Archive for September, 2007

3:10 to Yuma

Published
by
Chalupa
on September 24, 2007
in Crime, Drama, Remake and Western
. 0 Comments

If you’re into Westerns I think you’ll like this movie. If you’re not into Westerns, you might still like this movie. I’ve always thought of myself as a big fan of the Western genre. I think when push comes to shove I’m really just a big fan of Clint Eastwood. It’s always fun to see good vs bad…and even the ugly sometimes.

One of my fellow co-workers is considered an expert on the Western genre. He even has a book titled Westerns and American Culture, 1930-1955. This guy knows his stuff. One day I was talking to him about movies and to my horror the man hates Spaghetti Westerns and he HATES Clint Eastwood. The guy loves John Wayne. To me, John Wayne is the Jackie Chan of Kung Fu movies. If you couldn’t tell, I’m more partial to the likes of Jet Li and Bruce Lee. Anyways, I’ve kind of guessed that my co-worker isn’t a fan of the bad guys winning, little character development and little morality. Well, I think he just might like this movie because it’s not lacking in those areas.

I haven’t seen the original, but I read that it has a different ending. I’ll have to Netflix-it and see what I think. If you’re not familiar with the plot, it’s about a man who lost most of one leg in the Civil War and is trying to earn some money so his family doesn’t lose their land to the railroad. In order to earn $200, he volunteers to help escort a hardened criminal to a train station to put that man on the 3:10pm train to Yuma Prison.

I’m sure you can guess that everything doesn’t really just run smoothly. What kind of movies do? This terrible menace to society starts off by being all nice and polite. He even tries to befriend almost everybody. Don’t let him fool you though, he’s still a cold-blooded murderer. However, he doesn’t just kill on a whim. He does things for a reason. On the way to the train, the first man we see Ben Wade kill pretty much deserved it. In fact, before this little trip, he had recently burned down Dan Evans, the volunteer’s, barn. It was still a smoking pile of timbers when the group left town. Ben figured this guy deserved it, and he did. As the group treks across the open country, more and more of them don’t make it to the end, but you see a friendship growing between Ben and Dan.

This is where the character development happens. Dan is a good man, plain and simple. Dan does the right things for the right reasons. Ben notices he doesn’t belong on this trip. Dan has a family to take care of and not much to take care of them with. Ben knows that Dan is just doing what he can to take care of his wife and kids. I think that’s why you start to see a deep respect grow between them. I’m not going to tell much more about what happens because I can’t give too much away.

So you may be wondering who’s in this. Ben is played by Russell Crowe. Personally, I can’t think of a single movie this man has been in that I didn’t like. Dan is played by Christian Bale. Some other highlights are Ben Foster, Alan Tudyk, and Peter Fonda and Luke Wilson. Definitely a great group of actors. I’m continually impressed by Crowe, Bale and Foster in just about everything they do.

I’m so glad I saw this in the theater. It was an experience worth every dollar I paid to see it. This will be making its way into my top 10 for the year. I highly suggest you give it a chance if you are able.

Once

Published
by
Chalupa
on September 18, 2007
in Drama, Independent, Music and Romance
. 0 Comments

Once Once Once. That’s all I was hearing when this film first hit the theaters. Everybody that saw it was just gushing love for this movie. Usually that kinda turns me off to something. If EVERYBODY just loves it I kinda assume there must be something not quite right with it. I guess another reason was because none of my friends whose movie opinions I unquestioningly trust, there’s about 3 in the whole world, had seen it.

This was another film Liz and I caught while in L.A. and I now know what people were gushing about. This film is pretty awesome. Nobody even has names. This is something that didn’t even dawn on me until afterwards. I have heard one complaint - this movie is made up of musicians trying too hard to be actors. I kinda see that, but I still like the movie anyways. Music/soundtrack is also available on EMusic if you’re into that sort of thing.

So story - yes, it’s about musicians. More than that though it’s about people finding each other, making friends and connecting with each other on deeper levels. It’s about poetry, life, love found and love lost. It’s about a lot of things.

I can see a lot of people not understanding this film and not finding any redeeming value because this is nowhere near blockbuster material. The people, situations, dialog and pace aren’t the contrived, fast action, anti-ADD sort of stuff that makes millions of dollars in its opening weekend.

One interesting story I heard was while filming the scene where the guy tries to steal the guitar case, nobody on the street was informed. So in one of the first takes, a good pedestrian sees the theft happen, gives the thief a first-rate shot to the nuts and retrieves the guitar case for the main character. That’s what you get for trying to invoke honest responses I guess.

Stardust

Published
by
Chalupa
on September 18, 2007
in Adventure, Based on a novel, Fantasy, Narrated and Romance
. 0 Comments

I wasn’t really sure what to think of this one from the previews, but it looked interesting. I’m also a big fan of Claire Danes, Peter O’Toole and Robert De Niro. So Liz and I gave it a shot in L.A. It was definitely entertaining. It was a bit long in parts and is definitely geared towards the kids. This is probably something you could take the family to and everybody would be ok with it.

I’m always surprised by DeNiro in relation to Pacino. Both actors have done many similar projects but in the past 10 years DeNiro has definitely stepped out of the mold and has been broadening his horizons. It all started back in 1999 when Analyze This came out. This was followed up by the Rocky and Bullwinkle movie, Analyze That, Meet The Parents and Meet the Fockers. He even did a voice on Shark Tale. At first my reaction was that he must need money. Bad. I don’t really feel that way anymore. You might say DeNiro was kinda type-cast as an Italian gangster/tough guy. I think he’s been trying to break that mold and is doing a good job at it. Pacino has done a variety of roles but I don’t think they’re as recently diverse as DeNiro.

There are a lot of recognizable faces if you choose to go see this. Lots of cameos where you’ll recognize people from all sorts of things. I wouldn’t rush out to see this. Stardust isn’t a must-see film on the big screen. Still worth watching some time though.

Sunshine

Published
by
Chalupa
on September 18, 2007
in Adventure, Future, Independent, Murder, Sci-fi, Space, Suicide, Thriller and Twist
. 1 Comment

This is Danny Boyle’s latest and greatest creation and I highly recommend it. Other films of his you might have seen would include Trainspotting, Millions, 28 Days Later and The Beach. 28 Weeks Later wasn’t directed by Boyle, but he did produce it.

This is definitely a sci-fi film, but it’s not cheesy and nothing like Battlefield Earth. The Sun is burning out and Earth is going into another ice age. Earth has collectively come up with a way to change this by building a nuclear bomb the size of Manhattan, flying it to the Sun, and detonating it; effectively kick-starting the sun. This all sounds good, but something has to go wrong right? This is a Danny Boyle film.

Well something does go wrong. Terribly wrong. What I failed to mention earlier is that this isn’t their first attempt. This is attempt number two. The first mission was not successful and nobody really knows why. If you watched the trailer for this you might get a feeling of 2001: A Space Odyssey in the sense that they’re in space on a mission and the ship kinda takes over. This isn’t exactly what happens, but everything does seem to go wrong.

Warning: Spoilers
I’d love to start spouting off about the plot, but I’m trying to keep it all in here. There are a couple things I found interesting though. One is that the captain of the first ship went crazy from looking at the Sun. We also see the doctor, played by Cliff Curtis, becoming obsessed with looking at the Sun as well, but he doesn’t go crazy. Yeah his skin starts peeling off from over-exposure, but he still has his wits about him. He stayed behind to save them all.

Second, Harvey, the second in command after the captain dies really got what he deserved. The captain gave up his life for the mission to continue. The doctor decided to stay behind and make sure the rest of the boarding party lived. Harvey was the only person selfishly putting himself before the others. Harvey died. I think that was on purpose.

Lastly, as always, things work out in the end. With Trainspotting and the 28 Days series things go crazy in one way or another, but work out in the end. I didn’t know exactly what would happen while watching this, but as always, things worked out in the end.

I’m sure a lot of people consider Boyle to be very pessimistic, but I think it’s the total opposite. I think it’s sort of similar to how Tarantino incorporates violence into many of his films when he’s actually parodying it or making fun of it. You might also say it’s in the same way that Kevin Smith incorporates themes and content into his films for his brother.

So yeah, go out and see this. Rent it when it comes out on DVD. This is going on my top 10 list for the year.