All Things:Thriller/Crime/Action

‘The Shallows’ Review: Gill-ty Fun
http://collider.com/the-shallows-review-blake-lively/

The very things that make The Shallows a success, though, also holds the film back from being great, as there’s a degree of inevitability that can’t be shaken. There’s great tension when Nancy gets back into the water, but no clamping down of sheer terror. And while the familial exposition is handled with some natural modern grace in the beginning, there’s also a cringing saccharine closure to it.

By and large, the movie’s other star — the shark — looks fantastic, with the exception of one big moment, and “Steven” the seagull is a nice Wilson for Nancy. But what keeps The Shallows fun is its shallowness in narrative. Once we’re on the secret beach, we don’t leave it. Once Nancy is stranded, we stay with her. As Flavio Labiano‘s underwater camera shows us, even in the shallower depths, there is plenty indiscriminate punishment in the ocean.

Grade: B
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This looks really good to me. The only problem I see is that Charlie Hunnam is in the lead and I am currently on the last season of Sons of Anarchy via Netflix. I think I can get his SOA character out of my head while watching this but it will be somewhat difficult. He seems perfect for this role.

 
‘Hell or High Water’ Review: A Thrilling and Thoughtful Neo-Western
http://collider.com/hell-or-high-water-review/

Hell or High Water isn’t a simple tale of bank robbers vs. the law; it’s a neo-Western dissection of the misdeeds done to the land throughout the history of the West. It features career high performances from both Foster and Pine and a delightfully nuanced old codger turn from Jeff Bridges as one of the Texas Rangers in pursuit. It’s also one of the best films of the year; an unexpected getaway car from an unusually dry summer at the movies.
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I have been waiting so patiently to finally find out what happened to these poor souls, and I guess Detective Depp will be our best bet yet...
 
First ‘Live by Night’ Trailer Reveals Ben Affleck’s Long-Awaited ‘Argo’ Follow-Up
http://collider.com/live-by-night-trailer-ben-affleck/

Warner Bros. has released the first trailer for Live by Night, the fourth directorial effort from Ben Affleck and the filmmakers long-awaited follow-up to 2012’s Best Picture-winning dramatic thriller Argo. Based on the Dennis Lehane novel of the same name, the film takes place during Prohibition and stars Affleck as Joe Coughlin, the prodigal son of a Boston police captain who works his way up from bootlegger to notorious Florida gangster. Affleck adapted the screenplay himself and recruited Oscar-winning The Hateful Eight and The Aviator cinematographer Robert Richardson to serve as his director of photography.
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‘(Re)Assignment’ Review: Tasteless, Exploitative, and Unforgettable | TIFF 2016
http://collider.com/reassignment-review-michelle-rodriguez/

Brazenly tasteless and ridiculous, there are plenty of reasons to dismiss and dislike the latest feature from action movie pioneer Walter Hill. It’s a project that he has apparently spent 40 years developing, but it feels more like something that should have been made all those decades ago rather than a project that needed time to percolate. Yet there’s something charmingly sleazy about this absolutely bat**** insane project as well, criticizing itself through a fantastically evil performance by Sigourney Weaver in a way that suggests a certain level of self-aware camp in addition to cheap thrills. It’s tough to say if Hill did it all deliberately, yet it’s also equally tough to be bored by the results whether you like them or not.

Michelle Rodriguez stars as the amusingly and absurdly named Frank Kitchen, an assassin for hire with no conscience and little regard for life beyond its momentary pleasures. Rodriguez indeed plays a man initially, with full body prosthetics and a beard. It doesn’t last too long though. Kitchen’s soon set up for a job that doesn’t exist and kidnapped. The culprit is Dr. Rachel Kay (Weaver), a psychotic plastic surgeon who involuntarily turns Frank Kitchen into a women (yep, for realzies). There’s only one response to something like that: revenge, ideally flavoured by bulles n’ bloodshed.

Yep, that’s really the premise of the movie and one that treats transgender politics as tastelessly as it sounds. The concept of gender reassignment surgery being used as a form of punishment is problematic at best. The script was protested before production and if/when the film is commercially released, that’ll happen again. Yet, Walter Hill is also indulging in a little “cake and eat it too” nose-thumbing antics here. After all, he is suggesting that someone’s gender is defined by their interior more than their exterior; he just took a deliberately exploitative path to get there.
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sounds fun to me. And as far as the complaints, The Skin I Live In(spoilers) basically used the same premise and that was rather well received.
 
TIFF Journal: ‘(Re)Assignment’
http://www.highdefdigest.com/blog/tiff-re-assignment-movie-review/

At his prime, Hill specialized in terse and tense tales of men stuck in circumstances that required a gun. His movies never aimed for high art, but they stripped genre entertainment to the bone for a pure simple rush of violent thrills filled with memorable characters, effective plotting, and not a second of wasted screen time.

On a certain level, ‘(Re)Assignment’ couldn’t be more simple. It’s a noir-ish revenge tale in which an assassin is wronged and sets out to right that wrong with bullets and bloodshed. The twist is that the assassin is Michelle Rodriguez, initially playing a man named Frank Kitchen who is forced to have an involuntary sex change by psychotic surgeon Dr. Kay (Sigourney Weaver). Kitchen isn’t thrilled, so (s)he kills everyone she can find until she meets Kay face-to-face.

Yeah, it’s an odd one to say the least. Hill further complicates the movie with an odd, twisted flashback structure using multiple perspectives and scene transitions that turn frames into comic book panels.

Needless to say, the gender politics of ‘(Re)Assignment’ are murky at best and the film probably should have been made a few decades ago rather than in this particularly sensitive time. Thankfully, the deliberately trashy flick is so over-the-top that it’s nearly impossible to take offense at anything. However, it doesn’t help that Hill’s tone is all over the place. He’s clearly trying to work in a heightened comic book style with a little tongue-in-cheek sleaze, but it’s never clear how campy things are so supposed to be. There are laughs throughout, but some feel like the wrong kind as the movie dips frequently into absurdity without a safety net.

Still, there’s some good stuff here. Hill knows how to stage a hard-boiled action scene and delivers some good ones. Weaver is hysterically entertaining as a mad gender scientist, and the movie bursts to life whenever she goes batty (typically involving literary quotations for some reason). Rodriguez is also a rock solid action hero with dark intentions, even if her early scenes as a man never quite feel right due to her voice.

‘(Re)Assignment’ is an insane romp through bad taste and vengeance. Unfortunately, it’s also a bit of a mess and really could have benefited from the stripped-down storytelling simplicity that Hill brought to his best work. Reactions will vary. It’s hard to imagine anyone will love the movie without apology, but many will have a good time, ironic or otherwise.
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