The Canon Review's weekend of Jon Voight concludes with the 1997 Oliver Stone film U-Turn. Based off of a novel written by John Ridley title Stray Dogs, the movie has a big-time cast, starring Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Jennifer Lopez, Billy Bob Thornton, Voight, Claire Danes, and Joaquin Phoenix. U-Turn tells the story of a drifter named Bobby Cooper (Penn), who is on his way to Las Vegas to pay a debt off, has to take a U-Turn after the radiator hose in his car bursts and finds himself in the town of Superior, Arizona. After that Bobby's day goes from bad to worse, as he has difficulties with the town's mehanic Darrell (Thornton) a beautiful woman named Grace (Lopez) and her real-estate developer husband Jake McKenna (Nolte), who oddly enough, each wants Penn to kill off their respective spouses. Penn also meets a blind man (Voight) who loves to drink Dr. Pepper and pops up from time to time to offer Bobby advice, and a fickle girl named Jenny (Danes), whose frequent flirting with Bobby leads to problems with her boyfriend Toby N Tucker, aka TNT (Phoenix). No matter how hard Bobby tries, he just can't seem to get out of Superior, and ends up getting deeper and deeper in a web of lies, jealousy, and greed. A few thoughts about the film, and there are SPOILERS ahead:
- Director Oliver Stone is a talented filmmaker, and his talent shows in this film. The cinematography is excellent in this film, and Stone uses different tricks such as flashbacks to add background to the characters and slow-motion shots to add a sense of importance to certain scenes. However, Stone does get a bit too reliant on these and other gimmicks, so to speak, and a lot of it doesn't really add anything to the film at all and just seems as if he's trying to show off.
- As Bobby Cooper, Sean Penn does a wonderful job of playing the role, and manages to get the audience to root for this seemingly lowlife character to succeed in his quest not only to get out of town, but to pay off his debts as well. You almost feel sorry for him seeing his money being destroyed by a shotgun blast from a store owner after a failed robbery attempt from two local thugs, and his constant battle with the mechanic over the bill is something people can relate to, as most of us have been in slightly similar situations before. Penn plays Cooper with such skill that it's hard to imagine anyone else playing the role better. Certainly not Tom Cruise and Bill Paxton, who also were considered for the role. No offense to either men, who are both fine actors in their own right, but I feel like something would have been missing had anyone else other than Penn had played the role.
- Actually, most of the acting in this film is quite top-notch. Billy Bob Thornton does an excellent job playing Darrell the redneck mechanic, making him one of the film's more memorable characters. Jon Voight is a little over-the-top as the blind man who carries a dead dog with him, but the movie in itself was over-the-top, so it fits the film perfectly here. Actually, Voight was almost unrecognizable at first, so kudos to the makeup department for making Voight look like a hapless old blind bum. Voight's Anaconda co-star Jennifer Lopez also turned in a solid performance as Grace McKenna, and did more than just hold her own in her many scenes with Penn. Nick Nolte, however, was just ok as Jake McKenna, as he really just seemed to be going through the motions and didn't give his character a whole lot of depth. Meanwhile, Joaquin Phoenix was hysterical in his portrayal of the high-tempered TNT, nearly stealing the show despite being in the movie no longer than five minutes.
- This movie is shot and directed very well, and is acted very well. However, I must say that I felt the plot was a little bit flat with a few holes in it. There were quite a few moments where you may wonder "What are the chances of that happening?" Also, the story has so many twists and turns that some might end up confused, and the movie has so many false endings that at the end, I just couldn't wait for the makers of the movie to just pick an ending and go with it instead of dragging the film on.
Overall, this seems to be Oliver Stone's attempt at making a scuzzy, Tarantino-esque film. While the acting is strong, and Stone's talent shines through, there are some weaknesses with the plot and a few scenes just wind up going nowhere. It's a good film, probably worth seeing and I wouldn't be surprised if others like this more than I did, but to me it just fell short of being a great film. I'll give U-Turn a 5.920 out of 10. Well, thanks for reading, and if you have any thoughts about this post, or ideas for future reviews, than share those thoughts and ideas either by leaving a comment on the blog or by sending me an e-mail at kthec2001@gmail.com.
Showing posts with label Jennifer Lopez. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jennifer Lopez. Show all posts
Monday, August 9, 2010
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Canon Movie Review: Anaconda
In a decision I made after watching Deliverance last night, this weekend is now Jon Voight weekend at The Canon Review. Today the Voight movie under review is the 1997 movie Anaconda, which stars Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Voight, Owen Wilson, and a giant computer generated snake. Directed by Luis Llosa, Anaconda is set in the Amazon River. The plot of the movie is that a film crew sets out to make a documentary about a rarely seen Brazilian tribe deep in the Amazon. While on their voyage, they rescue a mysterious stranger stranded on a boat name Paul Sarone, played by Jon Voight. From there, the crew faces all sorts of danger from the anacondas and other wildlife, while the snake hunter Sarone seems hell bent on capturing one of the snakes alive in order to get a million dollar payday. Naturally, their conflicting goals cause Sarone and the rest of the crew on the boat to clash, and Sarone ends up becoming an over the top mad villian. A few notes about this movie, and there are SPOILERS AHEAD, so if you haven't seen this movie and still want to, I suggest that you stop reading this post, and read another fantastic post on The Canon Review instead.
- Before I start to give this film the thrashing it so deserves, I will say that the cinematographers did a great job of showing the scenery and the beauty of the Amazon River. The lush jungle and rainforest around the Amazon is really captured and shown with great detail. Overall, Anaconda is actually a beautifully shot film, with a rich setting around the characters, even with the CGI snake thrown in.
- The acting in this film is a wide range, from the wooden (Kari Wuhrer as the production assistant) to the stereotypical (Ice Cube as a black man from Los Angeles, what a stretch that must have been), to just completly hamming it up (Voight, which will be dealt with later). Lopez is the star of the film as director Terri Flores. I wouldn't say she was awful, but it wasn't exactly DeNiro in Taxi Driver good either. Her scenes with her supposed love interest, Professor Steven Cale (Eric Stoltz), are just totally unbelievable. Also, it seems Lopez is totally unable to express any emotion other than anger, even though most of her crew end up dead or incapacitated, Flores doesn't seem to give a damn about any of them. Then again, if I was hanging out with guys like Owen Wilson, who plays, well, the same character he plays in every other movie, and the snobby British narrator Warren Westridge (Jonathan Hyde), I wouldn't necessarily be too broken up over their deaths either.
- Then there's Jon Voight, as Paraguayan ex-priest turned snake poacher Paul Sarone. While everyone else around are either playing themselves or acting with all the excitement of a three-pack of sponges, Voight takes it upon himself to steal the show with his overacting. Voight speaks with some sort of weird accent that makes him sound like a mixture of Christopher Walken and Marlon Brando. His performance of Sarone borders on the absurd, to be frank. There were quite a few times in the movie that I just couldn't help but laugh at the actions and words of Sarone, even though he's supposed to be some sort of evil version of Captain Ahab terrorizing these inexperienced film makers. If the director had just gotten Voight to turn it down a little, than the character may have been more sinister and therefore the movie would have been better. As it is, Voight almost singlehandedly turns Anaconda into a comedy, albiet an unintentional one.
- The scene below is probably my favorite scene of the movie. In this scene, Sarone is all tied up thanks to the actions of Flores, Danny the camera man (Ice Cube), and Westridge. The three then have to go out of the boat because Danny somehow got it stuck, so they have to tie some ropes to some trees in order to steer it back into water. Meanwhile, Denise (Wuhrer) is angry or sad or confused or something, I can't really tell, so she decided to kill Sarone with a knife, and well, this happens:
How exactly, did Sarone jump that high from a seated position with his hands tied around a post behind his back? I have no clue, maybe you can explain it better than I.
-Sarone wasn't the only ridiculous villain in the movie, as there's still the Anaconda to deal with. This anaconda seems to be about 50 feet tall and has a rather large appetite. While it would be kind of difficult to get a 50 foot snake to act on the set, the crew could have done a better job of making it look like the anaconda was, you know, actually chasing the characters down. Instead it was so obvious that the graphics were superimposed that it really took away from what little suspense the movie had.
- Danny Trejo is in this movie at the beginning. He's on a boat when it's attacked by what presumably is the anaconda, so he does the only thing he can do and shoots himself in the head. Also, the captain of the boat, a man named Mateo, got a raw deal in the movie. He doesn't get to say hardly anything, and is the first victim of the anaconda. What's more, he actually got left behind by Sarone and Danny, who were carrying treasure out of a sunken ship (What that was or why they brought it up on board is never explained, so don't worry about it). So nobody's even sure that Mateo is gone, and the only person that seems even halfway concerned was Denise.
- This movie gets rather ridicoulous in the last 20 minutes. For one, Ice Cube and Jon Voight can take a lot of punishment apparently, because Cube (or Danny, if you prefer) gets stabbed in the leg with a knife, thrown around by the anaconda, nearly squeezed to death by the anaconda, and yet by and large seems no worse for the wear. Meanwhile, Sarone falls into the ocean after getting shot with a tranqualizer dart, but not only survives, he's able to capture Danny and Terri and comes up with some overcomplicated plan to catch the anaconda. The Anaconda, meanwhile, can apparently survive being nearly chopped in half with a pickaxe, multiple gunshots to the head at close range, and even being in the middle of a gasoline explosion, being on fire for at least a full minute, than coming back up from the water a little burnt, but still ready to go.
Overall, this movie sucks. There, I said it. This movie would have been a lot better if either Voight's character or the anacondas go. With two mega villains, it seems a little convoluted. Personally, I'd vote for Voight to be removed, or at the very least not to be a villain, and then you can just have a straight up man vs. nature battle where a few people die, but ultimately the main stars prevail in the end and kill the Anaconda. You know, kind of like Jaws. It still might not have been a great movie, but it would have made more sense this way. As it is, it's not very good, so I'll give it a 3.1 out of 10. Well, thanks for reading, and if you have any thoughts about this post or other previous posts, or ideas for future posts, than share them either by leaving a comment or by sending me an e-mail at kthec2001@gmail.com.
- Before I start to give this film the thrashing it so deserves, I will say that the cinematographers did a great job of showing the scenery and the beauty of the Amazon River. The lush jungle and rainforest around the Amazon is really captured and shown with great detail. Overall, Anaconda is actually a beautifully shot film, with a rich setting around the characters, even with the CGI snake thrown in.
- The acting in this film is a wide range, from the wooden (Kari Wuhrer as the production assistant) to the stereotypical (Ice Cube as a black man from Los Angeles, what a stretch that must have been), to just completly hamming it up (Voight, which will be dealt with later). Lopez is the star of the film as director Terri Flores. I wouldn't say she was awful, but it wasn't exactly DeNiro in Taxi Driver good either. Her scenes with her supposed love interest, Professor Steven Cale (Eric Stoltz), are just totally unbelievable. Also, it seems Lopez is totally unable to express any emotion other than anger, even though most of her crew end up dead or incapacitated, Flores doesn't seem to give a damn about any of them. Then again, if I was hanging out with guys like Owen Wilson, who plays, well, the same character he plays in every other movie, and the snobby British narrator Warren Westridge (Jonathan Hyde), I wouldn't necessarily be too broken up over their deaths either.
- Then there's Jon Voight, as Paraguayan ex-priest turned snake poacher Paul Sarone. While everyone else around are either playing themselves or acting with all the excitement of a three-pack of sponges, Voight takes it upon himself to steal the show with his overacting. Voight speaks with some sort of weird accent that makes him sound like a mixture of Christopher Walken and Marlon Brando. His performance of Sarone borders on the absurd, to be frank. There were quite a few times in the movie that I just couldn't help but laugh at the actions and words of Sarone, even though he's supposed to be some sort of evil version of Captain Ahab terrorizing these inexperienced film makers. If the director had just gotten Voight to turn it down a little, than the character may have been more sinister and therefore the movie would have been better. As it is, Voight almost singlehandedly turns Anaconda into a comedy, albiet an unintentional one.
- The scene below is probably my favorite scene of the movie. In this scene, Sarone is all tied up thanks to the actions of Flores, Danny the camera man (Ice Cube), and Westridge. The three then have to go out of the boat because Danny somehow got it stuck, so they have to tie some ropes to some trees in order to steer it back into water. Meanwhile, Denise (Wuhrer) is angry or sad or confused or something, I can't really tell, so she decided to kill Sarone with a knife, and well, this happens:
How exactly, did Sarone jump that high from a seated position with his hands tied around a post behind his back? I have no clue, maybe you can explain it better than I.
-Sarone wasn't the only ridiculous villain in the movie, as there's still the Anaconda to deal with. This anaconda seems to be about 50 feet tall and has a rather large appetite. While it would be kind of difficult to get a 50 foot snake to act on the set, the crew could have done a better job of making it look like the anaconda was, you know, actually chasing the characters down. Instead it was so obvious that the graphics were superimposed that it really took away from what little suspense the movie had.
- Danny Trejo is in this movie at the beginning. He's on a boat when it's attacked by what presumably is the anaconda, so he does the only thing he can do and shoots himself in the head. Also, the captain of the boat, a man named Mateo, got a raw deal in the movie. He doesn't get to say hardly anything, and is the first victim of the anaconda. What's more, he actually got left behind by Sarone and Danny, who were carrying treasure out of a sunken ship (What that was or why they brought it up on board is never explained, so don't worry about it). So nobody's even sure that Mateo is gone, and the only person that seems even halfway concerned was Denise.
- This movie gets rather ridicoulous in the last 20 minutes. For one, Ice Cube and Jon Voight can take a lot of punishment apparently, because Cube (or Danny, if you prefer) gets stabbed in the leg with a knife, thrown around by the anaconda, nearly squeezed to death by the anaconda, and yet by and large seems no worse for the wear. Meanwhile, Sarone falls into the ocean after getting shot with a tranqualizer dart, but not only survives, he's able to capture Danny and Terri and comes up with some overcomplicated plan to catch the anaconda. The Anaconda, meanwhile, can apparently survive being nearly chopped in half with a pickaxe, multiple gunshots to the head at close range, and even being in the middle of a gasoline explosion, being on fire for at least a full minute, than coming back up from the water a little burnt, but still ready to go.
Overall, this movie sucks. There, I said it. This movie would have been a lot better if either Voight's character or the anacondas go. With two mega villains, it seems a little convoluted. Personally, I'd vote for Voight to be removed, or at the very least not to be a villain, and then you can just have a straight up man vs. nature battle where a few people die, but ultimately the main stars prevail in the end and kill the Anaconda. You know, kind of like Jaws. It still might not have been a great movie, but it would have made more sense this way. As it is, it's not very good, so I'll give it a 3.1 out of 10. Well, thanks for reading, and if you have any thoughts about this post or other previous posts, or ideas for future posts, than share them either by leaving a comment or by sending me an e-mail at kthec2001@gmail.com.
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