Showing posts with label Josh Brolin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Josh Brolin. Show all posts

Sunday, 8 December 2013

Oldboy



Anyone who knows me personally or has read my review of Park Chan-wook’s 2003 revenge thriller Oldboy will be aware that the Korean film is one of my favourite movies of this young century. Its initial success and cult status in the West meant it was only a matter of time before a Hollywood remake reached the cinema. Talk of a Steven Spielberg-Will Smith project came and went and instead, ten years after the original, we’re hit squarely in the face with Spike Lee’s Oldboy, a sanitised and surprisingly safe American version. The film is based on the Korean movie rather than the original Japanese Manga but contains subtle and often baffling differences.

The story is of Joe Doucett (Josh Brolin). Doucett is a man on the verge of losing his job, a man who spends too much time with the bottle and not enough time with his wife and young daughter. Following a heavy night of drinking he awakens in what appears to be a motel room. It soon becomes apparent that his ‘room’ is in fact a cell, a cell in which he will spend the next twenty years of his life locked up for a reason that he cannot fathom. While incarcerated Joe is framed for his wife’s murder and sees his young daughter adopted. Inexplicably after two decades Joe is released and given the task of working out who kept him prisoner and why he was framed for the grizzly murder of his wife.

Sunday, 13 January 2013

Milk



Milk is an Oscar winning political biography of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in American history. The story begins in New York City in 1970 when the soon to be forty year old Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) meets a younger man Scott Smith (James Franco) on the subway. The two become lovers and with Milk wanting to make something of his life the two men move to San Francisco where they eventually open a camera shop in the Castro neighbourhood which is slowly becoming more and more homosexual friendly. Over the years Milk begins campaigning for equal rights for homosexuals before running for office multiple times. Milk tells the story of his struggle for office, recognition and respect from his fortieth birthday to untimely death eight years later.

Milk has for a few years been one of those films which I wanted to see, but just hadn’t got around to. It turned out to be pretty much the film I expected it to. It made me angry, I was interested and engaged and occasionally enraged. Sean Penn’s performance was excellent too and I’m not surprised that it along with the subject matter won him an Oscar. For me the film accomplished exactly what it set out to. It educated me.

Saturday, 12 January 2013

Gangster Squad



It’s nearly Christmas. You’re really excited and have been waiting for ages. You think that your parents have got you an amazing LEGO Castle with some of your favourite minifigures. Every time you go to the cinema your parents show you a little sneak peek at a couple of the best looking bricks. You can’t contain your excitement. Then some idiot shoots a load of people in the LEGO factory and Santa puts Christmas back. The Castle you are told needs some tweaking. You wait and wait, still excited. The day finally arrives. You rush to the cinema to open your Christmas Present and… wait. It’s not the amazing LEGO Castle at all but some cheap imitation. Your Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone minifigures are there and there’s even one that looks a bit like Sean Penn, it looks great too but it isn’t what you were hoping for.



Originally slated for release in autumn 2012 Gangster Squad was put back following the tragic Aurora shooting in Colorado. After some reshoots to remove a pivotal cinema shoot up the film was released in the UK in January 2013. I’d been really looking forward to it since early 2012 but my anticipation was never going to be met. The film tells the real life story of The Gangster Squad, a small Police Unit given free reign to catch L.A. Gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn). Sergeant O’Mara (Josh Brolin) brings together a crack squad of rough, strong and smart Police to meet Cohen on his own terms and free L.A. from his grasp.

Saturday, 6 October 2012

No Country for Old Men



A film that is difficult to place into just one particular genre, 2007s No Country for Old Men saw the Coen brothers win their first and perhaps long overdue Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director. In a year for which its main rival was the equally nihilistic and violent There Will Be Blood the Coen’s film won a total of four Oscars and three BAFTAS. Set in the West Texas desert in the early 1980s the film is based on the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy and tells the story of a man (Josh Brolin) who chances upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong and finds $2 million just waiting to be taken. He is chased by the vicious and merciless hit man Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) who is hired to get the money back. Both are in turn hunted down by local Sheriff Ed Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) who despite in being way over his head maintains a calm exterior in the face of the task in front of him. No Country for Old Men is the sort of film that I’d be happy to watch every five years or so but wouldn’t want to see it any more often than that. It is a supremely made movie which features some stunning performances and an interesting story but I found myself drifting more and more as it went on.

Monday, 28 May 2012

Men in Black 3

"Just 'cos you see a black man in a nice car, don't mean it's stolen. I mean this one is..."

Ten years after the disappointing Men in Black 2 and fifteen (really!) years since Men in Black, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are donning the black suits and Ray-bans once again. Agent J (Smith) and Agent K (Jones) learn that the alien murdering Boris the Animal (Jermaine Clement) has escaped his maximum security LunarMax prison cell on the Moon, 43 years after K arrested him in Florida. Boris gets hold of a time machine and goes back to 1969 where he murders K. J has trouble understanding what has happened and goes back to 1969 himself where he meets a younger K (Josh Brolin) and the two of them attempt to apprehend Boris before he kills K and sends an army to attack and destroy the Earth.

I’m a big fan of the first Men in Black film and will watch pretty much anything Will Smith is in so I was excited at the prospect of a third instalment of the franchise. Unfortunately I left disappointed. Quality wise this is much closer to Men in Black 2 than Men in Black. My two main problems were that it wasn’t funny enough and that it was really boring. Will Smith is a naturally funny man and has bags of charisma but here his jokes fall flat and he doesn’t seem cool enough. Jermaine Clement, who I travelled over 400 miles round trip to see perform as part of Flight of the Concords was also a little bit disappointing although his accent was very good he was neither funny or scary enough. I only laughed twice and these were both at jokes regarding the differing racial attitudes of the 60s and now. As for the story, yes there are alien bad guys and the threat of the Earth’s destruction and the time travelling stuff was good but I wasn’t gripped.


Sunday, 18 March 2012

The Goonies


The Goonies is a reminder of a time when little boys didn’t sit around at home playing video games or trying to spot Beyonce’s nipples on MTV but went out into the world and had adventures. This is one of the last of those adventures.

A group of friends who call themselves The Goonies are threatened by the expansion of a Country Club. The club are threatening to tear down their houses meaning the friends will all have to move away. One of the boys, Mikey (Sean Austin) finds a map in amongst his father’s antiques which he believes leads to hidden pirate treasure. Along with his older brother (Josh Brolin) and friends (Corey Feldman, Jonathan Ke Quan and Jeff Cohen) Mikey sets out on an adventure to find the hidden gold.


This is exactly the kind of fun 80s movie that Super 8 was trying to replicate and having now seen The Goonies I realise how successful that film was at taking the best of the genre and mixing it with something more modern. The Goonies is full of great adventure and made me wish I was one of them, in a tunnel under the town trying to outwit baddies. It made me feel young again. The film felt more adventurous and fun that the likes of Pirates of the Caribbean and cost a fraction to produce. It is really good fun and features some very funny characters speaking very funny lines. The main characters are stereotypical 80s kids but the film gets away with feeling caricatured. It is maybe that they seem stereotypical to me watching in 2012 but that they are actually the characters upon witch my stereotypes were based.


The chase and constant attempts to outwit the bad guys was reminiscent of another great family action adventure of the time, Home Alone which was directed by The Goonies writer, Chris Columbus. As with Home Alone I felt young while watching and as much a part of the action as I do with any 3D film. And like any good family film, it isn’t afraid to scare the younger viewers slightly.

The film is not without faults. The dialogue feels quite cheesy and at times it did get a bit boring but to be fair, I am not a child or teenager. The acting was also a bit mixed. John Brolin was fine, as were the bad guys Anne Ramsey, Joe Pantoliano and Robert Davi. I thought that Goonies Sean Austin and Jeff Cohen were also good but the rest weren’t. For me, this film had plenty of nostalgia and made me think back to watching the likes of E.T and Indiana Jones with my family as a child. The clothes, bikes and dialogue also reminded me of being a young child (the film is one year older than I am). Overall, I really enjoyed the film and it is that rare film that the whole family can watch and enjoy.   

7/10