Netflix And Chill: The Untouchables (1987)

Perhaps enough time has passed now, perhaps I was just being a bit too harsh and/or swayed by the opinions of others years ago, but I have finally reached a certain level of acceptance when it comes to The Untouchables. I always enjoyed the movie itself, and it's another great example of just how great director Brian De Palma can be when able to put considerable resources alongside his not-inconsiderable talent, but it's time to finally admit that I think, yes, Sean Connery actually deserved his Oscar for his performance here. Is that admitting that he's great in it? Is he giving the best performance of his career? No. There are a number of other roles to look at in that regard. But he's the absolute highlight in a film that is stuffed full of treats, and he's the one you remember for a long time after the film is over and done. It also helps that he gets most of the best lines of dialogue from writer David Mamet.

Kevin Costner is the legendary Eliot Ness, a Treasury agent looking to battle against those breaking the prohibition laws, and someone unafraid to go up against the ruthless Al Capone (Robert De Niro). Not knowing who he can trust, especially after being burnt during what should have been his first major operation, Ness assembles a small and capable squad that includes beat cop Jim Malone (Connery), an agent who also does accountancy (Oscar, played by Charles Martin Smith), and a hot shot youngster from the Police Academy (George, played by Andy Garcia). They intend to disrupt Capone's operations until they can bust him, but that gets them a lot of unwanted attention. As well as a number of anonymous threatening individuals, a dangerous man named Nitti (Billy Drago) aims to get rid of Ness and his colleagues, and aims to show that they're most certainly not "untouchable".

It's hard to think of where to start when praising The Untouchables, almost every individual element is as good as you'd expect. Mamet's script is snappy and entertaining, the camerawork and visuals are as wonderfully lush and stylish as they always are in any De Palma movie, and the score from Ennio Morricone feels like some kind of collage of the wonderful work he did over the years with director Sergio Leone. Production design is gorgeous throughout, and there are a couple of fantastic set-pieces that I am sure people have thought about way before getting to this part of my review.

The casting is spot on, for the most part, although I have never been completely convinced by De Niro in the role of Capone. He's fine, but it feels too close to a number of other roles he's already closely identified with. If he'd managed to nail the accent, Hoskins (the second one signed on when De Niro initially couldn't play the part) could have perhaps given us a more interesting portrayal. Hey, at least Hoskins got to enjoy a large paycheck for not doing anything. Costner is a good solid figure at the heart of everything, the kind of thing he has excelled at in a number of features, and he's somehow able to get the focus back on himself after spending time sidelined by more interesting supporting characters. Connery is brilliant, as I've already said, and both Smith and Garcia liven up scenes by bringing very different energies into their performances. Drago is entertainingly villainous, and I'll also mention how much I enjoyed seeing Patricia Clarkson, despite the fact that she's given little more than a token role of "worried wife of the hero".

(Re)watching a great Brian De Palma film always reminds me that I should make the time to watch his entire filmography. They're not all absolute greats, and not all as good as this one, but his best work is enough for me to never begrudge giving some time to the films that didn't work half as well. And I can always come back to something like this if I end up disappointed by too many others.

9/10

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Netflix And Chill: Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves (1991)

There are many things to remember about Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, things that help you to forget other aspects of it. You probably remember Alan Rickman stealing most of the movie. You should remember the monster hit song from Bryan Adams. There's the "arrow-cam" shots. And, for better or worse, Kevin Costner in the lead role. You may well remember all of the fun you had with it, intentional or not, but you might forget what a slog it can be at times, the wildly varying quality of the acting, and how it generally fails in any attempt to be a proper swashbuckling action flick for modern audiences.

Both terrible and fantastic in equal measure, Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves is a film I hadn't revisited since owning it on VHS. It's one that kept randomly popping into my head though, especially when discussing Alan Rickman with a work colleague and trying to deliver amusing impressions of his iconic cinematic villain roles. I kept wondering if it was actually any good, particularly when I wasn't too won over by it back when that song had spent months dominating the British music charts.

The plot is secondary to the stars and the set-pieces. Everyone knows a bit about Robin Hood, especially if they have seen the classic Errol Flynn movie, or the animated Disney flick. He robbed from the rich to give to the poor, and he was the enemy of the greedy and conniving Sheriff Of Nottingham (played here by Rickman, of course). He had a band of merry men, and he had some chemistry with a woman named Marian (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio embodying her this time around). 

Written by Pen Densham and John Watson, two people with relatively limited experience (their previous film being one I have long wanted to see, Upworld AKA A Gnome Named Gnorm), and directed by Kevin Reynolds, this is a blockbuster that seems to have become successful through sheer force of will. You have to ignore some of the dodgy accents, you have to just grin while groaning at some of the dialogue (especially the lines uttered by Duncan, played by Walter Sparrow, who could just as easily slot into place in a Monty Python film), and you have to be patient during any scenes that fill time in between the stars being stars.

Costner isn't the best choice for the main role, but he somehow does enough to show why he gained his movie star status. The film belongs to Rickman, thankfully, but not at the expense of our hero, who benefits from his more laidback style being juxtaposed against the brilliant pantomime villain. Mastrantonio does a decent job in a role that tries to balance out the strength of the character with the need to have her in peril, and there's a lot of fun to be had with Morgan Freeman, Nick Brimble, and Mike McShane, the latter two playing Little John and Friar Tuck, respectively. Christian Slater stands out for being miscast in the role of Will Scarlett, but he tries, Michael Wincott is a very good Guy Of Gisborne, and you also get screentime for Geraldine McEwan, Brian Blessed, and a couple of star cameos.

Despite the flaws, and an overly earnest approach to many scenes is one of them, it's easy to see why many can love this. It's a fantastic blockbuster that seems to fall in line with what Costner loves to do: old-fashioned entertainment with just the right blend of drama, romance, and spectacle. You can sneer at it if you like, and I'm sure many do, but it makes up for being a bit of a mess by trying hard at every turn to be a hugely entertaining mess. I may not have loved it back when it was first released, but I cannot help having a soft spot for it now.

8/10

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Waterworld (1995)

If there was one movie that came to symbolise the excess, and potential waste, of blockbuster movie productions of the 1990s, it was Waterworld. Supplying cinema fans with plenty of gossip before we'd even seen one main scene, it was the film that caused more strife between star Kevin Costner and director Kevin Reynolds, the film that had the biggest budget of all time (until James Cameron gave us Titanic, which then opened the floodgates, no pun intended, for budgets to go up and up and up), and the film that allowed everyone to (unfairly, in my view) knock Costner down a peg or two.

The sad thing is that the film itself, without taking everything else into consideration, is actually pretty good. I'd go so far as to call it a great action adventure. But that's easy to forget when the final product has been long overshadowed by that troubled reputation.

The plot is pretty simple. Costner plays the Mariner, a lone traveller on an Earth that has long been covered in a deluge of water, so much so that any notion of dry land is nothing more than a legend. But one little girl (Enola, played by Tina Majorino) may have the location of dry land, in the form of a skin tattoo, and she ends up on the Mariner's boat, along with her guardian, Helen (Jeanne Tripplehorn). This makes them of interest to a marauding gang, the Smokers, and their leader, Deacon (Dennis Hopper).

I thought long and hard about this, I think long and hard about every statement I make in my reviews (even if it doesn't appear that way), and I stand by the fact that Waterworld MAY be a contender for the best physically-realised movie environment onscreen. A lot of the screentime is taken up by our leads floating on the water, true, but there's an astonishing atoll set that is the focus of the action in the opening third of the film, fantastic design work on the main vehicle that belongs to Costner's character, and a wonderful reappropriation of the Exxon Valdez as a main HQ for the villains. There's not one moment in this movie that takes you out of it, in terms of the look and the production design, no matter how silly some of the plotting may be.

The script, by Peter Rader and David Twohy, may be little more than Mad Max on water, but that's not a bad thing to aim for when you're out to deliver some post-apocalyptic, stunt-filled, action. And everything is directed well by whichever Kevin you want to give the most credit to. This may have been the most expensive movie of all time, for a while, but you have to admit that you can see pretty much every dollar onscreen (well . . . apart from the thousands of dollars that it cost for every night that Costner stayed in his villa, which also had a chef and butler, apparently). Every set-piece is grand and impressive, without tipping over into the overdone and tiresome style we so often see in modern movies that have no limits on the spectacles they can provide, thanks to the computer tools at their disposal.

None of the cast members are doing their best work, but neither are they doing any of their worst. Costner does the strong and silent type well, Tripplehorn does as much as she can while not being given a lot to do, and Hopper is just about as fun a villain as you could wish for in this kind of fare (a scene with him trying out a replacement eye still makes me laugh harder than many big gags in comedy films). Majorino acts well opposite the adults, Michael Jeter is fun in a small role, and Gerard Murphy is another crafty villain in league with Hopper and co. The list of people in much smaller roles also includes a number of familiar faces: Leonardo Cimino, Robert Joy, Jack Black, Kim Coates, and one or two others.

Does it have flaws? It sure does. It's overlong, even in the shortest version available, it often misses the mark when it comes to the moments that aren't full of action, the computer effects, when on display, are mid-90s computer effects, and the ending is, well, it's a bit anti-climactic. But none of that is enough to spoil a movie that aims to provide viewers with a thrilling cinematic adventure. If you haven't seen it, or haven't seen it in years, then do check it out.  Maybe you'll agree with my opinion of it. Maybe enough time has passed, and the tide has turned for Waterworld.

8/10

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Molly's Game (2017)

Marking the feature directorial debut of celebrated scriptwriter Aaron Sorkin, Molly's Game is another slick, smart piece of work that the man has attached his name to, and it also happens to give Jessica Chastain a great role that doesn't rely on her being defined just by her seriousness and determination (admirable qualities, but not the only qualities I want to see in most performances).

Chastain plays Molly Bloom, a young woman who had a career in professional skiing ended by a freak accident on the slope. Which is the start of a chain of events that leads to her eventually running some major private poker games with very high stakes. Which would all be well and good if she didn't also end up welcoming players with ties to the Russian mob, and having to . . . wiggle herself into a position of illegality to cover some of the higher pots.

If I was ever going to be a sportsman then it would involve me learning how to get better at poker. Because it's the right level of physical activity for me, I like to feel as if I have a chance of winning, and it's just fun. It's also surprisingly cinematic, with many filmed games showing the building tension and how characters react differently to it. This works in Aaron Sorkin's favour, and he structures everything perfectly to reveal more about the main characters, tease out backstory, and lead viewers towards a finale that you don't think will prove satisfying, until it does. And it really does.

The dialogue is as good as you would expect, with the best exchanges being had between Chastain and Idris Elba (playing her lawyer), but also some great lines reserved for her infrequent conversations with Kevin Costner (her father). A lot of the lines sound cool and clever, but there are just as many that show Sorkin's knack for getting to the heart of a character or situation with just one or two sentences.

Chastain is excellent in the lead role, always cool and running through the odds even as things look to be overwhelming her. It's the kind of role she loves to sink her teeth into, with just a bit more detailing her and there to make her feel more human and rounded than she has been in some of her previous performances. Elba is an equally assured character, although he is at times worn down and frustrated by the stance that his high-profile client takes during her defence. Costner gives another great supporting performance that adds to the impressive list he has been building up over the past few years (but I may be biased, having always been a fan). Michael Cera, Chris O'Dowd, and Jeremy Strong are all good as various important figures in the journey that Molly makes to her position as poker game queen, with Cera and Strong both particularly good when angrily trying to assert dominance over a woman who knows she has to stay one step ahead of them. And there are a number of solid supporting turns from people Sorkin picked for their poker skills, lending the gaming scenes an air of authenticity some other films on this subject might lack.

It's easy to see why this appealed to Sorkin, and I am happy to say that he does well in the director's chair. Jargon is explained, dynamics are always made clear, memorable characters move in and out of the narrative, and Chastain looms large in every scene. Molly is never painted as an angel, although we only have her word for her personal code of conduct, but her bad decisions (some of them head-smackingly bad) are given as much attention as her successes.

Entertaining, gripping at times, aimed at adults, and doesn't often feel as if it is pandering to the audience. This might not be a full house for Sorkin, but it's enough for him to win the pot and walk away with a profit.

8/10

There's a disc you can order here.
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Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

Jack Ryan. At first he was played by Alec Baldwin. Then Harrison Ford took over the role for a couple of movies. And then Ben Affleck was given a shot. Now it's the turn of Chris Pine, having been handed the role for a film that plays out as a bit of an origin story for our main character.

The story isn't exactly complex. After an opening sequence that shows Ryan involved in a helicopter crash that seriously injures his spine, we see him work towards his recovery and fall for the woman helping him back on his feet (Cathy Mullan, played by Keira Knightley). He's then recruited by Thomas Harper (a decent supporting role for Kevin Costner) to work for the CIA. He is supposed to work as a covert analyst, a job that will allow him to inspect financial transactions and use the information to bust any criminal activity, but ends up out in the field, in Moscow to be exact, when he has to follow up a bad feeling he has about Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh trying on a Russian accent).

Data analysis may not sound like the most exciting thing to base an action thriller on, I agree. Thankfully, that's only the springboard to launch Ryan into an entertaining adventure. The script, by Adam Cozad and David Koepp, stays true to the central character, despite the youthful make-over, with the focus on intelligence rather than strength or fighting ability (although, it must be said, the first big challenge for Ryan when he enters Moscow is a physical one).

As well as portraying the villain of the piece, Branagh directs the film. He has shown over the years that he can work with popular entertainment just as easily as he can work with Shakespeare, and he puts together a nice slice of entertainment here for those who enjoy cat and mouse scenarios. The opening sequences aren't exactly full of promise, but that's only a minor wobble. Things improve considerably once we get past the obligatory detailing of just how much inner steel Jack Ryan has.

Pine is an actor I've enjoyed watching for years now, and he slips into the role of Ryan comfortably enough. Knightley isn't as well-served by the script, although she tries her best in a role that adds up to little more than "love interest who may need extra protection when things start to get more heated". Branagh is a lot of fun, even if he dances in and out of moments that feel like parody. His villain is the kind of cool, intelligent, cultured individual often seen mentally sparring James Bond, and that's no bad thing when it's done as well as it is here. Costner also has fun, just in a different way. He's the typical mentor here, giving Ryan the details without ever bullshitting him, and also helping the young man when he's struggling to deal with incidents that he remembers from his own past experiences.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit may not have set the box office alight, but don't let that put you off. In fact, we should all know by now that box office figures are no sure-fire indicator of quality. The only reason I mention the performance of this movie here is to say that I hope we still get another instalment with these characters in place. I'd definitely see it, and I hope that others feel the same way.

7/10

http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Ryan-Recruit-Blu-ray-Digital/dp/B00AIBZMM2/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1420666622&sr=8-3&keywords=jack+ryan

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The New Daughter (2009)

I'm in a very good mood. I must be, otherwise I'd simply spend this review ripping this movie apart, detailing how safe and predictable it is, and how disappointed I was by the whole thing. But I'm not going to do that. Despite its flaws, of which it has MANY, I found The New Daughter to be relatively enjoyable while it was on. It tried to do something a bit different. It just tried to do it, sadly, while reusing moments and tricks that we've all seen countless times before.

Kevin Costner stars as a single father who moves into a new home with his young daughter (Ivana Baquero) and younger son (Gattlin Griffith). He's single because his wife ran off with another man, which causes quite a bit of frustration and resentment among the kids, especially the daughter. While adjusting to their new life, Costner starts to notice that his daughter is starting to act strange. She's changing, but he's not sure if it's the stress of their situation or something else altogether. Maybe something to do with the mysterious mound of earth located on their property.

Based on a short story by John Connolly, the script by John Travis suffers from having too many scenes that feel like flab. Watching a loved one turn into someone very different from who they used to be is not a new idea in the horror genre, and it's hard to stretch this material out when the transformation seems to occur so quickly, and so obviously connected to the newest oddity in the lives of everyone involved.

Director Luiso Berdejo treats the whole thing with more care than it deserves, arguably, which makes up for the intermittent weakness of the material. There are fake scares, of course, and one or two jumps, but a lot of the thrills are well-handled, with even the few "twists" still managing to provide enjoyable closure to certain scenes/sequences, despite their predictability.

Costner is someone I will watch in anything, and he's fine here. It's not his finest hour, and the role could have been filled by almost any actor in his age range, but he does well enough. Baquero is okay, but okay isn't quite good enough for her part in the proceedings. While she doesn't ever become bad enough to unbalance the whole thing, she's the weakest of the three leads. Griffith, on the other hand, does very well with the lesser role. Samantha Mathis isn't bad either, as a teacher looking to help the family adjust to their new situation, and Noah Taylor is horribly underused, playing an expert in the sort of earth mound that sits on Costner's property.

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone as a first choice. It's not scary or gory or decent enough for horror fans, and it's a bit too sedate for non-horror fans who fancy watching a horror movie. But I still think it's worth a watch, if you have nothing else available. But I do mean NOTHING else.

5/10

http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Daughter-Kevin-Costner/dp/B0038RSJB4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1413047447&sr=8-2&keywords=the+new+daughter

3 Days To Kill (2014)

Directed by McG. A story by Luc Besson. Kevin Costner in the lead role. I can see 3 Days To Kill being a movie that many people are predisposed to dismiss, or avoid, but I ended up having fun with it. A lot of fun.

Costner is Ethan Renner, a CIA agent who remains the best man for the job whenever people need to be killed. Unfortunately, he's diagnosed with an illness that only gives him weeks to live, which leads to him desperately trying to rebuild some bridges with his daughter (Hailee Steinfeld) and wife (Connie Nielsen). The CIA have a lot of resources, however, and a woman named Vivi (Amber Heard) approaches Ethan with a proposal. She will offer him a treatment for his illness that isn't even on the market yet, if he helps her to kill a major target. And anyone else who gets in their way. Ethan agrees, but his job ends up being complicated by his attempts to enjoy some quality time with his daughter.

Co-written by Besson and Adi Hasak, 3 Days To Kill is enjoyably quirky stuff, anchored by a performance from Costner that may well remind viewers of his oh-so-cool turn as Frank Farmer in The Bodyguard. He may be many years older, and his character may be suffering from failing health, but he still has the confidence and the intelligence to be the most dangerous man in any room.

The rest of the cast don't fare as well, but all is forgiven whenever Costner is doing his thing. Steinfeld, in particular, suffers, due to the fact that her character is written as too moody, weak, and just bloody unappreciative (although she has some good reason to be lashing out). Heard is decent, strong and sexy as the woman who is now the boss of Renner. Nielsen is slightly sidelined for most of the movie, and Richard Sammel and Tomas Lemarquis are okay, if pretty unmemorable, as the main villains.

McG actually does fine in the director's chair. He's shown over the past few years that he isn't tied to the over-the-top style used in those Charlie's Angels movies, and the action beats here are nicely choreographed and edited. It's slick stuff, but smooth, reminding viewers that the main characters is cool and in control, for the most part. There may not be quite enough action moments for fans, but the quirky comedy is also nicely played out, making the whole thing a fun time for fans of the main star.

I'm sure I'll be in the minority with my love for this one, but I hope there are some other viewers out there who end up enjoying it as much as I did. Costner is, in my opinion, always worth your time. Even if he doesn't always pick the best movies to showcase his talent.

7/10

http://www.amazon.com/Days-Kill-Blu-ray-Kevin-Costner/dp/B00JA3RPAG/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1406370305&sr=1-2&keywords=3+days+to+kill