Divergent – 8
You’ll like this movie if you like
- Young starlets
- Futuristic stuff
- Hunger games type action
Shailene Woodley stars as divergent in Divergent. What’s a divergent you ask? Well, in the future, it’s a multi-talented
individual who is too talented for her own good. In the future you see, civilization is split
into 4 distinct factions. If you test
out to be good at all the factions, you are considered divergent, and a threat
to the governing faction.
The movie is fairly entertaining, and Woodley is definitely
a star in the making. It’s not for
everyone, in that it’s one of those movies that Hollywood churns out for teenage
girls. The action and story are fine,
and although there’s a few too many dream sequences, Divergent is priming
itself for a Hunger Games style run. It
might work.
Draft Day – 7
You’ll like this movie if you like
- Soap Operas
- The NFL Draft
- Kevin Costner
There’s a great movie to be made about the NFL Draft. This isn’t it. Maybe the NFL Network will do it and go into
the research, the combine results, the trade negotiations, the agents, the
contracts. Here’s what it probably won’t
include: A Cleveland Browns GM having an
affair with his assistant, finding out she’s pregnant the day of the draft,
which happens to be the same day his mother wants to distribute his father’s
ashes, who was the head coach he fired, so the GM goes in a closet not once,
but twice to talk to his girlfriend, but he still gets interrupted, and the
number one pick in the draft falls into his lap, and the team hasn’t even
researched the consensus number one pick, and so they’re watching film at the
last minute, and sorting out rumors, while the GM carries around a mysterious
yellow piece of paper, and tries to deal with a head coach who isn’t on board,
and an owner who gets so angry with him that he gets from draft headquarters in
New York back to Cleveland in about 5 minutes.
And, if all of that isn’t artificial enough for you, director Ivan
Reitman uses more split screens than 24 would ever use in an attempt to heighten
the drama. What it really hides is a
script that’s light on football, and heavy on soap. Too bad, because this movie, totally
sanctioned by the NFL and with all the right cameos, could have been a football
fan’s classic. Instead, it’s just
another kitchen sink movie.
But there is some redemption here. Two things in fact.
So while the first hour and a half of the movie rivals Glee
for artificial drama, the last half hour almost makes up for all this because
even though there are a lot of preposterous events during the actual draft, at
least it’s exciting to watch. Last
minute trades and trade talk, even though the end result is telegraphed 5
minutes into the movie, is exciting stuff and the movie ends with a bang, and it’s
a crowd pleaser, making us forget how
silly the movie has been to this point.
While Kevin Costner and Jennifer Garner are reliable, they
have little believability here. There is so little chemistry between them, you
can see why his mother, played by the great Ellen Burstyn, is dubious.
But the standout actor in this movie is in a supporting
role. It is Chadwick Bosworth, who plays
the about-to-be-drafted linebacker who thinks he’s the maniacal Ray Lewis –
type once in a generation defensive player. He plays his role to the hilt and is totally
convincing. Bosworth didn’t really
convince me when he played Jackie Robinson in “42,” but he’s the whole package
here. The best scenes are his, and he
tackles them ferociously. He speeds away
with the movie, but that isn’t a huge challenge.
