SPLIT
Director M. Night Shyamalan brings another unique story to the big screen that definitely redeems his career as a film director.
SPLIT is intense,interesting and involving.
The story set's its self up as something simple but traes of complexity form around its narrative when we are introduced to Dennis(James McAvoy),
who kidnaps 3 high school girls Claire (Haley Lu Richardson) and Marcia (Jessica Sula) and outsider Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy)
McAvoy gives the performance of a lifetime as a man with dissociative identity disorder (DID) and has has 23 prominent personalities
Anya Taylor-Joy also gives her all in a magnetic performance.
Betty Buckley as Dr. Karen Fletcher, a psychologist to Dennis who attempts to figure out if Dennis has remained stable,and tries to figure out what he's been up to.
By the time the film enters its last 20 minutes,i had to ask why is this happening? How is this possible? And i was definitely going to rant and complain
about a character but oh boy Shyamalan had an ace up his sleave and i definitely let out a couple of joyful colorful metaphors.
My only problem with the film is the pacing and a few scenes should have been sharper or edited out,but this is a great movie and Mr. Shyamalan
.......more please !!!!!!!!!
Scale of 1-10 a 9
THE FOUNDER
I love a success story and The Founder drew me in immediately with it's story about the famous Mcdonald's fast food franchise.
Maurice "Mac" McDonald (John Carroll Lynch) and the intuitive Richard "Dick" McDonald (Nick Offerman) are the brothers who came up with the fast burger and fries idea and it's so interesting how they came up with their efficient idea and the film sharply displays it.
Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) was a traveling salesman selling Prince Castle brand milkshake makers in 1954 came in contact with the brothers due to his sales of the milkshake makers to them.He re introduced the idea of expansion to them,contracts were signed and Kroc did the leg work and found multiple investor's and took the McDonald's brothers ball and ran with it.
Lynch and Offerman are great in their roles.
Keaton's performance makes Kroc a likeable person,and if one can admire anything about him,it was his efficiency,care for quality and customers,and unrelenting spirit to succeed
The film definitely shows his dark side as he slowly but surely pushed the brother's to the sidelines,plus a dark turn in his personal life
The film definitely avoids some situations that could have given the film some more emotional moments.
In the end its definitely a lesson on how cold and calculating big business is and can be
Scale of 1-10 an 8
xXx: Return of Xander Cage
Startting with a ridiculous plot about using satellites as weapons of mass destruction,i pretty much knew what i was going to get with this flick
Vin Diesel still has enough charismatic swagger to sell the role,but he's coupled with a terrible script,beautiful but obnoxious women,characters with obnoxious ticks,and some of the worst and cheesiest CGI i have ever seen.
I can definitely see the push to turn this into a multiple movie franchise like Fast and The Furious but it likely wont happen,but then again those foreign markets give films like this a giant boost.
There is some fun around it's edges with some good fights,stunts and bad guys who get whats coming to them.
Anything that could have given this film any type of emotion is completely obliterated with a wink and a smile.
This movie has wait for cable written all over it
Scale of 1-10 a 5