All posts by Josef Rodriguez

Hey, I'm Joey and I'm a (usually) film and pop culture blogger, but I'll write about pretty much anything.
MOVIES

Grizzly Review: The Devil Inside

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Demonic possession films have become quite a popular trend in modern horror over the past few years. A barrage of unnecessary Exorcist sequels, as well as a couple of hit and miss exorcism movies that have been released in the past few years. Among those, was The Last Exorcism, a surprisingly critical success, but one that failed quite epically with audiences, holding a 32% approval rating as opposed to a 73% from critics. I’m in the minority of viewers who actually loved the movie, taking its time to set up realistic characters that are actually interesting. The film itself built up nicely and ended with a twist I would have never really expected.

Enough about films I’d rather be watching, though, let’s get on to the piece of crap that disappointed me last night. The name of the film is The Devil Inside, one of the many demon flicks to come out in the past few years, and definitely not the last. It’s written and directed by William Brent Bell and Matthew Peterman, the two men behind Stay Alive, which I can fully admit is a guilty pleasure of mine. The film follows a young woman, Isabella Rossi, who decides to make a film regarding her mother, Maria. She killed three people during her own exorcism in 1989, and has been locked up in a mental institution in Rome ever since.

With her cameraman, Michael, in tow, she heads to Italy to figure out what the hell is going on. She meets two young exorcists, Ben (Simon Quarterman) and David (Evan Helmuth), who agree to help her as much as they can to solve the mystery of her mother’s condition. Going against every law that the church requires them to abide by, they perform an “introductory exorcism” on a girl who’s been possessed and never treated properly. Surprisingly, they successful remove the demon from her, which gives them both the confidence and the assurance to go ahead and try to help Maria. Maria’s exorcism, though, is much more difficult. Possessed by four demons, Maria isn’t just possessed in the way we know, she’s been taken over completely by these entities.


The Devil Inside is honestly the worst of all of the bad exorcism films in recent memory, but it’s also had the most marketing. With frightening TV spots popping up on every channel, and billboards as far as the eye can see, it’s amazing that such a low-budget, and not to mention amateur, production could get such acclaim. Starring no name actors who really cannot act for the life of them, Bell and Peterman decide to throw in horribly written dialogue, as well as some inspired but ultimately failed shaky-cam work.

The film’s opening scene is an equally pleasing and refreshingly violent sequence, displaying the bloody remains of the three bodies that Maria brutally massacred during her exorcism. If anything, it’s a promise that The Devil Inside is not your ordinary demonic possession film. Well, they lied shamelessly. The remaining hour and 10 minutes of the film is a brutally slow, scare-less, and rather illogical attempt to make exorcism scientific, religious, and scary all at the same time. Then, when things finally start to get exciting, The Devil Inside decides it’s worn out its welcome, and ends with one of the worst and most abrupt endings I’ve ever seen.

I can say that I got quite a few great laughs from this movie, and if you’re looking for a comedy, then The Devil Inside is honestly as funny as movies like Bridesmaids and Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil. But, if you’re looking for a scary demon movie that won’t let you sleep at night, this is most definitely not where you want to be. I mean, for a film that claims to be real, including a cast list during the credits probably isn’t a good idea.

0.5/5 Grizzly’s

MOVIES

Grizzly Review: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

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When remakes are done correctly, they’re a beautiful, glorious thing, like a beautiful piece of art or the birth of a beautiful baby. When remakes are done correctly, it makes me shed a manly tear of joy, because seeing something done better the second time around makes me happy, just like a great sequel.

In David Fincher’s adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, he takes what was a melodramatic and overall poorly made 2009 adaptation, and adds a new level of ferocity and stylishness to it that was otherwise lost on the original. I think this is due mostly to his familiarity with the source material, a novel of the same name by the late Stieg Larsson, and his unfamiliarity with the original Swedish film (he’s been quoted as saying that he’s never seen it).

By now the plot should be familiar to most, but I’ll run through it to give everyone a fighting chance. The story follows a journalist named Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) who’s been exiled by almost every news outlet and has been stripped of his credibility due to a story that he published that was “proven” false. On the other side of things, professional computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) has gathered information on Blomkvist for a large Swedish family that is interested in hiring him for a job.


The job is to investigate the murder of Harriet Vanger (Moa Garpendal), the 16-year old niece of Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), who is the head of a large corporation known as the Vanger Co. For the past forty years, Vanger has been investigating Harriet’s death with no luck at all. In his desperation, he hires Blomkvist, in the hopes that he might be able to crack the case. Blomkvist reluctantly agrees, but the only way that he can do it is to hire the same person who was hired to investigate him, Lisbeth. The two team up to solve the murder of what might have been the heir to the entire Vanger legacy.

David Fincher’s interpretation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is much better than the 2009 original, but in some respects it isn’t good enough. As a huge fan of the source material, the only way that this film could possibly live up to my expectations is by being four hours long, because that’s how long it would take to include everything that a film of this magnitude requires. But, from a strictly cinematic standpoint, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an extremely fascinating murder mystery.

At 158 minutes, the film is a lot to take in, but it’s unfortunate because the first 80 minutes require Lisbeth and Mikael to be apart until they finally meet to work together on the case, which is far too long in my opinion. I say that because they only spend about 45 minutes solving the mystery together, with the last 35 minutes being dedicated to the aftermath of the ordeal as well as Salander proving Blomkvist innocent.

Though the build-up seems unnecessarily long, once the two finally get working, the film ignites. Their chemistry is sheer beauty. Who knew that mixing such an “alternative” personality as that of Lisbeth Salander with straight man Mikael Blomkvist would create pure magic? It doesn’t hurt that the performances by both Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, especially the latter, are undeniably committed and mesmerizing. Similar to that of Justin Timberlake in The Social Network, I almost forgot that I was staring at two actors and not viewing the private exploits of such fascinating personalities. Lisbeth Salander is portrayed as much more personable and approachable to Blomkvist, turning their relationship from strictly physical and professional, to borderline romantic, an addition to her character that I’m actually glad they made.

David Fincher’s direction is undoubtedly stylish, but in comparison to The Social Network, which was steadily chaotic, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is chaotically steady. By this I mean that regardless of the amount of pulsating action that happens on the screen, the camera refuses to take the shaky cam route and is one of the few things in this movie that remains calm, which I’m thankful for. In keeping with the almost classy and dark style that the film seems to go for, remaining steady really helps set a tone rather than flopping all over the place, blurring everything out of view.

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and Atticus Ross, who also did the music for The Social Network, again compose the soundtrack. Whereas the music in The Social Network seemed to be a crucial part of the look of the film, the music in this film serves more as background filler rather than a key aspect, sans a dazzling credit sequence set to a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”.

Overall, as a remake, and even as an adaption, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo succeeds, but its sometimes obvious representation of the killer, as well as the dangerously slow first half drags the film down from great to good, which I’m perfectly fine with. I didn’t expect another Social Network, and I definitely didn’t get one. I’ve never been a huge fan of the adaptations of the books, because there’s just too much to adapt into one film, regardless of its length, but Fincher makes it much more watchable than the 2009 Swedish version, and that in itself is quite the achievement.

3.5/5 Grizzly’s

MOVIES

Grizzly Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

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The world of espionage, spies, secrets, and traitors isn’t necessarily what the James Bond movies make it out to be, quite the contrary actually. The car chases, gunfights, sexy sidekicks, and dry martinis aren’t the job. Instead, the world of a spy consists of endless amounts of research, chain smoking, and a lot of talking. The conversations, though, can be as heated, if not even more so, than your run-in-the-mill gun battle.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which is based on the novel of the same name by John Le Carre, follows retired agent George Smiley (Gary Oldman), who must come back to work to find a Soviet spy that is hidden in MI6, nicknamed the Circus. The man in charge, Control (John Hurt), is convinced that a mole is hidden within the Circus after he does some intensive research and studying with information that he’s been given from a reliable source.

The possibilities, according to Control, are “Tinker” who is Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), “Tailor” who is Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), “Soldier” who is Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds), “Poor Man” who is Toby Esterhase (David Dencik), and “Beggar Man” who is Smiley himself. The beginning of the film reveals that there’s a Hungarian general who knows the identity of the mole. Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) is sent to retrieve the information, but the mission goes bad, alerting the Soviets of MI6’s suspicion.


This leads Smiley to be forced into retirement by Control, who soon after passes away. Smiley is then brought back and given some very valuable information by a man named Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy), a rogue agent who travels around the world searching for information that may benefit the MI6 during the Cold War. Smiley listens to his story, and considering the failed Hungarian mission, as well as a successful Soviet operation named Operation Witchcraft, he pursues it further, enlisting the help of fellow agent and apprentice, Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch).

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a beautiful, intense, and sometimes extremely confusing spy film that trades in the usual action for something much more effective; edge-of-your-seat dialogue. The constant interaction between the characters keep things more than exciting, and the sometimes puzzling narrative is both saved and clarified by the use of conversation that literally had my heart racing. Gary Oldman’s flawless performance as George Smiley is a cinematic revelation. His calm and collected manner is sometimes eerie considering the situation, and the one time that he does raise his voice, it’s almost enough to frighten the viewer, especially considering the context.

Tom Hardy and Colin Firth are also absolutely amazing as spies who know things that everyone else wants to, but Mark Strong is surprisingly strong in his rather short but extremely necessary role. Personally, I’m a huge fan of his. I think he’s able to adapt to his environment extremely well, with enough diversity to successfully play both a bad guy and a good guy, sometimes in the same movie. It’s Tom Hardy though, that has probably the most screen time in the entire film besides Oldman, which is surprising considering how little he is shown in the trailer, and how far down he is in the opening credits. I’m not here to complain though, after his performances in Inception, Warrior and RockNRolla, he’s most definitely solidified himself a spot in being one of the best young actors in Hollywood today.

The direction by Tomas Alfredson is gorgeously mundane, and I mean that in the absolute best way possible. He recreates the 70s film style so well here that I felt as if I was doing a double feature with Marathon Man. You might recognize his name as being the director of the equally as fantastic vampire love story, Let The Right One In. Alfredson seems to have a knack for creating films with little action that are almost as exciting as a Transformers movie.

The film also plays as a retrospective, taking snippets of certain scenes and placing them in other scenes, which then leads them to go back to that original scene, but instead it moves forward a little bit. This allows the film to literally be a puzzle, with pieces being filled in left and right until the finale where everything is in place and the universal “aha!” moment is reached. Instead of me trying to explain it, think of it as an episode of How I Met Your Mother, how they flip back and forth between the present and other important times that relate to the story being told. You all know what I’m talking about, let’s just move on.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is brutally violent when it needs to be, dryly funny at times, but it’s also a fantastically plotted film that requires quite a bit of attention from the viewer. I’ll be honest, this and Warrior were the only two films of the year where I didn’t look at my watch once to see how much time there was left. For a two hour film consisting mostly of dialogue, that’s pretty damn good if you ask me.

5/5 Grizzly’s

MOVIES

In Case You Missed It Review: Super

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In 2010, we were introduced to one of the best films of the year, Kick-Ass, as well as the future of female actors, Chloe Grace Moretz. Playing Hit Girl, the infamously foul-mouthed pre-teen assassin, Moretz nailed the role perfectly and that will forever go down as my favorite performance of that year.

2011 gave us the flip side of what seemed to be the same story. Whereas Kick-Ass celebrated its unrealistic nature and extreme cheesiness, James Gunn’s new film Super revels in realism. Starring Rainn Wilson, the film follows a loyal husband named Frank D’Arbo, a fry-cook at a local diner. When his wife, Sarah (Liv Tyler), falls for a manipulative drug dealer named Jacques (Kevin Bacon), it’s up to Frank to save her from Jacques, but more importantly from herself.

To do this, he becomes a “superhero”, under the name The Crimson Bolt. He spends his first few nights hanging around dumpsters waiting for crime to come to him, with no luck. Inspired by a Christian TV star known as The Holy Avenger (Nathan Fillion), Frank searches for meaning in life, as well as what he can do to help the innocent people of his city.

One day, while at a movie theater, a man cuts in line to much disapproval from the rest of the people behind him. Frank, in a misguided act of heroism, changes into his Crimson Bolt costume in his car, grabs a large wrench, and bludgeons the man on the head, causing his skull to split open. This well-meaning but ultimately daft and vigilante behavior lands Frank a spot on the local news, which labels him a dangerous vigilante.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the only way that Frank has any chance of getting Sarah back from Jacques is to accept an offer by a local comic book chick named Libby (Ellen Page) to be his sidekick. A borderline psychotic young girl, Libby, whose superhero name is Boltie, begins hatching a plan with The Crimson Bolt, who has now adopted the catchphrase “Shut up, Crime!”, to get Sarah back once and for all.

Super, which is Slither writer/director James Gunn’s new film, is a darkly hilarious and brutally violent film about the chemically imbalanced vigilante in all of us. Rainn Wilson plays a distressed husband pushed to the point of violence perfectly, and his onscreen chemistry with Ellen Page is comedy gold. Previously sharing the screen with her for a scene in 2007’s Juno, it’s good to see them both starring in a movie together because from that one scene in Juno, I knew they would do well together if they co-starred with each other in a dark comedy. These are the things I daydream about don’t judge me.

Kevin Bacon is great as usual, playing a good villain with a particularly toothy smile. His sometimes dim-witted cronies make for some pretty great laughs, especially when they come into contact with Frank in the explosive climax. James Gunn’s directing is perfect for a film like this, previously displaying his action/comedy chops in his first feature film, Slither.

Super is probably not everyone’s idea of a good time. Some will find it dull, some will find it too brutal or realistic for a comedy film. Some will even find it to be completely unfunny with its dark punch lines and physical comedy. I’ll give you a taste of what you’ll be seeing; Super contains the funniest rape scene out of any movie I’ve ever seen. Take that as you will, but it’s true.

4/5 Bears

MOVIES

Grizzly Review: The Artist

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The silent era is one of the most important and one of the most sacred eras in film history. It marked the beginning of the motion picture, as well as the beginning of the future. No one had ever seen anything like a movie before, and, as bold of a statement as this may be, nobody ever will.

The late 20s marked the beginning of what was then known as the “talkie”. For years, people had been watching movies with no sound, backed only by live instrumentation to set the tone for every scene. People craved more, though. They figured that if people could talk in real life, why couldn’t they talk in the movies? The transition from silent to talkie left many actors jobless, with few able to maintain their status as a top silent actor or filmmaker, with Charlie Chaplin being one of the most recognizable names.

In The Artist, one of the world’s most famous silent actors, George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), is facing a similar ultimatum. Either he retires as an actor, forgotten like the rest of silent film, or he adapts to his ever changing environment, embracing the talkie as the rest of the world has. Valentin also has a chance encounter with Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo), a young and beautiful dancer who decides to follow her dream of being an actress when a photo of her and Valentin is found on the cover of Variety.

Meanwhile, studio executive Al Zimmer (John Goodman), pushes the technological advancement on Valentin, which does nothing but push him away. Valentin swears that he’ll keep silent film alive, making films of his own that bomb quite drastically as Miller’s status as a leading woman rises quickly, going from extra to star in a mere two years. The two begin something of an unspoken romance that is constantly interrupted by the outside world. Eventually, Valentin finds himself poor and alone, save for his extremely loyal butler, Clifton (James Cromwell). With both talkies and Peppy Miller at the top of the entertainment industry, Valentin is lost, looking for a reason to live as happily as he once did.

The Artist has been named the best film of the year by many a critic, and is almost a shoe-in for best picture at the Oscars this year. The hype for this film, produced by The Weinstein Company, has been some of the biggest of the year, causing viewers to rush to the theater, fueled by the film’s numerous awards, as well as its 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. So, does it live up to the expectations of being the best movie of the year?

Well, in short, no. In fact, it doesn’t really even earn a place in my top 20 and possibly even 50 of the year, but it does do something that I can’t quite put my finger on. It had a certain effect on me that I can’t quite vocalize. It wasn’t nostalgic, and it wasn’t authentic, so that can’t be it, but if not that then what?

For one, in aiming to resemble the silent films of the 1920s, it does a relatively decent job, but is also missing quite a bit. Screened in 14:2 ratio instead of the 16:4 that we’re used to was quite pleasing, as was actually making the film silent to really encompass the world that it was portraying. With all of the authenticity though, came quite a few mistakes. For one, the HD quality of the film angered me slightly, as if the filmmakers were going for clean, when in actuality, they should have taken a couple pages from the Death Proof handbook and physically scratched the film, giving it a look much more akin to a 1920s film.

Also, for a silent film, there’s a hell of a lot of talking, more than necessary for a film like this, and it kind of made me wish that they had just made the film a talkie, working harder on a select few scenes that were silent to give the movie a little more flair. The intertitles were unfortunately sparse, and considering the bloated running time, 100 minutes (about a 1/2 hour more than it should have been), intertitles would have been nice.

As I mentioned above, at 100 minutes, The Artist is also far too long, deciding to focus on mostly unnecessary and overly extended comedy sequences as opposed to creating a linear narrative that gets the viewer prepared for what was an excellent and heartbreaking third act. The last forty minutes of the film most definitely saved itself from the first 60, and I wished that the plotting in the first half had been as tight and focused as the second.

The Artist is advertised as a romance film, but for being marketed as such, the romance between the two leads seems to be second to the film’s themes of the future of silent actors and their movies, which is disappointing considering that I was hoping to see a beautiful, silent romance, similar to the one that viewers saw in 1931’s City Lights.

Personally, I spend the time that I’m not watching or reviewing movies researching film history, and as a huge fan of the silent era, the whole film’s plot becomes almost irrelevant once viewers learn that silent films were still being made well into the thirties, a well-known one being 1936’s Modern Times. Valentin is supposed to represent a star as big as Chaplin, so why could Charlie still make silent films successfully, and Valentin couldn’t? Seems odd considering the star status that he seems to hold.

In theory, I probably should have loved this movie. The acting is great, with Jean Dujardin giving one of the best performances of the year. The directing by French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius, who also wrote the scenario and intertitles, is fantastic, making reflection a metaphor for self-reflection through the sly turn of his camera. So what is it about The Artist that I don’t love? Well, besides its somewhat long first and second act, as a fan of the silent era, the film comes off as a love letter to cinema that got the address wrong. Its heart is in the right place, and its intentions are good, but the boring story never allowed things to take off like they should have, leaving the viewer at a standstill for almost 80 minutes, then gunning it for the last 20. Silent films are deliberate and artful, and require pacing that I found to be lacking here. Then again, if a silent film could win best picture in the the 1920s and the 2010s, that’d be pretty astounding.

3/5 Grizzly’s

Movie News & Opinions

Is Abraham Lincoln A President, Vampire Hunter, or a Zombie Killer?

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2011 marked the announcement of a film that literally sealed the deal for the death of Hollywood. Granted, it’s based off of a marginally successful, tongue-in-cheek novel of the same name, but it’s true when they say that some things are just not meant to be movies. Regardless, this Spielberg produced “historical” action flick has been garnering quite a bit of buzz over the last few months for being as outlandish as it can be.

Of course, every mindless action pic has its low-budget imitators, but there are some movies that are rehashed so poorly, they make history. The Asylum, which is the production company known for taking movies we love and turning them into remakes/sequels we detest. A couple of names that may sound familiar are: Almighty Thor (originally just Thor), I Am Omega (instead of I Am Legend), 2010: Moby Dick, Battle of Los Angeles (not be confused with Battle: Los Angeles; the colon makes all the difference in the world), 3 Musketeers, and sadly, Titanic II.

Now, The Asylum is deciding to bastardize Hollywood even further by redoing Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, as Abraham Lincoln Versus Zombies. Again, world of difference, got to give credit where credit is due. I mean, just look at the originality that is seeping from the loins of The Asylum, here! It really is quite astounding. I mean, if hearing the title Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter doesn’t already make you do a double take, then taking on zombies definitely will.

Of all the ideas that The Asylum has had, this one might be the most absurd, which in turn makes it the most watchable of the bunch. John Wilkes Booth has been turned into a member of the “New Secret Service”. I mean, who can resist historical accuracy this rich with flavor? One thing is for sure, if I had the choice between vampires and zombies, I’m almost positive I’d take the walkers.