Smokin' Aces

For a brief while back in 2006-07, I purchased my way to a friendship with the Leagues of Alamo Drafthouse fame.  They wanted to save their downtown theater, but their original ten-year lease was ending, the warehouse district had exploded in popularity, and the only way they could afford to stay was to become a non-profit.  They founded the Heroes of the Alamo Foundation, dedicated to preserving vintage and genre film presentation in downtown Austin - in other words, to keep the Original Alamo open.  My wife and I joined as our first big philanthropic donation.

It was a good year.  Part of our membership included free access to all Alamo Downtown events.  Despite living out in the suburbs at the time, we made great use of this perk, attending many events, hanging out with the owners and staff, and, for me, for the first time feeling part of the Austin vibe.  And when Butt-Numb-A-Thon came around, Tim held a few seats for us members and got me in, despite having never heard of the event or Ain't It Cool News.

This was the year of Octobuttnumbathon, and I was not prepared.  I do not like missing part of a film, even credits, and when Harry played a scratchy 1930s Irish gangster film in the middle of the night, or the 1980s Hanna Barbara animated adult film, I was awake through all of it.  Oh, what a fool I was.  For by the next morning, approaching the 24 hour mark of film, I lacked a changed of clothes or deodorant, and was jittery from caffeine pills.  I called my wife to pick me up, and when she arrived I had to bail.  Not only did I miss the final film in its entirety - an early screening of 300, but I left with 25 minutes to go on the previous film, Smokin' Aces.  So that gets around to the movie.

I like Guy Ritchie films.  Big ensemble British gangster just works.   Joe Carnahan apparently likes them as well, since he copied them to make this.  Except for him, gangster films are set in the Nevada, and feature a wild and improbably ensemble of characters that would otherwise never make it through the front door of any respectable establishment.  Classy, they aren't.  When Buddy "Aces" Israel decides to turn mob informer, mob boss Primo Sparazza puts a hit out on him.  As word spreads, several teams converge on Lake Tahoe to protect him, arrest him, or cut out his heart.  Violence ensues.

Clearly seeing the ending of the film was high on my list, since I managed to wait six and a half years to rent it.  Well, anyway, now I have, and I don't have to watch it again.

When the Leagues made the deal to get the Ritz location, the days of the Heroes Foundation were numbers.  We were able to attend the Last Night at the Alamo, and I took home my favorite chairs, but our year membership expired before the Ritz opened, and with it went our "in" with the clique.  Since then, neither the owners nor staff have acknowledged that they ever even knew who I was.

Smokin' Aces
2006, 107 minutes, directed by Joe Carnahan

GI Joe: Retaliation

It wouldn't take a Joe to drive a tank through the holes in Cobra's plan, making the entire story a laughable chain of improbably action sequences.

Wait, didn't Mission Impossible already use this plot?

GI Joe: Retaliation
2013,  110 minutes, directed by Jon M. Chu

The Bourne Legacy

I thought this was a sequel with a replacement lead.  Needless to say I'm surprised to instead find it's a "co-quel", taking place alongside events of the Bourne Supremacy.  This makes it somewhat disconcerting as they keep referring to things that happened in a film I saw two years ago, not in retrospect but in real-time, in a way that seems vital to the plot.  Or, to put it a different way, the plot of that other film seems so much more important to this one.  It's sort of like the Rosencrantz & Guildenstern of CIA action flicks.

It finally picks up most of the way through as the action intensifies and the film is finally allowed to chart its own course.  And then it ends, all set up for a sequel.

Having dropped from a must-see theater experience to Netflix DVD, I suppose I can't downgrade the series any further.  Overall though, I'm disappointed that they weren't able to set this up better, with more tie-ins to the previous film actually in the previous film.

The Bourne Legacy
2012, 135 minutes, directed by Tony Gilroy

Yellow

Yellow is a lost woman's spiral into depression, punctuated by the fantasies she constructs to cope.  Soaked with the hilarity of her hallucinations, the film has no real character development but leads from crazy to punchline.

Yellow
2012, 108 minutes, directed by Nick Cassavetes

You're Next

I missed this at Fantastic Fest a few years ago - it showed once and then disappeared from the schedule, one of the legendary screenings that got away.  Now it's back in all its glory.  A family gathers for reasons both complicated and unknown, while masked terror lurks.  When the horrors unleash, a family guest reveals her true nature.  It's pretty damn awesome.

You're Next
2011, 95 minutes, directed by Adam Wingard

Hours

2005.  New Orleans.  Something is wrong, and Abigail and her husband Nolan rush to the hospital.  Abigail dies in childbirth, leaving Nolan lost and barely able to relate to the premature baby in a ventilator that the nurse insists is his.

Then, Katrina.  The hospital is evacuated, except for Nolan and his baby, still attached to the ventilator that can save her life - if it keeps running when power goes out, order decays, and desperation sets in.

Maybe it's because of where I am in life, but this film moves me, in a way that few have.  It's intimate, raw emotion, and it's the first film since The Fountain that made me cry.  For me, it's the best film of the year.

Hours
2013, 97 minutes, directed by Eric Heisserer

We Cause Scenes

Charlie Todd had an idea: bring art to the masses.  Then he had a second idea: film it.  Almost a decade later, Improve Everywhere is known worldwide for its biggest scenes and continual favorites.  This is a great film about an innovative scheme.

We Cause Scenes
2013, 86 minutes, directed by Matt Adams