her own motives for doing everything. She isn’t just a lame plot device for Hunt, like a Bond girl.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation is definitely one of the best action movies of the year at this point, and probably one of the better non Superhero action movies from the last few years. Go and see and be entertained.

Buy It! – This movie is available now on {Blu-Ray} and {DVD}.

After American Hustle, I just assumed every Christmas we would get a movie with Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. They did it two years a row, and that means they have to do it forever?

Sure enough, looking at their IMDBs early in 2014, you would have seen Serena, coming out sometime end of 2014. Three for three, they were going for the Turkey!

But then something happened. It never came out. It got pushed to MARCH of 2015, basically the middle of nowhere. And it had an instant VOD release. Thinks weren’t looking good for this period drama set in North Carolina based on a book…

Real lumberjacks wear pink. Just ask Monty Python!

This movie, Serena, is a period drama (early 1930’s), set in North Carolina (Mountains) based on a book (also called Serena!).

George Pemberton (Cooper) is there, trying to start (or already has?) a big timber business. He is a lumberjack, okay? He is working on expanding his business to overseas, Brazil, get some of that rain forest money.

And then there is Serena (Lawrence). You may have heard about her. She is a blonde stand out, living amongst all the mountain folk. She doesn’t need no man to get her way, but she does, in George. Speaking of George, he has a child actually, with Rachel (Ana Ularu). Kind of awkward, but boys will be boys.

That is, until it is found out that Serena can NOT have kids. So the only person to carry on George’s legacy is some bastard kid. That’s not okay. When people get in Serena’s way, people get hurt. She is conniving and maybe even a little bit mad.

But what else is there to do in the North Carolina mountains?

Also featuring David Dencik, Rhys Ifans, Sean Harris, and Toby Jones.

And of course it ends with a big dance sequence like in Silver Linings Playbook. Right? Right?!

This has taken me about 10 hours of research after watching the movie, but I think I figured out why it was delayed and eventually only a limited release and VOD.

Serena is not very good.

The book might be fine, great, grand, wonderful. I don’t care. The movie is a bore and it is awkward. First off, Cooper and Lawrence, despite their presumably best efforts, do not look like they fit at all with the rest of the actors in this film. Maybe they are too pretty, maybe just too famous, but it doesn’t work. I would also say they don’t act that great here, which is a shame, since we know what they can do.

The side characters all above were pretty good though! Which is a shame. Their collective good was not great enough to overshadow the lumps of coal that Cooper and Lawrence delivered on a platter, however.

Aside from that, the story is pretty much a bore. Some excitement happens. Maybe two exciting things. And a couple more moments that were meant to be exciting, but instead were met with yawns. By the end when I should care more about the fate of certain characters, I instead found myself checking how much time was left and when it would finally end.

This isn’t All About Steve bad, no, but at least All About Steve had some entertainment value.

The first time I saw a trailer for Deliver Us From Evil, it definitely scared me. It was simple and basic, but it did the trick. They made a more plot based trailer eventually, but I never saw it.

It should have been of no surprise that I found the trailer terrifying, because the writer/director of this movie also wrote/directed Sinister from last year, which I loved. He seemed to have a real knack for the build up and tense moments, with the occasional jump scare to poop thine pants.

Basically, I was kind of excited, is what I was getting at, despite my dislike of being scared.

Who actually likes being scared anyways? Who? Who? Who?

The story mostly takes place in the distance past, 2013, with Sergeant Ralph Sarchie (Eric Bana, sporting a pretty accurate to me Bronx native accent) rolling around his turf, stopping bad guys. He has had a rough couple of cases recently, some dead babies, a dude who beat his wife, a lady who threw her baby into a lion pit.

Whoa now. Let’s go back to that. A Jane Crenna (Olivia Horton), mysteriously threw her baby over the side, then the lights went out in the whole park, causing everyone to flee. She was found later in the park, digging holes and singing The Doors very quickly. There was also a mysterious painter (Sean Harris) who was seen at the lion den, but got away, also mysteriously.

Things just are not going Ralph’s way. He is getting angrier at all of these stranger events, affecting his home life with is wife (Olivia Munn) and daughter.

But things don’t really get weird until he starts to see the connections between a few of his weird events and things I didn’t say. Unfortunately, it might even take a priest (Édgar Ramírez).

Also starring Daniel Sauli, as a mean man, and Joel McHale, as a character who is a cocky asshole. But this time the cocky asshole has a slight accent and a bit more relevant character traits than normal. Oh, he is also Ralph’s partner.

Man, that painter really doesn’t understand his job description.

First things first, yes, I did indeed get scared during the movie. There were a lot of jump scares too, a significant amount to say that they might have been a majority of the scares, which is annoying. But some of these came at such random times, just out of no where, that they did shock me. There was also fear in the build up and scene building, as I mentioned above that Sinister had. So despite the jump scares, the fear is real.

The plot? I actually enjoyed the plot. There is obviously an exorcism in this movie. Why else would we have a priest? They kept it mostly fresh and action packed. The fact that this was a sort of crime/mystery + horror movie really got you invested into the plot. Eric Bana was at his best and really flourished during this movie to I thought. Good job Bana. Everyone else? Eh, take it or leave it.

However, there was something incredibly terrible with this movie. Sound Editing/Mixing/Whatever. Holy crap, it was terrible. I feel like a real reviewer using these words, yes. Okay first off, yes, the main character began to hear things that other people could not hear. It was static noise, kids playing most of the time (and the kids playing used a very recognizable sound clip, so it was awkward every time it ran). But the rest of the movie’s sound was all over the place, screams out of nowhere as part of the music basically, despite nothing making the noise. Not just normal movie horror noise. Just very loud, all over the place, disjointed. It took me out of the movie numerous times.

There were a few cheesy moments too. The detective who was watching the exorcism from a distance made snide “OMG” like comments every now and then, un-tensing one of the final important moments of the film. Minor things like that. But mostly the sound editing.

So I don’t think it is as good as Sinister. But it wasn’t also trying to be inspired by a “True story” so that is another good bonus for Sinister over Deliver Us From Evil. Still very watchable.

Prometheus! Such a meaningful word. This movie I had the pleasure of seeing in theaters, which of course means it is automatically a bit better than it might be, so the review could change months later.

Outside of the amazing trailers, of course I knew that Ridley Scott was the director. I had heard originally that they planned on being a prequel to the Alien movies, but it was scrapped when it became so big. Well, it still is pretty much. Not a direct prequel, but same universe, and before Alien at least.

I’m sure there is nothing ominous about those vases.

Prometheus is the name of the ship, sent to a moon of a very very distant planet. Two archaeologists, Liz Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) find a bunch of cave paintings, showing old nations worshiping a lager man, and pointing to a very specific star system. It is weird, because none of these nations would have had contact, and are quite old.

So they believe that these beings are inviting them to their planet, and really want to “meet their maker”, and so they convince a trillionaire (Guy Pearce, looking like an old Bill Maher) to finance a ship and crew to do just that. Presumably the ship cost most of the funding, so not all individuals of the crew were the top of their field (on a potentially suicide mission), but still. We got a pilot (Idris Elba), a biologist (Rafe Spall), a geologist (Sean Harris), some sort of high level CEO like figure (Charlize Theron) and an adroid who is fucking fantastic (Michael Fassbender).

Of course other people too, like medics, navigators, security, etc. But eh whatever.

They go to the planet, find the people in question, but they are all dead (OR ARE THEY?). Also, find some nice black ooze. I’m sure after this they go home disappointed and no one dies.

After unlocking all of the secrets of the universe, of course.

Let me go over some pros first:

Michael Fassbender as an android. So good. So so good.
The visuals and shiny colors.
That basic premise.

Some of the cons?
Well, obviously, this is by far the worst depiction of a geologist I have ever seen in film. Thus my comments on not top of the field. Scientifically, a lot of this film is a travesty. Liz demanding no weapons on a new planet for safety, is pretty dumb, as is having only one “Expert’ on each field. But man, that geologist. It sucked, knowing he would die so fast in the film before I knew his field.

A lot of the characters don’t get as much development as one would like. So when certain self sacrifices are made, emotionally it doesn’t hurt as much because we barely know these people. Other conversations seemed forced (“I can’t have babies!” “Father!” etc) and it almost cringe worthy to see. Also drugs.

If I could rate this just on potential? It would be quite high. A lot of the elements are there but I think a bit too much was left on the cutting room floor. This film with a directors cut would probably be great. There is a lot of implied themes that make this film great as well, with plenty of evidence. Just…not enough for me to call it great.

Give a watch, but maybe wait for a nice Directors cut on Blu-Ray.