ANewLeaf Reviews

Machete (2010)

Hit the nail on the head, being a bad B-Movie.

[6/10 · 19 September 2010]

It is hard to rate a movie, whose intention is to have bad camera work, a poor hashed together plot meant to move from one violent scene to the next, canned acting performances, and the slew of other touches this movie has to make it seem one of the lowest grade of movies from the 1970's heyday of B-Movies.

They succeed. The acting is characterized and goofy, the action scenes are overblown and the effects look as fake as some of the worst of the gener, the plot is both simple and yet a mess. But how does one rate it? How would they have failed? Accidentally made the movie too good? Accidentally added some better dialogue, a better plot, better acting? This is a movie they could do no wrong in, anything that is done terribly can be wrote off as part of the whole experience.

One of the main problems though when comparing this to a true B-Movie is that the actual B-Movies did not "try" to be bad, they just were. One could do the exact same thing Machete did with say, the Japanese Godzilla movies. Those movies are brutal, but they are so bad they are good. But if one were to try now to recreate that feel? Sorry but there are few chances to go see that double feature at a drive-in with the dancing hotdog doing a flip into the bun at half time singing "lets all go to the lobby". Sneaking 4 friends into the thing in the trunk of your giant 1974 Chevy with a trunk the size of a small swimming pool to save the $1.50 admission and having the place on a Friday or Saturday night be full of teenagers half of whom you know from your school or the other schools in the neighborhoods.

The world has gone past the point where movies like the old B-Movies work. And Machete is not a B-movie, it is a mainstream movie in B-Movie clothing. It did not work on either front. It did not make me feel like a young kid back in the day watching a true B-Movie, and it did not feel at all like watching a good flick in the theater either.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

The focus is on the fluff.

[6/10 · 16 July 2009]

This is the review of my favorite book of the Harry Potter series and unfortunately the weakest movie of the series to date.

Spoilers will be present.

Much of the focus on this movie is relationships. Snogging and jilted love abounds for the first 2/3 of the movie. Action takes a very small back seat and seems rushed, while any chance to further a emotional moment of jealousy is focused on to the point of boredom. Despite this focus the actual emotional payoff between the characters going through this at the end of the movie is somehow missing.

The last 1/3 of the book is an amazing ride of action, tension, and despair. The movies shift to this moment seems very rushed, it is Harry all of the sudden being made aware of hoar cluxes and wisked away to find one in what seems to be within a whole 2 minutes. The scene of getting the "hoar crux" from the cave which was explained in great detail in the book was rushed.

Probably the worst change from the book, and truly a critical flaw, was that Harry is NOT immobilized by Dumbledore before his fateful confrontation with Malfoy and Snape. In the book Dumbledore knows that Harry would not simply stand by a watch as he is killed, but in the movie this is exactly what he does. He is not immobilized, forced to helplessly watch as Dumbledore is slain. In the book Harry is given no chance to attempt to save Dumbledore, in the movie he has the choice to attempt to save him but chooses not to. This changes the critical scene of the entire book in a huge way. Harry loses complete control at the death of Dumbledore, his enraged attack on the Death Eaters at the moment of his becoming unfrozen, his realization that the breaking of Dumbledore's spell means he has died. This is all destroyed via Harry NOT BEING FROZEN.

The subsequent battle between Death Eaters and the schools teachers is flat out removed, Snape's struggle to remain sane and in control while being called a coward by Harry after his sacrifice he had to make only moments ago. All of this stuff which was critical to the book is flat out gone.

For the amount of fluff this movie focused on it is amazing how many critical aspects of the storyline were rushed and I cannot believe the crucial changes to the story that take place from the time Harry and Dumbledore return to Hogwarts until the end of the movie.

Public Enemies (2009)

Good, but not great.

[7/10 · 1 July 2009]

This movie has moments of greatness, but certain things hold it back from being as good as it could have been.

Casting: The good: Depp dominates the role of Dillinger, The brief moment we get Channing Tatum as Pretty Boy Floyd is stellar, Cotillard is amazing as Billie, and the best performance of the show IMO is Stephen Graham as a perfect psychotic Baby Face Nelson.

The Bad: Bale was miscast for a man who was small in stature and looks nothing like the brooding ominous Pruvis that the movie creates. Bill Camp is horrific as Frank Nitti not looking as imposing as Nitti truly was (his nickname was the enforcer) or even Italian for that matter.

Plotwise the character development of Dillinger needs work, we get told brief accounts of his past, but we see nothing and are given no emotional connections to his emotional mindset or reason he became the man he became, a major misstep. Connections between Dillinger and his close associates are never developed enough to feel the true pain of their deaths. The movie DOES pay off in the end with Dillingers own death scene and the reaction of Billie. A scene in the police station where Dillinger waltzes through the department focused on hunting him looking at pictures and asking the police the score to a baseball game was ludicrous, contrived, and unbelievable to the point of jarring one out of the immersion into the storyline.

The art direction of the movie is first rate though, you are IN the 1930's in this movie from the opening scene to the closing. The cars, the cloths, the guns, the food, everything just looks and feels 1930's. The one thing that might have been an improvement would be making the problems of the times more apparent, this was in the midst of economic lows such as America had never seen and the poverty that existed is hardly alluded to although it had a part to play in Dillinger's fame with the public.

All in all, a good movie, worth seeing, but one cannot help but feel it could have been a great movie with some of the above issues fixed. 7/10

Gran Torino (2008)

Not nearly up to his former standards.

[5/10 · 9 January 2009]

I was greatly looking forward to this movie given the previous works of Eastwood as director. After Mystic River, Unforgiven, MIllions Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima, and others his movies are usually worth seeing. The premise of this movie also seemed quite intriguing from the previews.

The good: 1) Eastwoods acting in this movie is very solid and quite entertaining as he growls his way through most of it. He has some solid scenes that remind one of a younger Eastwood in his more sinister roles.

2) The very basic plot of the movie is quite interesting.

The bad: 1) The actual scene by scene flow of the movie is extremely disjointed. Many things take place that are out of character and seem hugely rushed. The movie's transition of the lead character comes off as very unbelievable.

2) The movie has far too many scenes that come off as clichés. One thing Eastwood has tended to excel at in other movies is stay away from the expected Hollywood movie models and instead keep the audience intrigued through story lines that don't follow set storyboards seen in dozens of previous movies. This movie has been seen before many times with different actors and a very similar storyline.

The ugly: 1) The movie's acting by the majority of the leading cast (Beyond Clint) is horrific, I don't use that word lightly but in this instance it is warranted. There are scenes in the movie that are acted so poorly that you are completely removed from the immersion of the story and are left thinking "wow, that was just bad". The two main roles of both Sue, Tao and many of the other Hmong are very weak performances and ironically tend to come off as caricatures of the cultural group more then a real and honest portrayal.

2) Much of the movie is spent listening to almost lecture types of dialog from the character Sue meant to portray a learning session by Clint's character but more often that not coming off as completely artificial. Much of this type of thing brings the movie into the realm of an after school special type of movie feel. Having a message in a movie does not entail one has to be preached at. Eastwood has done an amazing job in previous movies of putting important messages into his movies without being preachy. Unforgiven and Mystic River are two shining examples. Here, he does not even try to blend the message into the film as he has in the past. Unlike past movies the message comes out in events that could actually take place exactly like depicted on the screen, in this movie we don't get the message in a realistic fashion at all and instead get it in a form expected from a video you expect to have watched in class at high school.

Overall a serious disappointment from one whose films are usually top notch.

The Color of Money (1986)

As a pool player....

[10/10 · 10 April 2005]

As a competitive pool player I have a soft spot in my heart for a great pool movie that captures the pool scene and the personality of the game. As a pool player I also judge the movies about this sport based on how realistic they are to the real game and pool scene. There are only 2 great movies about pool, this is one of them and the other is it's predesesor "The Hustler".

***********SPOILERS**************** This movie is often misunderstood by many of the people who watch it, characters act in very real yet never well explained ways. The characters don't spell it out for the audience, they are made to think and that hurts this movie because most people don't want to have to think while watching a movie. Nevertheless this movie has many levels in it and many of the lines and happenings in the movie are very deep and not realized without very close attention and thought. Such questions as "Did Eddie lose to Amos on purpose?" or "What does Vince mean when he says "you used me"?" or "Why does Eddie quit the tournament at the end?" are often asked and this is because the characters never spell out the answers to the audience, they instead act real and simply do what they would really do and say what they would really say in that situation rather then dialoging to the audience so they keep up with the plot.

Answers are there, The movie is entirely about Eddie, Vincent is simply a tool used by Eddie to get back onto the road and hustle, Vincent is a loud cocky decoy too keep the attention while the "backer" cleans up and makes a fortune on the side, this point is missed by most who watch the movie. Being a backer was NEVER Eddies intention, it was a guise to allow him to hustle as a money-man, no one expects the backer to be a pro and a former best player in the USA, years since Eddie showed his face in a pool hall only the very rare old timer will recognize him now and the young people are clueless marks. Amos snaps Eddies delusions of grandeur though on a night when Eddie himself is hustled and realizes that he is simply not good enough anymore to do what he did in his youth. He says it himself after loosing a fortune to Amos, in his youth he would have beaten Amos and turned the tables on the hustler, he fed off players like that. Eddie realizes he is no longer the hustler able to beat the top players, he is now the mark and prey for those top players. He cuts Vincent loose because the fact is Vincent is of no use as a decoy if Eddie cannot beat the people he planned to play. Vincent is simply now in the way of what Eddie needs to do, start again and be reborn into the game of pool, rise through the ranks and again take him place at the top.

Seriously HIGHLY underrated movie that is largely misunderstood and considered by most to be far more shallow then it is because they take it at face value and notice Tom Cruise doing cue tricks and bank shots and miss what is happening with the characters and Eddie. Then again the audience gets hustled into watching the young cocky kid while the old hustler does exactly what he always planned to do so maybe it is a little ironic that the movie is poorly judged by people that were hustled by Eddie right along with the characters. Highly recommend people watch this one again and realize that Eddie NEVER planned on being a backer, that was a guise to allow him to return to his hustling ways before he ever played Fats as can be seen in the opening scene of "The Hustler". Vincent was a lot like Charlie, there for an act. Only at least Cahrlie knew he was being used to allow Eddie to make money with his skills. Only later in the movie does Vincent realize he was a pawn and Eddies match against Amos and a thousand other matches like that was the real reason he was taken on the road

Memento (2000)

Unique premise with poor execution

[6/10 · 22 October 2004]

This movie is unique in that it works backwards through time as we follow the main character through time to the past and slowly figure out what is going on and who all the people are. There are afew areas of the film that take a great stretch of the imagination to be believable, one area in particular where the main character is manipulated by a female just had way too many holes in it and hurt the entire feel of the film for me. I think the premise of the film was well done but the execution and direction could have been a lot better. As this film stands at #19 of all time films I cannot help but judge this film as highly over rated. It is not a bad film, but it in no way should be ranked so high and could have been done a lot better.

Shock Treatment (1981)

A movie ahead of it's time.

[10/10 · 3 October 2004]

After afew years since my last comment on this movie things have changed. The explosion of reality television on TV now makes the commentary on this movie a lot more relevant then when it was originally released. This movie looks not only at the "actors" of this form of entertainment but also the audience and even the producers. A lot of the people who watch this movie are seeing it in a monotone 2 dimensional way, when this movie has a lot more depth then can be seen with such a view.

This movie still deserves the 9/10 I gave it 2 years ago, it probably deserves 10. The style with which O'Brien shows the consumer/TV culture that was forming at the time this movie was made still works even today. This movie is a satire, it is not a spoof like the RHPS was, it is not a sequel, and it cannot be watched in the same manner. It works very very well as a satire on it's topic though using over the top imagery, effective musical numbers, and very over the top characterization.