Reviews

I like Chloe Grace Moretz was glad to see her in an adult role. But this was a role she should have declined. The movie starts out well enough but then devolves into an absurd, cartoonish monster movie with Moretz as a young superwoman who can do anything.

There is nothing subtle about it. She's an expert on WWII allied and enemy aircraft. Although she has never been in aerial combat, she's a crack shot with a turret gun. While the plane is under attack by enemy planes, she crawls across the underside of a wing to rescue a baby from a monster. One of the funniest moments is when she is blown out of the plane and is falling earthward yet somehow manages to get blown back upwards and into the plane through the same hole she fell out of. Back on the ground, she defeats the monster in hand-to-hand fighting, even chasing down the frightened monster as it tries to run away. It's a scene reminiscent of Popeye getting superhuman strength after eating his spinach. The only thing missing as she chased down and then beat up the monster was the Popeye music.

Unfortunately, the film is not done for laughs. It had potential as a comedy or a tongue in cheek action movie that doesn't take itself seriously. But it plays as a straight drama that becomes laughably bad.

Moretz likely took the role in order to star in an action film. Hopefully, it will pay off for her with better roles in much, much better films.

The movie begins violently as an apparently beaten Everly (Salma Hayek) retrieves a phone and gun that an unseen ally had hidden for her and shoots her attacker in the apartment in which she was being held. We quickly learn through phone calls that she was abducted 4 years earlier and forced to live there and provide sexual services for a Japanese gangster. We learn that she has cooperated because of threats that her mother and her young child would otherwise be hurt. We learn that her unseen ally was killed for helping her.

All of this might have made for an interesting first half of the movie. Instead, it is condensed into a few minutes of conversation and the movie essentially begins in the middle of the story. The rest of the movie is a combination of gun battles and sadistic torture as Everly tries to shoot her way out against numerous adversaries.

Everly looks like a low budget film with a very flimsy plot to justify director Joe Lynch's attempt to pack as much violence as possible into an hour and a half. There is nothing worthwhile about Everly. Don't waste your time on this garbage.

This is an outstanding film. An offbeat western set in the snowy northwest. We know little about McCabe as the movie opens with him coming into a small town with little more than a nice set of clothes, a deck of cards and a tablecloth. A professional gambler, McCabe immediately sets up a card game in the local saloon and soon inquires about buying property. Within no time he is building his own saloon and brothel. The townsfolk seem low key and unassuming and are impressed with McCabe but also begin to wonder about his background. Some spread stories that he is a famous gunfighter. But Warren Beatty portrays McCabe as a simple man who just wants to become successful in business. When Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) arrives and convinces McCabe that he needs her services as the madam for his brothel, his reliance on her reveals his own flaws as a businessman.

His problems intensify when 2 representatives from a large mining company come to town intent on acquiring his property either by sale or by more nefarious means. McCabe's shortcomings are never more apparent than when he thinks he can negotiate a large sum from these men who believe they are merely giving him the chance to sell his property rather than die for it. When negotiations fail and McCabe becomes aware that he is in danger, he doesn't do the typical western thing and prepare for a fight but rather visits a lawyer in a futile attempt for legal help.

The offbeat story is a refreshing change from typical westerns. And beatifically filmed by Robert Altman, who liked to use indistinguishable background conversations in many scenes for added realism. Like most westerns, this one does contain a gunfight. But true to its form, it's far from what we are used to seeing in westerns. The mining company sends 3 goons to town to deal with McCabe. And he is clearly frightened and out of his element. After failing to reason with the henchmen, including a desperate offer to sell his property cheaply, he realizes that it's kill or be killed. The climax is a disjointed gunfight between 3 hired killers and a desperate businessman in a raging snowstorm. And by the film's end we are left wondering if there might have been something to those stories the townsfolk had spread about McCabe.

A wonderfully written, acted and directed movie that includes familiar faces such as Shelley Duvall and a very young Keith Carradine. It was generally under the radar when it was released but definitely worth watching.

This was a very good movie until the last few minutes. Interesting story and well acted. And just when it looked like we would get the resolution to the plot we've followed for the past 1:30, it suddenly ends with no resolution whatsoever. It appeared the writer didn't know how to end the story. So it just stopped. That ending-or lack thereof-ruins what had been an interesting story and renders the experience a waste of time.

Chris Pratt is an appealing actor but this movie is mind-numbingly dumb. The idea of time travelling soldiers to fight a war in the future is interesting. But the details are just slapped together. For instance, Forester (Pratt) can't get US govt approval for a covert trip to Russia to kill the slumbering aliens before the war begins. Even though Russian and whole world knows the situation. So he just gets his estranged civilian dad to get him, a team of soldiers, and all their weapons and equipment there. No problem. And apparently no problem getting back either. The entire movie relies upon unexplained details as if the writer and director couldn't figure that stuff out so they just skipped it. A real waste of time.

The idea is interesting. Otis' mother is a sex therapist and he begins selling second hand sex and relationship advice to his high school peers. Otis is straight and white and his best friend is the openly gay, black Eric. Eric is having an interracial gay relationship with Adam. Otis is having an interracial relationship with Ola. Ola is the daughter of an interracial marriage. But Ola yearns for a lesbian interracial relationship with Lily. And Otis yearns for the straight, white Maeve who is dating black swimmer Jackson. Jackson's parents are an interracial lesbian couple. Throw in a few more gay characters, a disabled man, and a mother with substance abuse issues and you get the idea that this is a show as much if not more about diversity than about its own plot.

As Seinfeld said, "Not that there's anything wrong with that." But it often overpowers the story lines which seem contrived in order to add more and more relationships featuring diversity.

Great story, great acting, great writing/directing by John Huston. Oscars to John Huston (directing) and his father Walter Huston (Supporting actor). It was nominated for Best Picture.

It's an exciting story of 3 prospectors: an experienced old timer (Walter Huston) and 2 down on their luck green horns (Humphrey Bogart, Tim Holt) prospecting for gold in the mountains of Mexico and trying to protect their find from interlopers who would want to share in the find and bandits who would want all of it. And they also have to deal with their own greed and distrust of one another as the gold piles up.

It's also a fascinating character study of Bogart's Fred C. Dobbs. The film begins with Dobbs as an out of work American looking to make an honest dollar in Tampico, Mexico. He meets Curtin (Tim Holt), another American looking for work. Although penniless, Dobbs shares his cigarettes with Curtin and the two of them find hard work on an offshore oil rig. They work diligently only to discover the boss had no intention of paying them. When they catch up to him, he attacks them but they knock him out and take only the money he owes them and nothing more. When they meet old prospector Howard (Walter Huston) they are lured by his tales of striking it rich in the mountains and Dobbs uses a winning lottery ticket to finance the expedition.

So Dobbs is played as an honest, generous, hard working man who only wants what he's entitled to. But we see changes occur in him as he experiences greed and distrust as he and his partners sit on a fortune in gold that has to be transported back home from the mountain. But while we see signs of a dark side in Dobbs, we still see goodness in him as he offers to help Howard clean things up and put the mountain back the way they found it before they leave.

But as they make their way down the mountain burdened by mules loaded with bags of gold, we see Dobbs overcome with greed and paranoia as he becomes a danger to Curtin once the calming influence of Howard is lost when Howard goes off to help a sick village child.

It's an outstanding film that makes the most of its great writing, directing and acting.