Tag: Jamie Foxx

2017 Golden Raspberry Awards

On By troubledproductionsIn AwardsLeave a comment

*indicates winner

Worst Screenplay

Nominations

 

Baywatch

Fifty Shades Darker

The Emoji Movie*

The Mummy

Transformers: The Last Knight

Did it deserve it?

Hard to say really. The issues with it are ones which you could easily imagine being ones which were mandated by the studio. So I wonder whether the actual scriptwriters are to blame or whether it was mandated from up above. There were A LOT of issues with this film, but the plot was actually relatively consistent. Out of the films nominated I’d say The Mummy had the worst script in terms of consistency and storytelling, with at least the opening 20% being completely worthless, repetition of the origin (they must go over it at least 3 times during it), and WAY too much narration. If I include films which weren’t nominated I’d go with either Geostorm (because I’m pretty sure the script for that was just “Science! Explosions! Romance!”), or The Dark Tower, for being an incomprehensible mess.

Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel

Nominations

Baywatch

Boo 2! A Madea Halloween

Fifty Shades Darker*

The Mummy

Transformers: The Last Knight

Did it deserve it?

No idea. I try to see as many films as possible, but if I know a film will be diabolically awful, I will avoid it, doubly so if it’s a sequel to a film I haven’t seen/disliked. As such, I didn’t watch 50 Shades (or Transformers for that matter). In terms of films that were nominated: The Mummy was a much worse film, but Baywatch was a more confusing film in terms of brand identity. Fans of the original would not like it, so why bother making it? So I’d say Baywatch should have won, for that reason, and because I get the feeling The Mummy is going to be winning a lot more before this blog’s out, and if I say it should win any more I’m going to begin to feel like I’m kicking a wounded dog. If it was extended to films not nominated, I’d go with Rings. A film so bland I’ve almost forgotten it existed.

Worst Screen Combo

Nominations

Any combination of two characters, two sex toys, or two sexual positions – Fifty Shades Darker

Any combination of two humans, two robots, or two explosions: Transformers: The Last Knight

Any Two Obnoxious Emoji’s – The Emoji Movie*

Johnny Depp & his worn-out drunk routine – Pirates Of The Carribean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Tyler Perry and either the ratty old dress or worn out wig – Boo 2: A Madea Halloween

Did it deserve it?

As the only one of those films I’ve actually seen, I can’t say I entirely disagree with it. Although I’m not really sure it counts as a combo, I feel this award isn’t being taken seriously (weird, I know). but in terms of actors who had absolutely zero chemistry, I’d have to consider Power Rangers. This film is dependent on their being tremendous chemistry between the group, and that’s not there. Which is a shame, I’m not saying it would make the film brilliant, but it would improve it. But the winner, by a country mile (or a city mile, whichever is longer), is Cara Delevingne and Dane DeHaan in Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets. If you were somehow able to witness a complete vacuum, where nothing existed inside it, there’d still be more chemistry in that than between these two actors.

Worst Supporting Actress

Goldie Hawn – Snatched

Kim Basinger – Fifty Shades Darker*

Laura Haddock – Transformers: The Last Knight

Sofia Boutella – The Mummy

Susan Sarandon – A Bad Mom’s Christmas

Did It Deserve It?

Again, no idea as didn’t see it. This category represents a problem I have with these awards in general, they don’t distinguish between a bad performance and a bad film. The Mummy was not a good film, but Sofia Boutella is not the reason for that. They weren’t great performances, but they weren’t noticeably bad, the problems were with the films themselves, or the way the characters are written, not the performances. Plus, considering she’s the title character, is Sofia Boutella really a “supporting” character in that movie? If anything, Annabelle Wallis’s character is the supporting one. For sake of clarity, I’d suppose I’d give this to Kate McKinnon for Rough Night, mainly because of her accent.

Worst Supporting Actor

Nominations

Anthony Hopkins: Collide, and Transformers The Last Knight

Javier Bardem – Mother, Pirates Of The Carribean

Josh Duhamel – Transformers: The Last Knight

Mel Gibson – Daddy’s Home 2*

Russell Crowe – The Mummy

Did It Deserve It?

No. Russell Crowe did. His performance was over-exaggerated and not in a good way. It was so hard to take seriously as a performance that it was almost laughable. I didn’t see Daddy’s Home, but I cannot believe the performance was worse. If it was down to any film: Matt Passmore from Jigsaw. A performance so flat it’s almost 2-dimensional.

Worst Actress

Nominations

Dakota Johnson – Fifty Shades Darker

Emma Watson – The Circle

Jennifer Lawrence – Mother!

Katherine Heigl – Unforgettable

Tyler Perry – Boo 2! A Madea Halloween*

Did it deserve it?

I didn’t watch any of these (luckily). But I’m going to say yes, purely because I’m bored of typing that title out again and again. Find it hard to believe Jennifer Lawrence was nominated for this, I’d heard her performance was really impressive, albeit in a divisive film. If it was down to any film: Cara Delevingne in Valerian. I defended her performance in Suicide Squad (the first half of it anyway), but I won’t in this.

 

Worst Actor

Nominations

Jamie Dornan – Fifty Shades Darker

Johnny Depp – Pirates Of The Carribean

Mark Whalberg – Daddy’s Home 2, Transformers: The Last Night

Tom Cruise – The Mummy*

Zac Efron – Baywatch

Did it deserve it?

Yes. Although I think the choice to cast him was worse than any performance choices he made in this film. He is completely the wrong actor for this type of role at this stage in his career. If I included films that weren’t nominated: Jamie Foxx in Sleepless. As a fan of professional wrestling, I understand the importance of selling when it comes to performances. For example; if a character gets hit in the leg, acts hurt for a few seconds, but then in the next scene is running and jumping perfectly normally, it ruins the illusion of what happened. It doesn’t matter if in the next scene you show his leg hurting again, that moment where the audience realised it was fine completely ruins it, even on a subconscious level. That was the issue with this film; Jamie Foxx plays the character as a normal action hero, as opposed to one who is tired, oh, and GOT STABBED IN THE ABDOMEN IN THE SAME DAY! If you don’t watch the opening scenes, you wouldn’t notice the character is in pain. Completely takes you out of the film. I’m not sure if that’s down to him, or the director, but either way it’s a terrible decision.

Worst Director

Nominations

Alex Kurtzman – The Mummy

Darren Aronofsky – Mother!

James Foley – Fifty Shades Darker

Michael Bay – Transformers: The Last Knight

Tony Leondis – The Emoji Movie*

Did it deserve it?

Fuck it, I’m going with The Mummy again. For how they made the villain look ridiculous, and for the length of the opening narration. As a director, he should have questioned that moment in the script and refused to do it. If it came down to any film, The Bye Bye Man. The script let it down for sure, but the directing choices didn’t help. Completely ineffective at building any tension at all. As such it didn’t work as a horror movie, actually, I’m not entirely sure it worked as a movie either.

Worst Picture

Nominated

Baywatch

Fifty Shades Darker

The Emoji Movie*

The Mummy

Transformers: The Last Knight

Did it deserve it?

No. It was not as terrible as it seemed. Although to be fair, nothing could be as bad as the reviews made this seem. And I’m really surprised Baywatch was nominated, there was nothing terribly notable about it in terms of terrible films, and if that was nominated, why not CHiPS? That was far worse in every way and had an extremely problematic approach to its female characters. Out of the nominees, again, The Mummy is the (un)lucky winner. In terms of any film: Wish Upon, for reasons I go into here.

So there it is, the best of the worst. Surprised that The Book Of Henry wasn’t nominated, neither was The Space Between Us, The Mountain Between Us, or Shut In. They were notable in how bad they were. The worst you can say about a lot of the nominees this year is that they were bland.

Baby Driver/Spiderman: Homecoming

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

There’s something to be said for the accidental double bill. Films that have nothing to do with each other but seem like they belong together anyway. The best example of this lately I feel is Spotlight and The Big Short. They came out at different times, and were about completely different topics, but tonally they felt very similar. There’s a similar feeling with these two films, only this time it’s actually a lot easier to quantify; they’re both modern films containing a slight throwback feel to them. Baby Driver is basically a modern car chase film, a twenty-first century Bullitt, whereas Spiderman: Homecoming is basically a John Hughes movie with superpowers. Both of them are throwback films for the modern age, you don’t lose anything going into them without knowing the history of their respective genre-homages, but you do gain if you’re aware of them.

So what were they like? I’ll start with Spiderman. I actually liked it. The plot was simplistic but it was still better than at least 50% of MCU films purely because it had a compelling villain. Michael Keaton’s character (he plays some sort of Birdman) makes sense. You’re not watching it thinking “what a terrible person, glad he’s not real”, you’re thinking “he’s actually making a lot of sense. I see where he’s coming from, and in a way, I agree with him”. He’s the most compelling villain in the MCU so far, and the performance matches the writing. A lot of comic book fans were disappointed that they changed his appearance for the films, I don’t particularly care about it to be honest, mainly because it would be really hard to take THIS seriously.

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I know that this talk about “taking it seriously” makes this sound like it’s attempting to be super serious and gritty, thank God they didn’t do that, this film is fun as hell. Even the colours are better than lots of superhero films. A lot of films have orange and blue as the main colours, but use them against dark backdrops, this uses those colours but uses them against light. It’s very summer-ey in appearance. It’s also really funny. The characters are well written and have great lines, Zendeya’s character in particular is a great collection of sarcasm and apathy which I really identify with for some reason. She has the best lines throughout and is one of the films many comedic highlights. In terms of comedy though, most of the best moments from the non-main characters belong to Jacob Batalon’s Ned, who absolutely owns his role as “guy in a chair”. He also helps provide an audience surrogate, since the film starts with him already as hero, many people expected the origin to either be ignored, or told in flashbacks. It did neither, it had Ned ask questions and we found out small details from that, not so much that we were re-covering old ground, and not so little that people new to the franchise were confused. So in summary; very good, very fun, and I think it’s safe to say that Tom Holland is the best Spider-Man, although part of that is due to the way he’s written, he’s actually written as an adolescent, the villains he faces aren’t ones who are going to destroy the world, the main villain is basically an unfriendly neighbourhood villain.

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This scene is genuinely one of the best written scenes so far this year

So, onto Baby Driver. If you’re interested in film you need to see this, a true masterpiece of film-making. Almost the entire film has music alongside it, it’s a film which you could put on in the background at a party and just listen to it, and it would work (I will prove that one day). Yes, the plot is wafer thin, but it’s so fun you don’t notice. You don’t sit there thinking “well I know how this story is going to end”, you think “oh my God! Did you see that?”. It’s a non-blockbuster version of spectacle cinema. Everything about the way it’s made just works, the way the music complements the action and vice versa, the way the car chases are impressive without being unrealistic, the fact that Jon Hamm and Kevin Spacey continue to exist.

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Even Jamie Foxx agrees

The most annoying thing about this film is that you will never see anything else like it, but lots films will claim to be like it. The love and dedication that goes into this is obvious. This was not “film by committee”, this was a true passion project, and it shows through every inch of the screen. It’s also surprisingly American. The open road, the American dream, diners with endless coffee are all essential to the story, so it’s weird that such an American film was made by a Brit, this feels like the film where Edgar Wright has finally stepped away from under the shadow of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. In an ideal world Scott Pilgrim would have done that, but at least it has finally happened. One of the best films I’ve seen this year on a technical level, from the opening scene right through to the closing credits it never stops impressing, never slows down, which considering it’s almost 2 hours long is incredibly impressive.

So that’s Baby Driver and Spiderman:Homecoming. Both flawed but worth a watch. Both destined to be movies people put on and watch in large groups. Both have been put on my “buy on dvd” list. So how can I end this? The same way I end everything; cover song! Here’s an acoustic cover of the Spider-Man theme song, enjoy, then check out their other stuff on the youtube and their twitter.

Why we Love…Nightcrawler

On By troubledproductionsIn Why we loveLeave a comment

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A reworking of Friedrich Nietzsche’s quote, “if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you” but I found ‘void’ to be more apt for when describing Nightcrawler, this seminal crime thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal, who’s cold and warped performance inspired the ‘stare’ of the quote.

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Set predominantly in the L.A. nightscape; Nightcrawler follows Louis Bloom, played by Gyllenhaal, an enthusiastic and creepy young person, who just wants to find a job he can be proud off, and he will do anything to achieve his goals. So when he stumbles upon the underground world of freelance crime journalism, he thinks he’s found his calling. And then comes, a dark, twisted, funny, and warped thrill ride into the life of a deeply strange man, as he strives to be the best him he can be.

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This film is commonly referred to as “the modern Taxi Driver” and whether it measures up to that or not, is not the purpose of this post, but I see what they mean. Not that it shares a huge amount with the Scorsese classic, in terms of story, setting, or style; but both depict the life of disturbed people, with timely issues, and something to prove. Taxi Driver dealing with problems of a post-Vietnam America, with themes of loss purpose, and dislocation; while Nightcrawler similarly deals with a post-recession and jobless America. Louis’s obsession with finding a job that satisfies you, and an endless rotary of self-help empowerment mantras, tumblr_nenzi00tdU1tmssd6o3_1280combined with his veneer of a can-do attitude, echoes many promises the recession generation were educated on, but didn’t have delivered. Showing how ruthless someone really has to be to achieve the ever elusive American dream.

And it’s here the film has its first lair of satire; ingeniously parodying a classic rag to riches story, swelling inspirational music and all, but with a detestable character doing inhuman, evil things, to get his riches. And I won’t ruin what happens, but it does have a happy ending.


It also dives head first and balls deep into satirizing the News, as blood thirsty, network2manipulative, and downright evil at times. “If it bleeds, it leads” as is repeated multiple times in the film, with Rene Russo giving a chemical turn as the News show runner, clearly taking inspiration from 1996’s Network, with the satirisation of the ultra-violet media being the focus of that film, but as I haven’t seen it, can’t comment further.

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From left to right: Riz Ahmed (great supporting character). Jake Gyllenhall, Dan Gilroy. Rene Russo

Though it’s a stretch to call anyone here a ‘hero’; the heroes of this film are Jake tumblr_njkba6QKKU1qej1i6o1_500Gyllenhaal, giving still a career best performance in an already well versed one, dropping 20 pounds and digging deep to portray a mere reflection of a real man. The other being Dan Gilroy’s dark, clever and witty script; both married perfectly to fully realize and bring this character and story to life, and give us a sociopath for the digital age. (Move over Sherlock)

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Nightcrawler-Review-645x369Behind the camera Dan Gilroy does a clean job of making the L.A. nightscape a very cold and isolating place, reflecting its lead character, and sharing many shades with Michael Mann’s Collateral, which was clearly an influence. It’s a high-class and pristine looking film, especially for a directorial debut, having a gorgeous neo-noir style; and his motifs of focusing on camera screens to establish how the camera sees things – instead of exactly how they actually are – works as a great and sometimes surreal effect.

But at the same time its probably one of the films weaker aspects, not that there is anigif_enhanced-6602-1414793798-4anything wrong with the direction, just compared to its other elements. It doesn’t seem like it pushes the envelope as much, and has left me wondering how the film would have turned out in the hands of a David Fincher or a Nicolas Winding Refn who could really elevate the material visually- especially for the coherent, if a bit safe, action scenes.

But those little nit-picks aside, we love Nightcrawler because it showed there was still room in Hollywood for new and shocking things, which can be highly original and artistic, while still being major box office hits.

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And good god Jake Gyllenhaal is fucking amaze balls.

Recommendations
If you enjoy Nightcrawler, I also recommend American Psycho and Collateral, two other stylish and darkly funny thrillers, that featuring characters with warped views on life.
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