Movie Reviews on a Stick
I’m a firm believer in second chances for people who deserve second chances. I think people can be rehabilitated from past mistakes and redemption is possible to those who want it. So after over 15 years of one of the worst Hollywood remakes of a Japanese classic movie series, Hollywood has one more chance to make a good Godzilla movie.
Well, here it is, the final installment of the Christopher Nolan Batman franchise. Christian Bale’s final hurrah as the caped crusader. With all the hype and hoopla the surrounds it, let’s get the obvious questions out of the way before I give my thoughts.
When a popular book is being filmed into a movie, the hype machine revs up and preps for a massive ad campaign that’s hard to dodge. When this particular book came out, by the time the first person came to me and recommended the book, I heard that The Hunger Games is becoming a movie. So I decided to hold off from hearing about anything about the book, including story, trailers, commercials and online teasers. And frankly it was the hardest task I could think of. But, I’ve seen it now, so here’s my opinion on the movie. And there might be spoilers ahead, so if you haven’t seen it and want to be surprised, then why are you reading a review before seeing a movie?
There are four different kinds of trying in movies. The worst being the “phone-in”, when you can see the actor, director or editor really not care, giving a zero-filled performance and might as well not have shown up, and just called in his work. There’s the “on par”, where it feels like they are present and ready to do this, but not all the incentive and perks in the world could motivate the person to put in that extra percent. There’s the “performance” where they give the right amount to give a performance that is believable and thought-driven, and powerful. This is the level you want actors to be in, because then you know that they are giving it all.
When it comes to Denzel Washington, ever since he won his second Acadamy award for acting for the 2001 movie Training Day, he’s been playing a similar way, which is when he eats up the screen and overshadows everybody he is working with. It’s slowing becoming the Denzel movie starring Denzel and a bunch of other people.