Category: Theaters

A musical about people trying to make it big in show business is not a new idea, but one more grounded in reality, showing how hard it can be, is.  Live action musicals are a rarity these days.  We get one a year, if we are lucky, to go with the random western to keep their respective genres alive, and much like modern westerns, musicals only succeed if they find new ground to cover, so it was smart of Damien Chazelle to put a fresh twist on the ‘making it big’ theme for La La Land.

Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) keep running in to each other as they chase their dreams around Los Angeles.  Mia wants to be an actress but keeps getting turned down at auditions, and Sebastian wants to open a Jazz club but is struggling to find people who are even interested in Jazz let alone want to open a club with him.  While they don’t hit it off at first, they soon end up in whirlwind romance.

It is easy to be slightly ambivalent to the plight of attractive people in L.A., but the story is engaging, and the music is good.  The fact that neither of the leads are singers or dancers helps this movie keep its more grounded feel.  You will want them to succeed in the end, and not just professionally, but personally as well.  Gosling and Stone are what make this film.  Their performances keep this film going.  They play it just right.  They are never too defeated, and they are never too overly optimistic.  They are determined people going about their work and falling in love.

The music is wonderful.  Much like Jazz, the film does a good job of changing the theme song City of Stars every time you hear it to fit the mood of the scene it is in, and all the other songs are very good too.  Without good music it is hard to have a good musical, so the song writing department definitely held up their end of the production.

La La Land is a good movie, and in an era that is starved for good musicals, that is enough to make it successful and easy to recommend.  I don’t know if it would be my pick for the Best Picture Oscar, but still worth seeing.  Between La La Land and Whiplash, Damien Chazelle is making quite the name for himself.

Following the success of John Wick, it was not surprising that Summit Entertainment quickly followed it up with a sequel, the aptly titled John Wick: Chapter 2.  If you were not a fan of John Wick‘s slickly choreographed over the top violence, there is nothing for you in John Wick: Chapter 2, but if you loved it, like you should, John Wick: Chapter 2 offers more of everything the first movie had.

There is no point talking about the plot.  If you have seen the first one, John Wick: Chapter 2 picks up directly after it.  Pretty much since he killed people in John Wick 1, he will have to kill even more people in John Wick: Chapter 2.  We learn a little more about the crazy world that John Wick takes place in, but this movie is all about the action scenes, and they are glorious.

John Wick 1 is known for its amazing nightclub shootout, and that is about it.  I mean in the end of the first movie, John Wick has a long fist fight with a senior citizen, but that nightclub shootout was amazing.  John Wick: Chapter 2 however, will be known for several sequences.  It is amazing what a little extra cash will do, and just like John Wick 1, the camera doesn’t cut away and it holds steady, so you can take it all in.  The John Wick franchise is setting the bar for every other action movie that comes after it.

This is the signature role that we have been waiting for Keanu Reeves to have.  We knew he had great action chops, but he kept starring in bad movie after bad movie, but the John Wick series is perfect for him.  He gets to be the stoic hardened action hero he was meant to play.  If he is never in another movie ever again, he will be remembered fondly for his John Wick movies.

If you love action movies, or even just like them, do yourself a favor and watch John Wick: Chapter 2.  If you haven’t seen John Wick 1, see that first, but then quickly watch John Wick: Chapter 2.  I had a blast watching this movie, and I think you will too!

It is not often that you sit through a movie and do not enjoy it but still consider it a good movie.  However, that is the case with Martin Scorsese’s Silence.  It is a film that you endure for its almost three hour running time, but it is time well spent.  In the hands of less talented filmmakers Silence could have been a disaster, but Scorsese kept this movie on course.

Silence follows two Jesuit Priests (Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield) as they look for their mentor (Liam Neeson) in 17^th century Japan.  During this time period Christianity was strictly forbidden, and those found out to be Christians were tortured and killed.  So it should come as no surprise that their journey does not go well.

Usually the name of a movie is chosen for marketing purposes.  Something catchy that looks good on a poster.  That is not the case with Silence.  Silence is the what this movie is about.  Not just that the film is quiet, which it is, but more so about the question, “How can God stay silent in the face of all this horror?”  This question is why I said in the leading paragraph that in the hands of a less talented director that this movie could have been a disaster.  It is a strong and powerful question, and one the audience needs to think about.  Lesser filmmakers just would have said that there is no God and move on with it.  Not so with Scorsese.  He reminds us that God is with us in the Silence, and that even if God did give us the answers we were looking for, we may not understand them.

Scorsese also did a good job treating the torture scenes, which there are a lot of, responsibly.  He didn’t back down from showing any of the horrible ways that humans were treated, but he also didn’t glorify these terrible acts.  They were shown very matter-of-factly.  Silence shows what happened as it happened and that is all.  The torture is not in this film to titillate anyone.

Silence is a long and hard slog, but one worth watching.  It isn’t very often that a secular filmmaker makes a thoughtful and powerful movie about doubting one’s faith and still manages to work in a little hope.  This movie asks a lot of questions, but doesn’t give the audience a lot of answers, and I think that is for the best.  Silence can be a hard movie to watch, but I think you should watch it anyway.

I blame January for this.  I went and saw xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, and the reason I went to see it is because there is nothing good out to see.  Sure, sure the awards movies are out now, but they are all playing at weird times in weird places.  That meant the only movie my wife hadn’t forbid me to see without her was xXx: The Return of Xander Cage (FYI the xXx makes it really annoying to type).

According to xXx: The return of Xander Cage there are 30,000+ satellites orbiting the Earth (in truth there are less than 3,000), so when an ‘extreme’ group of terrorists get ahold of a device that can control every one of them and force them out of the sky like giant bombs (satellites are built so that is not possible), only Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) and his ‘dope’ team can bring these bad guys to justice.

If the infuriatingly dumb premise wasn’t bad enough, everyone in this movie speaks in cliché, one liners, or bad soft core porn come-ons, and because of this none of their conversations make any sense.  It left me wondering if theses actors were even in the same room when they were filming their lines.  Thankfully this meant that most of the dialog was unintentionally funny.  Unless they were telling a joke.  In which case the jokes fell flat, or at most resulted in a groan.

The actors, with a few exceptions, for some reason really committed to this film, and I think to their detriment.  Because trying to be serious in movie like this is not going to work.  The three actors who apparently understood what kind of movie they were in were Donnie Yen, Rory McCann and Nina Dobrev.  And Nina must have rewritten all her lines because she at times was purposely funny and clever.  Donnie and Rory on the other hand just looked like they were having a good time getting paid, and they, with Nina, were easily the best part of this movie.

Now I know what you are thinking, you don’t go to a xXx movie expecting good acting and well written dialog.  You go for the action.  Well that too was a let down.  None of the action scenes made any sense, and most of them were in the movie’s trailers.  Then, the first major action scene takes forever happen, and I am going to tell you something very important: If you are standing still in a hallway and Special Forces are firing at you, you are going to get shot.  Apparently that is not the case in xXx: The Return of Xander Cage.

I expected this movie to be bad, and it did not disappoint.  Though I will say it did have some of that ‘so bad it is good charm’, and I could see getting a bunch of friends together with some popcorn and tearing this film apart MST3K style.  There is no doubt that a RiffTrax will be made for xXx: The Return of Xander Cage soon.   You should not go see xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, but if you do, bring a friend who is able to see the humor in bad cinema.