The Accountant is effectively playing the same game that Soderbergh did with Haywire or that Fincher did with Gone Girl. The plotting and screenplay on this thing are as ludicrous as they come, but Gavin O'Connor has just as intense of an eye for action as the former, and the true skills of the latter to take The Accountant from just a distraction to being a more amazing Batman movie...than the Batman movie that actually just came out. That comparison doesn’t come lightly. Not only does The Accountant star Ben Affleck, who is currently playing the caped crusader in the DCEU, it’s also about an autistic, mild-mannered accountant who has a secret lair and can brutally beat anyone who he believes to be doing something wrong, determined to save those who need to be saved, while also blending into the real world. Oh, and also (spoilers!!!!) he has an “Oracle” like figure aka a so-called “woman with a computer who finds stuff out for him and provides the cops with information” to help him on his missions. Oh, and he has been contacting J.K. Simmons as a government agent of incredible merits helping Simons deal out justice after Simmons witnessed him killing a few men. Now, guess who Simmons might play in the DCEU. Commissioner Gordon, the cop who helps Batman smite his enemies. Now that’s all just connections, and not really a review, but intertextuality really is a big part of the enjoyment fact of The Accountant. As a film it’s kind of flaccid but engaging feeling bared down enough for the audience to buy the ridiculousness at its core, but with the added perk that Christian Wolff ( The Accountant) is basically Batman is actually enough to sway me towards saying that this is actually kind of a good movie. There’s plenty of other things other than this that bring The Accountant up. Ben Affleck is one of the best actors now, a truly fascinating performer. There’s a kindness to the coldness of the delicately played autism Affleck infuses into this role that makes Wolff startlingly empathetic, and because a righteous man murdering bad guys to save the one’s he loves in glorious “movie violence” is always fun, so is The Accountant. There’s a beautiful feeling of hysterical fear that comes with the bad guys realizing that they are wrong in not thinking that Wolff is formidable, and it almost becomes a particularly exciting thing to see Wolff dole out punches and gunshots with the precision of say John Wick mainly because of his compulsive need to perfectly do everything. Affleck really is good at conveying that and his little bursts of happiness or kindness are a lovely sight. The rest of the cast is of a surprising caliber including a wise-cracking Jon Bernthal, playing a funny version of The Punisher, and Anna Kendrick being finally compelling in a movie where you’re actually supposed to take her seriously. Gavin O'Connor is also just really good at the type of “R” rated violence going on here. Sometimes the lighting of action is a little low but it’s all still hard-hitting, even funny near the ending as a plot twist turns Bernthal into a sniveling mess trying to appeal to Wolff who is just not really able to have any of it. It’s actually kind of funny. The realm of belief here is stretched pretty thin to the point where none of the movie coheres, but that doesn’t mean it can not be awesome. It just can’t be great. Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, Jon Bernthal and Gavin O’Connor all but force The Accountant into being an entertaining action movie, and they succeed pretty frequently. Also, BATMAN!!!. The Accountant gets an 8 out of 10.
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Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children will now forever hold a special place in my critical heart. This is a fascinating film, one of the very worst of the year, but it contains such scenes that I will never forget seeing...so that’s weird. This doesn’t actually happen that often because, well, there’s usually a correlation between great scenes and a pretty darn good movie, but every once in awhile a movie actually comes up that is as a whole really, really bad, but contains such mind-meltingly amazing moments that it’s hard to recognize just how bad the movie actually is. It gets even more difficult when a director like Tim Burton is helming the whole enterprise because Burton, while not always great has always been genuinely unique and informed by large melodramatic emotions that are sumptuous to take in. That’s the reason why Miss Peregrine can be a really godawful movie, but also awesome. The largest problem is there’s not actually much of a plot. The internal mythology of the entire world is the only thing that builds a sequence of events here. Characters don’t naturally evolve or convincingly emote or fight, instead, the world gets explained by characters who are fully formed and never truly explored. Yes, the fact that each character is fully formed as they come into the story is a good thing, but that’s less through dialogue and more through stylistic touches, and that part is most likely attributed to the savior of this garbage fire: Tim Burton. Burton’s genuine talent as a filmmaker is the only thing that saves sections of this movie, as the entire mythology of the piece is informed with a blend of complex emotions. The house that the titular Miss Peregrine and the children live in is located in a time-loop, aka a fixed day that Miss Peregrine rewinds each night. The day happens to be one in which a bomb was dropped on the house that the children lived in killing all of them. Now, if that sounds like a frustratingly over thought piece of prose, it is, but the way that Burton spins his imagery around it is beautiful, almost informing the impending bomb with all the historical value of all the lives taken by them. His morbid, but creative style is just the thing to do that too. The use of music combined with gas mask-wearing children is typical Burton, and it’s great to see his style come out through this. All this said his application to more of the real world as it is in the present day doesn’t feel correct at all...that is until Burton pulls out the rock music, and the CGI monsters and skeletons fighting each other in an amusement park. Once this scene hits it’s hard not to be swept up in the propulsive action that Burton puts on screen, even if it does feel very small scale. It’s hard to believe that he has even put some of these images on the screen, and the effect is truly breathtaking in its absurdity. But these small flashes of absolute amazingness cannot save what is still ultimately a drab no-stakes mess. The actors even feel a bit off. Asa Butterfield, acts somewhat whiny and just unsympathetically as a lead, and Eva Green is boring, something I’d never thought was possible. The only one that comes out of this without truly embarrassing himself is Samuel L. Jackson, who is so pitch perfect but underutilized as the villain that it’s almost fascinating. But then again, Miss Peregrine’s is a truly awful picture, awkward in all moments, awesome in some. Tim Burton looked like he was ready to make good movies again after the excellent, Big Eyes, but that isn’t quite the case. Burton puts some mind-blowingly entertaining stuff on screen for this film, but it’s just a dull adventure to be had. Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children gets a 4.5 out of 10. |
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December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |