Under The Skin Movie Review

 Under The Skin (2014)

If Eraserhead-era David Lynch time traveled to today and directed a movie about aliens, I imagine it would look somewhat like Under The Skin. Except it probably wouldn't be as good as the actual movie is.

In old cheesy sci-fi flicks, and even in some more recent movies, aliens are always humanoid. They may have purple skin or weird space suits, but they always resemble humans to a fault. Whether in appearance, language, or technology, it seems science fiction writers can't get away from humanity when creating an alien race. Under The Skin doesn't have this problem. The extraterrestrial in Under The Skin takes the form of a Scarlett Johansson-looking Scot, but underneath it's something completely different. Something alien to our world. With thoughts, needs, and desires completely different than that of any human. I think it's the fact that this movie addresses how strange and alien actually aliens would be that makes it so interesting. It also addresses how strange and alien our world and culture would look to an outsider. Director Jonathan Glazer and his leading lady, Scarlett Johansson, portray these factors with the utmost skill and strangeness. Under The Skin is technically about an alien on Earth taking men and harvesting them for some unknown purpose. But that's not really important. The film is really about fear, confusion, and humanity itself. Big themes, I know. But this movie isn't afraid of big themes. What it really embraces are the big questions. The main protagonist here, Scarlett Johansson's alien character, spends a decent chunk of the film driving around Scotland to pick up men and then bring them back to her apartment where they're never seen again. When she first meets a guy, she always asks if he's alone. Whether he has a family, if he's traveling with anyone, does he have any friends. She wants to take people that won't cause a ruckus if they drop off the face of the Earth one day. She asks if they're alone. In life maybe they are, but not in the universe. When the movie starts out, Johansson has all the power. These men she finds are practically drooling at her to the point where they die, blinded by her hypnotic beauty. As the film progresses, she starts to lose this power. You can see her character scared and confused by people and Earth in general. At one point she trips in the street and passers-by rush to help her, the look of confusion is incredibly telling of her character. Scarlett Johansson barely speaks at all in the movie, but she deserves an Oscar simply for the way she communicates through her face. Whether she's utterly emotionless, or horribly frightened and confused, Johansson gives a marvelous performance. This may sound ridiculous, but I think it's the most honest portrayal of an alien that's ever been captured on film. Aliens probably wouldn't be all-knowing and confident. They're like snakes: dangerous, but more scared of us than we are of them. Things we take for granted like eating and even just regular human interaction become odd and even scary to an alien. Johansson embodies this horrified confusion so, so well The person involved with this movie I have to applaud most is writer and director Jonathan Glazer. His direction here is breathtaking. Every shot is clear and beautiful, haunting and meaningful. The imagery here is flawless. Just the shots of the Scottish countryside are awe-inspiring. The way he holds the seemingly meaningless shots like a hand tapping to music or an ant crawling, make those shots seem as important as the entire movie. And in some ways, they are. Glazer uses single shots to paint an entire picture and deliver so much emotion and information. He doesn't need dialogue.

The last scene has been burned into my mind since I watched this last night, and that's saying something about the power of cinema. Many people have deemed this film as Kubrickian. I'm a huge Stanley Kubrick fan myself, but I don't really see a connection. I think people were trying to connect this and 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is understandable but wrong. They're two great films, but two completely different films. The only thing Kubrick-esque about Under The Skin is it's pacing. In most of his movies like Barry Lyndon and 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick has this very slow, yet very riveting and deliberate pacing. Glazer uses a similar technique here. When watching this, I was in between deeply enthralled and utterly bored. And I mean that in the best possible way. Nothing is really happening, yet it feels like something profound and horrific will happen soon. I literally was on the edge of my seat most of the movie. If anything, Under The Skin is completely original. I have never seen a movie, technically and narrative-wise, like Under The Skin. It's completely it's own. One more thing. This film is an all around sensory experience, and I highly recommend you see it in the theater while you can. It's not just visuals. The soundtrack is incredibly eerie and it's use of sound in general is spectacular. Overall it's a very well-made movie. It marries it's sounds and images in such an amazing way, that it all permeates your soul. That sounds very pretentious and a little ridiculous but it's 100% true. In a world of reboots and The Amazing Spider Man 2, maybe that's just what we need. This film is in no way for everyone. Some may find it too weird. Some may find it boring. I found it riveting, original, and even a little prophetic. I believe that's enough to deem this a great movie. Or at least one we should be thinking and talking about. I give Under The Skin 4.8 out of 5 stars. Now stop reading my review and go see the movie!     

3 Days to Kill Movie Review

3 Days to Kill Movie  (2014)

Pauline Kael once said "Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them."

She has a point. Unfortunately, 3 Days to Kill isn't great trash. It's just plain old trashy trash. What a shame. 3 Days to Kill is about an aging CIA hit-man named Ethan Renner (Kevin Costner) who gets cancer and is given three to five months to live. Luckily for him, if he's able to complete some assignments for the CIA, he'll be given some experimental cancer drug that may help him stay alive to see his estranged daughter (Hailee Steinfeld) and his wife (Connie Neilson). Before I get into the meat and potatoes of my review, let me get something straight. I am not a pompous, uppity, and overtly critical movie watcher. I always try to look for the good in films. I can enjoy a crappy movie. I'm even sort of a fan of dumb action flicks. Sure, they don't have much cinematic sustenance, but they can be a load of fun. I can enjoy stuff like Escape Plan and White House Down.
Which is why I was somewhat looking forward to 3 Days to Kill. It was starring Kevin Costner. Costner's last action outing, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, was more than halfway decent. I was sure this would be the same brand of espionage-y fun. I was wrong. 3 Days to Kill was as much fun as death and taxes. It got off to a decent start with a classic spy vs. spy set up. Then it quickly became half cliche and very predictable spy movie and half boring melodrama. I tried really hard to like this movie, but it couldn't be done. Kevin Costner has the capacity to be the kind of action star Liam Neeson has become. Unfortunately, he seems content to "act" in garbage like this. I'm putting act in parentheses because all Costner did was walk around the movie with one expression on his face. It seemed as if Costner was just acting in this so he could get a paycheck and get out of there.
I don't blame him. The movie has a lot more problems than just Costner's performance. This movie is directed by some guy named McG. The only other McG directed movie I've seen was Terminator Salvation. I should have known right then and there that this was going to be bad. I don't know who taught this guy how to direct action sequences, but they did an awful job. Whenever some "exciting" action is happening, it feels as if they handed the camera to someone having a seizure and told them to film the scene. The supposed awesome action sequences were irritating to look at and amatuerly filmed. I guess we should count ourselves lucky there isn't much action in this action movie. Most of the film revolves around Costner's character bonding with his daughter and dealing with family melodrama. The script is weak so the family melodrama isn't even interesting in the slightest. Teenager problems and daddy issues rarely make good movies. Especially if a certain movie is marketed as a cool action flick and is actually a mind numbing and syrupy family movie. I didn't go see 3 Days to Kill to watch Kevin Costner teach his teenage daughter how to ride a bike! I don't care who she goes to the prom with! I came for an action movie not a mediocre family togetherness piece of crap! The thing is, it really has nothing going for it. It's very poorly written. The plot is fairly cliche. (So-and-so foreign villain has a bomb and he's bad and you need to take him down like in every other action movie. Except a lot more boring!)he acting is sub par. The action sequences are frenetic and annoying. There are also several half-hearted attempts at jokes here. The jokes aren't funny. At all. The whole movie seems like someone had half a good idea and then gave up there but you can judge for yourself later. take a look at this movie and comment.

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Jack Ryan : Shadow Recruit Movie Review

 Jack Ryan : Shadow Recruit (2014)

Sorry Chris Pine, no matter what, you'll never live up to Harrison Ford. That guy's shoes are just too big to fill.

Imagine if you took a Mission: Impossible movie, took out all the main characters except for Ethan Hunt, and then toned down everything a few notches. You would then basically have Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I feel it's fairly accurate. The new Jack Ryan flick is about, well, Jack Ryan (Chris Pine). It starts with him in Oxford where he's studying economics, finding out about the 9/11 attacks. Then flashes forward a few years where Ryan is a Marine. He gets a bad injury in a helicopter crash and is put out of commission for a while. At rehab, he's approached by CIA director/agent guy, Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner). Harper is impressed by Ryan, and then invites him to join the CIA as in analyst. After some thought, Ryan decides to go for the job. He goes undercover at a Wall Street firm, looking for false accounts and stuff of that nature. He has a girlfriend named Cathy (Keira Knightley) and he makes a decent amount of money. Jack seems to be having a decent life. Then he has to go to Russia to check out some unknown and possibly dangerous accounts held under business baddie Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh). This is when Ryan is thrown head over heels into the spy world. Having to kill people, steal information, and lie. The stuff James Bond does with no problem. I don't think anyone had really high hopes for Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. It's a reboot, released in January, based on a series of movies that weren't really barn burners themselves. Sure, Harrison Ford had a decent run, and The Hunt for Red October was pretty good, but the last version with Ben Affleck was just okay and the films never had a big following in the first place. The fact that the newest Jack Ryan film has even more than an ounce of originality is really a miracle. I didn't love Jack Ryan. It was really just okay, nothing truly special. Yet, as a fun little winter movie, Jack Ryan does everything it has to, and then some. Last year around this time, the newest Die Hard came out. The only thing that had to offer was being really disappointed in Bruce Willis. Too many action films that get released (I'm looking at you Fast & Furious 6) are just mediocre explosion shoot out fests with a generic plot. Jack Ryan, while occasionally cliche, has a very interesting and original story with an okay performance by Chris Pine. The evil scheme planned by Cherevin, involves buying up lots of American dollars and then dumping them as the dollar goes down and then doing some other confusing things that would basically leave America very, very poor. It would cause a second Great Depression. I have to give credit to director Branagh and writers David Koepp (who actually wrote the first Mission: Impossible) and Adam Cozad. I haven't seen this story before, and it's done quite well. While the film isn't groundbreaking in any way, it's nice to see a stripped down and slick action movie that isn't trying to be too grand or too convoluted. I enjoyed the film quite a bit. It's nowhere near great, but's it's exciting and fun. One major problem I had was the accents. Kenneth Branagh, who did a good job directing, put on a very cliche and awful Russian accent to play the villain. It sounded like an American trying to do a Russian accent, which is what it was. Which isn't a good thing. The British Keira Knightley does an equally bad American accent. She sounded like Sandra Bernhard mixed with a 6th grade girl. There's also a scene with Knightley and Pine in a hotel that felt very clunky, overly sappy, and just out of place. The rest of the movie had a fairly nice flow. Pine is capable as the hero. He throws out that assured cockiness he played in the Star Trek films, and takes up this cool patriotic persona. He does what needs to be done. He isn't amazing, but he's good. This Jack Ryan movie isn't fantastic. It doesn't do anything revolutionary. It even occasionally seems repetitive And it's not the best action movie I've seen in a while. Yet, it's interesting and fun.
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