Posts tagged woman
“Now You See Me” Misdirection in Its Own Right
Jun 9th
“Misdirection in Its Own Right”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Now You See Me combines the genres of a movie about magicians with a heist movie, and it ends up with an example of more is less.
Even the appearances of Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine can’t pull this movie out of the doldrums.
The story begins when four magicians who each have different specialties are all summoned to a locked apartment in New York City which is full of clues that they have to figure out in order to learn why they were summoned.
The four magicians are Daniel, played by Jesse Eisenberg, who is a master of misdirection; Henley, played by Isla Fisher, who is Daniel’s former assistant; Merritt, played by Woody Harrelson, who is a mentalist; and Jack, played by Dave Franco, who is an expert at card tricks.
Incidentally, Dave Franco is the brother of James Franco.
Then we shift to one year later in Las Vegas, the four now call themselves The Four Horsemen, and they put on a spectacular show in a casino, where Daniel announces, “Ladies and Gentlemen, tonight we are going to rob a bank!”
Well, not only do they rob a bank of 32 million Euros, but the bank is in Paris, France, and the robbery occurs during the show with the assistance of a man pulled at random from out of the audience.
Now the FBI gets involved with Agent Dylan Rhodes, played by Mark Ruffalo, another agent from Interpol, a woman named Alma Dray shows up to assist him, and after an interrogation that is unproductive for the authorities, The Four Horsemen are off to their next big show in New Orleans, which is publicized as the setup for their third show, the “Big Punch,” in New York City.
The thing about magic, however, is that if you know how a trick is done, you lose interest in watching that trick again, and a famous magician tells Agents Rhodes and Dray how The Four Horsemen managed to rob that bank in Paris.
The movie tries to spice things up with races through the streets of New Orleans during Mardi Gras, but again The Four Horsemen escape, and they are on to New York City, where a car chase through the streets and over a bridge don’t help much, either.
Now You See Me itself is all misdirection.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“The Company You Keep” a Blast from the Past
May 4th
“A Blast from the Past”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
The Company You Keep is based on the 2003 novel of the same name by Neil Gordon; Robert Redford produced, directed, and stars in it; and it is about an anti-war protester from the Seventies who has been underground all this time, but is now being chased by the FBI for a murder that occurred in a bank robbery that went bad.
This is somewhat ironic, because the protester, Nick Sloan, was a member of the Weather Underground, also known as Weathermen, who used bombs to draw attention to their cause, which was an anti-Establishment protest against the war in Vietnam.
The story erupts into motion when a woman who was also a part of the movement is captured by the FBI, and a young newspaper reporter, played by Shia LaBeouf, starts digging into the details of her arrest and discovers a link between her and a lawyer named Jim Grant, who lives in the area.
The reporter’s editor tells him, “You keep telling me you’re a good reporter, right? Prove it.”
After more digging into Grant’s background and the details of the bank robbery in Detroit, the reporter believes that Grant is actually Nick Sloan, whom the FBI has been looking for since the Seventies and making them look bad, because they could never catch him.
The reporter’s suspicions prove to be true, and after Sloan gets his brother to take care of Sloan’s daughter, who is 11 years old, Sloan takes off across country with both the FBI and the reporter after him.
Although the FBI believes that Sloan is just running to escape capture, the reporter thinks that Sloan has something else in mind, and the reporter is right.
Sloan is searching for Mimi Lurie, another protester from back in the day, and he is looking up other colleagues who might be able to help him find Mimi, because Sloan believes that her help is the only way that he can get his daughter back.
The people that Sloan gets in touch with are all played by famous actors, so many, in fact, that their appearance can become distracting.
The Company You Keep is a look back at a time when the whole country was in turmoil and a protest group believed idealistically that what they were doing was right, a blast from the past.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“The Place Beyond the Pines” a Terrific, Wonderful Drama
Apr 13th
“Terrific, Wonderful Drama”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
The Place Beyond the Pines is a wonderful drama in three parts about the influence of one generation on the next, or as William Wordsworth put it in “My Heart Leaps Up,” “The child is father of the man.”
The action takes place in Schenectady, New York, and when the movie opens we meet Luke, played by Ryan Gosling, who performs in a traveling circus as a motorcycle stunt daredevil.
One night a young woman named Romina, played by Eva Mendes, approaches him, and Luke recognizes her as the woman he had a fling with the year before when he was in town.
They talk, and Luke gives Romina a ride home, where he tells her that he leaves town the next day and won’t be back for another year.
Well, the next day Luke goes back to Romina’s house to see her, but she is away at work.
The woman who answers the door is holding a baby in her arms, and she tells Luke, “He’s yours. You want to hold him?”
Luke is immediately smitten by this surprise addition to his life, and he makes some dramatic changes because of it.
He quits his job with the circus, stays in town, and determines that he is going to take care of Romina and the baby, who is named Jason.
Unfortunately, Romina, Jason, and her mother are living in the house of Romina’s boyfriend, Kofi, and Kofi doesn’t take kindly to Luke’s sudden appearance and desires.
Meanwhile, Luke meets a man named Robin, who has a small mechanic shop out in the woods, and he gets a job working for Robin, which also gives Luke a place to stay.
Robin also gives Luke the idea for how Luke can make some fast money to give to Romina and Jason, but it leads to disastrous results.
Then we meet Avery, played by Bradley Cooper, who is a rookie policeman in Schenectady, and his first encounter with Luke makes Avery a hero in the eyes of his fellow policemen, which leads to ill-fated consequences.
Avery has a wife, Jennifer, played by Rose Byrne, and a young baby named AJ.
Then the movie shifts 15 years later to the two teenage boys, Jason and AJ.
The Place Beyond the Pines is a terrific film, and I cannot praise it enough.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”