Movies – Page 11 – Cinesnark

The Wolverine ends with a wet fart

It starts out like gangbusters, but the end of The Wolverine becomes an exercise in frustration as everything that made the movie kind of awesome is flushed down the toilet in favor of a stupid, cliché ending because fuck you. The entire third act is just because fuck you. At least Wolverine: Origins had the grace to shit the bed right away.

The movie begins with the bombing of Nagasaki in 1945, when Logan, a POW, saves a young Japanese officer. We then skip ahead to sometime after the events of X3, and Logan is now living on the side of the cliff—not in even in a proper cave, just on the side of a cliff, which made me laugh—listening to classical music and having nightmares within nightmares. He’s become a grizzled homeless survivalist who is engaged in a passive-aggressive territory battle with a bear, and he’s in deep mourning for Jean Grey, who keeps showing up throughout the movie as a ghostly dream vision to berate Logan like goddamned Horrible Lori from The Walking Dead. Of all the various crimes the X-Men franchise(s) have committed over the years, the vicious butchering of Jean Grey is the worst.Continue reading “The Wolverine ends with a wet fart”

Only God Forgives is aggressively unwatchable

After watching Only God Forgives (available On Demand), the second film from Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn starring Ryan Gosling, I messaged Lainey to tell her that unlike Drive, which I enthusiastically loved, I did not enjoy a single second of Forgives. That can’t have been their intention, she said. I don’t know, I said. It was willfully unpleasant. And it is—there is something deliberate about how hard this movie works to make you hate yourself for sitting through it. It’s like a mean-spirited prank that goes on for ninety minutes. And yet, the movie is so well made that it can’t be called bad. It’s one of the prettiest ugly movies in recent memory.Continue reading “Only God Forgives is aggressively unwatchable”

We Steal Secrets is a compelling look at ego and honesty

Alex Gibney, the documentarian behind such films as Taxi to the Dark Side and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, is a phenomenal storyteller. That’s always been true about him, but it’s especially apparent in his new documentary, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks (available On Demand now). Gibney neatly lays out the rise and fall of WikiLeaks and its charismatic and/or creepy founder cum figurehead, Australian hacker Julian Assange, but because he didn’t interview Assange directly (he wanted one million dollars from Gibney for an interview), Gibney relies more than ever on the elements of narrative to tell the WikiLeaks story. The end result is a documentary that is at times uneven but is always completely engrossing and fascinating, and surprisingly sensitive.Continue reading “We Steal Secrets is a compelling look at ego and honesty”

The Conjuring is pure unleaded nightmare fuel

Which is not to say it’s a 100% effective horror movie. It’s just that The Conjuring has so much scary stuff jammed in it, it’s like it was made by the people who ran the scare factory in Cabin in the Woods. Creepy kid ghosts? Check. Possessed children’s toys? Check. Chairs that rock by themselves? Check. Fucking nightmarish doll straight from Satan’s playroom? Check. CLOWNS? Check. The only thing The Conjuring is missing is a ventriloquist’s dummy and that’s probably only because someone at the studio emerged from crying under their desk long enough to make the point that the goal is to scare an audience, not outright traumatize them.Continue reading “The Conjuring is pure unleaded nightmare fuel”

Pacific Rim is the awesome(ly predictable) spectacle you’ve (seen a hundred times) been waiting for.

This is one of those reviews where I know I’m in the minority and I know everyone will disagree but I’m going to give my honest review and let the chips fall where they may. I didn’t love Pacific Rim. I went in fully expecting to—wanting to—but I didn’t, couldn’t love it. This isn’t to say I hated it. I didn’t hate it. It’s not the dumbest movie I’ve seen this summer (White House Down), or the worst (The Lone Ranger). It just wasn’t nearly good as expected, and had one of the most predictable screenplays I’ve seen in a long time. Maybe ever.Continue reading “Pacific Rim is the awesome(ly predictable) spectacle you’ve (seen a hundred times) been waiting for.”

Well The Lone Ranger sucked

I’m not surprised. I expected it to be big and dumb loud, and it is big and dumb and loud. (I did expect it to do better business, though.) What did surprise me about The Lone Ranger is that, under all the dross, there was the kernel of a good movie. At the heart of The Lone Ranger, which was the equivalent of watching a child hurl food on the floor in a fancy restaurant, was an R-rated, Tarantino-style revenge flick called Tonto that would have been awesome. Unfortunately, the movie that actually got made was Trains!: How the West Was Fun.Continue reading “Well The Lone Ranger sucked”

Joss Whedon’s DIY Shakespeare

After wrapping The Avengers in the fall of 2011, Joss Whedon, Nerd King, took a break by making a movie with his friends. In his house. Basically, Whedon threw a helluva cocktail party, had everyone speak Shakespeare, and filmed it. And the result is equal parts charming and frustrating. Charming, because it’s witty and droll and whether you’re a fan of Whedon’s previous work or not, anyone can see the genuine chemistry and real joy these actors have together. Starring a slew of Whedonites from Nathan Fillion (Castle, Firefly), Amy Acker (Cabin in the Woods, Angel), Alexis Denisof (Buffy/Angel and an unrecognizable cameo in The Avengers), Sean Maher (Firefly), Fran Kranz (Cabin in the Woods, Dollhouse) and Reed Diamond (Dollhouse), to more recent converts like Clark Gregg (The Avengers et al) and Jillian Morgese (pretty well cut out of The Avengers), Whedon’s weekend Shakespeare workshop looks like a lot of fun.Continue reading “Joss Whedon’s DIY Shakespeare”