Eye Candy #413 - "Assassination" (1987)

Assassination:  An inescapably bad, bad film, starring Man's Man Charles Bronson as Jay Killian, a secret service agent assigned to protect the wife of the President (played by Jill Ireland), protecting her from (*surprise*) assassination.  Given as she is almost the most irritating woman on the planet, so loud and so stupid, the assassins would be doing us a favor to remove the First Lady if she was so crappy.  The dialogue is bad.  The acting is worse.  The action scenes are laughable and sloppy (that you can see Bronson's stunt double head-on several times is so amateurish).   They even manage to louse up the soundtrack.  This is arguably one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.  Woodchuck sez, “Skip it.”

Eye Candy #412 - "The Shinjuku Incident"

The Shinjuku Incident:  A very dark departure from your standard Jackie Chan flick (and deliberately so, from what I‘ve seen and read).  Gone is the trademark humor and stunt work (very little chop socky in the film at all) as Chan plays Nick, a Chinese illegal immigrant in Japan who, against his better nature, descends into crime in an effort to be legitimate.  Nick arrives in Japan searching for both his fiancee who disappeared and his good friend Jie.  Once there, Nick and the other immigrants lives come in violent collision with local criminal gangs including the Yakuza and triads from Taiwan.   Chan’s usual goofy persona is gone as Nick is much more conflicted and even kills people to get ahead. This feels like various American crime films about new arrivals using crime to survive, thriving at it, and then resulting in their downfall.  The violence is graphic (various dismemberments, some of which looks incredibly fake), the tone grim, and it has a very downbeat ending (though it’s typical of the genre).   If you are looking for fun, stunt-laden Jackie, this ain’t it.  That’s isn’t to say it’s a bad movie.  I think Chan does very good in his serious role, though the film is a bit on the long side.  Woodchuck sez, “Not your standard Chan.”

Eye Candy #411 - "The A-Team"

The A-Team:  I admit, when I first heard about this film being made, I was more than a little hesitant.  I watched the show religiously as a child, had the toys, you name it.  I also have a growing malaise about recycling ideas from the 80’s (“G.I. Joe” and “Transformers” are other  examples).  But as the previews came out, I became more and more enthused.  Now I can say that this movie didn’t disappoint.  Sure, the kid-friendly “violence” of the original is gone (no cabbage cannons here and people do get shot), but the outrageous antics remain and the four main characters are rendered well with 21st century sensibilities.  Sure it’s loud, flashy, and shallow, but so was the TV show.  Hannibal Smith (Liam Neeson), Face (Bradley Cooper), B.A. (Rampage Jackson), and Howling Mad Murdock (Sharlto Copley) are an Army Ranger special operations group renowned for their unconventional methods and success rate.    When they are set up for a crime they didn’t commit (specifically, murder and theft), they pool their talents to exact revenge and turn the tables on those who set them up, including smarmy Generation X CIA agent Lynch (played with appropriate smarminess by Patrick  Wilson).   Directed by Joe Carnahan, this film sets a blistering pace from action set piece to action set piece, all of which are flashy enough to be interesting yet short enough not to bore the audience and wear out their welcome.  The script is surprisingly strong with several great lines and exchanges, and the right amount of humor to keep it punchy.  The cast is good (even Jackson) and Jessica Biel, in support as Lt. Charisa Sosa, has never been hotter.  Good stuff.  Woodchuck sez, “Me likey.”

Eye Candy #410 - "Shutter Island"

Shutter Island:   Having read the novel years ago, I knew what the plot twist was going into the flick, as I’m sure many people have. So to me, it became less about what happened rather than how they were going to stage it.  The ending of the book never really rang true to me (seemed like a tacked-on cop-out that negated large swaths of the story out of sloppiness.  It‘s easily the weakest of Dennis Lehane‘s books, not to mention shortest).   Set in the early 1950’s, Leonardo Dicaprio is Marshal Teddy Daniels, a widower and veteran, who is traveling to Shutter Island to the Asheclif Hospital for the criminally insane after a female inmate disappears from her cell.  Once there, Daniels begins to have vivid, disturbing dreams and flashbacks, and reality and fantasy begin to intermingle as the proverbial “not everything is as it seems” monster runs around the room with its head on fire.  Directed by Martin Scorsese, it has an artificial, forced feeling almost immediately (how many surreptitious winks can one director make in five minutes of film about the plot?).  It tries to be gothic and gloomy, but comes across as too clean and sharp.  Definitely a minor Scorsese effort.  This is the kind of movie that Alfred Hitchcock would have knocked out of the park, and with fewer special effects.   Unfortunate too, as the cast is a great bunch of actors – Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, Ted Levine, Jackie Earle Haley, Patricia Clarkson, Max von Sydow.  And the only ones who really acquit themselves well are Haley and Kingsley.  A disappointing book makes a disappointing movie.  Woodchuck, “Lived down to my expectations.”

Eye Candy #409 - "The Specialist"

The Specialist:  A low-rent, lousy plot "thriller" from the early 90's which plays like everything bad in film from that era - big, loud, and dumb.  Sylvester Stallone is Ray Quick, a former government operative specializing in explosions.  After leaving the company over a difference of opinion (he didn't want to kill innocent civilians; his partner, psychopath Ned Trent, played by James Woods, did), he re-settles in Miami and offers his services as an independent contractor.  Enter May Munro (Sharon Stone), a woman with a past that wants revenge on a Cuban-American mobster (Rod Steiger) and his son (Eric Roberts) who were responsible for the death of her family years ago.  So Quick agrees to help her, while dodging Trent, who wants to settle the score with Quick as well as May's own agenda.  A ponderous movie attempting to be an action thriller with a heavy romance angle to capitalize on Stone's popularity at the time, it comes across as sloppy and silly, with an incessant over-dubbed conversation between the two leads that gets old quickly.  Bad casting all the way around here - Roberts and Rod Steiger are the least believable Cubans you have ever seen.  In fact, Hispanics should be offended by Steiger's portrayal, who apparently used Desi Arnaz as his dialect coach.  Not to mention Stone is playing a woman whose family was murdered when she was a child, but neither Roberts or Steiger aged one bit from the various flashbacks and all the make-up in the world won't make Stone look less than middle-aged.  Woods comes out best, but even he can't make chicken salad out of chicken crap.  Composer John Barry must have re-used every cast-off James Bond snippet he ever wrote, mostly the schmaltzy ones.  I kept thinking I was watching "Moonraker".  Another waste of time from director Luis Llosa, whose best movie is equal to that of a good director's worst.  Completely disappointing in almost every way.  Woodchuck sez, "Avoid this."

Eye Candy #408 - "From Paris With Love"

From Paris With Love:  This film was given short-shrift by the critics, but frankly, for a half-brainer action movie (not a no-brainer, because there is a fairly intricate little through-line to follow), it’s not half-bad.  I would daresay…”enjoyable”.   Think of it as “Training Day”.  For spies.  On smack.  Jonathan Rhys Meyers is James Reese, a low-level intelligence functionary stationed at the US embassy in Paris.  His greatest desire is to be come a full field agent.  Well, he gets his wish when he is assigned a partner: Charlie Wax (John Travolta, in a nice scenery-chewing role), a special operative in Paris on a mission that becomes more and more involved and destructive the longer Charlie is on the ground, involving drug dealers, terrorists, Asian criminal gangs, betrayal, a high body count, and so forth.  At 92 minutes, it rushes along at a very fast clip, no effort wasted.  If only other action movies were so thoughtful.   Not the greatest action movie, but certainly a laudable recent effort and loads better than a lot of the drek I’ve seen.   The director, Pierre Morel, gave us the also entertaining “Taken” and “District 13“, so he knows how to stage some stylish violence.  I imagine that this film will enjoy similar success on DVD.  This is a solid 3-1/2 stars out of 5.  Woodchuck sez, “Check it out.”

Eye Candy #407 - "Iron Man 2"

Iron Man 2:  I don’t know why Hollywood feels the need to give us a “dark” sequel for just about every superhero property, where they debate being a superhero, succumb to greed or arrogance, before eventually being redeemed.  “Spider-Man 3” and “Superman 3” are good examples.  “IM2” is that kind of a film.  Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr., back again) is high on his accomplishments from the first film, virtually guaranteeing world peace with his Iron Man armor, to the consternation of the American government and a corporate competitor Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell).  We also get a revenge plot involving the son of a former Soviet scientist, Ivan Danko (Mickey Rourke, who looks more like a burn victim each role), who wants to destroy Stark the way his father was destroyed by Stark‘s father.  All of which makes Stark’s fall that much harder.  We get Jon Favreau and Gwyneth Paltrow back in their supporting roles, as well as Don Cheadle as Rhodey this time around and Scarlett Johannson as Tony’s new personal assistant who is more than she appears to be.  The dialogue is quick and glib, the action is solid, and build-up to the “Avengers” movie continues (though I hardly think it’s right around the corner, we do get nods to both Captain America and Thor here).  Disappointed in the soundtrack being just a re-hash of previously released AC/DC songs, but glad that they shelved that ridiculously over-used Marvel “synapse“ intro crap.  A respectable follow-up that holds its own with the original, though it seemed to take itself less seriously than its predecessor (Sam Rockwell is hardly menacing as Hammer).  Woodchuck sez, “Check it out.”

Eye Candy #406 - "Amelia"

Amelia:  What should have been a great movie about famed aviator Amelia Earhart just based on the quality of the cast alone is undone by a weak script.  Focusing directly on Amelia’s (Hilary Swank) marriage to her husband, publicist and publisher George Putnam (Richard Gere), and  affair with Gene Vidal (played by Ewan McGregor), in arguably the world‘s least torrid affair ever, the film starts roughly around the time of her first successful attempt to cross the Atlantic through various other exploits, while framing the entire picture within the context of her final flight over the Pacific, the last leg of her around-the-world flight where she and her navigator Fred Noonan (Christopher Eccleston) disappeared into history.   The script is emotionally remote - Earhart is more famous today for disappearing than for being the trailblazer she was during her lifetime.  So if your main character is more famous, presently, for being dead, then you have to do something to showcase her life other than just run through various events with little fanfare.   We are as distant from Earhart at the end as we were at the beginning.  No emotional punch at all.  And let’s be honest - unless you’re being shot at, flying is boring to watch, particularly long distance flying over large bodies of water.  Woodchuck sez, “Disappointing.”

Eye Candy #405 - "Flame and Citron"

Flame and Citron:  A WW2 thriller/drama about the real-life exploits of two Danish partisans during World War 2, codenamed “Flame” and “Lemon” (the Citron of the title) who were active for several years, assassinating Danes that collaborated with the Nazis.  They were hardly the smoothest operation, but they were extremely effective, dealing with the constant fear of capture, traitors within their own ranks, handlers with their own agendas, and double agents working both sides of the fence.  They also had juggle their deteriorating family and personal lives and inability to create close relationships, what with the paranoia that war brings.  Mads Mikkelsen is failed father Lemon and Thuri Lindhardt is young, cold-as-ice Flame (he got the name because of his red hair color).  We also get Christian Berkel as the head of the local Gestapo unit responsible for capturing them. While it is grim, grim, grim (as many WW2 films are), it is solid all the way around, with the ending a matter of historical record (the film does take some liberties with the final fates of the two men).   Woodchuck sez, “Good stuff.”

Eye Candy #404 - "The Green Berets"

The Green Berets:  There is something delightfully dopey about “The Green Berets”, a jingo-heavy John Wayne picture from the late 1960’s about the involvement of American soldiers in Vietnam.  We get to witness firsthand their trials and tribulations as they fight it out in the pine forests of southern Georgia, er, I mean, in the jungles of Vietnam, as the film tries desperately to hammer the squared-shaped sensibilities of an older style of war movie into the round hole of its contemporary (at the time) setting.  John Wayne is Colonel Mike Kirby, returning to Vietnam to help support a firebase located in enemy territory, with various Wayne company actors in tow like Bruce Cabot and Wayne’s son Patrick.  George Takei has a supporting role as a Montangnard captain allied with the Americans.  It’s very hard to take this movie seriously.  Even once you get past the non-jungle jungle setting,  you get a lot more of the inexplicable than the explicable.  Like troops marching in formation whenever aircraft are landing (which would seem to be dangerous to both the marching men and the landing aircraft).  Or the giant horde of VC being played by poorly disguised gringos.  Or the jaded reporter (played by David Janssen) who undergoes an under-fire conversion to the cause.  Or the world’s least believable helicopter crash (it literally hits the ground a blazing fireball…and Wayne just kind of rolls out of it without a scratch).  Or a tacked-on death by pungi stick that is more comical than tragic.  It was no secret of Wayne’s support of the armed forces and their service in Vietnam.  However, I don’t think this ended up as quite the homage he had intended it to be, drawing more incredulity now than admiration.  That isn’t to say that American soldiers didn’t go through some hairy sh!t in Vietnam, just that this wasn‘t the vehicle to tell that story.  Woodchuck sez, “If you don’t take it seriously, you might enjoy it.”