Watch Online Self/less (2015) - MovieTimeUs

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Synopsis:

A dying New York real-estate tycoon undergoes a top-secret procedure to transfer his consciousness into the body of a healthy young man, but he discovers that his new life isn't what he expected after learning about the mysterious origins of his new body and an organization that is prepared to kill for its cause. Ryan Reynolds toplines this sci-fi thriller directed by Tarsem Singh (The Cell, The Fall, and penned by screenwriting duo David and Alex Pastor (Carriers).

Review:

They say that money can't buy happiness in life, but for one New York City tycoon, it might be able to buy life itself. That's the premise of director Tarsem Singh's new film Self/less, a muddled mashup of genres that makes the disastrous assumption that the audience will be too brain/less to notice its many preposterous plot points.

(Sir) Ben Kingsley plays Damian Hale, an impossibly wealthy NYC businessman who has devoted his life to making bank instead of raising his daughter Claire (Michelle Dockery), now estranged from him and the director of a nonprofit. Damian is dying from a quickly spreading cancer, the end rapidly closing in with every blood-spattering cough. When someone slips him a mysterious business card claiming to offer a solution to his terminal dilemma, he takes the bait and is soon touring a secret lab in New Orleans with a crazy-smart (emphasis on crazy) scientist named Albright (Matthew Goode). Albright explains that he has developed a way to implant a person's consciousness into a "host" body, thus allowing the dying person a chance to live on with a new identity and face. But this procedure is not for everyone; only the world's brightest minds, he says, are worthy of the process called "shedding." When Damian asks how the host bodies are created, Albright states that they are genetically grown in a lab, not unlike some plants. One can't help but picture a Frankenstein-like Chia Pet that, in addition to a full head of hair, also grows a perfectly functioning brain, complete skeletal system, and all of the muscles and organs necessary to be considered human. Okie dokie.

Despite possessing one of those aforementioned "brightest minds in the world," Hale agrees to the procedure with nary a speck of incredulity regarding the outlandish method of producing a host body. His cancer soon becomes more aggressive, and when the final credits of his life story are about to start rolling, the shedding commences. All it takes is about 15 seconds or so in an MRI-like machine, and Damian is now comfortably ensconced in his cool but rather unsteady new vessel (enter Ryan Reynolds as the host body). As Albright gives him the stats on his new life, one can't help but wonder why the guy would pay all that money just to look like a 35-year-old about to enter middle age instead of someone much younger. And that's just one of the many frustrating questions that the film never sufficiently answers.

While enjoying his new existence as a wealthy New Orleans retiree who plays basketball all day and trolls for chicks at the clubs every night, Damian is also plagued by strange hallucinations (seemingly of another person's life), which can only be controlled by taking a daily pill. His discovery of the real cause of these hallucinations regrettably transforms this film from a potentially intriguing sci-fi thriller into a rock-'em-sock-'em action flick, complete with car chases, shoot-outs, and more than one death by blowtorch.

The overriding problem with Self/less is the lazy storytelling by Singh and screenwriting brothers Alex and David Pastor, who forgo character development and narrative credibility in the arrogant assumption that multiple fistfights and insane car crashes will be enough to satiate the audience. We never really find out why Damian is so jazzed about continuing life on earth, considering that he made a miserable and lonely mess of his first one despite oodles of cash to comfort him. Kingsley's screen time is so woefully brief (he's basically making a cameo appearance) that he isn't given the chance to flesh out Damian beyond giving him a thick New York accent and inserting barely noticeable pauses into his speech. Not that it even matters, since Reynolds doesn't bother to adopt Kingsley's mannerisms or in any way attempt to remind viewers that, underneath those ripped muscles, full head of hair, and Canadian-tinged intonation, there lies a brilliant, cynical seventysomething New Yawker.

While the action scenes are fun to watch, one can't help but feel that Self/less is like sitting through two completely different movies at the same time -- and the better of the two abruptly ends with the shot of Kingsley's body being covered by a sheet following the shedding. Unfortunately, the only thing left for viewers after that is, well ... less.

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Watch Online Nightcrawler (2014) - MovieTimeUs

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Synopsis:

An ambitious young crime journalist probes the dark underbelly of L.A. in this cynical urban drama that marks the feature directorial debut of film writer Dan Gilroy (Real Steal, The Bourne Legacy). Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a petty thief in search of a payday when he stumbles onto the scene of a grisly car accident, and witnesses seasoned "Nightcrawler" Joe Loder (Bill Paxton) gathering video footage for a local news broadcast. Convinced that this is a career he could excel at, Lou promptly purchases a police scanner and a cheap video camera, and hits the streets. In short order Lou has hired an assistant (Riz Ahmed) to help him navigate the city streets, and started selling footage to local TV producer Nina (Rene Russo), one of Joe's regular buyers. A fast learner with an eye for detail, Lou isn't above manipulating a crime scene in order to get a picture that tells a story. When Lou beats the police to the scene of a deadly home invasion in an affluent neighborhood, however, his shocking footage catches the attention of two homicide detectives who suspect he's hiding evidence that could be crucial to their investigation. But that very footage may be just what Lou needs to enter the big time.

Review:

Imagine Travis Bickle transplanted into the world of Paddy Chayefsky's Network, and you'll start to get a feel for the creepy, deeply cynical tone screenwriter Dan Gilroy establishes in his feature directorial debut Nightcrawler, a scathing condemnation of contemporary broadcast journalism starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a parasitic freelance news videographer whose chilling lack of ethics gives him a distinct upper hand over the competition.

Lou Bloom (Gyllenhaal) is a petty thief in search of a payday when he stumbles onto the scene of a grisly car accident, where he witnesses seasoned "nightcrawler" Joe Loder (Bill Paxton) gathering video footage for a local news broadcast. Convinced that this is a career he could excel at, Lou promptly purchases a police scanner and a cheap video camera and hits the streets. In short order, he hires an assistant (Riz Ahmed) to help him navigate the city and starts selling footage to TV producer Nina (Rene Russo), one of Joe's regular buyers. As a fast learner with an eye for detail, Lou isn't above manipulating a crime scene in order to get a picture that tells a story. When he beats the police to the scene of a fatal home invasion in an affluent neighborhood, however, his shocking footage catches the attention of two homicide detectives who suspect he's hiding evidence that could be crucial to their investigation. But that footage might be just what Lou needs to enter the big time.

In the world of the 24-hour news cycle, the fight to maintain viewership is fierce. Every day, reporters and news directors walk a precarious tightrope between reporting and exploitation. But when do they cross an ethical line, and what are the dangers if they do? These are just a few of the questions Gilroy flirts with in his caustic, blackly comic script for Nightcrawler. Immediately establishing Bloom as a cunning sociopath in the menacing, nocturnal opening scene, Gilroy then methodically draws us into the character's unscrupulous headspace by revealing him to be a man completely devoid of any and all moral boundaries: His singular ambition leaves no room for empathy, sympathy, or remorse. In Gyllenhaal,Gilroy finds an actor whose talent for displaying the full spectrum of the character's misanthropy borders on cinematic alchemy.

It isn't easy to make an audience want to spend time with a person as detestable as Bloom, and in keeping with the film's subject matter, Gyllenhaal makes the character so unrepentantly audacious that the viewer effectively becomes the same kind of rubbernecker whom Nina counts on for her ratings. It's a precarious balance to strike for a film that seemingly exists to highlight how easily the news -- and in turn, the viewer -- can be manipulated, but Gyllenhaal commands our attention with his strikingly gaunt appearance and too-quick smile, making us wonder just how far his character will go to find success. Of course, it doesn't take long to get an answer to that question, and even as Gilroy's screenplay begins to settle into the motions of a more traditional thriller, supporting players Russo, Ahmed, and Paxton are effective in their roles as the unwitting pawns in Bloom's nefarious game. Having returned to the screen in 2011's Thor following a brief hiatus, Russo is compelling in her role as an aging TV news producer who's acutely aware she's on the lowest rung of the ladder. Try as Nina might to maintain a steely exterior while dealing with the calculating Bloom, Russo brings the icy character's vulnerability to the surface in ways that highlight her young counterpart's complete detachment from humanity. Paxton is at his cocky best as the nightcrawler Bloom models himself after, and as Bloom's harried assistant, Ahmed represents the closest thing this movie has to a moral compass and a sympathetic character.

Yes, once Bloom captures the chilling aftermath of a violent home invasion, Nightcrawler loses some of its edge by morphing into a more conventional thriller. But it's a testament to Gilroy's firm grasp of his themes regarding the media and society that he ultimately brings them full circle for the film's uncompromisingly bleak denouement -- one that drives home the fact that we should always be conscious of the media we consume and where it comes from. It may not be a pleasant message to hear, but thanks to Gilroy's skillful writing and Gyllenhaal's fearless performance, it's as difficult to look away from as the nightly news.

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Watch Online Goodnight Mommy (2014) - MovieTimeUs

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Synopsis :

Their mother's face wrapped in bandages following plastic surgery, two young Austrian twins begin to question her identity, and resort to torturous tactics in a bid to discover the fate of their "real" mommy. In the aftermath of an unexplained trauma, nine-year old twins Lukas and Elias (Lukas and Elias Schwarz) spend their days playing in and around their secluded Austrian home as their increasingly short-tempered, single mother (Susamme Wuest) seeks peace and quiet while recovering from facial reconstructive surgery. Distressed at her unusual appearance and disturbed by her borderline abusive behavior, Lukas and Elias soon begin to question whether the woman under the gauze is truly their mother at all. Those fears are apparently confirmed when the siblings stumble across a photo album containing a picture of their mother with a woman who appears to be their twin, and decide to torture the suspected intruder into confessing her true identity.

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Watch Online The Boy Next Door (2015) - MovieTimeUs

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Toss most of director Rob Cohen's films into a pot, stir them around a bit, and what you end up with is a batch of alpha-male soup with testosterone as the main ingredient. The man behind The Fast and the Furious, XXX, and the depressing serial-killer flop Alex Cross seems more than a little obsessed with aggressive male dominance -- and he indulges himself once more in The Boy Next Door.

The average girl might consider it a dream to live next door to a teenage hunk who, if she's lucky, would attempt to seduce her with his adorable, lopsided smile and pecs-for-days physique. But if that hunk is also a sociopathic stalker and the "girl" is actually a fortysomething high-school teacher and single mom, that dream can devolve into night terrors pretty quickly. So it goes with The Boy Next Door,Jennifer Lopez's latest starring vehicle, which comes on the heels of her quasi-successful comeback as a judge on the waaay-past-its-prime American Idol. Lopez portrays Claire Peterson, the separated mother of a teenage son named Kevin (sweetly played by Ian Nelson), who is deeply affected by his parents' split. Claire seems to be incapacitated when it comes to pulling the trigger on her marriage to philandering husband Garrett (John Corbett of Parenthood and Sex and the City), no matter how many times her best friend Vicky (Kristin Chenoweth) reminds her of his cheating ways. Once you suspend your disbelief that anyone would want to cheat on J. Lo (she of the flawless olive skin and enviable, age-defying figure), Lopez (barely) manages to convince us that Claire is feeling old and insecure. She sips wine and cries after her husband talks of revisiting the city of his affair, albeit for business. Now that her defenses are properly down, cue the aforementioned hunk next door. Noah Sandborn, played by relative newcomer Ryan Guzman, is charmingly assertive at first: He coyly tells Claire that she's sexy, befriends Kevin, and generally kisses up -- he's basically a better looking Eddie Haskell. But Eddie would never do to Mrs. Cleaver what Noah ultimately has in mind for Claire. He recently moved in with his sickly uncle after his own parents died under mysterious circumstances the year before. Upon meeting, it takes approximately 30 seconds for Claire to begin unabashedly gawking at 19-year-old Noah, who quickly capitalizes on this situation.

Director Cohen and screenwriter Barbara Curry (a former trial attorney) seem to have little concern for the glaring double standard here. If the gender roles were reversed, the seduction scenes would be considered exploitative and creepy, and the high-school teacher would be excoriated and then dismissed as nothing more than a pervy, middle-aged guy with zero self-control.

The plot here is so formulaic that one could almost picture Curry filling in the blanks on a standard-issue stalker-movie template: "(Claire) breaks into (Noah's) house and finds a creepy shrine to her in the (basement)." It's like Mad Libs for screenwriters.

There are some bright spots to The Boy Next Door. Lopez's acting has markedly matured since she last played the victim of an obsessed stalker, in 2002's Enough. While she might be too pretty for the role of Claire, she has an appealing ease about her when she talks to her son, and she can muster a believable level of outrage when she sees her world start to implode.

The best scene in the film is elevated by a cinematic choice that can be considered (almost) inspired. A psychotic Noah is calmly talking to Vicky, who is out of the shot. As he speaks, the camera zooms out so slowly and painstakingly that the viewer will want to cover his or her eyes in order to deal with the tension of what's about to be revealed; unfortunately, the rest of the movie isn't able to sustain that level of suspense and intrigue. It's better to cover the eyes in fear than to not want to look at the screen in the first place. 

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high-school | seduction | stalker | teacher | Age Disparity Romance | Betrayal | Crimes of Passion | Dangerous Attraction | Infidelity | Mental Breakdown | Mind Games | Stalkers | Voyeurs | Wolf in Sheep's Clothing