MovieComment

Paycheck

Posted by Player under Action

Face/Off is one of my favorite action films, cause it throws out realism and replaces it with incredible action scenes and one liners from what may be one of the last films I actually liked that featured Nicholas Cage. John Woo was the director who made Face/Off, and also Paycheck. However this time, Woo does not deliver on action as much as he delivers what I would call a suspense or thriller film which falls short of being good.

I guess it seemed like a good idea to put Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman, two of today’s biggest Hollywood actors and make a loosely sci-fi themed thriller, but somehow the acting did not quite pan out. Affleck plays a brilliant engineer named Michael, who routinely reverse engineers products for any company that will pay his price. Since his customers can’t trust him with their technology once he leaves, Michael undergoes a memory erase after he completes the project so that he has no memory of the time he spent at the company’s lab. For his current job, he is asked to go a longer memory erase, which amounts to three years, in order to get the biggest paycheck of his life, hence the name of the film. During his time at the company he meets Uma Thurman’s character. Thurman is a nerdy biologist at the same company. We are led to believe that they fall in love during the 3 years Michael works for the company. Thus begins the action and conflict of the story. When Michael leaves the company he finds out that things are very wrong and that he has sent himself an envelope containing insignificant items to help himself out of danger as he is now a wanted man by both his former employer and by the FBI. In other words there is no paycheck! This all leads to Michael realizing just what he did during the last three years and trying to save the world.

If all that seems impressive, it is, but emotionally Michael is not very much of a hero. Affleck’s character never seems believable and is not very emotional. Unlike Cage and Travolta where they seemed overly dramatic in Face/Off, Affleck comes off as being unsympathetic to the audience and about the only sentiment of actual depth is from Thurman’s character. In the film, Thurman plays her part well, emotional and not stunningly hot, basically your typical boring scientist who just happens to be somewhat attractive.

As for the action scenes? Well it is a Woo film, so expect a motorcycle scene which is at least interesting, but in no saves the film from its mundane acting and unsympathetic characters.

What I found most interesting about Paycheck was the sets, and the way the future looked. The theme also speaks a little to our attachment to technology and how shallow and petty people can be in valuing such things.

So if you are looking for a good Affleck film, this one is not it. Pretty much Affleck’s acting might have helped kill this film, but that all depends on what you think, for me, he definitely did not help.

Shrek2

Posted by Player under Animation

The original Shrek was a light hearted modern view of fairy tales and it appealed to both adults and children on many levels. This was also in large part due to the cast, and not just good writing, so it is no surprise that Dreamworks released a follow-up film, now known as Shrek2.

Shrek2 has so far excelled everyone’s expectations as it has been breaking records for most theatres played in. I even saw parents walking out of Shrek2 with their kids at midnight hours! It is that popular.

Like any parent, I took the kids to go see the green guy and what I got out of the film was a bit different.

Shrek2 starts right after the honeymoon, where Shrek and his new bride must travel to Far Away Land to visit his in-laws. Upon arriving, Shrek, Fiona, and their trusty Donkey are greeted by less than excited parents and so starts the stage for Shrek’s new adventure.

Dreamworks tried a little harder this time to push more jokes into the film and in some places, it simply hilarious, like Pinochio not admitting to wearing a thong, or of course the Puss’n'Boots character. In a few places, the jokes don’t work as well, but kids will hardly notice this.

The animation is even better this time around, and maybe that is what bothered me most, because at a point, the animation is so good, that Shrek stops looking like a cartoon, and more realistic, like an actual real life person.

Overall, Shrek2 is just as funny as Shrek 1, but seems less fairy tale-like than the original, which means, it seems like a meshing of different fairy tale jokes which seem to overtake the main plot at times.

Saw

Posted by Player under Horror

I’m not a big fan of thrillers, but I do love a good horror film once and a while. In Saw, you get a little of both, some truly sick situations and a little bit of a guessing game as to who is the killer. I won’t give away the ending, but at least for me it did surprise me.

The story starts out with two guys that are chained in what appears to be a dirty and abandoned industrial bathroom. As they begin to relate to each other, the pieces of a relationship develop. It seems that they are being held captive by the Jigsaw killer, a crazy maniac that likes to challenge people to kill each other. Did I mention that these two guys woke up to find each other in chains and that there is a dead body bleeding on the floor between them? Well it’s there.

The main character turns out to be a successful doctor who is not particularly very happy in life. we learn that his wife and daughter are being held captive, and that a cop, played by Danny Glover, is obsessed with him and thinks he is the jigsaw killer. Eventually this all leads to plenty of flashback scenes and some scary moments here and there.

Saw has a great opening premise and tries to out do the previous classic Seven, but it falls way short. It’s characters are not very likable, it’s killer is not all that engaging like Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs, and even with actors like Glover, the film just seems empty and devoid of real depth. It’s another movie that shows you a cool What If?, but never really makes you care enough about the characters to really engage your sympathies. It’s an average film.

The DVD includes some cool packaging and there is a nice DTS soundtrack included. Overall it is a well produced DVD release.

Along Came Polly

Posted by Player under Comedy

I guess by now I’m a sucker for Ben Stiller movies, so I took a chance on Along Came Polly, and although the film had its moments, it was not the romantic comedy that I expected from the likes of Stiller.

The film starts out with Stiller as Reuben Feffer, who is a risk assessment manager for an insurance firm. He’s getting married to his realtor who he met only 6 months ago. They go off on their honeymoon where they run into nude Claude, a french scuba instructer, played by Hank Azaria, who is by the way hilarious in this film. Reuben avoids risk like the plague so he goes back to the hotel while his new wife played by Debra Messing joins Claude for a scuba lesson. When Reuben comes back to the boat, he finds both of them having sex, and ends up leaving the island, while his new wife explores her new love.

This of course makes Reuben a joke, not that he was not one already. All this time his best friend, also another walking joke, Sandy who is a failed child actor, tries to cheer him up. Although Sandy’s best line is the Shart, it’s when you fart and a little shit comes out, so it’s a shart. I love that. The two go to a party in which Reuben runs into a flighty Polly Prince (Jennifer Anniston) who he knew in grade school. The two find themselves strangely attracted to one another and eventually make for some comedic scenes, until Reuben’s wife returns and sets the stage for the Third Act in the romantic comedy.

What is disappointing in the film is not really the acting but the flat characters. We know who Reuben is, we know his parents, we know everyone and there simply are no surprises, no real quirks that make characters seem more like real people instead of just roles in a script. The comedy and jokes in general seemed to happen right on queue and Anniston’s Polly Prince (who has a great pornstar name), just never seems to be anything more than another version of Friend’s Rachel Greene. I’m not sure if Anniston can actually deliver a character who is not Rachel, cause in this film, that is all I see. And it makes me yearn even more for Cameron Diaz and her Mary in Something About Mary.

I guess since I already gave away everything, there really is no reason to watch this film anymore. Sorry!