DailyView: Day 358, Movie 510

With the new Nic Cage film on the docket for the evening, I had to wake up early today for another live action short for the DailyView. Today, from the Dust studio, I found the sci-fi film Immortal.

Simple story. In an attempt to find a way to “cure” death, scientist Harper (Meredith Casey) has been carrying on secret experiments that were just beginning to head toward human experimentation. Then, she is discovered.

There is some good acting in the short. There were some really intense moments between Meredith Casey and Laura Coover.

It’s the classic “mad scientist” trope and it went just where I thought it might and ended with a huge cliffhanger, which leaves you with the question of what happens next.

A decent short that make me excited to do the Saturday Short Day that I planned for May.

DailyView: Day 357, Movie 509

It is 4/20. In honor of the day, I watched Pineapple Express.

I have never been a fan of stoner comedies so I have not watched many of them.

Pineapple Express starred Seth Rogan and James Franco. Rogan, while smoking the new marijuana called Pineapple Express , witnessed a murder involving a police officer(Rosie Perez) and a drug lord (Gary Cole). Going on the run from them, Rogan and Franco get involved in all kinds of chaos.

There were some funny bits in the movie, but this was very much a Seth Rogan movie. It was loud, people were all yelling at the same time so it was hard to listen to, and more annoying than entertaining.

The story was ridiculous, which I believe was part of the charm. The situations were over-the-top. There were some parts that were funny, but it really stretched credibility.

The crazy violence of the second half of the movie seemed fairly out of place to the buddy comedy from the first half.

Like most stoner movies, I am not a fan.

DailyView: Day 356, Movie 508

Tonight, I went with another horror movie on Cinemax at Amazon Prime for the DailyView, which broke into single digits of days remaining. This film was called The Quiet Ones that was released in 2014, directed by John Pogue and featuring Jared Harris, Olivia Cooke, and Sam Claflin.

The Quiet Ones was based loosely on the Phillip Experiment, which was a parapsychology experiment in 1972 in Toronto that tried to “determine whether subjects can communicate with fictionalized ghosts through expectations of human will.” (Wikipedia).

The Quiet Ones is a mixture of a typical possession film and a found footage sub-genre film.

According to IMDB: “Jane Harper (Olivia Cooke) is a deeply troubled girl possessed of an all-consuming blackness, and Professor Joseph Coupland (Jared Harris) has a particularly unconventional plan for getting the darkness out of her. Summoning his top students to a secluded estate on the outskirts of London, Professor Coupland proposes that they attempt to manifest the malevolent energy in Jane. What the brilliant instructor and his ambitious students discover when they attempt to do so, however, is a horror so unrelentingly baleful and powerful that it may destroy them all before they even realize what a terrible mistake they’ve made“

There may have been a great horror movie inside this. Unfortunately, this was too disjointed and muddled to be effective. There were some decent scenes in the film and the acting was solid. I thought the story had a decent through line, but it required some rework. The story was very familiar with the beats, plenty of horror tropes that burden down the story.

For a movie called The Quiet Ones, there was certainly a lot of screaming. I have ot say that in the third act, Sam Claflin was way too out of control and it made him less enjoyable. The final effects were questionable too.

I have seen worse horror films, but this one is unremarkable in many ways. It had some interesting ideas, but the execution was just not quality.

DailyView: Day 355, Movie 507

Interestingly, this movie was released during January 2003 which said to me that even back then, studios were putting their crap out in January.

I had placed Darkness Falls on the queue after picking up Cinemax on Prime. The idea of a scary version of the tooth fairy sounded interesting, but, unfortunately, execution was anything but.

According to IMDB: “In the Nineteenth Century, in Darkness Falls, Matilda Dixon is a good woman, who exchanges with children their baby teeth per coins. One day, her face is burnt in a fire in her house, she becomes sensitive to light and uses a china mask to protect her face against light. When two children are not found in the town, Matilda is blamed by the population and burnt in a fire, as if she were a witch. She claims to be not guilty and curses the whole population of the town and their descendants, stating that when each child loses the last tooth, she would come to get it, and if the child looks at her, she would kill him or her. After her death, the two children are found, and the shamed citizens decide to bury this sad and unfair event and never mention it again. Twelve years ago, the boy Kyle accidentally saw the Tooth Fairy, and she killed his mother. All the persons in Darkness Falls but his girlfriend Caitlin accused the boy of murdering his mother and sent him to an institution, considered deranged. In the present days, Caitlin calls Kyle to help her young brother Michael, who has seen the Fairy Tooth and is afraid of the dark.“

Obviously, that synopsis is convoluted and unnecessarily confusing. The movie also breaks all of these rules throughout the movie. One wonders why there was not a whole bunch of terror going on in the town for the last 12 years since Kyle (Chaney Kley) was taken away until Caitlin’s (Emma Caulfield Ford) brother Michael (Lee Cormie) had the same troubles.

So many jump scares plastered throughout the film. Many of them are just an attempt to manipulate the viewer because the film knows that it is ridiculous and not scary at all. The design of Matilda is not special in any manner.

When I saw that the Rotten Tomatoes score of Darkness Falls was at 9%, I was hoping that it would be one of those bad movies that were fun because it was so bad. Not so. There was little to zero fun to be had in this movie.

Not good at all. I’m not going to give it a Putrescent because of Emma Caulfield, formerly Anya from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That is the only reason.

DailyView: Day 355, Movie 506

Nicolas Cage is hard to comprehend. There are times when he makes just the most god awful movies that are nothing more than a way to pay the bills such as Left Behind. Other times, he makes intense character pieces such as Pig. He didn’t utter a word in Willie’s Wonderland. I am never sure what to expect from Nicolas Cage so watching Joe this morning for the DailyView made me wonder which Nic Cage I was getting.

Joe featured Nicolas Cage and Tye Sheridan. Joe (Nic Cage) ran a tree-killing business and the 15-year old drifter Gary (Tye Sheridan) wandered in and asked Joe for a job. Impressed with his approach, Joe hired the boy on the spot.

Turned out that Gary’s alcoholic and abusive father Wade (Gary Poulter) wanted to work too, but his work ethic did not match that of his son.

Joe was an ex-con who had gotten in trouble with the police years ago, but the sheriff (Aaron Spivey-Sorrells) was an old friend of Joe, and he tried to keep Joe out of trouble. Joe, who had bonded with Gary, seemed to be on a path of escalating violent behavior.

Nicolas Cage was great as Joe. He was very conflicted throughout the film, but he was really good to Gary, giving him a father figure that he was lacking from Wade. Another excellent performance was from Gary Poulter, who played Wade. Poulter was homeless before the film and also an alcoholic, but he delivered a role with so much menace and cruelty that he stood out from an excellent cast. This was Poulter’s only role as he passed away not too long after the film was finished.

I do feel as if the film meandered a bit in the middle. It could have tightened up the story and trimmed 15-20 minutes from it.

With the recent Nic Cage-naissance happening, this is a hidden gem from his catalogue that would be a good watch for Cage fans.

DailyView: Day 354, Movie 505

Who would have thought that I would become a fan of King George III? And yet, after watching The Madness of King George, I was absolutely rooting for the Mad King, and not just in the humorous way as I did in Hamilton.

This biographical historic biopic featured the reign of King George III a few years after the Colonies won their independence from England, during a time period that was known as the Regency Crisis of 1788-89. King George III (Nigel Hawthorne) began displaying tendencies of madness, unable to control his behavior, his language or his actions. The madness that had overcome the King offered an opportunity to the Prince of Wales George IV (Rupert Everett) to attempt to be named regent, and gain control over his father’s health and treatment, and, generally, over the kingship.

Queen Charlotte (Helen Mirren) was completely loyal to her husband and did what she could to aid him through his troubles, but she was eventually separated from George.

Lady Pembroke (Amanda Donohoe) recommended to George III’s prime minister and ally William Pitt the Younger (Julian Wadham) a doctor named Francis Willis (Ian Holm), a doctor she claimed that cured her mother-in-law. Dr. Willis arrived with the King and immediately asserted his control over George III.

Meanwhile, the Prince of Wales continued to push for a bill to pass through Parliament naming him regent so he could take control. The bill is delayed within the body with expectations of reports of King George III’s progress or lack thereof.

This was a fantastic movie. I loved the entire thing. I was rooting for King George, wondering why the Queen did not have more power than she did (and wondering when it switched over to the Queen who now runs the Royal family in England) and hoping that the Prince of Wales would not get his weaselly little hands on the crown (Looking it up, he does become King in 1820 when his father died and he reigned for ten years. He apparently had been regent since 1811…twenty plus years after this moment in time).

Nigel Hawthorne was utterly brilliant as the mad king. His performance made the viewers relate and root for him despite being one of the major villains portrayed during the American Revolution. The loss of the Colonies seemed to have been a contributing factor to the King’s declining mental status. There was text at the end of the film that also indicated that King George may have been suffering from a disease called porphyria which was a factor in the changing color of the King’s urine.

Hawthorne and Helen Mirren were amazing together, sharing remarkable chemistry and a connection that made it completely believable that they had been together for years. I love Helen Mirren and she was spectacular playing off Hawthorne.

The movie was exceptionally well written, with both a great deal of humor and dramatic moments. There is a wonderful scene of King George reading from Shakespeare’s King Lear that works so well. The cleverness of the writing and the beautiful design of the costumes and sets truly do all work together to create a masterful piece of entertainment.

DailyView: Day 354, Movie 504

Blood & Wine is a neo-noir crime thriller that was directed by Bob Rafelson. Rafelson claimed that this film was the third film in an unofficial trilogy of noir crime films including Jack Nicholson. I started looking for this film on a recommendation and it took my getting Cinemax on Amazon Prime to find it. Unfortunately, I did not find this worth the effort.

Alex (Jack Nicholson) had set up a robbery with an old and dying safecracking partner Victor (Michael Caine) of a diamond filled necklace. Alex had an inside track, the place’s nanny Gabriela (Jennifer Lopez) that he wanted to run off with. He was ignoring his wife Suzanne (Judy Davis) whose son Jason (Steven Dorff) worked with him in his wine company.

The heist itself started the troubles brewing for Alex as things were going wrong. When Suzanne violently confronted him about his adultery, she unwittingly stormed out with the necklace inside a suitcase. This led to Alex and his violent partner Victor to begin to pursue Suzanne and Jason.

The story of this movie as sloppy and inconsistent. The characters’ motivations switched on a dime, especially Gabriela who felt like four different characters depending on what the film’s plot needed her to be. Jennifer Lopez was just not a strong enough actor to pull off the inconsistencies.

I did not have a reason to cheer for any of these characters. At first, it seemed as if Jack was going to be one of those lovable crooks, but he showed his true colors quickly. I did not have enough time early with Steven Dorff to deserve or earn the main character status.

This one I had been expecting good things from, but, sadly, it did not achieve anything more than a low level crime flick.

DailyView: Day 354, Movie 503

While going through Amazon Prime, I came across a film called Nancy and its synopsis sounded intriguing. What was listed on Prime was the following: “A serial imposter, Nancy becomes convinced she was kidnapped as a child, and when she meets a couple whose daughter went missing thirty years ago, the power of emotionality threatens to overcome all rationality.” When seeing that, my mind went to one of my favorite documentaries of all-time, The Imposter. Nancy, though, was a different beast though it remained very effective.

The key to the story is that we, the audience, never know for sure. We suspect what the truth is, and we can infer from what the movie gives us, but there is no one point where the movie comes right out and calls Nancy an imposter or that she truly is the missing daughter.

At first, that left me a little cold. I wanted to know for sure. I had pretty much made my own inference from the hints the film dropped, but it would not take much to readjust my thinking to see the hints from a different perspective. However, the more I reflected back over Nancy, I appreciate the film leaving it up in the air and allowing the audience to make the final judgements.

There were some wonderful performances in Nancy. Not only does Andrea Riseborough create a fascinating and complex character as Nancy, but the parents of the missing girl, played by J. Smith-Cameron and Steve Buscemi, are wonderful as the still grieving parents after 30 years of uncertainty. In their own ways, both of them are holding out hope that their daughter had come back to them. Buscemi’s performance is more subtle and guarded, showing that his character is more contained, reserved. The looks and glances that Buscemi gives tell so much of the story.

J. Smith-Cameron, on the other hand, is ready to welcome Nancy into their family and is desperate for any chance that this was the lost daughter. Though Buscemi’s character had told Nancy that he was worried about the possible disappointment for his wife, her strength was apparent and exceeded even his understanding.

Nancy is a wonderfully acted study of a woman searching for connection and a couple in need of putting grief behind them. The conclusion may not be for everyone, but it did serve the story they were telling of these characters.

DailyView: Day 353, Movie 502

Cedar Rapids is a comedy film that matched up Ed Helms with John C. Reilly with a lot of crude humor. Typically, these kind of films, wit lots of drug and sex jokes, are not up my alley. Cedar Rapids, however, has some charm to it and Ed Helms gives a solid lead performance that helps raise the level of film for me.

After a surprising death, Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) is sent to an insurance convention by his boss Bill (Stephen Root) to try and gain another Two-Diamond award for their company. Tim is shy and withdrawn so when he gets matched up with the wild Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly), things go haywire. After a lot of drugs and alcohol, Tim has to go to see the president (Kurtwood Smith) to keep his job.

As I said, this film has a charm about it, mainly from Ed Helms. John C. Reilly is not as over-the-top as he normally is, probably because he is playing opposite the quieter Ed Helms, so I could handle his performance better than when he plays opposite someone like Will Farrell who is doing the exact same schtick.

Anne Heche played a female agent at the convention who connected with Tim. She was married and had children but she used the convention in Cedar Rapids as her free time.

Sigourney Weaver is in the film as well, but she is grossly underused in a role that could be anyone. If you have Sigourney Weaver, you should really use her more.

The story is fairly typical for this kind of a film and does not miss too many beats. It is predictable as it moves along, but with the enjoyable cast, the film slips by.

Overall, Cedar Rapids is fine for what it is. It can be somewhat offensive at times, but there are some good laughs and Ed Helms does all the heavy lifting to make this a fun film.