Point of No return, and The Usual Suspects were his bestI've never understood why Gabriel Byrne never made it big.
Point of No return, and The Usual Suspects were his bestI've never understood why Gabriel Byrne never made it big.
Black Mass" is like that troublesome mask of makeup: we're not sure what, if anything, is going on underneath it, and its biggest failing is how close it gets to almost looking like the real thing. [B-]
Keep reading reviews about how over the top and fun this is...but if you get motion sickness, you might want to tap out.
Is this the same team that did that short?
A little over two years ago, the music video for Biting Elbows? ?Bad Mother****er? started making the rounds. It was directed by the band?s frontman, Ilya Naishuller, and features loads of insanely impressive (and very bloody) first-person perspective camerawork. It?s a wildly entertaining feat that currently has nearly 30 million views on YouTube, but now the question is, can Naishuller turn that short-form prowess and popularity into a worthy full feature?
Naishuller teamed up with producer Timur Bekmambetov to direct his debut film, Hardcore, which is told entirely from the first-person-perspective, just like ?Bad Mother****er.? This time around we experience the story through Henry, a cyborg super-soldier tasked with rescuing his wife Estelle (Haley Bennett) from an especially vivacious telekinetic psychopath (Danila Kozlovsky) named Akan.
As one might expect, Naishuller knocks the visuals out of the park. It does take time to adjust to the POV, shaky cam perspective and those prone to motion sickness might not be able to at all, but hopefully you don?t fall into that category because you?d be missing out on one heck of a violent, midnight romp.
There are still pleasures to be found: the recreation of the period and world is deeply immersive, and it’s worth the price of admission just to see Hardy’s Reggie performance, which is up among his best work. Still, the story could have perhaps used a more inspired hand at the helm, and it ultimately turns out that two Tom Hardys are not, in fact, better than one. [C+]
That's too bad. I still want to see this.
Does this mean The Krays is better?
So that sounds pretty interesting, yeah? Indeed, more than a few moments of Legend are engaging, but the film doesn’t really know where it’s going and, at over two hours in length, becomes an absolute slog in its back half. It’s clear from the onset that Helgeland is trying to make his own version of Goodfellas, complete with an uninspired long take in a night club and voice over narration from Browning, but the film falls so short of that bar that you’re left wishing you were just watching Goodfellas instead.
Hardy is one of the most fascinating actors working today, and while the prospect of the actor taking on a pair of gangsters in the 1960s is highly promising, unfortunately the results aren’t nearly electric as they could’ve been. Hardy is clearly having a ball characterizing the distinct personalities of the brothers—especially Ronnie, whose voice he imbues with a touch of Bane. But some of the dialogue is tough to understand due to Hardy’s stylized accents, and there are moments when his performance as Ronnie surpasses over-the-top, nearly veering into comedy which, although ill-fitting to the mostly serious tone Helgeland sets, is also a movie I would have rather seen than Legend.
Our own Tommy Cook caught The Invitation during the festival rounds, and now you can get a taste of the thriller from Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body) via the first trailer. If you have some unfinished business with a crazy ex, this might bring your worst fears to life.
Starring Logan Marshall-Green (Prometheus), Tammy Blanchard (Into the Woods), and Michiel Huisman (Game of Thrones), the film tells the story of one extremely uncomfortable dinner party among exes. Will (Green) is invited to the home of his ex-wife (Blanchard) for the occasion, but soon realizes she has some sort of hidden agenda for the invitation. Thankfully, the footage doesn’t reveal any spoilers because, as many who’ve seen the film suggest, it’s better to know as little as possible going in — only that it’s extremely unsettling.