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makku_briz
Reviews
The Company Men (2010)
Well done, but hard to muster too much sympathy.
The Company Men is a pretty good movie, a stellar cast and it shows, good writing and fleshed out characters, its a good watch.
But, and heres the bone I gotta pick, I had a hard time watching this movie and not being all like "Boohoo, I have to sell my GIANT house, I have to get rid of my PORSCHE, how dare they offer me an $80k job, when I used to make 160k!" This movie struck me more as the ridiculous sense of entitlement that some of the upper class people have. Like, its not a tragedy until some rich people lose their jobs. You know, broke as blue collar and minimum wage people just expect to be screwed. Oh, and they don't always have parents they can move in with, a brother-in-law that gives you a job on a construction site, that your ridiculously unqualified for, paying more then an apprentice of the same experience.
Ben Affleck does a great job, he nails the character, how much it sticks in his craw to have to eat humble pie and lower himself to, shock-horror, manual labor! Unforunantly thats not a likable character for me, probably from my background, but it is a great performance, none-the-less. I tell you who stands out, Rosemarie DeWitt's character of Maggie, Bobby's wife. She is the highlight for me, she's smart and sensitive, not getting on his back and accepting that, yes, the dude is gonna feel like crap after being laid off, because arrogant guys like that look in the mirror and see not themselves, but their bloody Porsche, house and job title staring back. But I kept on just thinking, man, this guy don't know how lucky his is having the great wife! She's the hero of this movie, she keeps him going, keeps the family together, basically gets him the construction job with her brother and supports him the whole time he's looking for work. (Not to mention being pretty damn hot as well, in a good way, not in a corporate wife way like Tommy Lee's character's wife.)
The upswing is the message at the end, its resolves it nice enough and leaves you feeling like 'oh that nice'. But one thing, and I guess it would make for one depressing arse movie, but these blue collar/min wagers, for them, it's not a year long chapter in their life where they get kicked in the nuts. No no, most people, flop from ball crushing to ball crushing, never making it above the bracket their parents birthed them into, never getting ahead with no safety net.
Look, I recommend watching this movie, it's well done, a lot better than most of the junk that hits the screen. But watch it for the awesome wife who holds her family together after her douchey suit-of-a-husband gets fired, keeps her sense of humour and is just an all round lovely gal! Thats why you should watch this movie.
Deadland (2009)
move along nothing to see here. Seriously
Deadlands isn't a great movie. I'm a big fan of the post-apocalyptic genre but despite this being sold as such, its more akin to deliverance than anything else.
The plot is really un-inspiring, centering purely around the main character trying to find his estranged wife. He goes on a plodding journey meeting poorly acted, cardboard characters along the way, through what looks like a bland, bulk standard north-American forest, completely untouched by any sort of catastrophic nuclear war.
I had to struggle to get through this movie, there wasn't an ounce of depth or truth to any of the characters throughout the entire movie. I don't know why but for me the strongest example of this was when the main character+1 stumbles across a nice little cabin in the middle of the woods, occupied by what turns out to be a 'favours' girl, who mistakenly greets the two intruders with something like 'what will it be this time boys, schoolgirl or nurse?' in playful tones, only to discover they're two randoms, pulls a piece, a few seconds of wooden banter later and they're friends, she explains why the officers keep her out and how its nicer here and shes quite happy all considered (this IS a nuke- ravaged, plague-ridden, fascist-run, war-torn place after-all, I mean understandable you gotta do what you gotta do to get by right...) Then, some said officer's show up, main character+1 jump out the window and we're shown her interaction with one of them. She's wincing at his touch, verge of tears, shaking with fear... ummm, she was good enough at her job they they took her out of a slave camp,holed her up alone in a cabin, with a nice bed, food, coffee even, oh and fresh fruit, because y'know, nuclear war and the decimation of any semblance economy doesn't mean your local super-market wont be able to stock all your needs.. Yet she acting like this is the first time and she's being forced to give it up. By the way, to a man she even knows his first name, a first name he's sensitive about, which might possibly suggest him having opened up to her at one point...
All in all don't bother with this low-budget self-indulgence, these guys playing at being film-makers. Bad dialogue, bad acting, lackluster direction, lame motivation, half-arsed attempt to add some religious symbolism, crappy faux-twists that can barely be classified as such, heavy handed moralization all add up to a wasted 107mins. Oh, and for the record, just leeching the colour out of a film doesn't make it 'post-apocalytic'.