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Bone Tomahawk (2015)
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
2015 | Action, Horror, Western
Kurt Russell (1 more)
Patrick Wilson
Slow (1 more)
Slow Pacing
Smart Men Don't Get Married
Bone Tomhawk- is a decent western horror action film. The cast is really good, its just slow, the pacing is slow, sometimes nothing intresting happens, but it does get intresting here ansmd there.

The plot: In the Old West, a sheriff (Kurt Russell), his deputy (Richard Jenkins), a gunslinger (Matthew Fox),and a cowboy (Patrick Wilson) embark on a mission to rescue three people from a savage group of cave dwellers.

Its okay.
  
Let Me In (2010)
Let Me In (2010)
2010 | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
8
7.3 (11 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Let Her in
Contains spoilers, click to show
Let me in- is a remake of the 2008 swedish film called - let the right one in.

The story is about- Bullied at school, neglected at home and incredibly lonely, 12-year-old Owen spends his days plotting revenge on his tormentors and spends his nights spying on other residents of the apartment complex. His sole friend is Abby, a strange girl who comes out only at nighttime. Both outcasts, the two form a strong bond. When Abby's caretaker disappears amid a series of gruesome murders, Owen begins to suspect that she is hiding a terrible secret.

The cast was really good, chloe grace mortz, kodi smit-mcphee, richard jenkins and dylan minnette were all really great.

Matt reeves who directed "cloverfield", 2 years before directed this film. He went on to direct "dawn and war of the planet of the apes" and hes going to direct the upcoming "the batman" film in 2021.

Overall "let me in", is scary, haunted, sad, romantic and overall very good.
  
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
2015 | Action, Horror, Western
The Citizen Kane of horror westerns
First of all, any time a movie combines two of my favorite things, in this case, a western and Kurt Russell, you have a recipe for success.

Certainly not for the squeamish or faint of heart, the horribly awesome brutality in this film rivals any I have seen in my life and that's saying a lot.


The plot is your basic four men set out to find and rescue several townspeople who have been kidnapped by horrible cave-dwelling "Indians" who no one seems to know anything about. Along the way, they have to face the elements of the weather, their own injuries and the eminent threat of encountering the ferocious beats that they are always on edge.


Patrick Wilson, Richard Jenkins and Matthew Fox are all also wonderful as the men who set off with Russell on their rescue quest.


For what the movie sets out to do, it succeeds wholeheartedly. Thoroughly engaging throughout, I was glued to my seat the entire time and the 135 minute runtime goes by in a flash.


In reading about it afterwards, it is unbelievable to me the movie was shot in only 21 days and for only $1.8 million.


Who says creativity is dead in Hollywood? Just takes great writing. I'd watch this before Iron Man 12 anytime.


  
Jack Reacher (2012)
Jack Reacher (2012)
2012 | Drama, Mystery
7
6.9 (14 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Rage Inside: A Mysterious Man
Jack Reacher- is a good movie, it has a intresting plot, good action, good suspense and good thrills. It seems like their just wasted the support cast like Richard Jenkins, David Oyelowo, Rosamund Pike, Werner Herzog and Robert Duvall. Jai Country was a great villian and he didnt ruining this movie.

Other critics aka Screen Junkies, Jeremy Jahns and Chris Stuckmann say that Jai Country ruined this film, A Good Day To Die Hard, Terminator Gensyis and Suicide Squad. Those movie were already ruined since the start. With Die Hard, we didnt need anything one, with Terminator, it was the second trailer that gave everything away and Suicide Squad it was Jared Leto, so screw them. Their were wrong. Anyways...

The plot: One morning in an ordinary town, five people are shot dead in a seemingly random attack. All evidence points to a single suspect: an ex-military sniper who is quickly brought into custody. The man's interrogation yields one statement: Get Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise). Reacher, an enigmatic ex-Army investigator, believes the authorities have the right man but agrees to help the sniper's defense attorney (Rosamund Pike). However, the more Reacher delves into the case, the less clear-cut it appears.

I liked Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher he was really intresting as the charcter.

This movie was good, but does have its downfalls.
  
Nightmare Alley (2021)
Nightmare Alley (2021)
2021 | Action, Crime, Drama
7
7.4 (7 Ratings)
Movie Rating
In short, Nightmare Alley is a sometimes plodding and bloated piece that gets by thanks to a hugely pleasing aesthetic, and a great cast.

Firstly, there is no reason for NA to be 150 minutes long. One could argue that it gives us more time with the many characters introduced, but it feels gratuitous. The first hour and a half has its moments for sure, but it sometimes feels a little direction-less before the last hour hits, and things kick off a bit. It's an issue that certainly impacts proceedings, and I feel it could have lost 30 minutes and been a tighter final product.
Thankfully, the assembled cast is stacked with royalty. Willem Dafoe and Toni Collette are two of my favourite working actors, so having them both involved is a treat. Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, and Rooney Mara are great as the main leads, and the rest of the ensemble is rounded out by some fantastic character actors - Richard Jenkins, Ron Perlman, Mary Steenburgen, David Strathairn - good stuff all round.
The overall visual style is wonderfully Del Toro, from the gloomy and misty carnival sights pierced by neon lights, to the snowy city scape of Buffalo, New York. A lot of the cinematography is gorgeous as well, hats off to Dan Laustsen, and is truly bought to life by a beautifully haunting music score from Nathan Johnson.

All in all, Nightmare Alley ultimately suffers from its pacing, and feels like a slog here and there. However, there are enough positives to carry it over the finish line. I look forward to checking out the black and white version in the near future.
  
The Shape of Water  (2017)
The Shape of Water (2017)
2017 | Drama, Fantasy
Sally Hawkins (1 more)
Michael Shannon
Beautiful and Enchanting
The Shape of Water really is one of those movies where I feel the trailer doesn't really do it justice. From seeing the trailer, I wasn't really sure how much I was going to enjoy the movie. Like I'm sure many others will be, I was persuaded that I might be wrong by the 13 Oscar nominations it recently received. I shouldn't have had any doubts to be honest. Pan's Labyrinth, also directed by Guillermo del Toro, is one of my favourite movies and The Shape of Water shares many similarities with that. A beautiful and enchanting mix of fairy tale, love story and monster movie.

Sally Hawkins plays Elisa Esposito, a mute woman who works nights as a janitor for Occam Aerospace Research Center along with friend Zelda Fuller (Octavia Spencer). At home she lives a simple life, watching musicals with her gay neighbour Giles (Richard Jenkins) and finding joy in the simple things in life. One day a strange creature is brought into the research center to be studied, surrounded by military and medical personnel. Colonel Richard Strickland has accompanied 'the asset' from it's previous location, and appears to have developed a serious dislike to it. He carries an electrified cattle prod, which he takes great delight in using on the creature. In return though, the creature does manage to remove two of Stricklands fingers, and also inflicts serious injuries on others.

But Elisa takes pity on the creature and over time tries to befriend it, bringing him hard-boiled eggs and teaching him sign language. When she learns that plans for the creature involve vivisection, she hatches a plan to help him escape, and from that point their feelings for each other develop into love. A true Beauty and the Beast style fairy tale.

I found myself absolutely captivated, swept along by the story, and everything about it is just beautiful. Sally Hawkins is incredible, portraying such varied emotions without speaking, she provides much of the films humour, and shines in the more serious scenes too. Doug Jones does what he does best as the creature, but the real monster of the movie is Michael Shannon as Colonel Strickland. Terrifyingly brilliant.

For me, I'm not sure if this beats Pan's Labyrinth, but The Shape of Water is certainly worthy of all the praise, and hopefully the awards, it receives.
  
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LeftSideCut (3778 KP) rated The Cabin in the Woods (2012) in Movies

Dec 29, 2019 (Updated Jan 22, 2020)  
The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
2012 | Comedy, Horror
I absolutely love The Cabin in the Woods. It's masquerades as a straight up horror flick but with a ridiculous curve ball thrown in(no spoilers here, but seriously, watch it already!), that manages to subvert everything you would expect from a standard slasher type horror.

The cast are all great - Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz, and Jesse Williams - all play typically heightened stereotypes of the kind of run of the mill teenage cannon fodder you usually find within the genre, and with the film's tongue firmly in cheek, it hard to not like any of them.
Then you also have Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford providing the majority of the comic relief, and the two of them together are pretty funny, and seem to be having a ball filming.
The narrative of The Cabin in the Woods is the secret ingredient here though. It's fun, it's different, and when the aforementioned twist arrives, it shifts heard pretty quickly, providing one if the most absurd and memorable final acts I've seen in a horror movie.

The gore and violence on display is truly astonishing, and it's nice to see that the effects teams on board used a lot of practical effects to achieve a lot of this, with digital effects used only when necessary. The costume designs for a certain aspect of the film are fantastic as well (still trying to avoid spoilers).

I can't for the life of me see why anyone who likes horror wouldn't get a kick out of The Cabin in the Woods. It tries to do something different, and in my opinion pulls it off with flying bloody colours, and is easily one of my favourite horrors out there.
  
The Shape of Water  (2017)
The Shape of Water (2017)
2017 | Drama, Fantasy
Beautiful, quirky love story
THE SHAPE OF WATER is the most romantic, beautiful, charming, weird and wonderful love story that I have seen in a long, long time.

The fact that the love story is between a mute woman and the Creature from the Black Lagoon makes it just that much more interesting.

From the fertile mind of Guillermo Del Toro (THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE, PAN'S LABYRINTH), TSOW answers a question that a young Del Toro had when he first saw the 1950's creature feature CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. He thought, "what if the creature ended up with the girl?" In Del Toro's mind, the Creature was the leading man, not the generic hunk that was hunting him.

Wonderfully realized by Del Toro, TSOW tells the tale of mute cleaning woman, Eliza (Sally Hawkins) who works at a "secret Government agency" in Baltimore. When she is asked to mop blood up in a highly classified area, she soon realizes that a "creature" is being held there. It is her realization that this creature is not just "some creature", but an intelligent being that starts this lonely, mute woman and the "creature" on the road to a loving relationship.

Hawkins is mesmerizing as Eliza. Obviously, with her character being mute, she must express herself in other ways - and she does. Her eyes are truly the window to her soul and Hawkins' ability to "eye act" is astounding, she conveys more feeling with a look and a glance than most actors can with a mountain of work.

She is strongly aided by some really good co-stars - Richard Jenkins is marvelous (as always) as Eliza's neighbor/friend who, himself, has a handicap - he is a gay man in the 1950's. The strength of Jenkins' performance is that he is able to overcome the trap of "the sympathetic gay best friend" and bring to the screen a complete character. Michael Stuhlbarg is watchable (as always) as the main scientist that studies the creature. Here is an actor that has grown in my eyes and he is a "must watch" in anything he is in. Michael Shannon is a presence as the main "heavy" in this film and though his character is pretty one-note, Shannon hits that note strongly and holds our attention. Unfortunately, compared to these 3 (and Hawkins' lead role), Octavia Spencer's talents are not put to the test as Eliza's co-worker. She is capable of so much more and her character is severely underwritten.

But, while strong characters are a must in a successful film, it is Del Toro's direction and "sense of place" that embue this fable with the character and detail it needs. Set in a 1950's that is a bit more idealistic/stylized than is real, Del Toro steers us through a world that is fascinating to watch - and be in - and makes it seem almost plausible that such a creature could exist and that a woman could fall in love with him.

Much like how I fell in love with this film.

Letter Grade: A-

8 stars (out of 10) - and you can take that to the Bank(ofMarquis)
  
Fun With Dick and Jane (2005)
Fun With Dick and Jane (2005)
2005 | Comedy
Story: Fun with Dick and Jane starts as we meet Dick (Carrey) who is about to get a promotion to vice president of the company he has worked for, for year. The problem comes that this promotion is designed to put the blame on the company’s problems on him instead of the men who really are involved, Jack (Baldwin) and Frank (Jenkins).

Dick loses his job and his wife Jane (Leoni) has quit her job, the two struggle to find new jobs and before long they are facing being evicted, which turns them to a life of crime to save their home.

 

Thoughts on Fun with Dick and Jane

 

Characters – Dick has been working for a company for his whole working career, he has been waiting for a chance to get to the next step which he gets only to see himself become the fall guy, making him unemployable in the field. He can’t get a job anywhere and out of pure desperation he turns to a life a crime to support his family. Jane is the wife of Dick who quits her job with his new promotion and can’t get a new job, she believes in Dick and ends up teaming up with Dick to commit crime. Jack and Frank are the CEOs that have taken advantage of Dick to get away clean after their illegal trading.

Performances – Jim Carrey gets to play into the full energy comedy that he is known for here, this isn’t the best he has given, but his fans will enjoy what he does, Tea Leoni does struggle with comedy and it is clear to see because she just doesn’t work with Carrey’s comedy. Alec Baldwin and Richard Jenkins get to enjoy their roles in the film playing into what they could be for these real people.

Story – The story follows a couple that are forced into a life of crime after losing everything when a business they are employed with gets closed down with the CEOs leaving the employees broke. This is a remake which has been bought into the modern era of greedy businessman who have taken advantage of their employees only to be left nothing. The story does seem to be going in fast forward with the crime montage flashing over what is happening. This does have a good outcome for everyone involved, but just doesn’t engage for the audience.

Comedy/Crime – The comedy in the film mostly revolves around Jim Carrey bringing in his routine which is enjoyed by people who are fans of his work, the crime side of the film shows just how CEOs can try and get away with things and how one couple looks to crime to survive.

Settings – The film doesn’t give us any settings which feel overly iconic which the film could have had to make us become more invested in what is happening.


Scene of the Movie – The first robbery.

That Moment That Annoyed Me – Crime montage.

Final Thoughts – This is a by the book crime comedy that skips over too much of the interesting material only to leave us feeling like we blinked and missed too much.

 

Overall: Basic crime comedy.
  
4 Minute Mile (2014)
4 Minute Mile (2014)
2014 | Drama
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Once again, Skewed & Reviewed has granted me the good fortune to screen another film for
you. An ‘underdog story’ that gives most others a ‘run for their money’ but keeps us, the
viewers’ glued to our seats with it’s drama and intensity. What makes the film more unqiue
is that not only does it take place in the city of Seattle but was also film in the great
city!

‘4 Minute Mile’ premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival on June 5th and is
set for a theatrical release on August 1st. ‘4 Minute Mile’ stars Kelly Blatz, Richard Jenkins,
Analeigh Tipton, Cam Gigandet, Rhys Coiro, and Kim Basinger. Directed by Charles-Oliver
Michaud, ‘4 Minute Mile’ tells the story of Drew (Blatz). An smart teenager from the wrong
side of the tracks doing his best to help his mother (Basinger) while doing everything
possible to avoid the fate of his older brother, an ex-con out on parole who pressures
Drew into running ‘errands’ which are presumably illegal in nature. Drew also happens
to be a fast runner. He runs like hell. The very same day he quits his school’s track team,
a reclusive track coach (Jenkins) scouts him and agrees to train him. The two soon form a
‘Rocky/Mickey’- like bond. However, tragedy soon strikes and Drew finds himself facing
the fear of losing everything hes’ worked and fought for.

I honestly don’t think I can describe how amazing I thoughtnthis movie was. I really can’t
see myself writing anything that would do it justice. It’s like ‘Good Will Hunting’ meets
‘Rocky 1′. This is no major hollywood production. This film is an intense drama with A LOT
of heart in it. These folks obviously believed in the film and it shows in every aspect from
the story, to the acting, and the way it was filmed. Theres’ also ‘realism’ to it. It doesn’t
have a ‘perfect ending’. Drew, the main character, overcomes tragedy after defeat after tragedy
and in the end … he succeeds but at great cost. It’s like with an quest or journey. You’re
not going to succeed without lose. Being from the Pacific Northwest, I also have to give
the film mad props for actually shooting the film in Seattle where the movie takes place
rather than saying it takes place here and then going to shoot it in Canada which has
sadly become ‘standard procedure’ for Hollywood to the dismay of many.
My recommendation? If you like a down-to-earth movie with heart, go see this one.
See it in the theater, see it at home, but go see it. It’s worth seeing and its worth
spending your hard-earned money in my opinion. I personally give the movie 4 out of 5 stars.
The film is PG-13 and it clocks in at about an hour and 36 minutes.

On behalf of my fellows at Skewed & Reviewed, this is your fellow movie fanatic ‘The CameraMan’
thanks for reading, and i’ll see you folks at the movies ….