From My Collection: A Simple Plan Movie Review

My history with A Simple Plan is very special. In 1998 I had seen lots of excellent movies that I really admired, but had yet to find a perfect 10. On New Year’s Eve I saw three movies. One of them was Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan, a movie I didn’t have any significant expectations for outside of being interested in Billy Bob Thornton and the premise of the film: three ordinary men find a bag full of money. What should they do with it? It was probably about halfway to two thirds of the way through when I had a realization that the film was on its way to my standard of perfection if only it could avoid any third act missteps. And then it made it. It arrived to the end and Scott B. Smith, who adapted the screenplay from his own novel, had made all the right choices and I stood in awe of this minor little film that was simply astounding.

Nightcrawler Movie Review

I always admired Jake Gyllenhaal’s talent as an actor. His performance in Prisoners demonstrated a real step up in his game, after which I realized he had even more to offer. But now he stars as Lou Bloom in Nightcrawler, which features a Gyllenhaal performance that blew me away like I didn’t think possible. That’s pretty impressive considering his body of work.

We first see Bloom at night, concealed in darkness. He’s clipping the metal chain link of a fence. A security guard stops him. He maintains a friendly, though slightly awkward interaction with the guard. We think he might be able to talk his way out of the situation when suddenly he attacks. Next he’s driving along, the back of his truck loaded with scrap metal, including the chain link, and his wrist bearing the watch that he spied on the guard. The minor violence of the scene leaves such an impression because this young man comes across as so unassuming and physically harmless.

Haywire Movie Review

Before going to see Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire I kept referring to it as “the ass-kicking movie.” It’s hard to argue that I was wrong in my terse description. The whole thing is a ruse to showcase the talents of Mixed Martial Arts competitor Gina Carano in several brutal action fight scenes.

The film opens with a cracker of a fight scene. The stage is set in a tranquil roadside diner somewhere in upstate New York. Mallory (Carano) approaches cautiously, enters and sits down. She’s soon joined by Aaron (Channing Tatum) and their conversation reveals tidbits of a plot we’re not yet privy to. The dialogue here is not the lazy expository garbage of your typical action film. Instead they speak like characters who already know the history and have no concern for the audience’s knowledge. Suddenly and without warning, Aaron has thrown his coffee in Mallory’s face and smashed the cup on her head before they start brawling in the tight confines between the counter and the booths.