K's reviews

It was pretty predictable yeah. But not to Landa, which makes it funny. We know what he's got coming to him, but he doesn't, like you said
Four rooms was a wierd flick. The rooms didn't have much relation to each other which made it booring to watch for me. And what's with putting it in a Bruce Willis box set and then he's only in it for the last 15 minutes?

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The Freedom Roads

The Boondock Saints: All Saints Day



Ten years after the beloved, vigilante cult classic, The Boondock Saints, its sequel finally hit theaters. Not that anyone was expecting a continuation of what now looks like a potential series, since director Troy Duffy wasn’t in the best light with Hollywood financial types and since the first movie didn’t exactly sped towards a sequel. Its comedic release and a big chunk of the movies personality was killed off in the final act and the movie ended with a montage of opinions from the man on the street thus putting the movie to a visible, though not definitive, full stop.

Regardless, The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day sets out in the homeland of Ireland, where the MacManus brothers (Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus) have retired, along with their father Noah (Billy Connoly), and are now working on a sheep farm, leading simple, murder free lives of hard work and solitude. Tolkien wrote that tales of peace, though pleasant, are not all that interesting and the MacManus brothers are soon forced into action as the news of a murdered priest, “a good man”, reach them. The murder was staged to look like the work of the Saints, complete with two shots to the head, arms crossed and coins placed over the victims’ eyes.
“Someone’s trying to call them out. You kill a priest. In a church. And make it look like it was them. Bring them back with a vengeance. Someone thinks it’s really clever. Only one problem with this little plan... It worked.”

The brothers are off to Boston, where they are joined by a few additional characters but also a surprising amount of familiar faces. Amongst the former we find Romeo (Clifton Collins Jr.), a feisty yet self-conscious Mexican and Special Agent Eunice Bloom (Julie Benz), the prodigy of Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe). It is difficult to decide who of these actors have the biggest shoes to fill. Is it the replacement of the funniest character from the first movie or the replacement of, well, Willem Dafoe? Difficult as that may be it is almost depressingly easy to immediately deduce who nearly pulls it off and who decidedly falls short.
Clifton Collins Jr. brings his own energy as he teams up with the Saints, much like David Della Rocco did in the first installment. Diehard fans will miss Rocco’s unique comedy but still find small comfort and a fair number of laughs in Collin’s attempt.
However, people expecting the same kind of brilliance as Willem Dafoe’s will be immensely disappointed with Julie Benz’s performance. It is clear that director Troy Duffy wanted to bring the same kind of punch he did with Dafoe but a questionable (at best) and catastrophic (at worst) casting error resulted in a two dimensional character with an unconvincing, outright laughable southern accent slapped on top.

But why should one compare these characters? Because they are obvious replacements of their predecessors and attempt to fulfill the exact same roles. The same kind of thing occurs with various scenes in the movie. The prank scene, the black and white documentary like montage, the death of a dear friend scene, the scene that sets up the federal agent and the armory scene are all in this sequel as well. But since these are obviously copied from the first movie they don’t pack the same amount of punch anymore.
And herein lays the core problem with The Boondock Saints: All Saints Day; it desperately attempts to be the original, so much so that it comes off as formulaic, bland and even cowardice.

Until the last part of the movie.

One of the aforementioned familiar faces unexpectedly swoops in and with a well-written, well-acted rant that does the character justice and then some, launches the movie into welcomed, unfamiliar territory. With this rant Troy Duffy proves that he can do fan service the right way instead of just slightly editing scenes and characters from a movie that came out ten years ago, in essence plagiarizing his own work. Regardless the plot gains momentum from here on out with well paced action beats that climaxes nicely and fades out even better, leaving the audience with a highly intriguing plot for a third installment.

One wonders why the quality and originality of these last twenty minutes couldn’t have infused the rest of the film. One wonders why we have to gawk at unfortunate eye tuck jobs instead of having allowed the Saints to grow old and battle worn. One wonders why we have to sit through the same predictable plot for a sizeable portion of the movie, yawning and snickering at obvious, inferior replacements of previously well done characters.

All Saints Day is a mixed affaire. Performances are all over the map and the writing spans from original and funny to unoriginal and laughable, yet somehow it still manages to make any fan of the first film crave seeing a third.

Hey KK, have you seen the documentary Overnight?

No but I've heard of it. Thanks for reminding me, I forgot I wanted to watch that.

By the way - read the review, take the quiz.

Here we go! It's been too long.

Rango Review




Having spent the entirety of his life behind glass walls Lars is a bit strange. Having known no social contact either, except his inanimate friends (or “cast members”), he has developed a set of characters rather than an actual personality. But when the scenes end and the delusion shatter he is left in a horrible moment of clarity and sanity. Looking out at a world he can only observe a horrible question pops into his mind - Who am I?
And then the car crashes. He is thrown from the comfort of his self-made paradigm and lands on a road in the middle of the Mojave Desert. In the real world, where he’s the only lizard who can’t fade and the only one who doesn’t know to hide at the shadow of a Hawke. Where the animals have had millions of years to adapt to the harsh environment… but the lizard? He’s going to die, said the Mariachi.
Lars meets a semi flattened armadillo who guides him to the nearest town on a quest for water. The town of Dust is a place of great corruption, an even greater drought and home to a tough bunch of characters. And Lars the lizard doesn’t blend in, which becomes painfully clear the second he enters the local saloon. Until it occurs to him that he can be anyone he wants. And he becomes Rango.
Rango, who killed seven men with one bullet. Who’s from the far west, beyond the sunset, where they kill a man before breakfast just to work up an appetite. Lars, on the other hand, isn’t. But touched by either dumb luck or divine fate he convinces the townsfolk that he is in fact a living legend. He becomes the town sheriff and gets involved in an intricate investigation to find out what happened to the town’s water supply.

Rango is everything Lars thinks a legendary cowboy should be. Having the mind of an actor Lars creates a caricature in excess and assumes that role with matching confidence. But it’s always clear to the audience that Lars doesn’t know what he’s doing. He relies on false confidence and bravado while desperately praying not to get eaten or found out. Brilliantly voiced by Johnny Depp the character is convincing as both Lars and Rango.

Animated features and westerns don’t usually blend but Rango pulls it off in an interesting way. It doesn’t sacrifice the gritty realities of the old west or even the heavy accents (that are extremely well done) but opts to be honest without being too violent. People died in the old west and the film doesn’t try to conceal this fact but kills its characters off in less graphical ways, like drowning or, well, smushing.
The animations and characters are great but not something you would expect from Nickelodeon at all. One rabbit has got an arrow stuck in his eye and several lizard characters might be frightening to some kids, with their yellow eyes, pointy teeth and realistically scaled skin. But the characters that are supposed to be the good guys aren’t evil or immoral but rather eccentric and varied. They’re the kind of characters you would expect in a western, with a few silly ones thrown in the mix to keep it fun.

Animated movies have always tried to keep it interesting for the kids and their parents alike but some might say that Rango went overboard trying to please the parents. Rango is packed with grown-up jokes and references to movies like Fear and Loathing and Apocalypse Now. These are films kids shouldn’t be watching and you can easily assume that they’re not going to get it. The question then becomes whether these adult gags occur too often and too visibly to make the whole thing boring to a ten year old.
The film still tells a heroic story about sacrifice, friendship and that you can be anything you want to be. But beware that it does so tongue-in-cheek and honestly.

Rango’s themes are surprisingly mature and emits in part from an existential crisis, which might sound a bit too heavy for kids to enjoy. But the honest message stands true. Sometimes you gotta sack up and be a hero.

Dig the review. I like the observation you sort of touched on (intentionally?) that he doesn't blend in literally or figuratively.

And yeah, huge swaths of the film feel too heavy for children, but mainly in superficial ways. I tend to prefer family films that challenge kids philosophically, but some of the language and execution were iffy for younger moviegoers. I can see some of those scenes genuinely scaring some kids.

Thanks buddy! Aye that was intentional. It seemed a bit weird to ignore the irony.

I watched an interview with Depp and he said that it was great to be able to bring a bit of Hunter Thompson to the character, which is cool and all but not really suitable for this kind of movie.
It's not really the language that worries me. Sure it's controversial and all but another thing I left out is the film's tendency to break the fourth wall and otherwise reveal the wheels that turn during the writing process. "Victor you were right! I have been undefined. The hero cannot exist within a vacuum. What our story needs is an ironic, unexpected event that will propel the hero into conflict! And then the car crashes. Personally I love it when writers have the nerve to do this but it's something that would probably only confuse a young audience. Another thing was the huge eye that opened during the underground part of the movie. There's all sorts of stuff I could read into that but a child might sit there and wait for the giant to arrive during the rest of the movie.

Yeah, I really liked that moment. The first 25 minutes are probably among the best. I can take or leave some of the other stuff. But, like you, I really loved the gritty look and feel. The character designs were fantastic. Finally, talking animals that look a lot like actual animals.

Aye! Would you have preferred (like me) if this wasn't meant to be a kid's movie at all? What ended up bugging me the most was those silly characters that were obviously only there to get a laugh out of the children. And I know that's unfair and that this movie isn't really made for me. But they tried really hard to get me to think so and I would've loved if they had just went with it.

Yeah, I kind of feel like it'd have worked better if they'd embraced the fact that it was going to be borderline PG-13 in places.

Yeah...

Oh and Timothy Olyphant is in it too! Great cameo.

He was so good I thought he was actually you-know-who for a minute.

I totally did too!

Aw, I liked those silly characters. They got a laugh out of me.

I don't have children nor am I around them very much, (although sometimes I think I should have one just to justify my love of animated movies ) so I don't know what they would think of the movie, but I loved it. Probably as much as most of what Pixar has done and that's saying a lot.

Great review, Kasper!

Nice review Thanks

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