Every Sunday, Gill delves into his archive of over 800 movie reviews and randomly selects three for your enjoyment! Here are this week’s…
Layer Cake
Since the creative team of Guy Ritchie and Matthew Vaughn parted ways following the massive success of Snatch, time has shown us that it was, in fact, Vaughn who held the lion’s share of cinematic talent. Layer Cake, his first directorial effort, is a slick and stylish gangster film with all the wit and energy we saw before in Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, but without the hyperkinetic, ADHD frenetics. Instead, Layer Cake is smooth and cool, and is a terrific showcase for the talents of all involved, including Daniel Craig in his star-making performance and Tom Hardy before he became so closely associated with Christopher Nolan’s films. All in all, a terrific time with some badass criminals.
4 out of 5
Green Lantern
Sadly, the most boring things about Green Lantern are its hero, its love interest, and its villain. Ryan Reynolds’ Hal Jordan is no different from Reynolds himself, and for a guy who comes into possession of a ring that can make anything he imagines become reality, he really doesn’t have much of an imagination to speak of. In fact, the power ring, the coolest deus ex machina plot device you could ever dream of, is hardly ever used. Instead, for some reason, the movie chooses to focus a lot on the relationship between Reynolds’ Jordan and Blake Lively’s Carol Ferris. Neither are interesting characters to watch, especially not when there’s a whole planet full of wild-looking aliens who are trying to figure out the best way to defeat a massive, fear-eating space monster just waiting on the sidelines. All of the stuff on the planet Oa with the alien members of the Green Lantern Corps is fun and cool to watch, but unfortunately, the movie’s focus lies elsewhere…on boring, old earth.
2 out of 5
Jonah Hex
A great big mess of a movie, Jonah Hex once again shows that steampunk Westerns just don’t quite work on the big screen, but perhaps the biggest crime this film commits is wasting a perfectly good cast on schlocky material. Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Aiden Quinn, Michael Fassbender and Will Arnett are all perfectly good actors, so there’s really no excuse for making a movie with them and having it turn out stupid. But somehow, Jonah Hex manages it. At 81 minutes long, Jonah Hex is 80 minutes too long.
1.5 out of 5
See you next Sunday for three more thrilling short reviews!