No Country For Old Men

No Country For Old Men

A Review

The 'Stache is BACK!

The 'Stache is BACK!

Like you thought we were dead...

We're back...!

Alas, the Film'Stache holiday is over. As explained in my last post, I took some time off to move house, recoup and refocus. There have been some recent changes in my personal life that effect the running of the site, but I will do my best to deliver what y'all visit for. Film'Stache is back, more enthused and passionate than ever.

A Return to Roots

This renewed round of "Film'Stache-ing" will be a return to roots. This site started as an outlet for film brain-farts, and while I feel that this continued throughout it's run, I also feel like it had become a race to post my thoughts on the latest movie releases and to deliver the latest TV news. While it drove site traffic to an all-time high, to be honest it had become a major stress. Film'Stache had deviated from the original plan.

From today onwards, Film'Stache film reviews will not necessarily be of the latest film releases, but will also feature older films that you may have missed or have forgotten to watch. The site will also include reviews of my personal favourites. Get excited, because future reviews will be completely random and will force some sort of nostalgia on you.

Shush now! I'm watchin' my stories...

Sadly, our TV Updates section of the site will not live on. With continuing development of several favourite television shows, there are simply too many updates to keep on top of! In its place, I will be linking my sources to Twitter and Facebook as the news breaks. On top of that, Film'Stache will begin to review (or provide some sort of input via social media) individual episodes of your favourite shows, such as Game of Thrones Season 3, Mad Men Season 6, and the final season of Breaking Bad.

How dat?

Are you amped? BECAUSE I AM!

As always, thankyou for your continued support. Film'Stache would be nothing without it's audience!

Remember to share the site to your friends and followers online. There is a load of love to be given at Film'Stache headquarters for sharers!


B.

Zero Dark Thirty: A Review

Zero Dark Thirty

A Review

Masters of a genre..

Following The Hurt Locker's huge critical success in 2008, the Kathryn Bigalow/Mark Boal team have truly outdone themselves with Zero Dark Thirty. The director/writer pair have undoubtedly mastered this genre of film making, making their newest film deliver on all of your hopes and expectations, and then more.

I have been waiting for Zero Dark Thirty since first hearing about it. Then, since its release in the US in December, excitement and real anticipation has been brewing deep inside me. I went into the cinema with massive expectations (one of my great downfalls when it comes to enjoying a movie), but Zero Dark Thirty didn't come close to popping my excitement bubble.

[spoilers ahead]

The movie was originally the story of the unsuccessful decade long manhunt for Osama Bin Laden, but had to be re-written when the real-life capture of the terrorist mastermind had been captured and killed. The original story was shelved, and a new script was written from scratch.

The iteration that we see on the screen follows the decade-long story of Maya (Jessica Chastain), a fresh CIA agent recruited out of high school, as she pursues the head of Al Qaeda after the events of September 11, 2001. Maya is taken under Dan's wing (Jason Clark) at a black site in the Middle East, and quickly grows to be a veteran officer. Her experience in the field tells her to trust her gut instinct on certain clues and leads that ultimately lead her and the CIA to find Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. After months of heavy surveillance and Maya's certainty that Bin Laden is hiding inside, the President gives the go-ahead for a US Navy SEAL team to raid the compound, ultimately leading to the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

When you lie to me, I hurt you.

Zero Dark Thirty opens on a black screen. Sounds slowly filter in - distress calls from the Twin Tower attacks on September 11, 2001. The black screen forces you to listen and relive the terror of that day, an effect that would not be accomplished if the harrowing sounds were played over a video reel. This sets the tone for the rest of the movie, leaving you feeling on edge and with a yearning for justice, instead of revenge.

Now this movie has the unfortunate label of "the torture movie", and while there are very disturbing and convincingly acted torture scenes, the movie as a whole does not deserve this name. The way the film shows torture is not glorified and is not overdone, and therefore it doesn't deserve it's nickname. The US Government calls it "enhanced interrogation techniques", and insists that it didn't happen during the events shown in the movie. While this may or may not be true, the film obviously wants to dramatise some things. It's a movie! It's almost compulsory to have these scenes shown, and is done so in an appropriate manner.

From what I gather, the movie is very tight with the real events that went down. There has been some controversy about how exactly Mark Boal gained access to the information that may or may not be included in the film. You will notice how "real" it feels, despite not knowing a damned thing about what happened. Everything in the movie is uber-detailed, especially the compound raid scene, which feels extremely tactical and planned out. One thing we do know is that the movie spends around 25 minutes on the compound raid scene, which is just shy of the time it took for the real life event [IMDB].

For the most part, Zero Dark Thirty feels very discouraging. It makes you feel the hopelessness experienced by the characters on screen. Al Qaeda keeps bombing and bombing and taking and taking, and Maya and her team are barely breaking any new ground to prevent the attacks. You are forced into this sense of desperation. Couple that with the way the film creates suspense, and it becomes truly gripping. You continually shift your expectations, thinking "something" is coming (a car bombing, another terrorist attack, sudden gunfire), only to have nothing happen. This uncertainty lingers throughout the entirety of the film, and thrusts you into their world.

I'm the mother****** that found this place.

Jessica Chastain can turn anything into gold. She's a massive star right now, and delivers her most stunning performance yet in Zero Dark Thirty. She has used her background as the quintessential mother figure to bring a softness to her character Maya, but is still so single-minded and driven. The scene that truly shows this is shown below:

Chastain's performance is spectacular throughout the entire movie. Not once did it feel like something she's done before, nor did it ever feel like Claire Danes' performance in Homeland, which both surprised and relieved me. 

Chastain is completely believable right up until the end, and her performance at the end of the film concretes her new found stardom. The scene I refer to is the very last one, where the movie's conclusion can be interpreted in a number of ways. However I think it can be agreed that the end scene is a real "What now?" moment for Maya, Chastain's character. An emotional Maya is sitting alone on a plane, and the pilot asks her where she wants to go, to which he receives no reply. Maya is lost - she's just spent twelve years hunting for the man who took so many lives, only to have him killed so unceremoniously. After so long dedicating her life to this, she doesn't know where to go, or what to do with her life.

You can help yourself by being truthful.

The only criticism I have for this film is Chris Pratt, from Parks and Recreation. I heavily associate him with the comedy scene, and when he popped up as a member of the SEAL team that takes down Bin Laden it made me think, "Ok, this could work", but then he spoke. He's doing the same thing he does in everything he does, and removed me from the reality the movie propelled me into.

Despite that one complaint, Zero Dark Thirty is a fantastic watch. It thrusts you into this world and makes you feel uncertain, anxious and thrilled at the same time. Plus seeing this on the big screen really paid off. Whoever pirates this movie is missing out on fifty percent of the experience. Zero Dark Thirty is loud - the force of the automatic weapons, the rumble of car bomb explosions, the chopping of helicopter blades - it is all amplified in the cinema, and truly makes the room around you rumble and vibrate as if you were inside their world, and feels incredibly real. And if you won't watch for the experience, watch for Jessica Chastain. Brilliance.

Zero Dark Thirty: 4.5 out of 5 zero dark 'staches

Gangster Squad

Gangster Squad

A Review

Shoot 'Em Up!

Gangster Squad is set in post-war Los Angeles, where gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) has risen to be a powerful underworld criminal, with plans to expand his money-making operations. Determined to put an end to Cohen's enterprise, Chief Bill Parker (growling Nick Nolte) puts Sergeant John O'Mara (Josh Brolin) in charge of putting together a team (aka the "Gangster Squad") to bring Cohen down. O'Mara manages to recruit his team: Sergeant Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling), detectives Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie), Conway Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi), Navidad Ramirez (Michael Pena) and Max Kennard (Robert Patrick). Together, the secret team lead a vigilante-style fight against Cohen's organised crime syndicate.

Gangster Squad is the latest film by director/executive producer Ruben Fleischer, director of Zombieland and 30 Minutes Or Less. Gangster Squad is only his third "real" film, and his inexperience is shown in his new movie. Put it down to over-ambition, but I think this movie should have been shelved for a few years, until he's gained experience from a few more films. This one was too big for him to handle at this moment in time.

First criticisms aside, I really enjoyed this film. Although it's poorly pieced together and fails to live up to expectations, I had such a good time watching this. Ruben Fleischer's vision for this movie ends up looking great - the style of each character, everyone looks great, the gangster violence - 1940's Los Angeles has been recreated brilliantly, though not an over the top, flashy, "look at me" recreation - a good thing.

[spoilers ahead]

"HERE COMES SANTY-CLAUS!"

This movie is badass. The action scenes are spot on. You'll notice the way everyone fights - they really want to cripple their opponents with direct punches to forearms, hits to the ribs and breaking faces. And this movie does not shy away from showing blood, and just the right amount of blood - not over the top "Quentin Tarantino" blood, but something just appropriate. That's not to say that this movie isn't violent - it is full of violence. The first scene shows a guy being torn apart by two cars driving in opposite directions, then having Cohen's dogs eat his insides. 

Each character is different, and I love it. John O'Mara (Brolin) has brought his fight from the war back home, and doesn't stop until justice is served. Jerry Wooters (Gosling) is the smooth ladies man who steals Cohen's girlfriend Grace Faraday (Emma Stone), and is also familiar with Cohen's nightclub hangouts. Coleman Harris (Mackie) brings the black into the team, with his knife being weapon of choice. Conway Keeler (Ribisi) is the "brains to balance the braun", and does intelligence for the squad. Max Kennard (Patrick) is the gun-slinging "cowboy" who never misses his target. And finally Navidad Ramirez (Pena) the Mexican who tags along with Max Kennard, the "apprentice", if you will. Every member of the team has his different strengths and personalities.

There are spots of humour throughout, and made the audience in my cinema laugh so hard. The "jailbreak scene" shows Michael Pena and Robert Patrick's characters outside a jail cell where Josh Brolin and Anthonie Mackie's characters have been locked up. They've have tied a rope between the bars on the window and a getaway car. The setup is obvious, and when it comes down to accelerating the car to pull the bars from the window in awesome jailbreak fashion, the bumper flies off the back of the car, attached to the rope. Though this could be one of the biggest clichés, this really had my audience in stitches. 

My favourite scene has got to be where Cohen's henchmen drag some guy who has wronged Mickey Cohen into an isolated room. At Cohen's command, "You know the drill", the henchmen power up an electric drill and points it to the guy's head. The guy starts screaming, the camera pans to behind an opaque glass window, and you see the blood splatter and death grunt of this guy as the power drill enters his skull. Then it immediately cuts to the next scene of a close-up on a fresh, brain-coloured chicken patty being thrown on a barbecue being held across town. Brilliant.

A Whole 'Lotta Tantrums...

Gangster Squad made me want to throw a tantrum. It isn't what I wanted!! It came so close in a lot of senses.. If the guys just used the camera a little smarter, it would have been a great visual film. There was just one visual scene that I loved, and that is during the "jailbreak scene". The lights have been shut off, and Brolin's character has managed to escape the cell. Now each time a gun goes off, the room flashes with light, and there is like a freeze-frame effect that captures a close up of the action. The movie needed more of that, and more. It could have been such a great visual film! A missed opportunity..

Another swing and a miss was the score. The music used to build suspense works in a glitchy kind of way.. Meaning that one minute you'd feel the thrill of the scene, then with one note or some sort of tweak, you'd lose it. Plus it sounded way too close to the Inception theme in some parts, then tried to mesh it with the standard "action rush" tempo.

The 40's LA lingo is wayyyyy over-stylised and overused. Obviously the way people spoke back then is different to the way we do now, but a lot of the time in this film it doesn't fly - for example, whenever Emma Stone's character talks in this 40's gangster-speak, it just falls to the ground. For her, and a heap of other times with other characters, it just made me screw up my face and ask, "WHY?".

Another thing you'll notice, there's A LOT of temper tantrums in Gangster Squad, and literally made me laugh out loud by the fifth or sixth "RARRRRR I'M SO PISSED!!" *overturns table*

Oh, the major problem with this film, even more so than the misdirection and swings and misses, is that the big bad guy, Mickey Cohen, is way underdeveloped. We're thrown into the film with him torturing someone (the guy and the opposite-driving cars), and it's like "Here's your bad guy. He's bad, believe me. Look at what he's doing, he's bad!" - there's not even a 5 minute visual introduction that explores his origin story. All we know is he's a sour-faced crook, and he's gonna send a henchman to take care of business. The film doesn't make me feel his menace, his villainy. This is the most important thing! Again, it's nearly there, but that's just not good enough. I didn't feel it.

A lot of critics say that the end climax of the film felt underdeveloped. This is because of the major re-write that had to be done on the script in wake of the Dark Knight Rises cinema shooting. The original scene included a cinema shootout, so Warner Bros. decided to have the ending of Gangster Squad re-filmed to what currently happens in the movie. I think the ending went alright. Yes, it felt underwritten. Yes, it felt rushed. But I didn't feel any any script cough and spatter at all. The climax pops off nicely (except for the fact that O'Mara decides to throw down his gun and decides to challenge Mickey Cohen to a bare-knuckle boxing fight before arresting him.... He MUST realise that Cohen is a boxing champion!)

At it's 113 minute running time, the movie felt kinda short, especially in this season of having 2.5+ hour movies. They should have spent more time developing Cohen's back story, and also invest in our hero's back stories. And, if it were a perfect world, have them piece together the script better. And take more time to be smart with the visual effects. And the score. And and and and.....

Don't Shoot Where It's At, Shoot Where It's Gonna Be...

Gangster Squad was a really fun movie. The casting is great, the action scenes are thrilling and they don't hold back. I had such a good time watching it and felt excited to be in this world.

There is a repeated line throughout the film, "Don't shoot where it's at, shoot where it's gonna be". Ruben Fleischer should have taken this advice when making this film, because that's what the end result of this film is: a bunch of shots that have missed their targets.

Gangster Squad...

...3 out of 5 gangster 'Staches