"Obscurities and Abject Pandering: What You’re Missing
on NETFLIX"
NEW ARRIVALS
Drama/Crime/Mystery
THE BEST OFFER
(2013, R, 131 minutes, PACO CINEMATOGRAFICA/WARNER BROTHERS)
The sneaky thing about Geoffrey Rush is that he grabs your
attention no matter what he is doing.
He commands you to watch him sail the seven seas as a dead pirate
captain (PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN), he demands that you witness him teach a
king to speak (THE KING’S SPEECH), he implores you to look away as he tries to
use ghosts to kill his conniving wife (HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL). Here, he is much more subtle in the way he
wins you over. As a crooked auctioneer,
Rush plays Virgil Oldman to perfection.
From every nuance of the germaphobic character, right down to the way he
throws a tantrum, Rush is on point. He
is hired by a local heiress (the stunning Sylvia Hoeks, whose beauty is only
outshone by her performance) who suffers from agoraphobia, to catalogue her
parent’s rich estate. Can an old,
crooked codger fall in love with a younger woman and draw her from her
shell? No spoilers here, kids. Just keep in mind that this is not just a
well written and well-acted tale, it is also a carefully crafted one. And it has Donald Sutherland in it, which
makes it a must-see. And: boobs.
Foreign/Drama/Action
RAZE
(2013, NR (solid “R”), 90 minutes, IFC MIDNIGHT)
It is hard to look away from this adult version of THE
HUNGER GAMES. But it is a rather tough
one to watch, too. A young woman
awakens to find herself held prison in a dungeon. A door opens, and she soon finds herself in a pit where she is
forced to fight another woman or die.
And from there, this film goes places you wouldn’t expect. The only thing that weakens the film is the
subplot concerning a secret society of bloodthirsty old people that watch the
fights on closed-circuit TV. The rest
of the film, which has some heartbreakingly touching moments, is all about
female bonding, female revenge, and females kicking some righteous ass. It helps that the acting is a thousand-fold
better than you would expect for such a brutal theme, but that is merely one of
the brilliant brushstrokes in this above-par production. Any director that can get you that invested
in so many characters at once is a manipulative, if not entertaining,
bastard. If not for the totally
expected ending, each character’s journey is handled with a certain level of
care that you don’t see in your regular kill-or-be-killed flicks, which makes
for a much richer experience.
Action Thrillers/Dark Movies
CONSTANTINE
(2005, R, 121 minutes, VILLAGE ROADSHOW PICTURES/DC
COMICS-VERTIGO)
Never has a film angered so many comic book purists. Okay, I don’t really know about anyone else,
but it really pissed me off. As a fan
of the “Hellblazer” comics (and fan is putting it rather lightly—I would save
up change just to purchase the latest issue every month), I was offended and
upset that the movie version said “adios, suckers” to so many of the trademark
elements of the book. Gone was the tan trench
coat. Gone was John Constantine’s
signature blonde hair. Gone was the
London locale and the British demonologist himself. Instead, we were presented with a VERY AMERICAN Keanu
Reeves. He had the title character’s
attitude right, had his confidence and swagger. But the ninety minutes was enough to make me hate the entire
production, no matter how good the special effects were (seriously, for the
time this was made, the effects were a million times better than they had any
right to be), no matter how awesome director Francis Lawrence’s (I AM LEGEND)
vision of Hell was, I had judged this film as the worst movie EVER. And then Peter Stormare landed as
“Lucifer”. Upon second through tenth
watching, I have grown to appreciate this film as the horror/action/beautifully
executed homage that it truly is.
Stormare’s unhinged performance as the big, bad old Satan hooked
me. Tilda Swinton as the androgynous
angel “Gabriel” convinced me of the beauty and rottenness of angels. And damn you and your abs, Reeves; you made
me appreciate what you did with a character that held such a sacred place in my
brain. You re-envisioned him, kept
everything that you could, and were as honest as possible. Thanks, dude. Anyone else would have done the fake British accent, and your
performance was better for the lack of it.
As a stand-alone film, leaving the mythology of the original comics
aside, this one has a special spot in my collection.
But the TV show was pretty damn good, too….
Why are you still reading this? GO WATCH A MOVIE!
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