Tag: Salma Hayek

Like A Boss

Rated: MLike A Boss

Directed by: Miguel Arteta

Story by: Danielle Sanchez-Witzel

Screenplay by: Adam Cole-Kelly, Sam Pitman

Starring: Rose Byrne, Salma Hayek, Tiffany Haddish.

“I love my friends, but I don’t think I can handle the judgement today.”

I’m trying to think of a moment I didn’t like in this film.  Maybe because I’ve been watching nothing but serious movies, crime series or the school holiday kid flicks…  Do I like a chick movie now, that gets it?!  Maybe I do…

Best buddies Mel (Rose Byrne) and Mia (Tiffany Haddish) are living the dream, running their own makeup store.

Boutique and clever with ideas like the, One Night Stand pack, they work when they want, give cute nerdy-girl discounts to young prom beauties so they can shine from the inside out…  But living the dream comes at a cost that leaves the entrepreneurs in crushing debt.  Debt that will close their business without a huge investment from an external source.  Like Claire Luna (Salma Hayek).

A gift, a rescue, Mel thinks, because she knows the finances.  It’s Mia who’s the genius when it comes to product.  Mia doesn’t want to give up control, but without financial backing Mel knows the company will sink.

Savvy businesswoman Luna proposes a compromise, forty-nine percent if the girls can continue to work together, fifty-one percent if the partnership doesn’t last.

Confident in their friendship, the two besties agree to the terms not realising the lengths this ‘angry carrot – that’s not her hair,’ will go to in order to drive them apart.

There are some genuine chick moments that strikes a chord here, the setting of friend against friend unveiling some of that passive aggressive behaviour we’ve all been guilty of, when confronting a friend is just too hard.

I mean, I could go on about directors and actors and how the film was shot, but this movie’s all about the comedy and friendship of these two girls being themselves.  Exactly what I was in the mood for.

I loved seeing Jennifer Coolidge as shop assistant, Sydney – gorgeous woman!  And seeing chicks deal with the stress of it all without being dickheads about it is a lot of fun.

I know I’m being a bit lazy with this review, but right now?  Like everyone else these days, I feel busy.  So with this screening, I enjoyed taking a break and just having a laugh.

The Hummingbird Project

Rated: MThe Hummingbird Project

Directed by: Kim Nguyen

Written by: Kim Nguyen

Produced by: Pierre Even, Jérôme de Béthune, Fabrice Delville, Alian-Gilles Viellevoye

Starring: Salma Hayek, Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgård.

The film is named, The Hummingbird Project because the beat of a hummingbird’s wing takes less than sixteen milliseconds – the time barrier Vincent Zaleski (Jesse Eisenberg) and cousin Anton Zaleski (Alexander Skarsgård) want to break by building a fibre line from the Kansas City Internet Exchange to the New York Stock Exchange.

If they can transfer data faster than the sixteen-millisecond barrier, they can trade faster than anyone else, making millions, even billions of dollars.

The only problem is that the line needs financial backing and the line needs to be built straight one thousand miles: under 10,000 private properties, under rivers, even through a mountain made of granite located in a protected state forest.

The project is a massive undertaking with all the issues that go along with making the seemingly impossible, possible by throwing millions of dollars and brain power at any obstacle.  Including ex-boss, Wall Street CEO, Eva Torres (Salma Hayek) who doesn’t like betrayal (the cousins quitting and taking their idea with them) from Anton, the technical genius she cared for, who’s obviously on the spectrum and Vince, the cousin she hired so Anton could have a pet.

She has her own project.

Vince and Anton must beat their vengeful ex-boss and her line of microwave towers otherwise the fibre line becomes pointless.

It’s a David and Goliath fight to the finish with pipeline engineer Mark Vega (Michael Mando) asking Vince, ‘We’re David?’  To him it sounds like Goliath against Goliath.

The film is based on the true story Michael Lewis published, Flash Boys (2014): the fight between Spread Networks, which built an 827-mile fibre cable from Chicago to New York, and a line of microwave towers.

An idea so crazy it’s got to be true (as they say).

There’s something satisfying in seeing a large project come together – the technically savvy Anton great fun to watch; he’s the genius coder who just wants to buy a country house for his family to get away from people, AKA ‘morons’.

Alexander Skarsgård shows his versatility in the role of a receding programming nerd, the character’s single-mindedness, hilarious – although the dance scene I’m pretty sure was a copy of Tom Cruise in his role as Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder (2008).

All the roles were well-cast, Salma Hayek showing real bite as the powerful CEO and financial guru – she’s just as good at her job as the geniuses she hires to work for her.

And there’s more to the story than data transfer, problem solving and making money – this is a life-defining project for Vince.  This is about the mystery of life and what he’ll find at the end.

I enjoyed watching this film on many levels.  And it looks good on the big screen, with falling snow, frozen in time; walking over a forest of pine trees like they’re moss covering the ground as thought rises above the project of building this line and seeing the idea and drive to finish as more than the project itself.

An intelligent film with a bit humanity thrown in the mix.

The Hitman’s Bodyguard

Rated: MA15+The Hitman's Bodyguard

Directed by: Patrick Hughes

Written by: Tom O’Connor

Produced by: John Thompson, Matt O’Toole, Les Weldon, Mark Gill

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman, and Salma Hayek, Elodie Yung, Joaquim De Almeida, Kirsty Mitchell, with Richard E. Grant.

Darius Kincaid: Well, when life gives you shit, you make Kool-Aid.
Michael Bryce: Life doesn’t usually give you shit and then turn into a beverage.

When Triple A rated executive protection agent, Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds) loses or should I say, watches in disbelief as his client is shot by a seemingly impossible bullet in front of him, his life falls from living the dream, like, right up there, to right down there: escorting coked-up stock brokers.

It’s a wasted talent.

So, when super-hitman, Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson) is put under witness protection so he can testify against, Vladslav Dukhovich (Gary Oldman), an Eastern European fallen dictator for crimes against humanity, it’s up to Bryce to get him to court alive.

If only Kincaid hadn’t tried to kill Bryce 28 times and wasn’t a complete pain in the arse.

The Hitman's Bodyguard

The Hitman’s Bodyguard uses that old-school formula of two guys who annoy the crap out of each other, leading to funny one-liners in between the explosive action of car, boat and motorbike chases to jumping from buildings gracefully or being ejected through a car windscreen.

There’s loads of action here and plenty of gun fights and bloody bits – a surprising amount of blood and swearing.

But the bromance/comedy/action formula is a classic one and works well if you’ve got the right cast, such as Ryan Reynolds versus Samuel L. Jackson.

It was interesting between Jackson and Reynolds because they’re both strong leads. Yet, they worked well with two very different characters bouncing off the other – Bryce (Reynolds) completely unfazed by the intensity that was Samuel L. Jackson as Kincaid which added to the comedy.

Ryan Reynold’s deadpan facial expressions of disbelief and perfectly timed deliveries were what really made the film for me.
The Hitman's Bodyguard

I can understand why the script written by Tom O’Connor was immediately sold as it’s a lot of fun, particularly with so many cars getting blown up (being more of an action entertainer then a thought provoker) but there’s enough development of the characters to create a satisfying emotional tone, so it’s not all just superficial explosions, there’s also a roundness to Kincaid and Bryce that develops as the relationship progresses.  And thankfully not sappy try-hard, but believable, funny and a bit cute with hard-arse Kincaid giving Bryce love advice.

Director, Patrick Hughes, who’s becoming an experienced hand at superstar casted action flicks (think The Expendables 3 (2014)) has put together a well-balanced and entertaining film.  And I was happy to leave the cinema with a grin.

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