Classic Movie Review The Crow

The Crow (1994) 

Directed by Alex Proyas 

Written by David J. Schow, John Shirley

Starring Brandon Lee, Ernie Hudson, Michael Wincott, Bai Ling, Michael Massee 

Release Date May 13th, 1994

Published May 21st, 2024 

The Crow is a haunting experience in more ways than one. It's a beautifully told tragic love story of grand ambition and a memorable goth aesthetic. But's also a virtual tomb for star Brandon Lee. Lee was killed in an on set accident that haunts every single frame of the movie. The dark coincidence of Lee dying while playing a character who was already dead adds a chilling layer to the movie that was, obviously never intended. And yet, the tragedy also deepens our connection to the character of Eric Draven and the romantic tragedy that was supposed to be his defining characteristic.

In Detroit, Devil's Night is a tradition in which the criminal underworld rises up to remind the populace who is really in charge of the city. This is a city of criminals, mercenaries, and crime lords who assert dominance through violence. Making people afraid is good for business and thus, when Shelly, a lovely young, soon to be married young woman complains about the condition of the apartment she shares with her soon to be husband, Eric (Lee), reprisal is needed to show her and everyone else that the apartment owner is not to be trifled with.

It's genuinely unknown if the criminals who attacked Shelly on Devil's Night intended to kill her or just violently terrify her into silence. Regardless, when Eric arrives and interrupts the violent encounter, the stakes go up and Eric is killed. Shelly will die soon after from the horrific injuries inflicted upon her. The pure agony of these deaths are a wound on the universe. It's as if the price paid by Shelly and Eric was so out of proportion to the good in the world that the universe needed to offer a correction of some sort. Therein lies The Crow.

A year after his death, with the despair and agony of his death still lingering over the people who knew and cared about he and Shelly, Eric Draven rises from the grave. A singular crow stands atop his grave and will guide Eric on his brief sojourn back into the world of the living. The bargain the universe has made to balance the scales for the death of Eric and Shelly, is to have Eric return to the Earth to kill the men who killed Shelly. This includes everyone who attacked Shelly in the apartment and the man who orchestrated the attack, a crime boss nicknamed Top Dollar (Michael Wincott).

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review Back to Black

Back to Black (2024) 

Directed by Sam Taylor Johnson

Written by Matt Greenhalgh

Starring Marisa Abela, Jack O'Connell, Leslie Manville, Eddie Marsan 

Release Date May 17th, 2024 

Published May 21st, 2024 

Why did director Sam Taylor Johnson want to tell this story? Is she a fan of Amy Winehouse? It's hard to say based on Johnson's new movie Back to Black. This is nothing biopic that offers no insight on Amy Winehouse, her art or her tragic death. The emptiness of Back to Black reminded me more of Johnson's Fifty Shades sequel than her slightly more accomplished John Lennon movie, Nowhere Boy. In that film, at the very least, we sensed that there was joy in the discovery of artistic talent and the forming of bonds that would become legendary. Back to Black carries little joy beyond playing Amy Winehouse's music. I could have gotten the same insights sitting at home next to my record player. 

Back to Black opens on an odd image. Amy Winehouse, played by Marisa Abela, is running down a London Street alone. The camera is shooting down at her from overhead. If this were a male director I'd want to ask why they have decided to aim the camera in a way that centers Marisa abela's cleavage as it bounces while she runs. The odd angle is perhaps, if I were to stretch a little, a visual comment on the strange way we view celebrities, but that's a pretty big stretch. Realistically, I can't think of a good reason for this visual. It's also a piece of a scene that unfolds later in the movie, not the end, it's not a preview of the end of the movie, it's a piece from around the end of the second act. So why does the movie start with this? I can't think of a reason. 

From here, we bounce back in time. A family party has Amy showing off her love of Jazz standards a mind for memorizing classic songs that she can repeat with out accompaniment. For someone as young as Amy to have memorized songs by Jazz legends speaks not only to her influences but her talent for adapting that style into her own remarkable pop styling. This, again, is an observation I could have made from listening to an Amy Winehouse record, but whatever, Marisa Abela sounds great and she has a big presence to her, reminiscent of Winehouse's outsized personality. 

Find my full length review in the Beat Community on Vocal Find my full length review in the Beat Community on Vocal 

Classic Movie Review Wait Until Dark

Wait Until Dark (1968) 

Directed by Terence Young

Written by Robert Carrington, Jane Howard-Carrington

Starring Audrey Hepburn, Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. 

Release Date October 26th, 1967 

Published 

Wait Until Dark opens on a close up of a piece of sill being surgically sliced. A pull back reveals a man opening up the back of a doll of some sort, a plush baby doll, filled with cotton. A woman stands near the man, fretting. Her name is Lisa (Samantha Jones), and she has a plane to catch. She's waiting on the elderly man to open the doll, place several kilos of Heroin inside the doll, and sew it back up. The doll is our MacGuffin, the Hitchcockian thing that everyone in the plot wants, has, or unknowingly possesses. As Lisa rushes from the elderly man's apartment with the Heroin filled dolly, he watches her through the window as she rushes into a cab. 

Director Terence Young was well into a lengthy, prolific, and not particularly memorable directorial career when he made Wait Until Dark. His best-known works were three of Sean Connery's James Bond movies, Dr. No, From Russia with Love, and Thunderball. If you enjoyed James Bond, you likely enjoyed those movies. Beyond his Bond work however, Young wasn't particularly noted. He did direct movies for 40 years, starting in 1948 and ending in 1988 but by 1988 he was working with the likes of Franco Nero rather than people like Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn. 

Young is a utility player to borrow a baseball term. Plug him in on a day when someone needs a rest, and he will play the field well and perhaps not be an automatic strikeout at the plate. He started during the days of studio pictures when guys like him could manage a few movies per year, rarely pausing between films, not particularly worried about the post-production part of the movie. This might sound mean-spirited, like I am diminishing a man who worked in Hollywood for literally 40 years as a director, but I assure that is not my intent. Indeed, one of my favorite directors of all time was very similar to Terence Young. Like Young, Michael Curtiz was a studio director. He knocked out movies on time and on budget and bounced from one project to the next unconcerned about what the studio did with the movie. Michael Curtiz made Casablanca under that system. 

Terence Young doesn't exactly have a Casablanca on his resume but, Wait Until Dark is a good flick. Written by Robert and Jane Carrington, adapting a play written by Frederick Knox, Wait Until Dark follows that heroin filled doll from Canada to New York City where Lisa passes the doll off to an unwitting accomplice, Sam Hendrix (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.). Sam is a photographer headed home to his lovely wife, Susy (Audrey Hepburn), who happens to be blind. Naturally, there are dangerous men who want that doll for what is inside of it. These include a pair of con artists, Talman (Richard Crenna) and Carlino (Jack Weston). And working with and against the con artists is the most dangerous man of all, Harry Roat (Alan Arkin). 

Structurally, we've reached the fun and games portion of the movie. With Sam sent off to a photography assignment in New Jersey, secretly arranged by Harry Roat, Susy is home alone and vulnerable. The plan has Roat manipulating his new accomplices Talman and Carlino to get inside Susy's apartment and convince her to give them the doll. This involves convincing her that Sam is involved in the death of Lisa, the woman who brought the doll to New York and gave it to Sam. She was killed off screen by Roat who then framed Talman and Carlino in order to blackmail them to help him roust Susy. Unfortunately, Susy has no idea where the doll is. She knows Sam brought it home but where it went from there, she has no idea. 

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Get Him to the Greek

Get Him to the Greek (2010) 

Directed by Nicholas Stoller 

Written by Nicholas Stoller

Starring Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Elisabeth Moss, Sean Diddy Combs, Rose Byrne

Release Date June 4th, 2010 

The character Aldous Snow was created for the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall by producer, screenwriter and star Jason Segal. However, when the role went to British comedian Russell it became entirely his. No one could play the debauched rocker as well as Brand has and now playing Aldous Snow in a lead role in Get Him to the Greek, Brand further expands the character and his mastery of him.

Rocker Aldous Snow has hit rock bottom. His latest record, African Child, has been unfavorably compared to famine and genocide while the ludicrous, highly pretentious music video is the subject of vast derision. Worse yet, his longtime, kind of, sort of, girlfriend Jackie Q (Rose Byrne), the mother of his son, has left him for a string of Hollywood bad boys. The loss leads Aldous back to his drugged out, debauched old self after 7 years of sobriety. It's also led to the near complete destruction of his career. 

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Aldous's record company has an idea to give Aldous a comeback. A junior exec named Aaron Green (Jonah Hill) wants to bring Aldous to L.A and the Greek Theater where his live record became an instant rock classic a decade ago. Charged by his boss Sergio (Sean P. Diddy Combs) to bring Aldous to L.A in three days, Aaron finds himself navigating the rapids of sex, drugs and massive egos with one of the last real rock stars in the world. What's supposed to be a trip to L.A with a quick stop in New York for the Today Show, quickly turns into a drug fueled rampage from London to New York to Las Vegas and maybe Los Angeles.

Whether Aldous Snow makes his big return to the Greek Theater stage is a moot point. It's all about the brilliantly funny journey and Russell Brand makes the journey constantly hysterical. Brand's style is a riffing, improvised style so off the cuff you will be hard pressed to figure what was in the script and what was in the moment. The style gives Get Him to the Greek a comic edge that few other actors could give it.

Russell Brand brings an unexpected authenticity to Aldous Snow in both his rocker debauchery and his charming narcissism. Brand embodies the rock star image like few non-rock stars ever could. He is believable on-stage singing oddball tunes like The Clap, Inside You and the completely brilliant Furry Walls and off stage with all the drugs, sex and privilege old school rock stars are known for. Jonah Hill hangs well with Brand and grounds the film in its alternate universe reality. As the nebbish Aaron, Hill is perfectly at home getting wasted with Aldous or sparking sweetly with Aaron's girlfriend played by Mad Men star Elizabeth Moss. While Russell Brand presses the limits of Aldous's likability, Hill's Aaron gives the film the human element it needs for the outrageousness to build into bigger and bigger laughs.

Russell Brand, Jonah Hill and the scene stealing, Sean Combs, pile one big laugh on top of another while also delivering characters we like and want to spend time with. Dramatic moments involving Aldous's drug problem and his ex-girlfriend are perfunctory and stop the movie cold for a few minutes, but these scenes are brief and easily forgiven because what leads to and follows those scenes is so hysterically funny. Get Him to the Greek is easily the funniest film of 2010 so far and a good candidate to stay at the top for the rest of the year. Parents should be advised however that the film earns its R-rating. Drugs, sex, brief violence and plenty of raw language make Get Him to the Greek adults only fare.

Movie Review Furiosa A Mad Saga

Furiosa A Mad Max Saga 

Directed by George Miller

Written by George Miller, Nico Lathouris

Starring Anya Taylor Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke

Release Date May 24th, 2024 

Published May 27th, 2024 

Furiosa rocks. It's a really great movie. I have been struggling with writing this review for a few days because, I wasn't sure I had much to add to the Furiosa discourse. It's a killer movie and most critics have already told you that. So, to try and make my review a little difference, I am just going to pick a part of the movie I like and use that to illustrate why Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is so good.

So, a brief plot description and set up. As a child, Furiosa, yes that's her actual name, it's not something she adopted like a nickname, get over it. As a child, Furiosa was kidnapped by marauders. Her mother gave chase and nearly rescued her. Mom gets killed and child Furiosa begins a banger of a revenge arc. She will spend the rest of her life trying to find and kill the leader of these evil marauders, Dementus (Chris Hemsworth).

Years later, Furiosa gets traded to Immortan Joe. It's part of a deal with Dementus who has captured the kingdom of Gasland, where all the gas in this post-apocalyptic wasteland is produced. Dementus gives Furiosa to Joe as a gesture of peace. Soon after, Furiosa escapes and becomes a slave of the Citadel, pretending to be a boy to prevent being a wife of Joe. After years of this, she gets her chance to escape after she helps build the prototype of the War Rig, Immortan Joe's most important vehicle, a truck that carries supplies in trade for gas and bullets.

The best scene in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has Furiosa tagging along on the first run of the War Rig. She's hidden herself beneath the rig with a motorcycle tied to to the bottom. When the rig stops, she will escape on her motorcycle and try to find her way back to her childhood realm, a place of abundance that her mother died to protect. Furiosa's bold escape plan is foiled when the War Rig is attacked by marauders who deal some damage to the rig and Furiosa is forced to defend the rig to save herself.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Documentary Review Restrepo

Restrepo (2010) 

Directed by Tim Hetherington, Sebastian Junger 

Written by Documentary 

Starring Members of the U.S Military 

Release Date June 25th, 2010 

Having been at war in Afghanistan for more than 8 years now it is no surprise that most Americans have begun to take the danger for granted. Nearly 8 years of politicians using the war as a cudgel against their political opponents and 8 years of news pundits spinning the war as a policy debate, it makes sense that many have grown jaded and have lost perspective.

"Restrepo" is a documentary that wrenches our perspective back to the matters at hand, the men who are on the front line fighting for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people as they attempt to survive and kill the enemy. Embedded with troops in the place that has been called the 'Deadliest place in the world' the Korangel Valley, journalists Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington bring devastating clarity to what is at stake in Afghanistan.

PFC Juan S. Restrepo was a Platoon Medic with Second Platoon B Company, 2nd Battalion 503rd Infantry Regiment. He was also a 20 something kid who with a big easy smile, a gregarious manner and a love for playing flamenco guitar. Early in the deployment of Second Platoon B Company, PFC Restrepo was shot and killed by members of the Taliban.

In his name the remaining members of B Company name their newest camp OP Restrepo. This outpost is remarkable for its dangerous position. It is high on a mountainside that had been crawling with members of the Taliban. It remains surrounded on all sides by potential members of the Taliban, those hiding among the citizens of the small villages in the Korangal Valley, and of course the real Taliban who may be no more than 100 yards away and sometimes closer.

Inside OP Restrepo we meet a remarkable and diverse group of our best and bravest. The standout is the leader Captain Dan Kearney whose determination to tame one of the most dangerous places in the world at first seems naive and then seems almost manageable through the sheer force of his professionalism.

Captain Kearney's assignment is to win the hearts and minds of the locals while creating a safe passage for workers building roads through the valley that will connect supply lines and bring some life and economy to these villages. The locals have heard these promises before but never I'm sure with conviction and strength. Kearney is the essence of tough but fair, unwilling to bend to the locals but never dismissive or disrespectful. The mission comes first with Kearney that means protecting his men and winning hearts and minds regardless of the dire circumstance or the seeming futility of effort. His professionalism is an example of the best we have to offer in our military.

The faces of the soldiers of Company B can tend to run together what with the buzzcuts and military garb but their personal stories when interviewed after the events of their 15-month deployment stand out in striking and heart-rending fashion. The stories they tell are stories of remarkable danger, pulse pounding, heat of the moment accounts that must be heard.

Heard they are but as filmed by Junger and Hetherington, they are seen as well in stunning, violent detail. Bullets sail over the heads of the soldiers, strike just at their feet and send the Journalists scurrying to the ground in search of cover. Most harrowing is the story and film of Operation Rock Avalanche during which B Company heads deep into the Korangal and come face to face with the enemy. Captain Kearney recalls in one interview members of the Taliban getting so close to his men that they could physically assault them and steal their supplies in the night. This is the war they never tell you about on the news.

Our complacency is shattered by Restrepo a trip deep inside of war like nothing you have ever seen on film. Years and years of operations in Afghanistan have passed and our culture has grown more and more weary and distant from the real dangers. Restrepo is a necessary film, required viewing as a reminder of the true, human cost of war.

Politicians argue policy and score cheap political points on Afghanistan on an almost daily basis and that is on both sides. What "Restrepo" does is remind us that when we go to war we had better know what we are fighting for, why we are fighting and never forget what the brave, brilliant soldiers who with their professionalism, valor and ungodly talents will have to sacrifice to achieve our goals.

Cop Out

Cop Out (2010) 

Directed by Kevin Smith

Written by Kevin Smith

Starring Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, Adam Brody, Kevin Pollak, Seann William Scott

Release Date February 26th, 2010 

Let's get one thing straight, I am in fact a Kevin Smith apologist. I have loved all of Kevin's movies, yes even “Jersey Girl,” loved it. Thus, I remove any thought of objectivity from this review of “Cop Out.” I am a Kevin Smith fan and I liked “Cop Out.” While other critics seem to delight in trashing this harmless, filthy mouthed throwback to 80's buddy cop movies, I sat back and laughed uproariously.

“Cop Out” stars Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan as detectives Jimmy Monroe and Paul Hodges. They seem like total opposites; Jimmy is laid back yet menacing while Paul is wild and outlandish. Yet, they have been partners for years with a notable reputation - good cops who tend to find trouble.

The latest trouble involves getting an informant killed and blowing a major undercover drug sting. This gets them suspended for a month. Meanwhile, Jimmy is trying to find the cash to pay for his daughter's (Michelle Trachtenberg) wedding. This subplots offer funny sidelights for Jason Lee and Sean William Scott.

The meat of the plot unfolds when Jimmy gets robbed of a valuable baseball card and he and Jimmy set out to retrieve it. Naturally, the card lands in the hands of the drug dealer who they were after in the first place and none of this is really all that interesting or important. The plot of “Cop Out” is secondary to Smith, Willis and Morgan hamming it up in homage to the great buddy cop movies of the 80's.

Kevin Smith is the perfect director for “Cop Out.” The film is both a send up of and a loving tribute to goofball buddy cop movies. Smith, being a virtual pop culture almanac, delivers on every beat of the buddy cop movies we love right down to a synth pop score that only Harold Faltermeyer could really appreciate.

Kevin Smith, Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan dive headlong into the parody fun not with obvious, “Naked Gun” style gags but by doing exactly what an 80's buddy cop movie did but with Kevin Smith style language, filled with plenty of four letter words and references that will someday make a great drinking game.

Is “Cop Out” a great movie? No. The plot is slapdash, the subplot payoffs are meaningless and don't even start on the continuity errors. None of that however, really matters because “Cop Out” is what it sets out to be, a goofball tribute to the buddy cop movies that dominated the 1980's. Forget the “Filmmaker Magazine” critiques; this is fun stuff for an audience seeking a mindless toss back to the movies they loved in the 80's.