nathanialwest

When I was driving to the theater, I was doubting my choice in Seven Psychopaths, because the trailer made it seem like so many films I'd seen before that looked edgy and wry, and showed so much promise in the previews yet fell short because of flat characters and muddled plots. This one, however, did not let me down.

I suggest that you see this film purely because it tries to do more with a movie than anything you've seen in a while, and it manages to actually succeeds on all levels, while dangerously romancing the clichés of toying with clichés, movies about writing movies, and gangsters with a soft side. Every time the story started to get even a little generic, wild cards came firing in from all sides.

The actors played their parts well, but Rockwell gave the best performance. I was impressed by Woody and Walken's abilities to shed their skins and get deeper into character than I've seen them be in years.

This is a writer's film--the subplots (really, borderline vignettes) about the various psychopaths that Marty encounters are well done, their back stories unfold at different paces, and their details that connect them to the central plot are creatively deployed, while the momentum of the film clearly hinges in the here and now and does not make the mistake of merely chaining together several subplots to produce one "dog" of a story.

I enjoyed almost everything about Seven Psychopaths. 10/10 to offset the 2 that someone without a brain will rate this.

I don't know how I got sucked into the hype, but I did, and went to see the 11:59 showing. It was about 90 minutes too long, with plenty of poor excuses for dramatic action scenes instead of awesome CGI sequences of robots destroying each other.

Apart from this, it was tortuously entwined with cliché college backdrop gags for the relationship story between Sam and the hot chick, who my girlfriend thinks looks like trailer trash, but I could go either way on, because her teeth are a little weird.

The story is also a load of crap. Don't even worry about reading any spoilers because you'll see it all coming anyway. I nearly fell asleep and left shaking my head as I realized I was theoldest one in the theater. BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD!

Bottom line: wait for the DVD, or better yet, go find some old school action figures and play make-believe.

"Righteous Kill" relies all too heavily on De Niro and Pacino to save what would be otherwise a predictable and uninspired plot and script on a straight-to-DVD flop of a film. Featuring actors such as the two leads is truly an injustice to their prior accomplishments because ultimately, they were not given any opportunities to shine it what ought to have a mind-blowing closing opus for them both.

Other reviews have said it wasn't bad, though they doubted any awards would come of it. I can't disagree with either of the two opinions, but I am saddened to think this is what we have come to expect from Hollywood: perhaps the only two A-list male actors left, and they sign on for what was a film that I wanted to hurry up and end. They shared a lot of time on-screen, but the total lack of characterization made it an experience that I would gladly trade to watch the few scenes of "Heat" again, where two legendary men square off, face to face, in a film worthy of their talent.