Sicario (2015)

 

“Nothing will make sense to your American ears, and you will doubt everything that we do, but in the end you will understand.”

 

            I am not really into movies that have to do with drug busting. Those are types of movies that really do not hold my interest. If you have heard anything about the plot of Sicario you may be asking yourself then why if I do not like movies that have to do with drug busting did I go see it. My answer to you is that I had no idea what Sicario was about when I went to see it and it was one of those movies I wound up really, really liking.

            The story begins with a drug raid on a house in Arizona. A tactical team is sent in to find supposed kidnap victims but no one but hired drug runners and thugs are in the house. The house is deemed clear. One of the hired thugs almost killed agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) but she managed to duck out of the way just in time. When Kate gets up she looks at the hole in the wall and sees something. The agents come to find that there are dozens of dead bodies hidden in the wall.

            Soon Kate is picked for a special assignment to bring in the drug lord who owned the house and hired the thugs. She is to work with a guy named Matt Garver (Josh Brolin) from the Department of Justice. Also working with Garver and Kate is a man named Alejandro (Benicio del Toro) to find the drug lord. They first take her across the border to Juarez, Mexico where they are to pick up a connection to the drug lord from a jail. On the bridge to the boarder the team is almost ambushed by cartel members looking to kill the prisoner before he can talk. Luckily the team bests the cartel members.

            With the information taken from the prisoner, Matt and Alejandro decide that they have to create chaos in order for the smaller drug lord to lead them to his boss the bigger drug lord.

            Kate gets wrapped up in a world she was not expecting. The two men use tactics to get information that she does approve of and her world becomes outrageously dangers in a short amount of time.

            The cast was beyond brilliant. None of the characters are likable and that is something I kind of like in movies if it can be done right. Emily Blunt’s character was a little annoying but I liked her. Blunt is actually the entire reason why I wanted to see the movie. I adore her as an actress. Josh Brolin was good his character was kind of  laid back like he had been through everything five million times before. Benicio del Toro was amazing. His character was scary as hell and awesome and amazing. I am hoping that he gets recognized around award season. I am not saying he should nominated or even win an Oscar but he should get like a Golden Globe or something. He was incredible.

            The direction by Denis Villeneuve was unbelievably fantastic. There were so many certain little aspects of scenes that he focused on that other directors might not have. I am a little obsessed with this one scene and the way it was filmed. When the American envoy is driving through Juarez attended by the Mexican police troopers they drive by a park. Villeneuve shows the cars and vans and motorcycles in the distance while he has the people playing in the park in the foreground. We see these people playing games to sitting around talking to each other and they do not even really pay attention to it. Their curiosity makes them look for a second but they are not bothered by it all because police cars and violence are such a daily occurrence to them. That was so sad to see. Another scene that I was thought was brilliant when the team goes to raid a tunnel the drug lords use to smuggle drugs to America. The scene takes place at night so the camera is in night vision mode. There is no dialogue and very little, if any, music. There is so much tension in the camera as well as the characters in this scene. This was when I said to myself, when does this come out on Blu Ray. I would really like to see Villeneuve nominated for an Oscar for his direction he was incredible.

            Sicario is one of the best movies I have seen in a while. The story was great, the direction was awe inspiring, and the acting was top notch. Sicario is a movie I highly recommend seeing as soon as you can. 

 

 

Into the Woods (2014)

“I wish, more than anything...”

            I am a big fan of the show Once Upon a Time. I like how all the fairy tale stories and characters are brought together. Magic, in the show, is used for both good and evil. The good and the bad characters struggle with their ability to use magic. As one character has said over and over again throughout the series “Magic always comes with a price.” I have no doubt that the concept for Once Upon a Time came from the Broadway musical Into the Woods. The musical has been made into a movie. In this story characters from different stories come together to learn that magic, either good or bad, comes with a price and they all pay in one way or another.

            The story revolves mainly around a baker and his wife, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Cinderella. The Baker and his wife have been married for a few years and have no children. The Baker’s Wife (Emily Blunt) desperately wants a child. The Baker cannot stand to see his wife so upset but he has some trepidation about being a father since his walked out on him. The Witch (Meryl Streep) from next door comes barging in. She tells the couple the reason they cannot have any children is because she put a curse on the Baker’s father. The father came into the Witch’s garden years before and stole from her. The Witch’s mother had told her to never pick the magic beans. The father had taken the magic beans and the Witch turned to her ugly self. Because of this theft, the Witch made sure anyone in that house would never be able to have children. But, she tells the couple, the curse can be broken. They need to find a red cape, hair the yellow color of corn, a cow as white as milk, and gold colored shoes. The Baker has to go into the woods to find what he needs. His wife wants to go but he tells her to stay behind. Before he leaves they find the magic beans in the pocket of his jacket that had once belonged to his father.

            Little Red Riding Hood had stopped in the Baker’s shop on her way to her grandmother’s in the woods. She helps herself to some cookies and bread and is on her way. In the woods a wolf (Johnny Depp) tries to tempt her to come with him. He wants to eat her. As much as Red would like to go with him to pick flowers and do other things she cannot stray from the path to her grandmother’s. Of course you know the wolf makes it to the grandmother’s eats the grandmother. In this version the wolf does eat both the grandmother and the girl but they are saved by the Baker.

            Jack and his mother are very poor. Their cow Milky White has not given them any milk. His mother (Tracy Ullman) makes him go through the woods to the next town to sell the cow. He comes across the Baker and his wife who refused to be left alone. The Baker’s Wife talks Jack into giving them the cow in exchange for some beans. Of course the beans are magic and the next day there is a large beanstalk next to his house. He climbs up and steals three large gold coins from the giants. He finds the Baker in the woods to buy back his cow but the cow dies.

            Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) lives with her step-mother and two step-sisters. There is a festival at the palace that she desperately wants to go to. The cruel step-mother and sisters make her clean up in the hopes of possibly going and then cruelly tell her no. Cinderella decides to go to her mother’s grace under a large tree in the woods. She tells her mother she wants to go to the festival. The mother comes to her daughter and grants the wish. Cinderella is dressed in a beautiful gold dress with matching gold shoes. She dances the night away with the prince (Chris Pine). Then she takes flight like she is frightened into the woods. She gets nervous and runs away all three nights of the festival. The prince, each night, runs after the beautiful girl. Each time she runs away Cinderella crosses paths with the Baker’s Wife who desperately wants her shoes.

            Everyone gets their wishes eventually but there comes a price even for the Witch.

            The cast was fantastic. Meryl Streep is just incredible in whatever she does. She is Meryl Streep she can do anything! She actually looked gorgeous in all blue when the Witch got her beautiful looks back. Anna Kendrick was brilliant. Her Cinderella was perfect. Emily Blunt I just adore the more I watch her in movies. Her singing voice was fantastic I had no idea she could sing. She was perfect in her role because she can go from doing drama to comedy flawlessly. Johnny Depp is not in the movie very long but he was the only one who could have played the Wolf it was almost as though it was made for him to do. James Cordon as the Baker was adorable. He and Emily Blunt were paired wonderfully they worked so well. Tracy Ullman is not in the movie too long either and she was brilliant in her few scenes. Chris Pine… I have issues with him in general so I was not thrilled with his character. He did a song with another prince called “Agony” and let me tell you it was pure agony to sit through.

            Into the Woods is a type of movie that drives me crazy. It started off well and then the last like half hour just went in a totally different direction and it blew the whole thing. If you see the movie you will know exactly the scene I am talking about. Ugh, the last half hour drove me nuts! It was literally a WTF moment. So many things happened so suddenly and out of nowhere that, to me, just messed up the whole movie. I think Once Upon a Time takes this type of queue from the movie. So many times has the show done something good for one of their characters (especially the Evil Queen who I adore. They always screw with her) and then messed everything they had built for the one character, brought them down and changed them out of the blue.

            Besides the poor ending Into the Woods was not terrible. I did not even know that it was a musical so that surprised me a bit when it started. The songs were good, the acting was perfection, the sets and costumes were gorgeous, and the direction was really good. Into the Woods is worth seeing at least once because of the cast. 

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

“Come find me when you wake up!”

            What if you could live your day over again? Imagine you had an embarrassing moment and you do something and you relive that moment and do it all differently. Or imagine you were in a difficult situation at work such as your boss or manager just laid into you for something stupid and they did not get a chance to defend yourself before they dismissed you and you could go back and tell them in a nicer more diplomatic way to shove off. I think we would all like to relive certain moments in our life where we made mistakes and we could fix them. Edge of Tomorrow takes that concept of reliving moments over and over again and applies them to fighting a war and to a man who was the first time a coward. What unfolds is something original and nail biting.

            Years in the future aliens have invaded the earth. All major cities have fallen. The people of the world are oppressed by these strange creatures. Battles all around the world take place to try to hold the aliens back. World leaders and leaders of armies try to sell this war as hard as possible. They find their seller in a woman known as the Angel of Verdun who was able to attack the aliens with what seemed like ease. One of these sellers is Lt. Col. Bill Cage (Tom Cruise). He travels to London for conferences. He meets with a British commander. The commander tells Bill he is to go into battle the following day. Bill has no battle experience he was part of the ROTC in college. He tries to run out of the office but he is captured and drugged. When he wakes up he is in a boot camp and treated like crap. He is put into a group with the lowest of life.

            The day of battle Bill and the rest of the troops are put into these metal robotic fighting machines and then placed into a plane. Before the plane can land on the beaches of Normandy it is shot at. Bill manages to release himself and land hard on the ground. The scene is chaotic. His head swims with the blurred images of men, machines, and sand flying around him. He has no idea how to use his mechanized body weapon. Bill manages to avoid some the aliens coming towards him with his gun. He gets to a certain point on the beach, he sees the Angel of Verdun. She stands and stares at him longer than she should have and is killed. A huge alien comes after Bill. He manages to shoot and kill it but whatever the alien is made out of splatters into Bill’s eyes and mouth. This matter from the alien burns and kills him.

            Before we can blink Bill is back to when he wakes up at the camp. He is reliving the day over. He relives the beach a few times before he meets the Angel of Verdun and she tells him to find her when he wakes up.

            When Bill wakes up he finds the Angel of Verdun whose real name is Rita (Emily Blunt). She reveals she once had the ability to relive the day over until she was given a blood transfusion. Now she works with Bill to train him and make him better so they can find where the lair for the aliens is.

            I had wanted to see Edge of Tomorrow when it was out in theaters a few months ago but unfortunately did not have the time. I did not have any expectations for it and I really had no clue what the story was about. I did not know that Emily Blunt would be an awesome fighting badass and that made watching her and her character that much more fun. I liked not knowing too much about it. The story was very unique even if it did have some used storylines such as Tom Cruise playing a guy who was a jerk and then became almost like a heroic super soldier. I am not a huge Tom Cruise fan but I did enjoy him in this. Edge of Tomorrow is one of the better Sci-Fi movies I have ever seen. The story takes a What If situation and one that is contemplated all the time and brings both situation and contemplation to a new level. I have to admit there were moments where I grew tense and I always love it when a story can do that because it does not happen very often with new movies for me. Highly suggest seeing Edge of Tomorrow.

Arthur Newman (2012)

Have you ever wished you can up and leave the life you are living and start a new one with a different name, a different outlook on life, and a different personality? I think we all have wished that at some point. I definitely wish I could. I would want to be someone stronger who is not so emotional and attached. I would want to be like the character Rosa Diaz from Brooklyn Nine-Nine who is like this total bad ass who could melt your soul with one look. I would mostly want to just live my live. I feel like I have not lived that for all of my twenty-six years on earth I have been afraid to let go and just do things. I have always felt stuck and it is killing me to no end.

Arthur Newman takes two people from two completely different backgrounds and brings them together through their want to be someone they are not.

Wallace Avery (Colin Firth) feels stuck in his life. He is a manager of a Fed Ex with a girlfriend who kind of likes him but just puts up with him for the most part and a son who does not even want to speak to him. Wallace buys a new identity and decides to fake his own death. He tells his girlfriend that he is going on a camping trip that will end with him on the beach. On the beach Wallace throws a few beers around, takes off his socks and shoes, and leaves his wallet in one of his shoes.

Wallace takes off on the road as his new identity Arthur J. Newman. In one town he drives through he sees a group of cops have blocked off part of the road. They are trying to get a young woman (Emily Blunt) out of a car she has stolen. Arthur does not think anything of it until he sees the girl at the same motel he is staying at. She is sitting incoherently on a chair beside the pool. Arthur sees something is not right with her at all and takes her to the hospital. Trying to get her checked in he finds her ID and finds her name is Michaela and she snaps back that she wants to be called Mike. Sometime later a doctor tells Arthur that Mike overdosed on cough syrup with codeine and needed her stomach pumped.

The following day Arthur waits for Mike so he can give her a ride. He did not want her to go along with him but they get to know each other. They find out they are both trying to run away from their responsibilities and from being who they originally were.

Colin Firth and Emily Blunt were great together. Their roles were corky for them or at least they seemed so to me. Arthur and Mike were darker roles for Firth and Blunt than I am used to seeing them in. Both Blunt and Firth did a fantastic job with their characters. They were both so uncomfortable and unhappy with themselves that they make you feel kind of uncomfortable watching them. I like those kinds of characters and they only really work if the acting is good.

      Arthur Newman was a good movie. I remember wanting to see it when it was originally released. I had no clue what it was about but I just wanted to see it because I really like Emily Blunt. She did not disappoint and neither did Colin Firth. The story did not disappoint either. It was unlike most movies that are released today. The characters were not very likeable and the story ended in a not so typical way. I like untypical endings very much. I liked how this showed that running away and becoming some else is not all it is cracked up to be, there is no real happily ever after. Arthur Newman is a movie I suggest seeing

Your Sister's Sister (2011)

I have watched a handful of movies both old and new that I went into not knowing what the plot was about or had a vague idea. Sometimes I am happy I did not know what the plot was and sometimes I wish I had so I could have avoided it. Your Sister’s Sister falls somewhere in between both sides but it was not too bad.  

            A year before the story of the movie takes place Jack lost his brother Tom. He is still reeling and cannot get out of grief. Tom’s friends throw a party to honor his memory and among the guests is Tom’s ex-girlfriend Iris (Emily Blunt). She sees Jack is not happy and practically forces him to go up to her father’s place on a remote piece of land. Jack relents and goes.

            When Jack arrives at the house Iris’s sister Hannah is there. Hannah tells Jack that she has just broken off a seven year relationship with her girlfriend. They sit down at a table and drink shots of tequila into the night. They get the idea to sleep with each other even though Hannah has not been with a guy in years.

            The next day Iris shows up. For a while Hannah and Jack act a little awkward around each other when Iris is around. He does not want to tell Iris because he really likes her and he knows she really likes him.

            The cat flies from the bag when Hannah has enough and tells her sister about sleeping with Jack and that she did so she could have a baby.

            Your Sister’s Sister is not a bad movie it started off great but I wound up not really liking the plot near the end. Well put it this way, I am not thrilled with stories where two people sleep together and they cannot let another person know it is overdone and annoying. The acting was great. I read that most of the dialogue was improvised. It definitely has that feeling but it kept the movie real and entertaining. The actor who played Jack was very good I liked him a lot he was funny and real. Emily Blunt was wonderful. I watched the movie because of her and she has yet to not be good in a movie to me.

            Your Sister’s Sister as I said is not a bad movie. I was happy not knowing most of the plot beforehand because the acting was very good but I kind of wish I did because I got bored with it. The ending just ends and lets you think of what happens which I liked a lot I love ambiguous endings. I would recommend watching Your Sister’s Sister just for the acting and the direction was not too bad either.

 

The Five Year Engagement (2012)

“The first important thing to remember about marriage is that it requires commitment. The second important thing to remember about marriage is that so does insanity.” 

            I wanted to see The Five Year Engagement when it came out in theaters and of course I never got around to seeing it then. I am not a fan of Jason Segal if I see him in anything I usually stay away from it because the man drives me up a wall. I only sat through it for Emily Blunt since I think she is an extremely talented actress. Blunt and Segal are a weird combination but somehow they worked and the movie was really cute.

            Tom (Segal) and Violet have been dating for a year when Tom proposes to her. They plan to get married in the near future but of course life gets in the way. Violet’s sister Suzie gets pregnant by Tom’s friend Alex and they get married. Violet is offered a job in Michigan at the college. Tom gives up his job as a chef. He thinks he can find a job out there but everyone laughs at him that he left a job in California and came out to Michigan.

            Their relationship begins to fall apart because Tom is working a crappy job at a sandwich shop and Violet’s job at the school is going very well.

            Typical romantic comedy the couple breaks up and dates other people but they still cannot get over each other. In the end after five years Violet and Tom wind up getting married.

            The cast is very good. Jason Segal still annoyed me I do not find him funny. He wrote the movie though and he did not do too bad he came up with a good story. Emily Blunt was wonderful. She really can do anything she is fabulous at drama and comedy. Alison Brie who played Suzie and Chris Pratt who played Alex almost stole the movie they were hilarious.

            The Five Year Engagement was a good movie. It dragged big time in the middle it could have been shorter. The movie is good to see at least once.