Seven Psychopaths

The play writing world wasn't enough for Martin McDonagh. The brilliant award winning playwrite broke into the movie world with his oscar winning short film 6-shooter starring Brendan Gleeson. Then in 2008, McDonagh released the critically praised In Bruges featuring Brendan Gleeson, Colin Farrell and Ralph Fiennes. It is quite literally one of the best movies of all time. And if you don't think so, shame on you. Four long years we had to wait for the next McDonagh film. In many ways it was worth the wait, but it many others the sophomore effort just can't quite reach the level of the first.

The story of Seven Psychopaths, like all of McDonagh's work, is always hard to pin down. You can guess where it's going but it was a total fluke if you actually predicted it correctly. It revolves around Marty (Colin Farrell), an alcoholic Irish screenwriter (Get it?) who is trying to come up with seven psychopathic characters for his new film entitled Seven Psychopaths (Seriously, do you get it? Because if you don't you shouldn't watch movies).

His best friend Billy (Sam Rockwell) is a struggling actor who wants nothing more than to help write Marty's screenplay and potentially star in it. But he's not very good at it. So in his spare time he and Hans (Christopher Walken) steal dogs from the park and then bring them back to their owners to collect the reward money. Only one day, they steal Charlie's (Woody Harrlson) adorable Shih Tzu. Charlie is a ruthless mob boss who loves his dog way more than his girlfriend or anything else in life.

And that's about as much as I can summarize without ruining some really fun and creative parts of the film. There's a whole lot more going on and I don't want to spoil anything.

So let's talk about the film's strengths. You don't see writing and dialogue like this outside of a Tarantino movie. Except I think it is even better. It's quick, it's funny and if you look away for a second you might miss the brilliance of it. Of course thankfully this time there is only one Irish accent. (I am notoriously bad at understanding other accents) The actors themselves are top notch. Sam Rockwell is in peak form as he always is, Colin Farrell is always better when he plays an alcoholic Irishman, Tom Waits is gleefully delightful as a psychopath and Woody Harrelson is forever awesome when holding a gun.

But the shining star (if there is allowed to be one) is Christopher Walken. Every line out of his mouth was either hilarious, poignant, thought-provoking or so tear jerking you want to hug him. This is his Supporting Actor Oscar nomination to lose.

And the gore! Oh god it is wonderful. McDonagh has a little love affair with gratuitous, but at the same time, hilarious amounts of gore. Headshots, throat slittings, blood shooting everywhere. It gets graphic. Thankfully, while gross, it doesn't stray too far into the too much area but it might be a little shocking to many viewers.

But Seven Psychopaths fails on a couple of levels. There's a little bit of "Hollywood" as my friends called it, pushed into the film. It's not bad, but it is noticeable. There's also several storylines happening at any one time. And both the trailer and the poster are an extreme lie. The trailer doesn't even mention the screenwriting plot and the poster lists two women as some of the psychopaths. Combined, those actresses have about 5 lines of dialogue before disappearing forever. Which results in a hilarious scene in which Hans reads Marty's script.

"Do you know women who can string coherent sentences together?"
"Yes."
"Then where are they in this screenplay?"

The film also does a poor job of connecting the scenes. Halfway through the movie they end up in the desert. With tents. With no real explanation as to how, or why they drove from L.A. to the desert.

Seven Psychopaths delivers a unique twist on the old person in a movie trying to write a screenplay gag. And it has some of the best actors in the biz going at it with some fantastic lines of dialogue. People who aren't familiar with In Bruges probably won't enjoy it. The scenes tend to have a disconnect and it just wasn't organized well. A little too many good ideas forcefully shoved into one movie.

2 1/2 stars out of 4

-Christopher O'Connell

P.S. No one can deny the brilliance and sheer creativity shown in Christopher Walken's final monologue. I wish I could come up with ideas like that.

Looper

Time travel, a frightening child actor and Bruce Willis? It's like director Rian Johnson wrote down the requirements for a science fiction film and then said "Yeah, that's what I want in my new movie." Fortunately for him, and for us, he did it in a creative way that rises above tired sci-fi tropes and delivers a genuinely entertaining, if confusing, action film.

In the future, time travel has been discovered. And outlawed. Instead of using it exclusively to go back in time and draw inappropriate pictures on Hitler's face while he's sleeping, the world's future criminal organizations use time travel as a way to kill people. Because it's super hard to hide a body in the future or something. So they send people they want dead back to about 50 years from our present to be killed.

The guys who do the killing are called loopers. They wait at a predetermined position, use a shotgun like gun called a blunderbuss to blow away a recently time traveled hooded target, and collect their payment in the form of silver sent back with the target. Then they dispose of the body, usually with fire. But there's a catch that comes in the form of the phrase "closing the loop." To erase all knowledge of this operation loopers have thirty years of life given to them, at the end of thirty years they are sent back in time to be killed by themselves. For an extra reward the young self is given a large amount of gold to compensate for killing himself. The only rule is never let your target go free.

Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, see what they did there?) is a looper. He waits in a cornfield, checks his pocket watch and carefully aims his blunderbuss. A white sheet is spread out in front of him. A man appears. Boom. In an instant he is blown away. There is no thinking, just acting. But one day after watching multiple loopers close their own loops, a man appears on his sheet but this time he isn't wearing a hood. The split second that Joe hesitates allows Old Joe (Bruce Willis) to escape, the one thing you're not allowed to let happen. Now Joe has to hunt himself down.

Sounds like a sci-fi chase action film right? Wrong. What the trailer doesn't reveal is about half of the story line. And I was very pleased with that. There is nothing quite like assuming you know what a movie will be about and then watching it take a complete right turn. Rian Johnson has thrown together, at minimum, at least 2 separate movies. Normally this would be a confusing experience, and at some points it is, but he keeps it all together for a satisfying sci-fi flick.

I had a real debate with a friend about the merits of this film. He thought some of the emotional moments were cheapened by the fact that they were forced to happen. I would half agree, but it doesn't make them less emotional for me and for most audience members. There are hard choices here. Some of them gory. There were many times where I stared at the screen slack jawed or quietly whispering to the man next to me "oh no."

Because for sheer entertainment value, "Looper" is hard to beat. Close range shotgun blasts are brutal, Levitt and Willis are fantastic at acting, and Johnson has created a believable world very much informed by past sci fi movies but unique in itself.

Sure there are some poor cheesy choices. And if anyone takes the time to actually think about the time travel stuff it would all fall apart, kind of like how "Inception" loses itself after multiple viewings. The final scene with Levitt is a mishmash of ridiculousness. This is his actual line, "And I saw it, a boy and a man, trapped forever making the same choices, stuck in a circle." LIKE A LOOP JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT? LIKE A GIANT LOOP? JUST SAY IT, IF YOU'RE GOING TO DESCRIBE THE TITLE JUST SAY IT. Also, for anyone who saw the movie, Joe had about 20 different options to pick before choosing what he did. But instead he was like eh, all or nothing right?

But is "Looper" good? I honestly have no idea. And I saw it 3 weeks ago. But I loved watching it and I would certainly watch it again. If just to see Bruce Willis dual wield machine guns.

3 out of 4 stars

-Christopher O'Connell

P.S. Did anyone else get a Walking Dead vibe as soon as Joe got to the farm? Thankfully it wasn't nearly as long or as boring.

The Expendables 2: A Quick Review

Is there any reason for this movie? No. There is not. But it has the most hilarious subtitle ever in the history of ever. Not many posters feature it because it is so mind boggingly stupid. Is Expendables 2 a good movie? Not by a long shot. Did I have fun watching it? You bet I did.

The crew is back, completely forgiving Dolph Lundgren for being a total bush in the first movie and they finally added a character that's actually under the age of 35. Hello Liam Hemsworth. The badass army war sniper who is the only title character to die. Wait WHAT?! Yup, spoiler alert. Liam dies. I guess he made everyone else look bad, or old.

But who cares? These films are so stupid that it really doesn't matter who lives or dies. Jet Li quite literally jumps out of a plane so he can stop being in these movies. But don't worry they bring out Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis to shoot endless waves of bad guys.

There's no real plot. Jean-Claude Van Damme is just a civilian killing dick looking to sell old Russian nuclear warheads to terrorists (Seriously Russia, hide your old nukes.) And the Expendables are there to kill him and all his henchmen.

If you don't like stupid action films, don't bother. This won't change your mind. If, like me, you laughed endlessly at the first one's stupidity, gives Expendables 2 a try. Only this time around, Stallone and crew are finally in on the joke instead of pretending they're trying to make a decent movie.

0 out of 4 stars in actual movie world.

3 out of 4 stars in action/hilarious movie world.

-Christopher O'Connell

Hope Springs

Hope Springs was directed by David Frankel and stars Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, and Steve Carrell.

Kay and Arnold Soames (Streep and Jones) have been married for thirty-one years.  They no longer sleep in the same room, haven't had sex in close to five years, barely talk, and are not emotionally available to one another.  Apparently this means that the marriage is in need of dire help.  Kay takes the initiative to sign her and her hubby up for a marriage counseling trip to Maine to see Dr. Bernie Feld (Carrell), since he wrote a book on marriage and must be an expert.  Arnold is against the counseling from the start, however he goes anyways, but is pretty cranky the entire time.  Dr. Feld seeks to delve into these two characters' relationship and try and restore intimacy to a marriage that has become dormant over the years.

This goes without saying, but I love Meryl Streep.  I have mentioned this multiple times on this blog and if you know me personally, chances are that I have told you this to your face.  She is incredibly talented and can literally play any role.  She looks different in every film and sometimes even gets fancy and dons an authentic foreign accent, all while transforming herself into another character.   I feel like she is at her best playing real people, such as Julia Child in Julie & Julia and Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.  However, she is good in Hope Springs, as well.  So what if it's not a role worthy of Oscar recognition.  Also, she has good chemistry with Tommy Lee Jones and it is evident that she loves this man, even after years of becoming emotionally distant and lacking intimacy.  I got to admit I was disappointed when Jeff Bridges decided not to play the male lead.  He and Streep would have been an awesome combination.  However, Jones took over the role perfectly fine, and has some of the funniest lines in the film.  Mostly mined from the character's cynical personality.  

The film also is further proof that Steve Carrell is a talented actor.  If you are expecting Steve Carrell to be hilariously funny like he was on The Office or in several of his films, then go watch one of those.  In Hope Springs all of his dialogue is spoken from the same chair in the therapist's office and hardly any of it is meant to be funny.  He had a simple role, consisting of forcing Streep and Jones' characters to open up to him and each other about the state of their marriage.  Carrell may be done with television for a while, but he has a quite a career in movies, and I don't see him getting typecast like Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler in the same dumb comedies.  

Also, the whole tone of the film was successfully executed and dealt with important topics.  The movie is primarily a drama, with some funny lines and scenes (especially during the credits...so stay and watch them...all of them).  It shows the importance of intimacy in marriage and being open to one another and telling your husband/wife your feelings.  The film showed some of the setbacks that the couple faced as they were trying to do the exercises that Dr. Feld suggested they do to get physically closer to one another.  This adds to the realism in the film, since no marriage is fixed instantly.  Had there been no setbacks, the film would have gotten cheesy and stupid and I would not have been amused by the price of the ticket I bought.  

Just so no one is surprised their is talk about sexuality in this film.  But the characters are married...and having problems in that department, so stop being so sensitive.  And some of it is actually quite funny.

Finally, this movie is way better than Marley & Me.  David Frankel also directed that, and I was absolutely not a fan of it.  He also directed The Devil Wears Prada, which I don't really remember, but apparently Meryl Streep was wonderful in it.   

3 stars out 4.  If you like the cast or films about restoring marriages, or just want to see Steve Carell sit in a chair, then by all means see it in theaters, or rent it.  I understand movies are quite expensive.  

-Joseph Sbrilli 

The Campaign

It's good to see Will Ferrell back in a solid comedy. Discounting last years disappointing "Casa De Mi Padre" Ferrell hasn't been in a solid comedy film since "The Other Guys." But while "The Campaign" isn't his best work, it is a solid film with entertaining leads and constant laughs.

Democratic incumbent Cam Brady (Will Ferrell) has run unopposed in the 14th district of North Carolina four times. He loves America, he loves freedom, and he loves Jesus, but he isn't sure why. He just knows the people love it when he says that. But when he is caught leaving a dirty phone message for his mistress on a constituents answering machine, the higher ups decide to do something about it. The higher ups are the Motch brothers (Dan Ackroyd, John Lithgow), loosely based on the Koch brothers, who need a senator who will vote to allow Chinese factories on U.S. soil. They try to find someone less reckless then Brady. They settle on  republican Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis) a small town business owner and son to the Huggins estate. A family that goes so far back they pay their Asian maid to talk like a black woman because it reminds them of the "good old days." Marty at first looks like he has no chance of winning, but with a ruthless Motch funded campaign manager (Dylan McDermott) both Brady and Huggins resort to dirty tricks to undermine one another in the race to get elected.

It is hard to review comedies because no one likes to read the jokes poorly remembered by me, so I am sorry if this one is a little bit short. Ferrell is hilarious. He is back into a character that immediately is reminiscent of Anchorman and should prepare him for that role again. He has beautiful hair, and acts very much like a douchey democratic politician should (looking at you former senator Edwards). He will do anything, up to and including sleeping with his opponents wife and running an ad of their sex tape.

Marty Huggins is the exact opposite. He's short and adorable. He owns two pugs and is very effeminate and very Christian at the same time. His campaign manager spends most of his time making Marty tougher. Replacing his house items with lots of carved wood, stuffed dead animals, and replacing his pugs with a lab and a retriever, the two most American dogs out there.

As I said, the movie is hilarious, with almost constant laughs, mostly coming from our two very capable leads. I wouldn't say there's very many quotable parts, just that every line of dialogue can be made good by a great actor. What detracts from the film, or holds it back is the lack of substance. This film is more parody than satire. The candidates use buzzwords to charge their audience like calling the other one a communist or invoking Jesus. Deeper issues are rarely discussed. There are some subtle jabs, like when Brady hands Huggins some Chick-Fil-A coupons, but on the whole it doesn't get very deep.

Does it matter? No, because it is still funny. Even if they both act like Republican candidates. I also died when Ferrell punches both a baby and the dog from "The Artist". Good, solid R-rated fun, that is funny for all ages in an audience.

3 out of 4 stars

-Christopher O'Connell

Bourne Legacy

The original Bourne trilogy is, far and away, the best spy movies I have ever seen. Even if he's really only spying for himself. Matt Damon threw himself into the role as Jason Bourne. And moviegoers were treated to some fantastic directing by Paul Greengrass. But we all know Hollywood loves to make money, so they decided to continue the Bourne series even though both Greengrass and Damon decided to opt out. It was a bad move.

Like the poster says, there never was just one. Which we knew from the first movies because Jason Bourne was set upon by multiple highly trained assassin bad guys. If you remember correctly, Bourne was part of a secret government program called Treadstone, or Blackbriar. I forget which because they throw around these names like a great white shark throws around a seal (Shark Week baby). Well, Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) is part of another program whose name I didn't catch. Except in his program, each operative is given pills that boost their strength and mental capacity. Trying to engineer Captain America. But in the last film, that Pamela Landsbury woman decided to blow the lid on the whole program because she felt bad for Bourne or something. I should really rewatch those.

Well she blew the lid on Jeremy Renner's program somehow, and the government obviously only knows one way to cover it up so nobody talks about it: by killing everyone. Even civilians. Which is ridiculous. They went after Bourne because they thought he was going rogue. They go after Aaron Cross because they'd rather kill a multi-million dollar super soldier then let CBS News know he exists. Obviously, because he is the main character, Aaron is the only one in his program who escapes certain death.

So he's going to find and kill the people responsible for trying to find and kill him right? WRONG. In the weirdest plot line ever, Aaron rescues a scientist woman, whom he shares no intimacy with even though THERE'S SO MUCH SEXUAL TENSION, in order to find a way to get his superhero pills back. BUT WAIT, he only needs one pill because they injected him with a virus that made the physical pill obsolete. This is literally the plot line right here: Aaron needs the virus form of the new pill because without it, he is literally mentally challenged. They need to get to the Philippines before Aaron gets too stupid to function anymore. A very odd way to run a supersoldier program.

And that's basically the movie. Which is just one big setup for the next Bourne film. Oh and the trailer lied, remember that part that says, "It's Treadstone without the inconsistencies."? That's not referencing Aaron Cross. It's referencing a different program called Larx-3 where they bred the empathy out of their super soldiers. Apparently the government has like 20 of these programs. Aaron isn't that special. Bourne was special, Aaron just has superhuman pills.

So we have a very confusing plot, a pretty bad lead female, a end bad guy fight which is entirely underwhelming and the movie ends with no closure whatsoever. When compared to the original films, it doesn't stack up at all. There is no fair comparison. Jeremy Renner is a great lead, and I hope to god he gets to team up with Matt Damon in the next film, but if they stay the course on this one, Bourne's legacy will be a pile of crap.

1.5 out of 4 stars

-Christopher O'Connell

Total Recall

I always get pumped for science fiction movies. Why? Who knows. Most of them are pretty bad. There's something about the future that will always fascinate us. How will we live? How will we interact? What new, exciting ways can we come up with to kill someone? Can we remake a movie from the 90's that was widely considered pretty great and hope that it stands on par? Not in this case, but that doesn't mean that Total Recall didn't do some things right.

Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell) is an average, if distinctly better looking, regular dude. He lives in Australia, also known as the colony. After some crazy war, the only two places on Earth that are inhabitable are the United Kingdom, known as the United British Federation, and Australia, the colony. Everyone who lives in the colony is your working class blue collar poor people that has surprisingly Asian tastes. They all basically work for the UBF. The only means of transport between the two places is a giant train that goes through the center of the Earth between the two every day, which you have to admit is pretty dang cool.

Well, Quaid is pretty unsatisfied with life, even though his wife is a super hot Kate Beckinsale. He decides to go to Rekall, a place that can put imaginary memories inside of your head so it feels like you lived as a spy or a supermodel or something else cool. Quaid goes and right as he's being plugged in, the machine freaks out and cops break in and kill everyone. And then Quaid kills all of the cops. Now he's running around the colony and UBF trying to figure out if what he is experiencing is real or fake while at the same time uncovering a conspiracy and stopping the war.

I don't want to ruin too much more but its pretty obvious from the get-go that he is not suffering from recall memories at all. Sorry to burst that bubble but the movie doesn't really care about that. It cares about action sequences.

And boy, does it have action sequences. Car chases, lots and lots of bullets, elevator chases, and a final badguy vs. hero showdown. It's all pretty fun.

Oh and BRYAN CRANSTON IS THE BAD GUY. And it's amazing. Non Breaking Bad fans are really missing out on this man right now. But seeing him on the big screen growling and kicking ass just makes me want more of him all the time.

The problem with Total Recall is its predecessor. It just doesn't compare. It's not groundbreaking, it has a few cool ideas, but at its core it is just a slightly above average sci-fi big budget action flick. And that is fine, everyone should stop complaining about it because it is way better than the Bourne movie.

2.5 out of 4 stars

P.S. Where's the accents? Only Kate Beckinsale really uses hers and it's based in Britain. Colin Farrell is literally Irish. Use the accents, would have been way cooler.