The boy rides the crux
Of becoming his hero:
Outlaw or father
Crowe and Bale strike true
As likable outlaw and
underdog rancher
The old west’s ying yang
Justice rides the 3:10 train
Gunslingers roundup
Tag: Christian Bale
FORD VS FERRARI (2019) movie review
REVIEW:
What’s not to love about being in a fast car with Christian Bale for two hours? Director James Mangold filmed exquisite racing scenes putting audiences behind the wheel flying over famous raceways.
Damon, the same, consistent character, even with his hint of a southern accent plays the charmer. As always, if you love him already, you’ll love him in this. Each actor plays a likable caricature, which I’ve decided is the outcome of historical films that take themselves too seriously. As the story went, Henry Ford II did take on the Enzo Ferrari, who was always at the top of the speed game. It took a pure driver in love with racing, who had already seen battle, to go to war in the most difficult race in the world.
RATING: B (Being a nice way to spend an evening…)
REVIEW in HAIKU:
Bale drives cars as fast
As Damon can design them
Classic speed racers
THE BIG SHORT (2016) movie review
This little big pic with a load of big names was nominated for a number of huge awards this year. I have to admit that this film won me over with its jolting flashes through ’02-’08 memorabilia and music and 4th-wall-breaking fast talking. A steady flow of truth serum on tap, it’s a game of sleuthing out the real bad guys. It’s the love of money preying on the weak-willed while families lose homes and livelihoods. Greed, abased and voracious, feeds on the basic human need for shelter in a market thought completely stable. Banks, originally the lending good guys, began playing Monopoly, gambling with real money, lending until the system imploded on itself. Only the fittest survived, and only the few, the smarter, the brave, the fighters saw what no one else would and bet against the house. They bet on the fringe probability that the future of finance had the dark potential they foresaw.
Based on the true story that few truly understand well, this film offers consistent sidebars with laymen’s tips for digesting the basic inside scoop of heady Wall Street jargon. They make it palpable using Jenga games that represent mortgage company strategies, fish soup comparisons, bubble bath exposition, and famous cameos throughout.
Actors like Bale, Pitt, Gosling, and Carell prove their chops yet again in caricatured roles like the rowdy anger management class drop out and savant mathematician, but each one is also given a level of personal story, history, loss, and heartbreak. We root for the gifted sad guy. Every time.
So, despite crass language and nudity, this is one incredible film. The brilliant script proves its worth every minute as dialogue rings true and exposition hides in plain sight below a universal and personal, visual story. Behind the truth, that in the end, being right and gaining obscene amounts of money can’t buy any of them what they really want: joy.
EXODUS (2015) movie review
Exodus has moments of beauty and potential greatness, thoughtful on so many levels. But Bale is no Charlton Heston. Exodus: Gods and Kings lacks the pizzaz and joy of the original Ten Commandments. Prince of Egypt may not have had a doe-eyed Aaron Paul but at least it never diminished the miracles by making Moses the God-whisperer and attempting to explain the plagues scientifically: alligators, so blood, so frogs, so flies, etc.
False beliefs prevail in Biblical films of late. The heroes must be A-listers, never mind the fluctuating accents, as long as they can wield a blade and train the peasants to retaliate. Why would God bother to intervene when Christian Bale or Russell Crowe can lead an army?
I shouldn’t be surprised that so many renowned directors, like the brilliant, detail-driven Ridley Scott would look to the Greatest Stories Ever Told in the Bible for great screen fodder. To grasp the immortal seems the quest for most Hollywood greats. The gods of myth thought that eternal life is for those who live on in legend. Stories live on, so they must work as conduits…flux capacitors for a new age of inventors who visualize and create widescreen and digital IMAX.
Some also sadly believe that special effects will cover any sub-par plot points or dialogue, or anything that the filmmaker thought too potentially religious. Visual accuracy over biblical. The Pharaoh can look like he grew up in Texas as long as he cuddles with Cobras and paints a mean eyeline.
Egypt is sepia toned, to color the Caucasian cast. And the wilderness a Prometheus blue. The burning bush burst into a less than stunning blue flame.
I’m sorry to say, it’s not the biblical inaccuracies that tanked the multi-million dollar project. It was…boring. Slow and unsteadily paced. It lags so desperately that in the end you almost hope the Red Sea will take them all. But they cross…waist-deep, then the armies drown in a tidal wave.
Many Christians cry and run from theaters over these kinds of oversights. If only the same crowd of movie goers would cry over poorly made films in the B-genre known as Christian films and seek to correct the problem with excellent filmmaking. The Bible will continue to provide a wellspring of stories. The era of Bible-based movies will continue.
So many filmmakers and viewers alike continue the search in a bottomless grave looking for a frozen Savior who they hoped would come to save the world. They have yet to find that He is risen. He is risen indeed.
AMERICAN HUSTLE (2013) movie review
Christian Bale will break your heart. His soft-spoken badger-like hunched persona seeks redemption, grace, requited love.
Amy Adams will make you question a million motives. She’s snake-like, a survivor. The tin-man shell coating, like clear polish, only glosses over her wounded, exposed red-beating soul.
Bradley Cooper will finally allow you past his pretty boy image and let you almost dislike him. He pitches back and forth, buoyed by power potential, by recognition, by attention-deficient, by hunger, by ideas unexamined and unrealized.
Jennifer Lawrence will make you laugh a hearty Napoleon Dynamite type laugh that you feel guilty for exhaling once it’s out. She’s the available one, the ironic truth teller, the unwanted wife.
Jeremy Renner will win your vote. He’s cool, collected, the honest family man politician from a time when most thought that men like him told the truth.
This film is a foul glimpse at underbelly life in the attempted pursuit at middle class. It’s untaught good intentions misguided and nearly mobbed out of existence. It’s life in the 70’s. It’s ABSCAM and FBI half-truths. It’s the birth of the “science oven.” It’s a masters class in acting. It’s David O. Russell on his A-game.
Every character actively pursues love, to know and be known, the internal meditative dialogue of need and desire. All seek redemption. All hunger for normalcy and fight to find it.
Splatter: on FILM 