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Tag Archives: Milla Jovovich

Shock and Awe (2017)

04 Saturday Aug 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Drama, Iraq War, James Marsden, Jessica Biel, Journalism, Knight Ridder, Mainstream media, Milla Jovovich, Rob Reiner, Tommy Lee Jones, True story, US government, Woody Harrelson

D: Rob Reiner / 90m

Cast: Woody Harrelson, James Marsden, Rob Reiner, Tommy Lee Jones, Jessica Biel, Milla Jovovich, Richard Schiff, Luke Tennie

In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, the US government began asserting that Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden had been aided by Iragi leader Saddam Hussein. This was at odds with the perceived wisdom that Bin Laden was operating out of Afghanistan, and despite an on-going mission to bomb him and the country “back to the Stone Age”. With most of the mainstream media, including publishing giants such as The New York Times and The Washington Post accepting the government’s “shoddy intelligence” as fact, it was only the likes of independent news service Knight Ridder journalists Jonathan Landay (Harrelson) and Warren Strobel (Marsden) who challenged the government’s stance, and did their best to expose the neo-con conspiracy that wanted to manufacture a war with Iraq. Supported by their editor, John Walcott (Reiner), Landay and Strobel strove to find evidence to contradict the government’s assertions that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and that this was the excuse being used to support the call for war, a call that had no basis in fact…

Recently, the journalist Carl Bernstein tweeted, “This is worse than Watergate, because the system worked in Watergate.” Of course he’s referring to the current situation with Donald Trump as President, but his remark could equally apply to the state of play following 9/11. After Watergate, the Republicans began managing the mainstream news media in a way that can still be seen today, and the post-9/11 watershed in political reporting is a perfect example of how government manipulation of the truth – or outright lying, if you prefer – was aided and abetted by the news corporations. But if you’re looking for a savage indictment of this kind of behaviour then Shock and Awe is not the place to find it. Instead, the movie flits between scenes of rote exposition and misjudged solemnity as it tries to exploit a situation where one group of journalists were outmanoeuvred by the Bush Administration, and their message was undermined by not getting it out to the public in as wide a manner as was needed. So what we have is a movie that deals with failure but not in an outraged, we-demand-justice kind of way, but in a poor-naïve-us kind of way that just isn’t attractive.

It also tries to be more than it has to be by including a distaff side to things through the paranoid (yet correct) assertions of Landay’s Yugoslavian wife Vlatka (Jovovich), and an awkward, should-have-been-jettisoned-from-the-get-go boy-meets-girl scenario involving Strobel and his neighbour, Lisa Mayr (Biel) (the scene where she recounts a potted version of fourteen hundred years of Iraqi history has to be seen to be believed). These episodes sit uneasily between scenes of Landay failing to charm various sources, and Strobel continually doubting if what they’re discovering is right. Added to this is a clumsy sub-plot involving The Philadelphia Enquirer not running any of Knight Ridder’s stories when they contradict the government, and the inclusion of veteran war reporter turned State Department official Joe Galloway (Jones), whose sole purpose seems to be to provide pithy comments about the duplicitous nature of his bosses. It’s all a huge, uninspired, unworthy, and unrelentingly mediocre movie with no fire or energy, and which uses a disabled soldier (Tennie) to make a thumpingly obvious point about the waste of men and resources once the US got to Iraq. Harrelson and Marsden are unlikely reporters, and Reiner overdoes his serious, flinty editor role, but it makes no difference as there’s not one relatable character in the whole movie. Is there any shock and awe? Yes, but only at how bad it all is.

Rating: 4/10 – you know your movie’s in trouble when its best performance is given by George W. Bush in archive footage, but that’s just one of the dilemmas that Shock and Awe fails to overcome; with no sense of outrage to build on or to, and by telling a story that’s too little too late, the movie lacks a purpose or a workable design, something that should have been spotted right from the start.

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Mini-Review: Survivor (2015)

27 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Action, American Embassy, Bombing, Conspiracy, Drama, Dylan McDermott, James McTeigue, London, Milla Jovovich, Pierce Brosnan, Review, Robert Forster, Thriller, Times Square

Survivor

D: James McTeigue / 96m

Cast: Milla Jovovich, Pierce Brosnan, Dylan McDermott, Angela Bassett, James D’Arcy, Robert Forster, Frances de la Tour, Roger Rees, Benno Fürmann, Genevieve O’Reilly, Corey Johnson

Kate Abbott (Jovovich) has transferred to the American Embassy in London. She oversees visa applications to the US by foreign nationals travelling through the UK. When she suspects that gas expert Dr Balan (Rees) isn’t all that he seems, it leads to her being hunted by assassin the Watchmaker (Brosnan). With only her colleague, Sam Parker (McDermott), believing she’s had nothing to do with the deaths of other colleagues in a bomb blast, or that of her immediate boss, Bill Talbot (Forster), Kate is forced to go on the run in an attempt to get to the bottom of the conspiracy she’s found herself entangled in.

Narrowly escaping several attempts on her life by the Watchmaker, Kate realises she has to get back into the embassy in order to find the proof she needs to expose the conspiracy. Helped by Sam and another colleague, Sally (de la Tour), Kate discovers enough information to send her off to New York on New Year’s Eve. Followed by the Watchmaker, Kate has only a few hours to foil a terrorist attack planned for midnight in Times Square, and which is backed by the pharmaceutical company that Balan works for.

Survivor - scene

Take a director whose previous output includes V for Vendetta (2005) and the underrated Ninja Assassin (2009), add two principal stars who are no strangers to the action genre, a supporting cast of more than capable (and proven) actors, and good location work in both London and New York – and what do you get? A terrible piece of nonsense that doesn’t even bother to try and hide how preposterous it all is. This is largely thanks to Philip Shelby’s overly-simplistic, corner-cutting script, a melange of action movie clichés and inane dialogue lumped in amongst an unconvincing plot and the kind of one-dimensional characterisations that leave the viewer shaking their head in disbelief.

There’s no point at which Survivor is even remotely credible, and while there’s a small degree of amusement to be had at each nutty development in the script, McTeigue fails to maintain any degree of confidence behind the camera. As a result, the movie plods from one uninspired set piece to the next without pausing for breath or an injection of self-belief. Jovovich runs around a lot looking frazzled and confused (as well she might), while Brosnan sleepwalks through his role with the look of an actor wondering where his career went to. By the end, with its inevitable showdown between Kate and the Watchmaker, the movie has given up trying to be exciting or different, and renders itself completely unremarkable.

Rating: 3/10 – why movies like these continue to be made is anybody’s guess, but Survivor is an object lesson in how not to make a modern day thriller with Cold War overtones; lacking credibility is one thing, but lacking suspense as well makes for a poorly judged and ill-considered movie that viewers can only help will end sooner than it does.

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Dirty Girl (2010)

16 Saturday May 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Abe Sylvia, Absent father, Drama, Dwight Yoakam, Fresno, Homosexuality, Jeremy Dozier, Juno Temple, Mary Steenburgen, Milla Jovovich, Oklahoma, Review, Road trip, William H. Macy

Dirty Girl

D: Abe Sylvia / 89m

Cast: Juno Temple, Jeremy Dozier, Milla Jovovich, Mary Steenburgen, Dwight Yoakam, William H. Macy, Nicholas D’Agosto, Tim McGraw

It’s 1987 in Oklahoma, and Danielle Edmondston (Temple) is constantly pushing the boundaries at her high school, being vulgar in class and unapologetically promiscuous. As a result of her behaviour, the principal transfers her out of regular classes into what is called The Challengers, a class Danielle regards as being for kids with special needs. At her first lesson she’s paired with Clarke Walters (Dozier), and they’re tasked with looking after a pretend baby (in this case a bag of flour) and keeping a diary of its daily life.

Danielle is less than impressed by the assignment but Clarke persuades her to go along with it. They begin to spend more time together, and to get to know each other. Danielle tells Clarke about her absent father, who bailed before she was born, while Clarke talks about his father, Joseph (Yoakam) and how he hates gays (Clarke is 35% gay according to a doctor he’s seen, but he’s keen to make it past 50%). When Danielle reveals that she has photos of her mother and father from before she was born, a check of the high school yearbook from when they were together reveals her father to be the assistant football coach at the time, Danny Briggs (McGraw). They find an address for him but when they go there, they learn that he’s moved to Fresno, California.

With her mother, Sue-Ann (Jovovich), planning to marry a Mormon named Ray (Macy), whom she detests, Danielle decides it’s time to go and meet her real father. She asks Clarke to go with her but he’s too afraid of what his father will do if they use his dad’s car (Ray has confiscated the keys to Danielle’s car). But when he gets home and discovers that his father knows about the gay porn he’s kept in his room, Clarke makes his escape in his dad’s car and picks up Danielle. Along the way they pick up a hitchhiker, Joel (D’Agosto), a stripper heading for Las Vegas. Clarke is attracted to Joel and when they make an overnight stop, Danielle leaves the two of them alone. The next morning, however, Joel is gone.

Meanwhile, Joseph has gone to Danielle’s house and broken in in an attempt to find out where the two friends have gone. But with nobody home, he’s arrested and put in jail. His long-suffering wife, Peggy (Steenburgen), arrives at the jail but refuses to take him home. Instead she leaves him there and decides she’ll look for Clarke and Danielle herself. She calls on Sue-Ann and together they fly to Fresno so they can warn Danielle’s father that she’s coming. But Joseph’s car breaks down, leaving enough time to go by for Joseph to be released and catch up with them. When he does, Clarke confronts his father and gives Danielle the chance to get away and still get to Fresno.

Dirty Girl - scene

The phrase, “Nobody likes a dirty girl” is uttered twice in Dirty Girl, first by the principal as a pointed reminder that Danielle’s behaviour will only get her so far, and then by Danielle herself as an ironic statement reflecting how she’s developed over the course of the movie. In both cases it’s a badge of pride for Danielle, one that defines her within the milieu of her high school (but not in the wider world, where she is just another teenager with “issues”). Basing his script on his own experiences growing up in the Eighties, writer/director Sylvia has fashioned a tale that shows what can happen when self-assurance gives way to longing, and how that longing can prompt a change in attitude in even the most rebellious and uncompromising of teenagers.

However, the reason for Danielle’s behaviour is never properly explained. Sure, she’s never known her father, but it’s a fragile hook to hang such an unhappy personality on, and the role of Sue-Ann in Danielle’s life is too vague for comfort (one scene aside, Jovovich plays Sue-Ann as if she’s reacting to everything a few seconds too late, leaving the character looking somewhat adrift from the action). Danielle picks out her future conquests then drops them just as quickly, but if you were to ask why, the movie hasn’t got an answer. Nor does it try to explain why Danielle would hook up with a shy, overweight homosexual (other than that if they didn’t, the movie would be a lot shorter). As odd couples go, they’re not that odd either, just a couple of lonely individuals who learn to support each other, and where haven’t we seen that before?

With the script prompting more questions than it can answer, and with too many scenes bumping awkwardly against each other, Dirty Girl tries for an emotional honesty that doesn’t quite come off, leaving some moments feeling preachy and tired. As the aggressive, troubled Danielle, Temple proves yet again what an intuitive young actress she is, and it’s easy to see the neediness behind her flirtatious image and attitude. Likewise, Dozier – making his feature debut – portrays Clarke’s goofy, endearing personality as if it’s the only thing about him that’s any good. Browbeaten by his father, Clarke lives that life of “quiet desperation” so beloved of screenwriters everywhere, but here it’s less pointed and apparently more manageable, thus limiting the drama. Dozier is very good in the role but he has to work extra hard sometimes to make Clarke less compliant.

With a great supporting cast doing their best with a script that doesn’t give them an awful lot to play with, Sylvia does his best to make Danielle and Clarke’s journey a rewarding one both for them and for the viewer, but he doesn’t quite manage it (though he does manage to offset the drama with some well-judged pockets of humour). While Dirty Girl isn’t a bad movie per se, what it is is a movie that you can engage with on a straightforward level and not be disappointed. But when you start to look at it more closely, it’s a movie that lacks the depth necessary to carry off the narrative. There are plenty of teen dramas out there, but this one misses out on being truly memorable.

Rating: 5/10 – lacking the necessary freshness needed to make this stand out from the crowd, Dirty Girl is forced to rely on two quality performances from its leads; a sharper script would have helped, but based on its own merits it’s only occasionally diverting and less satisfying than its premise might imply.

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Cymbeline (2014)

18 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Anton Yelchin, Biker gang, Crime, Dakota Johnson, Delroy Lindo, Drama, Ed Harris, Ethan Hawke, Iachimo, Imogen, John Leguizamo, Literary adaptation, Michael Almereyda, Milla Jovovich, Mistaken identity, Murder, Penn Badgley, Posthumus, Review, Shakespeare, Thriller

Cymbeline

D: Michael Almereyda / 98m

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Ed Harris, Milla Jovovich, John Leguizamo, Penn Badgley, Dakota Johnson, Anton Yelchin, Peter Gerety, Kevin Corrigan, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Delroy Lindo, James Ransone, Spencer Treat Clark, Harley Ware, Bill Pullman

Imogen (Johnson) and Posthumus (Badgley) are young lovers who have married in secret and exchanged gifts of a ring (for Posthumus) and a bracelet (for Imogen). Their marriage is not to the liking of Imogen’s father, biker king Cymbeline (Harris). He banishes Posthumus, and so paves the way for his second wife, the Queen (Jovovich) to advance her own son, Cloten (Yelchin) as Imogen’s husband, in an attempt to secure control of the biker gang when Cymbeline is dead. Aided by his servant, Pisanio (Leguizamo), Posthumus goes to stay with his friend Philario (Ransone). There he meets Iachomo (Hawke) who wagers that he can seduce Imogen to prove that she isn’t as virtuous as Posthumus believes. The wager accepted, Iachomo visits Imogen and when a direct assault on her virtue backfires, he portrays it as a test of her commitment to Posthumus – which she accepts. Before he leaves he asks her to look after an item for him overnight, which she also agrees to.

The item is a chest, one that Iachomo has hidden himself inside. While Imogen sleeps he climbs out of the chest and puts together evidence that he has slept with her. He takes this evidence back to Posthumus who, enraged by Imogen’s seeming duplicity, sends two letters: one to Imogen asking her to meet him at Milford Haven, the other to Pisanio asking him to take her there and when they arrive, to kill her. Pisanio, however, is unable to carry out his order and shows Imogen his letter. He has her disguise herself as a boy and tells her to travel on to Milford Haven; he also gives her what he believes to be a remedy for travel sickness that he has taken from the Queen, but which is a potion that will mimic death.

Meanwhile, Cloten discovers Posthumus’ plan to meet Imogen and heads to Milford Haven himself with the intention of killing Posthumus and bringing Imogen back to marry him. Imogen has reached the town already and fallen in with Belarius (Lindo) and his two “sons” Guiderius (Clark) and Arviragus (Ware). She tells them her name is Fidele. While they are out hunting, they encounter Cloten who insults and then threatens Guiderius, who in turn kills him and then beheads him. Imogen, feeling unwell, takes the remedy and becomes as dead. Belarius decides to bury her with Cloten’s body; when she wakes she believes Cloten to be Posthumus as he is wearing similar clothes. With both she and Posthumus believing themselves lost to each other, an impending war between Cymbeline’s gang and the Rome police – to whom they pay a tribute – proves to be the unlikely cause of their reconciliation.

Cymbeline - scene

In adapting the play by William Shakespeare, writer/director Almereyda has done two things very well, and two things not so well. The first is to employ an incredibly talented cast, all of whom are able to take Shakespeare’s lines and make them sound as natural as modern day speech, fully understandable and with clear purpose in their meaning. The likes of Hawke – reuniting with Almereyda for the first time since Hamlet (2000) – Harris, Leguizamo and Lindo provide convincing interpretations of the prose and help the casual viewer through some of the more confusing aspects of the plot (mistaken identities are key here). The second is to condense the play’s final third into a more manageable “wrapping up” of things, even if it all feels rushed and at the expense of the movie’s previously more measured pace.

But where Almereyda gets those things absolutely right, where he gets it absolutely wrong proves too damaging for the movie to recover from. The first is to set the action in a modern day setting, mostly Brooklyn, and to flavour the movie as if it were a version of Shakespeare meets Sons of Anarchy. This backdrop, given that it should enhance the drama – the Queen persuades Cymbeline to back out of his arrangement with the Rome police in the hope that war between them will see him dead – instead seems ponderous and ill-considered, more of a budgetary consideration than a narrative one. It leads to some incongruous moments, such as Cloten pushing a motorbike along a gravel road, Imogen choosing her nom-de-plume thanks to a T-shirt worn by Guiderius, and Posthumus getting about on a skateboard. While some of these tweaks may have appeared sound in the pre-production phase, on screen they’re not as effective as was probably hoped for.

The second problem is with Almereyda’s direction itself. The movie plods along from scene to scene with little energy or flair displayed, and struggles to provide any momentum to take the audience with it. There’s a signal lack of connection between scenes that makes for a stop/start experience, the narrative appearing jumbled and ill at ease with itself, like a story that needs more cohesion. With so many subplots and supporting characters, Cymbeline looks and feels like a movie that can’t quite get a grip on what it’s trying to say, or even how to say it. Again, if it weren’t for the very talented cast, the movie would founder even more, and the audience would be left adrift, waiting – unsuccessfully – for Almereyda to place his authority on the material and make it work with more style and verve.

Generally regarded as one of Shakespeare’s weaker plays (written at a time when he seemed to be bored with them), Cymbeline is a strange choice for a movie adaptation, its tale of thwarted lovers and political machinations proving not quite as amenable to the translation as might be expected. It also looks very much as if it were shot too quickly – some of the set ups look rushed or improvised. Still, it’s a brave choice by Almereyda, but if he has any plans to adapt any more of Shakespeare’s works, he might be better off securing a bigger budget, and concentrating on the script rather than directing. After all, “the play’s the thing…”

Rating: 5/10 – a dour, unimpressive adaptation, Cymbeline is rescued by a set of strong performances and an astute conflation of the plot; not as engrossing as it should have been, but not as awful as the early scenes seem to indicate.

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