Latin Fever

Sometimes you see a trailer so flawed, so flush with derivative story and character, awash in wanton violence and sexual innuendo, that you can tell it is not a film worth spending your time or money on. 90% of the time that is true. On the other hand, sometimes you see a trailer with those same qualities, and despite knowing that the movie will have its issues, you still can't wait for it to come out in theaters so you can catch it yourself. That tangible difference between them may be slight, but for some reason most titles in that vein are nigh unwatchable, while Colombiana intrigued me to the point where I couldn't see myself NOT watching it. As if featuring a kick-ass Zoe Saldana in a role similar to La Femme Nikita was not enough, the film was produced by Luc Besson, who if nothing else knows how to make interesting looking movies. Colombiana caught a lot of flak for its portrayal of a lawless Colombia and the organized crime that infests it, but none of that had any bearing on my wanting to see it. If anything, it was Saldana who is guilty of that, as the star has taken her career to another level the past few years with starring turns in Star Trek, Avatar, and even last year's The Losers even if not enough people watched it. She was the primary (if not only) reason to see Colombiana in the theaters, as achieving a leading role is an even bigger step forward than this particular talent has taken so far.

First rule for dating Zoe: Don't get on her bad side

After her parents are murdered by Colombian drug lord Don Luis (Benito Benites) and his right hand man Marco (Jordi Molla) at nine years of age, Cataleya (Saldana) escapes to America where her uncle Emilio (Cliff Curtis) takes her in and eventually trains her to become a lethal assassin. Twenty years later, Cataleya is one of the world's deadliest women, and her attention has shifted to flushing out the men responsible for taking her family away, while balancing that with the facade of a "normal" life and her romantic involvement with artist Danny (Michael Vartan). Soon, the FBI, CIA and Don Luis are all after Cataleya, and she must use every weapon in her arsenal just to survive, if not escape her life completely.

Some people take peeping into toilets to a whole other level

As you can tell by the actors I mentioned above, there's hardly anyone of note beyond Saldana in the cast notes. While several of them are indeed talented performers and character actors, only Saldana could be considered a star, not surprising considering the heavy Latin American casting needed to make this film. It's only recently that Latin American performers have been successful in more mainstream roles, as in the past they've had to settle small, stereotypical parts or "genre" flicks with no widespread appeal. Michael Pena is one actor who has vaulted that barrier, as is Saldana, who is captivating in every scene she enters in Colombiana. Since that's almost the entire film, she had to be on for every moment, and she emotes sexuality, intensity and intelligence perfectly. She had some help from the filmmakers, as one scene with her sucking on a lollypop while performing maintenance on a firearm elegantly captures the dichotomy of her innocent childhood with her murderous adult life, but it is mostly her ability to become this dangerous character that makes her so valuable to the film in question. Running a close second is British actor Lennie James, the guy we all wanted to see more of after the series premiere of The Walking Dead. As an FBI agent tracking Cataleya's murders, James is a good alternate to leading the scenes which Saldana herself can't be part of. Cliff Curtis is also solid as Cataleya's uncle, a professional hitman who at times regrets introducing her to this life. Curtis has put up good performances in recent films Push and Sunshine, and I always like seeing him on the big screen. Michael Vartan thankfully doesn't have as much of an impact on the story as he could have; he's fine as an actor but the romance angle was overcooked from the start and predictable in its execution. Molla and Benites are campy villains, more dangerous in their off-screen doings than in anything we actually see ourselves. Most impressive on the cast might be Amandla Stenberg, who plays the young Cataleya. While I thought the opening featuring her was a bit overlong, Stenberg impressed me greatly with her ability and her character's inner strength. Easily the surprise of the entire film.

The most kick-ass girl in cinema right now

Unfortunately, there are far too few surprises in Colombiana. Despite the great acting involved, it barely makes up for the overused femme fatale construct that wrote the screenplay and made the film what it is. While the action sequences are indeed exciting thanks to director Olivier Megaton (which sounds like a rejected Transformers character), they are incredibly one-sided, and never do we believe that anything besides Cataleya's victory is possible. Besides transporting La Femme Nikita to Colombia and the US, and making the heroine of Latin descent, there is little to differentiate between Cataleya and her hit-woman predecessors. Sure, it's great that she is a strong woman from the start and wanted to grow up to be Xena, Warrior Princess, but as she develops her sociopathic tendencies one has to wonder that this is the person we're rooting for. Then again, this is the same woman who prances around in skintight catsuits with heavy weaponry, and upon doing so our self-reflective insights are lost to other imagery.

She does construction too? That is so hot.

Still, despite Colombiana's obvious issues with itself, Saldana and cast manage to create an enjoyable, thrilling and sometimes funny film out of the rendered husks of Femme Fatales past. You might want to wait on a rental, as it's only barely worth a full-priced ticket, but Cataleya is one of the few female action heroes in a world where 2010's Salt was a big deal sociologically despite being at best an okay movie. It's a shame Colombiana hasn't garnered as much attention as that Angelina Jolie piece did, but I still found myself entertained, as did a surprisingly full theater a week after it was released. If anyone deserves stardom, it's Saldana, and I can only hope that if she fails to reach that highest tier it is not the color of her skin that deprives her of it.

Push Back

I'm pretty lucky to have friends who like the same sort of movies I do. When Push came out last year, I never had the chance to see it in theaters, and it's time in the theater was short, anyway. I never really had a chance to see it, so when the opportunity to borrow someone's copy came up, I leaped at the chance to temporarily acquire this for my viewing pleasure. After all, an alternative to the over-the-top superhero stories that Marvel and DC have been cranking out with their favorite children in the lead, let alone marketing such an independent superhuman film to the big screen, is no small feat. Even if it had been a financial failure (which it wasn't), it would have been a victory for the independent filmmakers who don't want to make the next Superman or Spiderman films.

Funny meeting you here...

Push, obviously not the movie based on the Sapphire book of the same name, takes place almost entirely in Hong Kong. Nick Grant (Chris Evans) is a second-generation superhuman. Nick's father was a powerful type of superhuman known as a Mover, someone who could move objects with his mind. Nick can Move, too, but his talents are relatively weak, mostly honed by trying to rig back-alley dice games. Nick's father was killed by a secret organization of the US government known as Division, when he refused to join the organization. Nick, running away, has ended up here to avoid them. There are numerous types of superpowered beings in the world, we are told. Watchers can predict the future. Sniffers are like human bloodhounds. Bleeders send out sonic pulses that tear you apart from the inside. Shifters can manipulate an item's appearance. Shadows can block the tracking ability of Sniffers and sometimes Watchers. And Pushers can implant ideas and memories into your head that are so real you're convinced they really happened. Division wants all these superhumans in one place, for use by the government as weapons against their enemies. To that effect, they've been developing a drug to boost the powers of superhumans, only the drug has the nasty side effect of killing everyone who's injected with the serum. At least, until one unlucky soul survives, and escapes to Hong Kong...

Perhaps not surprisingly, this new Chinese pop duo haven't quite worked out

The film has on tap a surprisingly talented cast of people, whether on-the-way-up stars or underrated performers. I've seen a lot of Chris Evans lately, and his talents are obvious to anyone bothering to pay attention. He plays his role as the perfect blend of in over his head bravado and sincere honesty. I wonder how good he'll be for the starring role in next year's Captain America, but only because that character is so relatively simpler than many of the roles he's done in recent years. But even he's overshadowed by Dakota Fanning, whose superpower seems to be acting circles around everybody else in the room with her. She plays a punk-ish second generation Watcher who wants to break her mother out of a Division holding area back home. Fanning is another one of those actors who I've witnessed be lauded without having actually seen any of her work. Now I know, and it's damned mystifying how someone so young could be so imbued with talent that it's actually SCARY. At least it doesn't seem to be going to waste, even if Oscar roles haven't reared their heads her way yet.Camilla Belle is surprisingly good as the Pusher who manages to escape from Division. I say surprisingly good because I really hadn't seen her in anything and had all but tossed her aside as another side effect of the Twilight phenomena. So she has actual talent? Nice. She has great charisma for the screen, especially with Evans, which is good since their on-screen romance is half the point of the film.

Hounsou (l) and Belle are equally good here

Great small roles don't go to waste when you cast Cliff Curtis, Ming Na, Maggie Siff and Xiao Lu Li as acquaintances and enemies to the heroes. Xiao, a Golden Calf-winning Chinese actress, is a treat as one of the more charismatic villains of the film, and it's a pleasure to see Siff in anything since I have enjoyed her performance in what I've seen of Mad Men. The only really disappointing role in the film is that of the main bad guy. Don't get me wrong: Djimon Hounsou is a damned talented actor, and I believe he did everything he could with this role, that of the human face of Division, a Pusher who is attempting to find Belle's escaped inmate. His character is also the one who killed Nick's dad so long ago. The problem is the filmmakers never seem to know whether this guy is straight up badass or confusingly sympathetic. Maybe he's more like a Lex Luthor type, so arrogant that he simply fails to bother to cover his tracks or make sure everything is working right as to leave himself open for Nick's Superman. Okay, that makes some sense, but it wasn't obvious while I was watching that this was the case, nor did he make too convincing a bad man. Thankfully, he's not the only villain on the scene, as a Hong Kong Triad of superpowered Bleeders balance out the battlefield somewhat, lending more threat to the evil permeating the film.

No, this isn't a scene from the new Home Alone flick...

As I mentioned, the film was shot in Hong Kong, and it makes for a viable and unique location for this type of film. It's gritty, messy, choked with people, simultaneously the best and worst place to hide from the world. The narrow streets and passages combined with the occasional wide-open basketball courts and sky-rise rooftops make for an interesting environment in which to make this movie. Simply put, Push doesn't FEEL  like other films of it's type because it's like if the X-Men were living in a dirty slummy apartment complex instead of a quiet suburban mansion (yes, I know the X-Men now live on an island off the coast of California, but the X-Mansion is more well known). It's a different world for superhumans than we're used to from comics, and it's a refreshing change of pace.

She'll simply watch your every move... THEN she'll kill ya

The special effects are something to see. While decidedly low-tech, the effects are nonetheless engaging and realistic, perhaps due to their low-tech origins. The film's aforementioned grittiness lends itself well to this end, making things like energy balls, shattering glass, collapsing structures and dilating pupils are so real they seamlessly blend into the rest of the setting. Director Paul McGuigan can be properly given credit here for his great work using all the tools at his disposal to make each scene work. Is it as thrilling as the best parts of Watchmen or Resident Evil or even Scott Pilgrim? No, but nor does it have the lulls in between that harm action films so much. It simply is a well-balanced movie that doesn't take itself too seriously to detract from the action while also not letting the fights draw you out of the story. Unlike so many similar films, everything happens for a reason, and it all makes sense.

"So... how much do you think it's worth?"

To sum up, Push is an interesting, exciting, but also thought-provoking film that definitely stands out as one of last year's underrated titles. It's not perfect, as a little more attention to Hounsou's character would have made the film much better, but what little is wrong with it doesn't detract from what's enjoyable. If you're looking for a superhero-type film with enough action to get by but not the cliched caricatures from fifty years ago, give this a shot.

Good Morning Sunshine, The Earth Says Hello...

It's quite often that I miss films in the theater. I may be looking forward to a movie and it may simply pass without my knowledge or ability to get a chance to see it, or it may simply be too far down my list of titles to see that by the time I get around to it, it's out of theaters. This happens often, and usually the only way to rectify that situation is to nab a rental copy and hope your home setup is good enough to watch movies on. This happened three years ago for me with Sunshine, the 2007 sci-fi film directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland about a group of astronauts and scientists sent on a mission to save the planet.

The problem is the sun, which by the year 2057 has diminished in it's brightness, leading to the Earth undergoing a new Ice Age. Icarus II is the second ship to attempt this dangerous mission, to deliver a "stellar bomb" to attempt to reignite the sun and return it to full brightness. The first Icarus failed it's mission seven years ago after losing contact with Earth, and if Icarus II fails there will be no further Icarus missions, as Icarus II has used up the Earth's supply of fusion materials. The team of eight includes physicist Robert Capa (Cillian Murphy), who is the only crew member who can properly operate the bomb; Kaneda (Hiroyuki Saneda), the ship's captain; hotheaded engineer Mace (Chris Evans); Harvey (Troy Garity), the ship's communications officer and second in command; biologist Corazon (Michelle Yeoh), who maintains the ship's oxygen garden; Cassie (Rose Byrne), the pilot; Searle (Cliff Curtis), the doctor and psychological officer; and Trey (Benedict Wong), the navigator. They've been living together en route to their destination for about fifteen months, and are on the last leg of their journey. Nerves are starting to fray due to the insularity of the mission and solar radiation cutting off communication from home. However, the estimates of oxygen supply and food look good, and the people aboard are fairly confident that they have enough resources to return home once their mission is complete.

Then things begin to go horribly wrong.

And to think, in three years he's on Lost

One of the reasons I wanted to see this film was all the good names attached to it. Danny Boyle made one of my favorite zombie films 28 Days Later, and it would be just one more year until his triumphant Slumdog Millionaire made him a superstar. Alex Garland may have also penned the screenplay for The Beach, which is almost unforgivable, but he is a talented writer with interesting ideas, and I loved his books The Beach (for which the movie was based) and The Tesseract, and he also wrote the screenplay for 28 Days Later. Chris Evans, though I'd seen nothing by him at the time, was an up-and-coming star. Michelle Yeoh was a superstar both here and at home in Hong Kong. All you needed at this point was a believable (or at least theoretically possible) premise and scenarios to make the whole thing salable, and thankfully, that's what Boyle does in telling this story.

No, in this film she doesn't rounhouse kick anyone

The ensemble acting cast does a fantastic job of portraying the everyday lives of deep space astronauts, each with varied quirks and breaking points. Murphy, as the brainy scientist, plays up his relative social inexperience well, as he speaks on a more blunt and scientific level than most on the ship. Evans plays the more typical military type, and though that type of character has little imagination in fiction, Evans does good work with it. Yeoh and Saneda make good mentors, Saneda's captain willing to risk anything for the mission to succeed, and Yeoh cultivates a believable relationship with her work, the oxygen garden she builds almost like her own baby. Byrne and Wong are both good, though neither is given too terribly much to do. Wong's character does go through a believable mental breakdown (as do most of the characters, to some degree) but neither really steals the spotlight from the others. Garity makes a great transformation from strong second in command to mewling child when adversity hits, and Curtis is possibly the best performer of them, a psychologist who seems to have an unhealthy fascination with the brightness of the sun. With this well balanced cast, we really get attached to most of them and are upset when the bad things that eventually happen come to be.

Wow, just... wow.

The special effects here are also larger than life, as they would have to be in most outer space filmography. The design of Icarus II is intricately designed, and looks amazing against the setting of deep space. Sunlight and solar flares twinkle realistically, and explosions, decompression and scorching do a great job of showing the dangers inherent in space travel. That said, some of the best effects of the film are appreciably better on a small scale, as most of the scenes are set in the almost claustrophobic halls of the ship. Boyle was inspired by Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot in this way, and also has noted inspiration from other famous works, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, and the original Solaris.

Unfortunately, that's where the good in Sunshine ends. The final act is an unbelievable and oddly mediocre change of pace for the film, like something out of Event Horizon instead of the film I thought Sunshine was. To say anything more would spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen the film, but it seems lie the change might have been made to reach out to a wider audience. Also, so much derivative material means there's precious little that Doyle or Garland thought up on their own, making this film somewhat less special than it could have been. There are parts you will see coming a mile away, people you will know to be killed long before it happens, and only sterling acting and amazing effects prevent these parts from being such trite rubbish as they threaten to be.

Murphy literally plans to touch the sky here

Ultimately, I liked Sunshine. I do wish I'd seen the film in theaters, especially since it was a bomb and didn't make back it's $40 million price tag due mostly to nearly nonexistent marketing here in the States. Seeing it finally three years later however let me appreciate it for what it is, however, not what it was supposed to be then. In the end it's an interesting take on the "saving the world" tale, with a great ensemble cast and enough gritty storytelling to make the shoddy ending bearable. If you haven't seen it yet, I definitely recommend it.