Travis Fantina » Travis’s Review

Hancock=Pretty Cool

Travis — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:12:47 +0000

I went to an early showing of Hancock tonight and I found it to be wonderfully entertaining and fully enjoyable. I have been anticipating this film for a long time, so naturally I went in with great expectations.

Despite a fast adrenalin filled, and funny, opening sequence I found the film lagged a little around the twenty minuet mark. Maybe I was expecting something different but it seemed the story had come to an almost stand still, here I found a lot of the jokes to be laborious and immature. However shortly after the film picked up and became very, very enjoyable and made for a fun hour-and-a-bit. Not the summer’s best but pretty good.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Indy 4

Travis — Sat, 24 May 2008 01:15:41 +0000

I’m back and coincidentally so is Indiana Jones. Last night I popped down to the Cineplex Moving Picture Magic store to see the first Indiana Jones installment in 19 years. What did I think? (not that you care). It was really good I fully enjoyed it. Some parts I found to be a little over the top, even for an Indiana Jones but it was only one or two moments out of the whole film, however thinking back to them now they were very silly I still enjoyed them. It was a solid action film great summer fun. Harrison Ford may have aged 20 years but he still packs a hard punch and he is as awesome as ever in this. I have been reading tons of reviews and everybody seems to hate Mutt, Shia LaBeouf’s carachter, while I don’t think he’s Butch’s Sundance Kid, or even Batman’s Robbin I think he was decent. He did a good job but really Indiana Jones is a lone wolf I have always felt the less screen time his side kicks have the better but I liked Shia I just wish there was not so much of him.

Is it as good as the original 3? No. But really would that be possible? The original Indiana Jones films were so amazing, so iconic there just unparalleled in the realm of adventure films. So I walked into the theater, with high expectations yes, but still expecting this to be less the the original 3. This is not a discount it’s good, really good just not the original 3. But definitely worthy of the title “Indiana Jones”!

I’ve heard many complaints about Spielberg, Lucas, Koepp, pretty much everybody involved with this film and well that’s going to happen. You can’t touch something as classic and iconic as Indiana Jones with out generating a lot of hate. You can never please everybody, and I don’t think they were trying to. They were just telling a sweet story about some skulls, a kid, communists and a really cool guy with a fedora and whip- they succeeded. I’ve been a huge fan of Spielberg sense I first saw Jurassic Park when I was 6 or 7, so this was my most anticipated film of the year and well I’m not at all disappointed.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

There Will Be Blood

Travis — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 16:31:47 +0000

I went to There Will Be Blood on Saturday night (crazy night by the way, locked the keys in the car with it running!) and I have to say I liked it, it was a powerful film with amazing visuals Daniel Day-Lewis gives an Oscar worthy (we’ll see what the Academy says) performance as Daniel Plainview an enterprising oil man at the turn of the beginning of the 19th century. I was particularly struck by Paul Dano’s (The angry-vow-of-science child from Little Miss Sunshine) performance, amazing especially while doing most of his work next to acting heavyweight Daniel Day-Lewis.
Despite it’s lengthy run time it held my interest quite well, however I don’t think that this film is all it’s cracked up to be. It’s a great film no doubt, maybe one of 2007’s best and I think it deserves all 8 of it’s Oscar nominations. I here people on various forums and in some reviews calling it the best film of the year (I don’t think so- not with Michael Clayton in the mix) some have even gone as far as to say it’s the best film of the past few decades- to me this is udder nonsense. But still a great film, one of the year’s best!

I enjoyed it, wonderful performances, beautifully shot, compelling and dark but not the best film of the year.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

EDITOR’S NOTE:I wrote this about two weeks ago then forgot to publish it.

Michael Clayton

Travis — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:45:37 +0000

Last night I finally got around to seeing Tony Gilroy’s (writer of the Bourne movies) directorial debut; Michael Clayton, and man it was a good film. If you’re up on the movies you know that Michael Clayton has been out since October, and is coming to DVD, Blu-Ray and HDDVD (But who uses HDDVD?) in about 15 days. Since it’s been out for a while I will not be doing a formal review but I will say that it is strongly constructed thriller from first time Director Tony Gilroy. It seems a lot of people passed this film over in it’s first run so Warner Bros. rereleased it just recently after it received 7 Oscar nominations. If you have not yet seen it I recommend it, but you may want to leave the kids at home it’s got some strong language.

I was pleasantly suppressed to see that it was playing in my local theater, we don’t get a lot of films like this around here (one of the advantages of moving to Toronto, (see post below)). Kudos to my local theater for also finally deciding to play No Country For Old Men.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Cloverfield

Travis — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 08:11:29 +0000

Take a good look at that poster, yeah I know everybody’s seen it like a million times sense it was first released but it to me it never gets old, it’s one of the best/most provocative posters of recent years. But enough with the marketing campaign lets move onto the film…

The story begins with a group of twenty-something year olds awaiting the arrival of there friend Robert Hawkins (Michael Stahl-David) at his flat. He is about to leave for Japan and the group is having a surprise good bye party for him. The seldom seen Hud Platt (T.J. Miller) is given a camera to document the events of the night and so Rob will have something nice to remember his friends with whilst he is in Japan. Hud goes from person to person capturing there good-bye’s, the entire film is seen through the lens of Hud’s camera as he insists on carrying it everywhere.

The party is disrupted by a temporary power-failure and earthquake like trimmers, the group goes to the roof for a better view. On the horizon we see a building explode, rubble rains down from the sky unto the roof. Hud and the others run down the stairs in a very chaotic and claustrophobic sequence where the camera is bounced all over the place. Emerging on the street the camera pan’s up and we see one of the most accelerating images of the film (I would not want to give it away but it’s in all the trailers); the head of the Statue of Liberty.

The rest of the film chronicles the events of Rob, Hud, Lily Ford (Jessica Lucas) and Marlena Diamond (Lizzy Caplan) Searching for a girl Rob has loved sense collage.

After the first tremor the rest of the film is a hard core thrill ride filled with action and some very well done suspense scenes. Lots of people and critics have been likening the events and images in the film with those of 9/11, sky scrapers leveled to heaps of smoldering ash, people running in a confused state, people screaming it’s powerful stuff. Some have criticized this film for hitting two close to home but I disagree, New York is always a target for monster movies and the images of 9/11 have changed the way those monster and disaster films are made, there’s no doubt about it but I definitely don’t think there’s any exploitation.

Another thing that struck me about the film was how intense and violent it was for a PG-13 movie. There’s plenty of bloody wounds and images of carnage, lots of language also, I think if this had been made in the early 90’s it would have definitely received an R rating. I often compare films like this to The Matrix (the first one)- if that film had been made today I think it could have pulled off a PG-13 rating.

I liked it, a lot. It definitely had it’s flaws, quite a few of them however, it was a very intense and enjoyable film.

On a closing note, I want to briefly talk about the shaky-home video style in which Cloverfield is filmed. I liked it, it worked for the movie, it was an interesting and pretty original (I know, I know Blair Witch did it 10 years ago) way to shoot the film. I just hope this does not become a popular thing to do, in other worlds I hope it’s not a trend setter.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars