Netflix And Chill: Romeo Must Die (2000)

Trying to create a glossy start vehicle around a Chinese star who is far more physically talented than most Hollywood leads? Check. Making use of a first-time director who should be able to work to the template ordered by a superstar producer? Check. A hit song on the soundtrack that holds up better than the film itself? Check. Romeo Must Die is many things, and not all of them good, but it's kind of comforting to watch nowadays and recognise how the decisions were made. 

This may be directed by Andrzel Bartkowiak, and it may star Jet Li in the lead role, but it feels very much like a film guided by Joel Silver. You get a very basic and predictable plot, you get action scenes that veer between brilliantly showcasing the talents of Li and then obscuring those talents with horrible editing and enhancement choices, and you get a few cast members who are doing far better work than the material deserves.

I'm not going to detail the whole plot here. It's easy enough to follow, despite seeming quite convoluted at times. Needless to say, Li plays Han Sing, a man who ends up travelling to America when he hears about the death of his brother. It turns out that a couple of major players are clashing with one another as they head towards a life-changing business deal. One side is headed up by Han's father (played by Henry O). The other side is headed up by Trish O' Day's father (Isaak, played by Delroy Lindo). Oh, Trish O'Day is played by Aaliyah, and she's a real highlight in the middle of all the nonsense. It's not long until Han is upsetting people simply by being on the scene, particularly Maurice (Anthony Anderson) and Mac (Isaiah Washington), two people who are employed by Isaak.

After introducing Jet Li to American audiences in Lethal Weapon 4, it feels fair enough that producer Joel Silver would then follow that up with a leading role for such an impressive "new" talent. The fact that an American movie wouldn't be able to make the best use of Li is neither here nor there. The important thing was to get him packaged and sold to mainstream audiences, and this certainly managed that, leading to Li at least getting some extra exposure that he might have otherwise missed out on. This isn't a good film, but it feels like everyone was certainly trying to make something in service to Li.

Aside from our action man at the heart of it, Lindo is another highlight. He always is, but his presence here is enough to keep the film alive when it could have easily been dead within the first 20 minutes. Anderson is amusingly annoying, Washington impresses with his constant swagger, and D. B. Woodside, Russell Wong, and DMX all make an impression, even if they have relatively little screentime compared to the core group of characters. And then there's Aaliyah, making her feature film debut. I am sure that we would have seen many more acting performances from her, had her life not been ended at a very young age in a tragic accident, but this is definitely one of the better singer-turned-actor turns that we saw at this time. The fact that her next, and only other, film role was Queen Of The Damned is not something I will hold against her, especially when she does what she can to make that film bearable.

The 115-minute runtime could be paced better, there are a couple of weird effects that feel very much tied to the time period (showing injuries in some kind of x-ray vision is an odd, and poor, choice), and too many moments have Li defying the laws of nature, but there's still enough fun to be had here if you're after some slick and silly action movie entertainment. And then you can start working back through Jet Li's filmography to start seeing the many better movies that he's starred in.

5/10

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Shudder Saturday: Dead Birds (2004)

Set in the time of the American Civil War, this is the tale of a group of people, led by William (Henry Thomas), who rob a bank and then lay low in a house located, effectively, in the middle of nowhere. While they are all on edge, and with some trying to figure out how to increase their own share of the ill-gotten gains, things start to get a bit creepy. The house has a history, and that history is not staying locked in the past.

There are two great American horror movies that I was pleased to discover in the past twenty years, two that still stand out from so many others that I have enjoyed over the years. Session 9 is one of them, Dead Birds is the other. The former may hold up slightly better, but this one still deserves to be found and loved by horror fans.

The first feature written by Simon Barrett (who started his run of movies with this film and the fun of Frankenfish), Dead Birds is an impressively atmospheric piece that also delivers some impressive moments of gore and decent jump scares. Unfortunately, as decent as they are, it is the jump scares that now hold this back from being closer to a modern classic, with the CGI used and the snap of movement now all too familiar to genre fans who have seen it overdone in the years since this was released.

Director Alex Turner doesn't have too many other movies to his credit (his only other feature so far is Red Sands from 2009 - it's been a decade, Alex, get your finger out) and that's a great shame. Although helped massively by the casting, Turner does a fantastic job behind the camera here. Guided by Barrett's script, Turner takes plenty of time during the first half of the movie to set up the characters and their motivations, allowing the standard mistrust and unease of co-operating criminals to weave through various interactions until more supernatural happenings start to affect everyone. There's also an injured party to be looked after and the memory of an innocent bystander who was killed during the robbery, both of these things, and more, feeding in to the atmosphere and the heady brew of bloodshed and betrayal that has brought these people to where they are, and perhaps where they deserve to be.

Thomas is good in the nominal lead role, although he is matched by excellent performances from Isaiah Washington and Nicki Aycox, both playing characters who seem to cause friction amongst the group just by being accepted as important members. Patrick Fugit is slightly weak, although he works okay while his character physically weakens from injury, but that is compensated for by typically fine performances from Michael Shannon, Mark Boone Junior, and Muse Watson.

Although it stumbles in a few places, Dead Birds generally remains a satisfying, rich, experience. If you somehow haven't heard of it before now, be sure to check it out now. You won't be disappointed.*

*does not apply to anyone who is disappointed

8/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.

Noir November: Out Of Sight (1998)

George Clooney has a lot to thank Steven Soderbergh for. The two have had a successful working relationship for some years now, but Out Of Sight seems to be where it all began. Adapting the novel by Elmore Leonard, it really feels like this film had the benefit of great timing. Any closer to the releases of Pulp Fiction and Get Shorty and this could have been lost among the tidal wave of imitators that came along. Any later and it might have all felt irrelevant. At the very least, the full cast might not have been available, and this is a movie that gets some major brownie points thanks to the casting.

Clooney is Jack Foley, a bank robber who can do more with his brains and charm than many others could do with guns and violence. But it's not so easy being a career criminal when you're currently behind bars. When he finds out about a potential big score, one that won't wait around forever, he engineers a prison break. The bad news is that he breaks out of the prison just as U.S. Marshall Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez) pulls up in her car. Jack then has to take her hostage, the two of them stuck in the boot of a car while his main accomplice (Buddy, played by Ving Rhames) drives them to a safe spot. The good news is that the two seem to immediately feel something between them. But will it be enough to make Sisco forget her duty as a Marshall?

Scott Frank takes the source material and transfers it all to the screen in a way that nicely balances out the humour and violence, while never once losing a single drop of cool. Soderbergh helps, obviously, with his filming style, shot choices (kudos to editor Anne V. Coates), and the brilliant decision to let David Holmes create an appropriate score, mixed with some classic choices (Dean Martin, The Isley Brothers, and Herbie Hancock all make an appearance - well, not an "appearance" but you know what I mean).

Clooney and Lopez are both fantastic, generating the kind of heat between them that seems to emanate off the screen in waves. Okay, so the former can make that happen with many a co-star, but let's not take anything away from a real highlight in the career of Lopez. She's sexy, strong (apart from her bad choice in men), and feels very much like an equal to her male co-star. Rhames is a constant delight as Buddy, a criminal who always has to confess his misdeeds to his sister, Don Cheadle is suitably menacing as the kind of criminal Foley and Buddy would never want to work with, and Steve Zahn is very funny as a hapless crook who thinks he can run with the big boys. There's also some great support from Dennis Farina (playing Sisco's father), Albert Brooks (the mark), Michael Keaton (revisiting the character he played in Jackie Brown), Luis Guzman, Isaiah Washington, Catherine Keener, Nancy Allen, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Funky, funny, and pretty damn sexy too, Out Of Sight occupies a space nicely in between the two other Leonard adaptations mentioned here. It's neither as funny as Get Short, nor as rich in characterisation as Tarantino's film, but it mixes those two main ingredients together to create an end result that easily ranks alongside those movies.

9/10

http://www.amazon.com/Out-Sight-Collectors-George-Clooney/dp/0783229402/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1416847022&sr=1-2&keywords=out+of+sight

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Dead Birds (2004)

Modern horrors come in all shapes and sizes, but many people keep trying to insist that they're all unscary and not worth your time. There are many, many fine horror movies still being made and released each year, it's just that the better movies aren't always as easy to hear about and get hold of. Most people will know this already, I'm not saying anything new, but it's always worth remembering every now and again. Especially when you come across a movie like Dead Birds (recommended to me many years ago by the fine folks who used to populate the IMDb Horror board).

Henry Thomas, Patrick Fugit, Michael Shannon, Isaiah Washington, Nicki Aycox and Mark Boone Junior star as a bunch of outlaws who rob a bank in 1860s America. They then hide out at an abandoned plantation before their next stage of the plan - getting to Mexico and splitting the gold. But it's not long until mistrust starts to take hold, as well as a sense of unease about just where they're holed up for the night.

With great acting from all involved, Dead Birds is a horror movie that feels a bit different while hitting a number of familiar genre beats. Henry Thomas is a decent lead, but the real treats come from the supporting cast (especially Michael Shannon before his name was so well known and Isaiah Washington). Nicki Aycox could easily, in a lesser film, be sidelined as nothing more than a token female character in the group, but she's given some decent moments and she does well with them.

The script by Simon Barrett does a great job of making each bit of character motivation clear and also allowing for some flashbacks that provide imagery to feed into the fear-filled present. The main characters may not realise how the fear is building until the second half of the movie, but it is. All around them.

Director Alex Turner also deserves praise for his handling of the material. There are a few jump scares here and there, with some decent CGI helping one or two of them, but he also keeps ladling on the atmosphere like golden honey. The film may blend Western elements with the horror, but it's not trying to be a horror Western, specifically. Oh no, it's just a horror movie that happens to take place in years gone by when there was a shorter life expectancy and bigger divisions amongst men (namely race and allegiance to certain flags). It's a real shame that Turner doesn't have much more to his credit yet.

Do check it out when you get the chance and I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Dead Birds is showing today at The Filmhouse - buy your ticket here - as part of the 20th anniversary celebrations on the run up to Dead By Dawn.

8/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Birds-Nicki-Lynn-Aycox/dp/B0007RUSUS/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1359152412&sr=1-1

Wild Things 2 (2004)

Six years after the cool and sexy first movie, along comes this sequel to show how you can take almost exactly the same material (in some instances even the scene structure is almost EXACTLY the same as in the first movie) and turn a winning formula into complete sewage.

If you've seen the first movie then none of the twists and turns will surprise you. If you haven't seen the first movie then why the hell are you considering even watching this instalment?

Jack Perez directs and I can't help thinking that all he did was watch the first movie. Of course, this isn't the worst thing he could have done. After all, Perez is now the man perhaps best known for giving the world the supreme and jaw-dropping Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus. (best sold to anyone who has yet to see it with THIS clip). Ross Helford and Andy Hurst wrote the screenplay for this and the next outing in the series so no worries there. Of course, they also wrote the screenplay for Single White Female 2: The Psycho. Oh dear.

Which means that we have nothing but a rehash of the first movie from a group of untalented people behind the camera. Hopefully, a few good stars onscreen could pick things up a bit. Well, not really. There are some decent people in front of the camera (Susan Ward is just too cute for me to dislike and Isaiah Washington is a very good actor and certainly the best thing in this film) but there are also just as many folk you won't care about one little bit. Leila Arcieri as Maya King is just annoying, Joe Michael Burke is far too bland, Linden Ashby is okay and that's about it, nobody else really gets to make any impression.

Overall, Wild Things 2 is just like Wild Things (even the dvd cover is almost a carbon copy). Without the talented cast. Or smart script. Or style and sexiness. Or any trace of originality. Despite so many failings, however, it's still a bit of an entertaining watch thanks to the way it follows the structure of the original so closely. There are even a number of reveals during the end credits which end up being almost as much fun to watch as the revelations in the first movie. Almost.

4/10

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Exit Wounds (2001)

Steven Seagal is a goodie but he’s the bad kind of goodie who always goes off on his own and busts heads before thinking of the repercussions. For example, saving the Vice President by throwing him into a river isn’t really what anyone wants to see in the newspapers. Which is why Seagal is sent to a different precinct, somewhere a bit rougher where he can go through the fun of being the new guy again. DMX is a baddie but he’s a good kind of baddie, perhaps. He doesn’t seem to want to kill anyone and just wants to be left to buy his drugs in peace. Perhaps. The two men find themselves in a situation that involves a LOT of heroin and a LOT of corrupt cops. Oh, and a lot of great supporting actors.

Exit Wounds is a lot of fun. The script has a lot of humour throughout and the action beats are numerous and consistently entertaining. Andrzej Bartkowiak directs with a great energy, grounding things so that each fight move packs a punch but also adding an occasional over the top move just to make things cool.

Seagal plays the same kind of character he plays in almost every movie, he’s a cop with an attitude who just wants to get the bad guys, but he also goes along with the humour and this puts him in a much better light than usual (especially in a scene where he’s sent along to an anger management group). DMX does okay onscreen but I can never seriously evaluate the acting of someone who has named themselves after some kind of computer cable (?!?!?). Elsewhere, we get treated to a fantastic and eclectic cast. Isaiah Washington, Michael Jai White, Anthony Anderson, Bill Duke, Jill Hennessy, Tom Arnold, Eva Mendes and the ever-brilliant Bruce McGill. Something to please everyone, surely.

With a lively soundtrack and some great exchanges between Seagal and whoever he deigns to share the screen with at the time, this film remains one of many simple pleasures. The plot throws in a few big twists that nobody should be shocked by but, first and foremost, it sets out to keep you entertained from beginning to end. And it absolutely succeeds.

7/10 

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