josh brolin | the m0vie blog

Batman – Year Two (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 22, 2014 by Darren

23rd July is Batman Day, celebrating the character’s 75th anniversary. To celebrate, this July we’re taking a look at some new and classic Batman (and Batman related) stories. Check back daily for the latest review.

Batman: Year Two is an… interesting read. It’s much-maligned by comic book fans, and there are a lot of reasons for that. Most obviously there’s the fact that it really doesn’t make a lot of sense, but there’s also the fact that it was published by DC as a way of capitalising on the success of Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One. Year One is a classic comic book story, one of the greatest origins ever written, and one that endures to this day, where even Scott Snyder felt intimidated in writing over it more than two decades after it was published.

Batman: Year Two is not that sort of classic.

In fact, it’s not any sort of classic. However, divorced from context, it’s an interesting read. It feels like writer Mike W. Barr is consciously and gleefully subverting absolutely everything that worked so well in Miller’s Batman: Year One, rejecting the notion of a version of Batman anchored in something approaching the real world, and getting right down to the comic-book-y-ness of the character. Positioning it as a sequel to Batman: Year One feels odd. It would almost read better as a rebuke.

Welcome to the late eighties…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Barr, batman, dark knight returns, frank miller, gotham, gotham city, Joe Chill, josh brolin, Mike W. Barr, Miller, Scott Snyder, Warner Bros, zack snyder | 6 Comments »

Watch! Spike Lee’s Oldboy Trailer!

Posted on July 11, 2013 by Darren

If you haven’t watched the original Oldboy, you should really do so now. I’m not as head-over-heels in love with it as most, but it’s a stunningly powerful piece of film making, “visceral” in the strongest sense of the word. After years of trying to get the film off the ground, the American remake is incoming. I remember when there was gossip about a Steven Spielberg and Will Smith version, which it’s hard to imagine working anywhere near as effectively as the original. The team of Spike Lee and Josh Brolin, on the other hand, looks more likely to deliver something as twisted and bold as Pan Chan-wook’s original.

Anyway, the trailer’s below. So have a look and let me know what you think.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Filmmaking, josh brolin, Oldboy, Park Chan-wook, Spike Lee, steven spielberg, United States, will smith | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Men in Black 2

Posted on June 29, 2012 by Darren

I have to admit, I’m not the biggest fan of any of the Men in Black films. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike, it’s just that they tend to be enjoyable and entertaining… and yet completely forgettable. Of the bunch, Men in Black II (or MIIB) is probably the most forgettable. Again, it’s not that it’s terrible – although some elements flat-out don’t work – just that there’s not really anything exceptional about it either. It’s a reasonably competent comedy adventure, even if it’s never an especially good one.

Black up there a minute…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Barry Sonnenfeld, film, Johnny Knoxville, Jone, josh brolin, Lara Flynn Boyle, Men In Black, Men in Black II, Men in Black III, Michael Stuhlbarg, Movies, non-review review, Patrick Warburton, review, Smith, tommy lee jones, will smith | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Men in Black 3

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Darren

Men in Black 3 is a fine film. Like Men in Black and Men in Black 2, it’s a perfectly entertaining piece of popcorn entertainment if you’re willing to just go along with it. It’s not superb, it’s not exceptional, but it’s not bad either. It’s a decent movie. It manages to probably offer some better moments than the earlier two films, but these are averaged out by some painful deficiencies. You lose Tommy Lee Jones for most of the runtime, but you gain Josh Brolin. That’s a fairly reasonable trade, even if Brolin and Smith don’t share the same chemistry. You get the same wonderful production design, this time heightened by a sixties setting, but a plot that threatens to evaporate if you think about it too hard and any number of developments that are far too easy to predict. Nothing is truly fantastic, but nothing is exceptionally terrible. It just sort of is.

Putting the star in 69…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Agent J, Agent K, Alice Eve, arts, Barry Sonnenfeld, Boris, film, jemaine clement, Jones, josh brolin, Men In Black, Men in Black III, Movie, non-review review, People, review, Smith, tommy lee jones, will smith | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger

Posted on February 28, 2011 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival.

You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger is – we’re told at the start by the (now seemingly customary) narrator – “a tale told by an idiot, filled with sound and fury, signifying nothing.” It doesn’t use the exact quote from Macbeth, but it references it pretty explicitly. However, this seems less like the genuine intention of Woody Allen and more like an excuse scribbled on the introduction to a term paper he couldn’t be bothered finishing, as if to declare to the world, “It’s okay if nothing is ever really resolved or developed and random stuff seems to occur for no reason – that’s the stylistic approach I’m adopting!” I don’t doubt that the movie’s inconclusive nature is undoubtedly intentional, but it’s inconsistency is still infuriating – perhaps more for the sections of the movie that do engage rather than those that meander. It’s not necessary a bad film – Allen is still a great storyteller, even when he doesn’t seem especially bothered – but it’s just not up there with Vicki Cristina Barcelona or even Match Point.

Growing old disgracefully...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: anna friel, anthony hopkins, comedy, film, fortune teller, Gemma Jones, josh brolin, Movie, Naomi Watts, non-review review, philip glenister, prophecy, review, Woody Allen, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Wall Street – Money Never Sleeps

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Darren

The words “too big to fail” are, understandably, bandied around quite a bit over the course of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. While they refer, of course, to the bloated financial institutions holding the world’s democracy to ransom, it’s hard not to get a sense that they could also apply to Stone’s film. The financial crisis continues to prove that Stone’s original Wall Street was a powerful condemnation of all-consuming unchecked capitalism, and one might assume that the timing is right for a sequel. Indeed, Stone’s attempts to make his movie reflect on the harsh economic climate are admirable – but one gets the sense that the director is unable to decide where to focus the camera. As a result, the film loses a lot of its punch as it jumps around from macro-economics to personal tragedies without thinking too much of the gap between them.

Family fortunes?

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Carey Mulligan, frank langella, Good The Bad & The Ugly, Gordon Gekko, josh brolin, oliver stone, shia labeouf, Wall Street | 6 Comments »

Wall Street Guy

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Darren

What with my review of Wall Street going up today and the release of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, I thought I’d post this quick bit of marketing genius from the guys over at Fox. Basically, somebody in the marketing department must have discovered that they were releasing a Family Guy DVD boxset on the same day as the 20th anniversary edition of Wall Street, and though it would be hilarious to mash-up Gordon Gekko and Stewie Griffin. It’s a fun little clip, and it shows that the marketing at the studio doesn’t exactly take itself too seriously (after all, I doubt there was too much overlap between the two fandoms), but it works.

Filed under: Movies, Television | Tagged: arts, Carey Mulligan, Gordon Gekko, josh brolin, Stewie Griffin, Television, Wall Street, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: W.

Posted on November 9, 2009 by Darren

Oliver Stone famously rushed just about every aspect of this production in order to get it into cinemas before last year’s November election. Does that affect the movie? It does and it doesn’t. It doesn’t in that Stone seems to have a clear image of the President in his head and it’s perfectly captured on screen. It does affect the movie in that Stone has to choose an arbitrary cutoff point for his movie, since he can’t end it with the end of Bush’s presidency. So he chooses the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004 to serve as the film’s ending. That point arguably suits the central thesis of Stone’s psychological profile of the man, butit also serves to make that thesis seem heavy-handed or forced. The other side of that coin is that I doubt the Stone would have been able to market and sell the film for a few years after the end of the Bush administration, and the fact that so vintage a diretcor as Stone can still make such a raw and energetic film is a testament to his abilities (that some of us may have doubted after World Trade Centre and Alexander).

Misunderestimate at your peril...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: biography, biopic, dubya, elizabeth banks, film, george w. bush, james cromwell, josh brolin, Movie, non-review review, oliver stone, presidency, president, review, scott glenn, texas, toby jones, w., white house | 3 Comments »

Non-Review Review: No Country For Old Men

Posted on October 12, 2009 by Darren

It’s a funny world. But it has always been a funny world and it’s arrogant to presume that the world waited until we got here to go and get itself in a mess. Sure, some of us carry the fire off into that night, but it’s a very cold and very dark night and all we have is faith that there is an even greater fire out there waiting for us. No Country For Old Men is a stunning film – an odd fusion of the Coen Brothers with Cormac McCarthy which manages to say a hell-of-a-lot without weighing itself down with too much exposition or dialogue. It’s a great film which realy stands out even amongst the Coens’ already-impressive filmography.

Yes, it's a silencer. On a shotgun.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: adaptation, anton chigurh, best picture, best picture oscar, book, coen brothers, cormac mccarthy, drama, film, javier bardem, josh brolin, Movie, Movies, no country for old men, non-review review, review, the coen brothers, thriller, tommy lee jones, western, woody harrelson | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Milk

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Darren

Finally got to sit down and watch Milk, despite it being on my DVD shelf for just over a month now. Tonnes of Oscar nominations and two wins, so it’s got a lot of hype to live up to. Was I satisfied with the latest effort from director Gus Van Sant? Was I ever.