Wrecked (2011)

Tags

Adrien Brody, Caroline Dhavernas, Drama, Movie, Suspense, Wrecked

typical day in L.A. traffic...?

R

Adrien Brody, Caroline Dhavernas

Man:  “Are you a good dog…or are you a bad dog?”

A man (Brody) awakens, pinned in a wrecked car in the bottom of a remote ravine.  He has no memory of who he is or how he got there.  As he struggles to survive, clues to his identity start to emerge.

Do you like Adrien Brody?  Can you stand to watch him for an hour and a half?  Because if you can’t, I’d suggest you just skip this one.  Basically it’s like Cast Away, but without the Helen Hunt bookends.

I happen to like Adrien Brody, so I was fine with him being the main focus of the movie.  Of course, I was also pleasantly surprised when Caroline Dhavernas (of Wonderfalls) showed up as the mysterious woman that Brody keeps having visions/dreams about.  Does she have something to do with the events that got him in this predicament?  And what about the dead guy in the back seat??

Going any more in depth about the plot would be giving away too much.  But, I will say that I found it a tad bit predictable.  There’s really only two directions it could go, one more likely than the other.  Still, the movie did manage to throw in a couple of little twists that kept things interesting.

It’s Brody that drives the movie, though.  He just seems to have a way, a certain look he can give, that automatically makes me feel sympathy for him.  Even when you’re not exactly sure how you should be feeling about his character, you’re still rooting for him to find a way to crawl out of that ravine.  Of course, he’s so badly injured that it’s hard not to feel sympathy for him.  In addition to a broken, mangled leg, he seems to have possibly broken his nose, and when you’re Adrien Brody, that’s a pretty big deal.

It’s all filmed up in the Pacific Northwest, in the Vancouver area I believe, and the scenery certainly adds to the appeal of the movie.  The director, Michael Greenspan (in what seems to be his first full length feature), has managed to make this mountainous forest both beautiful and isolated in a sort of creepy way.  Though it doesn’t seem like THAT bad of a place to get stranded.  I mean, at least it’s not the desert or in the snow.  This place has pretty trees, rain water to drink, worms to eat, and deadly mountain lions.  What’s not to like?  Aside from the deadly mountain lions.

While this isn’t an instant classic, and a few aspects of it could have been handled better, it’s a fun what-would-you-do type situation, as well as a good little (though predictable) mystery.  I was a little annoyed by how long it took him to actually try more methods of extracting himself from the car (3 days to finally try to pry the door open??), and I wish there had been a few less plot conveniences, but all in all, I had a pretty good time watching this one.

Avoid mountain lions.

10 – 1.6 for being a little bit too predictable – 1 for some plot conveniences and other annoyances = 7.4

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Predators (2010)

Tags

Action, Adrien Brody, Alice Braga, Danny Trejo, Drama, Louis Ozawa Changchien, Mahershalalhashbaz Ali, Movie, Oleg Taktarov, Predators, Science Fiction, Topher Grace, Walton Goggins

hey little friend, can you tell us where we are?

R

Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Walton Goggins, Oleg Taktarov, Danny Trejo, Louis Ozawa Changchien, Mahershalalhashbaz Ali

Cuchillo: This is hell…
Royce: Last time I looked, you didn’t need a parachute to get there.

A group of people, all a sort of “predator” in some way, find themselves dropped into a strange jungle where they are hunted by an even more dangerous group of Predators.

Not quite as fun as the original, but still fairly enjoyable.

It seems pretty obvious that the movie makers wanted to get back to the general feel of the first movie, and they did a pretty good job of achieving that feel.  It’s fun to keep an eye out for all the little nods and references to the original, and while Adrien Brody is no Ahhnold, he and his gruff, Batman voice still work well enough.  He manages to display a certain toughness and anger that doesn’t usually come across in his performances.

The supporting cast isn’t quite as fun as Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura, and Bill Duke were in the first one, but they’re okay.  I must say, though, it was really easy to predict what order they’d be killed off in.  There were a few other easy to predict moments too, but I won’t go into those.

Despite some predictability, and initially seeming a little too much like the setup for a Saw movie, it was still pretty fun.  The story did manage to take some interesting turns here and there.  Plus, they threw in one fun little cameo that I didn’t know was coming (since I didn’t read the cast list beforehand).

There’s not too much more to say about a movie like this.  If you liked the original, chances are you’ll get at least some enjoyment out of this one.  Unless you just hate Adrien Brody…or the jungle…or Predators…

If you wake up one day to find yourself free falling into a mystery jungle, just go ahead and give up.  You’re pretty much screwed.

10 – 1.7 for being fairly predictable – 1 for some underdeveloped characters = 7.3

Splice (2009)

Tags

Adrien Brody, Delphine Chanéac, Drama, Horror, Movie, Sarah Polley, Science Fiction, Splice

guess we should've spliced in a wig too...

R

Sarah Polley, Adrien Brody, Delphine Chanéac

Elsa: She doesn’t eat meat!
Clive: I’m sorry, is rabbit considered a vegetable??

After the plug is pulled on Elsa (Polley) and Clive’s (Brody) experimental work, the two scientists carry on their experiments in secret.  They create a new life form from various DNA sources, including human, and must decide what is the right thing to do with it, morally and scientifically.

It’s been a few days since I watched it, and I’m still not quite sure how I feel about this movie.

I liked the odd twists and turns that the characters went through, their moral compasses spinning wildly as these odd events played out around them.  I also liked the way it wasn’t played up as a horror movie for most of its running time.  Unfortunately, it still had to fall back on some Jeepers Creepers type action at the end.  It felt like they didn’t know how to end it, so…let’s just turn it into a monster movie!

I’ve always been a Sarah Polley fan, and she does some interesting stuff with her character here.  She ropes you in, gets you rooting for her, then next thing you know, you’re back to feeling completely alienated by her actions.  Meanwhile, Brody takes the audience for almost the exact opposite ride.

This thing is pretty twisted, in a sort of Freudian kind of way, which would be okay if that made it more intriguing.  Instead it just made me feel a bit indifferent to it all.  In the last act of the movie, I stopped feeling much attachment to the characters and their plight, and whatever parenting issues/fears were being explored didn’t hold my attention either.  It just felt like everything interesting they built up in the first half of the movie unraveled in a sea of ickiness and monster movie clichés.

I applaud the effort of doing something different and weird, but I can’t say that I loved the final product.  I liked parts of it, but ultimately it was a bit of a let down.

Do not tamper in God’s domain…?

10 – 3 for losing me in the second half and having too typical of an ending – 1 because it wasn’t filmed in the most inspiring way…some of the shots seemed more suited for a TV show than a movie = 6.0

The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

Tags

Adrien Brody, Comedy, Drama, Jason Schwartzman, Movie, Owen Wilson, The Darjeeling Limited

yeah, good idea...this is much better than the train...

R

Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman

Peter: You know, maybe right before whenever you’re about to take out your tooth, you should say something like, ‘please forgive this,’ because it’s kind of –
Francis: Can you back away a little?  You just spit in my eye.

Three brothers travel across India in a train, hoping to bond with each other along the way.  Their ultimate goal is to find their mother who has disappeared from their lives, but the various adventures they have along the way is what will really bring them together…or make them want to kill each other.

Wes Anderson movies.  When you hear that phrase, you pretty much know what you’re going to get.  You know the kind of humor you’re going to see and you know what general tone the movie is going to have.  Chances are, you’re also going to see a group of characters that alternate between bonding and driving each other crazy.  Oh, and you’ll probably hear a pretty good soundtrack too.

This movie is no exception to those rules, although I think it might be one of his least widely accessible movies to date.  Not because it’s bad, but because of its ambiguous, fractured nature.  The conversations between Francis (Wilson), Peter (Brody), and Jack (Schwartzman) are all over the place, with everybody interrupting each other and jumping from subject to subject.  I think it might be a little alienating to people who aren’t die hard Anderson fans, but those conversations are where the real humor lies.  There’s a lot of quick little lines that make me laugh even after multiple viewings.

So, if you are a fan, I don’t see why you wouldn’t enjoy this movie.  It’s not my favorite in the Anderson catalog, but it’s pretty good.  All three of the brothers are interesting characters, and all 3 performances are good as well.  I think Adrien Brody is gradually becoming one of my favorite actors.  He can do drama and sympathetic really well, but his comic timing is also impressive.

There’s a lot of nice (in its own way) scenery, some funny supporting characters, and one really sad but touching detour along the way.  It seems like a strange turn for the film to take, but it’s really the only situation that was going to be able to bring the brothers together finally.

As I said, it’s not the best that Anderson has to offer, but if you like his style of film making, I’d recommend you check it out.  If you don’t like his previous films…yeah, you probably won’t like this one either.

Don’t trust little kids in India who want to shine your shoes…or just don’t wear $3,000 shoes in India in the first place.

10 – 1.6 for being a little frustrating and inaccessible at times – .7 for feeling a bit overlong even though it’s only 91 minutes = 7.7

The Brothers Bloom (2009)

Tags

Adrien Brody, Comedy, Drama, Mark Ruffalo, Movie, Rachel Weisz, Romance, The Brothers Bloom

you fought a mummy, eh? well, I fought King Kong, so...yeah...

PG-13

Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel Weisz

Bloom: You don’t understand what my brother does.  He writes his cons the way dead Russians write novels…with thematic arcs and embedded symbolism and s***.  And he wrote me as the vulnerable anti-hero…and that’s why you think you wanna kiss me.  It’s a con…

Stephen (Ruffalo) and Bloom (Brody) started out as con men early in life.  Stephen is the brains behind most of the schemes, and Bloom is tired of playing the characters that Stephen thinks up for him.  Bloom wants something real.  Stephen convinces him to do one last con with him, and Penelope (Weisz) is the mark.  It’s a complicated con, and Penelope ends up being a much more interesting and unusual mark than they expected.

I really really liked this movie.  It’s energetic (for most of its running time), funny, interesting, romantic, and even touching now and then.  Everybody seems to be having a blast making it, especially Rachel Weisz.  She’s as charming as I’ve ever seen her as the somewhat loopy Penelope.  She’s a lonely woman, rich via inheritance, living in a huge castle of a house.  As she tells bloom, she “collects hobbies”, meaning she sees something interesting, then learns how to do it.  This leads to a highly amusing montage of her talents, including juggling chainsaws while balancing on a very tall unicycle.

Brody is sympathetic as Bloom, the more passive of the two brothers.  He’s played so many roles in cons that he doesn’t even know the difference between real and fake emotions any more.  Is he falling in love with Penelope, or is it just acting?  I guess you’re a pretty good con man if even you can’t tell the difference.

At first, Ruffalo seemed like an odd choice to me as the more aggressive, genius brother who’s not afraid to get a little violent now and then, but he won me over pretty quickly.  He and Brody have a good chemistry that was really needed if this movie was going to work.

The setting all feels like it should be in the 1930s maybe, but then there’s cell phones and Lamborghinis, which place it clearly in a more modern era.  I guess the con men theme lends itself more to an older era, so the costumes and locations reflect that.  It’s strange, but it adds to the quirky, offbeat tone of the movie.

There’s solid acting, a good script, great visuals (and visual humor), good music, and likable characters.  It all adds up to a movie I definitely plan to see again.  Admittedly, in the end, the movie does start to get a little too convoluted and loses steam just a bit, but it’s still a satisfying conclusion to a great story.

You can make a pinhole camera out of a watermelon.

10 – 1.1 because it does get convoluted and overlong near the end = 8.9