Twice now, the Drunk Monkeys film department has participated in what we call a Drunk Monkeys Movie Club event. It’s a fairly straightforward concept. The editorial department picks a movie, I write up a little carnival barker advertisement for it, and then we generate interest on social media. We’re going to watch the movie, and we’re going to talk shit about it on Twitter every step of the way.
Robert Downey Jr. wants to remind us he’s neither Iron Man nor Tony Stark in The Judge. He plays a quick-witted, fast-talking, big shot Chicago lawyer named Hank Palmer, who takes airplanes from Chicago (whose city limits touch Indiana) to some fictional town in Indiana called Carlinville, and he’s got a problem. Two problems, actually. No, make it three. In fact, Hank Palmer’s got a gargantuan web of problems that tangle together when the death of his mother draws him back to sleepy, rural Carlinville. This sets in motion an armada of conflicts in this courtroom family drama so drenched in melodramatic tropes that The Judge manages to make daytime soap operas blush.
"The two most harmful words in the English language are ‘good job’”. So says JK Simmons as Terence Fletcher, respected and feared music teacher at prestigious academy where Miles Teller’s Andrew attends school. This much is known: Fletcher is a physically and verbally abusive prick who is never going to inspire his students to stand on their desks in tribute. In fact, they’re much more likely to be fleeing the classroom in tears. But Fletcher would tell you there is a method to his madness, that the only way to inspire true greatness is to push others far beyond their limits until any vestige of humanity is eradicated and only the artist in his purest form remains.
At first glance, Dracula Untold just looked like a slightly darker Van Helsing or 2010’s The Wolfman. But don’t let that scare you because this film isn’t a festering pile of refuse. Sure, it’s not exactly Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Nosferatu or Let The Right One In but it is still a decent film that people will actually enjoy watching.
Sometimes there are hidden benefits to being an ignorant American. For example, someone could make a movie about a huge historical event that happened in England just thirty years ago, I have the advantage American can say “mining strike? Hmm. Interesting, tell me more”.
October is here and that means Horror Films! Hooray!
I have in the past found Rosamund Pike to be wooden, and she is at times here as well, but she works. She captures the controlling, manipulative nature of Amazing Amy and her coldness only stood out in the lovely scenes which chronicle Amy and Nick’s blossoming romance. As for Ben Affleck, while I actually believed in him and his ability to play a narcissistic douche bag and he delivered completely. I’ll let you decide if that’s because I’m an optimist or a realist.
Even if the twist ending for Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie’s almost twenty-year-old classic The Usual Suspects strikes you as fantastically impossible, and it has indeed struck that chord with certain viewers, it’s hard to get angry at the ride. When the film was released in 1995, a few people actually did. Most notably, Roger Ebert put the film on his “Most hated films” list.
Cousin Marv’s is a forgettable little bar tucked away in Brooklyn. It’s a hidden sanctuary where the locals seek refuge, where Bob Saginowski (Tom Hardy) tends bar, doling out the occasional free drink to someone who needs it, to someone lost and alone in this inescapably expansive city. Bob’s cousin, Marv (James Gandolfini), manages the bar, his eyes carefully surveying the bottom line. Marv used to own this place back in the day. He used to be a well-respected king – a god, even. Then life intervened, and Marv sold the bar adorning his name to Chechen criminals. These new owners kept the name, but they gutted Cousin Marv’s soul.
After reading a blog post by an L.A. Weekly writer on the worst hipster movies of all time, my first thought was I wish someone would punch that guy in the back of the head. It was a childish reaction. Largely based on “HE HATES A LOT OF THE MOVIES I LIKE, BRARARARARAR!” logic, there was also some basic confusion in there. Shaun of the Dead is a hipster movie? Where’s V for Vendetta, the definitive slacktivist call to clammy, meaty arms? For a good five minutes, I was righteous in my self-assured agitation with this shimmering jackass.