Reservoir Dogs

It's been said that Reservoir Dogs is Quentin Tarantino's most disturbing film. It's not the most violent, or the most realistic but it's at a certain middle point. I'm not sure I totally agree, because although movies like Kill Bill and Django Unchained are more outlandish and not as dark, they still obviously have much more death and pain. I was personally more disturbed by Inglorious Basterds, but I guess that's just my opinion. One thing I found especially interesting about Reservoir Dogs was that it's a heist movie where you never see the heist, but rather, all the before and after parts. We just have to imagine the robbery that went totally wrong. I can't exactly tell what type of film it is, but I can say that it's not easy to watch. It's full of people getting shot, and there's also one scene where a guy gets his ear cut off. I wasn't especially scarred mentally by this because in both Watchmen, and The Big Lebowski, people get their ears bitten off, so it's not the worst I've seen. I liked how each of the main characters had their own small segments of which they were the focus. We got to learn each of their pasts and what type of person they each were. When they all interacted, it felt like I knew each of them in depth and it was all just a matter of how these personalities would collide. Then we got to see what happened after their first mission as a team. It's safe to say it didn't turn out too great. One thing I didn't like was the way these super professional people who seemed to know what they were doing were so unprofessional so often. They weren't acting like the characters they were made out to be in the beginning. I couldn't understand their actions in that way. I wanted to see all these different people act together and try desperately to keep their professionalism, as it's a good way to make a story, but I didn't really get that from Reservoir Dogs, though it was still excellent in many other ways. B+

Goodfellas

I remember first seeing The Godfather Part I, and Part II, and I thought Goodfellas, being a mob movie, would be very similar. Boy, was I wrong. Goodfellas is much more street-level crime film, and it's also kind of funny at the beginning, but eventually spirals into more serious topics. We get to see a kid with a head start in the crime business rise to the top, then, over time, fall, due to drugs, rats (not the rodents), and a hunger for power. I loved learning about the ins and outs of the criminal underworld, and how an insult can take you all the way to lying in a ditch on the side of the road.
   
     Our protagonist, played by an actor I only recognize from a commercial for 1800 tequila, leads a successful life, making it pretty far, but learns that most don't get a chance to go out on top. Instead, they fall and see themselves fail before death. Throughout, the film gives us a glimpse at how tough even the high crime world really is. Although they wear expensive suits and tip doormen hundreds of dollars at a time, they're very venerable. They're all insecure, insane, or just very, very touchy, and that leads to them killing the wrong person. That's where they always fail. They think they can do whatever they ant and get away with it, but are very often wrong. I had an issue with the change of tone being very abrupt, and uneven too. The whole first half was comedic and fun, the second half was dark and depressing. I think, though, that maybe this was to add effect. Maybe we were supposed to see the fun side of crime, the life which so many young men chase, then see all the repercussions later on. It's like a tsunami, everything's fun in the sun, and before you know it, a huge wave of bad stuff is upon you.

    I used to think all of the characters had weak judgment, but I guess that's what power does to you. The human mind is a fragile thing, and it's hard to keep it from breaking. Anyway, Goodfellas is a comedic-turned depressing crime drama, with all sorts of twists and turns that takes you on a journey to and from success. A-

Struck by Lightning

After I finished watching the only four seasons of Glee available on Netflix (saddest moment of my life), one of the three watch suggestions was Struck By Lightning, which starred Chris Colfer, who was also one of the leads in Glee. The guy has lots of wit and always acts like he's smarter than everybody else, which is a little against his character in the TV show, but in Struck By Lightning, he was perfect. He's a high school senior who rightfully feels superior to everybody around him. This doesn't necessarily make him cold or condescending, but he just always tries to make his own life and school a better place, as he works towards his dream school. He also has to deal with a bad mother, grandma with Alzheimers, and an awful school experience. There's no main story, as it's more of a document of a few weeks of his life, but there are a few subplots, such as when he blackmails classmates to write for his literary magazine, and when he tries desperately to preserve student rights at school. There are some comedic moments, but it's mostly serious, as we watch him deal with everything thrown at him, and in the end, we wonder if it was even worth it at all. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, we can't change things, and sometimes we don't have a second chance after we fail once. I thought it was quite powerful and heavy to see him go through this, trying, failing, and then realizing it was all for nothing, but maybe success isn't everything, is it? The whole movie was fun and made me think about the years ahead where everything will change. Although it was a tough subject, it wasn't humorless. I laughed out loud at moments, yet the changes of tones were smooth and I easily transitioned into a serious scene without any abrupt switch. I've seen other reviews, and they all hated Struck By Lightning, but, by my opinion, it was severely underrated, and I highly recommend it. A

Kingsman: The Secret Service

I was very excited to see Kingsman: The Secret Service because the director, Matthew Vaughn pleased me with his previous work, such as Kick-Ass. Both are based of graphic novels by Mark Millar, too. I will say, this had a good beginning. I loved the introduction to all of the tough but classy main characters. I also enjoyed the stylized violence, as I always do. There were some great ideas, but I felt that, overall, it only catered to one side of me. It was full of crazy action, hilarious comedy, explosions, and one scene where a character did what we all kind of refuse to accept that we sort of want to do too. Which I loved, but I'd have enjoyed more interesting subjects too. I wanted to explore more of our protagonist's family life, which wasn't good. I also wanted to explore the incredibly awesome villain, played by Samuel L. Jackson. He had an assistant who had metal prosthetic legs with blades on them, which was cool and one of the redeeming factors of the movie. I can't say it wasn't a whole lot of fun to watch her jump around and duel suit-wearing umbrella-wielding British spies. I can say that's what's good about Kingsman. It's enjoyable and very entertaining but I only really liked that. Everything else was uninteresting. Kick-Ass was good because is was stylish and violent, but we also got to focus on the protagonist's struggle to try and be special, and to be a hero. Kingsman was just like any other action-blockbuster, with just a little bit more style to make it slightly better. C+

Relatos Salvajes (Wild tales)

I love dark comedy. It's funny, yet scary. Comedic, yet psychopathic. Amusing, yet disturbing. Some movies go too far in one direction or the other. Sometimes I end up being depressed, not laughing, and sometimes it's not dark enough and just gets boring. Relatos Savajes (translated: Wild Tales). Is an Argentine-Spanish dark comedy, involving six unrelated stories about people who just LOSE IT. After being struck with bad luck, each of these people want revenge, and they get it, whether it involves a hammer, a knife, rat poison, a car, a mirror (strangely, yes) or even a jet plane. Surprisingly, not all of these incredibly tense psychopath stories end sadly, but they all have many very dark elements to them. One of them got too dark, and I didn't really find it very funny because it wasn't a very interesting situation that might cause one to laugh. Comedy = tragedy + time, but some tragedies are just so boring and normal I wouldn't be surprised to find happen any day in the real world. Basically, the whole point of this film was that sometimes,
    “All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day.” 
― Alan Moore, The Killing Joke.

      That's one of my favorite Joker quotes, and it goes so perfectly with the theme of Wild Tales. I wouldn't say this movie is a masterpiece, with slightly too-dark parts, yet I wouldn't say it shouldn't be watched by anyone who has a good sense of humor. I personally loved it, but many will be grossed out by the violence and dark content, I think those people know who they are. Take the opportunity to see it in theaters, too. The suspenseful and tense moments where you don't know what's going to go wrong are much stronger in front of a large screen rather than a laptop or whatever people watch movies on nowadays. A-

What we do in the Shadows

I'm not usually into movies from other countries. I don't enjoy reading subtitles, as it prevents me from fully viewing what's going on. I obviously liked What we do in the Shadows more than most foreign films because not only was it from New Zealand, where English is spoken, but it was also a comedy. It seems as if all the foreign movies I've ever seen are about a girl who's family was all murdered, or a mother who killed all of her young kids, or a brother and sister living on their own because their parents died (all examples based on real movies). I don't go to the movies to be sad, I go to see something exciting, interesting, funny, or special. If all I see is death and pain, what's the point? Anyway, the film I'm focusing on is a comedic mockumentary about a group of vampires living together as flatmates. It shows us what the daily lives of vampires would be like if they really existed in the modern world. Throughout the film, they do things you'd expect a real vampire to do, and it can be funny simply due to the absurdity of it all, but that type of humor only works for so long. After a while, the audience begins to get used to the situation, and it stops being funny. It takes work to make a feature-length film amusing the whole way through, and you can't just rely on the absurdity of the situation to make the audience laugh for two hours. I think it got a bit dull towards the end as I stopped being interested in watching their daily lives, but at a few moments it picked up again. These moments alone make it worth watching. The originality of the story is what I like most about it, though. There are vampire movies, documentaries, comedies, vampire documentaries, documentary comedies and vampire comedies, but I don't think I've ever heard of a vampire-documentary-comedy. Wow. That got a bit complicated, didn't it? What I'm trying to say is that What we do in then Shadows is unlike anything else I've seen, and it keeps it's comedic value up most of the time. It may lack a real meaning, but I'm sure something can be dug up somewhere in the script. It also has a lot of character depth that isn't shoved in your face, so you can slowly digest each vampire's history and point of view on the world. A-.

Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man!

True, this is only my opinion on The Big Lebowski, I'm sure there are people who don't find a weird satisfaction in this movie like I do, or like the millions of fans out there. I would say this is more than just a Coen Bros. film. It has a large fan base who know huge portions of the script word-for-word, celebrations all over America, known as "Lebowski Fest" ( https://lebowskifest.com/ ) and even a religion, I kid you not. Jeff Bridges obviously holds this movie as one of his greatest achievements, I mean, he named his band "The Abiders". I can't really say there's anything wrong with The Big Lebowski, in fact, there isn't anything that isn't absolutely brilliant about it. Everything has some sort of meaning that sometimes only the most devoted fans notice. Everything about it has comedic value, too, it just takes a few views to fully understand some of it, and it depends on how you watch it. While other Coen Brothers movies are sort of fun like O Brother, Where art thou? or downright terrifying like No Country for Old Men, Lebowski is a little bit of everything, but again, it depends on how you view it. It's about a lazy man who does nothing with his life, until he gets caught up in a kidnapping case due to having the same exact name as a millionaire. A hilarious series of unfortunate events follow, as you watch our protagonists face off against bowlers, nialists, evil porn stars, and an insane sheriff. There isn't much else to say, besides that I think everyone should see this movie, and whether or not they like it, they'll at least know that about themselves. A+

The Green Mile

 I've seen The Shawshank Redemption, which is a prison movie by the director, Frank Darabont, and I expected The Green Mile to be the same, but it wasn't. It was quite a bit heavier, as it dealt with people on death row who didn't get out in the end, well, at least not exactly. As you'd expect, it was very tragic, and there were a lot of religious metaphors. Throughout, I felt that the story lacked structure, and seemed like a bunch of events that didn't really connect enough. They all meant something for the message the story conveyed, but it could've been done a little bit better. Sometimes, a story without any structure is good, such as in Fury, which I complained had too much of a plot, but that was because I wanted to get an authentic experience of what life was like in the situation those characters were in, as their situation was shared by many people like them in their time, but in The Green Mile, this is a very specific situation, which should have had a very specific plot to go with it. Apart from that, it was a perfectly good film. Michael Clarke Duncan's portrayal of John Coffey (like the drink, just spelled different) was spectacular. He was the perfect gentle giant character, and I can understand why he won his only Academy Award for this role. I loved the symbolism and meaning with these people, how it perfectly portrayed the injustice even the best of people face in this world. I also especially like sad movies, so this really got to me. I don't want to see a total tragedy, I don't want to be depressed for a week after watching it, I just want to connect to the characters on screen, which is easy when you share their sorrow. I liked Transformers: The Movie, a little animated Transformers movie for kids from 1986 not just for it's amazing voice cast of Peter Cullen, Orson Welles, Leonard Nimoy (R.I.P.) and a few others, but also because it killed of Optimus Prime, who everyone loved, including me. It made me feel all the hatred of Megatron that the heroes had. In the comic book mini-series Forever Evil, in which an evil warped version of the Justice League called the Crime Syndicate kills off just about every hero on earth. I saw so many of my favorite characters try so hard to save the day and just end up dying, so when the Crime Syndicate fell in the end, I was overwhelmed with joy. What I'm getting at here is that tragedy pulls the audience into the story and makes them feel all of the same emotions as the characters. I felt very connected to this story because I knew there was no chance John Coffey was going to survive. It's not even a spoiler. I love the emotion, symbolism and acting, though the story lacks any sort of developed plot, but it doesn't matter too much. A-