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: James Franco
The Disaster Artist (2017)
Each year there is at least one movie that I think I will absolutely hate that I end up loving. Some years, it is much easier to pinpoint that movie than in other years. Not in 2017. Based on the trailers and the movie’s premise, I thought I would absolutely hate James Franco’s (Child of God, As I Lay Dying) The Disaster Artist. I will say that I knew nothing about Tommy Wiseau or the cult status of his movie The Room. However, I was more than pleasantly surprised and impressed by how effective this movie was. This movie had quite a bit of Oscar buzz heading into awards season. Actually, it netted Franco a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. Unfortunately (for him), he was hit up with some sexual misconduct claims right around this time, and it very well could have cost him a nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role. I actually think this was the sixth-best performance of the year. As mentioned in previous posts, I would have gone with four nominated, minus Denzel Washington (Roman J. Israel Esq.), and replaced him with Jake Gyllenhaal (Stronger). After seeing this movie, I would have knocked Washington’s performance down to seventh and inserted Franco’s performance as the best performance not to be recognized with a nomination. His performance was very good. I think the movie would still have been good had he directed it and cast someone else as the lead, but casting himself was the right call for sure.
Continue reading The Disaster Artist (2017)
Child of God (2014)
I want to say that I am a big fan of author Cormac McCarthy. I loved his novel “The Road” and thought the film adaptation of the movie was spectacular. It was one of those movies that I went in not knowing what to expect but came out loving it. I read the book after seeing The Road in the theater, and I thought that the book was just as good as the movie. I liked the movie so much that I created a trailer for it. I enjoyed No Country For Old Men, but I certainly didn’t think it was the best movie of 2007. I have yet to read the novel, but I will at some point. I picked up two more of his novels this past year. The first was a book called “Outer Limits,” of which I enjoyed parts. The second was “Child of God,” parts of which I enjoyed. I thought both movies were random and very different from “The Road” and how I would expect “No Country For Old Men” to read. I had heard James Franco (As I Lie Dying, The Sound and the Fury) was directing an adaptation of a McCarthy novel, but I didn’t know it was Child of God until I had finished the book.
Continue reading Child of God (2014)
Date Night (2010)
I’m not the biggest fan of romantic comedies despite what my VHS movie collection of the 1990s might suggest. I’ll be the first to admit that despite all of the crappy romantic comedies (i.e., just about every Ashton Kutcher movie), there are some good ones. I’m a big fan of movies like (500) Days of Summer, Notting Hill, and The Money Pit. Date Night falls right in line with those movies. The most significant difference between Date Night and the other three is that it’s not quite as heavy. Not that the three movies that I just mentioned are by any means downers, but they do have slightly more sentimental moments than Date Night.
127 Hours (2010)
After seeing an episode of I Shouldn’t Be Alive a few years ago that showed the story of Aron Ralston, the adventure seeker who got his arm pinned between a boulder and a rock wall and managed to survive, I didn’t know if there was a need for a full-length feature film. I figured that the only way that Danny Boyle’s (Slumdog Millionaire, Yesterday)127 Hours would be able to affect me was if there was a masterful lead acting performance, some stylish directing, or a combination of the two. Fortunately, that was precisely what happened.