PCP in Theaters - The Town

NOTE - this was originally posted by me on my friend's blog on 10/7/10 when this was actually still in theaters.

Review:  The Town.  Rating:  4.5 out of 5 stars.

In the interest of full disclosure, I had this movie circled on my calendar for months.  I read the book this was based on,Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan, over a year ago and loved the book.  As soon as I heard it was being made into a movie, I was very excited.  Then they announced that the film would be directed by the same director as Gone Baby Gone, another phenomenal film set in Boston.  So, I was very psyched for this film.  The Town is the 2^nd directoral effort from the director of Gone Baby Gone, so the director had set a high bar for himself.  It turns out, he actually can direct.  If you weren’t aware, the director of those two films was the star of this one, Ben Affleck.  He may not be the world’s best actor, but he actually can direct very well.  He’s a big fan of doing close-ups on his actors and then letting them do the work and it actually works very well.  It helps that The Town has such a talented cast, including Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) as Affleck’s extremely unstable partner in crime, Blake Lively (Gossip Girl) slumming it as Renner’s white trash sister who has a past with Affleck, Rebecca Hall (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) as a traumatized bank manager that starts a relationship with Affleck, and Jon Hamm (Mad Men) as the FBI agent trying to bring them down.  It also has small roles that pack a punch from Oscar winner Chris Cooper (Adaptation) and Oscar nominee Pete Postlethwaite (In the Name of the Father).  Despite Affleck being the main character, Renner really steals the show, proving that he is definitely a talented actor with his psychotic performance here.
Read the rest of my review after the jump.

PCP in Theaters - Easy A

NOTE - this was originally posted by me on my friend's blog 9/23/10 when this was actually in theaters.

Review: Easy A. Rating:  4 out of 5 stars.

Easy A caught me off guard.  I was expecting it to have a couple entertaining moments but to not actually be that good.  It turns out it was great.  I was laughing out loud at a number of moments in the film.  Emma Stone was awesome as the lead Olive, and she had a ton of great lines in this film, the writers really helped her out a lot with some awesome dialogue.  I think I laughed the most though at her parents, Stanley Tucci (The Devil Wears Prada) and Patricia Clarkson (The Green Mile), who were two of the coolest movie parents I’ve seen in awhile, very hilarious.  Amanda Bynes (She’s the Man) was also good though as the over the top caricature Marianne, the resident crusader on campus, and great small roles are also given to Penn Badgley (Gossip Girl), Thomas Haden Church (Spider-Man 3), Lisa Kudrow (Friends), and Malcolm McDowell (Halloween), especially the latter 3 steal the scenes they are in.  Easy A catches you off guard because it makes you think it is going to be yet another lame teen comedy, but it actually has a lot of depth and some good satire of other popular teen films, with some nice 80s references thrown in also.  Rare these days for a teen comedy, you actually start to care about the characters by the time the film is over, and you want to visit their world again.  With its very witty dialogue and memorable characters, Easy A has also joined my holiday wishlist for movies I want this year.

PCP on DVD - Boondock Saints II

NOTE - this was originally published by me on my friend's blog on 9/24/10.


Review: Boondock Saints II.  Rating:  3 out of 5 stars.

I really really wanted to like this film.  The first Boondock Saints is one of my favorite flicks.  It clocks in at # 4 on my favorite  guy movies list and it was a cult classic.  The sequel, a decade in the making, tries really hard to live up to its predecessor.  In fact, it tries way too hard.  And that is my chief problem with this film.  In an attempt to top the magic of the first film, everything in this film is trying as hard as possible to top the first film.  The whole time I’m watching this, I have a sensation that the actors and director are just forcing everything, and it pays off negatively.  Julie Benz costars as an FBI agent involved in the case, and her horrendously over the top awful southern drawl just sounds like nails on a chalkboard every time she opens her mouth.  She fills in for Willem Dafoe as the intelligent law officer involved in the case, and he was way better in the first film than she is in this one.  The action scenes are bigger, and the film has a higher body count, almost double of the first film, but they aren’t as good as they could be.  Director Troy Duffy is trying too hard to be John Woo, but he just can’t compare to the action legend.  The plot is largely strung together with baling wire, there’s not a lot of meat here to this story.  The acting is nothing to write home about either.  The only performance I liked was of Billy Connolly, aka Il Duce, who has some great moments in this film.  I do like how they explained how Il Duce came to become such a feared hitman, but that was the only highlight of the movie for me.  All in all, I was thoroughly disappointed in this movie, especially when compared to the original.