Texas Killing Fields

Year: 2011
Director:  Ami Canaan Mann
Starring: Sam Worthington, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jessica Chastain, Chloe Grace Moretz

Texas Killing Fields is my unofficial "part two" of a Worthington and Chastain film. I came upon this and THE DEBT around the same time and so I decided to review them back to back.

This movie is hard to describe in terms of genre because the genre that it would traditionally be described as would take away from the movie's effectiveness. I suppose I would categorize it as a cop drama, but with way more plot depth than a typical cop drama would be. Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Sam Worthington play partners who are trying to solve a murder in their city, Texas City. They are also put into a obligated situation to help out Jessica Chastain (who works for another police department) with her missing persons - turned - homicide case. While the officers try to solve these crimes they are also going through things in their lives separately that dictates their actions and pushes them to certain breaking points.

For the second time in a row, I found myself actually enjoying another Sam Worthington acting job. I'm surprised. In both THE DEBT and this film, he seems to have found what he is good at in acting. He plays a blatant jerk who using violence and aggression to be a great cop. Along with his surprising performance was a solid "good cop" acting job by Jeffrey Dean Morgan who plays mature very well and Jessica Chastain who once again acts her heart out even though her character was not a focal point.



I liked this movie. I liked the pace of the movie and how the slowness of a Texan, Southern city reflected the tone of the movie. The writing was decent, but the plot and the story were powerful and at times disturbing.

Go see this film.

Score: B

The Debt

Year: 2010
Director: John Madden
Starring: Helen Mirren, Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, Tom Wilkinson

The Debt was a product of one of my new favorite actresses, Jessica Chastain. I loved her in it, but I also really enjoyed the movie. The Debt is a espionage suspense thriller about three Jewish spies who attempt to kidnap a notorious Nazis surgeon and bring him back to Israel to stand trial for his crimes. The writing was pretty good as well as the directing, but what made the film for me was the acting. Obviously, Helen Mirren and Tom Wilkinson are great actors but I was most impressed with the aforementioned Jessica Chastain. She was pretty amazing in this film. She beautifully portrayed a young woman faced with capturing a man, alive, who was responsible for the death of so many of her people including her mother. Also I found myself actually liking the performance by Sam Worthington. I'm not a huge fan of his. Even though his movies are good, his acting has never impressed me. In The Debt I was surprised by his performance. I feel he is better suited for a secondary character role where he doesn't have to carry a movie.

The Debt was a pretty good movie. I was entertained throughout and was just in awe of Jessica Chastain. This movie acted it's way to a good review.

Score: B+

Bottle Rocket

Year: 1996
Director: Wes Anderson
Starring: Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, James Caan

If you read my review on Submarine you would notice I referred to my love of Wes Anderson quite a lot, so with the announcement of a new Wes Anderson film, Moonrise Kingdom, I decided to re-watch his films and do some reviews. And what better way to start than with his first film, Bottle Rocket.

This is the movie that started it all. Every distinguishable feature that Anderson employs started in Bottle Rocket and continues onto the rest of his film career. Now some do criticize Anderson for this apparent one dimension (as well as his typically dry sense of humor). I disagree with these claims as it's really just his style and it's a style that while not everyone "gets it", it works and is unique to him.

I will admit though that Bottle Rocket is perhaps one of my lowest rated Anderson Films although it may be tied with The Darjeeling Limited. It does have the typical quirky feel to it which I do love, but I think it's really the cast that gets to me. Own Wilson does good in his part as over enthusiastic and naive wannabe thief. I guess what I'm trying to get at is there was no real visible connection between the rest of the cast. Their respective storylines were great but just no connection to really care about the story as a whole. Luckily, I found the dry humor (my humor in general is pretty dry so guess that's why I appreciate it so much) to be excellent and does have a few scenes I would put at the top of any list.

Bottle Rocket may not be the home run that other Anderson films accomplished but it is a worthy watch if you love Anderson films and just the quirky "indie" (And I use that term sparingly) style that is prominent.

Score: B-

Girl Walk // All Day

Year: 2011
Director: Jacob Krupnick
Starring: Anne Marsen, Dai Omiya, and John Doyle

Watch Here: Watch the Film

Decided to do something different for todays review. Girl Walk // All Day is essentially a movie length dance music video to Girl Talk's album All Day featuring heavy elements in urban exploration and follows three dancers as they turn New York City's sidewalks and architecture into an evolving stage of joy from music. It was originally broken down into 12 parts and was posted every Tuesday and Friday for the last month. Today was the final part and that is what made me decide to review it in full.

Now I know it is not your typical film if it can even be considered a film in itself. So keep that in mind although I am going to kind of analyze it as such. If you look at it as just a dance music video it is flawless and very, very well done. You have all aspects of it and since it features three dancer perspectives makes for a variety of dance styles. When I first started watching this series I was amazed; All Day is my favorite Girl Talk album and I love huge projects of this caliber. It also got my attention as it seemed there was a loose and mysterious story line to link the three dancers. However this was the biggest but only disappointment I had while watching this movie series.

What I mean by this is the story line was so disjointed. It started out with the story line assumption and then would insert something totally random (like the flower people)... but then continue with this vague story line I had associated with. Then at the end it just ended abruptly without tying together anything other than Anne Marsen's arc.

Overall it's a great and very unique idea. But I guess I was looking for more and tried to get more out of it than just strict entertainment.

Score: B

Memento

Year: 2000
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano

I'm reviewing Memento  not so much for the acting, but for the amazing writing and directing done by Christopher Nolan. Everyone knows who he his, but many people, unfortunately, only know him for Batman and Inception. I'm here to tell you that before the masterpiece that is Inception, there was the first AWE-mazing movie Memento. It is the perfect cinematic brain punch where you have no idea what's going on throughout most of the movie and you love it. 

 I don't want to give away even a hint of the plot. Instead I want you to just watch the movie. It's a really well put together film and it is so smart. I found myself saying "cool" many times during the film. It's just entertaining. I'm not a huge fan of Guy Pearce as an actor and because of that my rating is not perfect, but luckily amazing script writing and directing saved it. Hey... go see this movie.

Score: B+