Movie Review: Blue Ruin (2013)

Revenge is a dish best served cold… wait, that’s “Star Trek”, not indie-thriller… shit.

Ladies and gents… “Blue Ruin”.

Dwight (Macon Blair) has been trying to live a quiet life away from people. But when he hears that a man who had wronged him in the past is about to be released from jail, Dwight intends to get revenge. So now we have our revenge-thriller plot. However, it’s not just about Dwight trying to get revenge on this one person as there’s a lot more that happens throughout, but I don’t wanna say too much about that. What I can say however is that this plot is pretty damn good. It’s tense, it’s dramatic, and it was just really interesting to follow. It takes a couple of interesting turns and I was genuinely invested in this dark journey. It also gives off a feeling of unease from the first few moments and keeps that feeling throughout. So yeah, the plot here is really good.

Most of the characters here aren’t very interesting as they’re not given a lot of development, but I think that’s okay in this case as this focuses on Dwight, who is a very interesting character. Macon Blair is excellent in the role, giving an understated and layered performance. He doesn’t talk a lot in the movie, but you still get a good idea of what is going on in his head thanks to his eyes. He really acts more with his eyes than anything else, and that is pretty cool. And like I said, Blair is excellent here. Amy Hargreaves plays Dwight’s sister, Sam, and she’s really good in the role. Devin Ratray, you know… Buzz from “Home Alone”, plays one of Dwight’s old friends that we meet at one point in the movie, and he’s good in the role. And that’s about all that I’m gonna say about the cast, because I don’t wanna say too much. But let me just put it like this: all actors in the movie do really well in their roles.

The score for the movie was composed by Brooke Blair & Will Blair and it is great. It’s dark, eerie, and suspenseful and really helped build a lot of tension in the movie. There were also a bunch of licensed tracks that were used throughout the movie and they worked quite well in their respective scenes. Really, this movie has some great music.

“Blue Ruin” was written, directed, and shot by Jeremy Saulnier and I think he did a great job with all of that. His direction is very tight, keeping everything steady and making you feel like you’re there with Dwight, feeling every second of tension that Saulnier wants you to feel. Because when this movie feels like building up a lot of tension, it fucking delivers. Don’t think a movie has made me feel this tensed up in a while. And the cinematography here is gorgeous, making for some absolutely stunning shots. This movie is also violent. And by violent I mean that there are a couple moments throughout the movie that feature really graphic violence. There aren’t a lot of violent moments in the movie, but when it’s shown it is quite graphic/disturbing. I guess the relatively small amount of violence has a bigger impact than if they’d had a lot of violence throughout. Good on ya, Saulnier and crew.

This movie has been quite well received. On Rotten Tomatoes it has a 96% positive rating and a “Fresh” certification. On Metacritic it has a score of 77/100. And on imdb.com it has a score of 7,1/10.

“Blue Ruin” is an excellent thriller. It has a great plot, really good characters, great performances, great music, and fantastic directing/cinematography. Time for my final score. *Ahem*. My final score for “Blue Ruin” is a 9,88/10. Which of course means that it gets the “SEAL OF APPROVAL!”.

My review of “Blue Ruin” is now completed.

Yeah, I got nothing clever to say here. The movie’s just awesome.

My Favorite Scenes: Batman Begins – I’m Batman

Hello and welcome to this corpse of a series. For anyone new, “My Favorite Scenes” is the series where I take a look at scenes I like from movies and TV shows and share my thoughts on why I like them. Kind of self-explanatory. So let’s get into it!

So today, as you read in the title of the post, we are taking a look at a scene from a movie about the greatest superhero of all… Arm-Fall-Off Boy! I’m of course kidding, we’re actually talking about the god damn Batman. Though I will add that Arm-Fall-Off Boy is a very real superhero, feel free to google it if you don’t believe me.
“Batman Begins”, the 2005 reboot movie directed by Christoher Nolan that was a modest hit at the box office, and spawned two sequels, one of which earned an Oscar win for best supporting actor. Who knew a franchise about a grumpy billionaire dressing up like a crazy bat-person could be so beloved? Jokes aside, I love these movies. And to be quite honest, “Begins” is my favorite in the trilogy. Anyway, what scene are we talking about today? Well, it’s the scene in the movie where Batman (Christian Bale) officially comes to life. Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) is at this place filled with containers, overseeing his henchmen prepare drugs for transportation. Then suddenly, somethign happens. His henchmen start getting picked off, one by one. And finally, this weird entity pulls Falcone out of the car and utters the phrase “I’m Batman”. Yeah, I fucking love this scene. Not only because of the bit where Bale says “I’m Batman”, though that is amazing. This entire scene is actually really tense. The way Batman stalks the goons, taking them all out, it’s all very tense and almost a little scary. Say what you want about Nolan and his philosophical stuff, the dude knows how to build tension. And this scene proves it. From the tense stalking to the badass final “I’m Batman”, this scene is amazing.
Enjoy!

Movie Review: 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

If you follow me on twitter (@TheMarckoguy #ShamelessPlug) you would know that I made a poll a few weeks ago. And in that poll I asked people to vote for what movie they would prefer to see a review for out of four different choices… and this movie won! So let’s review this thing!

Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to… “10 Cloverfield Lane”.

After a car crash, Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) wakes up in an underground bunker. Apparently she was brought there by Howard (John Goodman) right before some big attack happened. And according to Howard no one can leave the bunker because of the outside world being a hell on earth after said attack. So now Michelle is trying to figure out what the hell actually happened while also being stuck in this bunker with Howard and another man named Emmett (John Gallagher Jr). So from that we get a very tense and suspenseful plot with several twists and turns throughout… and I absolutely loved it. The amount of suspense generated throughout the movie is astounding. But it’s not just tense thrills, there is also a good amount of compelling drama being generated. I was invested into the plot throughout the entirety of the runtime and I thought it was great. Sure the ending was a bit weird in comparison to everything that preceded it, but I didn’t mind it too much.

The characters in this movie are very compelling and very interesting. Usually the girl in a horror-thriller tends to be really inept and useless… but not Michelle! She was clever, she was resourceful, and she felt like a real person. And Mary Elizabeth Winstead was absolutely terrific in the role. John Gallagher Jr was great in his role, playing Emmett as a sort of comic relief without actually making the humor feel out of place. John Goodman… holy fucking shit, you guys. I’m not just saying this as a lifelong fan of this man, I’m saying it because he was legitimately terrific in this movie. Yeah, it’s easy to say “Wow, John Goodman was so good in that!”, but this is a movie where he truly impressed me. His character was so unsettling, jumping back and forth between reasonable man and borderline psycho on a whim. Yeah, I loved him in the movie. Shit, I would say that I love everybody in this movie, they’re all great in their roles.

The score for this movie was composed by Bear McCreary and it was pretty fucking great. The way that the score was able to add to the drama and the tension was really impressive and I thought that it was just really great. There were a few licensed songs on the soundtrack too that I thought worked for the scenes they were in.

This movie was directed by Dan Trachtenberg and raise your hand if you knew about him prior to this movie. Yeah, I can tell that no hands were up right there. But I don’t blame you, because this was his frist feature film. And what a way to start out your career withinthe world of feature films. The movie is tightly directed, perfectly using the isolated location to build tension. It’s a very good looking movie too, being visually appealing without needing huge landscape shots or fancy “Birdman”-ish camera tricks. It’s perfectly fine with it’s tight shots and tense situations.

This movie has been very well received. On Rotten Tomatoes it has a 90% positive rating and a “Fresh” certification. On Metacritic it has a score of 76/100. And on imdb.com it has a score of 7,3/10.

“10 Cloverfield Lane” is one of those movies that just came out of fucking nowhere, surprised both audiences and critics with it’s quality and mere existence. It has a terrific plot (ending a little weird though), great characters, terrific acting, great music, and terrific direction. Time for my final score. *Clears throat*. My final score for “10 Cloverfield Lane” is a 9,87/10. So it gets the “SEAL OF APPROVAL!”.

My review of “10 Cloverfield Lane” is now completed.

Take me down to 10 Cloverfield Lane, Where the Winstead’s hot and the Goodman’s crazy. TAKE. ME. HOME.

Movie Review: Sicario (2015)

The war on drugs is one that I would dare call a neverending story. Take one distributor down, another will pick up the torch. And that is how it’s gonna go forever until the world gets swallowed by the sun. Although I have to admit, it is fun hearing about law enforcement actually succeeding in taking down big drug lords.

Ladies and gents… “Sicario”.

Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is an FBI agent who have been hired by the government to work with a special task force to try to find ways to take down some big Mexican drug cartels. And at the forfront of this task force we find it’s leader Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) and the mysterious Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro). So now we get to see Kate work with these men to find a way to take down these cartels while also experiencing some intense shit. And I absolutely loved the plot of this movie. Sure, it’s quite a simple and not too original idea, but the execution of it is absolutely outstanding. The plot has a lot of suspense which makes for an interesting watch, but it also presents a few pretty great plot twists along the way that I didn’t see coming. I really loved every part of the plot of this movie.

The characters all have several layers to them and they’re all very interesting. Emily Blunt is absolutely fantastic in the movie. The longer her career goes on, the better she seems to get. There are so many little nuances to her performance that just make it all the more impressive. Josh Brolin plays what I would call the team leader of this task force and he’s excellent in the movie. What is so interesting too is that he brings a bit of levity to the movie without it feeling forced and terrible, his humor works in the movie. And then we have Benicio Del Toro…. Del Toro is fucking fantastic in this movie. Throughout the movie you don’t know much about him as a character, and that is what makes him so interesting. And Benicio’s performance just makes it so much better because of how great he is in this movie. We also get some really good supporting performances from actors like Victor Garber, Jeffrey Donovan, Jon Bernthal and Daniel Kaluuya. There is no such thing as a bad performance in this movie.

The score for the movie was composed by Jóhann Jóhannsson and I would say that it’s pretty amazing. It’s heavy, intense and dark. A lot of times throughout the movie it helps to build tension and even make the scenes a bit disturbing because of the style of the score. But that’s jsut a great thing because it then evokes some kind of emotional response from the viewer.

The movie was directed by Denis Villneuve who also made the movies “Prisoners” and “Enemy”, two movies I really loved. So you can see how I had pretty high hopes for this movie in terms of directing. And my expectations were met because this is one of the most well directed movies of the year. And thank you so much, Mr. Vileneuve for bringing back Roger Deakins to do the cinematography because the movie looks absolutely amazing. A good example I can give that doesn’t spoil anything are the nighttime scenes which actually look like it’s nighttime. You know how in movies people’s faces are all lit up in an unnatural manner as if there were studio lights there? Well there is none of that bullshit here, this shit looks real. Remember that extreme tension I mentioned early on in the review? Yeah, that also translates into the action scenes in the movie and that makes the scenes as terrific as they are. And the gunshots all sound pretty real too, kind of like in a Michael Mann movie. I also have to mention that “Sicario” is a lot like “Se7en” in a few scenes. And what I mean by that is that you get to see some fucked up shit that will make you sick to your stomach if you’re a normal person. So yeah… don’t eat anything when watching this movie.

This movie has been very well received. On Rotten Tomatoes it has a 93% positive rating and a “Fresh” certification. On Metacritic it has a score of 81/100. And on imdb.com it has a score of 7,9/10.

“Sicario” is a drug bust movie with a great plot with some unexpected twists, interesting characters & fantastic acting, a fantastic score, excellent directing, gorgeous cinematography and some fantastic “edge of your seat” tension. TIme for my final score. *Clears throat*. My final score for “Sicario” is a 9,90/10. It most certainly gets the one and only “SEAL OF APPROVAL!”.

My review of “Sicario” is now completed.

Well… I guess Benicio is cool again.