Based off the novel ‘Cogan’s Trade’ by George V. Higgins, Killing Them Softly is writer/director Andrew Dominik‘s third feature film, and is the story of Jackie Cogan, an enforcer hired to restore order after three dumb guys rob a Mob protected card game, causing the local criminal economy to collapse.
Writer/director Quentin Tarantino returns to the big screen with his unique and specific style in Django Unchained, the story of a free slave named Django who teams up with a bounty hunter to save his slave wife from a Mississippi cotton plantation.
A homicide investigator digs deeper into a case involving a trained military sniper who shot five random victims.
I haven’t really noticed how typecast an actor Tom Cruise is until I say down today to look at all the cast and crew IMDb pages for Jack Reacher. The star of the Mission Impossible franchise, which has announced its fifth installment is currently under production, does a new action thriller in a similar fashion every couple of years [MI I-IV, Minority Report, Knight and Day, Jack Reacher]. All of his characters in those films are the same, and I realized something after coming to that conclusion: he does the role well, and these movies aren’t really about him anymore. He is exactly like the character Jack Reacher in that we know what the character is, but we don’t know what kind of adventure he will go on or what mystery he will solve. I usually look down on the same performances from typecast actors, but its not because they aren’t capable, but because they are good and reliable in doing so.
A younger and more reluctant Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, sets out on a “unexpected journey” to the Lonely Mountain with a spirited group of Dwarves to reclaim a their stolen mountain home from a dragon named Smaug.
The Hobbit trilogy currently in production is so wildly interesting to me because for the first time ever in film a single book will be adapted into three separate films, and the book isn’t even that terribly long to begin with. This could and should be the most true and accurate adaptation we have ever seen. Not only that, but this was the first book I ever read for my own interest, so I have long wondered what Hollywood, and recently Peter Jackson, could create from it.
An introvert freshman is taken under the wings of two seniors who welcome him to the real world.
Having not read the novel, I had no idea what to expect from this film. I was assuming it would be a regular coming-of-age story about teenagers, a weekday rental kind of movie. Honestly, I just wanted to see the movie because Emma Watson was in it, her first role since the Harry Potter series. What I didn’t assume was to find a movie with a consistent view and feel that channeled The Breakfast Club and Garden State to create an emotionally powerful story about life, love, and relationship.
The film centers on high school freshman Charlie [Logan Lerman]. Charlie is *gasp* a loner who spends most of his time sitting by himself reading. That is until he meets seniors Patrick and Sam [Ezra Miller and Watson] who Charlie befriends and joins their crowd of theater producing, drug using, partying friends. The film also features Dylan McDermott as Charlie’s father, Kate Walsh as Charlie’s mother, Johnny Simmons as a football star and Patrick’s love interest, and Paul Rudd as Charlie’s first high school friend and English teacher.
Bob's Movie Reviews 