Wish I Was Here (2014)

Aidan Bloom is a 35-year-old man who finds himself at major crossroads, which forces him to examine his life, his career, and his family.

Director:

 Zach Braff

Writers:

 Adam J. Braff, Zach Braff

Stars:

 Zach Braff, Joey King, Pierce Gagnon |See full cast and crew »

'Wish I Was Here' is the story of Aidan Bloom, a struggling actor, father and husband, who at 35 is still trying to find his identity; a purpose for his life. He winds up trying to home school his two children when his father can no longer afford to pay for private education and the only available public school is on its last legs. Through teaching them about life his way, Aidan gradually discovers some of the parts of himself he couldn't find.

Admittedly, this is the first Zach Braff film I have seen. I only saw one trailer for the film, and it immediately intrigued me. I did not hate this film, but I also did not love and found myself in a lukewarm middle ground. For everything I liked, there was something I did not like.

First off, the story. The story as a whole deals with living life and dealing with death which was pulled off fairly well. However, there were several things in the script that I feel like took away from the film and the story Braff was telling. One of the those things were the laughs or lack thereof. 

The script thinks its wittier and funnier than it actually is with most jokes missing that hitting. The movie also thinks it's deeper than it actually is. Maybe that's just Braff's style, but to me it seemed like it was more style over substance.

I did really enjoy the soundtrack for the film and Braff gave a good performance as a 30-something-year-old treading the water in his life.

I will definitely give Braff's future movies another shot and will see Garden State soon, but Wish I was Here was just not as good as I hoped it would be.

Falcon Rising (2014)

Chapman is an ex-marine in Brazil's slums, battling the yakuza outfit who attacked his sister and left her for dead.

Director:

 Ernie Barbarash

Writer:

 Y.T. Parazi

Stars:

 Michael Jai White, Neal McDonough, Laila Ali |See full cast and crew »

FAVELA, the first installment in the CODENAME: FALCON franchise, introduces former marine John "Falcon" Chapman, a dark anti-hero driven by guilt and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, who will destroy himself unless given something else to destroy - a useful weapon-of-last-resort for the U.S. State Department. When Chapman's sister is brutally attacked while on assignment in Brazil, Chapman flies into Sao Paulo to track down her assailants, quickly entering the city's seedy underbelly and discovering a world of drugs, the sex trade, corrupt cops, and organized crime syndicates battling for control.

So when I first saw the trailer for this movie I thought it was going to be your typical predictable Hollywood action flick. As we all do sometimes I resolved myself to just forgive anything corniness and just enjoy the movie. I sure was in for a surprise; this movie is anything but cliché -- it was a genuine rockbuster of a film that blew me away.

The fight scenes were really well done and even the acting was surprisingly good. There were maybe a couple small action film stereotypes but they were subdued to the point where they weren't insulting (e.g., ending fight scene at the docks against the bad guys, boss, etc.) In all I was highly entertained and I recommend the movie.

The Anomaly (2014)

A former soldier is taken captive and awakens in the back of a van where he learns that he only has a few moments to figure out how he got there.

Director:

 Noel Clarke

Writer:

 Simon Lewis

Stars:

 Noel Clarke, Ian Somerhalder, Brian Cox |See full cast and crew »

Set in the future, a traumatized ex-soldier discovers that he can only experience life as himself in nine minute bursts every few days or so. Consequently, he has no idea what he has been up to in between times but it appears in his other life he's clearly been up to no good. He tries to piece together what is causing this.

The Anomaly is a really good example of what can be achieved in a science fiction movie on a low budget. Actor/director Noel Clarke and writer Simon Lewis have put together a nicely ambitious genre flick that is structured in a really interesting way. Its technique is not dis-similar to the one used in Memento (2000) where we follow a protagonist who is consistently unsure of how he got where he is. It's a great idea and ensures that the story-line remains intriguing throughout. It also allows for the film to change gears suddenly and for us to be thrown into jarringly different scenarios as well as re-locating locations. The special effects are well used for the latter, where there are nice cityscapes of the likes of London and New York – very well rendered on a tight budget.

Clarke himself makes for a good central character. It's quite a physical role that calls also for a fair amount of action set-pieces, so we have lots of slow-motion fight scenes interspersed amongst the more cerebral sci-fi stuff. Ian Somerhalder makes a mark too as a dapper, enigmatic man who seems to be involved with Clarke in his unknown other life, while the rather gorgeous Alexis Knapp makes an impression as a girl who assists Clarke in finding out the truth. Brian Cox also stars but is restricted to a cameo role unfortunately. Overall, I was very impressed with this flick. While it does go down a sci-fi action route to an extent, and that's okay, it was the more mysterious sci-fi puzzle aspects that really made it tick. It's well worth seeking out and it should be supported simply on the basis that it shows a lot of ambition and good ideas, while never forgetting to remain entertaining.

Welcome to New York (2014)

Mr. Devereaux is a powerful man. A man who handles billions of dollars every day. A man who controls the economic fate of nations. A man driven by a frenzied and unbridled sexual hunger. A man who dreamed of saving the world and who cannot save himself. A terrified man. A lost man.

Director:

 Abel Ferrara

Writers:

 Abel Ferrara (screenplay), Christ Zois(screenplay)

Stars:

 Jacqueline Bisset, Gérard Depardieu, Drena De Niro| See full cast and crew »

Is that the best actor in France? Really? Can some surgeon put him out of his misery? This was awful. Ferrara forgot to hire writers. The acting is pathetic. Dialogues wouldn't even make an episode of a 1980's cop show. I feel sorry for French people that this was presented to the world at the Cannes Festival.

Depardieu is a sick man, it's become obvious he needs help. Besides his physical appearance, for a man who was beautiful 20 years ago, there is the problem of his acting, and what emotions he conveys. There is none. He has zero charisma left. He's lost his mojo somewhere in the 1990s. I think Louis CK would have done a better job. Heck, I think Schwarzenegger would have done a better job.

Tammy (2014)

After losing her job and learning that her husband has been unfaithful, a woman hits the road with her profane, hard-drinking grandmother.

Director:

 Ben Falcone

Writers:

 Melissa McCarthy, Ben Falcone

Stars:

 Melissa McCarthy, Susan Sarandon, Kathy Bates |See full cast and crew »

Tammy, who was recently fired from a Topper Jack's fast food restaurant, returns home only to find her husband enjoying a romantic meal with the neighbor. She quickly packs her necessities, and travels down three houses to her parent's home. Upon denied use of her mom's car to drive to Niagara Falls, she quickly resorts to an "ailing" grandmother, who also lives in the home...Only instead of traveling alone, Grandma Pearl wants in on the road trip. After realizing Grandma Pearl has the funds, they hit the road. Pearl soon proves to be quite the alcoholic despite her diabetes, and Tammy quickly turns into the "baby-sitter." From finding love in a bar to robbing a Topper Jack's in order to bail Pearl out of jail,the quirky adventure will have you finding yourself riding along for the misadventures of Tammy.

It's films like these that make me ask 'Why do directors/producers/writers try and fill comedies with sentimental claptrap?'If they want to make a comedy they should make something funny. If they want to make a tear-jerking drama about a granddaughter struggling with her lifelong string of failures and her grandmother's alcoholism then they should release all the stops and make something truly tragic.

Tammy tries to do both and therefore fails twice.

Melissa McCarthy is a hilarious actor and there are moments of brilliance in this film however they are separated by long periods of sentimentality for which i did not sign up.

I hope her next film is a bigger success.

Twelve Monkeys (1995)

In a future world devastated by disease, a convict is sent back in time to gather information about the man-made virus that wiped out most of the human population on the planet.

Director:

 Terry Gilliam

Writers:

 Chris Marker (film La Jetée), David Webb Peoples(screenplay), 1 more credit »

Stars:

 Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt |See full cast and crew »

An unknown and lethal virus has wiped out five billion people in 1996. Only 1% of the population has survived by the year 2035, and is forced to live underground. A convict (James Cole) reluctantly volunteers to be sent back in time to 1996 to gather information about the origin of the epidemic (who he's told was spread by a mysterious "Army of the Twelve Monkeys") and locate the virus before it mutates so that scientists can study it. Unfortunately Cole is mistakenly sent to 1990, six years earlier than expected, and is arrested and locked up in a mental institution, where he meets Dr. Kathryn Railly, a psychiatrist, and Jeffrey Goines, the insane son of a famous scientist and virus expert.

Terry Gilliam's fantastic, twisted story of a virus destroying all but a handful of people across the Earth and forcing them to move underground and the man sent back in time to gather information about it is a fantastic, dizzying, and highly stylized film that boasts Bruce Willis' best performance ever.

What sets 12 Monkeys apart from most time-travel sci-fi movies is that Bruce Willis character actually deals with what the psychological effects of time-travel, that is, not knowing what reality is actual reality: the place that the time-traveler comes from or goes to. Also, the film recognizes that things that have past cannot be altered and that the prevention of a cataclysmic event, in this case the release of said virus, cannot be stopped or changed. As Willis asserts "It's already happened," while he's in a mental hospital, the major dilemma the film trudges into is not a trite, overdone plot to save the world; instead it's Willis' inner struggle to simply survive himself. It's a fresh, innovative concept, and it works beautifully thanks to a tautly written script by Peoples and Gilliam's unique brand of dementia.

Besides this, 12 Monkey's storytelling is totally non-linear and instead opts to distort and bend the way the story is told skillfully incorporating a bevy of different time sequences: flashbacks, dreams, memories, the present, the past, the future, and even a scene that is lifted out of Hitchcock's Vertigo. All serve to envelop the viewer into its disturbing cacophony of madness and futility.

Visually, Gilliam is a master of desolate umbrage and shadow rivalling Tim Burton in his strikingly despondent scenery and imagery. With cold, wide, and immersing cinematography, Gilliam plunges into the colorless surroundings and darkness of his characters. The scenes are often bathed in a strangely antiseptic, dead white and help serve as a contrast to the often veering-on-madness characters.

Performance-wise, Brad Pitt steals most scenes, filling them with a patented loony, off-the-wall performance that deservedly garnered him an Oscar nomination. As mentioned, Bruce Willis gives the best performance of his career, not reverting to his heroic cliches and cardboard hero and instead portraying Cole as a simple, poignant, tragic everyman. Equally good is Madeline Stowe as Willis' psychologist. She holds her own, injecting her character with both wild energy and strength as she collapses under the weight of what she comes to believe is a false 'religion.'

Gilliam's expert, overwhelming, and complex handling of what could have been a routine action/sci-fi film makes 12 Monkeys a compelling vision of a nightmarish, futuristic landscape. Its rich, well-thought out, intricate storyline along with bravura performances from the entire cast and its brooding, bleak cinematography make it a masterpiece of madness. Ranking in my top 10 of all time, 12 Monkeys is a darkly lavish spectacle of a film brimming with brilliance.