Homefront is not a movie I would normally watch (let alone review), but it had been in my Netflix queue for quite some time. February and March are usually the months where I watch some of my more mindless movies. That’s not to say before I even begin reviewing that this was a poorly made movie or one that you shouldn’t watch. It just means that this is a movie that you watch purely for entertainment purposes, and its storyline does not require a lot of thought or concentration. Also, I have over 400 movies reviewed at the time of this writing, yet I still have not reviewed a Jason Statham (The Mechanic, The Transformer) movie. That has mostly to do with the fact that I don’t watch a lot of Statham movies. I actually kind of like him as an action star, but my movie watching these days tends to take me away from The Mechanic, The Transformer, The Expendables, and The Fast and the Furious franchises. Although, based on their box office numbers, there is definitely an audience for Statham-type movies. But, now in my early 40’s, I find myself drawn more to movies as an art form rather than I do for pure entertainment purposes. And I almost laugh at this, considering the movies that I watched 15 years ago compared to the movies I watch today.
Continue reading Homefront (2013)
Category Archives: Frank Grillo
Captain America: Civil War (2016)
Captain America: Civil War is perhaps the greatest superhero movie that Christopher Nolan has not directed. My two favorite superhero movies (The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises) belong to him. As of this post, my third favorite would probably be a toss-up between Batman Begins, Iron Man, and Captain America: Civil War. There are others (such as The Amazing Spider-Man, Iron Man 2, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, etc.) that are up there, but there is clearly a distinction between the top 3 or 4 and all of the others. I hope that superhero movies continue to get better, but unfortunately, it feels like we get 3-4 bad ones for every good one we get. So when we get a movie like Captain America: Civil War, it’s important to take pause, see it, praise it, and encourage more movies like it because we know that poor movies will continue to be made because all of them seem to gross over $100 million easily. And the reason they do is our fault. We continue to see these terrible movies. But that is a different story for a different day.
Continue reading Captain America: Civil War (2016)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
In a day and age where it seems like a new superhero movie is getting released every other week, it is hard for an average mainstream moviegoer to know which ones are worth watching, which ones to skip, and what order you should watch these movies. This seems to be particularly important with the Marvel movies and of even more importance with The Avenger movies. I have done my best to see The Avenger movies as they’ve been released, but there have been some that I have found to be terribly along the way, including Thor: The Dark World and Avengers: Age of Ultron. It certainly has not helped that Marvel characters who aren’t Avengers (like Spider-Man) are starting to show up in movies featuring The Avengers. It’s only a matter of time before all of these other Marvel characters (Ant-Man, Deadpool, etc.) start appearing in each newly released movie. At that time, it just might be time to give up. Don’t even get me started about the future when either Marvel or DC buys the other out and we get characters like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Iron-Man, Thor, Captain America, Flash, Wonder Woman, The Green Lantern, Hulk, etc. all end up in the same movie. It won’t occur for a while, but when this market becomes stale many, many years from now, there will be too much money sitting on the table not to do it. Of course, the purists will also be upset those who write the comics (though they most likely already are), but if I’ve learned anything, it’s that money speaks.
Continue reading Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Disconnect (2013)
Following the pattern of such successful smashes as Crash, Traffic, and Babel (all of which earned Best Picture nominations, with Crash winning the top prize), Henry Alex Rubin’s (Murderball) first non-documentary film, Disconnect is a movie that tells three distinct stories at the same time that have little connection with each other and only minor overlapping, but one in which many of its main actors are not on the screen at the same time. It’s a formula that, when done correctly, is magical but when done poorly, can be a disaster. Disconnect was done right. It is a daring movie and deals with not just one but three of the most prevalent technological safety issues of the day, which are cyberbullying, security fraud/identity theft, and the predatory practices of recruiting minors to become online porn performers. Each story could be its movie, but Disconnect does an awesome job of telling all three and showing the raw emotion associated with each. On top of that, the performances are top-notch. And while this movie came in at 68% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, it earned only $1.4 million at the box office. Both are much too low for a movie of this magnitude, officially classifying Disconnect as a hidden gem I think everyone should see. Continue reading Disconnect (2013) Warrior (2011)
When I first saw the extended trailer for Warrior, the first Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) movie made into a drama, I thought for the first 30 seconds how stupid the movie WAS going to be. As the trailer progressed, the film began looking more and more interesting. As the trailer ended, I kept waiting to see the “Based on a true story” line because if this wasn’t based on a true story, it looked like a more intense MMA version of Rocky. The trailer gives the entire story away. Two brothers who have grown distant end up facing each other in the championship fight of an MMA tournament. If there had ever been a more predictable trailer, I would be interested to know what that is. Then when I saw that the biggest name in the movie was Tom Hardy (The Drop, The Dark Knight Rises), I was 100% convinced that the film would be terrible and flop in the theater. I was wrong on all accounts.
Continue reading Warrior (2011)