Oblivion

A veteran assigned to extract Earth’s remaining resources begins to question what he knows about his mission and himself.

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Director: Joseph Kosinski

Writer[s]: Joseph Kosinski (graphic novel original story) , Michael Arndt (screenplay), Karl Gajdusek (screenplay)

Starring: Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough

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Another installment in Tom Cruise’s “I’m not too old for this shit” campaign of action adventure films, Oblivion is set about 65 years in the future after planet Earth has become unsuitable for human life, and Jack, played by Cruise, and his partner Victoria, played by Riseborough, work together to fix drones that scan the planet for the last of the resources and the last of the alien Scavs, the “mop up crew”.

Only God Forgives

Julian, a drug-smuggler thriving in Bangkok’s criminal underworld, sees his life get even more complicated when his mother compels him to find and kill whoever is responsible for his brother’s recent death.

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Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

Writer[s]: Nicolas Winding Refn

Starring: Ryan Golsing, Kristin Scott Thomas, Vithaya Pansringarm

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Drive might have been my favorite movie of 2011. The visual style and colors, the visual story telling and lack of dialogue, the surprising and shocking violence; it all really worked for me, and many others. Globally, audiences were split between love and hate for the film. Now the time has finally come for the follow up to the indie hit, and it features the same lead actor and same stylistic production, but this is undoubtedly not Drive 2.0. This film is it’s own, weird, disturbing, beautiful self.

Valhalla Rising

In 1000, a Norse-warrior named One-Eye and a boy travel with a band of Christian Crusaders in pursuit of a Crusade. Instead, they find themselves in an unknown and unfamiliar land.

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Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

Writer[s]: Nocilas Winding Refn, Roy Jacobsen, Matthew Read [additional writing]

Starring: Mads Mikkelsen

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Valhalla Rising is one of the simplest movies on paper that I have seen recently. Simply enough, Mads Mikkelson is our “protagonist”, a mute Norse warrior on a journey. That’s it. The film takes place in six parts:

• Part I – Wrath
• Part II – Silent Warrior
• Part III – Men of God
• Part IV – The Holy Land
• Part V – Hell
• Part VI – The Sacrifice

Each part is about 15 minutes, and the movie is only 90 minutes long. The lead role has no lines, and IMDb tells me that there are only 120 lines of dialogue and has to be the spark for Refn’s next two films Drive and Only God Forgives, also camera driven productions [as opposed to dialogue driven]. Clearly there is much, much more to the movie than “a guy on a journey”, but it is undoubtedly a creative, artistic production that requires a lot of patience and self-generated interest to sit down and watch all 90 minutes.

World War Z

United Nations employee Gerry Lane traverses the world in a race against time to stop the Zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments, and threatening to destroy humanity itself.

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Director: Marc Forster

Writer[s]: Matthew Michael Carnahan [screenplay], Drew Goddard [screenplay], Damon Lindelof [screenplay], Max Brooks [story]

Starring: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos

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World War Z really struggled to become an actual film. A cinematographer change lead to a huge delay and many reshoots, along with a re-write and other delays along the way, and I feel like to movie suffered because of it. I’ll preface this review with the fact that the movie couldn’t hold my interest very well, so I wasn’t really paying full attention. But that fact gives you a good idea of how poor I thought the movie was.