Blu-ray Review: Crypto (2019)

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Having written a compliance report that ruffled feathers on Wall Street, anti money laundering officer Martin (Beau Knapp) is sent back home to Elba, New York like a kid who acts out at summer camp.

Not bothering to change out of his department store suit the entire time he's home — or even when he goes hiking with Alexis Bledel — it's no surprise that his sudden return to audit a local bank rubs people in as wrong of a way as his report.

Confronted by his tough, veteran big brother (a strong Luke Hemsworth) who later picks a bar fight with him, Martin has enough to deal with on the home front even before cryptocurrency, the Russian mob, and money laundering are added to the mix.

A film that seems like screenwriters Carlyle Eubank and David Frigerio — working from a story by Jeffrey Ingber — tried to squeeze as many buzzwords as they could into the otherwise oddly passive movie's plot, Crypto is a family drama, a cyber thriller, and a crime film unconvincingly rolled into one. With at least three different storylines wrestling to see which one gets to take the lead, aside from knowing that our lead will always be in a suit for no reason whatsoever, we never quite know which version of Crypto we're going to get from one scene to the next.

Still, after a weird introduction to the mob through a campy, sexually aggressive art gallery owner who seems to have wandered over from a David Lynch set, the film settles into a nice groove for awhile.

Playing like a watered down, abridged version of the John Grisham movie The Firm to the point that we almost want to call Martin Mitch McDeere (I mean he's got the suit and all), just when it starts to get interesting, Crypto veers off once again.

And while the Grisham approach might've served director John Stalberg Jr.'s film well enough if it'd been carried throughout, the film's A-list talent objects by hitting the screen and changing our mind with a vengeance.

As Martin's proud father hoping to save his struggling farm and son (Hemsworth), Kurt Russell turns in a terrific if all too brief supporting performance that makes you wish they would've focused on Martin's family tree and dropped the poorly developed Russian mob subplot once and for all.

Trying to tie it all together with yet another idea involving cryptocurrency and Martin's convenient hacker friend, by the time we reach its increasingly illogical third act, the sleepily directed Crypto has all but fallen apart.

The only upside? Luckily, Martin's suit holds up.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Parts Per Billion (2014)

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In his overly ambitious yet ultimately overwrought feature-filmmaking debut, writer/director Brian Horiuchi takes an Altman meets Iñárritu style approach to his end of the world tale of three couples whose romantic relationships are put to the test on the brink of a biomedical weapon hastened apocalypse.

Filled with confounding edits and nonsensical transitions that frequently lead us forward and backward in time before we’ve even begun to get our bearings straight, Horiuchi’s meandering work moves so awkwardly from one place, point-of-view and time to the next that we’re left with a knotted yarn we can hardly unravel as opposed to the poetic tapestry I believe he was attempting to weave. 

Nonetheless, to his immense credit and future promise as a storyteller, Horiuchi utilizes a clever foundation with which he begins to build his narrative.

For contrary to their initial introduction as everyday citizens watching events unfold on the news over which they seemingly have no control, we soon realize that the film’s main three couples are not only linked to one another but also to the war-related attack that’s hastened the end of civilization.

While this alone should’ve ensured a promising thriller, tragically Horiuchi uses the lightest of brushstrokes to illustrate this idea rather delving further into a greater exploration of man’s culpability and link to one another on a global scale.

Thus instead of focusing on the actual tangible moral drama inherit in the setup, Horiuchi’s film spends way too much time manufacturing sudsy soap operatic subplots involving marital strife, economic woes and domestic issues that are all in desperate need of a major rewrite.

And while this could’ve proven intriguing if the narrative had perhaps unfolded a bit more conventionally in chronological order, unfortunately by inserting lines of dialogue that don’t even begin to pay off  (or even make sense until much, much later) it all feels very inconsequential when you contrast the petty squabbling with the end-of-the-world framework that should’ve taken precedence throughout.

Moreover although the literary technique might have served the material much better on the page than on the screen, ultimately as a film, the odd priorities of foolish arguments and vague inferences that never fully explain just where the characters are coming from make Billion largely ineffective overall.

A work where certain moments as well as the chemistry of its cast (most notably between Penn Badgley and Teresa Palmer) help keep you watching, all in all there’s not enough for the players to do to sustain your interest for long.

And perhaps sensing that and ultimately giving in, Horiuchi chooses a strange moment for the action to simply end in a cut to credits that feels more like a surrender than a stopping point.

A major letdown for actress Rosario Dawson (who also inexplicably produced this cinematic blunder) as well as Josh Hartnett (who plays her husband in a likewise underwritten role), Parts Per Billion not only fails to generate any empathy or genuine understanding for those two leads but it doesn’t even bother specifying a certain fate for the characters in its bizarre conclusion.

Although Gena Rowlands and Frank Langella help class up Horiuchi’s pretentious misfire, overall it’s one of those mind-boggling, conceptually clever yet half-baked celebrity driven film festival bait movies where one A-list caliber actor signs on and it starts a chain reaction for other under-utilized, talented performers to join the pursuit even if they’re unable to heighten the film based on their charisma alone.

An apocalyptic Altmanesque film that tries to build tension before realizing that there’s nowhere for the movie to go, although Horiuchi’s Parts Per Billion started with an enviable amount of potential, ultimately what we’re left with is less a cohesive work worthy of your time than simply a mismatched collection of its disparate parts.

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Blu-ray Review: Violet & Daisy (2011)

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There’s an old adage warning writers that there are no original plots – Shakespeare did ‘em all. Of course, this in itself is a bit of a joke based on how much of the Bard’s output was inspired by previously published works, not to mention the whole debate over whether or not he actually wrote any of his own material or was simply the man who got the credit.

Obviously it’s up to a great writer to make even the oldest and most familiar storylines about love, death, revenge and all of the emotional shades in between seem new again. But with so much content released in so many different ways over the years, authors not only have to contend with stories that have been told a million times before but also with an audience that’s heard ‘em all before as well.

 

And unfortunately in the case of Precious screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher’s feature filmmaking debut as both writer and director, anything new that Violet & Daisy tries to serve up is bogged down by the weight of everything that came before it.

What feels like the cinematic emptying of a pop culture recycling bin, Fletcher dreams up an uneasy blend of fairy tales and graphic novels, using hardboiled pulp fiction from the ‘30s and ‘40s to bridge the two genres together and the result is as mind-boggling as you would expect.

The World of Henry Orient by way of The Professional (aka Leon), Fletcher’s introduces us to our two titular teenage assassins doing a Pulp Fiction style walk-and-talk before bringing down men twice their size in a hail of gunfire.

 

It aims for too-cool-for-school but ultimately leaves us cold, shivering at the emotionally detached celebration of style or substance without giving us any sense as to who the young women behind the bullets actually are and wondering if we’re watching something closer to surrealism or satire than a straightforward storyline.

Unfortunately, it’s a question that never really gets answered, as Fletcher hints at a great number of things and tries to incorporate too many big picture ideas about absentee-parentism, empty consumerism and celebrity worship than he can actually address in the guise of a hit-man (or hit girl) film throughout Violet's intriguing but ultimately unsuccessful eighty-eight minute running time.

 

Determined to complete their latest kill in order to purchase a signature dress by their favorite singer, the girls (played by Alexis Bledel and Saoirse Ronan) are caught off guard when they interact with their mark (James Gandolfini) and begin to see him as a human rather than a hit.

Augmented by the performances of its leads, Violet is temporarily saved by the late great Gandolfini as a surprisingly friendly would-be victim, who not only seems eager to be assassinated but has made the girls cookies for precisely this occasion.

 

Though it isn’t too hard to guess why he’s glad death kindly stopped for him, Gandolfini makes the most of his character’s admittedly goofy actions, elevating the simple script with more tenderness than we’ve seen throughout, sublimating the disconnect he has with his own daughter into his final day with the fatherless gum-snapping, gun-toting lost girls that show up at his apartment.

Yet it’s the inauthentic, overly-cutesy characterization of the girls that baffles throughout, interrupting bursts of jarring ultra-violence including jumping on top of bullet-strewn bad guys by awkwardly infantilizing them with tricycle rides and pat-a-cake games that makes Violet & Daisy border on fetishistic camp.

 

Nowhere near as darkly cynical as Kick Ass to warrant the same level of controversy nor as good at blending quirk with coming-of-age angst as Ghost World – just to name two more films that enter your mind as you watch – though it strives very hard for originality, ultimately Violet feels as synthetic as a pop song sampled from past hits we know by heart.

 

While The Bling Ring did vapid consumerism among bored teens much better this year, perhaps the greatest tragedy of Violet & Daisy is that buried beneath all of the kitschy madness and self-conscious parody is enough of an idea to have generated a much better movie.

The only thing stopping Fletcher was Fletcher in paring down the script a few more times until he carved out a storyline that could have adequately supported one of his endless ideas… and perhaps a pop culture moratorium that lasted until Violet & Daisy transitioned from script to screen.    


Text ©2013, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (2008)

Director: Sanaa Hamri

Predictably, unlike the crowded screenings for The Dark Knight or Swing Vote, when it came to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, the reserved press section had enough vacancies that the seats next to mine were released rather quickly. Soon enough, a kind, educated couple and their adorable, roughly nine-year-old aspiring blogger/film critic daughter became my impromptu movie buddies. Surprised to see such a young face amidst a theatre filled with halter top-wearing, high-heeled shoe adorned teenage girls who all looked like they’d mistaken the screening for a Gossip Girl audition or a Miley Cyrus concert, I eagerly chatted with the amiable family.

Quickly I learned that their daughter was not only the biggest fan of The Sisterhood but had also — unlike this reviewer whose schedule prevented proper preparation — recently watched the original 2005 film a few times earlier in the week to double check where the director Ken Kwapis had bookmarked the lives of Tibby (Amber Tamblyn), Lena (Alexis Bledel), Carmen (America Ferrera), and Bridget (Blake Lively). While Kwapis didn’t return for the Sisterhood reunion, Warner Brothers made an excellent choice in bringing in the talented Sanaa Hamri, who is not only a female director and thus more in tune with memories of female post-adolescent identity crises but also one whose wonderfully uplifting and overlooked romantic comedy Something New was one of the best entries into the genre over the last few years.

Although unaware of any changes behind the scenes, the contagious enthusiasm expressed by my new young seatmate made me recall just how surprisingly good the first movie had been. Given its intelligence, humor, warmth, and compassion, it put to shame all of the forced women’s bonding films such as the anti-feminist Georgia Rule and stereotypical Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.

Additionally, the fact that a girl that young could view the film speaks volumes for its family friendly quality. And although both the original and especially the sequel do contain some issues that make the most of its PG-13 rating, the filmmakers and screenwriter Elizabeth Chandler (taking plots from numerous titles in the series by Ann Brashares) ensure that it’s all handled with taste. Besides, luckily it appeared that my seatmate seemed to have the ideal parents with whom she could consult were there any lingering concerns she wanted to discuss after the film. Therefore it was joyous to see parents and children both enjoying a film together and appreciating aspects of it on different levels as some jokes played better to males in the audience than females and others struck a chord with varying generations.

Catching up with The Sisterhood’s foursome after their first year of college, we find them all dealing with that instantly relatable feeling of trying to reconcile the concerns and friendships of their youth with their new busy lives studying and living in various places. As those who are of a certain age are readily aware, it’s a tough transitional time where friendships are put to the test but the girls all continue loyally shipping the worn pair of blue jeans to each other in the hopes they will slide not only into the denim but the miraculous good fortune the jeans are purported to inspire. However, predictably we learn that over the previous freshman year, The Sisterhood has started to drift, barely e-mailing one another with some beginning to view their traditional ceremony at the beginning of the summer as “forced” rather than the spontaneous and exciting ritual they’d begun in the original film.



Set over the course of another fateful summer and unfortunately given little in the way of shared screen time, we follow the adventurous events of each girl’s life in Chandler’s jam-packed script. In trying to be all things to all people, the screenplay grew in both complexity and length but unfortunately not in quality, most likely similar to those infamous, unhygienic jeans which have barely survived after too many trips through the washing machine along with racking up the frequent flyer miles from globe-trotting via FedEx. While overall, the film is so warm and comforting that it reminds one of a teddy bear, Sisterhood 2 is so overstuffed with plot points and introduces too many useless new characters that it is bursting at the seams and leaking stuffing and plot threads throughout.

Before the smash success of Ferrera’s Ugly Betty made her the marquee name of the sequel, the former film’s biggest “name” star, Gilmore Girls’ Alexis Bledel, reprises her role as the ultra-feminine, sweet-natured, sketch-happy Lena. Thrown for a heartbreaking loop early on, Lena’s on again/off again relationship with Kostas (Michael Rady) is jeopardized with some shocking news. Still reeling from the revelation about the man she assumed was her soul mate, she continues studying at the Rhode Island School of Design where her spirits are lifted when the possibility of a new love literally unfolds before her eyes in the form of Leo (Jesse Williams), a handsome fellow art student who moonlights as a nude model in exchange for studio time.

Of course, this being a family film marketed for tweens and teens, the nudity is implied rather than overt but Bledel charms in an early scene as she stumbles, fidgets, blushes and reminds us of the socially awkward Rory Gilmore we used to know and love. Unfortunately, soon enough the lackluster plotline makes her character just go through the motions until Lena’s problems are wrapped up in a rather forced and ludicrous conclusion in Greece that actually felt like the segment had been added in during the filming stage to bring the gang back for one last hurrah.

While it’s Ferrera who is drawing the most critical praise for her return as Carmen, the insecure and often overlooked bright young woman feeling left out as both her family and friends have proceeded to move on with their lives, Carmen clings to her youth and the pants of The Sisterhood as if they were a baby blanket. After spending an unenthusiastic year at Yale School of Drama working as a tech helping the school’s star diva Julia (Rachel Nichols) make quick changes and exits, she accompanies Julia to a theatre program in Vermont.

Under the direction of pompous Kyle MacLachlan (visibly loving his clichéd role) and catching the eye of British hottie Ian (Tom Wisdom), Carmen discovers her inner actress and finally earns her own chance to shine after being cast in Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale. Despite Ferrera’s talents which are best displayed with her stellar work in independent films like Real Women Have Curves and her award-winning television series, she never fully convinces us this time around in her Shakespearean debut. In this case, I’m wondering if it’s possibly due to Hamri’s direction or Ferrera’s own intuition as “Carmen”. By playing Shakespeare with an incessant exclamation point, it always felt like a forced performance (or the old warning of an actor “acting”), thereby taking away from Carmen’s storyline, which admittedly consisted of a recycled All About Eve meets 42nd Street subplot.

The film’s strongest plot surrounds Blake Lively’s Bridget who returns from playing soccer at Brown University to the still overly quiet, sad home where she and her father (played by the father of the actress, Ernie Lively) struggle to converse, still equally haunted by Bridget’s mother’s suicide. While preparing for an archeological dig in Turkey led by House of Sand and Fog actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, Bridget stumbles upon a box filled with cards and letters from her estranged grandmother Greta (Blythe Danner). Midway through the Turkish adventure, she inevitably makes the decision that her own past is more urgent to dig up and goes to visit her feisty grandmother.

While their scenes are filled with emotional potential, especially with the pitch-perfect casting of Blythe Danner who manages to give Blake Lively more to do than simply pout and sigh like her Gossip Girl character Serena, the effect is overly rushed and too much time is spent trying to juggle the other, less interesting plots. However, in retrospect, the other characters’ arcs may have been put on the front burner since Bridget’s is the only one that doesn’t involve romance and Warner Brothers most likely wanted to ensure the teen viewers had enough chances to swoon at the attractive male stars in Lena, Tibby, and Carmen’s storylines.

In my humble opinion, the best actress of the group is Joan of Arcadia's Amber Tamblyn as the wisecracking, cynical, aspiring filmmaker Tibby (a more likable version of Thora Birch’s Enid from Ghost World) and while she was given an admittedly contrived plotline in the first Sisterhood, it was also one of the film’s most moving storylines. This time around, despite being tossed one Juno-like plot device which Tamblyn plays to masterful comedic effect, she’s wasted here and in some scenes it feels like she’s only set to enter just to deliver a well-written, witty line (for proof, just check out the film’s trailer). Unfortunately, aside from a superb build-up to a conflict that never fully materializes in a way that’s beneficial to the script other than to end up as an obstacle to romantic happiness with her equally hip beau Brian (Leonardo Nam), we get far too much Carmen playing Shakespeare than we’d like.

While fans of the original are sure to enjoy it, the film ends on an unintentionally hilarious note via a ridiculously spontaneous journey to Greece to find the pants that the girls fear have been the only thing keeping them together. But despite Sisterhood 2's many, many flaws and the way characters and stories are just inserted for distraction much like the beadwork, ink, and ornaments on their famous jeans, it’s still quite a welcome sight to see a film that can play to audiences of all ages. Not to mention, the bonus that it’s a feature film which portrays young women as intelligent and thoughtful as opposed to the media-perpetuated cliché they’re simply vacuous beings all just angling for credit cards and trips to the mall.

Admittedly, box-office wise, it’s unfortunate that it’s playing opposite the Summer Olympics; however, given the elevated celebrity of Lively and Ferrera, it’s sure to garner more ticket sales than the original film did. Although, via the advice of my new young acquaintance whom we will probably see reviewing on the world wide web someday, I’d urge prospective audience members to check out the first Sisterhood before they journey to the theatre so they can see how surprisingly good a stereotypical “chick flick” can be.