Six Shooter (2004)
Martin McDonagh has only come out with a few films so far. Most recently there was "Seven Psychopaths", which received a somewhat mixed but mostly positive reaction and before that there was "In Bruges", which is widely recognised as fantastic.
Before all of these, however, Martin McDonagh made this short film. I had high expectations and I cannot say they were met. The comedy wasn't as funny. Also I was expected to feel sorry for an utterly obnoxious character by the end and naturally I couldn't have cared less about the obnoxious bastard.
Still it's a good little short film held together by a strong performance from Brendan Gleeson. The dialogue is great and, as the quieter character, Brendan Gleeson conveys a great deal with his facial expressions. A very simple story told well, but if there's some deeper point then I missed it.
A-
Don Jon (2013)
Regardless of how you feel about this movie, credit needs to be given to Joseph Gordon Levitt for his work here.
First of all, for a directorial debut this is pretty great work. Performances are consistently great with solid timing.
Also JGL shows his commitment, throwing himself into the role of a man who is addicted to porn, with his character going into embarrassing levels of detail about masturbation.
The problem is that he's clearly playing a pretty horrible character. He regularly goes to clubs, marks the women with a score out of 10, picks the best ones up simply so he can brag about it and then not call the women he sleeps with either.
In fact, since he claims porn is better than sex, it's pretty clear that bragging is the only reason he picks up all these women. Quite apart from the masturbation he is a complete and total wanker.
So is this an anti-hero or a redemption story? Well initially our protagonist seems like an anti-hero. Despite being a bit obnoxious, he's got his own kind of charm (JGL can't help it) and he speaks frankly to the audience about his experiences. It's impressive how JGL is able to pull me in to this story about such an obnoxious figure. But the bad side is that the film clearly expects this to be viewed as some kind of redemption story and apart from how much porn he watches, he still seems like the same old person. Admittedly he does seem to be prepared to treat at least one woman as a human being by the end, but the script seems to try to suggest that the protagonist is somehow hard done by rather than making him admit his own mistakes.
I liked some aspects of the film, but it seems like JGL's message here is a little mixed-up. I can understand avoiding a clear moral to avoid seeming preachy. But this film is even worse in that it seems distinctly preachy without really making clear what it is preaching. Stop masturbating and you'll be a bit less misogynistic? Was that the message?
C-
Injustice (2011)
The weird thing is, I was absolutely loving this film before the final act. I've never really thought of Michael Biehn as someone who could ruin a movie, but he gets some very unfortunate last-minute exposition lines here and sadly he's just not able to pull it off.
However, there's no question about Chris Evans' central performance. He really deserves to be a star in his own right rather than being simply known as 'that guy who plays Captain America'.
Here, Evans plays a drug-addicted lawyer who takes on a case other legal teams won't touch. Apparently this is based on a true story, but frankly the longer the film ran, the less I bought into it.
Despite good performances and often being highly watchable, I ended up finding the film pretty silly. Yet I was going along with it and really enjoying myself right until the third act popped up.
D+