Film Review: American Sniper (2014)

Copyright: Warner Bros. Pictures

There are three types of men, American Sniper teaches us. These are the sheep, which can�t defend themselves, wolves who are the predators, and the sheepdogs. The last kind of people is �blessed with aggression�, but only uses it to protect the sheep.

The sheepdogs, however, apparently also make substantially problematic main characters in war dramas. From the beginning, we watch Chris Kyle, the deadliest recorder sniper in the US history, fights his way through life and war. Kyle is a simple dude who only wants to protect his buddies in the field of battle, and does the same with a very clear consciousness.

Clint Eastwood directed this film, but like Kyle�s life, he meandered from the US, where Kyle produces a family, but seems to be truly living only when he is in Iraq behind a scope, looking for people who hold a possible weapon. As a documentary story, the film is significantly misguided. For dramatic purposes, we only see a single US helicopter fire off a single missile during the course of the entire film. The rest of the Iraq fighting takes place assault gun to assault gun, which makes the Iraq war a lot more poetic and fair than it truly was.

In fact, there is no massive presence of US armor or aerial bombardment shown, because the insurgents need to look as if they are an equal adversary to Kyle and his buddies. Historically, a lot of American lives were lost in Iraq, but American Sniper makes the conflict look like Vietnam in a desert urban environment, which it simply was not.

The same is true for many other elements of the film, where Eastwood ignored a lot of stuff that didn�t fit into his plan of making a baseball cap wearing All-American hero. Kyle has some pale emotional doubts, but no political inkling of any kind. He kills gladly and proudly, until he decides he had enough, even though his family begged him to stop (this is explained with a manufactured insurgent boogeyman that eludes him, but this fails to make any impression).

Finally Eastwood, who detailed examined the lives Kyle took through violence during his deployments, decided not to explore the moment when his own life was taken in this manner. This final moment of dual intentions is similar to the transparent flag seen on the film�s poster. Although there is some matter and meaning there, the true essence of this film is to tell everyone that it was all worth it, even though there is nothing there to be shown.

The American Sniper movie is a weak action film that drives a faulty message.

Film Review: The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014)

Copyright: Millennium Entertainment

There is a hint of great filmmaking in the Taking of Deborah Logan, but only when it is observed as a whole. During the film itself, many tropes and plot devices of the horror genre are there. In the movie, there are CCTV cameras that menacingly swivel around while we wait for things to jump into the frame, or analogue telephone switchboards that seem to be present in the film only so some kind of unearthly entity could make a call to it.

But, in spite of them, the film is actually very savvy when it comes to the choice of what should and shouldn�t be exploited in it. Primarily, unlike most found footage horrors, it knows when and who to land a very deep-rooted fright, even though it manages to do it only once in full force and does it right before it ends (which is for me one of the creepiest, did-I-just-saw-that moments in recent horror films).

The Taking of Deborah Logan opens with Sarah, the daughter of the elderly Deborah Logan, who welcomes a documentary film crew into their home. The crew is led by Mia, who desires to focus on Deborah as a sufferer of Alzheimer's disease, which is the main topic of their documentary. The crew sets up in their family house, and starts to film Deborah, who very soon begins to exhibit strange behavior that isn�t explainable by her medical condition.

Adam Robitel, who directed this film as his debut, and even wrote it along with the Gavin Heffernan, very smoothly combined the idea of a scary natural thing (the illness) and then added a layer of supernatural terror to it. This all came to life on the screen because Jill Larson managed to transform into Deborah. There is not much time to set up Deborah as a character, but Larson succeeded in making her terrifying by her sheer physical presence, the way she exchanges looks with other people and other similar non-verbal moments.

These elements really absolve the idea of the found footage genre, because Larson really excels in talking directly to the camera, even if she is just staring at it. This produces an atmosphere of tension and the feeling that something just isn�t right (which works both for her terrible illness and the possibility of her being taken over by something much worse). It is also important to note that, unlike Devil�s Due and similar films which desperately try to seem very modern in their found footage approach, this movie takes its shots steadily and slowly, at least until the very end.

As a film about getting old and getting different in a bad way, The Taking of Deborah Logan is a horror that offers a slow but steady breeze that smells of something new and fresh.

Crowdfunding push: The Fastest, Most Romantic Love Yet

With the title like The Fastest, Most Romantic Love Yet there should be little doubt that this Kickstarter campaign is aiming high when it comes to the plot of the film it was designed to support. Regarding its core narrative, its official page explains the plot like this:

Phoebe has a Tinder date in an hour and a half. Keith has a Tinder date in an hour and a half. Can you guess where we're going with this one? In a cafe, bubbly Ashlee explains to the shy MIT grad student Phoebe the Text Delay Theory and past relationships. At a bar, apparent writer Clay and frat bro Keith discuss the discovery of America and its relation to dating; their favorite porn genres; and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

Along the way, others drop in on them: a surly bartender, a rational Neo-Nazi, a couple excited of Beats from out on the road, a hypocritical preacher, an intellectual feminist, a scientifically-illiterate MIT humanities professor, and a barfly philosopher.

Interspersed are interviews with couples who met through the decades of the twentieth century, from exchanging letters during the Korean War to meeting online. All leading up to the Tinder date. This is: "The fastest, most romantic love yet."

The film was imagined by Shane Butler, a young filmmaker who recently made an interesting indie feature-length comedy called Down the Cape. Now, he desires to make something through the influences of people like Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Linklater, while placing the plot (I�m guessing this) in a Seinfeld-like environment. Currently, the film�s crowdfunding campaign passed the 10% mark, and the initial goal is focused on getting the right sound recordist, which is a very smart move by Butler (and a necessity for a film like this to work).

If The Fastest, Most Romantic Love Yet seems interesting to you, check out their official page on Kickstarter and see who you can help it out.

If you're looking for exposure for your film-related project, contact me right here.

Crowdfunding push: Albion

After We Are Soldier, here is another Sci-Fi short that seems really interesting. It includes crash landings and ancient relics, which is a solid starting point while adding the Arthurian legend sprinkles even more flavor onto it. This is what the official Albion Indiegogo page states:

A long friendship will be put to the test when Arthur and Eric crash on the continent of ALBION. They are occupied in the search for an ancient artifact, but when they stumble across a native of the hostile world, a struggle for power will come to the fore and both of our heroes will have to decide � who returns home, and who DIES. This is the origins of - KING ARTHUR.

Albion - Indiegogo Campaign Video from Joshua Eley on Vimeo.

Although the notion of Sci-Fi in the woods isn't too exciting, the feel of the pilot for this short film has a few things going for it, including the crucial atmosphere of danger and discovery, along with a welcomed focus on the characters. Albion just began their campaign and have currently passed a few percent of their targeted budget of 1000 British pounds (which is pretty modest). Check their Indiegogo page here and see if you are interested in helping out.

If you're looking for exposure for your film-related project, contact me right here.

Film Review: Taken 3 (2014)

Copyright: 20th Century Fox

The Taken franchise seemed very interesting back in 2008, when it brought a cool and minimal plot, featuring the ideally cast Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills, an ex-something-dangerous-and-murder-enabled man, but also a dad whose daughter gets kidnapped in Paris. The rest of the film covered Bryan hunting and killing his way to the end goal.

In this constellation, Taken worked perfectly while it balanced between ultraviolence and a regular action thriller. Neeson, who became very proficient in this type of role, which variation was recently seen in the A Walk Among the Tombstones, added the right kind of style and sealed the deal. The sequel pretty much did the same thing, but Taken 3, the ending of the trilogy, goes completely off its old playbook and because of that, ruins the fun.

Now, Bryan is his home in the Los Angeles area, where he lives separated from his wife, trying to be a good dad to her college-going daughter. One day, all this goes to hell when he comes back home and finds something terrible in his bed. The police burst in, believing he is responsible for the crime they find. Bryan does his ex-something Kung-Fu and flees the scene, determined to get to the truth by producing a pile of corpses that belong to one or another East-European crime syndicate.

Director of the film, Olivier Megaton, definitely made two huge mistakes that gutted this film of much fun. First one is a strange editing process which destroys every car-chase scene with a badly positioned camera (that is too close to the vehicles) and fast, maniacal cuts that stack up until the vehicles finally come to a halt. In every car sequence, the same thing occurs as if Megaton thought that he needed to cover bad stunt driving scenes by cutting everything in milliseconds and filling it with tons of motion blur effect. But then, weirdly, the ending car chase was shot and edited perfectly, apart from the fact that its setup is very original (this is the best element of the film by far).

The other problematic feature of Taken 3 is its lack of narrative direction. First half an hour are filled with family drama that builds tension, but also muddies the waters when it comes to defining a clear antagonist of the story (which is a necessity in these setups). Later, it mutates in a Fugitive-type of film, where Bryan dodges cops and investigates gas stations, making us wonder who he is really fighting against. Somewhat of a similar mashup can be seen in Cold in July, only Taken 3 doesn�t have its strange but strong charm. Instead of rushing through this part of the story, Megaton takes it slow, killing with this the winning and recognizable Taken dynamic.

It tries to go for red herring characters, but this comes off as a waste of time and completely nullifies the laser-precise plot development of the first film. Taken 3 full movie feels like an action film that struggles with this fact and covertly aspires to be something more. The character of Franck Dotzler, played by Forest Whitaker, is a good example of this thought. Whitaker performs Dotzler in a solid manner, but his purpose in the film turns out to be nothing more than stealing screen-time from the real bad guys.

With a slow, watered-down script and a few sub-standard action scenes, Taken 3 ends the series on a very low note.