Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Sloth: Unstoppable & Due Date & Eclipse

Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 was really.. oh, sorry, I mean Unstoppable was really suspenseful the whole way through! Yes, they have the same director (Tony Scott) and lead actor (Denzel Washington, my third husband), but I couldn't help thinking most of the way through that these films are incredibly similar. Each director understandably has their own style, and Scott's is perfect for the genre he seems to pursue quite often, but it was too much of the same thing to go unnoticed. Denzel Washington plays some blue-collar, middle class guy with a family, who has been working at the same job long enough to be a little bitter, and is put in a situation that requires him to save the motherfucking day once again. And there's a train.

Chris Pine offers a bit of distraction from Denzel's repetitive role, but it's not enough to keep the storyline fresh and I find myself wondering why directors and writers always have to return to the same plots and twists. I did enjoy their bantering, and Scott has mastered the art of keeping suspense and tension at such high levels for really long periods of time. Check this one out if you like TRAINS and sexy family men, and feeling like you're going to burst into a million pieces from so much suspense for the entire two hours. Good fun! P.S. Rosario Dawson is adorable.


Due Date is a load of crap. Like most flicks of this genre that have been coming out recently (the Hangover, Role Models, Dinner For Schmucks, etc, etc), it tries to push our boundaries of funny while giving us bang for our buck. I realize I mentioned earlier in this post that directors and writers continue to use the same plots and twists (Due Date seemed to be a tribute to/rip off of Planes, Trains & Automobiles), but this one fails to hit the nail on the head. It tries to show us a bit of twisted comedy, but each time seemed weirder and weirder, until it got to the point of not really funny, but desperate instead. Robert Downey Jr. even manages to punch an 8-year-old kid in the stomach.

So much more could have been achieved with this film if the creators weren't focused on catching up with the new generation and giving them a new kind of funny they could relate to. Like keeping Ethan's (Zach Galifinakis) father's ashes in a coffee can (Big Lebowski, anyone???)... on a different note, Jamie Foxx is useless, but Juliette Lewis is wonderfully cute. One part of the film I did enjoy is when Robert Downey Jr. says he SWEARS he has never done drugs before. Ohh, so funny.

Twilight Saga's Eclipse delivers everything you could ever want from a hot, steamy teen drama/action/fantasy film with vampires and werewolves. If you consider the genre, the books the screenplay is based off of and the technology available, this one is fantastic piece of cinema (I have read the books... they are very similar to the films so you can imagine the amount of teenage angst and young love that had to be translated over). The CGI wolves are pretty cool and the wide shots of the West coast are gorgeous!

The creators managed to get most of the book in the film, and they worked around the classic stories of vampires and werewolves rather well, keeping parts of the traditional creatures while creating entirely new parts of an old genre of fiction. The choreography in the fight scenes aren't bad and you can tell they didn't leave any of the budget out when they made this one. The wigs even look kind of real, except for Victoria's (Bryce Dallas Howard), which was a hot fucking mess the entire time.

What I would like to see for the finale of such a strange series is the same quality of production, with maybe a little less breathing and lip-biting from Kristen Stewart and a little less eyeball from Robert Pattinson. Can't wait!

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