"The Choice"

My review of "The Choice" starring Benjamin Walker, Teresa Palmer, Alexandra Daddario, Maggie Grace.

"The Choice"

Posted on Feb. 5, 2016 on CWAtlanta.cbslocal.com

Wayback Machine Archive Post

Photo courtesy of Lionsgate

“The Choice” (2016)

Travis (Benjamin Walker) is living the good life. He has a beautiful home in a small town on the coast of North Carolina. Travis is popular, fun-loving and playing the field. He has a great support group of friends (all have married and have kids). He takes his boat out on almost a daily basis with his trusty dog by his side (who, by the way, is afraid of water). Travis works as a veterinarian with his father, Dr. Shep’s (Tom Wilkinson) and he has a loving sister, Stephanie (Maggie Grace) who seems to know Travis better than Travis knows himself.

Gabby (Teresa Palmer) is working at a local hospital and is studying to take her medical boards. She works alongside her boyfriend, Dr. Ryan McCarthy (Tom Welling) and his father (Brett Rice) who runs the hospital. She is comfortable and happy with her life, looking forward to when she becomes a doctor. She moves into a new home near the water with her dog. What she wants from her new home is a quiet place to study and sleep.

Photo courtesy of Lionsgate

Gabby’s plans to study are complicated by her neighbor Travis. Travis doesn’t take a lot of things seriously, and he loves to have people over to his place for bar-b-que and beer. The afternoon that Gabby moves in Travis has a couple of friends and their families over for a cookout and play games. Gabby gets more and more frustrated as the party seems to get louder with each passing moment, disturbing her plans to study. As the party winds down, and Travis’s friends leave, he sits in a lone chair in his front yard that looks out over the water listening to rock blasting from a boom box when Gabby angrily appears. As Travis continues to kid her, Gabby chews him out for his lack of good manners and accuses Travis’s dog of knocking up Gabby’s dog. Travis is intrigued by this fiery woman who won’t even give him her name. As Gabby storms off to her home, Travis turns the music up and enjoys the evening. Little do each other know that this first encounter is one that will change each of their lives for the better.

Nicholas Sparks produced this film based on his best-selling book of the same name, hand-picking the cast, the screenwriter, and the director. “The Choice” is a film that has all the usual Sparks touches that we have come to expect from his work. We have the two lead characters that while they initially clash, are destined to somehow, some way, end up together. The supportive family and friends are there, some of whom recognize, even before Gabby and Travis do, that there are some sparks there between them, and of course, there is a significant crisis that threatens the couple’s happiness.

As with most of Sparks work, the film is set in North Carolina, and the scenery is spectacular as cinematographer Alar Kivilo captures every purple, pink and blue hue coming off the water and the sky. Director Ross Katz keeps the film moving at a quick pace and lets quite a bit of humor come into the story-line. The first two-thirds of the movie are fun and lighthearted, as the couple starts falling in love, even as they continue to get on each other’s nerves.

What makes this film watchable, for all the Sparks schmaltz that this movie contains, is that Benjamin Walker and Teresa Palmer work incredibly well with each other. They have exceptional chemistry on screen together, especially in those moments where they are bickering. There is quite a spark between them and it’s very apparent on the screen that their characters are attracted to each other right from the start, and that draw continues to build as the film goes along. Walker has an easygoing southern charm that makes you like him from the start. Palmer has to work a little harder as her character isn’t as likable, but she wins us over as soon as her character starts warming up to Travis. The film is also helped by an outstanding supporting cast, including the always fascinating and brilliant Tom Wilkinson as the kindly father of Travis, Maggie Grace as Travis’s sister who keeps telling Travis that he is about to fall for Gabby and Tom Welling as the supportive boyfriend of Gabby’s.

My biggest problem with the film is that it almost slows to a stop when the big crisis starts happening. It goes on way too long, letting us experience the agony of the situation for what seems like forever. However, the chemistry between the two lead makes this a movie that fans of Nicholas Sparks films will enjoy.     My Rating: Bargain Matinee 

My movie rating system from Best to Worst:  1). I Would Pay to See it Again  2). Full Price  3). Bargain Matinee  4). Cable  5). You Would Have to Pay Me to See it Again

“The Choice” Website

"Kill Me Three Times"

My review of "Kill Me Three Times" starring Simon Pegg, Teresa Palmer, Alice Braga.

"Kill Me Three Times"

Posted on Apr. 10, 2015 on CWAtlanta.cbslocal.com

Wayback Machine Archive Post

Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

“Kill Me Three Times” (2104)

The film opens with a man desperately running down a road in the desert. He keeps looking back, hoping that the person or persons chasing him have given. He looks back once again, and this time a car appears on the horizon, coming towards him. He heads up a dune as the car approaches. A man wearing sunglasses gets out of the car, just as the man climbs over the dune. We get a closeup of the pursuer (Simon Pegg), a man who gets out of the truck a high-powered rifle. He slowly climbs the hill, sets his sight on the fleeing man below and shoots the man in two quick bursts. He looks down below at his handy work, only to realize that the man is still alive and is able to move behind a piece of construction equipment. This pisses off the hunter, and he heads down the hill. The hurt man is barely able to crawl, and the hunter shoots the man again, just as his phone rings. The hunter answers the phone, quickly puts it on silent, shoots the crawling man in the head and then takes the rest of the phone call.

And that’s how the comedic film noir movie “Kill Me Three Times” starts. The hunter in the opening scene is Charlie Wolfe (Simon Pegg), a professional hit man who is cool as ice and never gets caught. Charlie has gotten himself involved in the lives of a group of interconnected people in a small Australian town. The townspeople are all interconnected, most having affairs with each other, and all seem to be full of bad intent. Wolfe is hired by businessman Jack (Callan Murphy) to kill his wife (Alice Braga) after Wolfe confirms that she is cheating on him with a mechanic named Dylan (Luke Hemsworth). Complicating things are a dentist (Sullivan Stapleton), his ultra-controlling wife/receptionist (Teresa Palmer). Added to the mix is a crooked cop (Bryan Brown) who has his hand in every illegal action going on in the town.

In a creative bit of filmmaking, we are slowly exposed to each character’s story, seeing how everyone seems to be connected in town by either by trying to steal each other’s money or their spouses. It’s a big, complex con game that each character thinks has the winning hand but only a few will make their way out of the small town full of bad intentions and equally bad decisions.

The film is bolstered by an impressive cast led by Simon Pegg. Pegg, playing against his usual type, is a strong, forceful hit man that is cocksure and deliberate. Wearing sunglasses, a suit and driving around in a muscle car, it’s interesting that the film rarely uses Pegg’s flair for comic timing. Other cast members who stand out are Alice Braga, playing the unhappy but determined wife of Jack, who unlike most of the characters, seems to have at least a bit of a conscience. Teresa Palmer seems to have the most fun of the cast in her role of the wife of a weak-willed dentist Nathan. Of course, Brian Brown never disappoints, joyfully eating up the scenery as the cop that believes that everyone owes him a take of their ill-gotten gains.

The film is directed by Kriv Stenders, who directed the well-received 2007 Australian drama “Boxing Day.” “Kill Me Three Times” is taught in its quick and fast cuts by editor Jill Bilcock but is let down by Stenders direction and by a last-luster script from first-time screenwriter James McFarland. It’s a film that too quickly moves back and forth between hard drama and comedic moments that don’t always work. The movie never can find its tone, which is too bad because the premise is so darn good.

While the film starts very promising, it’s not as fun or inventive as it needs to be. The movie ends with too simple an ending, not as surprising as it should have been and never delivers the big outcome we would have liked. It’s an enjoyable ride with some excellent performances but ultimately, it’s a film that wants to be in the cinema vein of Tarantino or more recently Martin McDonagh’s “Seven Psychopaths” (2014) but never quite delivers the punch of those two filmmakers.    My Rating: Bargain Matinee 

My movie rating system from Best to Worst:  1). I Would Pay to See it Again  2). Full Price  3). Bargain Matinee  4). Cable  5). You Would Have to Pay Me to See it Again

“Kill Me Three Times” is playing exclusively at Landmark Midtown Art Cinema'