From Filmento’s YouTube description: We got a new teaser for Matt Reeves’ The Batman starring Robert Pattinson and it looks amazing. But more than great, it also looks and feels familiar — like Batman’s very own murder mystery detective thriller with The Riddler in vain of David Fincher’s Se7en. Plus, @The Film Theorists also made the same point in a great new video titled “Film Theory: This is NOT A Batman Movie! (The Batman Trailer 2021)”. And so, let’s take a look at 1995’s Seven starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman to find out what makes it the greatest detective movie of all time and what the Batman needs to do to reach the same level. In this episode of Film Perfection, let’s see what makes a great detective thriller.
Release Date: May 25th, 2011 (New York City premiere) Directed by: Matthew Vaughn Written by: Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn, Sheldon Turner, Bryan Singer Based on:X-Men by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Music by: Henry Jackman Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, January Jones, Oliver Plat, Kevin Bacon, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Jason Flemyng, Lucas Till, Edi Gathegi, Caleb Landry Jones, Zoe Kravitz, Michael Ironside, Ray Wise, James Remar, Hugh Jackman (cameo)
Marvel Entertainment, Dune Entertainment, The Donners’ Company, Bad Hat Harry Productions, Ingenious Film Partners, Twentieth Century Fox, 131 Minutes
Review:
“I can’t stop thinking about the others out there, all those minds that I touched. I could feel them, their isolation, their hopes, their ambitions. I tell you we can start something incredible, Erik. We can help them.” – Professor Charles Xavier
While I haven’t seen this picture since it was in the theater, it left a great impression on me and gave me hope for the future of the X-Men franchise in film. Granted, we’d get two pretty good movies and two mostly poopy ones, but the weak whimpering farts of the second half of the prequel series of films didn’t take away my satisfaction with this one and its followup, Days of Future Past.
It was nice to revisit this, all these years later, as it holds up fairly well, even if I’m not as optimistic about the franchise now.
To start, this was much better than the last of the first run of films, X-Men: The Last Stand. That movie left such a bad taste in my mouth that anything better would have made me happy. Luckily, this was a lot better but I think that my original impression was a bit over-inflated due to the precedent set before it.
That’s not to say that this isn’t solid, it is. This is, in fact, a damn good superhero film and one of the best in the schizophrenic X-Men series.
What really sets this one on a pedestal is that the story was pretty good and the acting, at least from the core actors, was convincing and impressive. I didn’t know much about Michael Fassbender, before this, and I wasn’t yet sold on James McAvoy, but this picture cemented both men as two of my favorites over the last decade.
On the flip side of that, you also had some really weak performances from January Jones, who felt out of place and awkward, as well as the younger actors in the cast. A few of them would become better actors over time but they all mostly felt green, here.
I did like the inclusion of Kevin Bacon and Oliver Platt in this, as well as character actors Michael Ironside, James Remar and Ray Wise. While the character actors had small roles, they added an extra level of legitimacy and coolness to the picture.
I loved that this took place in the ’60s, tied to the Cuban Missile Crisis and also went back into Nazi Germany to establish the relationship between Magneto and Sebastian Shaw. The general look and aesthetic of the film were really good and it actually fits with the previous X-Men films, despite those being set over thirty years later. One thing Fox did well, while they managed the X-Men movie franchise, was that they kept everything sort of visually consistent.
My only real gripe about the film is that there isn’t enough emphasis on the actual “first class” of students, which this film is named after. They all felt generic and disposable, cast to play archetypes and nothing more. Sure, some of them are major comic book characters but they didn’t feel that way in this movie.
Overall, this was a good, fresh, soft reboot of the series. It eventually ties to the older films and the series becomes an even bigger continuity clusterfuck but at least this generation of the franchise started out on the right foot.
Rating: 8.25/10 Pairs well with: the other Fox X-Men films.
Release Date: March 12th, 2017 (SXSW) Directed by: Aaron Katz Written by: Aaron Katz Music by: Keegan DeWitt Cast: Lola Kirke, Zoë Kravitz, Greta Lee, Michelle Forbes, Nelson Franklin, Reeve Carney, Jessica Parker Kennedy, James Ransone, Ricki Lake, John Cho
Film Science, Rough House Pictures, Syncopated Films, Pastel Productions, Neon, 92 Minutes
Review:
“You know how you said you don’t feel safe? I feel like that all the time.” – Heather Anderson
Have you ever heard the saying “style over substance”? Well, this is a perfect example of that.
This is a film that looks really damn good with top notch cinematography, a strong understanding of mise-en-scène and stellar lighting. It also has better than decent acting but that’s about it for the positives.
This tries to be a modern film-noir but it fails in most ways. Just jumping right into the deep end of the pool, the ending of this movie is fucking terrible and it makes it so that the film doesn’t really have much of a point or a point within the framework that it seemed to be building. Like a noir, it had a twist. The twist, however, is that this movie was a waste of your time. It exists more as a critique of fame than a solid mystery crime thriller.
Zoë Kravitz’s character is killed in her home with the gun of her personal assistant. The assistant discovers her body, she becomes the prime suspect but like a typical noir, she goes on the run from the law, trying to figure out who murdered her boss. Spoiler alert: her boss is alive and the body belonged to a crazy fan that looked a lot like her.
That being said, the title of the film pretty much gives away the fucking ending! But even then, I figured this mystery out in one regard. I knew that the title would obviously be important. So when you meet the psycho fan and see that she looks an awful lot like the starlet, it was a dead giveaway that she would be the murderer or that she would be tied into the sorry excuse for this film’s twist. And when I saw the dead body, which is just shown from behind while on the floor, I thought it might be the psycho fan. Boy, was I right! But I hoped that this film was smarter than that and I kept watching, waiting for something profound that never came.
When you get to the end, the assistant finds the starlet hiding out in her other house. Then it’s like “Yeah, I’m alive. Sorry you went through all that shit with the cops. Let’s go talk to the press now and clear things up.” And that’s the end. Seriously, that’t the fucking end.
This is a film that was made with a lot of technical prowess but tried so hard to be artsy and a critique on fame that it just looked like every other self-obsessed Hollywood schlock that gets pumped out on a regular basis. I’m just sick of these type of films where Hollywood thinks its the most interesting thing in the world and where famous people are sick of being famous. Hollywood takes itself way too fucking seriously. This movie also took itself way too fucking seriously, which is laughable, considering that it was devoid of soul or real purpose.
Rating: 3.75/10 Pairs well with: Vodka and Valley girl pills.
Original Run: August 13th, 2007 – June 29th, 2014 Created by: Tom Kapinos Directed by: various Written by: various Music by: Tree Adams, Tyler Bates Cast: David Duchovny, Natascha McElhone, Madeleine Martin, Evan Handler, Pamela Adlon, Madeline Zima, Stephen Tobolowsky, Jason Beghe, Bill Lewis, Judy Greer, Tim Minchin, Mädchen Amick, Ezra Miller, Justine Bateman, Peter Gallagher, Kathleen Turner, James Frain, Carla Gugino, Rob Lowe, Zoë Kravitz, Meagan Good, Rza, Maggie Grace, Michael Imperioli, Heather Graham
Totally Commercial Films, Aggressive Mediocrity, Twilight Time Films, And Then…, Showtime, 84 Episodes, 29 Minutes (per episode)
Review:
I heard a lot of good things while Californication was on the air. I held off on checking it out until it was over, recently binge watching it on Netflix.
The story follows novelist Hank Moody (David Duchovny) as he tries to win back his long time baby mama Karen (Natascha McElhone) and balance a life of sex addiction, drugs, booze and his daughter (Madeleine Martin). Also, early in the series, he gets caught up in having sex with the underage daughter (Madeline Zima) of his baby mama’s new fiance. The show is accented by Hank’s manager and best friend, Charlie (Evan Handler) and his wife, Marcy (Pamela Adlon).
The show starts out really strong and each season is actually pretty good before it runs off the rails in the final season of its seven season run.
Duchovny is lovable as the childish and womanizing novelist but ultimately, he constantly does questionable things and always finds himself in trouble or making situations much worse. Sometimes, it is just the result of unforeseen circumstances but typically it is the result of a myriad of bad or careless decisions.
The constant back and forth between Hank and Karen is enjoyable for the first few seasons but it eventually grows tiresome about midway through the series’ run. Maybe that is because I binge watched it and didn’t see their relationship grow, evolve and fall apart over the course of several years time.
Hank’s daughter started out as a decent enough character but after a season or two, she becomes completely unlikable and doesn’t recognize that her father isn’t really all that bad and that despite his pitfalls has genuinely tried to put her first.
The best overall story during the run of the show was the up and down relationship of secondary characters Charlie and Marcy. They go through more real world problems and drama than Hank and Karen do and in the end, they reconnect and find each other, ending off better than they ever were throughout their tumultuous relationship. And Stu, who becomes Marcy’s husband over a season or two, was hysterical. The love triangle between Charlie, Marcy and Stu was the highlight of this entire show. And honestly, this relationship makes Hank and Karen’s look like bullshit high school level drama.
By the time I got to the end, I really didn’t care about where Hank and Karen ended up because based off of their track record, I knew it had the possibility to go in the opposite direction five minutes after the final credits rolled.
The show was pretty solid for most of its run but the final goodbye was long overdue by the time I got to the end.
Rating: 7.75/10 Pairs well with:Shameless, Weeds, Entourage and Aquarius.
Release Date: May 7th, 2015 (TCL Chinese Theatre premiere) Directed by: George Miller Written by: George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nico Lathouris Music by: Junkie XL Cast: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough, Zoe Kravitz, Abbey Lee, Courtney Eaton, Nathan Jones
Village Roadshow Pictures, Kennedy Miller Mitchell, RatPac-Dune Entertainment, Warner Bros. Pictures, 120 Minutes
Review:
*originally written in 2015.
This film is difficult to review.
I mean, being a lifelong avid film buff, I can only compare the task of reviewing this film to some crazed Evangelical Christian having to write a review of the Bible. Can a film be perfect? It is very fucking rare. Was this perfect? It is as close as anything I have seen in a very long time. This could honestly be the best film of this decade. It is certainly the best summer blockbuster film of this decade.
You see, the original Mad Max trilogy is an amazing thing. Those films are all great in their own way. Mel Gibson was prefect. But this film is something else entirely.
This is an homage to the original three films, a sort of reboot/sequel but ultimately, its own thing and a perfect amalgamation of all the things that made each of the original movies great on their own. It also offers up its own powerful ideas and vision and takes things further than any of the previous films could go, whether due to budget or because this film took George Miller decades to make. Having had three great films in this series, as templates and as trial and error efforts, this film took Miller’s life’s work and his direction and showed us what is possible if an artist is able to truly make the masterpiece they have intended all along. Balls to the wall, all out, motherfucking mayhem.
If this hasn’t set the bar higher in Hollywood, well.. fuck Hollywood.
Mad Max: Fury Road has proven that you can have an R-rated blockbuster and not have to cater to seemingly mindless PG-13 audiences. Also, the theater wasn’t full of a bunch of yapping kids muffled by Iron Man masks.
This is the big film that men have wanted since film became a neutered art form. This reminds me of all the things that made the original Robocop and the R-rated Schwarzenegger and Stallone films of the 80s so great. It had more testosterone than the last twenty minutes of Death Wish 3 after it pounded a few bottles of low-t medication and jacked off with a porterhouse in hand. This is a manly man’s film, through and through. It is high art in cinematic form for every man’s inner Neanderthal. It is like a Chuck Norris fist to the balls where the fist’s fingers are made up of little Bruce Lees. It made me sprout hair in places I didn’t know it could grow.
Tom Hardy was pretty damned good as the new Max Rockatansky. I will always feel that it is Mel Gibson’s role but the legacy is in perfectly capable hands going forward. Charlize Theron may have been her greatest in this film. She also had more lines and was more central to the plot than Max was. It is almost as if this was her movie and Max was along for the ride. But isn’t that Max’s modus operandi? He wanders around, stumbles upon some shit, rides the lightning and then wanders off again.
The use of colors and design in this film were amazing. The costumes were top notch, the set design was marvelous and this post-apocalyptic world that I got to traverse through with our heroes, was colorful and refreshingly vivid for being in the middle of such a desolate and bleak environment.
I actually don’t want to delve into too many details with this review because I think everyone should go see this movie. If, for some bizarre ass reason, you don’t find this film to be a tour de force of blazing machine gun testicles, something is seriously wrong with you. This film features enough bad ass action and intensity to satisfy any man and enough tough as nails female characters to inspire any woman.
Looking at what else is supposed to come out this summer, the rest of this blockbuster season is going to suck. Nothing will top this. In fact, Mad Max: Fury Road just magnifies all the things wrong with Avengers: Age of Ultron and every other big budget film I’ve seen in recent memory.
I may just go see this film again and again, every weekend it is still in theaters.
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Talking Pulp 
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