Sucker Punch (2011)

BOMBASTIC!!! – Beyondthefilms.com on Sucker Punch

“Zip, pow, slash, kaboom!” - Sucker Punch on Dialog

“I liked it.” – Oscar Wilde on Sucker Punch

Reviewed by James Ryder

Sucker Punch is a very, very bombastic film. There isn’t an ounce of subtlety to be found here. Once the fight scenes kick in, so does the soundtrack, and every punch is undercut by a driving bass thump or the strum of a heavy metal guitar. Some of it is great fun. Seeing World War 1 planes fighting dragons, robots and many other action film staples is quite exhilarating and inhabits a uniquely post-modern setting. However, most postitive things in Sucker Punch often carry an equal negative. For every impressive action sequence, there will often be several flashy, “look at me, I’m cool” camera compositions which serve no other purpose than to look cool. For example, the camera repeatedly zooms in on shell casings in slow motion during a train heist sequence. Why keep focusing on the casings? One shot would have sufficed for the cool quotient. Are the now useless bullet shells a metaphor for the discarded girls who populate the film? If so, I think it’s accidental. KERPOW!!

The Fighter (2010)

by: Ann Marie.

The Fighter based on a true story follows Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) an Irish fighter before going pro. Micky is trained by his brother, Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale) who talks about his 1978 boxing match against Sugar Ray Leonard. Now in 1996 Dicky is a crack addict and HBO is filming a new documentary which Dicky believes he is going to make a come back at the age of 40. Dicky has also acted as Micky's trainer and their mother Alice Ward (Melissa Leo) has acted as their agent. But Dicky is unreliable and Alice is too controlling. As for Micky he has a fight coming up soon that he's been training for and it's suppose to be a guaranteed win. But when the whole crew gets to the hotel, they find out that Micky's opponent is sick and they brought in a stand in, as they call it someone who just got off the couch. Well it's safe to say Micky got his butt handed to him on a silver platter. After the defeat the whole family heads out to the bar and that's where we meet Charlene Fleming (Amy Adams). Micky asks her out and Charlene becomes a vital part of his life, changing his management team and cutting both Dicky and Alice out of the equation. As for Dicky he finds himself in jail after assaulting a police officer. From here the movie, Micky and Dicky's characters continue to grow all the way up to the last fight.

Catfish (2010)

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Screw You Fish

**SUPER SPOILER ALERT**

**CONTINUE AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION**

Doc or not? Hmmm good question.

Some suggest that social documentaries like this are fraudulent, and to an extent I agree. I do believe that when you are making a documentary about yourself that the desire to embellish would be overwhelming, even impossibly to avoid. That being said, this film does seem very genuine at its conclusion. I can’t say for sure that it is a completely true story as it is presented, but I would like to believe that it is and I suggest you all watch and decide for yourselves.

Catfish is the story of a young photographer from New York City who begins an online relationship with a woman on Facebook. The story goes that a 9 year old girl from Michigan is so infatuated with this man’s photography that she sends him paintings that she has made replicating his photographs. In the process of communicating with this young girl he begins talking to other members of her family. First, he speaks with the mother to coordinate packages they ship back and forth with little trinkets and gifts for each other, and eventually our photographer, Nev, begins talking to the sexy twenty-something sister of his 9 year old fanatic. Over the course of several months Nev and the older sister, Megan, become increasingly close and develop what appears to be a romantic relationship despite having never met in person.

Five Minutes of Heaven (2009)

Time for another DVD Dump Bin entry!  This month Phantom goes all out and spends a whopping $7.50 on this month's film, found in a "Get Drunk Even If You're Not Irish" St. Patrick's Day display among such Irish Classics as the Boondock Saints II and Family Guy Volume 5.

By Phantom

Alistair Little (Liam Neeson as an adult, Mark Davison as a youth) joins a Protestant paramilitary group in Northern Ireland as a reaction to what he felt was baseless Catholic aggression. After killing a Catholic dockworker who threatened Protestant co-worker, Alistair winds up in jail for murder. Many years later, a changed Alistair is scheduled to meet Joe Griffin (James Nesbitt as an adult, Kevin O' Neill as a youth), the brother of the murdered dockworker, for a TV show about reconciliation. The film is divided up into roughly three acts. The first act depicts the murder and the events that led up to it. The second act focuses on the two prepping to meet on television. The final act depicts the life of the two after the television program. It’s difficult to describe all the acts without giving out too many plot details and although they are distinct, the acts are clearly linked. The segues aren’t jarring as much as they are unconventional… which is to be applauded but again difficult to describe concisely.

Thematically, Five Minutes of Heaven is kind of the anti-vigilante picture, which is kind of interesting since Neeson scored box office gold with the vigilante picture Taken a year earlier. However, instead of vengeance killings taking on a cathartic role for the vigilante, killings here take a heavy toll on the soul. Of course the situations are slightly different than those presented in the traditional vigilante picture. In traditional vigilante pictures, the hero is greatly wronged by a petty criminal who goes too far and commits murder, wronging the protagonist. In Five Minutes of Heaven, the context is that of the Northern Ireland “Troubles” between Protestant Unionists and Catholic Nationalists.  Since the film doesn't get into specifics, the conflict could easily be any one where retribution is constantly handed back and forth.  The film doesn’t really get into all of the details of the Troubles, just that it was Catholics vs. Protestants and both the perpetrator and victim of a violent act carried that act with them for years. I suppose the film could be knocked for not providing a lot of sociopolitical background, but the film is really just a character study about two guys forever linked by a single act of violence.

Liam Neeson does a fine job, as does James Nesbitt. There is a bit of speechifying from the character of adult Alistair, though fortunately they are given a deft hand by Neeson and an appropriate context (a television interview and in counseling sessions to be precise). Whereas Alistair gets to tell his feeling to the Camera, Joe gets a few voice over monologs. Nesbitt has the more demanding role, with his character having to contain fear, anger and sorrow into one anxious mess. All the other characters, even Joe's wife who he pushes around in one scene, are peripheral players without a lot of characterization, keeping the focus on the two’s internal struggles. Director Oliver Hirschbiegel who is best known for Downfall (if you’ve spent any amount of time on YouTube you’ve probably seen a “Hitler Parody” utilizing a clip of that film), keeps the film at a good pace and holds the three disparate acts into one cohesive film. The screenplay was written by Guy Hibbert.

Five Minutes of Heaven is a well acted, technically proficient film that has a valuable, if understated theme. However, the film is missing a certain “something” to really push it into the upper echelon of great films. Recommended.

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