JohnDeSando
Joined Oct 2001
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Not since Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid have I enjoyed a buddy film as much as I have Accountant 2. In this fraternal buddy comedy, Ben Affleck's autistic action savant Christian is joined by his manic, sociopathic brother, Braxton (Jonathan Bernal), to make life miserable for hoods who feed on undocumented immigrants..
Because poor families are involved, the heat is off the accountant and becomes an exercise in setting right the current film obsession with trafficking. When Affleck's Christian, played with slightly more expression than Affleck has shown before, is exploring answers to the disappearances, the effect is rousing as the character seems to represent on the one hand almost a super hero and on the other distanced from the mobs he is used to helping with his mathematical genius.
Yet no denying while the range of the character is more than Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man, it still is limited by his obsession with the objective. Add to the sometimes-confusing plot the autism angle, and you have a pleasant pot of plot that challenges but reminds the aud we're almost in summer, when logic doesn't dominate. Even his home, a PanAmerican Airstream RV, begins to make sense as limited like his social skills.
When the brothers unite after years of estrangement, the thriller serves up low-key wit and reconciliation slow in coming. Yet when they take care of business with the bad boys, they work together as if they had been practicing self-defense for the years of their estrangement. When we see Christian line dancing, we know we have gone a long way from the original stoic Accountant.
When we meet the students at the high-brow Harbor Neuroscience Academy, we know director Gavin O'Connor and writer Bill Dubuque have enhanced the original in creative and dynamic ways that force Christian into new social interaction.
Accountant 2 is larded with humor and punctuated with action, a fine preparation for the coming summer season and a reminder that Affleck as producer and star can go nose to nose with John Wick and Jason Statham only with more stress on the intellectual and less on the physical.
The Accountant 2 is a good enough sequel to make us anticipate #3, like suddenly realizing a tax return has value especially when your accountant is a savant.
Because poor families are involved, the heat is off the accountant and becomes an exercise in setting right the current film obsession with trafficking. When Affleck's Christian, played with slightly more expression than Affleck has shown before, is exploring answers to the disappearances, the effect is rousing as the character seems to represent on the one hand almost a super hero and on the other distanced from the mobs he is used to helping with his mathematical genius.
Yet no denying while the range of the character is more than Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man, it still is limited by his obsession with the objective. Add to the sometimes-confusing plot the autism angle, and you have a pleasant pot of plot that challenges but reminds the aud we're almost in summer, when logic doesn't dominate. Even his home, a PanAmerican Airstream RV, begins to make sense as limited like his social skills.
When the brothers unite after years of estrangement, the thriller serves up low-key wit and reconciliation slow in coming. Yet when they take care of business with the bad boys, they work together as if they had been practicing self-defense for the years of their estrangement. When we see Christian line dancing, we know we have gone a long way from the original stoic Accountant.
When we meet the students at the high-brow Harbor Neuroscience Academy, we know director Gavin O'Connor and writer Bill Dubuque have enhanced the original in creative and dynamic ways that force Christian into new social interaction.
Accountant 2 is larded with humor and punctuated with action, a fine preparation for the coming summer season and a reminder that Affleck as producer and star can go nose to nose with John Wick and Jason Statham only with more stress on the intellectual and less on the physical.
The Accountant 2 is a good enough sequel to make us anticipate #3, like suddenly realizing a tax return has value especially when your accountant is a savant.
"Dog is a man's (Woman's) best friend." Old Saying
Having Manhattan isn't as easy as it was when Woody Allen called it up with a Greenwich Village tracking shot or a lilting jazz background, but writer/directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel have captured it in a modest drama about at middle-aged writer/teacher Iris (Naomi Watts) lamenting the loss of her best pal, author/writer/teacher Walter (Bill Murray).
As she questions why he committed suicide, she also deals with his bequeathing her his magnificent great Dane, Apollo. The lyrical study of grief is a tone set by Murray's easy-going delivery and her gentle nature. As Murray did in Lost in Translation, the drama has enough subtle melancholy to endear him and her to the audience as it sees ways to deal with loss outside the confines of a funeral.
Although Apollo brings a regal mien and playful attitude to the sometimes-somber moment, it is Iris's low-key reactions that keep the drama from being mawkish. Yet, she must be active as she fights to keep her rent-controlled apartment for her and Apollo as well as her sanity in the recurring interaction with her thoughts of the deceased Walter.
He was an old-school author, whose dalliances with students like Iris finally caught up with ethics, and he exited academia with students like her the better of for knowing him. But what to do with the dog? Although no substitute for the brilliant Walter, who read regularly to Apollo, Iris learns to fight for herself about her apartment and her need to continue writing without Walter hanging about her.
As in Mark Sutherland's Abby's List, the "dogumentary" is often about the owners while the canine support serves as facilitator for self-discovery. As also in Pengin Lessons. Where Steve Coogan's penguin brings out his humanity, The Friend is about just that-humans becoming human through animals.
The Friend is simple and benign, a luxurious few hours of contemplation about our place in the universe and NYC all at once. It's not Woody, but it does well enough.
Having Manhattan isn't as easy as it was when Woody Allen called it up with a Greenwich Village tracking shot or a lilting jazz background, but writer/directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel have captured it in a modest drama about at middle-aged writer/teacher Iris (Naomi Watts) lamenting the loss of her best pal, author/writer/teacher Walter (Bill Murray).
As she questions why he committed suicide, she also deals with his bequeathing her his magnificent great Dane, Apollo. The lyrical study of grief is a tone set by Murray's easy-going delivery and her gentle nature. As Murray did in Lost in Translation, the drama has enough subtle melancholy to endear him and her to the audience as it sees ways to deal with loss outside the confines of a funeral.
Although Apollo brings a regal mien and playful attitude to the sometimes-somber moment, it is Iris's low-key reactions that keep the drama from being mawkish. Yet, she must be active as she fights to keep her rent-controlled apartment for her and Apollo as well as her sanity in the recurring interaction with her thoughts of the deceased Walter.
He was an old-school author, whose dalliances with students like Iris finally caught up with ethics, and he exited academia with students like her the better of for knowing him. But what to do with the dog? Although no substitute for the brilliant Walter, who read regularly to Apollo, Iris learns to fight for herself about her apartment and her need to continue writing without Walter hanging about her.
As in Mark Sutherland's Abby's List, the "dogumentary" is often about the owners while the canine support serves as facilitator for self-discovery. As also in Pengin Lessons. Where Steve Coogan's penguin brings out his humanity, The Friend is about just that-humans becoming human through animals.
The Friend is simple and benign, a luxurious few hours of contemplation about our place in the universe and NYC all at once. It's not Woody, but it does well enough.
"A Working Man"-hardly an accurate descriptor for tough-guy Jason Statham's new character, Levon Cade. As a former black-ops super star, he is more like a robotic savior of the working man and in this case, saving an abducted daughter of his boss Joe (Michael Pena). Nevertheless, he has chosen daily to leave his exalted rank in special forces to be a low-key construction foreman, whose past few know about.
Until the bad-boy Russian mafia enters his scene and he is dramatically called back to his killer way of life. Statham has evolved lethal characters from a simple transporter to a beekeeper, from a mindless operative to a citizen who reluctantly helps the needy, using those deadly skills from long ago.
In this manner, he has some value as a do-gooder, but beyond that he is simply a killing machine and his enemies, unapologetically Eastern-European, now are the once accursed enemy but beginning to look like co-conspirators in the world politic outside the film.
Talk about the world, films are paying attention more than ever to human trafficking from Liam Neeson and Denzel Washington to the holy studio Angel, whose Sound of Freedom sets a standard for smart anti trafficking drama. Because I find Statham a suitable heir to the Bronson, Stallone vigilante tradition (a writer and producer of A Working Man), we'll continue to review his films even when he has withdrawn on this thriller to dialogue-starved mayhem.
When he is more than a death dispenser, Statham's films have potential for insightful social commentary outside of the visceral satisfaction of simply shutting down world-wide mafia activity.
Until the bad-boy Russian mafia enters his scene and he is dramatically called back to his killer way of life. Statham has evolved lethal characters from a simple transporter to a beekeeper, from a mindless operative to a citizen who reluctantly helps the needy, using those deadly skills from long ago.
In this manner, he has some value as a do-gooder, but beyond that he is simply a killing machine and his enemies, unapologetically Eastern-European, now are the once accursed enemy but beginning to look like co-conspirators in the world politic outside the film.
Talk about the world, films are paying attention more than ever to human trafficking from Liam Neeson and Denzel Washington to the holy studio Angel, whose Sound of Freedom sets a standard for smart anti trafficking drama. Because I find Statham a suitable heir to the Bronson, Stallone vigilante tradition (a writer and producer of A Working Man), we'll continue to review his films even when he has withdrawn on this thriller to dialogue-starved mayhem.
When he is more than a death dispenser, Statham's films have potential for insightful social commentary outside of the visceral satisfaction of simply shutting down world-wide mafia activity.