OSCAR 2012: Pre-Fall films spark enduring interest

It's been a particularly dry patch at the theaters, given that it's been more than a month since wide release yielded any particular gems. The last new release I caught in theaters was "The Dark Knight Rises", and somehow that just didn't light a fire for the end of summer. Even a handful of my most anticipated films of this month are already falling from grace. "The Bourne Legacy" seems to be receiving a universal yawn from critics wondering how this story couldn't have booted up into an entirely new franchise. I caught a preview for "ParaNorman" recently that entirely doused my interest in the film, which seems to be trading heavily in hollow and substance-less wit rather than genuine magic.

So I've taken the time to revisit some rather positive cinematic revelations of the recent past, and it's beginning to show how much of a splash these films could make in the awards season conversation. We're bound to see one or two films not meet expectations, but on the most part the fall slate is seeming to have a pretty massive hold on the Academy's interest. "Argo", "Les Miserables", "Life of Pi", "Lincoln", and "The Master" remain prominent figures on the schedules, and we'll see rises and falls depending on how those play with audiences and critics. But there are more than a few films from this first half of the year that I suspect will figure into the conversation more than they have been.

Film Review: Red

I always wanted a nice and perfectly agreeable film as this every week, and we very rarely get it. It's just nice to see people who know how to make good entertainment, and I can't help but think how stupid you have to be to not pull that off. Red comes from a DC Comics series of the same name, so it already has a solid backbone to work off of. However, that's hardly the selling point for this film. So rarely do you get an all star cast for such a small film as this. Then again, most of the films that Bruce Willis deals with these days are short budget mediocre action films. On top of that, Morgan Freeman does a fair deal of unobserved straight-to-DVD work these days. And John Malkovich... well, he's John Malkovich.

The film follows retired CIA agent Frank Moses (Willis), who is being inexplicably and aggresively hunted down by the FBI, along with Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker), a customer service agent that Frank is attracted to, but has never met before. It's actually a rather sweet and unorthodox love story, which is hardly the point of a film such as this. He gets in touch with his old team members, his mentor Joe Matheson (Freeman), wetwork agent Victoria (Helen Mirren), and an LSD infused whatever Marvin Boggs (Malkovich), and together they decide to track down the man responsible for calling the hits on them.

The cast for the film is spectacular all around. When Bruce Willis walks out of a moving cop car, you know you've made the right choice. Mary-Louise Parker is such an awkwardly funny personality, and I enjoy how her character takes everything in stride with a grain of salt. Malkovich is crazy, and that's probably the only character he was ever born to play. Morgan Freeman adds class to any film, and Helen Mirren fulfills our lifelong dreams with the way she possesses the weaponry she is afforded. Karl Urban adds a hardcore quality to his CIA agent character, who you just know will end up turning into a hero by the end. Ernest Borgnine has a cute and hilarious cameo, and Brian Cox shows up unexpectedly.

The cinematography always feels extremely close to taking that extra leap into an amazing shot, but falls just short of that. It's not bad, but it could've easily been more. The original score by Christophe Beck is exactly what you'd expect it to be. Nothing more. Nothing less. The action in this film is pretty sweet, offering us extreme gun fights (with Helen Mirren) and explosions. What good is an action film without explosions? I'm pointing at you Twilight. The film starts out a bit slow, and takes a while to find it's stride, but when Red does reach that important moment when things take off at full speed, it's a hilarious action-comedy that's actually worthy of the price of a ticket.

B+

For Your Acknowledgement: I Was Hoping You'd Have Hair

To start off this week of release, we have two clips from Red for you, because we don't quite get across the reason why this one is worth seeing in one. I know that this film has an all star cast, but when I first saw the trailer, I just assumed I was probably in for another Bruce Willis action flop. However, the footage I've seen has actually been nicely witty in both the dialogue scenes and the action scenes. It's definitely worth a look.