Movie Review: Turn the River

Turn the River (2008)

Directed by Chris Eigeman

Written by Chris Eigeman 

Starring Famke Janssen, Chris Eigeman, Rip Torn, Lois Smith

Release Date May 9th, 2008 

Published July 8th, 2008 

Trusting an actor like a brand name is risky. Unlike your favorite brand of pop, the consistency and taste won't always be the same. I trust actor Chris Eigeman as a brand. His work from television (Gilmore Girls) to the big screen (Last Days of Disco) have displayed consistent quality, good taste and entertainment value.

Now that he has moved into the realm of writer-director he risks his brand name on a difficult new venture. Thankfully, my trust in the Eigeman brand is well rewarded. His debut feature Turn The River is an exceptional, dark character study, consistently riveting and heartbreaking without ever cloying.

Famke Janssen stars in Turn The River as Kailey, a degenerate gambler and pool hustler. She also happens to be a loving mother who longs to see her little boy Gulley and lives for their brief Central Park meetings before school, away from prying eyes. Gulley was taken from Kai at birth by his grandmother, a pentecostal type who couldn't imagine her grandson being raised by a woman who made her money gambling.

Some ten years later, with the help of a friend and pool hall owner, Quinn (Rip Torn), Kai has reconnected with Gulley and the two are exchanging letters and meeting secretly. When Gulley shows up with a broken hand and cryptic excuses, Kai begins to suspect that his father (Matt Ross) is responsible. So, Kai hatches a plan to kidnap her boy and head for the border.

The clever twist of convention in Turn The River is having our degenerate gambling hustler played by the exotic and glamourous Famke Janssen. We have seen plots about low life characters who try to turn their lives around for their kids but they are always with male leads and the doom is predictable. With Janssen in the lead we are a little off balance with this typical plot and it's kind of nice.

Chris Eigeman's direction does a tremendous job of bringing us around to Kai's side even as she engages in less than the best behavior. She has poor judgement and grand ideas, always a bad combination and yet we are with her from beginning to an ending that will leave many audiences up in arms.

Though the film is oddly called Turn The River, a poker reference for the uninitiated, the films third lead is pool. Janssen's Kai engages in an epic series of single pocket and nine ball games with ever increasing stakes and the way they are played by Eigeman and his tremendous cast, we are sucked in and the suspense is palpable. The plot mechanics do nothing to push the outcome and the genuine unknown quality is tense.

Turn The River is a tremendous debut for actor Chris Eigeman as a writer-director. He has extended his brand loyalty to another level and it will be excited to see what he does next. Whatever comes next, I have complete faith in the quality of the effort. Turn The River demonstrates that the Chris Eigeman brand is only getting stronger as it diversifies.

Movie Review Taken

Taken (2009) 

Directed by Pierre Morel 

Written by Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen

Starring Liam Neeson, Famke Janssen, Maggie Grace

Release Date January 30th, 2009 

Published January 30th, 2009 

You have to judge movies for what they are and not for what you think they should be. That's not an easy standard when you see as many movies as I do. Many movies have such great ideas that fail to be realize and you can't help but dream of what that movie might look like. That's often to the discredit of the movie you are watching. Taken for instance is a trashy movie but it has so much more potential to not be complete trash. But, if I am to be fair, I have to judge it as the trash it is. By the standard of trash, Taken is okay trash. 

In Taken Liam Neeson stars as a nondescript former CIA operative Brian Mills. Brian has recently retired to Los Angeles to be near his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace). His time in the agency estranged him from his daughter, and her mother Lenore (Famke Janssen), and now he is attempting to make amends. Meanwhile, Brian makes money on the side working as a security guard for a major pop star. This scene exists so that Brian can offer exposition regarding his talents and resume 

For her birthday, Kim tells her dad that she wants to go on a sightseeing tour in Paris with her best friend.  In reality, Kim and her friends are going to blow off the site seeing and are planning to head across Europe on her stepdad's dime to follow U2 around on tour. Brian is against the idea of such a trip, even without knowing about the concert tour, but under the pressure from mom and daughter he agrees.

When Kim arrives in Paris we quickly find out why dad was so worried this trip. The girls immediately meet a suspiciously friendly stranger at the airport. He calls some friends and the girls are soon kidnapped. In a scene that has become iconic from the film's trailer, Kim calls her dad as the kidnapping is in progress and Neeson as Brian delivers an admittedly quite good monologue about his 'set of skills.' Vowing revenge, and to retrieve his daughter unharmed, Brian travels to Paris and uses his specialized skills to track down the kidnappers.

Taken then quickly devolves into a series of ever more ludicrous car chases and fisticuffs but that isn't such a bad thing. Under the direction of Parisian director, Pierre Morel, the action and stunts of Taken are top notch stuff. Blessed with the intense and broody Liam Neeson as lead badass, Morel sets up the action and watches Neeson knock it cold.

The trashy story of Taken and the unending violence are entirely ludicrous. Genuinely, the action and plot of Taken make Jack Bauer on 24 look like a logical masterpiece. That said, the action is big, loud and daring in many ways and it works if you are into big, loud, daring action minus all of that  tricky, plot stuff.

Keeping it simple, perhaps too simple if you prefer your movie to have characters and intelligence, Morel and company set out to make a trashy French action movie with wild car chases and a high body count and they succeeded. On its own terms, Taken is trashy but it is entertaining trash. If you're willing to overlook a lot of silliness, and pretend that it all makes sense and is totally possible, you might just enjoy this kind of trash. 

Movie Review Made

Made (2001) 

Directed by Jon Favreau

Written by Jon Favreau 

Starring Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn, Puff Daddy, Peter Falk, Famke Janssen 

Release Date July 13th, 2001 

Published October 25th, 2001 

I hate living in the Midwest, always hopelessly behind the times. I get Variety a month behind and no Hollywood reporter at all. But the worst is not getting indie films 'til they're very successful or headed to video. But thanks to Nova Cinetech I get too see some indies, though still much later than those of you in big cities. 

Which brings me to my review of Jon Favreau's Made which, for a lot of you, is a couple months ago memory and for me not exactly new having read so much about it. Nonetheless Made is the first post Soprano's gangster story all be it on the periphery of "gangsterism," as a pair of would be goomba's take on their first assignment a simple money drop that, of course, if it were that simple there wouldn't be a movie.

For Jon Favreau, it's not really the gangster part that interests him. It's the interaction between his character and his best friend played by Vince Vaughn, who seems to have been instructed to not just act his lines but to make sure he gets in the way of everyone else acting their lines. Favreau plays the flustered straight man to Vaughn's wacky troublemaker beautifully, tweaking their Swingers dynamic with a bit of danger and a dollop more of forced machismo, fitting of the gangster setting. 

Made is populated with great performances including a surprisingly good turn by Sean Puffy Combs. But it's clearly Vince Vaughn's show. As Ricky Slade, Vaugh he is a force of annoying nature. Ricky is the first post Soprano/Gangsta Rap wannabe gangster who believes that if he just knows the lingo and acts tough he can be a gangster.

Made is a funny and entertaining film that I highly recommend.

Movie Review: X2 X-Men United

X2: X-Men United (2003) 

Directed by Brian Singer

Written by Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris, David Hayter 

Starring Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellan, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, James Marsden

Release Date May 2nd, 2003 

Published May 1st, 2003 

The first of 2003's many blockbusters is here. The sequel to the 2000 cash machine, X Men, X Men United once again has Professor Xavier's clan of mutants attempting to prevent a human-mutant war. The twist however in X2 finds our hero's on the same side as archenemy Magneto against an evil army general with a double secret agenda. The familiar story combines with spectacular effects for an enjoyable popcorn entertainment.

The film opens with a sensational effects scene involving a new mutant called Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) and an attack on the White House. Using his mutant ability to turn to smoke and float through walls, Nightcrawler evades the secret service and attacks the President. Through luck, the President's life is saved, but now the tentative peace between humans and mutants that started at the end of the first film is over.

Despite the efforts of Mystique (Rebecca Romijn Stamos who is not bad when she's not saddled with too much dialogue) disguised as the late Senator Kelly (Bruce Davison), an army General named Stryker (Brian Cox) convinces the President that a strike against mutants is necessary. His target, Xavier's School for the Gifted, AKA the X-Men compound.

In the meantime, Professor Xavier has begun searching for Nightcrawler to uncover why he attacked the President. Xavier dispatches Storm (Halle Berry) and Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) to find Nightcrawler, while he and Cyclops visit archenemy Magneto (Ian Mckellen) to determine his involvement. Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) returns to the school just in time to take charge of the student while everyone is gone. Of course this is when Stryker and his army attack, forcing Wolverine to empty the school and go on the run.

With Rogue (Anna Paquin), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) and Pyro (Aaron Stanford), Wolverine heads for safety in the home of Iceman's parents. In one of the films most talked about scenes, Iceman "comes out" to his parents about being a mutant. It's not long though before the cops show and they are on the run again.

Once reunited with Storm and Jean, they find that the Professor and Cyclops are missing and they are being hunted by military jets as they escape in the X jet. After taking a hit the jet nearly crashes, they are saved at the last minute by the unlikely savior, the now free Magneto. With the mutual enemy of General Stryker, they must team with Magneto and Mystique to free Xavier and stop Stryker from launching the war against mutants.

Summer blockbusters aren't about great storytelling, they are about special effects and sly humor and X2 delivers both. Not only is there the awesome White House attack sequence, but also the jet fight with Storm attempting to lose the military jets in a series of tornado's that she creates.

Most of the film’s humor comes, surprisingly from Wolverine in subtle commentary in his surroundings. Thrown in to babysitter mode while the rest of the crew is hunting for Nightcrawler, Wolverine has some fun interaction with the students before the military attacks. Then as witness to Iceman's coming out, Wolverine's annoyance of his conventional surroundings are very funny. Jackman's gruffness is perfectly in tune with his humor.

The effects are strong, but suffer in comparison to the Matrix trailer that precedes it. The Matrix trailer was so good I missed the first couple minutes of X2, still reveling in Reloaded. That is not to say I wasn't impressed by X2 but it is made to look conventional by comparison.

The performances aren't much to be remembered Halle Berry's Storm gets more screen time this second time around but not much insight is made into the character. Jackman as Wolverine gets the most screen time and is undoubtedly the star but the more Wolverine is on the screen the less impressive he becomes. In comparison with Jean and Storm, Wolverine's powers, his adamantium claws and superhuman healing ability seem small. You know when it comes to the major save the world stuff it will be Storm or Jean doing the saving with Wolverine as a spectator.

Director Brian Singer does an efficient job of balancing his large cast and huge effects scenes, and while the story isn't all that impressive it's all very well choreographed and follows a certain logic. To balance all of this big budget stuff and make a film that is semi-coherent is a feat all on it's own. It's an entertaining popcorn film that effectively sets the stage for the next sequel. It's no Spider-Man, Batman or Superman, but it's still pretty good.