hamilton-3 Reviews

The Accountant (2016)

Another super-killer franchise is "bourne"

[5/10 · 1 April 2024]

As I watched this film, I imagined that this was Ben Affleck's turn to play the super-competent killing machine to match his buddy Matt Damon's Bourne persona. The back story is a bit muddy. Affleck's character Chris Wolff has high-functioning autism. This aspect was interesting to me, as I am the father of an adult son nominally in that category. Affleck portrays the emotional detachment adequately, but this is not what really shapes his character. His personality was more significantly shaped by his overbearing father who pushed him and trained him to develop elite violent skills.

Fast forward, Chris has made a fortune acting as accountant for mobsters. Subsequently he has a very severe falling-out with the mobsters, with all the violent mayhem you might expect. Next up, he gets a legit auditing gig, but uncovers some money laundering, leading ultimately to more ultra-violent mayhem.

The police investigation of the mob massacre is led by Ray King (J K Simmons). He extorts an analyst, Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), with a troubled past, recruiting her to find the accountant. In an extremely contrived scenario, Marybeth concludes her target is autistic and tends to use mathematician's names as aliases. (BTW I doubt if Christian Wolff would actually be on anyone's top 100 mathematicians list. Same could be said of Lewis Carroll, though he seems to there to hint at some kind of connection to autism.)

Needless to say, this is a lot of mud to squeeze into one plot. It's all about the shoot-em-up, folks. There is one additional plot contrivance Chris's brother.

Mildly entertaining, but ultimately unfulfilling.

Dream Scenario (2023)

An Arch Look at Bigotry

[7/10 · 17 March 2024]

Nicolas Cage does a really good job of portraying a nerdy college prof whose life is thrown into turmoil when he starts to appear in other people's dreams. As more and more people dream of him, a hysteria develops whereby people fear him for what he seems to be doing in their dreams. Soon, everyone is mistreating him, not letting him go out in public places, and he has done nothing to earn this hatred. We see bigotry in highly distilled terms.

The film is a bumpy but interesting ride. Elements of cringe and an awkward end to boot. It seemed a bit like a Twilight Zone episode of old. I wonder why he never thought of disguises?

Should Ladies Behave (1933)

Surprisingly entertaining

[7/10 · 1 February 2024]

This didn't seem so promising at first, but hold on, it gets better. Here in the the depths of the Depression we have a screwball comedy, populated with foolish rich people. Alice Brady is quite funny as Laura, the airhead wife of Lionel Barrymore's grumpy character, Augustus.

The best character, by far, is Winnie, played Katharine Alexander, who is Laura's sister. Her snarky attitude backfires when she coerces her beau, a famous painter, Max, into a visit at the country estate owned by her sister. There, Max becomes infatuated with Laura's daughter, Leone, and the feeling is mutual as they plan to elope together.

Winnie's character shows real poignancy as she navigates the mess she's made. The other characters start to wear as the plot rolls on. Butler jokes, in particular, fall flat. But stick around for the end. There is a nice satisfying twist to the tale.

Don't Worry Darling (I) (2022)

Pleasantly surprised

[8/10 · 12 September 2023]

From the film's description and its introductory elements, it seems like we may have seen this movie before. We see a tightly contained community, weirdly isolated from the world we know. The setting is superficially the 1950s America, cartoonish in the way the men all go off to work, while the wives tend their houses and meet for drinks by the pool.

"The Stepford Wives" comes to mind certainly. Maybe hints of "The Village", "Pleasantville", or even "Barbie". But most of all, I am reminded of "The Prisoner", the classic BBC television series, with the big white ball replaced by the swarm of guys in red suits.

The protagonist, Alice, seems comfortable with her mindless cultish existence, but she is disturbed to see her friend Margaret rebelling against the system. She herself starts to have disturbing hallucinations.

Flashbacks bring Alice's background a bit more into focus, but there is a lot that is unexplained. There is even an awkward reference to "The Matrix" at one point. Nevertheless, the story unfolds with a good deal of visual panache, and despite the many reference points, "Don't Worry Darling" feels fresh and is better than most movies I've seen recently.

The Pale Blue Eye (2022)

Muddled and frustrating

[4/10 · 16 August 2023]

I had not heard of this film, but seeing that it is a Christian Bale project, it seemed worth watching. The 1830 setting seems authentic, but the candlelit interiors add a dark pall over the film. The inclusion of Edgar Allan Poe as a character is an acceptable gimmick to add more interest to the story.

But it's the story that's the problem. There are early hints at the twistiness to come in the plot. I had to rewatch early parts of the film. The lieutenant's jacket with the missing insignia on one shoulder is a particular detail that gets lost in the muddiness of the story-telling.

The climactic scene wherein the mother, daughter, and son aim to cut out Poe's heart is terribly confusing. Was Poe drugged? Did he voluntarily agree to sacrifice himself? The son claims he wrote the note which we later find was written by Bale's character. How did this mother, son, and daughter get to the point where they would agree to murder Poe?

Perhaps rewatching more portions of the film would clarify these points for me, but why bother? Overall there is not much pleasure, other than Bale's acting, to extract from this dark and dreary story.

65 (2023)

Adam Driver can't carry this cheesy waste of time

[3/10 · 5 August 2023]

Thia movie is incredibly predictable. The plot is generic and plodding. I had to set the Netflix speed to 1.5x, and that was still too slow. ChatGPT could have written a more involving story line. I am sure I have seen this movie, more or less, before. I can't tell you what they were. They were just as readily forgettable as this steaming mess. Adam Driver looks plainly embarrassed at having to perform in this bogus potboiler. The dialogue, as Adam and the little girl try to bridge their language gap, only makes the story drag on and on. The escapes are incredibly miraculous. Cringiness galore. Adam's attempt to communicate by drawing a mountain as an inverted "V" and other abstract symbols is just plain nuts. The dinosaurs are used sparingly. They are cheesy and not particularly well-rendered. Blah!

Don't Let Go (2019)

Intricate and thrilling; emotional dynamite

[9/10 · 7 February 2021]

Quite a pleasant surprise. The premise is like a classic Twilight Zone vaulted into the modern age. A policeman is devastated by the brutal murder of his favorite niece, along with her parents. Subsequently he starts receiving cellphone calls from his deceased niece. Step by step he comes to accept this alternate reality, determines that she is calling from the past, and proves that he can alter the present by affecting his niece's behavior in the past. Now the scramble is on. Can he somehow save his niece? The story is dark and emotionally draining but ultimately a satisfying experience. Well worth watching more than once.

The Nun (2018)

Schlocky Horror Picture Show

[3/10 · 18 January 2020]

Lots of atmospherics to no great effect. Unfathomable story line that's hard to follow. Characters who are hard to care about. A few scares but mostly laughs of derision at the ridiculous proceedings.

The Greatest Showman (2017)

Ambitious intentions fall short

[4/10 · 9 September 2018]

The movie starts out with good energy, which drew me in. This is not really a movie about Barnum, but a musical based (very loosely) on Barnum's life. Accepting that, what can we hope for? The best musical theater will give you the pleasures of music, choreography, and production design. Exceptional musicals like "Hamilton" and "My Fair Lady" will incorporate great storytelling. Unfortunately, "The Greatest Showman" falls short. The production design is truly wonderful, and the choreography is okay up to a point. The songs, however, are pretty generic. Not a single memorable melody. They only serve the purpose to push the story along. And alas, the storytelling devolves into soapy fiction. There is an underlying theme, represented by Barnum's crew of freaks, of diversity and opposition to racism. Admirable, but weakly executed. Hugh Jackman does a great job of carrying this movie, but he is ultimately crushed by its burden of glossy shallowness.

Super (I) (2010)

Dreadful

[2/10 · 27 November 2011]

I can't believe how painfully bad this movie was. I love subversive, edgy, indy films, but this is just bad, bad, bad. Rainn Wilson pretty much plays the same character he plays on the Office, an idiot in a world of his own distorted imagination, but without the aid of the contrastingly humane characters that inhabit that series. His character has less depth than tissue paper.

This film doesn't know whether it wants to be a comedy or a dark tale of violence. The Crimson Bolt's antics are so broad and unrealistic to be laughable. He goes into the ghetto and starts bonking people with a wrench and gets away with it? He similarly bonks people waiting on line for a movie and drives away in his car? Nobody can report the license plate?

I love Ellen Page, but this is such a degrading role for her, it makes me really sad.

When the film makes its ultra-violent turn, it is clear that this was a script devoid of ideas without hope of redemption. Along the way there were occasional hints of offbeat humor, but they were quickly nullified.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)

Fargo without the laughs

[6/10 · 1 May 2009]

This caper-gone-wrong drama revolves around an extremely dysfunctional family. The out-of-sequence threads of story lend intrigue and draw you in, but it all becomes a plodding slow-motion train wreck. Angst and tears, and nowhere to go. On the plus side, we get to witness Ms. Tomei's awesome bodaciousness, and that itself is worth the rental.

We must credit the acting skills of the cast. Ethan Hawke is excellent as wimpy younger brother, Hank, propelled onto the path to disaster by Andy, who is played to the hilt by Mr. Hoffman. Neither brother is doing very well in managing his life. Hank is behind on child-support payments, but that's nothing compared to Andy's problems. He's been embezzling from his real estate firm in order to support his drug habits. And oh yes, the IRS is coming n for an audit. And so it goes.

Marisa Tomei and Albert Finney are fine in their roles, but their characters are not so well written. At the end, there is still no final resolution.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

Big disappointment

[4/10 · 18 December 2005]

I had heard that this was the best of the three. I thought the first one was very good, and the second one almost as good. So, why was I nodding off during the final episode? For one thing, the story isn't all that interesting. Characters abound but there is little depth to most of them, despite the extravagant amount of time available for character development. And really, yet another orc siege on a human stronghold, with a flimsy subplot about a father attempting to burn his not-quite-dead son. Nothing really new or interesting to add to the previous two episodes. I don't know which are more boring, the elves or the ghost army. And don't get me started about the extended epilogue. Pointless.

I apologize to the many true believers, but this movie is a bloated, boring, anticlimactic conclusion to the series. The three films as a whole provide a decent adaptation of trilogy. Unfortunately, the concluding episode only detracts from those that came before.

Anger Management (2003)

Absence of writing

[2/10 · 27 November 2003]

Unbelievably painful to sit through. The story makes no sense, the characters are uninvolving, the situations contrived and stupid. Ugh!

I suppose some producer got the idea that it would be funny to have Jack Nicholson in Adam Sandler's face, with Adam having to bottle up his anger. Then they ran out of ideas. A last-minute backstory to "explain" everything only makes it more absurd.

(2/10) only because Marisa Tomei and John Tuturro are worth watching even when they're doing crap.

Spy Kids 3: Game Over (2003)

Vision vs. Presentation (How to Enjoy a 3D Movie)

[9/10 · 2 September 2003]

This movie continues the family-oriented Spy Kids series, which are exemplified by Robert Rodriguez's exuberant visual style, along with heavy doses of tongue-in-cheek humor and a consistent grounding in positive values, especially mutual support within one's family. "Spy Kids 3" is a fine addition to this highly entertaining series.

Why is the IMDB rating so depressed then? A lot of people (18%) gave it the lowest rating of "1". I guess that some people react very negatively toward the stereoscopic presentation, which employs blue/red color filtration (anaglyphic system) to deliver to each eye its particular view of things. This mode of presentation makes sense for general distribution in a wide variety of theatres where the technical requirements of polarized 3D could not be reliably delivered. Also, the packed theatres during the first couple of weeks of release pretty much guaranteed bad viewing aspects for a good portion of the audience. And then, others have unreal expectations of the 3D presentation.

Here's my advice for enjoying this movie:

(1) Don't sit so close! Sit in the back half of the theatre and toward the center if possible. Some people incorrectly assume that sitting closer will enhance the 3D effect. Instead, they force their eye muscles to try to do nearly impossible tricks. Typical result of such strain might be a headache.

(2) Don't expect the same result you may have seen in special theatres such as Omni or Imax where the polarized system allows true color registration and audience distance from the screen is more controlled. The anaglyphic system does cause loss of photorealism and present odd conflicts between the eyes. Try to accept this limitation as the price of the 3D effect. (Hopefully before too long, we will also see a version of this film released in polarized format at theatres which specialize in such presentations.)

(3) Accept strangeness. A 3D movie is not like real vision. We see the real world in 3D, but we use focus to filter out details that are not what we are directly looking at. In a movie everything is typically in focus at the same time. Also, in such a movie as this, which relies on composited elements, there will be some mistakes in the combining of the images. For example, at one point, we are on the moon, and the distant Earth hovers in front of the horizon! At other times, characters appear to stand above or below the surfaces they should be walking on. Though only occasional, these errors do distract, and I hope that future releases of this movie might adjust the composition to correct these errors.

Some people complain that the 3D effects are not extreme enough, but they overestimate the possibilities on the medium. This movie is exemplary in its well-constructed execution of stereoscopic 3D.

My overall verdict: a worthy conclusion to the Spy Kids series. Great visual style and panache, funny references to the Matrix and the Lord of the Rings, positive values without preachiness. Extra point for the best theatrical 3D since "Dial M for Murder". (9/10)

Gods and Generals (2003)

Battle re-enactments and wooden dramatics

[6/10 · 2 September 2003]

Well-crafted, politically-correct rendering of the Civil War up to Gettysburg. Pretty much a homage to Stonewall Jackson, with a few side trips to check in on Joshua Chamberlain on the Northern side as necessary to connect up to "Gettysburg" (filmed earlier, and a better movie based on a better book). Largely a re-enactment of battles. Don't expect any insights into historical issues.

The movie sags in its latter half as we set up ol' Stonewall for his sobby fate. The battle re-enactments will make the DVD a valuable resource for some history classes. Gory aspects are de-emphasized. But at times, this movie really puts you into the gut-crunching position of a soldier in the line of fire. A sappy musical score detracts. Overall a mixed bag. (6/10)

The Hours (2002)

I respect this movie more than like it...

[7/10 · 2 September 2003]

I respect this movie more than like it. An interesting scrapbook of fine acting performances, but nevertheless it left me less involved than I expected to be. Perhaps it is because the story is spread so thinly across the three time periods, or maybe it's because the story doesn't know where it's going. There is an "aha" moment that eventually arrives, but it can't save the story from muddle. Maybe those who are more familiar with literary precursors will appreciate it more.

The luminous Julianne Moore has the toughest job, acting her way through yet another poorly written 1950's housewife role (as in "Far From Heaven"). Jeff Daniels delivers a finely nuanced cameo performance. I wish I enjoyed the entire movie as much (7/10).

Daredevil (2003)

Better than I expected...

[7/10 · 2 August 2003]

While not at the level of Spider-Man, this flick is a solid interpretation of comic book heroism. While the action looked cheesy in previews, it turns out to be quite effective in context. Ben Affleck does a fine job of underplaying his character, providing just the nuance to offset the cartoonish context.