Short Review: Unequivocally the only movie ever made about screaming, half-naked, greased up men that is worth seeing .

In a time where homes downwind of movie theaters have to keep their windows closed each weekend to keep the stench out; this film is still an invigorating change. Yes, the dialog is seemingly overwrought, and the production is crammed with so much testosterone the DVD boxes have beards. Then there is the fact it is filled with half naked guys. There are many reasons to mock this production. Regardless, Zack Synder offered the freshest, most visually striking film since The Lord of the Rings Trilogy was released.

There is one thing that ignites my respect and approval and that is creativity. The inventiveness of this piece makes this worth seeing. From its fully realized art direction to the carefully constructed script, to the effective score, this is one of those films that combine all aspects of film making into a unified and pleasing whole.

The film follows Spartan King Leonidas as he leads 300 of his best men to hold off a army of thousands coming from Persia. Persian King Xerxes demands Sparta bend to his will and Leonidas refuses to submit to another man. When Xerxes comes to slaughter the defiant Sparta, it’s a battle royale where all of the players are apparently popping steroids between takes.


Many will most likely brush this film off as being a simple minded “guy’s movie”. Yes, there is bloodletting, screaming and oodles of death. Don’t be fooled by this film’s oafish exterior, there is more going on than a bunch of guys in leather jockstraps sweating on everything. The piece has a great deal to say about the battle between the rational versus the spiritual.

The main thrust of the film is a violent defense of The Enlightenment (or as I call it “Hey God, look -No hands!" The 300 Spartans do more than defend Sparta from the hordes of Xerxes in this film, they lay themselves down in an existential war against mysticism and religion.

Embodying mysticism, the self-worshiping devil Xerxes who is intent on commanding the world. Behind the Spartans are The Ephors who stand for organized religion. The Spartans deny both and look to remain clear of their theological entanglements to live free in their own “rational” world. Of course, the Spartans retreat from their rationality once bad things happen but that’s expected. It is the modus operandi of the self-reliant mind to crack under pressure. We’re all about being free from God up and to the point things go to pot, then comes the eventual reconsideration of one’s intellectual/spiritual footing. Despite this film’s desperate clinging to this world it is forced (albeit quietly) to bow to the afterlife.

Beyond the apparent sanguinary elements, there is a marvelously constructed piece of film making to be enjoyed. Each frame of this film is a work of deliberate beauty. I cannot think of another film so dedicated to making each inch of the screen so vibrant. Director Zack Snyder’s work is a breathtaking, visual pleasure.

The screenplay is equally as strong. Deceptively guttural, the dialog is a testament to the economy of language. Each line means something. Even when the characters are throw belligerent retorts to their enemies it isn’t meant as a sly wink to the audience, as we have come to expect from Schwarzenegger and company, but a reinforcement of the Spartan philosophy. The few words in this film are carefully chosen. Even the narration is deftly woven into the piece with care.

I seriously enjoyed this film. I was expecting this to be little more than a flashy version of all-star wrestling. I was thankfully proven wrong. Men will love this movie. This, much like Fight Club, speaks directly to our masculine side without shame.


Cautions: This is an exceptionally violent film. Digitized blood splatters, innumerable impaling, slow-motion beheadings and corpses abound. There is also graphic sex and nudity. This is not - I REPEAT IN LARGE UPPER-CASE LETTERS THAT BOLD - NOT - for children.


Worldview: As I mention above, the film essentially comes out in favor of The Enlightenment and "reason" over religion. As a Christian, how can I throw my support behind such a message, in particular one that revels in so much violence? Simple, Snyder is correct to put himself behind the Spartans.

The real Spartans were a brutish, fascistic lot. They had a code of conduct; heck, they had a code of existence. If you broke the code you were not allowed to play in their reindeer games. I see them as being the logical end of secular thinking. Without God, the perfection of mankind becomes the only reasonable goal. When you start talking about perfecting man its only a matter of time before you begin casting the hapless deformed babies off cliffs.

The battle of Thermopylae was a critical point in Western Civilization. Without it, none of what we have today would have been possible. It is one of those lynch pin moments of history. The only way to show this event is to back the Spartans. They were jerks, but they were right to push back against Xerxes intruding hordes.

Regarding the overt mind over spirit angle of the film. I don't find this offensive in the slightest. I want people to use their reason, to be thoughtful. I do not want people to define themselves by their religion or delve into mysticism. Religion is a problem, it gets worshipers to focus on process and symbols rather than the Truth and the Word of God. This in turn leads people to creating their own rules and regulations. It also leads to "us vs. them" thinking.

A film that pokes its finger, or in this case a sword, into the eye of religion - you're okay with me.
The Spartans in the film believed in gods. They weren't atheists. They simply didn't feel the need to worship a man or man made idols. In the film they fight against the old mystical thinking that still hinders many people in the world today. The sooner the ancient mysticism are vanquished, the better.



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Labels: David Wenham, Dominic West, film, Gerald Butler, Lena Headey, Michael Fassbender, movie review, Vincent Regan, Zack Snyder

How to Train Your Dragon is Dreamworks latest 3D animated adventure featuring Vikings, dragons, and monsters. The story is a sort of Androcles and the Lion parable where the main character "Hiccup", is a nerdy 98 pound weakling of a Viking who desperately wants to kill a dragon to impress the hottest girl in the village.

During a devastating dragon attack, Hiccup manages to shoot down one of the most dangerous and elusive dragons. Unfortunately, it is still alive and he can't bring himself to dispatch the helpless critter with his only weapon - a tiny, rather symbolic, knife.

Instead, Hiccup discovers the dragon can be quickly tamed, trained and flown - which doesn't sit well in a village where every building has had to be rebuilt due to dragon attacks and the art of killing them is considered a necessary survival skill.

The movie is cleverly written and the art design excellent. The story moves pretty well right up until it gets to the anti-war on terror message. The message may act as a bit of a sucker punch for adults, but will likely be missed by the kids. The final outcome of the story tends to moderate the message in any case.
Pet peeve: the usual PC female lead who can and does literally kick the butt of the protagonist.



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Labels: adaptation, Amadeus, America Ferrera, animated, Craig Ferguson, film, Gerald Butler, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Kristen Wiig, movie review

THIS IS STUPID!

Gamer, Gerald Butler's star vehicle gives the bastard child of mixing The Running Man with Death Race and he owes us all an apology.

I have suffered through more than my fair share of crappy movies. I've seen moronic movies, dumb movies, feckless movies even embarrassingly misguided ones. Of those bad movies it is common to see the reason why it was made. There is generally a hook or concept threaded somewhere in the presentation that shows there was someone thinking someone at one time. I couldn't find one such concept here.

This is the deposit of the writing team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the guys who are responsible for (or should I say guilty of) Crank. Which, by the way, has one of those pitch-ready concepts at its core (a violent British thug has to keep his adrenaline up or he will die (Speed meets The Transporter). In this go-around they manage the Herculean effort of making Crank seem like it was penned by Moliere.

Here is the synopsis torn off of IMDb:

Set in a future-world where humans can control other humans in mass-scale, multi-player online gaming environments, a star player from a game called "Slayers" looks to regain his independence while taking down the game's mastermind.

Odd that this movie has a script, it didn't need one. They could have just pieced together random images of explosions, bullet wounds and oil, muscled men carrying weapons and it would have been roughly the same.

If for no other reason, you should skip this film because they actually cast Ludacris as someone other than a drooling moron. We're asked to believe he's computer savvy. I guess Britany Spears was unavailable during the shooting schedule.




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Labels: Alison Lohman, Amber Valletta, film, Gerald Butler, Kyra Sedgwick, Michael C. Hall, movie review

Not my cup of tea. Then again, not much is.

I think the world can do with less Jennifer Aniston wacky relationship flicks. Apparently, the world disagrees. This will make a load of cash and then disappear into the discount bin at Wal Mart eight months later.





Screenwriter: Sarah Thorp
Director: Andy Tennant (Hitch)
Actors: Gerald Butler (300) and Jennifer Aniston (Office Space)

Labels: film, Gerald Butler, Jennifer Aniston, movie trailer

Short Review: A hero of classic literature is remade as postmodern man. In other words, he can’t stand up in a fight, wets his pants every time he’s asked to make a judgment call and couldn't find his own backside in a fog when it comes to moral issues.


I’ll start with the good points and then, like the film, descend into my own petty agenda until I arrive at an unsatisfying, muttering end.

This is an absolutely beautiful looking film. Director Sturla Gunnarsson knows how to take advantage of his surroundings. Combined with the real feel of the actors and their costumes, this film has a visual reality that is stunning and undeniable.

In addition to the wonderful look of the film, there are some very good performances as well. Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson gives a daring performance as the monstrous troll Grendel. He is, in effect, primal man and Sigurðsson acts like a complete fool in order to get his performance right. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. You run around in front of a couple dozen strangers in your underwear grunting and sniffing and see how you cope. Sigurðsson deserves credit for his honest and notable work. The remainder of the cast, including Stellan Skarsgård as King Hrothgar and Gerald Butler as Beowulf, does good work (with one exception – I’ll get to her later.)

And now on to the downside…

This film is adapted from the epic poem which has been plaguing undergrad students for generations. The important word in the last sentence is “adapted”. What the word “adapted” is another way of saying the film acknowledges its roots and then spins off into postmodern whimpering.

Beowulf tells the story of a great hero who arrives on the shores of King Hrothgar’s land and does battle with the evil demon Grendel. Beowulf vanquishes Grendal and Grendal’s swamp hag mother. Following that Beowulf returns home to rule his lands only to be forced into a one on one with a dragon. There’s plenty of blood and impossibly difficult language.

Beowulf and Grendel tells the story of an justifiably angry troll who kills King Hrothgar’s men out of revenge. Beowulf, now a Billy Ray Cyrus clone dressed in chain mail, can’t come to grips with the moral struggle of his age. Is it acceptable to kill evil or is it better to co-exist with it? Beowulf offers some hollow efforts to get Grendel to leave the land but the pesky troll just won’t go. There’s also a subplot involving a witch named Selma who distracts Beowulf from his purpose for being in the story in the first place. King Hrothgar is a guilt-ridden sop who cries in his beer over his moral anguish. He offers moral relativism as a cure for our ills. Essentially, this film lays out the exact problems with modern day Europe. Moral ambivalence has swamped the initiative not only to kill evil but to even recognize it when it is knocking down the front door. It’s connection with modern Europe’s moral sickness isn’t a condemnation however, it’s a symptom of the disease.

The piece refuses Beowulf the straight heroic path, but prefers him to languish in the ditch wallowing in navel gazing relativism. This is a terrible shame since the film could have been great. As the film starts it retains the source material’s feel and story. As the production expounds upon its true effort, it rolls into a morass of nonsense. I will give the piece credit however, it is possible to overlook this downward slide and enjoy the much of the production. This means one isn’t allowed to think independently however. In other words it is suitable for those currently enrolled in an undergraduate programs.

To get through the film you will have to swallow a multitude of accents and a prominently poor performance by Sarah Polley as Selma. She is dreadful and she’s dressed up like Pat Benatar in her “Love is A Battlefield” getup. If you can struggle through all of the negatives, the positives of the film may intrigue you. Just make certain to turn off your brain and kick over your moral compass and you’ll make out fine.


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Labels: Beowulf, film, Gerald Butler, movie review, Sarah Polley, Stellan Skarsgård

Screenwriters: Mark Neveldine (Pathology) and Brian Taylor (Crank)
Directors: Mark Neveldine (Pathology) and Brian Taylor (Crank)
Actors: Gerald Butler (300), Alison Lohman (Drag Me to Hell), Milo Ventimiglia (Pathology), Kyra Sedgwick (Something the Lord Made), Michael C. Hall (Paycheck), John Leguizamo (Ice Age) and Keith David (Barbershop)

Labels: Alison Lohman, film, Gerald Butler, John Leguizamo, Keith David, movie trailer

The premise of the film is simple enough, what if dragons actually existed? The answer to that question is also fairly simple. We would all be turned into screaming human smores.

So, a dragon buried under London for centuries is awakened. It escapes, reproduces tons of baby dragons and that's all she wrote for humanity. The film mostly takes place twenty years after the initial encounter with Ol' Smoky. A small band of surviving humans are holed up in a castle, cuz y'know when the Red Dragon of the Apocalypse shows up for dinner with you on the menu, you're going to want to be hiding in an ancient castle instead of some fortified modern bunker or underground facility.

The survivors are led by Quinn (Christian Bale) whose leadership style pretty much relies on his ability to look as intense as a guy who ate too many pork and beans for lunch. Quinn does his best to keep the survivors surviving but their plans for survival really stink. Quinn's great plan is to stay put and wait to be cooked alive inside the castle walls the next time a dragon shows up. Oddly enough, everyone but Quinn thinks that waiting to have their flesh torched from their bones and then being a dragon's intestinal stuffing is a bad idea.

A group of American militiamen arrive, because even in the end days, in the middle of the English countryside, Americans still kick butt. The Americans are led by Denton (Matthew McConaughey) whose leadership style pretty much relies on his ability to be bald, tattooed and shirtless, covered in baby oil with smudges of charcoal. When this doesn't impress, his fall back position is to make his eyes look all crazy like and yell his lines.

Being an American, Denton inherently knows how to kick butt. He announces that he has an way to kill the dragons and save humanity. Everyone decides that going with Quinn's "let's hang out here and wait until the dragons make our home into a huge Weber Grill" idea is inferior to Denton's "Let's die screaming, flying through the air, wielding a super awesome battle axe" concept. Sure Denton's way is going to get everyone else killed but its sure to provide a few cool clips for the trailer.

The bottom line on this film is that it is utter pap. Then again, we know this going in. All that director Rob Bowman needs to do to succeed is to manage his action sequences so they're watchable and don't overwhelm the rest of the story. He does this. Which is why the film works despite its silly concept.

I'm not saying this a great movie. Its not. It is predictable in many places, there is clear projection prior to any character's death and Christian Bale is way too serious for the show. Bale acts like he's auditioning for a production Macbeth for the annual over-actors convention.

McConaughey is the one who strikes the right tone - hammy. He overacts as well, but he does so with his tongue wedged firmly in his cheek. Although, to be fair, it is very likely that Bale was squinting so much not out of trying to be intense but because he was being blinded by the sun reflecting off of McConaughey's glistening pecs.

Dumb movie, but it is very fun. This is a good guy movie and a solid pick when you don't know what else you want to watch.


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Labels: Christian Bale, film, Gerald Butler, Matthew McConaughey, movie review

Screenwriter: Kurt Wimmer (Street Kings)
Director: F. Gary Gray (The Italian Job)
Actors: Gerald Butler (300), Jamie Foxx (Ray), Michael Gambon (The Good Shepherd), Leslie Bibb (Iron Man) and Viola Davis (Doubt)

Labels: film, Gerald Butler, Jamie Foxx, Michael Gambon, movie trailer, Viola Davis

Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen didn’t cover the entire series. This is understandable since the episodic nature of the books isn’t capable of being translated to screen. First, it would take too much time to present all of the material. Secondly, its structure would be too chaotic for most audiences. This direct-to-video animated accompaniment to the film is for serious fanboys only, and even these geeky losers may turn their nose up to this nonsense. The story is simple enough, having survived a deadly naval ambush, a captain creates a raft out of the corpses of his dead men. He sails the waves to the port where his enemies are celebrating. He shows up and slaughters said enemies. In the context of the graphic novel this all makes some thematic sense. On its own, it is a violent, gory and needless tale of empty revenge.

The story was never meant to stand alone. This film is proof.


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Labels: animated, film, Gerald Butler, movie review, watchmen, Zack Snyder

My one year old daughter will make a face or say something that gets a laugh from her mother and me. Flushed with the attention she receives, she will do the shtick again in hopes of getting the same reaction. Sometimes it works out for her. If so, she will then do a third, fourth and sometimes a fifth time. The longer the trick goes on the less effective it is. Unlike Guy Ritchie, my one year old daughter has the sense to stop her routine when it fails to get results.

This is the same old same old hyper-stylized, popping paced, snap edited "ain't we too cool for the room" dribble we've seen before. When writer/director hit the scene with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels his style was exciting and new. He make a statement and his fresh voice was heard. When he broke and took the next step with his follow up Snatch he seemed like he was a notable rising power in cinema. A film maker with a talent for crime flicks. Like a British Tarantino but without the massive cranium and he didn't come across as someone desperately making up for his missing dad. Then Richie stagnated and hasn't grown one bit. If you have seen his first two films you've seen this one.

The thing that strikes me about this film is how immensely controlled it feels. Every shot is obviously carefully planned, the design work is obvious and the characterizations are calculated. I never felt as if I were doing anything but watching a very elaborate movie. This is not a good quality since it means I was never able to "get lost" in the movie. Ritchie's governing hand is seen the whole time, he may as well be heard yelling out direction in the background of all of his scenes.

The performances by the likes of Tom Wilkinson, Gerald Butler, Mark Strong, Idris Elba and Thandie Newton are passable. They all strut across the screen with appropriate confidence and toughness but it is all hollow. Their lines are contrived and sound like dialog not actual people talking. They may have done admirable jobs delivering their roles but the combined end product is completely soulless. This drains their efforts of any value.

Ritchie opens his film with a fat knot of facts, motivations and plot all delivered in a kinetic package. The opening five minutes is more flashy and distracting that most children's cereal commercials. One would expect the film to settle a bit as it moves forward so the audience can register the ideas presented in the flurry but Ritchie chooses to keep the flashiness up. We're given more characters, all are oh, so cool and posed, more conniving and more deliberate camera work. This continues throughout the film until Ritchie has devised a Rube Goldberg contraption for a plot that all fires off at once only to provide the uninspiring result of a lighter being snapped on. The problem with creating multi-layered, complicated narratives is that you had better make it worth people's time. This film doesn't meet that criterion.


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Labels: British Cinema, film, Gerald Butler, Guy Ritchie, Idris Elba, Mark Strong, movie review, Thandie Newton, Tom Wilkinson

Short Review: A hero of classic literature is remade as postmodern man. In other words, he can’t stand up in a fight, wets his pants every time he’s asked to make a judgment call and couldn't find his own backside in a fog when it comes to moral issues.


I’ll start with the good points and then, like the film, descend into my own petty agenda until I arrive at an unsatisfying, muttering end.

This is an absolutely beautiful looking film. Director Sturla Gunnarsson knows how to take advantage of his surroundings. Combined with the real feel of the actors and their costumes, this film has a visual reality that is stunning and undeniable.

In addition to the wonderful look of the film, there are some very good performances as well. Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson gives a daring performance as the monstrous troll Grendel. He is, in effect, primal man and Sigurðsson acts like a complete fool in order to get his performance right. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. You run around in front of a couple dozen strangers in your underwear grunting and sniffing and see how you cope. Sigurðsson deserves credit for his honest and notable work. The remainder of the cast, including Stellan Skarsgård as King Hrothgar and Gerald Butler as Beowulf, does good work (with one exception – I’ll get to her later.)

And now on to the downside…

This film is adapted from the epic poem which has been plaguing undergrad students for generations. The important word in the last sentence is “adapted”. What the word “adapted” is another way of saying the film acknowledges its roots and then spins off into postmodern whimpering.

Beowulf tells the story of a great hero who arrives on the shores of King Hrothgar’s land and does battle with the evil demon Grendel. Beowulf vanquishes Grendal and Grendal’s swamp hag mother. Following that Beowulf returns home to rule his lands only to be forced into a one on one with a dragon. There’s plenty of blood and impossibly difficult language.

Beowulf and Grendel tells the story of an justifiably angry troll who kills King Hrothgar’s men out of revenge. Beowulf, now a Billy Ray Cyrus clone dressed in chain mail, can’t come to grips with the moral struggle of his age. Is it acceptable to kill evil or is it better to co-exist with it? Beowulf offers some hollow efforts to get Grendel to leave the land but the pesky troll just won’t go. There’s also a subplot involving a witch named Selma who distracts Beowulf from his purpose for being in the story in the first place. King Hrothgar is a guilt-ridden sop who cries in his beer over his moral anguish. He offers moral relativism as a cure for our ills. Essentially, this film lays out the exact problems with modern day Europe. Moral ambivalence has swamped the initiative not only to kill evil but to even recognize it when it is knocking down the front door. It’s connection with modern Europe’s moral sickness isn’t a condemnation however, it’s a symptom of the disease.

The piece refuses Beowulf the straight heroic path, but prefers him to languish in the ditch wallowing in navel gazing relativism. This is a terrible shame since the film could have been great. As the film starts it retains the source material’s feel and story. As the production expounds upon its true effort, it rolls into a morass of nonsense. I will give the piece credit however, it is possible to overlook this downward slide and enjoy the much of the production. This means one isn’t allowed to think independently however. In other words it is suitable for those currently enrolled in an undergraduate programs.

To get through the film you will have to swallow a multitude of accents and a prominently poor performance by Sarah Polley as Selma. She is dreadful and she’s dressed up like Pat Benatar in her “Love is A Battlefield” getup. If you can struggle through all of the negatives, the positives of the film may intrigue you. Just make certain to turn off your brain and kick over your moral compass and you’ll make out fine.


Related Reviews:
Stellan Skarsgård films
Pirates of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
Dominion: Prequel To The Exorcist (2005)


Other Critic's Reviews:
Film School Rejects
Cinematical

Labels: Beowulf, film, Gerald Butler, movie review, Sarah Polley, Stellan Skarsgård

Screenwriter: Guy Ritchie (Snatch)
Director: Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels)
Actors: Gerald Butler (300), Gemma Arterton (Quantum of Solace), Jeremy Piven (The Kingdom), Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton), and Thandie Newton (Crash)

Labels: film, Gemma Arterton, Gerald Butler, Guy Ritchie, movie trailer, Thandie Newton, Tom Wilkinson