Unsolicited Movie Review - The Magnificent Seven

Unsolicited Movie Review - Remade Classics Edition - (part 1) – The Magnificent Seven

My Dad always gets angry at the thought of remakes. He can't understand why they would remake a good movie. Why not redo the crappy movies? It is a fair point. I suppose it is the same reason Home Depot and Lowes build the same stores side by side. The consumers who want what they have are there. It is the same thing with movies. A good story is a good story. You could argue that all plays, movies and TV shows ever made are all just variations of 6 common stories. You could argue that but you’d also need to be wearing a black turtleneck, sitting in an overpriced cafe wearing a hipster beard and smoking cloves. Regardless we are if nothing else an unoriginal people. We like our comfort food and remakes are basically the mac-n-cheese of the entertainment industry. Sure Mom’s mac-n-cheese was amazing because it was your first and it was seasoned with the salt of emotion. Then your sister-in-law added some smoked gouda and cheddar to her mac-n-cheese and the next thing you know you are wondering what in God's name your Momma was thinking with that crap in the blue box. By the way I'm hungry.

Anyway, back to remakes. To be fair there are some exceptional remakes (or re-visionings for those readers wearing peg-leg pants and smelling of patchouli) that are way beyond entertaining and equaling or bettering the originals on which they are based.

For example:

Scarface with Al Pacino was actually a remake of a 1932 gangster film.

Scorsese's The Departed was a remake of a Japanese thriller

Ocean's Eleven was a dramatically better film than Sinatra's original

Mel Gibson replaced Glen Ford in a new and better Ransom

The Cohen Brother’s True Grit wasn’t as good as the original but it was beyond a solid film.

Pale Rider is nothing but Shane with a girl kid as opposed to a boy.
Heck, the latest Star Wars episode 7 is all but a remake of Star Wars episode 4.

The list goes on and on and on.

The fact is some remakes are really good and some just pound sand. You have to take each on its own merits remembering you can always watch the original anytime. Thank You Amazon!

All of this to tell you about one of a couple of high profile remakes this summer.

The Magnificent Seven – This may be the ultimate remake because the “original” 1960 film is actually a remake itself!!!!! When Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner starred in this classic western they were remaking Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece “Seven Samurai” and as far as we know Kurosawa got the idea from a traveling puppet show which is strange because I didn't think they had mac-n-cheese in Japan but now I may be mixing my metaphors. Did I mention I’m hungry?

Regardless, the 1960 version is the gold standard of the western genre.  Any list of greatest westerns that doesn’t include it is just not credible. In addition to Brenner and McQueen you have Eli Wallach, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn and the only member of the Magnificent Seven and The Dirty Dozen, Mr. Charles Bronson. It has everything: Screen Legends, awesome character actors, Heroes and Anti-Heroes, Good Vs Evil, hungry peasant villagers, EPIC THEME MUSIC, gunfights, humor, show downs, and…well… everything. Let’s face it. If you could put all that into a movie why in God’s name wouldn’t you want to remake it?

So how does the 2016 version compare?  I don’t really care. The newest version is its own film and to be fair the mass majority of people who see it will never have even heard of the original much less have seen it.  But, while comparing them is a bit pointless it is also a bit inevitable. So here we go.

The 2016 version is an extremely entertaining, well made movie. It’s got everything.
Screen Legends – Denzel Washington is as close to “legendy” (my word) as you get and adding Chris Pratt you get the hottest box office star of the last 5 or 6 years.
Exceptional character actors – Ethan Hawke is superb and at times unrecognizable. Vincent D'Onofrio steals every scene he’s ever in. - Check
Heroes/Anti-Heroes - They are all over the place in the form of hired killers who learn to fight for something besides themselves and gold. - Check

Good vs. Evil – You will want to kill Peter Sarsgaard yourself. Check

Hungry Peasant villagers – Check
EPIC THEME MUSIC – They bastardized the 60’s theme so – check

Gunfights, Humor, show downs – check , check and check  well you get the point.

The movie works. Is it as good at the original? No, but it isn't necessary to be legendary to be great. Like any good film the story is king and it's goal is to make you care for the characters. Cheering for success and mourning defeats is why we are in the seats. The relationships and motivations make sense. For example, the friendship between Goodnight Robicheaux (Hawke) and Billy Rock (Byung-hun Lee) feels so genuine and the ease with which the actors interact conveys such a realistic camaraderie that you can’t help but be moved. There are explosions and jokes and show downs and vengeance and justice and loss and the action sequences are fast and furious and have a little twist for good measure. That’s a full movie remake or not!

Then, after the lights come up, you realize your bucket is empty. This is confusing because you don’t remember eating the entire bucket of popcorn. You realize you must have eaten it because it is gone but the more you think about it the popcorn was awesome. It was warm and filling and….this sounds crazy….but you are pretty sure…Yep!  The popcorn wasn’t popcorn at all. It was your favorite bowl of mac-n-cheese and it was GOOOOOOOD!

Unsolicited Movie Reviews - Summer 2016

Unsolicited Movie Reviews – Summer Edition

The wife and kiddos are taking their annual trip to the lake. I am forced to stay behind with the dogs and hold down the fort. Ok, forced may be a bit of an exaggeration.

Luckily I get to pick all the movies I go see regardless if they are kid friendly.  In truth as my kids keep getting older that list of movies that they can’t see keeps shrinking.  I’m taking advantage of the free time regardless.

Nobody's opinion of Finding Dory, Avengers Civil War, Star Trek and the Secret Life of Pets is going to keep them from making obscene amounts of money and they should. They are solid entertainment.  For my money the best one of the bunch this summer was X-Men Apocolypse, but that is beside the point.

I picked two movies that are still in the theaters and two I watched at home.  A true crime story,  a buddy flick/ period piece, a sci-fi action thriller and the most recent installment of an iconic franchise made the list. Each has a good to great story with compelling characters and A-List actors across the board. 

Jason Bourne – Did you love the first three Jason Bourne movies?  Well you’ll love this one. That doesn’t mean it’s a canned remake of past success. It is a true continuation of the story but it could stand on its own. Some sequels are wholly reliant on the previous films. This movie is so good and complete that if you’ve never seen the first films this movie will make you want to go back and watch the others.

Phenomenal action sequences that are actually action sequences and not some whored-out, cgi, BS cartoon of an action sequence.  The chase through the Athen’s riots will be studied by film students for years. Fast paced, succinct dialogue, rich backstory and awesome action, throw in Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones and the finest film actress of her generation Joan Allen and it is hard not to just love this movie.

To be clear I liked it…….a lot.

The Infiltrator – After a career-altering role like Walter White many actors would coast away. A role like that has a tendency to permanently typecast an actor. Let’s face it most everything after that could be a letdown. Think Dennis Franz and Andy Scipowitz. Bryan Cranston is refusing to take that path.  

The Infiltrator is a true story based on a novel written by a US Customs agent. He worked undercover in Miami during the height of Pablo Escobar’s cocaine empire. This story follows the efforts to go after Pablo by going after his money and international network of businesses that enabled the cartels to operate with impunity by washing their billions.

To be fair we have seen this story before, Donnie Brasco, Prince of New York and most recently American Hustle to name a few.  That could be a bad thing but luckily this genre lends itself to drama, thrills and apparently a never ending supply of engaging stories to tell. The pacing is a little slow at times but the performances are strong and regardless of familiarity to the subject it is a compelling chapter in history. It is also the story of a patriots and heroes sacrificing and placing themselves in harm’s way and that is never a small thing.

Nice Guys – Funniest movie and the most fun movie I’ve seen this year.  It is a buddy movie where both buddies are really down on their luck and more than a little, ethically challenged.  Los Angeles in the 70’s looks awesome and thankfully they don’t make it look like the costume party so many period pieces like this seem to become. 

The best way I can describe it is China Town goes disco with a lot more jokes and without all the incest.

Admittedly, the mystery our heroes are hired to solve is rather typical including an unsolved murder, a lost girl and ties to the seedy underground of LA. That is OK . This movie works because the two leads work, period.

Ryan Gosling is quickly becoming one of the most reliable quantities in Hollywood.  Gosling proves the comedic chops he showed in The Big Short were not a fluke.

Russel Crowe is not aging gracefully and it’s a beautiful thing.  Out of shape and looking like he ate all the animals from the ill-conceived Ark he plays a great down on his luck enforcer. When Crowe played The Gladiator he was the man all men wanted to be and all women wanted to be with.  Now he’s playing the overweight , recovering alcoholic that men realize they could be and women are afraid they’ll have to settle for.  Now that’s range.

The chemistry works and ironically its Crowe playing Bud Abbot to Gosling's handsome Lou Costello. It is not family friendly but simply put it made me laugh.

Criminal - his isn’t Citizen Kane. This is a 90 minute popcorn eater of a film with great actors and great action. It’s sci-fi in the vain of Face-Off but lacking the same cheese over-acting and self-indulgent direction.

It is a common tale.  Spy has information that will save the world. Spy has uber-hot wife.  Spy get’s killed. CIA uses experimental treatment to transfer the dead spy’s memories to the mind of a homicidal sociopath.  Hilarity ensues!

Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones and Gal Gadot! 
Stellar cast for a really entertaining movie. The film is definitely violent but not sadistic.


There they are.  Four movies without any superheroes with great actors and great action!  Enjoy

Mid-Donut

Mid-Donut

Recently an old friend from high school posted a picture on FaceBook. It wasn’t a very good picture. It was overexposed, not level and the subject was off center. There was a young lady getting ready to take what appeared to be her second bite of a succulent little pastry. The caption read:

“Caught Mid-Donut”.

All of a sudden everything was clear.

What an exquisitely simplistic and clarifying phrase: “Mid-Donut”.

That’s the place. That’s the goal. Take me to there. Take me to the “Mid-Donut”

Before going further I must confess there is a possibility I may be placing an exaggerated emphasis on pastry treats. For the last month I have been attempting to change the way I eat. There are a number of reasons for this. None of which are unique to me. They include my health, my appearance and an inseparable sense of duty and love for my wife and kids. Consequently, the last 4 weeks have seen my diet stripped of things that have been held sacrosanct to me for nearly 45 years. Potatoes, pasta, buscuits & gravy, cookies, cakes and what often seemed to be every sliver of human goodness and decency have been left by the plate side of my life’s dinner table. Let’s face it. If you are addicted to carbs as I was and suddenly remove them from your diet be prepared. There will be moments of longing so fierce for a bowl of mashed potatoes or a slice of wonder bread that you would seriously consider strangling a complete stranger.

This is to say. My judgement is either clouded in a fog of longing and regret or it is clarified and focused as it has never been before. You’ll have to decide.

But, since I am in this ethereal, emotional limbo where I cannot be entirely certain of my motivations or judgement it is the perfect time to make a life altering decision. Check That!, A WORLD ALTERING decision.

I am starting a cult!

Welcome to the Order of the Mid-Donut!

Easy Now!  My cult is different. But to be fair I would imagine that is exactly what every cult leader would tell you as well. But reaaaaaally, it’s different. Every time we see a cult they are having a shootout with federal authorities, burning up in a ball of flames, committing mass suicides, raping and pillaging their members or attempting to get Donald Trump the nomination for President. Cults, heretofore, require you to turn away from your past and your heritage. Cults make you replace your faith with something vapid and fake. Cults make you forget yourself.  Well, not this cult.

·        

• We don’t want your money.
• We don’t want your allegiance.
• We don’t want you to ignore your past.
• We don’t want you to fear the future. Period.
• Most of all, and this can’t be overstated.We don’t want you coming to live with us. 
• First of all I don’t have the room and the only good thing about communes is that it is easy to avoid a lot of people I probably don’t want to be around in the first place.

Just stay where you are!

The Order of the Mid-Donut just wants you to strive every day to find and recognize the beauty, the joy, the simplicity and the hope that is Mid-Donut. It is by no means a religion. But it is more than a state of mind. It is more than an attitude. It’s a philosophical sugar high, as it were. It’s the ideal of an esoteric plane of consciousness or unconsciousness as the case may be.

I know what you’re thinking. “FROM A DONUT?”

Hear me out. Donuts are like life, I think. Screw it!  It is my blog. Donuts are like life.

No two are ever the same. It takes a series of complicated events and reactions to create a donut and then to mold a donut into the donut it is meant to be. They come in countless varieties: Jelly, chocolate, cream-filled, crullers, long johns, colored sprinkles, powdered and now with the CRONUT

apparently the French have finally joined the rest of humanity, albeit reluctantly. Heck, I’m sure there is some gluten-free donut out there made with garbanzo bean flour, coconut lard and sprinkled with GMO-free, organic paprika that was ground under the hooves of free-range, pygmy yaks. It takes all kinds. The options are limited only to the imagination. Some won’t be to your taste but each one is somebody’s tasty treat.  Sound familiar?

Think about it. Mid-Donut is that glorious moment where those two exquisite feelings of

elation-realized and elation-anticipated finally coexist. You have just bitten into the donut and felt the exhilaration and satisfaction that you had been anticipating. AND, Oh a beautiful word AND, as you enjoy all its pastry goodness, now you get to start anticipating taking your next bite.  You know why? You have MORE donut left to eat. That is a pretty phenomenal crossroad of emotions.

What if we made it a point to find that emotional crossroad all of the time?

What, if every day we not only savored the extraordinary journey we have all taken by appreciating the life we have led? All the life we’ve led with the good and the bad. We should celebrate the triumphs and appreciate the failures. We should awe at the struggle and the fact of still being here. At the same time, what if we embraced, regardless of where we are on life’s journey, having the opportunity to take another bite of our proverbial donut. It may be a small nip or a huge mouth full. It doesn’t really matter. It is the fact as long as we are here we have more servings to come of this joyous, maddening, affirming, frustrating, incomparable donut we call life. That is the essence of "Mid Donut".

• We want you to love, honor and remember your past. All of it.
• We want you to embrace your faith or find your faith as a promise of what is to come.
• We want you to taste different donuts.
• We want you be excited with what is around the corner and the opportunities and promises of  donuts to come.
• We want you to share your donuts.(Proverbially and literally. If you go to Krispy Kreme what would it hurt to get an extra dozen?  JUST SAYING!”

I recognize the irony. At least for the time being I can’t even have a donut. But God knows I have had my fair share to this point. I also don’t mean to belittle the precious and sacred gift that is life by comparing it to a ball of lard, flour and sugar. I know life isn’t that simple. For certain the struggles, challenges and evils that will surely be faced throughout any life are neither easy nor trivial.

What I also know is at this very instant we are standing here in our entirety. A complex compilation of the moments in our lives that led us to HERE! The struggles, the chances, the wins, the losses, the tragedies, the triumphs, the horrible mistakes and the lucky guesses all blended and got us to HERE! Right smack dab in the middle of the donut. We have the opportunity of what’s next. We get another bite. We may get thousands of bites to go along with all the other bites. We should do what we can to be thankful or at least content, if not joyful, for the past. They, for better or worse, have prepared us for the awesome opportunity we have to come. It has given us reason to be hopeful and daring and faithful and really anything we care to be. That’s a gift. That’s a helluva intersection! That’s a place to spend some time.

OK, I’ll admit it. I’m not starting a cult.

Like I said, my mind is either foggy from sugar-withdrawal or it is cosmically clear. The jury is still out. For the record though, I would make a horrible cult leader. Communal-living creeps me out and let’s face it. Eventually, “THE GROUP” is gonna expect me to eat quinoa and to make my own soap and that’s just crazy. Put more simply and to paraphrase Groucho Marx: “I wouldn’t want to be part of any cult that would be willing to have me as their leader!”  Maybe we can just get t-shirts made or coffee mugs. Coffee and donuts mmmmmmmmmmm. That is a whole other post.

I would however like to find it. That crossroads, that millisecond, that blink in time where appreciation and anticipation intercede. I want to find and keep finding the Mid-Donut. It is exactly where you are whether you realize it or not. It isn’t always easy to see. It occurs constantly all the while changing second by second. It is there for the taking but at times you’re going to have to search and search hard. But, Oooooh, when you find it……..goodness, gracious that’s a good donut. 

Remember! Pick up an extra dozen to share!

Oscar Picks 2016 Best Picture

Oscar’s night is nigh. It snuck up on me this year so I have been scrambling to view all the nominated films for Best Picture. Just finished the last one and thought I would put down a few thoughts. Strangely enough I really enjoyed all the films this year. I can usually find at least one of the nominees that I truly hate. Last year with Birdman and Boyhood I had two. No such luck this season. To be honest I’m a little disappointed. It makes ranking them extremely hard. Oh well, I’ll survive.

All you can do is judge the films in front of you for how they made you feel. Every year has its snubs. Is racism the reason “Straight Outta Compton” or Will Smith weren’t nominated? Maybe, but I guarantee you that if Harvey Weinstein had produced either of those films there would have been bundles of nominations. The process is a little rigged. Some people do a better job marketing (BUYING VOTES) than others. Way of the world I suppose but that’s where we are. Life goes on. No movie has ever been snubbed as bad as “Color Purple” and they may have been as much racism as it was that fact that the Academy didn’t really like Spielberg for a long, long time. Truth is when your vote is subjective you get results that can be suspect. Again, it’s the Way of the World.

Movies based on true or actual events rule the day. This seems to be a pretty familiar Oscar trend. The one truth to take away from all the pictures is that even with the truest movie they are full of inaccuracies. Funny enough, Brooklyn, which is a total work of fiction, came across more realistic than any of the actual “real stories”. But here is the thing and it is hard to get around this fact… IT IS JUST A MOVIE!  Chill out.

Again, I really liked all of the movies this year.  While there is no runaway film there is also no stinker.  Does that make it a stronger or weaker crop of movies? I don’t know but it can make for interesting conversation I suppose.

These are listed in my personal order ranked by how I would vote if I were voting and not what I think will win so I wouldn’t use this for betting unless you want to lose your house.

Room:

No other way to describe it but HEART WRENCHING. Imagine trying to explain the world to a child who has never known anything but a 12x12 room. The film is at its best when showing us how much we take for granted. Things like “outside” and “across the street” are not real if you never knew they existed. The sense of loss and then the sense of awakening that you see in the child is both heart breaking and life affirming at the same time. That is not easy to pull off. Did I say this movie was heart wrenching?

Brie Larson should walk away with the Best Actress award and deservedly so.

Spotlight:

There is a lot of anecdotal proof that investigative reporting is all but dead in American journalism. The story of Spotlight is the greatest argument for not letting it stay dead. There is a long list of classic films that have dogged reporters as the antagonists of the story. All the Presidents Men, Killing Fields, Salvador all come to mind. Spotlight easily belongs on that list. A true story of how a team of reporters at the Boston Globe unearthed one of the largest and most insidious conspiracies in history.

The reporters didn’t want to believe what they were learning. They were skeptical and questioning. The work was mundane and the odds were huge. They were going against arguably the most powerful force in Boston if not the world and doing so came with risk of professional ruin and worse. THAT’s drama and Spotlight does it well. A superb cast telling an unthinkable tale in a fine movie.

The Big Short:

As much as I like films as a release and a getaway I really love films when I learn something. Whether that something is about me, the world or the human condition it doesn’t matter. When I get a film that does both then it is a homerun. The Big Short is a master class in high finance and economics wrapped up in a sleek, funny and if you think about it ANGERING film. It is a master class because it uses a half-naked supermodel in a hot tub to explain some of the more complicated aspects of the story in a simple way. Who could look away?

The movie does pull a little switcharoo. It goes through great lengths to show you what happened with the US economy in 2008 and how it was extraordinarily complex. Many, many smart people missed it or at the very least willfully ignored what was happening. Then, almost miraculously, you find yourself rooting for the handful of folks who figured out the coming demise and made huge financial bets on the crash of the U.S. economy. That’s right. People profiting billions as folks are losing their homes are the heroes.

As I said this is a funny, fast paced, smartly written and wonderfully acted film and if it doesn’t make you madder than hell you weren’t paying attention.

The Revenant:

You will wince…..a lot. This movie is definitely “High Art” but it is also a little bit of “Torture Porn.” It very well may be the best picture of the year but PLEASE can we stop hearing about how hard everything was? I get it. You were cold and wet. Well, so were the masseuses and caterers.

Seriously, this film will take you on an emotional ride. DiCaprio deserves the Best Acting Oscar not because it was so hard but because he was that good. Showing the brutality of the life these men led is accomplished with every aspect of the film. The music, the cinematography, the costumes, everything adds to the story and doesn’t take away. Let’s be clear. This isn’t a new story. We have seen the movie many times. This is a tale of revenge plain and simple but it is told in an astonishingly, breath-taking way. That’s pretty impressive.

FYI: Tom Hardy’s speech describing how he “found the Lord” is acting gold.

  

Brooklyn:

Any other year Saoirse (Seer-sha) Ronan would have my vote for Best Actress. She’s going to be around for a long time. Brooklyn is probably handicapped in the Oscar race because it doesn’t deal with some unimaginable set of ridiculous events like Revenant or Room and it isn’t set on another world like Martian or Mad Max. It is a more common tale of a young Irish girl leaving her family for a chance at a better life. It is a beautiful love story and no less dramatic, well-made or deserving in its own right than the more outlandish films in the category. It does the most important thing a film can do and that is to make you care for the characters and what happens to them. What else do you want?

Mad Max: Fury Road:

With George Miller, Mad Max and Rocky Balboa all on the big screen I feel like the 70’s are back! MMFR in a lot of ways is what movies ought to be:  an epic in scale, visually stunning story of an anti-hero, outcast loner who overcomes all odds to save the day. It is not typical Oscar Bait because fantasy doesn’t always bode well with the Academy, some notable exceptions notwithstanding.

MMFR is violent, quirky, over the top and it lacks subtlety but to be fair George Miller has never claimed it to be subtle even in the original Mad Max in 1979. So now that he has a digital palette to play with he has taken brash and bold to a digital level. It really is a fascinating film to look view. I found myself wondering what the first movie would have looked like if the technology had been available.
Oh and forget Tom Hardy. Charlize Theron owns this movie!

Bridge of Spies:

Spielberg / Hanks tell a cold war story of quiet espionage and backroom diplomacy. Seriously if it hadn’t been nominated the earth may have shifted on its axis. To be honest it is not Spielberg’s greatest but that’s a pretty high bar. It is thoughtful, temperate and deliberate telling more of a famous story that has been know till this point. The movie is not a genre changer or a ground breaking event. However, it is a film that is told with a steady and trusted hand by skilled filmmakers. In that way it is not unlike the hands that guided the events in the story it tells. It is a story of patriotism that is as concerned with idealism behind the acts as the acts themselves. It didn’t take place on a battlefield but in boardrooms and governmental office. It is a different type of patriotic tale but a patriotic tale none the less.

The Martian:

The greatest trick of “The Martian” is how is took a painstakingly technical, high minded 

sci-fi novel and turned it into a highly entertaining and watchable film. You have to credit Ridley Scott and Matt Damon. They know what they are doing. The Martian is a funny, inspirational and uplifting film that while it was “unbelievable” it stayed “believable”. You find yourself aching for this poor guy to finally get home. If I’ve got one complaint, well two actually, is that the movie didn’t do a good job of showing exactly how long he was gone. But it didn’t really matter because it would have been impossible to root for him any harder. The second complaint was about the “science” For the most part all of the science made sense. Until the end and that’s why it dropped from my number 1. I’m still not over the ending. But on the whole it is a great film.

Don't let the rankings throw you.  All these movies were superb.  Again this was a tough year to rank.

Let me know what you think!