Bleakness and Ambitious Storytelling Abound in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead begins with a bank robbery gone awry. A masked man tries to get money out of some mom-and-pop jewelry store while holding an elderly woman at gunpoint. We do not know who any of these people are or what their motivations are. We just know that this is not how things were supposed to go. Eventually, the masked man is shot while the elderly woman is also left deceased. As getaway driver Hank Hanson (Ethan Hawke), seeing that his cohort is dead, drives away in a panic, the frame freezes. From here, writer Kelly Masterson and director Sidney Lumet begin to travel down a non-linear path to show the viewer exactly what went wrong here and why.

13 Days of First-Time Frights: The Mist

13 Days of First-Time Frights is a series of reviews for October 2019 where Douglas Laman, in the spirit of Halloween, watches and writes about thirteen horror movies he's never seen before. These reviews will be posted each Tuesday and Thursday as well as the last three Wednesdays of October 2019.

Entry #3: The Mist

We're always talking about the Before trilogy, the Toy Story trilogy or the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But what about the most important trilogy of 21st-century filmmaking? What about the trilogy I call Mid-2000s Genre Fare Where An Andre Braugher Character Perishes? This trio of films, Poseidon, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and The Mist, are all connected in how they feature Andre Braugher playing supporting characters that prove to be antagonistic to the protagonists and eventually, even in the PG-rated Silver Surfer movie, meet gruesome ends. It's the only thread holding these three individual films released over the span of 18 months together but it's all they need to make up the greatest trilogy of all-time.

Killer of Sheep Paved The Way For A New Age of American Indie Cinema

Charles Burnett is an inspiration to aspiring filmmakers everywhere. With only $10,000 to his name, Burnett spent two years in the early 1970s filming his debut directorial effort Killer of Sheep. Though legal problems related to music employed in the film prevented it from getting a general theatrical release (it played at film festivals in the late 1970s), it finally got released to the public in 2007 and has since become regarded as an important historical artifact in the history of independent cinema. Burnett's accomplishments here feel like a precursor to legendary 1990s indie filmmakers like Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez and Cheryl Dunye who also went out and made deeply personal cinema on shoestring budgets. Even if it didn't get a conventional theatrical release until the 21st-century, the very existence of Killer of Sheep paved the way for then-future cinema by showing what was possible with independently produced filmmaking.

The Savages Is Another Authentically Messy Achievement From Tamara Jenkins

Who exactly are the titular family of The Savages? Well, they're an eclectic group mostly consisting of a father, Lenny (Phillip Bosco) and two adult children named Wendy (Laura Linney) and Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman), with Wendy serving as the stories protagonist. Both Wendy and Jon are trying their best to muddle through their lives when they get the news that their distant father is having extreme issues related to a newly formed case of Dementia in Arizona on the other side of the country. Wendy and Jon bring their father back to their neck of the woods in Buffalo, New York and set him up in a nursing home. As she tries to chart a course for where her life needs to go, Wendy decides to live with Jon so that she can be nearby if their father has any issues.

Despite Starring Two Acting Legends, Fracture Is Criminally Forgettable

Now that he's spent the 2010's working with the likes of Denis Villeneuve, Damien Chazelle and Shane Black, it's hard to imagine an era where Ryan Gosling would star in a disposable courtroom thriller like Fracture. But this hunky leading man of very few words did just that back in 2007 in between two movies, Half Nelson and Lars and the Real Girl, that saw him deliver two of his best performances. Those two motion pictures became more of the norm for Gosling going forward whereas Fracture, as the years go on and on, looks more and more like a strange anomaly for one of the most fascinating modern leading men in American cinema.

Half of Grindhouse Is Utterly Sublime, But The Other Half, Well, Is One-Note Even By B-Movie Homage Standards

Grindhouse is a project only a filmmaker with as much clout as Quentin Tarantino could get off the ground. A 191-minute-long homage to old B-movie double features consisting of two feature-length films, one directed by Robert Rodriguez and the other helmed by Tarantino, it's a project that sounds like a perfect fit for the midnight movie festival circuit but something that would have limited appeal as a conventional wide release project. The Weinstein Company decided to make a big go at bringing Grindhouse to general audiences and pushed it out into 2,629 locations in April 2007 only for it to end up grossing only $26 million domestically, the worst box office performance ever for a movie Tarantino directed outside of his inaugural feature Reservoir Dogs, which never played in more than 61 locations.

Breach Starts Out Rough Before Finding A More Comfortable Suspenseful Groove

Eventually, the 2007 thriller Breach gets pretty darn good, but you gotta wade through a pretty weak first act to get there. But once it actually gets into a groove that writer/director Billy Ray (the guy behind last years better than expected military drama Thank You For Your Service) seems more comfortable with, Breach finally becomes something more akin to (though not as wholly successful as) the suspenseful political thrillers of the 1970's it's clearly mimicking. Like that subgenre of American cinema, Breach is based on a true story of corrupt American politics, specifically the saga of Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper), an intellegence officer at the FBI that is being secretly spied on by Eric O'Neill (Ryan Phillippe).

Stardust Is A Good Old Fashioned Fantasy Romp And A Highly Entertaining One At That!

Among his numerous hallmarks as a director, Matthew Vaughn loves to play fast and loose with the comic books and graphic novels he adapts into movies. More often than not, Vaughn will basically just run with the core concept of what he's adapting into a film to better suit his own interests and desires most notably in turning Mark Millar's grim Kingsman graphic novel into a breezy Bond homage. Even X-Men: First Class, his feature most faithful to its source material, took liberties with what it was adapting and this tendency of Vaughn's is on full display in his first ever directorial effort, Stardust, an adaptation of a Neil Gaiman graphic novel that's far more family-friendly than its source material.

Ocean's Thirteen Goes Through The Motions In An Entertaining Fashion

Steven Soderbergh brought his Ocean's Eleven trilogy to a close with Ocean's Thirteen, an adventure that saw the main characters of the prior two movies (save for those played by either Julia Roberts or Catherine Zeta-Jones) embark on a heist spurred by vengeance. After Reuben Tishkoff (Elliot Gould) gets double-crossed by super wealthy businessman Willy Bank (Al Pacino), Danny Ocean concocts a plan to get some revenge on Bank by way of sabotaging the opening of his newest casino resort. This is a plan that's going to require all kinds of elaborate set-up and tricks, all in the name of aiding a friend. Despite all the hard work ahead, the other nine members of Danny Ocean's gang agree to help.

Lars And The Real Girl Finds So Much Power In Kindness And A Terrific Ryan Gosling Performance

There is, to quote Avenue Q, "a fine fine line" between kindness and schmaltz. The latter element is widely detested and, not unfairly, looked at a manipulative way to generate pathos without actually generating substantive characters or plot details for the audience to get invested in. There are times where I've seen movies that get too schmaltzy for their own good (remember that ending of The LEGO Ninjago Movie that smothered the audience in too many hollow dramatic monologues?), but I'm always gonna root for a movie to charge towards kindness, even if it stumbles along the way. Kindness is such a vital thing in our lives and it's always good to see art championing it. Well-done kindness is one of my favorite things in all of cinema and you can see it in all kinds of movies like The Muppets, Blockers, City Lights or even the 2007 dramedy Lars And The Real Girl.

High School Musical 2 Hits Too Many Sour Notes To Live Up To It's Potential

It was always gonna be difficult to pull off a High School Musical sequel. The whole point of the first movie was that it embraced corny storytelling so heavily that it might as well have swept up that type of storytelling in a big old bear hug. Adhering to this sort of storytelling means you've wrapped up all the characters stories in tidy little bows at the end so that the viewer believes they go on to live happily ever after. How exactly do you create further adventures for Troy Bolton and his fellow wildcats then, especially when you have further issues like trying to create a premise that still feels like it's a High School Musical production without just coming off as a weak retread of its predecessor?

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story Hits A High Note For Outlandish Satire

In 2007, Judd Apatow seemed to have garnered the Midas Touch in that every comedic project he touched as a producer was generating massive box office. Most notably, Knocked Up and Superbad had been back-to-back box office hits in the summer of 2007 that ushered in a new age of American comedy and he would follow those two up with more box office hits like Step Brothers and Pineapple Express the subsequent year. But even in a year as golden as 2007, not everything can be a hit and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story ended up being the Judd Apatow produced comedy to be a box office dud despite opening just a few months after Superbad.

The Justice League Movie That Almost Was (In Laman's Terms)

What if I told you this almsot wasn't the first live-action movie iteration of the Justice League?

 In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

Come this Friday, we're finally getting a live-action Justice League film adaptation. It seems crazy that superheroes like Spawn, Howard The Duck, Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, Tank Girl, Steel, Ghost Rider, The Green Hornet and Big Hero 6 all got movies prior to the Justice League, but it's not like Warner Bros. hasn't been trying to get a live-action Jutice League movie off the ground. In fact, a decade ago, it seemed like a Justice League movie was gonna finally get off the ground, one that has now joined the likes of Tim Burton's Superman Lives or Edgar Wright's Ant-Man movie as among the most tantilizing "What Could Have Been?" unmade superhero movies.

Things We Lost In The Fire Burns Brightest When Handling Drug Addiction

For her first foray into English language American feature film directing, Susanne Bier was not gonna take things slow, she was gonna hit the ground running with a film concentrated on a bleak topic. Specifically, this film in question, Things We Lost In The Fire, would kick off with the death of Brian Burke (David Duchovny) and chronicle how his demise affected two very important people in his life. These two people are his now widowed wife, Audrey Burke (Halle Berry), and his lifelong best friend, Jerry Sunborne (Benicio Del Toro), who has also been struggling with a crippling drug addiction.

Set Sail With Ten Canoes And Its Ode To Humanizing Native Populations

One of the most exciting things about diving deeper into world cinema is getting a chance to learn about foreign events, individuals and even entire cultures I may not have been aware of. So it is with Ten Canoes that I was able to discover a part of Australia that I had no knowledge of in prior exposures to Australia in both pop culture and real life. This 2007 directorial effort hailing from Rolf De Heer and Peter Djigirr (the latter individual also plays a character in the film) aims to tell its viewers a story chronicling the various goings-on of a tribe of ancient natives residing in Arnhem Land, a Northern region of Australia, with the language of Yolŋu Matha being spoken by all the on-screen characters.

A Realistic Take On Awkwardness Very Much Serves As A Positive Facet Of Eagle vs. Shark

There's not much in the life of Lily (Loren Horsley) that can be called extraordinary. She lives out her comfortable existence with her cartoonist brother, works at a fast food burger joint and enjoys watching documentaries about her favorite animal, sharks. But there is a customer that repeatedly comes into her place of work that does brighten her day and that customer is a dude named Jarrod (Jemaine Clement). Jarrod is basically your quintessential nerd's nerd and one whose oblivious that Lily has a crush on him. Lily does have a chance to build upon her infatuation with Jarrod when she gets invited to a party he's hosting wherein guests have to dress up as their favorite animal.

Tony Gilroy Proves To Be A Skillful Filmmaker In His Directorial Debut Michael Clayton

Who is the titular character of Michael Clayton? Well, Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is the guy they ("they" being a big-time law firm) send in to help clean up messes. He'll walk you through options, he'll help you figure out the best way to proceed in a time of hardship, all that jazz. It's not a glamorous job, but it's one that pays the bills and gives Clayton a comfy life. The new client Clayton and the law firm he works for have taken on is that of the U-North corporation, which is in the middle of a lawsuit alleging that the company poisoned various local water supplies and hurt countless individuals.

Unimportant Events Makes For Thoroughly Engaging Storytelling In The Band's Visit

Trips tend to never go as planned but for Lt. Col. Tawfiq Zacharaya (Sasson Gabai), things have been going particularly troublesome for himself and his fellow band members. They have come to Egypt to perform some music at an important local ceremony, but the scheduled ride meant to transport them to where they need to go never came. Thus, they're now trapped in a foreign land with no transportation, no shelter and very little money to speak of. Those alone are all troublesome elements but the fact that there's some turmoil going on amidst the various band members, particularly between Zacharaya and the younger and rebellious Khaled (Saleh Bakri), are only adding to the tension.

The Small-Scale Intimate Scenes Of Sicko Are Great. The Michael Moore-Centric Material? Less So.

Fahrenheit 9/11 had catapulted Michael Moore to a level of fame unheard of for the vast majority of not just documentary filmmakers in America, but filmmakers in any genre in America. The dude became a part of the Bush-era zeitgeist with his 2004 box office phenomenon and while I had heavily mixed feelings on that movie, there's no denying it struck a nerve with people and it set expectations high for whatever his follow-up project would end up being. Turns out, his next feature film would be Sicko, an extensive look at the American health care system, a hot-button topic in American politics as the rampant attempts to revoke the Affordable Healthcare Act under the newest presidential administration have demonstrated.

I Am Legend Is A Really Good Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Until It Isn't

The world itself has come to an end. A supposed cure for cancer has instead mutated into an airborne virus that is killing the vast majority of humanity off instantly while turning a small portion of the populace into feral monstrous creatures that hate the sunlight and feed on living flesh. An even tinier slice of the human race has proven to be resistant to the virus and Dr. Robert Neville (Will Smith) belongs to that part of his species as he's managed to be immune to the sickness that has ravaged the planet. Now, three years after the apocalyptic pandemic began, he roams the streets of an abandoned New York City with only his loyal dog by his side.