DailyView: Day 363, Movie 517

With just a couple of days remaining in the DailyView, I have finally gotten to a classic film that was on the first page of my list from way back in last April. I watched the iconic John Singleton written and directed film, Boyz N the Hood. This was the directorial debut for the late, great Singleton and it showed such an amazing wealth of talent, from behind the camera to in front of it.

Boyz N the Hood is a coming of age story that takes place in South Central Los Angeles as Tre Styles (first played as a child by Desi Arnez Hines II and then by Cuba Gooding Jr). He was sent to live with his father ‘Furious’ (Laurence Fishburne) by his mother Reva (Angela Bassett) when Tre got into a fight at school. It was here where he met brothers Doughboy (first played by Baha Jackson and then by Ice Cube) and Ricky (first played by Donovan McCrary and then Morris Chestnut) Baker.

The three of them grew up in this neighborhood that featured plenty of violence, shots fired in the distance and the sound of police sirens. Doughboy was a gang member and had a friend Chris (Redge Green) who had been shot and ended up in a wheelchair.

Ricky was a local star football player and was trying to get a scholarship to college to play football. He discovered that he had to take the SAT and score at least 700 in order to receive the scholarship.

After taking the test, Ricky got into an argument with a rival gang that caused Doughboy to wave his own gun around to try and straighten out the situation. This was leading to even more violence later in the film.

I was surprised how emotional this movie made me and how much I was into the story without even realizing it. While the language used in the film always makes me uncomfortable, I found myself really rooting for Ricky and Tre, despite the fact that I had a bad feeling about everything that was going on.

This film showed the real world in these neighborhoods without diving into hyperbole and stereotype. We see these characters as real people, not just the typical gang members you might see in a movie. These are very believable and allow you to connect to them even more.

There are great performances from Ice Cube, Cuba Gooding Jr, and Morris Chestnut, in particular. Laurence Fishburne brings an entirely different vibe to the film and does so with the gravitas that he always brings to the movie.

This is powerful and potent, shining a light on the dangers and the trials that face these people everyday in the hood. This is an absolute masterpiece.

DailyView: Day 362, Movie 516

I was in the mood tonight for a documentary. I went to Netflix and started to search though the list of documentaries on the streamer site. I had found a couple of interesting docs that I put on my queue, a couple of documentary shorts that I added to the Saturday Shorts list, but nothing that was really jumping off the screen. Then, I found it.

The Legend of Cocaine Island sounded fascinating and it was absolutely the right choice for tonight.

Following a legendary tale of a mysterious bag of cocaine that had been buried on the Caribbean island of Culebra, family man Rodney Hyden tried to find and dig up the stash of drugs, believed to be worth over $2 million dollars.

This documentary was told with plenty of recreations of the events that led to Hyden spending time in prison for his choices in the treasure hunt.

There was a lot of light-hearted reconstruction of the tale that was being told. The story was one of those stranger than fiction stories and is laid out very well.

I enjoyed the documentary and wonder what these people were thinking.

DailyView: Day 361, Movie 515

Escape from Pretoria tells the true story of one of the great prison escapes of all time, with three political prisoners escaping from Pretoria in South Africa in 1979.

Based on the novel Inside Out: Escape from Pretoria Prison by Tim Jenkin, who was one of the escapees, played here by Daniel Radcliffe, Escape from Pretoria was an exciting prison escape film that showed how intelligence are the most valuable weapons.

Daniel Radcliffe continues to push himself further away from Harry Potter with every film choice he makes. Honestly, I saw more Wolverine in him than Harry Potter.

There are plenty of moments of tension and anxiety that builds up with the movie. Several times when you have that feeling of holding your breath because you are afraid of whether or not the protagonists were going to get caught.

Apartheid is one of the most horrible governments in recent history and to see some of the struggles to oppose the racist, hatred of the evil government. It is a great thing that this government crashed.

DailyView: Day 361, Movie 514

One of the films that has been on the DailyView to watch list since the very beginning, nearly a year ago, was Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto. With just four days remaining in the DailyView, I finally pulled Apocalypto up on Amazon Prime.

What an epic this was.

The film took place during the Mayan civilization as we saw a peaceful tribe doing some hunting. Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) and the rest of his tribe were out hunting boar when they came across another tribe in the jungle. This new tribe did not seem problematic so they allowed them to pass through their jungle.

Later, back at their camp, the new tribe attacked them viciously, leading Jaguar Paw to hid his son and his pregnant wife Seven (Dalia Hernández) into a deep hole to hide them. Captured, Jaguar Paw and the other men are taken to a ceremony where several of them are sacrificed. Thankfully, a eclipse occurred just before Jaguar Paw was to be sacrificed and so they believed that the God had his fill of blood.

The remaining members of the tribe, including Jaguar Paw, were taken and allowed to try and escape into their jungle, but the warriors of this tribe shot at them with arrows and threw spears, killing almost them all. Jaguar Paw, injured, is able to turn the table on the warrior and make it to the jungle. The rest of the group followed him in a chase through the jungle that is just epic as can be.

The first part of this movie was fine, but once Jaguar Paw made it to the jungle and they began chasing him, this movie turned into a fantastic thrill ride. Yes, there were some iffy CGI (especially with the jaguar that showed up), but Jaguar Paw being chased and turning the tides on his pursuers was just totally thrilling.

There are some beautifully shot scenes and the imagery around the jungle is just fantastic. Mel Gibson has proven himself to be one of the best directors working today. Sure there are issues with Gibson as a person that may tend to lean towards troublesome, but there can not be any argument that he knows what he is doing behind the camera.

I am very pleased that I finally got to Apocalypto for the DailyView because it was a fully engaging and thrilling chase movie with historical aspects to it. This was not what I had expected when I started it, but it turned out to be an entertaining, albeit extremely violent, ride.

DailyView: Day 361, Movie 513

I have generally found Clint Eastwood directed films to be hit or miss. However, when they hit, they hit big time. That is the case with Changeling, the 2008 drama focused around a true story of the 1928 Wineville Chicken Coop Murders, the disappearance of the son of Christine Collins and the rampant police corruption in the LAPD at the time.

Angelina Jolie gives a stunning performance as Christine Collins, a woman whose son disappeared and was missing for six months. Then, the police discovered the boy and brought him back to his mother. The only problem was that once reunited Christine told the police that the boy was not her son, Walter. The police insisted that he was and that he’d been through trauma and that she just did not recognize the boy. She was in shock, they said. She took the boy home, but further physical traits supported her suspicion that this boy was not her son.

Christine approached Captain J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) about her doubts, insisting that the boy was not Walter. Jones did not believe her and began to accuse her of being an unfit mother. Rev. Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich) picked up the story and began to support Christine, encouraging her to fight for justice. Christine went to the papers and, because of this, wound up being thrown into an insane asylum by the police.

This movie was excellent and does an amazing job of creating emotion among the viewer. It is not just sadness for the disappearance of Walter and Angelina Jolie’s stirring performance, but also the anger that it builds up over the behavior of the LAPD at the time and the use of the mental asylum to do its dirty work. The cruelty is unimaginable for people who are meant to help and aid others.

Jason Butler Harner was outstanding as well as Gordon Northcott, the man behind the Wineville Chicken Coop and the man who may have killed Walter. He played this man with an abandon and an almost carefree attitude that made him even more frightening. The young actors involved were also very solid. Eddie Alderson, who played Sanford Clark, the boy forced to help Gordon Northcott, Gattlin Griffith, who played Walter Collins, and Asher Axe, who played David, a boy who escaped from the chicken coop with Walter’s help.

The film was beautifully shot and used its time frame wonderfully to fully tell its story. It was 2 hours and 20 minutes long, but the film did not drag on at all, paced well. The final version of the film had plenty of amazing craft to it and it is one of the better directed films of Eastwood’s catalogue.

Changeling was an unbelievable story that was able to connect to the outrage of the time.

DailyView: Day 360, Movie 512

How did I miss this?

The Voices came out in the middle of the time when I was going to the movies all the time, and I have always enjoyed Ryan Reynolds. Heck, this was not too far before Deadpool. So how had I never even heard of this little dark horror/comedy gem?

Ryan Reynolds played Jerry, who worked at a bathtub factory. He seemed to have a sad little life, living alone with his pets Bosco the dog and Mr. Whiskers the cat. He was socially awkward and had trouble with making connections. He had to see his psychiatrist Dr. Warren (Jacki Weaver), who kept pushing him to take his medication. You get glimpses into what appeared to be a dark past from Jerry, but you really have no idea where the film is going to take him. Jerry feels like that withdrawn loser who can overcome his demons and adjust to the world.

Unfortunately, that is not exactly in the cards for Jerry. As he carried on conversations with his supportive dog and the cruel and wicked cat, Jerry found himself in situations where his darker nature took over.

The film also starred Anna Kendrick (who has quite a list of oddball films) and Gemma Arterton, as women that Jerry was interested in, Kendrick, in particular, had a really strong performance and you are really rooting for her to be able to make it through.

Ryan Reynolds is handed a character that was darker than anything he had done before, including Wade Wilson in Deadpool. The catastrophic circumstances of Jerry’s life was devastating for him and gave the audience a reason to continue to hope for the best for this tragic character. The flashbacks to his youth with an abusive father and a mentally ill mother are heartbreaking and truly frames the character of Jerry in a different manner than you would expect. Right up until the end, I was hoping for the best for Jerry.

It was a funny movie, but there were plenty of times where laughing just felt like the wrong response, yet laughter is what would happen. The voices of the two pets, provided by Reynolds, were perfect and capsulized the way dogs and cats are perceived.

The ending sequence is as batshit crazy as the rest of the film, putting me slightly on edge. Honestly, the song at the end made me feel plenty of feelings, including feeling a little disgusted for liking it.

This was a much deeper film than I thought it was going to be and the character of Jerry was deeply scarred and developed more effectively than you would think. It was funny and filled with great performances from a really strong cast. The Voices is a trip of a film.

DailyView: Day 359, Movie 511

Last night I had the pleasure of watching the new Nicolas Cage movie, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and I loved it. During that movie, Nicolas Cage stated that one of his all-time favorite movies, and one that he forced his on-screen daughter to watch, was The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was a 1920 silent German horror film directed by Robert Wiene.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, “At a carnival in Germany, Francis (Friedrich Feher) and his friend Alan (Rudolf Lettinger) encounter the crazed Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss). The men see Caligari showing off his somnambulist, Cesare (Conrad Veidt), a hypnotized man who the doctor claims can see into the future. Shockingly, Cesare then predicts Alan’s death, and by morning his chilling prophecy has come true — making Cesare the prime suspect. However, is Cesare guilty, or is the doctor controlling him?”

This silent movie has been considered an influential and beloved film for years. This was the first I had heard of it. It was an interesting film with a decent story. I found all of the characters to have solid performances, very expressive as needed.

I loved the style of the backgrounds. I know that it was because of the year this was recorded, but the minimalist backgrounds with its jagged corners and intriguing angles felt painted and attractive. It fit right in with the shade of the film.

This was fun, especially after the Nic Cage recommendation.

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.