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Haywire(2012)Steven Soderberg has made movies from artsy explorations of characters to Science Fiction films with a romantic and heavily ambient tone to a Hollywood film about the war on drugs. These are but a few themes he’s explored. He’s never attempted to shoot a straight up action film, which is what he set out to do with “Haywire”.
“Haywire” begins with a fight a diner followed by an interesting car jacking. From there we begin to learn how Mallory (Gina Carano) got to that point and what the motivations are for the rest of the tale. Mallory, a black ops soldier, has been betrayed and plans to find out who did and why. The bodies begin to pile as she gets deeper and deeper into this tangled web of lies.
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Shrek Forever After
If best things come in threes, the opposite rings true for fours. Can we think of any fourth film in a celebrated series that might be remotely good? Number 4’s are usually lazy, unmotivated or unnecessary, resorting to the strokes that made the preceding movies memorable. “Shrek Forever After” is not different in recycling to the clever comedy that made the Ogre and his pals endearing. However, in adding a Capra-esque twist, this last adventure was, dare we say, decent. While it never tops the innovating satirical turns of Fairy Tales from the first two movies, “Shrek 4” manages to be more grounded that the inflated third film, softening the transition into the adult themes while still having some good fun.
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Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
We admit the above is the worst title for a review in Bitter Balcony’s history. But it's still not nearly as bad as “Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever," a 2002 dog BB caught while on vacation (our vigilance for foul celluloid never takes a day off). This laugher stars Antonio Banderas as Jeremiah Ecks, the “guy with nothing to lose” – the sort you see at a dive bar sporting a five o'clock shadow and sloshed on bottom-shelf scotch. The FBI finds our man doing just that, hoping he will help them capture Sever (Lucy Liu), a hit woman who kidnaps the son of Gant (Gregg Henry), an enemy of the state who the FBI believes is ready to activate a biological-tech weapon. |
