Posts Tagged ‘Clifton Collins Jnr’

The Bricklayer

Director: Renny Harlin

Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Nina Dobrev, Clifton Collins Jr, Tim Blake Nelson, Ifenesh Hadera, Ori Pfeffer

Running Time: 1 hour, 50 minutes

Film Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Millennium Media the film production company behind the Expendables franchise, delivers another paint by numbers action film this time with strong man Aaron Eckhart as the spy hero Steve Vail as the Philadelphia based “Bricklayer” in the new Renny Harlin directed film The Bricklayer also starring Nina Dobrev as Kate Bannon and the superb character actor Tim Blake Nelson (Nightmare Alley) as their CIA director O’Malley.

The Bricklayer is set in Thelassoniki in Greece and features Bannon and Vail as two completely different CIA operative who arrive in Greek port city to hunt the elusive villain Victor Radek, flamboyantly played by Clifton Collins Jr sporting a black bowler hat. Radek is seeking revenge against the American spy agency based in Langley, Virginia as he blames them for the death of his wife and child so he is executing certain key journalists as part of a larger strategy to assassinate the Greek deputy foreign minister.

Before the tough Vail and the rookie Bannon can make inroads in locating Radek they first have to deal with a Greek gangster Denis Stefanopoulos played complete with flashy suits and gold chains by Israeli actor Ori Pfeffer (Hacksaw Ridge, The Hitman’s Bodyguard).

Aaron Eckhart is having an interesting career having starred in both high profile films like Christopher Nolan’s the Batman Trilogy and in some quirky American films like Thank You for Smoking to Oscar winning films like Erin Brokovich, but he appears to be going the same route as Scottish star and action hero Gerard Butler which will always pay the bills and keep audiences satisfied.

The Bricklayer does not have a clear storyline but the action is solid, a sort of medium budget spy film and is saved by a salvageable onscreen chemistry between the two lead stars. Bulgarian actress Nina Dobrev (The Perks of Being a Wallflower, XXX: The Return of Xander Cage) holds her own as the female heroine and possible love interest although in The Bricklayer the script focuses more on the action and fighting sequences than any romance.

Capote star Clifton Collins Jr is perfect as the duplicitous villain Radek and Tim Blake Nelson has the best lines in the film as the stroppy non-nonsense CIA director O’Malley.

If audiences enjoy a great action film set in Greece, then The Bricklayer is recommended viewing and proves that the 56 year old actor Aaron Eckhart can hold his own as muscular action star.

The Bricklayer gets a film rating of 6.5 out of 10 and won’t win any awards except some for corny images of American patriotism. It’s an entertaining action film which what the Los Angeles based Production Company Millennium Media always delivers.

Nightmare Alley

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Willem Dafoe, Toni Colette, David Strathairn, Ron Perlman, Richard Jenkins, Mary Steenburgen, Paul Anderson, Holt McCallany, Clifton Collins Jr

Film Rating: 9 out of 10

Running Time: 2 hours and 30 minutes

Based upon the pulp fiction novel by William Lindsay Graham, Nightmare Alley, Oscar winning director Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water) turns his deft hand to the genre of film noir in this 1941 American thriller featuring brilliant performances by Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett.

Starting in the mid-west, we follow a low life con artist Stanton Carlisle expertly played by Cooper who gets off a train and follows a dwarf into a Carnival where he meets an assortment of weird and equally morally subversive characters from the sultry Tarot Card reader Zeena played by Toni Colette to Clem Hoatley played by Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe (Platoon, Shadow of a Vampire, The Florida Project, At Eternity’s Gate) who controls a man in a cage who eats live chickens.

The first half of the spooky Carnival scenario is vividly captured on film by del Toro as Cooper’s character proves that he is a fast talker and a suave mentalist, easing gullible folk out of their money but he has bigger dreams. He yearns for the big grift: the wealthy clients of the urban metropolis.

Dragging his equally suspicious girlfriend Molly Cahill wonderfully played by Oscar nominee Rooney Mara (Carol, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) along to Chicago, they decide to turn their glamourous tricks on wealthy city folk until he is caught in the cross hairs of psychiatrist Dr Lillith Ritter, the ultimate femme fatale in a brilliant and sassy turn by double Oscar winner Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine, The Aviator), who wears brilliant red lipstick and carries an ivory handled pistol in her evening gown.

Dr Ritter psychoanalyses the suave Stanton skilfully manipulating him into going after some wealthy clients including the eccentric recluse Ezra Grindle superbly played by Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins (The Shape of Water, The Visitor) who is paying him a fortune to conjure up the image of his dead wife.

From the authentic production design, to the expert pace and tension of the film, director Guillermo del Toro delivers a first rate film noir thriller about the rise and spectacular fall of mentalist and trickster Carlisle played by Bradley Cooper in his career best performance.

Cooper does a superb job of holding this entire film together from the seedy Mid-Western Carnival scenes, which are both dazzling and daunting to the exquisite scene between himself and Dr Ritter in one of the best scenes in the film, in which the dialogue crackles with manipulation, seduction and desire amidst temptation and cigarette smoke.

Nightmare Alley is a long film, in which the first half entirely foreshadows the second half but the talented ensemble support the two stars of the show in this riveting, psychological thriller which eventually leaves blood on the passageways. From the gorgeous golden Art Deco interiors, to the beautiful costumes, Nightmare Alley leaves nothing to chance.

This isn’t a carnival trick, it’s authentic cinematic entertainment which the supremely talented director Guillermo del Toro excels at delivering. In this case, it’s a pure cinematic homage to the original 1947 film starring Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell and Helen Walker.

Strictly for sophisticated cinema goers, soak up the atmosphere of sinister intentions in 1941 America and watch the film noir Nightmare Alley, which gets a film rating of 9 out of 10.

Definite Oscar nominations for Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett and David Strathairn as the drunkard trickster Pete.

Pacific Rim

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Cast: Charlie Day, Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Clifton Collins Jnr, Diego Klattenhoff, Max Martini, Rinko Kikuchi, Ron Perlman, Burn Gorman

Acclaimed Mexican director Guillermo del Toro’s much anticipated 3D sci-fi film Pacific Rim is imaginative, rich and definitely needs to seen in a 3D cinema with digital surround sound to fully savour the cinematic spectacle.

Moving away from the American-centric location of many recent blockbusters most notably Iron Man 3 and Man of Steel, del Toro firmly aims Pacific Rim at a broader international audience as he centers most of the mind bending action in Hong Kong. Avoiding choosing a purely American cast, del Toro selects a relatively unknown ensemble to head up Pacific Rim, from the buff and gorgeous British actor Charlie Hunnam (looking ever more spectacular in 3D and last seen in Children of Men and Nicholas Nickleby) as the brooding Jaeger fighter pilot Raleigh Beckett and Rinko Kikuchi from Babel fame as Mako, the Japanese love interest who has to come to terms with aliens attacking Tokyo and join humanity to fight the horrific creatures along with Ron Perlman (Hellboy) as Hannibal Chou as a shady Kaiju bones scavenger and British actor Idris Elba as Stacker Pentecost the Jaeger central commander. Look out for a humorous performance by Charlie Day (Horrible Bosses) as the geeky scientist Dr Newton Geiszler who has to discover what the Kaijus really want with planet Earth along with Max Martini as Herc Hansen.

Warning to most audiences, that if you don’t like Monsters and Robots, don’t see Pacific Rim. However if you have followed del Toro’s cinematic rise to fame from the imaginatively rich Hellboy franchise to the critically acclaimed Spanish language fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth then fans will not be disappointed.

Pacific Rim is set in a 21^st century shattered world where giant descendants of dinosaurs known as Kaijus emerge out of the earth’s core and start attacking all the major cities of the Pacific Rim from Cabo in Mexico to Sydney to Hong Kong. To combat these giant sea beasts hugely inspired by Japanese monster movies and anime, humanity has built these huge robotic war machines known as Jaegers which honestly make Transformers look like Lego pieces. The script and backstory does not deliver too much on motive or plot, but del Toro gets straight to the point – Monsters attacking the World and Humans are fighting back using massive Robots. The result is some fascinating visual effects and superb set designs paying homage to Blade Runner and Total Recall, making Pacific Rim in 3D resemble a mixture of Hellboy and Battleship on acid!

The intricacies of operating the Jaegers involves two fighter pilots mentally connecting in a visual process known as drifting overseen by a frenetic controller, the Elvis inspired central ops Tendo Choi played by Clifton Collins Jnr (Capote) so that they can both symbiotically operate these giant robots (Jaegers) and combat the blue blooded snarling monsters known as Kaiju’s.

Pacific Rim has been hugely popular in the Asian markets and when watching the spectacular Hong Kong harbour battle sequence it’s not difficult to see why. Unfortunately the enormity of both Jaegers and Kaiju’s battling each other using tankers and skyscrapers inevitably dwarfs any real human interactions displaying that del Toro deliberately went for cinematic style over substance in what is imaginatively a hugely impressive cinematic experience but don’t expect the character depth or emotion displayed in Pan’s Labyrinth. This is del Toro on a massive budget appealing to a much larger audience and in this regard, Pacific Rim succeeds on every monstrous level and surely will be in line for a Visual Effects Oscar.

See it to believe it and Pacific Rim is not only big in Japan!

Capote

Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins, Jr
Directed by: Bennett Miller
Written by: Dan Futterman

Already heaped with critical acclaim from several North American Film Critics Associations, director Bennett Miller’s fascinating film, Capote, tells the story of the American author Truman Capote obsessive struggle in researching and writing a novel on the true story of a horrific crime that happened in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959. Philip Seymour Hoffman deservedly won an Oscar for best actor for his stunning, camp and brilliant portrayal of the great American writer Truman Capote. His nuanced, and almost understated performance ranging from mental anguish to drunken witticisms is perfectly balanced against the stark performances of the convicts, especially Clifton Collins, Jr as Perry Smith.

Capote, a respected writer for the New Yorker, first sees an article on the brutal killings of a respected Kansas family, the Clutters, in which the parents and the son and daughter were bound up and shot in their bedrooms. At the time, the crime was so horrific, it shocked the small Kansas farming community. Capote develops a morbid fascination with the case and once the two killers are caught, extends this fascination into an unusual bond with the killers, who have been incarcerated in Kansas City. Catherine Keener plays the author, Harper Lee, whose famous novel To Kill A Mocking Bird is about to be published. Lee and Capote are close friends, and she accompanies him to the stark, flat plains of rural Kansas, providing clear observations of the murder case. Bennett Miller beautifully contrasts the almost debauched world of the New York literary circle, where Capote holds court after many drinks at various social gatherings with the cold landscape of crime scene investigation, incarceration and sentencing of the killers in Kansas City.

Capote’s obsession with the murders and the killers, especially Perry Smith takes its toll on him psychologically and emotionally, and this is where Hoffman’s performance is just superb. At the urging of his lover Jack Dunphy, portrayed by Bruce Greenwood, Capote takes a break in the Costa Brava in Spain to recuperate and write what would become his most famous novel, In Cold Blood, the story of the Clutter murders.

Capote is a heavy going film, yet a fascinating study of a writers research into a shocking crime and the subsequent punishment of the perpetrators. Hoffman deserves the Oscar for his excellent and complex portrayal of Capote, as he certainly carries the movie through the journey of investigation, obsession and deterioration, while producing a seminal novel, which would make him one of the most respected writers in the American literary world. This film is highly recommended, but not for the faint hearted or the uninformed.