Tag: Matt Damon

Reviews

‘The Last Duel’ Review

Wannabe Movie Critic

Ridley Scott delivers another epic, this time a medieval affair that showcases some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, where friends becomes enemies and relationships are pushed to the brink.

The Last Duel' Is From Three Different Perspectives Similar To 'Rashomon'

King Charles VI declares that Knight Jean de Carrouges settle his dispute with his squire by challenging him to a duel.

If you were to tell me a movie with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Adam Driver, a movie that was directed by Ridley Scott, would be a complete and utter box-office bomb, I would have called you crazy. The Last Duel suffers from only one thing, being a real film. We live in a world now, where every movie that average movie-goer sees, has to do with Superheroes or is already a large existing IP of some sorts. Even myself, I found it weird to sit down and watch a flick that didn’t have any larger stakes at hand, that wasn’t going to be apart of any larger than life expanded universe and I’ll tell you this, it was lovely.

This is an adult movie, it deals with trauma, rape and the consequences of such evil behaviour. How Ridley Scott dives into this material is through the perspective of our three main characters. Matt Damon plays Jean de Carrouges and he is a noble knight and one hell of a warrior, who just wants to be respected, all while trying to be remembered and have his name passed on throughout the generations. His chapter is first and it tells the events leading up to the tragedy that falls upon his wife. This is a slow burn, but we do get blips of action and when it happens it’s really great. It’s brutal and dirty and looks exhausting as I’m sure combat was back in the 1300’s. The longest of the three chapters of the story, it dives deep in to Carrouges awful luck, whether it’s money, his family or not getting the attention or respect that he rightfully deserved.

His friend, well at the beginning of this story, Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) is a fellow Squire, that is almost the polar opposite of Carrouges. He is considered handsome, he has it all, and most importantly he is well respected throughout France. Driver plays him well, the relationship between these two men is strong, but ultimately jealously and bitterness threatens their relationship and is the demise of their tenured friendship. Le Gris has it all, money, woman and respect, so when he sees something he wants, he goes after it and that’s exactly what he does and it becomes his downfall. The second chapter is strong, it showcases Ben Affleck’s Pierre d’Alecnon who is a powerful man and makes Le Gris essentially his right hand man. Affleck is brilliant here, playing a rambunctious, horned up man who loves woman and places his trust in all the wrong people. Driver and Affleck are having the time of their lives all while making Carrouges feel small and unimportant. Taking land that is rightfully his away from him, and not appreciating the amount of blood he is shedding for their rightful King. In the end the thing Le Gris wants most in his life, becomes is ultimate demise as he finds out with unlimited power does not mean life does not have consequences.

In the third and final chapter we get the point of view of Carrouges wife Marguerite de Carrouges (Jodie Comer). The tragic victim of it all. We relive her horror twice in the movie, and through her eyes and her perspective it’s even more disheartening and spine-numbing. She’s unlike most woman at this time, educated, loyal can speak multiple languages. She has a heart of gold, who is loyal to her husband and just wants to start a family before it is too late. She doesn’t gain the respect of Jean’s mother, who is almost at fault for what occurs to her, because like most woman of that era, things happen and you should just deal with it. She stands up for herself, without anyone thinking she is in the right. So when Jean comes to her aid and honour both of their lives are at stake when Carrouges and Le Gris fight to the death in the duel. If her husband loses that means she was lying and must be burned alive because that is “the will of god.” She and Jean want justice and to finally put their demons at rest, which culminates in one hell of a fight.

Performances across the board are fantastic, from heartbreaking to hilarious, again Affleck is all over the place in this movie and it’s great to see him spread his wings and fly again. Beautiful cinematography with a chilling score. Some of the scenes looked like they were exhausting to shoot, all of the battle stuff and it’s great to see a movie look like a real life movie, instead of the green screen treatment a lot of movies get these days. Shot on location, with big sets and tons of extra’s it was simply refreshing.

The movie can drag a little bit, but it’s enough meat on the bone to keep you engaged the entire time and it sucks a movie like this crashed and burned at the box-office, but i think it will still be an awards contender. Support movies like this please and thank you.

The Last Duel – 73/100

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‘Ford v Ferrari’ Trailer

Wannabe Movie Critic

So this year we are getting Leo and Brad for the first time, and now Damon and Bale. 2019 is going to be an all-timer

It sure is refreshing to see a car movie that doesn’t involve super heroes of sorts. James Mangold coming off the incredible Logan, is now taking his talents to the racing world and bringing an A plus cast with him.

This made the list for one of my most anticipated of the year for multiple reasons. I’m a big fan of James Mangold, Walk the Line and Logan are both just incredible films, he’s a fantastic film-maker. Mix in a world class cast that involves some of the very best. You can’t really ask much more from a film, and when you throw in a pretty neat and well put together trailer, it’s a great recipe for success. I’m just excited to see both Damon and Bale in a project like this. I feel like it’s been a long time since either one of these guys have been in a big “Hollywood” movie.

This has Oscar potential. Maybe not for any acting, but technical categories and maybe even best picture. It’s hard to tell from just one trailer but so far so good.

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‘Oceans 8’ Trailer.

Wannabe Movie Critic

I pray this isn’t another Ghostbusters situation on our hands.

Seriously though, I’m all for this fantastic group of women getting together to make a heist movie, but I don’t think it needs to be an ‘Oceans’ movie.

Sandra Bullock leads this all-star cast as “Debbie Ocean,” Danny’s little sister. I love the Ocean movies so much, I hold them dear to my heart. I don’t think you mess with the success of this franchise, unless you have a future plan of combining these two groups of people for an epic Oceans 14. It just doesn’t make sense, this doesn’t need to be set in the same universe, change the title and just make a really good movie about female con-artists. I’m sure they will sprinkle in a few cameos here and there throughout the movie, but I don’t know, it makes it feel like a cop-out.

This cast is stacked, Bullock, Paulson, Blanchett, Munn, Hathaway, Dakota Fanning, Bonham-Carter, Holmes, Rihanna, Kaling, I could honestly keep going, this movie is full of star power. So why not have a woman directing these leading ladies of Hollywood? Gary Ross is directing, the guy behind some of the Hunger Games, but I think they should have totally gotten a women to do this. With everything that’s goes on in Hollywood, more people think woman should direct, which is true, this would have been the perfect chance to do just that. A movie about women, directed by a woman, makes sense to me.

The premise is much smaller than what we are accustomed too, usually these movies deal with casinos, this is about a 100 million dollar necklace, 150 million sorry. I really hope they pull this thing off, do I want to see Danny and the boys back together? Absolutely right I do, and I think so does everyone else. Add in these lovely ladies and I think you’ll have a real winner. I’m hoping the execution of Oceans 8 is pulled off as well as the heists in Oceans 11 and 13.

Check ya later.

Reviews

Throwback Review – ‘Good Will Hunting’

Wannabe Movie Critic

I don’t care if Helen of Troy walks in the room, that’s game 6!


 

Good Will Hunting literally changed my life. The year was 2007, and I was sitting in my dorm room deciding what movie to watch, I didn’t really come to realize my love of movies until later in my life. I stumbled upon Good Will Hunting, but honestly I didn’t know much about it, I knew what it was from the infamous Oscar speech by Ben and Matt, and knew it had one of if not the best Robin Williams performance ever. So as I sat on my bed, and stared at my laptop screen for 126 minutes, I thought to myself how did I go the last 10 years of my life without watching this movie? I just remember sitting their starring down, watching Matt Damon’s; Will Hunting drives off into the distance, as he “had to see about a girl.” I sat there kind of stunned, I really hadn’t ever had that feeling after watching a movie before, I went on to watch Good Will Hunting countless times that semester and I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve watched it since, so many times in fact that I’ve almost perfected my Boston accent.

Will Hunting (Matt Damon), bad boy turned math prodigy, goes around M.I.T solving advanced math equations that only a hand few of people can solve, with pure ease. It’s more than just that though, this has a really special, raw, and unique love story, about learning that it’s okay to let people into your life, and that not all people are the same. Will’s love interest Skylar (Minnie Driver) was excellent as the down to earth brainiac, who just wanted to be loved as much as she wanted to give it. She also has one of the best pick up lines ever dropped on her in this, “well why don’t we just sit around and eat a bunch of caramels.” So many incredible lines and scenes that it’s hard for me to pinpoint my favorite one. This whole movie is just so beautifully written, and smart and has some serious real life issues going on in it. But that shouldn’t surprise anyone seeing how it won an Oscar for the writing, an underrated and unappreciated trait of great movies.

All around phenomenal performances across the board here, from the Affleck brothers, Cole Hauser, Stellan Skarsgard and clearly Robin Williams but we will touch on him later. Let’s start with the four misfits, Ben as everyone knows helped write the movie alongside Matt, and he’s come a long way since being in this movie. He’s had one of the more up and down careers in Hollywood from a bright beginning to a troubling middle act, to what he has become now. One of the best working directors today and he’s the Batman. When you think back to Ben in this, I think one scene comes to mind, when he tells his best friend Will that he’s simply to good for the life he’s living and if I’m not mistaken he says it in a more harsh way, “you’re sitting on a winning lottery ticket, but you’re too much of a pussy to cash it in.” This was a powerful ass scene, because it was Chucky who had to tell Will to get his act together and pursue a better life for himself, and that he wishes that Will would just leave one day, and not even say goodbye. The movie does a great job calling back to that scene at the end of the movie when that exact thing happens, when like every morning, Chucky heads to Will’s front door, to find it empty and he doesn’t breakdown or look sad, but rather has a smile on his face and it’s just a really touching moment. Morgan (Casey Affleck) provides the comedic relief in the film, and most of his stuff was actually improvised and that just makes it even more glorious. From him backing out of fighting because “they got snacks now,” too using Chuckie’s baseball glove for clean up. I wish the Affleck brothers would be in more movies together, especially now a days, let’s get Casey in the DCEU. Cole Hauser, who plays the classic blue-collar Bostonian with a little bit of a drinking problem to a tee. Rounding out the misfits is Damon, who shines in the lead role and is involved in the most powerful scenes in the movie. Still my all time favorite Matt Damon performance. Skarsgard as the brilliant mathematician is just an underrated actor and is always fantastic in whatever role he is playing. Just remember a difficult theory can be like the symphony, very erotic, I guess so?

Now for the main event, Mr. Robin Williams himself! First off, I’m just going to leave his clip here and watch it and remember how brilliant this man was in Good Will Hunting. The therapy session scenes are some of my favorite in all of film; Damon and Williams’s feed off one another so well, and have amazing chemistry. Who knew such powerful acting and such pure raw emotion could come from two men sitting in a room together, it’s just incredible. This was an Oscar winning performance by Robin and rightfully so, they wrote the part for the man himself. His role almost felt real, like Robin had once lived this exact life and he was just reimagining everything from his past, that’s how authentic his role felt to me. He’s had so many memorable roles in his life, but for me this will always be the one I remember most. He might be remembered for he’s comedic genius but he knew how to do drama with the best of them, and the world just simply lost this man way too soon.

Music also plays a big part, Elliot Smith does the soundtrack and it’s simply outstanding. Some haunting music is in this movie and the tone of his work blends perfectly with the sad and ominous scenes throughout the movie. Along with the directing by Gus Van Sant, who crafted such powerful and career stealing scenes, he was able to capture the words on the page and transform them into some of the best things these incredible actors have been apart of.

When it’s all said and done it’s perfect I find zero flaws in Good Will Hunting, certainly none that I can think of. For the amount of times I’ve watched it, I can never point out any flaws or have anything to nitpick about. It always puts me in a better mood when it comes on TV or I decide to watch it on Netflix, something about it just makes any bad day turn around. Not too many movies can do that for people and this is one of them. I’ll never forget that first night I watched this, and how happy I was that I stumbled across it, and it’s just never gotten old, and never will.

Check ya later,

Nate’s Movie Tour Reviews – Good Will Hunting = 100/100

 

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We Need To Talk About This Oscars Photo

Wannabe Movie Critic

“Steve Harvey ain’t got shit on me” -Warren Beatty 

So how about those Oscars? Sunday night the 89th Oscars were held and they certainly didn’t disappoint. 2016 was a great year for movies, and the best movie of the year Moonlight walked away with the grandest Oscar for Best Picture. This was a great and confusing moment; well a few minutes before this, the world was told that La La Land actually won Best Picture. You see, Warren Beatty who was presenting the award, accidentally read from the wrong envelope. Some how he read from the Best Actress envelope, which minutes earlier Emma Stone was awarded that Oscar for her role in La La Land. Rightfully so too, Emma Stone was fantastic in that and it was one of the best movies of the year, so when Warren announced who won, it wasn’t really all that shocking. Until everyone who was involved in La La Land got on stage, and even starting giving thank you speeches, it wasn’t until one of the Producers Jordan Horowitz announced to the world that it was in fact Moonlight who had taken home the last award of this very long evening. He showed the real winning card to the camera, and that’s when the internet broke. Twitter was ablaze as everyone was tweeting and rightfully so losing their shit. This was a weird situation, one – this was the first time in the history of the Academy Awards something like this had occurred and secondly – it was suppose to be Moonlight’s moment. A moment for the world to recognize as a movie about a gay black man just won Best Picture at the Oscars, in a time when the world is so divided. It truly is a beautiful movie, and that was kind of all taken away from them, because of all the chaos and confusion that was happening on stage. Jimmy Kimmel did an excellent job trying to remedy the situation the best he could, but there was a shit storm of emotion going on, and people didn’t know what to think. He even pointed out that Warren Beatty had pulled a Steve Harvey who infamously called out the wrong winner of the Miss Universe Pageant last year. At the end of the day, this is just an award show, yes people’s feelings were hurt, and I’m sure some were embarrassed, but the award went to the right movie in the end. It made for an incredible TV moment, but this photograph captured by Al Seib might be even better. So I’m going to talk about it a little bit Note: I got this article idea from Shea Serrano of The Ringer. I’m certainly not clever enough (not yet) to think of something like this to write about. Take a good hard look at the photo, or just keep referencing back to it for each person! Honestly I blame Matt Damon.

Casey Affleck 

I’ll start with Casey because well not too many people are happy that this guy won Best Actor. I watched Manchester By The Sea last weekend, and it was truly one of the most depressing things I’ve ever seen. Affleck was fantastic in it; I don’t really think too many guys could have pulled off what he did in this movie. I just think the Academy thought he did a better job than Denzel, the person every one feels should have won. In the photo, Casey has the look on his face that screams “Maybe we should get the fuck out of here before they take mine away,” as he leans in closely to the person next to him. He’s got a lot on his plate right now, with all the sexual harassment stuff going on and I feel like if they took away his Oscar last night, he would have pulled a Negan and crushed some skulls with it first.

Matt Damon


The banter between Kimmel and Damon will never get old. They really play into one another really well, and that stuff about We Bought a Zoo was priceless. I think for Matt in this photo, it’s a look of pure fear and excitement for his friend Jimmy Kimmel. Like “How on Earth is Jimmy going to get out of this situation alive,” or maybe “Does Jimmy really have the balls to pull a stunt like this at the Oscars?”

Meryl Streep


She honestly just has the look we all do when we watch one of her overrated piece of garbage performances. She’s also probably super stoked Moonlight is actually winning; she’s a certified badass

Ben Affleck

Glad Batman decided to join in on this party last night. It was such a great moment when Ben actually made a joke about Matt’s acting in We Bought a Zoo, and you could tell Matt was biting his lip so hard and just wanted to shout “Batman v. Superman” and drop the mic and walk away, but he didn’t and thank god for that. Because well Ben is Batman and he would have gone all warehouse scene on his ass, probably. Ben and Casey are brothers and you know they have some sort of telepathic thing going on, like most brothers do. I imagine this is the convo going on their heads.

Ben: “You better get out of here man”

Casey: “Why?”

Ben: “If they are taking awards away, you know yours is next right?”

Casey: “Fuck, what should we do?”

Ben: “I’m built like a brick shithouse, I’ll get us out of here”

Casey: “Thanks bro! Can I ask you something?”

Ben: “For the last time Casey, I’m not letting you be Nightwing!”

Casey: “I’m an oscar winner now man, let’s talk about this on the car ride home”

Ben: “Fine. To the Batmobile”

Casey: Ben for the last time, you’re not actually Batman!”

Michelle Williams & Busy Phillips 

Awe, these two have totally been besties since meeting while doing Dawson’s Creek. Best friends at heart, but they both have different expressions on their faces. Lets start with Busy, wait what kind of name is Bus? I really hope she changed that for Hollywood, anyways she looks petrified. Like someone just told her that her dog died. I don’t want to make any rash judgments here, but Busy looks like a basic white girl and thought La La Land was the bees knees and is totally crushed it’s actually not winning Best Picture. Or maybe she’s just upset because the Starbucks in the main lobby was closed. Michelle Williams on the other hand, looks almost happy? Look at her face, I think she’s laughing, that’s a face you make when laughing. So either she’s dead inside or she also knows that this is just an award show, and everything will be okay. She’s been through some major shit in her life, so I understand if she finds humor in other people’s sadness. Side note, she was incredible in Manchester By The Sea, she probably had a top 3 gut wrenching scene in all of film in 2016, so kudos to Michelle.

Mel Gibson


Something along the lines of “I’m to drunk, to taste this chicken.” I assume Gibson gets plastered at these kind of things. Hacksaw Ridge was phenomenal so it’s all-good. The girl behind Mel on the other hand, must be either looking at a cute puppy or literally gives zero shits about what’s going down on this stage right now

David Oyelowo 


Now, this is a man trying so hard to hide his emotions. David wants nothing more than to get up and cheer, but he can’t. No one can at this point, but look at that face. He hasn’t smiled this hard on the inside since, well I don’t know because I don’t know David personally. He’s just thinking to himself “Stay calm, in about 5 minutes this will all be over, and I can go jump for joy with everyone else who is super happy this movie won!” Pretty much the same principles of being in front of a T-Rex, if I don’t move or do anything, maybe they won’t notice me.

The Rock 


Are you in the majority or the minority if you still call him The Rock? Saying Dwayne Johnson will just never sound right, to me at least. This isn’t disrespect either; he’s become on hell of an actor. He looks so concerned in this photo, like his son is on stage bombing the school play, concerned. Let’s face it, The Rock is a goddamn hero, he wants nothing more than his music to drop and for him to be able to run on stage and steal the show. He was a wrestler he’s seen some horrible people on the microphone and every twist and turns imaginable. But nothing could prepare him for last night; he just finished making a musical himself, Moana, which was just delightful. On that note, he definitely has a soft spot for all things music and musical now, and just wants to run on stage and give everyone from La La Land a big old Rock hug. Don’t worry Dwayne; you’ll get your chance next year, because I’m officially starting the petition for Dwayne Johnson to host the 2018 Oscars! With special guest referee Stone Cold Steve Austin (Cue up glass shattering music).

Shout out to Gary from Chicago!

Check ya later.