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thedullwoodexperiment

~ Viewing movies in a different light

thedullwoodexperiment

Tag Archives: Nicholas Sparks

Monthly Roundup – July 2016

31 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Apache War Smoke, Apaches, Australia, Bank robbers, Banshee Chapter, Ben Whishaw, Benjamin Walker, Blair Erickson, Brendan Gleeson, Cambodia, Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy, Crawl, Daniel Zirilli, Drama, Gena Rowlands, George Shevtsov, Georgina Haig, Gilbert Roland, Glenda Farrell, Harold F. Kress, Herman Melville, Historical drama, Hitman, Home invasion, Horror, In the Heart of the Sea, James Garner, Katia Winter, Literary adaptation, Moby Dick, Nantucket, Nicholas Sparks, Nick Cassavetes, Numbers stations, Offshore Grounds, Online journalist, Paul China, Paul Holmes, Project MK Ultra, Rachel McAdams, Reviews, Robert Horton, Romance, Ron Howard, Ryan Gosling, Steven Seagal, Ted Levine, Thailand, The Asian Connection, The Essex, The Notebook, Thriller, Tom Holland, Tonto Valley Station, True love, True story, Wells Fargo, Western, Whales

Crawl (2011) / D: Paul China / 80m

Cast: George Shevtsov, Georgina Haig, Paul Holmes, Lauren Dillon, Catherine Miller, Bob Newman, Andy Barclay, Lynda Stoner

Crawl

Rating: 7/10 – a hitman (Shevtsov) hired by an unscrupulous bar owner (Holmes) winds up injured while trying to leave town, and ends up playing a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a waitress (Haig) when he seeks refuge in her home; a slow-burn thriller that takes its time and relies on tension and atmosphere to keep the viewer hooked, Crawl often belies its low budget, and features terrific performances from Shevtsov (in a role written expressly for him) and Haig, but stops short of being completely effective thanks to some awkward narrative choices and first-timer China’s lack of experience as a director.

The Asian Connection (2016) / D: Daniel Zirilli / 91m

Cast: John Edward Lee, Pim Bubear, Steven Seagal, Sahajak Boonthanakit, Byron Gibson, Byron Bishop, Eoin O’Brien, Michael Jai White

The Asian Connection

Rating: 3/10 – career criminal Jack Elwell (Lee) meets the love of his life, Avalon (Bubear), and decides that robbing a bank is the way to a financially stable relationship, but unfortunately the money he steals belongs to crime boss Gan Sirankiri (Seagal), and soon Jack is being coerced into robbing more of Sirankiri’s banks when one of his men (Boonthanakit) threatens to expose him; what could have been a moderately entertaining action thriller is let down by some atrocious acting (and not just from Seagal), some equally atrocious camerawork, editing that looks like it was done with a hatchet, and the kind of direction that gives “point and shoot” a bad name, all of which leaves The Asian Connection looking like something to be avoided at all costs.

Banshee Chapter (2013) / D: Blair Erickson / 87m

Cast: Katia Winter, Ted Levine, Michael McMillian, Corey Moosa, Monique Candelaria, Jenny Gabrielle, Vivian Nesbitt, Chad Brummett, William Sterchi

Banshee Chapter

Rating: 3/10 – a journalist (Winter) looks into the disappearance of a friend, and discovers a secret world of government experiments that are linked to strange radio broadcasts and the discredited MK Ultra program from the Sixties; a paranoid thriller with supernatural overtones, Banshee Chapter tries extra hard to be unsettling and creepy – much of it takes place at night and has been shot using low light – but fails to make its story of any interest to anyone watching, which means that Winter and Levine put a lot of effort into their roles but are let down by the tortuous script and Erickson’s wayward direction.

In the Heart of the Sea (2015) / D: Ron Howard / 122m

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland, Ben Whishaw, Brendan Gleeson, Michelle Fairley, Paul Anderson, Frank Dillane, Joseph Mawle, Charlotte Riley

In the Heart of the Sea

Rating: 5/10 – the writer, Herman Melville (Whishaw), convinces retired sailor Tom Nickerson (Gleeson) to talk about his experiences as a young boy at sea, and in particular his time aboard the Essex, a whaling ship that encountered a creature Melville will call Moby Dick; based on the true story of the Essex, and the voyage that saw it sunk by an enormous whale, In the Heart of the Sea is technically well made but lacks anyone to care about, avoids providing a true sense of the enormity of what happened, sees Ron Howard directing on auto-pilot, and leaves Hemsworth and Walker struggling to make amends for characters who are paper-thin to the point of being caricatures (or worse still, carbon copies of Fletcher Christian and William Bligh from Mutiny on the Bounty).

The Notebook (2004) / D: Nick Cassavetes / 123m

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Garner, Gena Rowlands, Sam Shepard, David Thornton, Joan Allen, James Marsden

The Notebook

Rating: 7/10 – in the late Thirties, a young man, Noah (Gosling), sets his cap for the girl of his dreams, Allie (McAdams), and though they fall in love, social conventions keep them apart, while in the modern day their story is told by an old man (Garner) to a woman with dementia (Rowlands); handsomely mounted and told with a genuine feel for the central characters and their travails, Nicholas Sparks’ The Notebook is an old-fashioned romantic drama that could have been made in the time period it covers, and which is bolstered by the performances of its four stars, as well as Cassavetes’ (son of Rowlands) sure-footed direction, glorious cinematography by Robert Fraisse, and a sense of inevitable tragedy that permeates the narrative to very good effect indeed.

Apache War Smoke (1952) / D: Harold F. Kress / 67m

Cast: Gilbert Roland, Glenda Farrell, Robert Horton, Barbara Ruick, Gene Lockhart, Harry Morgan, Patricia Tiernan, Hank Worden, Myron Healey

Apache War Smoke

Rating: 6/10 – a stagecoach station finds itself under attack from angry Apaches after a white man kills several of their tribe – and the evidence points to the station agent’s father, a wanted outlaw (Roland), as the killer; a compact, fast-paced Western, Apache War Smoke zips by in low-budget style thanks to the efforts of two-time Oscar winner Kress – editing awards for How the West Was Won (1962) and The Towering Inferno (1974) – and a cast who enter willingly into the spirit of things, making this studio-made Western set in Tonto Valley Station(!) a surprising treat.

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The Lucky One (2012)

16 Friday May 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Blythe Danner, Dead brother, Ex-husband, Green Kennels, Iraq, Louisiana, Nicholas Sparks, Photograph, Review, Romantic drama, Scott Hicks, Taylor Schilling, Zac Efron

the-lucky-one_ec5d8c66

D: Scott Hicks / 101m

Cast: Zac Efron, Taylor Schilling, Blythe Danner, Jay R. Ferguson, Riley Thomas Stewart, Adam LeFevre, Robert Hayes, Joe Chrest, Ann McKenzie, Kendal Tuttle

Adapted from the novel by Nicholas Sparks, The Lucky One opens in Iraq and a night mission where Logan (Efron) and his platoon run into Aces (Tuttle) and his platoon. There is a firefight with some Iraqis and Aces is killed. The next morning, Logan spies a picture of a woman in the rubble. He picks it up just seconds before an incendiary device goes off, killing several of his comrades. Logan survives, and for the rest of the tour he keeps the photo with him and it acts as a talisman, warding off harm and keeping him safe. He also tries to find out if anyone knows who the picture belongs to, but no one recognises it.

Back home, Logan traces the location where the picture was taken, and with his dog, Zeus, heads off on foot across country from Colorado to Louisiana, and the small town of Hamden, where after asking around, he discovers the woman’s name is Beth Green (Schilling) and she runs a kennels on the outskirts of town. When Logan goes there to tell her about the picture he finds he doesn’t know how to, and the situation is further complicated by Beth’s assumption that he’s there to apply for a job. Accepting the job, but with Beth having reservations about someone who walks so far just to work at a kennels, Logan makes himself useful doing repairs and general chores.

Beth’s grandmother, Ellie (Danner) takes to Logan from the start, as does Beth’s seven year old son, Ben (Stewart). The one person who doesn’t is Beth’s ex-husband, Keith (Ferguson), a deputy sheriff whose jealousy and violent temper have him believing that Logan is trying to usurp his position as Beth and Ben’s protector. With Keith making it difficult for Beth to move on with her life, Logan becomes increasingly close to her, and soon they are looking at each other with more than curiosity. They begin a hesitant romance, but Logan still finds it impossible to tell Beth about the photo, even when it becomes clear that Aces was her brother.

When Keith finds out that Logan was showing Beth’s picture around town he wastes no time in telling Beth (he also has the picture, stolen from Logan’s home). Beth confronts Logan and she asks him to leave. Keith makes an attempt to reconcile once more with Beth but when she rejects him, he threatens to take Ben there and then. Ben runs away, but in doing so, puts his life in danger…

The Lucky One

With its typical stranger-with-a-secret-comes-to-town storyline, The Lucky One doesn’t bring anything new to the romantic drama genre, but in many ways that’s its strength. Its reliance on minor soap opera clichés to reinforce both the romantic and the dramatic aspects helps establish the movie as a straightforward telling of a familiar story, and one that the audience can take a great deal of comfort from. As Logan and Beth circle each other, there’s never any doubt as to how their romance will proceed, and the familiarity of the situation is aided greatly by the performances of Efron and Schilling, his brooding reticence complimenting her fragile beauty.

Beautifully set (and shot) in Louisiana, the movie moves easily from one reassuring plot development to the next, almost casually hitting its emotional high points, and thanks to Will Fetters’ astute screenplay, never trying to subvert or over-complicate matters. Hicks, who shot to fame with the altogether weightier Shine (1992), directs with a confidence that is reflected in the ease with which the cast inhabit their characters, and the credibility of their interaction. Efron plays the strong, silent type effortlessly but for long stretches Logan is almost a secondary character, as the movie sets up the family dynamic around Beth, Ben, Keith and Ellie. Once the romance kicks in, Efron gets to show just why he’s become one of the most sought after actors working today, showing a vulnerability the likes of Channing Tatum and Josh Duhamel (both male leads in other Sparks’ adaptations) would struggle to portray. It’s a low-key performance and one that befits the character of an ex-Marine trying to rebuild his life one step at a time.

Schilling also impresses as the put upon single mother putting a brave face on being divorced and bereaved at the same time, as well as looking for some way to rebuild her own life. Beth and Logan are kindred spirits in that sense, and when they begin their romance, their need for each other ignites a coming together that breathes new fire into both their lives (surprisingly, their love scenes are quite steamy for a PG-13 movie, but that’s not a bad thing). As Keith, Ferguson (mostly known for his TV work) makes more of the dastardly ex-husband role than appears to have been a part of the script, and the scene where his armour cracks during a recital given by his son is both unexpected and affecting in equal measure. Danner outshines them all, of course, but then if she hadn’t then something would have really been wrong.

The movie does have some faults, however. Logan’s PTSD is clumsily dealt with and is forgotten once he’s met Beth, and there’s a few too many occasions where the central conceit struggles to fend off its own implausibility, and Ben behaves a little too much like the semi-adult he clearly isn’t at seven years old, but these are minor complaints. All in all, The Lucky One is a rewarding experience, cleverly presented, and if things are a little too predictable at times – fans of this type of movie will be able to spot the outcome from a mile off – as noted above, the filmmakers’ determination to embrace the customary elements of such a storyline is a benefit and not a detraction.

Rating: 7/10 – a solid if unspectacular production, The Lucky One will please fans of the genre for its straight on approach and for treating its main characters with sympathy and respect; bolstered by often beautiful location photography, it’s also blessed with a score by Mark Isham that avoids all the usual emotional cues.

(for Roxanne xx)

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