Tag: Jason Clarke

Movies

Pet Sematary (2019)

Not A Walking Tree

I actually enjoyed this one! HEAVY SPOILERS THROUGHOUT but I was surprised that they had the cojones to follow through with the ending. Sometimes the story ain’t about the protagonists overcoming the odds. Sometimes, the story is a cautionary tale of meddling with forces greater than man. Of failing to move on after a tragedy, of not processing one’s grief and coming to terms with it. A story that still made me go “ugh, not zombies again!?” Failure on my part for not reading the book written by a think-tank. What can ya do?

Jason Clarke as the lead character, Dr. Louis Creed, was excellent. A little rough to start, but he grew on me as the plot went on. Although I had different motivations as to how I treated the characters than most audiences… I was rooting for his dumbass to pay the consequences. Not out of malice for the character, but out of hoping for once they have a dark story. They delivered it. Though reading of the alternate ending, I would have preferred that one. That one is a more delicious emotional turmoil of character. I mean if we’re going for horror, may as well go all out. What’s more grim than living with malevolent spirits posing in the flesh of your wife, daughter, cat, and potentially son? Top notch horror.

Amy Seimetz as Rachel Creed, the good doctor’s wife, had a whole subplot of horror all on her own. Traumatized by the death of her sickly sister, that she had inadvertently caused through her laziness and fear, her character was forced to relive that moment through haunting visions while living in their new home. Mostly caused by the idea of speaking about death to their young daughter which reminded her of herself. Plenty of psychological horror with that one, especially when she meets her grisly demise at the hands of her undead daughter. But not before being made to confess to being glad her sister died and that she secretly prayed for it when she was younger. More delicious emotional turmoil for horror aficionados.

John Lithgow was the only light in the movie, but even his character was tainted because he wittingly invited this evil upon his new neighbors. I liked that message, if something turns out to be an evil spirit, don’t trust it that this time it won’t be an evil spirit. Also the whole “don’t meddle with ancient forces that you know nothing about especially when they involve ancient Native American legends. See, I ain’t even gonna write it out. Some words shouldn’t be said.” That whole deal.

From a horror standpoint, it was excellent. From a logical standpoint, all of this could have been avoided if you built a fence next to the road with the speeding trucks. Add a large gate. Secondly, if an old white dude ushers you to follow him deep into the woods, after climbing over a clearly foreboding tree wall, and you’ve been seeing hallucinations of a recently dead man warning you against it, just maybe think “hey, this is weird, I’m going back to my initial hole.” Unfortunately, horror requires our sacrificial victims to be dumbasses. And when that happens, my mind switches from being scared for our protagonists to “I wonder how just badly you’ll be suffering the consequences, you monumental imbeciles.”

I digress, it was good movie. I liked how when the camera focused on a certain part in a scene, and it being horror, so you just know that at any moment something is gonna happen. Especially if the camera gaze lingers for a second, that’s when BAM, I close my eyes! I ain’t seeing that gory shit. I can hear the sound effects just fine. Despite that, I still liked the movie and I’d recommend it for horror in this spooky month.

Movies

One Shot and Black Site

Not A Walking Tree

Oh look, two movies with very similar plots released within a year of each other. A common occurrence, like Armageddon and Deep Impact. The movie, One Shot, is a smaller budget movie than Black Site due to the actors involved. One has action B-stars, and the other has formerly A-list stars.

One Shot was a fun experiment in a long continuous take, with much of the action showed with as little cuts as possible. Often using misdirection to make it seem like one continuous take. It starred Scott Adkins as a Navy SEAL, Ashley Greene as a CIA analyst and Ryan Phillipe as the station chief of the black ops detention facility. When it falls under attack by hundreds of insurgents, they must work together to get a high priority target out safely into order to find a nuclear bomb hidden on US soil.

The action was definitely B movie tier, but it was fun to watch. It was relentless, and enjoyable for if you’re in the mood for an hour and a half of non-stop action. The plot was minimal, it was merely a vehicle to deliver the action. Of which it came in spades. Minor issues with bad guys having unlimited ammo while the good guys had to reload, but good sound quality overall. I liked it.

Black Site goes the other direction, with a focus on story and development over action. Even then, it suffers the same issue as One Shot did which is the unbelievability of how the main bad guys enter the place. At the same time, it’s quite enjoyable to see American intelligence and military as being incompetent. And the slight digs at the CIA and Mossad are a nice little treat. We have Michelle Monaghan as a CIA analyst with personal ties to the bad guy, Jai Courtney as soldier Miller (he’s good at playing bullies), and Jason Clarke as the sadistic bad guy called Hatchet. We also have a relative newcomer, Phoenix Raei as the Israeli Mossad agent called Uri.

When incompetent delta forces fail to interrogate Hatchet, the base goes on lockdown and they have one hour to restore communications lest they be hit by a drone strike by their own nation, the United States. What follows is hilariously bad attempts at re-securing their own base, while Hatchet goes around brutally killing the inhabitants.

In both movies, the target of the bad guy(s) is a businessman with alleged ties to terrorist organizations and we do not know if he’s a head honcho or merely just a puppet.

Somebody needs to tell the action choreographer or the guy in charge of effects for Black Site, that guns have recoil. It is a sad attempt to not have any when the blood effects were on point. Also if you’re supposedly a trained soldier or ex-soldier, you’d know when picking up a gun to check ammo/that it works right.

Overall, I’d recommend Black Site for the story because it has threads of truth to it. While I would recommend One Shot for the action.

Movies

White House Down

Not A Walking Tree

“If you feed a man, you take away his propensity for violence.” This is what immediately sets this movie apart from all other Presidential movies, because the president is a legitimate good guy who wishes to improve the state of poverty within the United States. Secondly, it’s established that the war in the middle East is a massive waste of money that could have been spent bettering the people of that area. And that they’ve established peace talks with Iran in addition to removing all troops. This is within 10 mins of the movie starting. Could you imagine how much better the world would be?

The best part is the news stations talking about how American companies who do business with the military wouldn’t like that one bit. A nice bit of foreshadowing. “All they wanna do is keep the cycle of war going” and “these corporations have been in bed with radical regimes for years.” And another goodie, “those bases are just for show, we could launch a drone off any carrier in the gulf and hit any target we want.” Another gem “The military industrial complex. Those are the manufacturers of the weapons. They think the own the system and they will do anything to keep that power. They profit off your sacrifice.”

With those political leanings out of the way, the movie gets into the nitty gritty with a bomb set off inside the White House and soon armed men take over. What follows is quite enjoyable action scenes with rewarding fights that see our hero, John Cale, played by Channing Tatum, kick ass and taking names. Baddies just fall to his guns, and he essentially is John McLane (even the name is similar). It’s basically Die Hard but inside the White House. And going with that comparison, the jokes are similar and the tone is as well. Jamie Foxx plays the president and he did a good enough job. I mean there’s no standard for it given the current president in the US is far below standards, so if anything, this is quite a great job by Jamie Foxx.

James Woods does a fantastic job of a bitter head of secret service because his son, a marine, was killed during a black ops mission orchestrated by Mr Foxx’s character. He tends to chew the scenery around him, and makes the mercenary head bad guy pale in comparison (played by Jason Clarke). I enjoyed this movie because the bad guys weren’t international but good ole homegrown Americans that wish to keep the status quo going. It feels reminiscent of the times. The director, Roland Emmerich, did a great job at navigating his story. Several scenes are done with his signature style of CGI and explosives, and he even gets his own movie mentioned, Independence Day.

Overall, I recommend this movie if you’re in the mood for some light hearted comedy and action. If you enjoy Die Hard, then you’ll enjoy this as well.