Tag Archives: Joseph Gordon Levitt

The Needle Drop

I’m a complete and total sucker when life pairs two of my favourite things – movies and music – in an ungodly goodly way. I love being moved by a score, I love a soundtrack I can relate to, but nothing arrests me like the perfect pairing of a movie scene and a pop song.

You Make My Dreams, Hall & Oates from 500 Days of Summer

This? This is genius. Have you seen this movie? SEE THIS MOVIE! It’s about this guy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who falls for a fanciful, quirky woman, and for a time at least, it’s totally magical and transformative and the best thing about it? She lets him have sex with her! This scene is the morning after – the world is just different. In fact, it’s 10% better. Or 50% better! He literally wakes up with a song in his heart and a bounce in his step. The world is smiling back at him! His own reflection is proud. It’s crazy but it’s relatable. I feel like this too often probably, but if a good song comes on my MP3 (and a good song is always coming on!) and the sun is shining and life is good, then yeah, I’m the girl shaking my bootie down the street. Rarely do other people join in, let alone the bird from Cinderella, but I think it’s only a matter of time. My life is 10% better just knowing this exists in the world.

Stuck in The Middle With You, Stealers Wheel from Reservoir Dogs

This one has possibly made life just a little bit worse. In fact, I have not, since watching this, been able to hear this song and not feel a slight stinging in my ear. But I loved it. Quentin Tarantino is kind of a superstar when it comes to his ingenious pairing of image and sound. Here, Michael Madsen’s Mr. Blonde boogies down to his favourite oldies radio station while severely torturing a cop. The image is graphic and horrible but the song is light and catchy. Your eyes and your ears are experiencing two different realities, which makes your belly do a queasy thing and it’s fucking brilliant, man. I mean, I hate it, but I love it. And Mr. Blonde? He just loves it. He’s having a party. Gives you a lot of insight into just what kind of guy we’re dealing with. Watch at your own risk.

Where Is My Mind, Pixies from Fight Club

The perfect song for the perfect scene – the music is haunting and kind of apocalyptic, the lyrics vague and dream-like. The song is asking Where Is My Mind? when it’s entirely possible that Edward Norton’s protagonist is only just finding it for the first time in the whole movie. The ending is meant to be ambiguous but David Fincher leaves us with a beautiful moment, giving us time to digest the blows we’ve just been dealt.

Wise Up, Aimee Mann from Magnolia

If you’ve seen this movie, and you totally should, you can’t ever forget it. It rains frogs, goddammit. It’s way too complex to explain the various interconnecting characters and stories, but it’s a whole group of people who are in bad situations – the movie tackles regret, loneliness, family violence and exploitation. In the middle of a whole heck of a lot of hard times, every major character takes a turn singing Aimee Mann’s beautiful but unforgiving song, Wise Up.

You’re sure there’s a cure
And you have finally found it
You think one drink
Will shrink you till you’re underground
And living down
But it’s not going to stop
Till you wise up

No it’s not going to stop
Till you wise up
No, it’s not going to stop
So just give up

These lyrics prepare us for the fact that Paul Thomas Anderson isn’t giving out absolution. Mistakes can’t always be erased. There are limits to forgiveness. If you’re looking for a happy ending, look elsewhere. Hard truths, softened by an ethereal melody.

The Blower’s Daughter, Damien Rice from Closer

This movie just kills me and this end shot with the song layered over top really hammers home the wrist-slitting qualities of heart break and loss. Like, if you weren’t quite depressed enough, Mike Nichols finishes you off with this song just so you can be sure that there’s no happiness to be had here, only pain and confusion. Ouch.

Then He kissed Me, The Crystals from GoodFellas

Martin Scorsese might be the king of pop songs and movies so it’s hard to pick just one – hell, it’s hard to pick just one from GoodFellas. But I’m going with this one because it’s a classic Marty shot, a famous minutes-long steadi-cam single take that follows Henry as he leads Karen into the bowels of the Copacabana, passing out twenties like nobody’s business and basically impressing the panties off her. The song mimics this with its carefree feeling and sweep-her-off-her-feet lyrics. You feel and see and hear things from her perspective; it’s a whirlwindy pop song power trip that shows how much privilege he has while also reminding us that he came in the back door. One of my favourite three minutes of film ever.

Tiny Dancer, Elton John from Almost Famous

Who but Elton John could unite a bus full of cranky, burnt out super-egos? In a movie chock-full of songs, this one is particularly well chosen, but we wouldn’t expect any less from Cameron Crowe, would we?

Old Time Rock N Roll, Bob Seger from Risky Business

I resisted including this one for as long as I could, but rarely does a scene rival this one in our collective audience consciousness. It has transcended the movie and belongs now to pop culture’s hereafter. I have never dated a man who hasn’t at least partially recreated this scene for me unbidden and I have never seen this song fail to pack a dance floor. Tom Cruise dances around in his underpants (apparently unchoreographed) and a star is born.

I’m Kissing you, Des’Ree from Romeo + Juliet

Now to cleanse your palette and possibly enrage you, I present to you for your consideration: Baz Luhrmann. It’s nearly criminal to leave him off a list like this, but people have mixed feelings about anachronistic music in period films. This movie was released the exact year I was reading Romeo + Juliet in high school and our English class boarded a bus and drove an hour and a half so the girls could all sob as we watched the movie in a dark, dark theatre. Oh, Leo! Remember when you were briefly a teen heartthrob? Baz Luhrmann does, and this movie serves as a shrine to that era. But it’s also William Shakespeare doing a teen drama, and this song reminds us that in this moment, forget the flowery language and the hundreds of years of veneration – this is about adolescent love at first sight. Meanwhile, Baz Luhrmann is famous for inserting crazy music where you wouldn’t think it belongs – Prince into Shakespeare, Nirvana into the can-can, and Jay-Z into The Great Gatsby. Does Baz Luhrmann get a pass for being inventive or is it just as jarring as when somebody thought to use Queen’s We Will Rock You in A Knight’s Tale or David Bowie in Inglorious Basterds?

It turns out that I could geek out for hours on this subject, so I’ll cut myself off here – for now. Meanwhile, please tell me YOUR favourite musical moment in a movie! Matt, I know you just wrote about Somewhere Over the Rainbow in Face\Off last week, and Sean, I’m guessing yours is probably from Top Gun. 🙂

Brick

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Back in December, I reviewed Mysterious Skin, Looper, and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and made no secret of my Joseph Gordon-Levitt bias. It all started with Brick. I exited the theater when I first saw it back in 2006 certain that this was an actor to watch out for and refusing to listen to my friend’s allegations that this was in fact the same kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun.

Watching it again nearly a decade later, Brick feels a bit like a feature length high school video project- complete with an extremely low budget and a high school serving as the unlikely setting for a Maltese Falcon-style detective story. JGL plays a loner named Brendan who must navigate the seedy underworld of his school to solve his ex-girlfriend’s murder. The dialogue, music, and twists seem to come from a bizarre 40s noir. Instead of a meddling cop, we get a nagging vice-principal.

Just like in the Leonardo DiCaprio version of Romeo and Juliet, first time writer-director Rian Johnson (who JGL later worked with again on Looper) relies on the anachronisms in the discourse to make an old story feel new. This gives him an excuse to tell a pretty straightforward detective story without it feeling like just another detective story. I’ll admit his style takes some getting used to and I was completely thrown off at first back in 2006. But once you get the hang of it, it’s easy to get caught up in Johnson’s surreal picture of a modern high school. Sure, they don’t talk like real teenagers but they never do in the movies anyway. At least Brick is fun to listen to.

Brick runs just a little bit longer than the novelty of Johnson’s gimmick and there are a couple of times too many where he uses self-parody as a bit of a crutch. The film really works best when it’s reminding us that the darkest of secrets can be hidden within the walls of our publc schools. You’ll either love the film’s style or you’ll hate it but JGL sold it for me. He always strikes just the right note and, like the movie itself, has one foot in the past and the other in the present. He has the look of a modern troubled teenager with the soul of Sam Spade. Nearly a decade later, I am still always looking forward to his next project.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

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For a blow-by-blow account, read Jay’s live blogging of Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.

“I’ve gone and done something again. Wish I could remember what”.

Marv (Mickey Rourke) has gone and done it again. It’s bad to forget your medicine when you’ve got a condition. This opening, based on Frank Miller’s short story Just Another Saturday Night, does not bode well for the rest of this sequel that I’d been anxiously awaiting for nearly 10 years. The first scene of Sin City, where Josh Hartnett plays a contract killer who completes a contract that a woman apparently put out on her herself, was not like anything I had ever seen. Sin City 2’s opening felt so much like a movie that I’d already seen before that, when watching it with Luc, it took me five minutes to convince him that we weren’t accidentally rewatching the first one. This had better get better fast.

“Poker. Savage power in gentlemen’s hands”.

If you’ve read my other reviews, you might have noticed that I have a bit of a Joseph Gordon-Levitt bias that I might as well come clean about. With that kept in mind, this next segment of the film, an original story by Frank Miller written for the movie, is the strongest by far. JGL plays a gambler who wins more than he should have against the beastly no good Senator Roark. He’s cocky but with more than his share of demons and if there’s one thing JGL knows, it’s cocky with more than his share of demons. Plus, movies like Brick and Looper have prepared him for lines like “Sin City’s where you go in with your eyes open. Or you don’t come out at all”. It isn’t just him that makes this the best of the four stories though. Everyone involved seems to be having more fun, especially Powers Boothe as Roark, who seems to get hard with every ruthless word.

“It’s another hot night, dry and windless. The kind that makes people do sweaty, secret things”.

This is really the main segment of the film, a nearly panel-for-panel adaptation of one of Miller’s more popular graphic novels, A Dame to Kill for. Eva Green plays Ava Lord, a damsel to kill for who seduces men into doing horrible things, including our old pal Dwight (this time played by Josh Brolin). The almost constantly naked Green is even more wicked than in Miller’s 300: Rise of an Empire earlier this year. She seems to relish playing her, even if she never seems sure what to do with her accent. Everyone else is phoning it in though. Brolin growls through all his lines like he’s trying to out-Marv Marv. Rourke, as Marv (over-used in the sequel) sounds like he showed up to the ten-year Sin City reunion only to find that it wasn’t nearly as much fun as he remembered. And Ray Liotta, in a short cameo, uses the campy dialogue as an excuse to go full Liotta. This story might have been a better fit for the first film, when the novelty was still there.

“I don’t use the stripper logic anymore”.

We end with another original story, this time focusing on Jessica Alba’s character. It gets off to a pretty good start. Nancy starts to fall apart after the death of Bruce Willis’ character in the first movie and Alba plays it better than I would have expected. The segment itself starts to fall apart very quickly though with more skull-crushing from Marv and a crossbow-wiedling Nancy. It ends with the death of a character that may kill the possibility of a third Sin City, which I would have been disappointed by 9 years ago. After watching this sequel though, it’s probably for the best.

Looper

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After reviewing Mysterious Skin yesterday, I was inspired to buy and rewatch Looper. I think this movie was high profile enough for me not to bother with my usual summary of the plot so I will just offer a reminder that this is the one where Joseph Gordon-Levitt (the connection to Mysterious Skin in case you were wondering) plays a specialized hitman who must hunt for his future self (Bruce Willis) who has been sent from the future for assassination.

If you haven’t already seen it, I highly recommend it. Director Rian Johnson (Brick) creates a version of the future that is different enough from our present to be interesting but similar enough to be relatable. Because people are sent from the future just to be executed, not to change the past, Looper even avoids most of the logic problems that are usually par for the course with time travel movies. Okay, there are still a few “yeah, but wouldn’t…” moments but maybe that’s even part of the fun. JGL apparently spent a lot of time watching old footage of a younger Willis and, with the help of some talented make-up artists, the two actors do a better job than you might expect of being convincing as the same guy. Oh, and you have Jeff Daniels playing a gangster. So, see it.

But I’m mostly writing this not to the people who haven’t seen it but to those who have. Or at least to those who have either seen it enough times or seen it recently enough to remember what I’m talking about. Please, please, explain that ending to me! When I first saw it back in 2012, I promised myself that if I saw it again, I’m a smart guy- I could figure it out. But I just rewatched it and I still don’t understand how the last five seconds could possibly fit. So, if you have any thoughts, please leave them in the comment section.

Mysterious Skin

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In the early 1980s, two 8 year-old boys are molested by their baseball coach. They react to the trauma in very different ways. Neil, who had been abused by his coach repeatedly, grows up identifying with his abuser, carrying around some secret pride that he was coach’s favorite. At the age of 15 (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt), he starts working as a prostitute. Brian, on the other hand, a quieter and shyer kid than Neil, grows up having no memory of his abuse and, as a teenager (played by Brady Corbet), has spent years fascinated by stories of alien abductions, convinced that he himself had been abducted. Searching for answers, he tries to track down Neil hoping he can explain the gaps in his memory.

Mysterious Skin is not for everyone. Many will be turned off just by the quick synopsis that I offered in the first paragraph. It deals unflinchingly with subject matter (child abuse, prostitution, and rape) that most of us don’t want to think about in such graphic detail.

Many of us can forgive a mediocre action movie or convenient twists and lazy writing as long as they keep us entertained. For most people, though, if we’re going to sit through a movie with subject matter like this, it had better be GREAT. Which this isn’t. Not everything works, Corbet’s performance as Brian rings true but a subplot involving an alliance with 24‘s Chloe, who plays a reclusive 32 year-old with an alien abduction of her own, is particularly unconvincing.

But director Gregg Araki gets most of the details right. This film is refreshingly, even brutally, honest about the traumatic impact of childhood sexual abuse. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s half of the film is particularly convincing. JGL has made a career of playing tortured young men and he’s at his best here. Neil is charming but unreliable, constantly letting down and pushing away the people that care about him. He seems to have a bit of a death engaging in increasingly risky and unsafe sex. We see a gentler, more compassionate side to him though when he finally reconnects with Brian, leaving us with a glimmer of hope that maybe there’s hope for these two characters after all, quite a feat for a film that is a mostly bleak and punishing experience.

Live Blogging Sin City: A Dame To Kill For

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WARNING: MAJOR SPOILAGE AHEAD

Oh hello, old friend. Less than two minutes in and we have our first dead body. Love the feel of these movies, it’s instantly cool. Mickey Rourke as “Marv”. Familiar growl. Loving the stark contrast of the snowfall in black and white. This narrative is reminding me very much of the first one. Like, a LOT. Like, am I accidentally watching the first one?

Nope. It’s the second one. Jessica Alba’s still sexy. How many babies does she have now? Damn.

Oh shit. Man on fire. “Burning meat.” This explains the first dead body – a weird sense of vengeance. Good citizenry on Marv’s part. Ooooh, lots of breaking glass as he flies through the windshield. I hope that means this movie was released in 3D. Aaaannnnd there’s our first explosion, 4 minute mark.

Oooh, getting arrowed half to death, the noosed the rest of the way. And first slit throat, 5:10. White blood gushes toward me and splashes me with the fact that Marv has just murdered a “brand name” – and he happens to be wearing his coat. Oh that Marv. Conveniently can never remember a damn thing.

Credits: lots of old crew back. Some new faces. Tragically no Clive Owen. Stupid. Jeremy Piven? Seriously? Oh fuck. What have I gotten myself into?

Oooh, cool effect on the shuffling deck of cards. Like that.

Joseph Gordon Levitt. I like him. No replacement for Clive Owen, mind you. Looking very young in black and white. Not nearly jaded enough for this movie. He does have the smug asshole look down though. Been practicing that one in the mirror, eh, Joey?

I was super relieved not to see Rory Gilmore in these credits. Now we’re in a bar where we see some colour on the purty, near-naked ladies. Painted lips. Redheads.

Room full of card sharps. Look like white collar criminals by day. Still wearing their bankers’ shirts. Some heavy shit gambling going on in here. And Joey’s already raking in the chips while Jessie’s in another room with sexy laces all up her thighs, spying on the poker as it plays. Oh, Joey’s playing “the senator”. For HIGH stakes. Bound to be trouble. Jessie’s got a gun. Joey’s got the goods and leaves with lots of coin. A cop player warns him to run – he can’t protect him.

Jessica Alba’s back to dancing. Using the gun as a weird prop. And here enters King Willis. Jessica Alba is nearly ready to shoot the senator as he leaves but doesn’t. Bruce mentally whispers for her not to avenge him. It’s very dramatic, the mental whispering.

JGL is showing his floosie a good time on the town but then his credit cards go mysteriously bad. They’re beign followed and it “smells all wrong.” He confronts the thugs, as big as bulls, and takes them both down. Now he looks clean cut but menacing, a few hairs out of place. He gets into a car with the senator to “go downtown.”

“You made a fool of me, boy.” The senator is displeased. He’s brought pliers, so others will know that they shouldn’t fuck with power. Oh, yup, those fingers are messed the fuck up! And now he’s shooting him, just for good measure. Now everyone else will knowthe senator’s a super sore loser. What the what? Turns out JGL is “one of his” – ie, the senator’s son. One of many bastards apparently. Shit. Son vows vengeance and knowing this movie, there’ll be plenty of it.

Josh Brolin (Dwight) now, creeping on Ray Liotta and some young blonde. He vows this is the last time because his wife is making threats. Doesn’t stop him from taking her dress off. Josh Brolin taking secret pictures. Didn’t need to see Liotta’s ass, and neither do you. After one last (short) fuck, he’s forced to kill the girl to keep the secret so out comes the gun and – more breaking glass! – Clive Owen’s shitty replacement flies through the skylight to smash Liotta’s face in and save the dame, who, it turns out, is not a blonde, but a REDHEAD.

Some coloured neon lights in “old town”. More throaty narration. Dwight brings the photos to Liotta’s wife, having left him beaten and handcuffed to the bed. He’s dramatically remembering some terrible thing that he did (but not sharing it with us) – must be pretty bad because he calls himself a monster and screams into the night while kneeling next to a cliff. SUPER GODDAMNED DRAMATIC.

Back at the office, Dwight gets a call from Ava. Goes to meet her at a saloon. Jessica Alba (Nancy) is dancing in a red wig. Ava appears, blue coat, worth the wait. As tall as he is. Has been thinking of him. He still cares. She gets whisked away for unpleasant business. Dwight tries to talk himself out of it but has to follow her. Spies on her naked. Glorious. Worth the price of admission. Dwight is so enthralled by her luscious buttocks slicing through the pool water he gets surprised by henchmen and falls off the roof. She allows him to be beaten. Badly.

Tossed out of a car, looking pretty rough. His mustang mysteriously returned to him. Ava naked (with a cigarette) in his bed. Shadows in all the right places. Offers herself to him. He threatens to bash her teeth in. This seems to turn her on. He does in fact smack her good before they kiss. Blowie implied, reverse cowgirl, and then more standing around naked, her beautifully on display, him mercifully shadowed. Tells Dwight that her sadistic rich husband allows her to run away only because he knows she’ll always be found, and then disciplined with her transgressions. And then Manute shows up, or has always been there, and though he’s recently enjoyed beating the crap out of Dwight, he does it again, for good measure. More breaking glass as Dwight goes out the window.

Nancy in chaps. Dwight and Marv at the bar. Drinks. Dwight tells Marv about Ava and his eyes “go killer red.” They charge her compound. Two beasts beat the living crap out of each other. More breaking glass. One literally plucks a pulsing eyeball out of the other. Luc can tell by the look on my face that I’m not liking this bit. Meanwhile, Dwight seeks out the evil, rich husband who’s sitting around in his sexy satin robe. Some red blood. Ava is not really covered in a diaphenous robe that’s pleasingly see through and nipplerrific. She accuses Dwight of murdering an innocent man. Apparently this was her plan all along, and he’s made her a rich woman. She shoots him, vowing never to make her living on her back again. Boy he sure fell for her tricks. Aaaaand breaking glass. Jeez. You know you’re having a bad day when you fly through a window for, what? the third time?

Oh hot damn! Bullet in the eye. Didn’t need to see that. Love how he’s still breathily narrating away though. Tough old bugger. Eye for an eye, eh?

Ava is crying to the cops, fingering Dwight for the whole thing, wearing a few more clothes and not as much smutty lipstick. Tells them a whole tall tale. Jeremy Piven is as annoying as I imagined. Maybe more.

Marv is getting Dwight to a guy he knows who’s good with bullets. The girls of Old Town come out with their guns drawn. Rosario Dawson (Gail) in a weird S&M luchador mask.

Ava is naked again, in the bath. Smutty lipstick in place. Detective calls her. He’s also naked. The better to masturbate by? He’s “thinking about her” (this is code for has wood). She “can’t bear to be alone” which is code for : I wish to manipulate you and he and his wood go running.

Gail and her weird mullet just knew he’d be back. And deadly little Miho! Um, dude, she doesn’t recognize you because a) you used to have 2 eyes and b) you used to be handsome Clive Owen. Miho doesn’t kill him because he saved her ass when she was 15. It is unclear why she was threatening to kill him in the first place. He’s hanging around for “more surgery.”

The detective is of course in love with Ava. Is so turned on by her describing a fictitious rape that he has to fuck her on the spot (um, sensitivity training, anyone?) Even Jeremy Piven is disapproving. Detective humps like a dog. Dwight calls and she answers mid-hump. He’ll be coming for her soon. Ava wants the detecting to kill Dwight, but only if a) he’s a man and b) if he wants to ever fuck her again. Jeremy Piven for some reason just doesn’t understand and so he must die: shot through the eye. 3 eyes in under an hour, folks! Show of hands – who’s doinga happy dance that Piven’s already dead?

Oops. Detective puts gun to his own head. Misses his eyes but this one’s gone too.

Ava’s already loving up on warty mcwarterton – Stacy Keach unrecognizable as Wallenquist – who counsels her to procure Dwight’s suicide, and a suicide note confessing to her crimes. Luckily (I assume), Rosario Dawson is undercover (or simply making a quick couple of bucks) as a waitress at this shindig so when a sketchy dude gets off the train and meets Manute, she’s there to meet him in a blonde wig. The wig budget on this movie must be incredible. Rivals the prosthetic eye budget I bet.

And it turns out sketchy train dude is in fact Dwight, post-op. He has floppy hair now. Like Clive Owen? Except you wish! Manute sees right through the ruse. Henchman does not see through Rosario’s southern accent (possibly the leather bustier is helping). Miho, hiding in the trunk, swords him right through the neck. Sounds wet.

Guess who’s naked again! “You can’t make a sale without showing the goods.” Ava comes on to him and he actually has to steel himself not to fall all over her. Huge explosion. Breaking glass. Oh no, pretty naked girl will have scars! Wait, was that an arrow through the eye? Oh! Multiple beheading!

Manute is cocky – takes 6 shots, but not a single head wound. Four more will kill him though (again, I assume). The only 2 left standing, Dwight and Ava celebrate with a kiss. Their tongues are still touching when he pulls the trigger.

Hey. Little JGL is back, knocking on Doc Brown’s door. Doc Kroenig in this movie, I guess. Same crazy hair though. Jesus. “Sterilizes” the scalpel with a nice dirty rag wipe. Extricates the bullet in young Johnny’s leg. Trades his shoes to have his fingers straightened. It’s pretty awful. Now he’s shoeless and it’s raining and he’s feeling pretty sorry for himself when he remembers – the girl!

He goes to her, but daddy’s already gotten to her. Severed hand on the table. Wait. Two severed hands. And there’s her head. Severed. Little Johnny dives through an (open) window to escape. And all he can think about is gambling. Yes, gambling will be his salvation.

Oh shit. Lady Gaga and Madonna’s 1984 eyebrows make an unwanted appearance. She should stick to flushing her music “career” down the toilet. She gives him the buck he needs to get back int eh game.

Tracks daddy down. Gets into the game. Is dealt some good cards, real good, but keeps folding. Pourquoi?

He goes all in. Daddy has 4Kings. Baby has 4 Aces. Oh damn. Little Johnny wins and gets a bullet in the head. But it was a moral victory, right?

Meanwhile, Nancy is visiting Bruce Willis’s grave. He whispers more advice to her as his ghostly self. The senator is fixing to do away with her next – blames her for his yellow son’s death (remember the yellow dude from the first movie?). She’s been hitting the bottle, and the target range.

Nancy wants to show ghost Bruce Willis how she can take down a senator by “going crazy” and like all crazy women, she cuts her own hair. The senator pays her a visit and brings a good old fashioned switchblade. Seems to have the same obsession with making ladies scream as his yellow son. But the apparition was just a dream? I guess that’s why no one lost an eye.

Next stop on the way to crazy town: smashing your face into a mirror. Using broken mirror shard to cut own face. She’s all stitched up like Frankenstein’s monster and recruits Marv for backup. He’s game. An unexplained motorcycle gang is no obstacle at all.

“There’s no reason to leave anybody alive. Nobody’s innocent.”

When did Nancy learn to shoot a crossbow? She must be watching The Walking Dead. Marv just pops someone’s head. Like, crushes it until it bursts open. And chalk another one up for the eye count. Mirrors continue to be Nancy’s nemesis – she gets confused and in her undoing, the senator shoots her, then sexually harrasses her while she’s down.

Bruce Willis’s ghost to the rescue! The senator sees dead people. Nancy regains upperhand and kills him. Dirty rotten town. Roll credits.

What did I think?

This movies does little to improve upon the first.

“Rehash” comes to mind.

Tries to use women as more than props but given the nudity of our femme fatale, I’m not sure they’ve won any points.

Decent, I suppose, but hollow. The first one felt almost ground breaking, and this one just rode on its laurels. If you have 7 years between films, the audience is going to expect something more. Up the ante. This was just cashing a cheque.

The Lookout

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Joseph Gordon-Levitt (also appearing in 50/50) stars in the only bank heist movie screening at Healing Fest 2015.

Chris Pratt (JGL) was hot shit back in high school until some reckless driving leaves him with a traumatic brain injury. Since the accident, he can’t concentrate quite like he used to and needs to make himself a list of instructions to even be able to do simple things like making himself a bowl of soup. After what seems at first to be a chance encounter with an old schoolmate, he soon finds himself in way over his head when he is manipulated into acting as accomplice in a bank robbery by a gang of low-lifes looking to take advantage of his disability.

The ski masks, shotguns, and double crosses only make up a small part of this indie thriller from writer-director Scott Frank. The Lookout tells the story of a young man who not only has to learn to live with a brain injury but with the consequences of his own actions. Two of his classmates didn’t survive the accident and Chris still can’t bring himself to visit his ex-girlfriend, the only other surivivor from the crash, who has lost one of her legs.

JGL apparently prepared for his role through sleep deprivation and strenuous physical exercise before filming to help give himself that confused and exhausted look. He’s made a career of playing likeable characters with more than their share of demons (Mysterious Skin, Brick, Looper) and his hard work pays off here. He keeps us invested in this story even as the plot twists start to seem implausible.