Posts tagged Colin Farrell
“Seven Psychopaths” Is Gruesome Twisted Fun
Oct 27th
“Gruesome Twisted Fun”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Seven Psychopaths is a very funny, very bloody, and very violent comedy that keeps you laughing, but you almost feel guilty about doing so.
It begins with a surprising double murder that seems to be out of place with the rest of the movie until an explanation later on identifies the killer as the first of the psychopaths.
Colin Farrell plays Marty, who is living in Los Angeles and writing a screenplay, but all he has so far is the title, Seven Psychopaths.
Sam Rockwell plays Billy, Marty’s best friend who is also a struggling actor, but he has a profitable enterprise which gets him into serious trouble.
Billy steals dogs from people, and then another friend named Hans, played by Christopher Walken, returns the dog to its owner and modestly accepts a reward for the dog’s return.
Meanwhile, Marty gets drunk at a party, his girlfriend throws him out of the house, and he wakes up the next morning in Billy’s house. And yet when Billy accuses Marty of having a drinking problem, Marty says, “I don’t have a drinking problem. I just like drinking.”
Then Billy helps Marty with his screenplay by thinking up additional psychopaths, and we see scenes of the film as Marty narrates it.
However, when Billy makes the mistake of stealing a shih-tzu named Bonny, all hell breaks loose for everyone involved and some who aren’t involved.
You see, Bonny belongs to a mob boss named Charlie, played by Woody Harrelson, and Charlie will do anything to get Bonny back.
Anything.
As if that weren’t enough of a problem, Billy puts an ad in the local newspaper asking for psychopaths to answer the ad, so that they can help Marty and him with the screenplay.
A man named Zachariah, played by Tom Waits, shows up holding a rabbit, and he tells his gruesome story, which we also see.
Meanwhile, Charlie and his henchmen start closing in on Billy, and so Billy, Marty, Hans, and Bonny take off to the desert, where they can all work on the screenplay and where Billy thinks that the desert is the perfect place for a final shootout.
Now, don’t walk out of the theater when the closing credits start, because the movie isn’t over, and there are additional laughs coming.
Seven Psychopaths is gruesome, twisted fun.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Total Recall” Is Total Overkill
Aug 13th
“Total Overkill”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Total Recall is the 2012 version of the 1990 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and if you have seen the first film, you will keep asking yourself whether you remember it or whether it is a false memory.
One thing is sure, however: Colin Farrell is a better actor than Ah-nold.
Spoiler Alert! The story begins with a dream. Or maybe not.
Doug Quaid has been having a recurring nightmare, and he wakes up in bed with his wife, Lori, played by Kate Beckinsale.
Doug lies to her about the dream–or maybe not–and when she leaves for work, Doug says, “Sleep scares me.”
The time is the future, and there are only two places on Earth left inhabitable: the United Federation of Britain, which is where Great Britain is now, and the Colony, which is where Australia is now.
Doug lives in the Colony, but he works in Britain as an assembly worker, making the commute to and from work in “the Fall,” a super elevator between the two through the center of the earth.
Well, Doug is bored with his life, and after work he goes to a Rekall Lounge where he can have exciting memories implanted in his brain.
However, something goes wrong–or maybe it doesn’t–and the next thing he knows, robotic policemen called “Synthetics” are trying to kill him. So, maybe his choice of memory implant for “secret agent” worked, or maybe it didn’t because he was a secret agent all along with lost memories.
Anyway, a woman named Melina, played by Jessica Biel, shows up to save him, and she is a resistance fighter who claims that he is one, too. Or is he?
Could he be a double agent for the Establishment pretending to be working for the Resistance, could he be pretending to be working for the Establishment but really working for the Resistance, or could everything that is happening to him just be the memory implant from the Rekall Lounge?
What should you believe and what should you disbelieve? When does it stop being interesting and just a screen filled with a confusing story and lots of explosions and special effects, which for this movie are called “visual effects”?
When does the suspension of disbelief become the suspension of belief?
Total Recall is nothing more than total overkill.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Total Recall – Movie Trailer
Aug 9th
Welcome to Rekall, the company that can turn your dreams into real memories. For a factory worker named Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell), even though he’s got a beautiful wife (Kate Beckinsale) who he loves, the mind-trip sounds like the perfect vacation from his frustrating life – real memories of life as a super-spy might be just what he needs. But when the procedure goes horribly wrong, Quaid becomes a hunted man. Finding himself on the run from the police – controlled by Chancellor Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston), the leader of the free world – Quaid teams up with a rebel fighter (Jessica Biel) to find the head of the underground resistance (Bill Nighy) and stop Cohaagen.