Body of Lies

So I think this is going to be the second review of the day about a movie that I think probably should have been a television series instead. However, unlike Valerian, I can say I actually really enjoy this movie.

Body of Lies is a film that was released in 2008. I always try and put movies in context of the year they were made if I can and it shouldn't be surprising that this movie came out a year after The Bourne Ultimatum. At the time, that Bourne film was thought to be the last one and Warner Brothers, probably aware of that, wanted to release a gritty war movie like The Hurt Locker that was released earlier that year as well as a spy movie to fill the void some people had from the end of the Bourne trilogy.

Body of Lies follows the story of CIA case officer Roger Ferris (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) and his mission to track down a terrorist by the name of Al-Saleem (played by Alon Abutbul).

His work with the CIA takes him from Iraq, to Jordan, to Syria, all while receiving support, both good and bad support, from his boss back in the states, Ed Hoffman (played by Russell Crowe). That's the basic overview of the film because the truth is, a lot of stuff happens in this film.

Ferris starts with an intelligence gathering mission in Iraq with his informant played by early Oscar Isaacs, and then he goes to Jordan and works with Jordanian intelligence and their ruthless but cunning leader (played by Mark Strong). Along the way he develops a relationship with a Iranian woman named Aisha (played by Golshifteh Farahani). He develops a deep cover operation to root out this terrorist leader and his group.  It all feels very episodic... which again makes me think that this movie would probably be better as a mini series or a television show.

We have so many television shows being made off of movies that didn't really lend itself to being a television show. Taken is a great example of this where they had to turn it into a prequel to make an episodic format. Body of Lies truly does lend itself to the episodic TV format and I'm kind of surprised nobody has suggested it be made into a television show in the same vein of Homeland.

Hell I would love to even see it star Leonardo DiCaprio but I highly doubt that would happen. On the other hand we have mini series and television shows starring people like Nicole Kidman and Anthony Hopkins so nothing is outside the realm of possibility.

I would love that because everyone in this cast really does a great job creating this gritty and exciting espionage thriller.

A little bit more context on the film, this movie came out in a time where we were in the midst of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This same year Barrack Obama was campaigning on ending the war in Iraq and while there was definitely fatigue and political commentary to be made on the war, Hollywood still couldn't resist making entertaining cinema surrounding the war on terror.

There's a little bit of commentary on the war in Iraq that is up front, but the thing I like more is the contrast between the characters of Ferris and Hoffman. Ferris represents the rational approach to these conflicts and the good intention that I think a lot of people did/do have towards the war on terror, to find and punish those who would go and hurt innocent people. Hoffman on the other hand is very much the flipside of the same coin where he has that same goal, but he's more interested in American interests, seeing the people of the Middle East as inhuman, and launching an American conquest to fight and win this war. The relationship between these two, as well as their collective and individual relationships with Mark Strong's character makes for a really intense and intriguing spy thriller.

But I think the problems with this movie comes in the movie Warner Brothers wanted it to be in the context of 2008.

On one hand Warner Brothers was posing this movie to be an Oscar contender like The Hurt Locker with great performances from Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, and Mark Strong. It had interesting ideas about our situation in the Middle East, and it was gritty and realistic.

On the other hand it was trying to be the next spy action thriller like The Bourne Ultimatum with the high intensity action and gritty realism that would make you question if this was realistic or not. I just think Ridley Scott got his wires crossed a little bit in the movie he was trying to make.

And I like Ridley Scott. I think he's made some bad movies for sure and those seem to make people diminish his really good movies and overlook his flawed yet still decent films. I think Body of Lies falls into that category. I don't think Body of Lies is Gladiator, The Martian, or Blade Runner good, but it definitely is better than I think people give it and other marginal movies Ridley Scott does enough credit.

There are flaws for sure. The movie is a little disjointed in both its theme and its episodic nature, the romance in the movie seems a little bit forced at times, and it's probably selling you the idea that its realistic when I know for a fact it isn't.

If you want a good example of what this movie could be compared to, think of 13 Hours. 

Both movies have a really interesting international espionage premise that would make for either a really great action movie, or a really real drama. Instead of choosing one or the other, the director decides to go somewhere in the middle to try and achieve both objectives. You definitely see the points where the movie could have been a solid action movie and you definitely see the points where it could have been an Oscar contending war movie. But because it does both trying to succeed in both categories, it kind of fails in both.

Now I think that Ridley Scott got closer to that lofty goal in Body of Lies than Michael Bay did with 13 Hours, which is strange because 13 Hours lends itself more to a gritty war drama because its based on real events as opposed to Body of Lies which is based off of a fiction novel, but it still stands that they're very similar.

Another example of this is the 2018 film 12 Strong.

In my opinion, you have to choose which movie you want to create and what your end goal is before you make it. Accept that if you choose one or the other, you're going to get criticism by people who wanted to be the opposite of what you chose, but that's better than getting criticism from both sides when you don't meet either goal.

But those are my thoughts on Body of Lies. It's on Netflix now so I do recommend you still check it out. But have you seen it? What did you think? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks and see you next time.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

I don't really know how to start on Valerian because even if I had heard that the movie was good when it came out, I don't really have much of a connection or interest in this property. Apparently it's based off of a french comic book series that started in the 60s that looks like its in the vein of Flash Gordon (if I'm wrong about that feel free to call me out on that), but there wasn't really anything about this film that sparked any interest in going to see it in the theaters.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets takes place in the 28th century. There is a really cool montage in the opening credits of the International Space Station being added onto by different nations and later alien races. This eventually creates the space traveling city of Alpha. If you've ever played Mass Effect, just think of The Citadel and you're good. That provides our setting. The main characters of the story are two space cops by the name of Valerian (played by Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (played by Cara Delevingne).

The main plot of the story follows these two as they acquire a little creature tied to an ancient alien race as well as their mission to rescue the representative of the human race on this space city (played by Clive Owen) when he is captured. However, the story takes a lot of weird twists and turns and you can tell that the main purpose of the movie is not so much to tell a really cohesive story, but rather to show off the gorgeous CGI landscape and CGI characters.

And don't get me wrong, I think the visuals in this movie are actually pretty good. I think the only minor regret of not seeing this movie in the theaters is that this is a very expansive and visually beautiful movie and it probably would be cool to see on a big screen. However, I can't say that regret is really salient because the story is so convoluted and detoured by smaller side quests that these two go on.

The biggest take away I took from this movie was that this story would actually be really interesting as a mini series or full on television show. The story is so fragmented. At the beginning they spend a good amount of time on this planet that has a giant virtual reality world that is a real world... somewhere and the physics of that don't always compute, but then they go to Alpha, and that districts that you could spend an entire episode or two on. I think you would definitely have to change the two leads (don't worry I'll get to that) and you would have a really interesting set up for a television show where the limits to what they could do are really only writers imaginations.

And especially with the creatures and aliens that are shown in this movie, there's really no limit to the challenges that these two could face.

Like I said, the opening montage of all these people and aliens forming together to create the station of Alpha really opens up a whole world that I'm sure was explored in the comic series. I don't want to knock it until I've read it but if certain elements of the movie is any indication of wide universe this comic series created, I totally understand why people wanted to bring this to the big screen.

But the movie just has too many issues and gets distracted too much to really create a cohesive story. It's also blundered by its two main actors.

I always feel the need to put the disclaimer before I trash a performance and note that, these two people are probably great people, I have nothing against them personally, I'm sure they've done a lot of hard work to get where they are today... However...

Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne were really, REALLY not the right choices for this film. I can't speak to if they fit into the characters set up from the comic, but just in their performance, they were bland, looked uninterested, and just aren't strong enough actors to head up the epic that this movie toted itself to be.

I really only know Dane Dehaan from The Amazing Spider-man 2 and he was fine in that movie. I have not seen Chronicle, I've heard he's good in that. But here he always looks tired, he looks like a teenager instead of a war wary Major, and all his character traits are told to us, not shown.

And Cara Delevingne. Oh boy. I thought that her performance in Suicide Squad was just an outlier and maybe there's some talent there, but at this moment and in this movie, there is not. We're hearing a lot of stories about people coming from different forms of art like the Rock and wrestling to acting and working really hard to get to a point where they're entertaining, but Cara is still in that process. She used to be a model and don't get me wrong, she is VERY attractive, but she can't act. She looked bored a lot, she couldn't hold an emotion, and everything about the performance just seemed wrong.

Now to be somewhat fair to these two, their parts weren't written that well to begin with. I've mentioned how the story gets detoured by multiple side quests and "world building" tours but the bigger issue is that their relationship and a lot of the movie is explained in exposition and not a whole lot is shown to a point to get to me care too much about the world I'm in.

For example, when we first meet Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne's characters, they're on their ship. We get a vague understanding that they have a romantic relationship but she's not convinced he's serious because he's had a past of sleeping around. We figure that out because Delevingne's character tells us exactly what kind of person DeHaan's character is. We sort of see it later when he goes to a strip club... sorta (don't worry I'll talk about that in a second). But the information comes from her telling us that, not seeing it in action. Show don't tell movie.

But more importantly, the main pitch of this movie from the trailers was that you will be going into an expansive and visually beautiful world. You'll see aliens, you'll see good environments, its gonna be awesome. And while we do see it, the only real exposure to it is when they're flying into Alpha for the first time (their home) and they get an overview from their ship. The ship explains that Alpha has all these different species and environments and we never really get to explore them except when its very briefly.

The movie feels more like a visual and audio encyclopedia rather than an adventure because we get exposition from side characters telling us about the history and habits of environments and creatures we see rather than us figuring it out as these two go along on their adventure where they are already aware that their environment is different.

As I said, this would be a phenomenal television show as you would be able to explore different parts of the world and experience them rather than Dane DeHaan literally running through every environment really quickly in what is a really cool montage, but does nothing for the progression of the story.

And then there's Rihanna.

Rihanna adds absolutely nothing to this plot. She has two contributions to the film. 1. She does a "stripping" dance (this movie is PG-13 so its not nearly as exciting as you think it is) that literally stops the movie dead in its tracks, and 2. She is Rihanna, it's another big name to add to the credits (and now that I'm thinking about it, she's also one of the only persons of color in the movie besides Herbie Hancock).

The movie could have been done without her, I don't know why she's in the movie.

Overall, this movie is just strange. I think there is a lot of potential in a film like this and I'm always for something that just goes out of its way to be weird and different, but it needs to make sense. It also needs to have good performances and writing behind it and Valerian didn't have either. Yes it was visually pretty but it's been a couple days since I've watched it and it really hasn't had the impression that I think it was going for. Like I said, I'd be all for a television show on this, but I imagine the production costs would be way too high. I don't know if we'll see any form of Valerian adaptations in the future.

But what did you think? Did you like this film? What did you like about? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks, and see you next time!

A Series of Unfortunate Events Season 2

So last year I did a review of the first season of A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix. Overall, I think I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the show and while there were definite issues to be had with the show, I was impressed with how passionate about the role of Count Olaf Neil Patrick Harris was and just how creative the atmosphere of the show was.

Well the new season came out last week and I took some time to re-watch the first season and then got onto the second season. I think I still have the same outlook on the first season that I did a year ago, but I think a lot of the nuanced parts of the first season lost their flare upon the second viewing and while I still enjoy the first season (quite a bit more than the second), I think a sober look on the season didn't exactly give me a great starting point for the second season.

Something I'll restate about these stories that I mentioned in my season 1 review is that I read the first book of the series and that's it. I have no inkling on what book was the most popular (because I'm having trouble finding the individual sales of each book) or which book is considered the best because every list I've gotten has been wildly different. I find it interesting that the fans of this series probably take different things out of each book than others, making me kind of want to go and read the entire series now. I won't, not anytime soon anyway, but it intrigues me.

But regardless while the majority of the first season was mostly unfamiliar to me, I at least had the first book I was familiar with and the 2004 movie to compare at least the first 6 episodes to something. This season was totally uncharted territory and I am starting to get a little bit of an idea of the style that Daniel Handler (AKA Lemony Snicket) had in his books, but we'll get to that in a little bit.

Season 2 of A Series of Unfortunate Events finds The Baudelaires, Violet, Klaus and Sunny (played by Malina Weissman, Louis Hynes, and Presley Smith respectively) where they were left at the end of the first season, waiting to be enrolled in the "Austere Academy" Prufrock Preparatory School. But Prufrock is just one of many wacky locations that the Baudelaires find themselves in over the course of the season to include a lavish mansion owned by Tony Hale (oh I'll get to him), a "Vile Village" in the middle of the desert, a "Hostile Hospital" and a "Carnivorous Carnival", all while desperately trying to avoid the evil schemes to kill them and steal their family fortune, perpetrated by the vile Count Olaf (played by Neil Patrick Harris).

 And once again, Neil Patrick Harris is having WAY too much fun with this role. Harris is playing up this role so much that at this point it almost highlights how other people aren't playing it up as much as he is. Some are trying, like his henchmen, Nathan Fillion (I'll get to him), some other characters, but Harris feels really comfortable at this point where others aren't exactly as comfortable, aren't committing as much, or just aren't written in a way to keep up with him.

Just like the first season, Patrick Warburton plays Lemony Snicket, the omnipresent narrator who claims it is his civil duty to tell us the unfortunate events surrounding the Baudelaire children.

So it sounds like they're doing very much the same thing that they did in the first season right? It should be as entertaining as the first season right? So why could I rarely stay awake, at least for the first four episodes and just didn't feel as entertained by this season as the first?

Well a huge issue are the main characters themselves, The Baudelaire children.

Now listen, I mentioned in the first season that these kids were not that great of actors. They have a lot of wooden delivery and they're supposed to really be the straightest played characters. But it is just a little bit painful watching these kids try to act because they never really feel comfortable getting emotional or angry, or anything. They're very good at delivering deadpan lines for the kind of absurdist intellectual humor that goes with the theme, but a whole subplot of this season is to save their friends they meet at the school they go to. Now this is a conflict, they care about these other kids and want to save them. But these kids never really have a different expression on their face and they're not really well written either. I think for the first season I could forgive it because I was entertained by the characters Harris was playing as well as the fun actors they got for other roles, but that doesn't really happen in this season.

Oh and their friends, the Quagmires (played by Dylan Wingwell and Avi Lake) are super bland and just white bread kids. There's nothing distinguishable about them and could have been played by big planks of wood.

And you really need more interesting and compelling actors playing important roles like the Baudelaires and the Quagmires when they're on screen 90% of the time. Especially in a format like this where the story feels like it's on repeat now.

The show now starts to get into a very predictable formula. The kids go to a new location. They're put under the care of a nice but either ignorant or misguided person. Count Olaf shows up, puts on a costume and nobody believes it's Count Olaf even when the kids insist it is. Shenanigans happen, Count Olaf's plot is foiled, kids escape. Rinse and repeat.

I get that that happens in the book and Netflix is just adapting something that somebody else wrote, but with the exception of some additions of characters, some of whom are interesting, some of whom are not, when the show follows a similar formula over and over again, it gets tedious and little boring at times.

Now there is an underlying plot of the Baudelaires trying to figure out their parent's history and the mystery surrounding their parents, the people they've met, and Count Olaf, but they don't exactly answer any of those questions in any kind of digestible or intelligible way. It would have been better to have small answers to the questions as opposed to an information drop in the last episode that was already information we already could deduce just from the structure of the story.

And speaking of the backstory, let's talk about some of the background characters, especially the mysterious VFD.

So we finally get the name of the secret organization that the Baudelaire's parent's were apart of called VFD. A lot of that information is brought to us by Jacque Snicket (played by Nathan Fillion).

Now this is an area I wish I had read the books for but I am pretty sure that the adventures of Nathan Fillion and the random librarian they run across as the school (played by Sara Rue was not in the book. I'm sure they were characters in the books but I don't think the story diverted to them having cooky spy adventures. Which is problematic because the truth is, these two do absolutely nothing in this season. They're goal is to help the Baudelaires escape from the clutches of Count Olaf but while logic would dictate they could just swoop in, grab the children and bring them to safety, that can't happen because that didn't happen in the book.

And it's not just these characters, it's everyone in the secret organization who is good. Everyone from Larry the Waitor (played by Patrick Breen) to Jacquelyn (played by Sara Canning) are horrendous at their jobs and do absolutely nothing to help the Baudelaires.

In the first season, the story diverted to follow Will Arnett and Colbie Smulders. Now these two were really a red herring and weren't really connected to the story of the Baudelaires at all but they at least seemed capable and good at their jobs. Everyone the Baudelaires come across with this secret organization is horrible at their job and are no help whatsoever.

The only person who really seemed to be helpful at all was actually portrayed as a pointless and useless character, Jerome Squaller (played by Tony Hale)

I guess this is a spoiler but there's a scene in the show where Tony Hale survived Count Olaf's plot, unlike a lot of the people who were the Baudelaire's guardians in the past. He's this wealthy dude who just wants to take care of the children in his mansion. He tells the children to come with him and let the police go after Count Olaf. This is a super nice guy offering these kids to live in his mansion with him. Yes, the Baudelaires have to save their friends but there's no way they couldn't convince this guy to use his wealth to help them search for their friends... and so the Baudelaires go and live in the desert...

Which draws me to a conclusion that I feel I might get some shit for. I don't think these books were really well written.

And yes, I understand these books are children's stories and they're absurd and they don't exactly exist in the realm of reality that would allow Neil Patrick Harris to continuously dress up in different costumes and expect people not to recognize him. But even the most absurd universes have rules and this season doesn't really follow those rules.

Nobody can recognize Count Olaf in his disguise but Count Olaf can immediately recognize the Baudelaire children in their disguises. This secret organization really wants to help the Baudelaire children but they send Larry the Waitor to save them when he has failed multiple times already. Tony Hale is a super rad guardian who just wants to take care of the kids of his friends and the Baudelaires turn down his guardianship.  I get that the story needs to continue but when you're adhering to the fact that there is another episode we need to get to instead of logical story progression and choices, that's when things start to suffer.

This review has been mostly negative because the truth is a lot of the stuff I liked about the first season is still in the second season. I wasn't a huge fan of the first, second, and third set of episodes but "The Hostile Hospital" and "The Carnivorous Carnival" were actually pretty fun episodes with a lot of creepy imagery. Those were also the episodes where you actually start to figure out more information about the VFD and more importantly, didn't revolve around the Baudelaires trying to find the boring as hell Quagmires.

I think the more absurd a role is in this show, the more entertaining it is and the more fun the actor had with it. Harris, Lucy Punch, Nathan Fillion, even Robbie Amell has a small role that I was a lot funnier than I originally thought, were all pretty good in this show. Looking back, Aasif Mandvi, Alfre Woodard, and Catherine O'Hara played up their roles excellently and were really entertaining.

In season two I can really only point to Tony Hale and the previous people mentioned as roles that stood out to me.

Also...

Somebody is really pushing for this show to be a musical in the same vein as Dr. Horrible's Sing A Long Blog. In the first season the songs were scarce enough for it to just be entertaining enough but not distracting. In this season it seems like they felt like they were wasting the opportunity to have Neil Patrick Harris sing if they didn't add a couple musical numbers.

Listen Neil, you're talented. I love seeing and hearing you dance and sing. But I don't need it. You're a talented actor and you seem to be having a lot of fun in this role. The songs, while fun (especially the circus song) just felt a little bit shoehorned in. If you want to do a dark musical like Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, here's an idea, maybe do a sequel to that!

Do I still recommend A Series of Unfortunate Events? Well at this point I'm committed, and have already gone 18 episodes in. It would be kind of silly of me not to check out the third (and I really hope last season). But the formula is losing it's charm on me and the show is starting to feel tedious. Again, I recommend going back to my season 1 review because a lot of the things I liked about this season were present in the first season, like the creative atmosphere and some of the humor. But I didn't really feel like the second season was as strong as the first.

I need to find somebody who read the books and have a discussion about the format of these books and ask if it ever felt tedious like the show is. I would also have other questions but maybe I'll answer those questions with season 3.

But those are my thoughts on A Series of Unfortunate Events Season 2. What did you think? How does it compare to the books? Is there just a huge secret community of people who love A Series of Unfortunate Events that I just haven't run across? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films or TV shows I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie and TV reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. This is obviously a passion project for Neil Patrick Harris but I'm actually really looking forward to him doing something else. I mean this guy is always just a talent. Enjoy!

Sneaky Pete Season 1

John Oliver said it best that Amazon Prime has so much money that they are able to create a lot of original series on their streaming service and not too many people have heard of much less seen. How else do you explain the existence of the show Goliath, a show nobody has ever seen. NOBODY. 

But I have decided to venture into Amazon Prime from time to time mainly when there is a lot of hype over the show, or if I'm really, REALLY bored. This is what got me through the first season of the well performed but really slow Man in the High Castle. And it was a very similar situation that brought me to Sneaky Pete. It was a show that I started to see advertisement for online, it was starting to gain some popularity, and most of all, I figured out that Bryan Cranston was in it. I was sold.

Sneaky Pete follows the story of a con man by the name of Marius Josipovic (played by Giovanni Ribisi). He's been in prison for the past three years and he's just about to get out. The entire time he's been listening to his cell mate, a man by the name of Pete Murphy (played by Ethan Embry) tell him stories about his childhood in Bridgeport Connecticut with his grandparents.

Marius doesn't pay a whole lot of attention to them until he's about to be released and he is tipped off that a gangster by the name of Vince Lonigan (played by Bryan Cranston) is looking for him and he believes that Marius owes him one hundred thousand dollars. He expects to get that money or he is going to start to take it out on Marius's brother Eddie (played by Michael Drayer) who works in his underground casino.

Thinking quickly, Marius skips town and goes to Bridgeport Connecticut, takes on his cell mate's identity of Pete Murphy and goes to visit his grandparents.

Otto and Audrey Bernhardt (played by Peter Gerety and Margo Martindale) own a bail bond business with their granddaughter and Pete's cousin Julia Bowman (played by Marin Ireland). Marius also runs into Pete's other cousins Taylor (played by Shane Mcrae) a local cop in Bridgeport, and Carly (played by Libe Barer) a sixteen year old high school student.

The family is a mixture of skeptical and overjoyed to have their long lost cousin come and visit, all the while Marius is concocting a plan to get Vince his money back, but also pull a con for one last big score.

So at first the premise of this show is a little bit difficult to pin down. On one hand it's pretty simple, it's about a con man who is pretending to be his cell mate once he gets out of prison, but then a lot of things happen and there are a lot of moving parts, so much that you're never really sure where the show is going at certain points.

Near the end of the first episode, you kind of get the feeling that Marius is just going to be doing Bail Bond assignments with Julia and the family for the entire season, but that really doesn't happen. So just a warning, that's not the premise of the show.

The first season of the show really takes place over the course of a week that Vince give Marius to get the money to save his brother. And when I say it takes place over a week, it's almost in real time how sequential things happen. Sometimes watching this show without binge watching it can get confusing. A lot of TV shows give the impression that some time or days have past but Sneaky Pete really moves one day or two at a time

The way the show is structured is both good and bad. On one hand it feels very unique and it's not gimmick-y. They weren't setting out to make a show about the bail bond business or just a straight up con man show (although that is a big part of the show), they made it more about the characters and the things they do when they're backs are against the wall. The show has a very similar feel and atmosphere as Breaking Bad. While the premise of Breaking Bad is about a high school teacher who gets cancer and ends up cooking meth, individual episodes rarely have Walter White cooking meth. They're about the characters and their struggles. And that's what Sneaky Pete is.

The downside is that there is A LOT going on in this show. Every single character has their own storyline and while they all converge near the end, there are a couple that drag a little bit and/or just aren't as interesting as the main story. The show doesn't feel very streamlined despite being closed to a single week in this guys life.

That being said, I will say the performances from everyone are pretty good. Giovanni Ribisi is a bit of an acquired taste. He's always played a supporting or side villain role that it's definitely a change of pace seeing him lead a ten episode series. I think he does a good job but again, I think he's an acquired taste and if you don't give him enough time, you probably won't like him.

The family and the other members of the cast also are good actors. I would say the people who really stand out are the grandparents. Otto Bernhardt, the grandfather, is an especially tragic character as he recently suffered a stroke and it has caused a rift in his and Audrey's marriage. And Audrey is such a complex character that it's just entertaining all around. At first you think she's your typical nice grandma but then you delve into the history of the family and the way she treats the other people in her family through running the business and you develop complex feelings about her.

But like I said, the real reason I sucked into this show was the recurring guest role of Bryan Cranston as Vince Lonigan.

Bryan Cranston might be my favorite actor working today. No matter how slow certain parts of this show got, every time Cranston is on screen I was sucked in and paying total attention. He's got a pretty big role for the first season. I can't say whether or not he'll be in the second season and I can't help but think the show might suffer a bit if he's not.

I also enjoyed the fact that he produced the show and even directed a couple of episodes. It just works towards how talented this guy is.

But the thing that I loved the most was just the sections that Cranston basically gives himself these long monologues that are almost Shakespearean. I don't know if in the greatest context they work towards the story at all, but I could just watch Bryan Cranston deliver a monologue about Vince's time as an NYPD cop all day. He's so intimidating and threatening that he does pose a huge threat to Marius and pretty much every good guy in the show.

Would I recommend Sneaky Pete? I think so.

If you're a fan of stories about con men, kind of in the same vein as Oceans 11 and if you're also up for some gritty real crime drama in the same vein as Breaking Bad, that's basically what you get with Sneaky Pete.

It's not a perfect show and I'm figuring out more and more that Amazon Prime is really into their slow burn TV shows. I would say give it three or four episodes to marinate with you and if by that point you're not into the show, maybe Sneaky Pete isn't for you. Overall, you get some really good performances from mostly everyone involved, you get some heroes that are very unorthodox and not really great people in general, and you get a unique character driven story. It takes a little bit to get going but I think you'll enjoy yourself.

Those are my thoughts on Sneaky Pete. What did you think? Have you watched Season 1, what about season 2? Is it worth continuing? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films or TV shows I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter you can get updates on future movie and TV news and reviews coming out of this blog.

See you next time!

Power Rangers

I do realize that I haven't done many reviews this month. I wanted to knock at least one more out before the end of the month and why not jump into a film that I had absolutely no interest in seeing at all and swore I wouldn't spend a dime to see. Well guess what showed up on Amazon Prime?

So I never watched Power Rangers as a kid. It just wasn't my thing. I think for a while I wanted it to be my thing and I tried to watch it once... but then I saw an episode with the real Rita Repulsa and I laughed and turned back to Star Wars. So I'm gonna say right now, I have not see any of the original Power Rangers. The very little I have seen in no way makes me an expert to point out whether or not this movie was faithful to the series or not. I'll also say, I have absolutely no interest in this franchise whatsoever. The only little interest I've ever had was to the fan film starring Katie Sackhoff, and even that I wasn't nearly as interested as everyone else... With that out of the way, let's talk about Saban's Power Rangers.

The movie follows the story of five misfit teenagers in a town called Angel Grove. At the beginning they very much want to harken back to the 80s Nostalgia of The Breakfast Club but that is pretty much forgotten after the first half hour so if you were going into this movie because it reminded you of that, you're in for a disappointment already.

You've got Jason Scott (played by Dacre Montgomrey), the former football star now washout after his injury made him unable to play for the football team. Former cheerleader Kimberly Hart (played by Naomi Scott) who is outcasted from his cheerleading squad and cuts her hair to be different. Billy Cranston (played by RJ Cyler) a kid with autism who becomes very much the heart of the team. Trini (played by Becky G) the "new kid" who is struggling with her sexuality. And Zack (played by Ludi Lin) a wildcard risk taker. Coincidence really takes them to the same place where they find these crystals and gain super powers.

They're introduced to Zordon (voiced by Bryan Cranston) who informs them that their powers make them the Power Rangers, a team of powerful individuals destined to fight off evil, especially a rogue former ranger named Rita Repulsa (played incredibly unironically by Elizabeth Banks).

I'll get into Elizabeth Banks but one thing I really need to applaud about this movie is how amazing Bryan Cranston is an actor. There is a lot about this movie that is ridiculous. The premise, the script, the acting, all of it, super silly. However, Cranston still manages to deliver his lines like he is delivering Shakespeare. He is somehow able to get me to totally buy into this world that I have no knowledge or interest in. Applause for the incredibly talented actor giving it 110% in a role he really could have just phoned in.

The rest of the film though is super hokey, weird, and takes itself WAY too seriously.

I mean someone, please tell me how you can take the Power Rangers seriously. It is not a subject that allows for the gritty realistic feeling all superheroes have post-2008. And yet everyone wants to treat this as seriously as they've treated the Marvel movies because we all know Marvel makes gangbuster money.

It is so weird because everything is played so seriously and not ironic at all.

The best example of this comes in the form of Elizabeth Banks playing a character named Rita Repulsa.

If this picture wasn't enough, just take a look at the way this character was played in the show and tell me please how I am expected to take this character seriously at all.

And like I said, this is just one of multiple aspects of this entire concept that I am supposed to be taking seriously but can't do just due to the fact of how ridiculous it is. If you grew up with Power Rangers, I'm not making fun of you, I really just want to know how this is expected to be played as serious.

Now if the movie was played off as a comedy or meta humor, I could see this being played off as a joke or a funny character, but Banks plays it 100% serious. She's weird in the movie, very similarly to the character in the show, but they play it with enough seriousness that I feel as though I need to take it seriously.

The weird thing however is that this movie potentially could have worked. The actors playing the Power Rangers are by no means good, but some of the intended emotions and feelings I knew I was supposed to have about these characters do manage to come through in certain parts of the film, especially in the character of Billy. And while the other four are not very good actors, I feel like if they had had a script and a good director that did more than Project Almanac back in 2015, this could have potentially been an okay movie.

They play this movie very much like a superhero origin film. In fact they steal a lot of origin ideas from movies like Spider-man and X-men. But when these kids start figuring out that they have superpowers, they maneuver through it the way a kid would write a superhero origin story in 5th grade after seeing the first Sam Raimi Spider-man film. I say this because I was that kid. I've looked back at some of my writing from an early age and it's not a whole lot different than the writing in this movie as these kids are trying to figure out their powers. There isn't really anything driving these kids to figure out their powers together, it just turns out that way because the script needs them too. For a story that is very much about friendship and growing up, I feel like the movie sacrificed some moments that could have been really good relationship building by just fast forwarding these kids through what is admittedly probably an awkward transition for normal writers to write. Taking characters from ordinary to extraordinary can be difficult but that's why people like John Gatins gets paid a lot more than I do to write the screenplay for this film.

The other mistake this movie made was not only taking itself WAY too seriously, but they addressed this film like a superhero origin story as opposed to the monster destruction movie it clearly should have been as evident by the end of the film.

Listen, the final fight of the film is not very good. It was too little, too late. But as I was watching it and the Power Rangers get geared up into their Zords, I got a glimmer of the action sequences from a movie like the first Pacific Rim. The action got a lot cooler and a lot less hokey when they were in their dinobots and fighting Rita's giant gold monster. In a way it's the Transformers movie we probably will never get that would still be terrible, but I would be more interested in than the Transformers fighting with King Arthur.

I don't want to see a Transformers Power Rangers crossover. I have no interest in seeing either one of these film franchises come back in any way shape or form. But one of the biggest complaints I've heard about the Transformers films is that they focus way too much on the human characters and not enough on the actual Transformers. My thoughts are, if you're going to continue focusing on the human characters, why not make them Power Rangers and have them be able to go toe to toe with the Transformers?

Again, I am in no way endorsing this crossover and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't happen due to the fact that they belong to two different studios, but if they insist on continuing to waste money on these franchises that I have no interest in, you might as well just throw everything into it, make it the wackiest concept you'll ever see and just invite me to spend money on it, chances are I might just out of Fear of Missing Out.

Is Power Rangers as bad as I thought it was going to be. For the most part yes. It is not a good movie and I didn't think in any uncertain terms that it was not going to be bad. But there were more parts that I enjoyed than I expected. Still bad, but it at least gave me some fun ideas that will probably never happen due to copyrights.

But what did you think? Did you watch Power Rangers as a kid? Did you like this movie? Should they make a sequel? Should they make a sequel crossing over with Transformers? Or Pacific Rim? Isn't Bryan Cranston the best? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. Seriously, if you have 15 minutes to spare, just treat yourself to this fan film. It takes the concept of Power Rangers and takes it WAY WAY WAY too seriously almost to the point that it works. Check it out here.

Shutter Island

There are a lot of reasons why I haven't seen Shutter Island until now. When it first came out in 2010, I didn't see it because the trailers portrayed it (inaccurately) as a generic horror film set in an insane asylum. 2010 Connor had no interest in that because he was (and still is) a wimp when it comes to horror films. Another reason I didn't end up seeing it was because when everyone figured out it wasn't so much a horror film as much as a it was a cerebral film, it unfortunately fell off people's radars because it came out the same year as Inception and of course that blew everyone's minds and kind of overshadowed this film. More recently though I figured out it was an adaptation from a book and I wanted to read it first. Finally, while I was flying home on a plane I saw it on the in flight entertainment menu and I thought it was finally time.

Shutter Island takes place in the 50s and follows the story of US Marshall Edward (Teddy) Daniels (played by Leonardo DiCaprio). Teddy and his new partner Chuck Aule (played by Mark Ruffalo) are sent to Ashcliff Hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter island to investigate the disappearance of a patient of the hospital. The name of the patient is Rachael Solando (played by Emily Mortimer) and she is there because she drowned her kids in the lake.

The audience soon discovers that there is more to this hospital than meets the eye and Teddy makes it his mission to thoroughly investigate Ashcliff to not only find the missing patient, but uncover the unsavory acts happening behind closed doors. The movie starts to blend illusions and reality as Teddy is reminded of his dark past and the mystery unfolds.

So the cast of this movie is actually really solid, utilizing some pretty talented actors and actresses that I'm not sure were as well known or popular at the time. DiCaprio has always been pretty particular about the roles he takes on and the directors he works with and in looking at his filmography, there hasn't been a movie he's been in since 2002 that I haven't thought he's given a solid performance.

I'm not one of those people who believe DiCaprio deserved an Oscar for the longest time well before The Revenant because if we're being honest, I don't think that's necessarily true, Fight me. But that doesn't take away from the fact that he's a solid performer and this movie is no different.

This is such a cerebral and personal movie for DiCaprio's character that it requires someone I need to be totally invested in the whole time and Leo does that with this film. It's not his best performance, but again, I find it hard to find a movie after Catch Me If You Can where you can honestly say that DiCaprio sucked in a role. It cannot be done. Fight Me!

Mark Ruffalo does a good job in this film. I am trying to make it a goal of mine to watch more Ruffalo pre-MCU because the guy is a solid actor, he just hasn't been in many films I watched before he became the Hulk. He doesn't steal the show by any means, but he's good.

Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow both play Doctors at the hospital and these are both veteran actors who I have a very hard time finding a film they're bad in. The one thing about these two is that their characters are a little bit redundant. They're both good, but I feel like you could have combined their characters and made them one. Having read the book I know that they are two separate characters in the book, but I feel like that could have been adapted differently.

Ted Levine (Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs) plays a small role that was fun. Not incredibly huge or important but fun. I had to actually look him up because his name is not that familiar.

I think the thing that took me by surprise in this movie was the female talent. I've always been a fan of Emily Mortimer from The Newsroom but she's always been a bubbly happy character. In this she's very dark and creepy in her delivery and I loved it. Patricia Clarkson has a small role that was kind of like Levine that I had to look up who she was to recognize her.

And then Michelle Williams has a pretty decent role as the ghost of Teddy's dead wife Dolores. Now I had to look this up, but apparently Williams has been active pretty much since the 90s. She was in a lot of stuff I didn't watch like Dawson's Creek and she's been in other roles since, but I've only really come to notice her in the past few years, especially starting with Manchester by the Sea. More recently she was in The Greatest Showman and I really enjoyed her in that. So it was a surprise to me to see her there doing a phenomenal job in a really cerebral role. I obviously need to be paying more attention to Michelle Williams because she should have been on my radar a long time ago.

Now I loved the book and the movie is pretty true to it. The one issue with that is that because this movie is so cerebral and a bit of a thinker, it's automatically compared to the other cerebral thinker film of 2010 Inception. And I'm going to answer this question right away, Inception is better.

Shutter Island is a really good film. It definitely plays with the mind and it's very well acted, if not a little bit better acted than the performances in Inception. The problem is, Shutter Island is such a condensed story and very personal that it feels very small compared to Inception. When you come to the end of Shutter Island, there is a lot to think about and when you watch it a second time it does change the experience. However, I can't imagine this film is one I would want to watch multiple times over like I do Inception. Watching it twice and maybe revisiting it every once in a while might be the max for me, whereas Inception I could go back to multiple times and still be awed by it.

Now it's not exactly fair to compare the two because while they are cerebral films that came out in 2010, they are still very different. My point of bringing up the comparison is to point out how Shutter Island is a small story. It feels like a noir and the atmosphere is great, but I can't see myself going back to this movie to uncover more things. Once you've uncovered things in the first viewing, you're pretty much covered.

Seriously, if you haven't checked out Shutter Island yet, I am highly recommending it. It's a really solid film. But after that initial viewing and maybe another one, I could imagine this storyline just being a one-off fun experience.

I've laid out the great probably underrated cast, Martin Scorsese directs it the only way he knows how, brilliantly, and the story is definitely one to check out. Don't worry about how it compares to Inception. Take that out of the equation. Again, my point in bringing that up is not to compare them, but to point out the scale of this movie. It's less of an epic, and more of a personal claustrophobic experience. It does that phenomenally.

If you haven't checked out Shutter Island, avoid all spoilers and give it watch, you won't regret it.

But those are my thoughts on Shutter Island. What did you think? Comment and Discuss below! Do you think it was unfairly compared to Inception in 2010? Am I unfairly comparing it to Inception now? Have you read the book? Let me know your thoughts. You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for your support!

mother!

Darren Aronofski is definitely a unique voice in the movie making community. I haven’t seen nearly enough of his films to tell if I’m a fan of him, but I respect him mostly out of reputation more than anything. I’ve seen Requiem for a Dream and Noah and the common thread that I can pull from his movies is that you don’t exactly come out of the theater feeling good about life in general. He pulls a lot of his inspiration from disturbing imagery, theme heavy story-telling, and almost a horror element in some of his films as well, though I wouldn’t call Noah or Requiem a horror film. But I think some people thought that mother! was going to be a horror film, based on the trailer and previous films like Black Swan (it’s on my list, I promise), so when it turned out the way it was, people were disappointed. I think the biggest thing to take away from 2017 movies is that if we get our expectations so high and it doesn’t turn out being what we think it should have been, that doesn’t make it a bad film. And mother! is no exception. After taking some time to finish mother! I actually think this movie will probably be more appreciated as time goes by. Is it a phenomenal film? Well, no, it definitely has its problems, but this review might be a little hard because I don’t want to give too much away. At the same time, I don’t think this movie is the kind of movie I do a full spoilers review on. I hope I can describe this movie as best as I can without going into spoilers and hopefully you'll be able to asses whether or not this movie is one for you or if you can skip it. 

mother! stars Javier Bardem and Jennifer Lawrence. They are a married couple who live in this house together in the middle of nowhere. Bardem’s character is a poet who is having trouble writing a new piece whereas Lawrence is just a homemaker, in the sense that she spends a lot of time taking care of the house that they live in so Bardem can write. You may notice I’m using the actor’s names and that’s not for the reason it usually is that these characters don’t have memorable names or something, it’s that they don’t have names. On Wikipedia, Lawrence is credited as “mother” and Bardem is credited as “him”. That might give you a little bit of insight into the type of movie we’re dealing with here. Everything is very abstract and while characters are making decisions in the film and they say things, it’s usually, if not always alluding to some kind of metaphor.

Well Bardem and Lawrence are visited by this couple played by Ed Harris and Michelle Pheifer. From there things only get more and more hectic as stuff starts to happen and more people start to show up, and they start to make themselves comfortable in Lawerence and Bardem’s house and a lot of stuff happens and it’s all symbolic towards a larger message that I won’t get into now.

This movie is definitely not for everyone. It’s easy to be turned off by the style of this movie because in all reality, it’s pretty hard to not catch onto the metaphor they’re trying to convey and the movie pretty much forgoes any structured story in exchange for a super abstract metaphor. Which I’m not sure it really needed to do that.

There is a definite supernatural element to this movie and it could have easily been turned into an interesting story with a couple of twists and turns while still being symbolic. Jennifer Lawrence herself has these moments and things she does that are really interesting and could have made her an actual character. The issue is she’s not a character, she is a symbol. It’s very hard to relate to a character when the entire movie is banging you over the head trying to explain that she is symbolizing something. 

The last thing I will say as somewhat of a criticism of this movie is that if you read about the production of this film, it all seemed very laid back and finished very quickly. Aronofsky apparently wrote the script in five days, and since it’s all really abstract, he can kind of get away with it by saying read into it however you like. And while I kind of like how mother! is definitely different from other films, I do think it is a little bit pretentious to write a script that you could see being written on a 5 day cocaine bender (not saying Aronofsky does cocaine, just a joke) and leaving things up to interpretation.

But that being said, I do have to give Aronofsky credit, although I’m a little bit skeptical on the amount of work that was put into this film, it still is a movie that makes me think. The allegories in it are pretty well done in the context of a modern setting, and there are definitely parts of the film that don’t exactly fit into that allegory so it just makes you think more and more about what it could mean.

There are other pretty recognizable names in this film and pretty much everyone is 100% committed to the role they're in and the style this movie is, but the other parts played by other big names actors is so small, they're almost like cameos that were more entertaining than super important to the plot of the story. I'll leave their names out so if you decide to watch the film you'll be pleasantly surprised like I was, but you should know that the other actors like these cameos and Harris and Phiefer, outside of Bardem and Lawrence, give good performances in this film. 

I think the biggest thing I enjoyed about this movie was just how it made me think a little bit about the metaphors being portrayed. Like I said, everything is a metaphor and instead of a real structured story, it just decides to bang you over the head with that metaphor. However, not everything is so clear cut as other things. There are things that happen in this film that are clearly alluding towards a certain allegory or symbol and it's pretty obvious while there are other things that are open ended or just things I'm not totally aware of. 

Now, this does have the danger of making Aronofsky seem a little pretentious that instead of a story, he's giving you "art" or "a message" but I'm not going to be the guy who criticized him because I didn't understand some elements of the film. But I'm also not going to say this is the most inspired thing I've seen ever. It's fine and it's a mind fuck. It's Arronofsky, what did you expect?

I won't spoil the ending but it's a great example of how this movie could have multiple interpretations and at the end of the day, that's really what film and themes in films are, subject to interpretation. You might get something out of this movie differently than I do and you may hate this movie even if you think I'm describing a movie you will enjoy. 

My goal is to point out what is good and bad about the film, say a type of people who might enjoy it, and the rest is up to you. I hope I have done that in this review because this review was difficult. 

Have you seen mother!? What did you think? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts via Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog. 

I do thank you for your patience as this is the first review I've done in a while. I've got a couple of posts I want to get out this weekend so I'll push for that, but it's the same old excuse about transitions and making money as I've done in the past. I've also been playing some video games. I'm thinking I'm going to try and incorporate some video game reviews and thoughts. Again, thanks for your patience and continue your support on the blog and on Twitter. Thanks!