The Crow (1994)

Director: Alex Proyas. Cast: Brandon Lee, Michael Wincott, Ernie Hudson, Bai Ling, Rochelle Davis, Tony Todd, Michael Massee. 102 min. Rated R. Action/Fantasy.

The beautiful gothic cinematography combined with Brandon Lee's untimely death during the shoot made this a cult phenomenon in its own time, but after Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy upgraded the same material (flying comic book-based crime-fighting crusader who vanishes as soon as characters turn their back - with people remindng: "He does that ...") by multiple levels, watching this 20 years later doesn't strike any chord. Too many close-ups of "The Crow" himself depletes him of any sense of mystery, and makes you wonder how he came back from the dead. Still, nice second feature by the intelligent Alex Proyas.

PS: The IMDb back-stories are probably more engaging:

"A scene required a gun to be loaded, cocked, and then pointed at the camera. Because of the close-range of the shot, the dummy cartridges loaded had real brass caps, bullet, but no powder. After the cut, the props master dry-fired the gun to get the cock off, knocking the projectile/bullet into the barrel of the gun ... Lee entered the set carrying a bag of groceries containing an explosive blood pack. The bullet that was stuck in the barrel was blasted at Lee through the bag he was carrying, killing him."

"The footage of his death was subsequently developed and used as evidence in the investigation into his death. As part of the lawsuit settlement, the footage was later destroyed."

"Lee cut himself when he broke the glass in Gideon's shop. The glass was breakaway glass and it is very rare for anyone to get cut by it. During the first day of shooting in North Carolina, a carpenter suffered severe burns after his crane hit live power lines. On subsequent days, a grip truck caught fire, a disgruntled sculptor crashed his car through the studio's plaster shop, and a crew member accidentally drove a screwdriver through his hand."

"Although he was not at fault for the death of Brandon Lee, Michael Massee stopped acting for a year because he was so traumatized by the incident. He has never seen the film."

"Linda Lee Cadwell, the widow of Bruce Lee and mother of Brandon Lee, filed a negligence case against producer Edward R. Pressman, actor Michael Massee and 12 other defendants over the death of her son on-set. She settled out of court to the tune of $3 million."

Mo says:

Gone Girl (2014)

Director: David Fincher. Cast: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, Carrie Coon, Kim Dickens, Sela Ward. 149 min. Rated R. Drama/Mystery.

Whoever has read the voluminous "Gone Girl", knows adapting such a book to film is by no means easy. But I dare say the screenplay, adapted by the author herself and directed by the seasoned Fincher, is a well-thought and well-implemented summarization, showcasing the novel's main message even better than the book itself; which is: How well do you know your spouse? The implications of that question are grounds for a horror movie, which including a masterfully-directed hard-to-forget murder scene at the end, is exactly what this film becomes. The end-result will make you self-aware about the concept called marriage.

PS; Reading the book, I had Paddy Considine and Reese Witherspoon in mind as people who could play the roles of Nick and Amy. But Affleck and Pike work just fine too. And Witherspoon is actually one of the producers. Some empathy, perhaps?

Mo says:

MoMagic!

Maps to the Stars (2014)

Director: David Cronenberg. Cast: Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, Robert Pattinson, John Cusack, Evan Bird, Olivia Williams, Carrie Fisher. 111 min. Rated R. Canada/USA/Germany/France. Drama.

David Cronenberg's films so far can be divided into three phases: gooey body-horror sci-fi, intense crime dramas, and ... crap about rich people. After the obnoxious Wall Street boredom Cosmopolis, now he's ventured into picturing celebrities' schizophrenic lust for Hollywood stardom. We've all heard and read stories of annoying Kardashian/Bieber/Hilton lifestyles, but what is portrayed in Maps is an exaggeration even from a cynical point of view. It's just sad that the once great Cronenberg is stooping to such low levels.

Mo says:

White Bird in a Blizzard (2014)

Director: Gregg Araki. Cast: Shailene Woodley, Eva Green, Christopher Meloni, Thomas Jane, Angela Bassett, Gabourey Sidibe, Sheryl Lee. 91 min. Rated R. France/USA. Drama.

Teenage girl comes home from school to find her mother is gone - and never comes back. So the whole mystery is where she went. Full of terribly directed artificial scenes where youngsters sit around and chat about nothing, and characters with ambiguous motivations coming and going without any effect in advancing the story. After several noteworthy films (The Descendants, The Spectacular Now, The Fault in Our Stars), Shailene Woodley suddenly seems to have become the representative of all teenagers on the planet. At the end, the solution to the mystery is not only nonsensical and pointless, it's disgusting. Stay away.

Mo says:

The Purge: Anarchy (2014)

Director: James DeMonaco. Cast: Frank Grillo, Carmen Ejogo, Zach Gilford. 103 min. Rated R. USA/France. Horror/Thriller.

After the original film didn't exploit enough a dystopian future where once a year any crime is permitted for 12 hours, now the sequel is getting there. As opposed to confining itself to one house defending against intruders, this one shows the street side of the annual event, exploring the social and political ramifications of the night through a Snowpiercer/Hunger Games conceptual combination, showing how the rich 1% rules the clueless 99%, and how American lust for guns can breed such a "patriotic" ritual. But then, maybe I'm impressed because it's a far cry compared to last year's film.

PS: The Annual Purge is on March 21st, which is Nowruz, the Persian New Year, or the first day of Spring. Hmmmmmm ...

Mo says:

The Drop (2014)

Director: Michaël R. Roskam. Cast: Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, James Gandolfini, Matthias Schoenaerts. 106 min. Rated R. Crime/Drama.

Written by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Shutter Island) in a story Ben Affleck might have directed in Boston or one Cronenberg might have made in the 2000s, a bar-owner and his cousin bartender are victims of a robbery in the bar - a "drop" site where the dirtiest money in Brooklyn is regularly delivered. Revelation after revelation after revelation make this one of the smartest heist/crime movies I've seen, to the point that I wouldn't mind watching a prequel to these characters' life stories. And how can you avoid seeing Tom Hardy paired up with Gandolfini in his last movie?

Mo says:

Obvious Child (2014)

Director: Gillian Robespierre. Cast: Jenny Slate, Jake Lacy, Gaby Hoffmann. 84 min. Rated R. Comedy/Romance.

A young stand-up comedian is dumped by her boyfriend, and is notified the next day she'll soon lose her job at the local bookstore. Before any chance for recovery, she learns she's pregnant from a boy she just met, and wants an abortion she can't afford. Newcomers Jenny Slate and Jake Lacey are the most charming couple in recent years, in the very first feature of its director, which is a bitter satire that will break your heart more often than you expect. Looking forward to Gillian Robespierre's (whose?) next projects.

Mo says:

Space Station 76 (2014)

Director: Jack Plotnick. Cast: Patrick Wilson, Liv Tyler, Matt Bomer, Marisa Coughlan, Jerry O'Connell Keir Dullea. 93 min. Rated R. Comedy/Drama/Sci-Fi.

This one is full of surprises. It starts out as a postmodern sophisticated version of Spaceballs, and what 70's B-movie sci-fi thought the future would look like, with some prominent stars (including 2001's Keir Dullea in a small role). Then, it becomes a space soap-opera with no specific plot in sight (i.e., it becomes boring). Then, it ends with very tense drama in a final scene that left me hanging. You'll likely disagree with my score on this indescribable comedy/sci-fi/melodrama. All I can say is, it's fairly new, and thought-provoking. The opening monologue says it all:

"I've always been amazed that asteroids can fly in groups for millions of years, and never touch each other or connect. They're dead rock, so they find their perfect orbit, and stick to it. We also want to find that place of perfection. But we're not asteroids; we change, and that's the problem. The more you try to create a paradise, the more you will resent the prison, and all you're left with is dreams of a future that never happened."

Mo says:

Felony (2013)

Director: Matthew Saville. Cast: Joel Edgerton, Tom Wilkinson, Jai Courtney, Melissa George. 105 min. Australia/USA. Drama.

Honest good cop (actor/writer Edgerton) hits a bicycle-riding Indian boy while drunk-driving, and is ridden with guilt in a racially-divided Sydney. Older experienced good cop (Wilkinson) wants to cover it up because he believes in "team" more than the law. Younger inexperienced good cop (Courtney) has suspicions and wants the matter investigated because ... he's interested in the boy's young mother? The drama creates a very palpable moral dilemma, forcing you to take a side, but I felt the ending more of a cop-out of the difficult situation the screenplay had created. Expecting an Oscar nomination for the great Wilkinson.

Mo says:

Nobody Knows (Dare mo shiranai) (2004)

Director: Hirokazu Koreeda. Cast: Yûya Yagira, Ayu Kitaura, Hiei Kimur. 141 min. Rated PG-13. Japan. Drama.

Based on a true story, mother abandons her 12-year-old son and his three younger siblings in a Tokyo apartment to survive on their own. Another one of those instances where cinema miraculously creates empathy for humans living in a distant world thousands of miles away, and the young actor who played the son won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival. But boy ... is this movie slow. At least half an hour could have been cut to reach its inevitable dark ending. But then again, a slow rhythm may be the whole point, to 'feel' these kids' lives.

Mo says:

Capital (Le capital) (2012)

Director: Costa-Gavras. Cast: Gad Elmaleh, Gabriel Byrne, Céline Sallette, Liya Kebede. 114 min. Rated R. France. Drama.

Before 2008, there used to be only Wall Street. Now, there's a flurry of movies about the evil power-hungry CEOs who act as Robin-Hood-for-the-rich. Costa-Gavras' new film does much better than Cronenberg's boring Cosmopolis and Stone's underachieving Wall Street 2, but isn't as insidiously creepy as Margin Call - and Scorsese's later Wolf of Wall Street has pretty much sealed the deal. In lieu of a few loose ends blamed on an imperfect screenplay, I still found this story of a newly-appointed CEO of a powerful French bank engaging - acting as another warning about larger financial storms yet to come.

Mo says:

I Know That Voice (2013)

Director: Lawrence Shapiro. 90 min. Documentary.

Documentary aiming at signifying the importance of voice acting as an art. No doubt that the people interviewed (as they demonstrate) are incredibly gifted artists, but the film bogs down to a compilation of innumerable interviews with artists among whom, as expected, I only knew the screen actors (Mark Hamill, Hank Azaria, Ed Asner) - in contrast to a film like Side by Side, which delves into the painstaking technicalities of its subject, and as a result shows why the subject is important. The voice actors here complain why they aren't taken seriously; this documentary is unable to resolve that complaint. 

Mo says: