John Wick (Movie Review)

Fun fact: Keanu Reeves once played Hamlet on stage. I’m not kidding. Look it up. Apparently He was pretty good!

Keanu Reeves is a Canadian treasure. I will fight anybody who says otherwise.

 John Wick

Directed by: Chad Stahelski and David Leitch

Produced by: Basil Iwanyk, Eva Longoria, David Leitch

Written by: Derek Kolstad

Genres: Action, Thriller

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Michael Nyqvist, Alfie Allen, Willem Dafoe, Dean Winters, Adrianne Palicki, Bridget Moynahan, John Leguizamo, Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, Andy the Dog

Music by: Tyler Bates, Joel J. Richard

Plot: John Wick (Keanu Reeves) is seemingly an everyman who, sadly, is mourning the death of his wife (Bridget Moynahan), who has succumbed to a terminal illness. While moping around his house, he receives a surprise package from his wife from beyond the grave who had arranged to give him a puppy to cope with his loneliness. John and the puppy immediately hit it off, becoming the cutest movie couple in film history, outdoing Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone.

Awwwwww……

Unfortunately, while going on his daily routine of, uh, Driving donuts?!?! That’s……Pointless…..

Yeah, this movie doesn’t exactly display a whole bunch of logic, and this scene in particular probably could’ve been cut from the film to the benefit of the picture as a whole. Anyways, while driving around, he runs afoul of a group of hoodlums led by Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen).

Sure, I know Alfie Allen’s character is technically named Iosef Tarasov, but if you’re as big a Game of Thrones fan as I am, you can’t not see him as Theon Greyjoy. Especially this character. Don’t even try to tell me otherwise, he is Theon Greyjoy.

Reek and his shithead buddies follow John home, murder his puppy and steal his Mustang. What he doesn’t know, however is that John is known in the underworld as the deadliest hitman in New York City. And know that he’s got nothing to lose, he’s gunning for Tarasov, his dad, Viggo (Michael Nyqvist) and the rest of the Russian Mafia.

The Russian mob: Because the Sicilian mafia is overused, and a Mexican cartel may come off as racist.

The moviegoing community hasn’t seen all that much of Canadian “actor” Keanu Reeves since his appearance in the shit-tastic The Day the Earth Stood Still in 2008. Until his appearance in last year’s 47 Ronin, which we will not discuss ever, he had mostly just appeared in some small scale independent dramas that nobody saw. That’s a damn shame because I’m a big Keanu fan.

Yeah, I get that he’s not a good actor, technically speaking,but there’s something about him that’s so damn appealing. I’m not sure if it’s the fat that he still looks like a 25-year old, or the fact that he really looks like he’s trying to emote up there. And hey, it’s not like he isn’t capable of delivering at least a passable performance. here and then.

So, how does Keanu do as John Wick? Well, you know,  he does what he did in the Matrix: Be a blank slate, enabling the audience to comfortably insert themselves into the action, of which there is a crapload. He’s not about to set the Academy Awards on fire, but he does exactly what a B-movie action star should do. And when he does need to show some emotion, he doesn’t embarrass himself, and can be genuinely touching when he needs to be. Sure, it would’ve been nice to get an all-around better actor, but as comebacks go, you could do worse.

Much, much worse.

The New York City of the world of John Wick is definitely something to behold. It is apparently a mecca for hitmen who do various jobs for the different crime bosses, and who seem to live a life separate from the non-criminal elements of society. The cops don’t particularly care about the in-fighting between the different games, as long as they clean up their messes and leave civilians out of it (There’s a pretty funny interaction between Keanu and a policeman). Hell, the hitmen have an entire damn hotel, maintained by Lance Derrick and Ian McShane, reserved for themselves. These assassins use freaking gold coins as currency for chrissakes! It’s definitely highly illogical, but I don’t really care all that much. I love it when movies try to do world-building  like this movie does. It almost seems like a less-stylized and less extreme in general version of the world of Sin City.

That’s not to say it isn’t stylized or violent though, because it’s both of those things, especially the latter. Holy shit, does John Wick ever rack up a body count. The movie, admittedly, is a little slow for the first ten minutes or so, but the minute that Keanu Reeves starts kicking ass and taking names. Director Chad Stahelski was Keanu’s martial arts coordinator in the sci-fi epicness that was The Matrix, And he definitely brought his talent for making people look like unstoppable badasses to this movie. John Wick is up there with the other unstoppable badasses of film history in terms of sheer body count and pure…Uh…Badassery, I guess. You have not trouble believing that this guy wiped out all of the Russian mafia’s rivals. Seriously. The Punisher wishes he was as badass as John Wick.

Did this help or hinder Punisher’s street cred? I’m going back and forth on that.

 The other actors aside from Keanu were fine too. I especially liked Michael Nyqvist as the big baddie of the movie, although you can tell at times that he and Alfie Allen aren’t Russian when their Swedish and English accents, respectively, bleed through.

The only other real problem I had with the movie is the writing. There isn’t a whole lot of dialogue in this movie (Compared to, say, Sin City), but when it does show up, it is just plain silly. You see this dumb line?”

JOHN WICK: People keep asking if I’m back. Yeah, I’m thinking I’m back!!!

Clunky, cheesy and B-movie fodder, right? It’s not even close to being the most awkward line in the movie. That said, I kinda give the movie a pass on that front, because, well, I think that this movie is kind of a throwback to the action movies of the 80’s. Stupid, corny dialogue, sure, but man alive is it ever a good time.

Doesn’t mean that the movie gets a nine. Still a great ride, though.

Overall: A creative world, ultraviolence, silliness and Keanu Reeves. If you are a fan of any of those things, then drop whatever it is you’re doing now and get to your local movie theatre to watch John Wick. What are you gonna watch otherwise? Ouija?

8.0/10

If this makes more money than John Wick, anybody who made that happen will have a gruesomely violent chat with me.

Paris, je t’aime (Movie Review)

KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!

I have a confession to make. I’m not that proud of it, but I feel like I need to own up to it if I ever want a chance at a happy, productive life.

As a general rule, I’m extremely uninterested in watching non-American movies.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a xenophobe. Some of my best friends are non-American (Me, for example). And I’m not saying that all foreign movies are bad either. I grew up with Spanish-language movies (Of which there are many great ones) and, being Canadian, I’ve seen and enjoyed my fair share of Canadian movies. Foreign movies like Hot Fuzz, In Bruges and Pan’s Labyrinth should all be mandatory viewing in elementary schools the world over, in my opinion.

LSD-fueled terror is essential to any grade schoolers’ education.

Now that I think of it, it might actually be more appropriate to correct my confession: I don’t necessarily dislike foreign films, but I’m usually wary of movies from mainland Europe, mainly because of the darker, more introspective and, dare I say, pseudo-intellectual style that these movies tend to have. Look, I get that not every movie can be a goddamn Wes Anderson film, but does that really mean we have to sign off on A Serbian Film?

I mean shit, I know that it’s extremely prejudiced and ignorant of me to assume that an entire continent’s worth of film production resembles Cannibal Holocaust, but I still can’t help giving these movies a wide berth. That’s why I decided to review Paris, je t’aime, (Paris, I Love You) a 2006 French anthology film, to kind of ease myself into European movies.

As it turns out, it really wasn’t that far from my comfort  zone (And really, why the hell would it be?) but I figured it was still worth reviewing.
 Paris, je t’aime 

 Directed by: Bruno Podalydès, Paul Mayeda Berges, Gurinder Chadha, Gus  Van Sant, Joel and Ethan Coen, Walter Salles, Daniela Thomas, Christopher  Doyle, Isabel Coixet, Nobuhiro Suwa, Sylvain Chomet, Alfonso Cuarón,  Olivier Assayas, Oliver Schmitz, Richard LaGravenese, Vincenzo Natali, Wes  Craven, Tom Tykwer, Frédéric Auburtin, Gérard Depardieu, Alexander Payne

 Produced by: Emmanuel Benbihy, Claudie Ossard

 Written by: The aforementioned directors, Emmanuel Benbihy, Rain Kathy Li, Gabrielle Keng Peralta, Gena Rowlands, Nadine Eid

Genres: Mainly Romance, Comedy, Drama

 Starring: Bruno Podalydès, Florence Muller, Cyril Descours, Leïla Bekhti,  Gaspard Ulliel, Elias McConnell, Marianne Faithfull, Steve Buscemi, Axel Kiener, Julie Bataille, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Barbet Schroeder, Li Xin, Leonor Watling, Sergio Castellitto, Miranda Richardson, Javier Camara, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Martin Combes, Paul Putner, Yolande Moreau, Nick Nolte, Ludivine Sagnier, Maggie Gylenhaal, Lionel Dray, Seydou Boro, Aïssa Maïga, Bob Hoskins, Fanny Ardent, Elijah Wood, Olga Kurylenko, Emily Mortimer, Rufus Sewell, Alexander Payne, Natalie Portman, Melchior Beslon, Ben Gazzara, Gena Rowlands, Gérard Depardieu, Margo Martindale

Plot(s): Paris je t’aime is an anthology film, meaning that it’s not just one continuous storyline, but a series of several (In this case, eighteen) short films, each with their own storyline, director, writer and actors. In this case, each one of the films are named after the Parisian neighbourhood where they take place (Although scenes were also filmed in Switzerland, Germany and Lichtenstein).  Some notable short films in Paris, je t’aime include:

• Steve Buscemi getting assaulted in a Paris subway station.
•  A beauty product salesman (Barbet Schroeder) trying to sell a product to a Chinese hairdresser (Li Xin).
• A young man (Cyril Descours) coming to the aid of a young Muslim woman ( Leïla Bekhti) after she is bullied by a couple of racists. 
• A mime propositions women, gets rejected.
• Maggie Gylenhaal develops a crush on her hashish dealer.
• A vampire (Olga Kurylenko) terrorizes Frodo Baggins.
• An American tourist (Margo Martindale) reflects in broken French on her vacation in Paris.

I feel like the most important thing in a movie like this, that is, a romantic movie that also serves as an homage to the City of Lights, would be to make sure that it doesn’t stray into sappy, overly sentimental territory with occasional pretty vistas in Paris littered throughout. Indeed, there are times in the early going when PJT can stray dangerously close to being kinda eye-rollingly sweet, but it never really crosses the line and remains a very entertaining movie, while also juggling different themes and genres without letting it get out of hand.

Well, at least until the “Porte de Choisy” sketch (The one about the Chinese hairdresser) , which tries way too fucking hard to be quirky, a constant pain in the ass of mine since Napoleon Dynamite.  It throws all these bright, disorienting colours at you and tries to make its’ point (About beauty in uniqueness, or something) so incoherently that it felt like it was directed by Baz Luhrmann.

To it’s credit though, the only real hiccup the movie hits after that is the weird vampire scene with Elijah Wood and Olga Kurylenko. And I don’t even know if I would really call that one a hiccup, I just don’t know what I’m supposed to feel after watching it other than confused and somewhat disturbed.

Otherwise, though, the movie does a fantastic job of making the audience go through a whirlwind of emotions throughout, possibly because of the slew of different directors used. The comedic skits (I feel like these comprised the majority) are very well done and never unnecessarily dry or dark, meaning that we end these short films with a pleasant lighthearted feeling, which makes the scenes that ARE  a little darker and hard hitting that much more of a punch in the gut. I suppose this can leave the audience feel a little bit numb, which isn’t really a positive, but hey, this isn’t really that big of a complaint.

Another minor flaw can be found in the writing, in that I think that it can try a little bit too hard to be deep and introspective occasionally, which can be muddling for my poor reptilian brain to process, but for the most part, it’s a smart, intelligent and funny script that competently does what it needs to do to set things up for the enormous ensemble cast, which mostly consists of European actors unrecognizable to the average North American moviegoer, which is kind of a damn shame, because they do a pretty freaking great job countering some of their more well known counterparts, such as Bob fucking Hoskins, Nick Nolte, Steve Buscemi, Willem Dafoe and, be still my beating heart, Natalie Portman. Every actor, A-lister or otherwise, does an excellent job of really drawing the audience in and making these characters interesting, which is somewhat tough to do when all you’re given is around ten-ish minutes to make an audience care about that character.

“How hard could it possibly be? I’m Natalie-fucking-Portman!”

Conclusion: While not without its’  fair share of flaws, Paris, je t’aime makes up for them, mainly on the strength of the performances and the emotional journey the viewer is taken on.

Rating: 8.5/10

 

 

The Grand Budapest Hotel (Movie Review)

Say “Ralph Fiennes” out loud for me right now. If you pronounced “Ralph” with an “L”, then I know something you don’t know! … “Saoirse Ronan” is still a complete fucking mystery for me though.

So, I finally got to see Wes Anderson’s new movie, The Grand Budapest Hotel. Before beginning the review, I must confess that I’ve never actually seen a Wes Anderson film before. I knew him only as the weird, quirky guy that uses a lot of colour and makes a lot of movies with Owen Wilson, Bill Murray and Edward Norton. But hey, I’m nothing if not intrepid, so I decided to take a chance, not go to some crowd-pleaser like  Noah, Captain America: The Winter Soldier or The Lego Movie (Which may be because I hate watching animated movies in theaters, but that’s a topic for another post) and take a chance on this weirdo and his Ralph Fiennes-headed movie.

Boy am I not regretting that decision right about now.

 

 The Grand Budapest Hotel 

Directed by: Wes Anderson

Produced by: Wes Anderson, Jeremy Dawson, Steven M. Rales, Scott  Rudin

Screenplay by: Wes Anderson

Story by: Wes Anderson, Hugo Guinness

Genres: Dark Comedy, Mystery

Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff  Goldblum,  Saoirse Ronan, Edward Norton, F. Murray Abraham, Mathieu  Amalric, Jude Law, Harvey  Keitel, Bill Murray, Lea Seydoux, Jason  Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson,  Owen Wilson

Plot: The Grand Budapest Hotel opens in the fictional European republic of Zubrowka in the year 1968, where a famous unnamed writer (Law) is vacationing at a decrepit relic of a hotel named, you guessed it, the Grand Budapest. The once decadent and celebrated hotel has fallen onto difficult times, being, as mentioned, decrepit and, as a result, business has suffered. While there, the writer meets the elderly proprietor of the hotel, a man named Zero Moustafa. Moustafa, a fan of the writer’s work, invites him to dinner where the writer inquires about how the old man came to own the hotel and why the hell he hasn’t closed the dump down.

Moustafa’s story began in 1932, when young Zero (Revolori) was hired as a lobby boy at the Grand Budapest, a lucrative, decadent hotel with a mysterious, anonymous owner where he is mentored by the hotel’s eccentric concierge, Monsieur Gustave H (Fiennes). The looming specter of war in Zubrowka does nothing to faze Gustave  an extremely devoted concierge, who goes the extra mile to make the clientele feel comfortable and ensure that everything runs smoothly. He is, however a bit of a, well, an oddball. In order to make any anxious older blonde ladies feel welcome, personally makes them feel physically and emotionally at ease… With his penis.

Sadly, one of his more frequent penis-clients, Madame D (Swinton in terrific old lady makeup) dies under mysterious circumstances. Accompanied by Zero, he arrives at Madame D’s wake, where it is revealed, surprisingly, that he has inherited an invaluable painting from Madame D, the priceless Boy with Apple. This decision does not sit well with Madame D’s family, especially her villainous son, Dmitri Desgoffe-und-Taxis (Brody), who coveted the painting and wants him dead.

As far as the story goes, I have no real complaints with the movie. I’ve always been a fan of the mystery-comedy genre since I saw the Pink Panther movies as a little kid….

And then, Hollywood discovered the reboot and everything went to shit.

…  And, in truth, it does seem to have a similar style to those movies, so yeah, maybe it provides a healthy bit of nostalgia for me, but regardless of my weirdly old-fashioned tastes, it’s humour should appeal to pretty much anybody. It’s zany enough to appeal to little kids, dry and subtle enough to appeal to older folks, and, surprisingly, dark enough to appeal to sick, twisted weirdos like me. Is this type of somewhat wide-reaching humour a staple of Wes Anderson movies?  Because if so, I need to have a marathon one of these days, this stuff is just wonderful.

One minor quibble I have is that the plot got a tiny bit muddled near the end, which left me a little bit confused, but truth be told, I couldn’t really give less of a shit. The humour, as well as the wonderful use of colour more than make up for anything my pathetic lizard brain couldn’t comprehend. There is just way too much positives to really make a serious complaint out of something that can be remedied by just paying a little bit less attention to the colour of the elevator, or whatever.

Acting: The cast in this movie is goddamn insane. All of Anderson’s usual crop of actors make an appearance in roles of varying importance, and they are all very good at their respective parts. The two leads, however are played by Wes Anderson newcomer Ralph Fiennes, who is absolutely brilliant as Monsieur Gustave, and should, so far, be an early favourite for an Oscar nod.

Although it’s easy to be considered an Oscar favourite in March when this piece of crap is the next best non-animated movie in theatres.

This is the first big role for American actor Tony Revolori however. And I gotta say, he knocks it out of the park as young Zero Moustafa. It’s a rare thing when I approve of an actor under the age of eighteen, but Revolori is funny, fun to watch, and in rare occasions, kind of sad. Irish actress Saoirse Ronan is also wonderful as Zero’s love interest, and Adrien Brody is clearly having a blast as the cartoonishly evil, yet still sinister antagonist, Dmitri.

Which is good to see, considering the career choices he’s made lately.

 

Conclusion: Vibrant, colourful and hilarious, Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel is an epitome of pure joy. If there is one movie you must see this week, go on and take a chance on Wes Anderson. Captain America isn’t going anywhere.

9.5/10