asksunny
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Manchester by the sea (6/10): no idea what all the fuss and awards are about. Pretty boring.
Manchester by the sea (6/10): no idea what all the fuss and awards are about. Pretty boring.
Kong - 7.75/10
Not as much fun as it could have been. It scored some points more towards the end.
There's some comedy in it but nothing too funny. I don't think anyone in the theater laughed once.
They were totally silent the entire movie which is pretty rare.
John C Reilly should be in more movies BTW. He was one of the few interesting characters in the movie.
The movie would be better if he was in the entire movie and they added more comedy!
BTW I'd rank this as being better than King Kong (the remake) and "Jurassic Park".
It's better than most super hero movies too.
It's worth seeing at the theater, but just barely.
Heat - 7/10
A good film, but not a great one - at least not in my estimation. Despite having more of a film noir sensibility and a darker, edgier feel to it than your average actioner, it's still basically your average actioner. Hard boiled LAPD cop, Lt. Vincent Hanna (Pacino) goes head to head with career criminal, Neil McCauley (De Niro) in a personal vendetta to end them all, as he tracks him across LA, like a predator stalking its prey.
As an action film, it's entertaining, but I think it's aiming higher than that and therein lies the problem. With nearly a 3 hour run time, I think Mann is aiming for Scorsese territory; aiming to expose the existential angst at the core of his protagonists' beings, where both Hanna and McCauley are revealed to be shells of men outside of the world of work, which is everything to each man. Their families (or in the case of McCauley, his hastily found girl - a vain attempt to buy himself a slice of the 'normal life' Hanna talks about in their one meeting) suffer as a result of their twin obsessions, to the point of implosion. Unfortunately, it's a case of style over substance. The revelations on offer don't really justify the epic scale and it's all a bit one note - the women in the film really are peripheral, passive and in some cases, their motivations hard to buy. The rapidity of Eady's transition from aspiring graphic artist to compliant gangster's moll defies belief.
The much anticipated meet-up between Hanna and McCauley feels as much like an exercise in adversarial admiration between the actors, Pacino and De Niro, as it does the characters: two heavyweights sizing each other up and conceding their mutual respect. It's the classic super-villain vs super-cop scenario; no different really to McClane vs Gruber in Die Hard or Archer vs Troy in Face/Off (both films I actually think are tauter and more enjoyable than this one). As much as they're on opposite sides of the fence, they're personalities cut from the same cloth.
I think Mann wanted to make something more than a typical actioner with this film, that has something to say about the human cost of obsessive behaviour, but it can only paint in the broadest of strokes and seems limited to a palette of genre tropes. The best moments of Heat are still the action set pieces - such as the heist gone wrong, which escalates into a pitched battle on the streets of LA - great (if highly improbable) moments. Where it tries to go deeper, I think it's in danger of overreaching.
Logan (2017) 8/10
For unknown reasons the X Men franchise was the only one I ever really warmed up to as far as superhero stuff goes. This one may shock the devil out of a lot of fans. It is dark and brooding and not terribly uplifting. Logan is pretty much at his wits end existing in a semi post apocalyptic world and taking care of Xavier who, it would appear has gone slightly batty with the strain over the years. It follows the Nolanesque tone but with a dirty grimy Mad Max vibe rather than slick stylings. R rating is well earned here and I for one was always thinking c'mon Wolverine, tell us what you really think. This films goes there and a little further.
This is a story about ends and beginnings and if it has any flaw that stands out it is a set up for a "next generation" series of films.
Heat was a block buster in it's day. If you lived in LA then you remember how they blocked off the streets to film it. Not many movies could block off the streets they used. Of course many movies have blocked off streets though with Heat they blocked off the biggest streets for awhile which gave the film respect even before it came out. So ahead of release Heat had "heat". To top it off it had a legendary shoot out which was enhanced with the sound of real gunfire. If you saw Heat in the theaters the movie was renown for the sound of the gun battle. I happened to see it upon release at the largest screen on the West Coast in Newport Fashion Island.
The film received praise from critics and has grossed over $113 million worldwide, against its $4.5 million budget.