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The Lincoln Lawyer Reviews
The Lincoln Lawyer
In the gripping thriller “The Lincoln Lawyer,” Matthew McConaughey stars as Michael “Mick” Haller, a slick, charismatic Los Angeles criminal defense attorney who operates out of the back of his Lincoln Continental sedan. Having spent most of his career defending petty, gutter- variety criminals, Mick unexpectedly lands the case of a lifetime: defending a rich Beverly Hills playboy (Ryan Phillippe) who is accused of attempted murder. However, what initially appears to be a straightforward case with a big money pay-off swiftly develops into a deadly match between two masters of manipulation and a crisis of conscience for Haller.Smooth operator Mickey Haller (Matthew McConaughey) zips around Los Angeles in his chauffeured Lincoln town car, cutting deals and finding clients on the road. Then he lands a doozy: a rich real-estate heir (Ryan Phillippe) accused of the brutal assault of an escort. At first, the case looks like a breeze, but odd details start nagging at Haller until he r
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Rango (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy)
Get ready to tango with RANGO, a winner with critics and audiences that’s “like nothing you’ve ever seen before” (Peter Travers, Rolling Stone). Johnny Depp is spectacular as Rango, a kooky pet chameleon who gets tossed into a wild and raucous town in desperate need of a hero. Refreshingly original with eye-popping animation, RANGO is “loads of fun and genuinely funny” (Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times). And now you can get more RANGO in the Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack with Digital Copy featuring the never-before-seen ending, 10 deleted scenes and exclusive interactive Blu-ray features including picture-in-picture storyboards and an interactive field trip to Dirt, and so much more.An animated Western with a chameleon as the hero is an unlikely concept, but Rango is a great film thanks to its witty mix of parody, intriguing characters, and sophisticated humor. When a common pet chameleon who’s suffering from an identity crisis crashes headfirst into the stereotypically clas
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C. R. Swanson "wilybadger.wordpress.com"
June 25, 2011 at 8:14 pm
Saddle up for a good time! (yes, that’s the best headline I could think of),
Going into this film I had pretty low expectations. It’s released by Nickelodeon, stars Johnny Depp, who tends to be rather feast or famine, and is an animated film that’s not made by Pixar. Due to that latter fact, the probability of it sucking hard went up by, oh, about 300%. So imagine my surprise when I went in and actually liked the movie!
Rango stars Depp as the title character, a chameleon who finds himself lost in the middle of the Nevada desert. A kindly, if somewhat odd, armadillo (Alfred Molina), sets him on a course that takes him to the town of Dirt. The town, which is lifted directly out of every old West movie ever made, is populated entirely by animals, uses water as a currency, has a massive water shortage, and a shortage of living sheriffs. Next thing you know, Rango has ridden to the post of sheriff on a pack of lies and finds himself stuck in the middle of something bigger than he’d expected.
There was a lot to enjoy about this movie. It’s really one of the funnier comedies I’ve seen in a long time (and made for adults as well as kids. I doubt many eight-year-olds would appreciate Hunter S Thompson), and it’s a movie that clearly knows its cinematic history (just wait until you see the Spirit of the Old West). It’s also astonishingly lovely to look at. I compare the CGI in this with, say, Shrek, and the distance we’ve come in just a few years is really breathtaking. There were several points where I would have sworn the animals were muppets rather than CGI. They really looked good, as did the desert landscape.
Sure, I’ll be the first to admit that much about the movie doesn’t make any real sense, like why would there be talking animals setting up a town in the desert in a world that clearly includes humans? Why would said town be based on the old west when the movie is set in modern times? How did they manage to have things like shotguns and a Bible? But frankly I was able to ignore all that because the movie really was amazingly good!
So if you’re looking for a little time to kill this weekend, go see this film. It’s easily the best animated movie since Toy Story 3, and one of the best comedies of the last few years.
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|Whitt Patrick Pond "Whitt"
June 25, 2011 at 8:04 pm
Great animation, but really more for film buffs and lovers of animation than for kids,
Gore Verbinski’s animated feature Rango, with voices by Johnny Depp, Ned Beatty and a host of other talented actors, is a hard film to review, mainly because its real target audience is not the one it’s being marketed towards. Let me just flat out say it: this really isn’t a kids’ animated movie. Not because there’s anything in it that is not suitable for kids – there isn’t – but because 95 percent of what really makes it worth seeing is going to go right over most kids’ heads.
On the surface, the plot is fairly straightforward, at least in the set-up. A terrarium-housed pet chameleon lizard (it’s significant after the fact that you never know his real name) ends up stranded in the desert where he is directed to a small town that is on the verge of extinction because of a mysterious water shortage. In his efforts to blend in (he _is_ a chamelon after all), he adopts the name Rango and in quick order suddenly finds himself appointed sheriff and given the mission of finding out what’s happened to the town’s water.
Stylistically, Verbinski was willing to take some real chances with Rango, and anyone who appreciates animation as an art will find a lot to see here. The level of detail and sheer originality is stunning. Rango does not resemble _anything_ I’ve seen in an animated film before. Though set in the current day, the world of Rango is essentially an Old West town – aptly named Dirt – that’s literally drying up, populated by a cast of animal characters who look like they stepped out of any number of classic Westerns. The difference between Rango and your usual animated take on this theme though is that the residents of Dirt are _not_ cute. In addition to being much closer in look to the real animals they’re based on – lizards, tortoises, toads, possums, snakes, prarie dogs and such – they’re also grizzled, dusty, sun-bleached and wind-beaten, and in many cases, just downright _ugly_. Including, or even especially, the good guys. One suspects that merchandising for Rango will be somewhat problematic.
But it says something that everything fits together seamlessly. The town really looks like an Old West town on the verge of becoming a ghost town, and the characters look like they really do live there. And again, the level of detail is stunning, from the clothes the characters wear to the characters themselves, the buildings and other structures, the interiors. The four desert-owl mariachi players who sing narration at various points in the film are a case in point. The level of detail that is taken with their intricately shaded feathers, their embroidered mariachi costumes and their musical instruments – and the way all of these things _move_ when the characters do – is amazing. This is a movie you could watch again and again just to appreciate how much the artists put into it.
I have to mention two characters in particular that really stood out: the Mayor (marvelously voiced by Ned Beatty), a tortoise modeled directly on John Huston’s genial but chilling Noah Cross from the classic film Chinatown, and Rattlesnake Jake (also marvelously voiced by Bill Nighy), absolutely one of the best animated villains ever created. It’s absolutely spell-binding just to watch Jake _move_, a stunning feat of animation. I’ve never seen an animated character manage to radiate sheer menace on the level that Rattlesnake Jake does. In thinking about it, I now have to amend my earlier statement somewhat; Rattlesnake Jake could definitely scare some younger children. But that said, Rango is worth seeing for Rattlesnake Jake alone.
My mention of Chinatown brings me to the other prospective audience for Rango: film buffs. Rango references a truly astonishing number of movies: several classic Westerns (High Noon; The Good, the Bad & the Ugly; The Quick & The Dead, Paint Your Wagon) as one would expect, but also a number of non-Westerns, some fairly recent (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, A Bug’s Life), some classic (Lawrence of Arabia, Apocalypse Now) and some obscure (Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas). And of course Chinatown, not only for the Mayor character but for a number of scenes (watch for the glasses) and a good deal of the plot. And there’s also a key scene that’s a nod to a famous actor/director who is still remembered for his association with Westerns and for a certain classic character he created. A good example of the little in-jokes in Rango is what he’s carrying around in the back of the golf cart. As I said, most kids are going to miss 95 percent of this stuff. Me, I want to get the DVD just so I can watch it again and pick out all of the references I probably missed the first time around. It’s that kind of movie.
About my only real criticism of Rango – other than its being marketed to the wrong audience – is that parts of it are uneven and do tend to drag a bit. I think this is because the parts that do seem to be…
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|C. Sawin
June 25, 2011 at 7:15 pm
Brilliant in every sense of the word,
Director Gore Verbinski has put together quite the filmography over the years. His first feature film was the family comedy Mousehunt, which he followed up with the R-rated action comedy The Mexican. He also jumped on the successful remake bandwagon before the trend really took off with The Ring. It was the Pirates of the Caribbean films that teamed the director with the hottest actor in Hollywood today; Johnny Depp. Perhaps it’s because those films made over a billion dollars at the box office or because they just had fun working together or a little bit of both that Depp was chosen to voice a talking chameleon in Verbinski’s bizarre yet spectacular animated adventure known as Rango.
Rango isn’t your average animated film. That fact will become abundantly clear during Rango’s opening monologue amongst his “friends.” The film is actually more adult than any of the trailers let on. Within the first ten minutes of the film, Rango has a rather lengthy conversation with some fresh roadkill. In addition to that, the last half of the film is much darker than the first half. Maybe it’s the countless number of bats with gatling guns strapped to them, Rattlesnake Jake being one of the most menacing animated villains in years, the film using its fair share of both “hell” and “damn” quite a few times, the film not shying away from the use of nooses, or, God forbid, animated characters smoking, but Rango just doesn’t feel like an everyday, run-of-the-mill film put out by Nickelodeon.
Rango also wears its western references on its sleeve. The old time saloons, tumbleweeds, stare downs before a gunfight, and a town’s utmost desire for both a sheriff and something to believe in are proof of that. But perhaps it’s Timothy Olyphant’s cameo appearance as The Spirit of the West that is both the biggest homage to westerns you could possibly think of and the biggest surprise of the film (at least as far as his appearance goes). Well it’s either that or the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas reference. Both are equally amazing.
This has the atmosphere of an animated film that was made for adults. It’s very off-balanced in the best kind of way, but a lot of the references and humor are sure to go over a child’s head. Some of the characters in the film talk really fast (mostly just Rango and Beans at times) and while Rango is goofy enough to make the kids laugh, the subject content involving the town of Dirt certainly seems to be aimed towards a more mature sense of humor.
Rango is the first animated film from Industrial Light & Magic, the special effects company that did computer generated effects for the first three Star Wars films and the effects for the T-1000 in Terminator 2 among countless others. The film looks phenomenal. There were times when Rango looked like he was walking in an actual desert. While the characters weren’t quite as detailed as the owls in Legend of the Guardians, they still looked incredibly realistic or as realistic as talking animals could possibly be.
Rango is one of the most eccentric animated films you’ll ever have the pleasure of sitting through. Its homage to westerns combined with its explosive action sequences, an endless amount of hilarity, tender and sentimental moments that actually make you feel sorry for a talking lizard, and even a little bit of romance pretty much has all your bases covered as far as genres are concerned. Rango is a dark, witty, and entertaining ride that’s also fairly mature for an animated film. All in all, Rango is easily the best movie of 2011 so far.
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|Karen Franklin "Forensic Psychologist"
June 25, 2011 at 6:18 pm
Good old-fashioned legal thriller,
This legal thriller is a refreshing break from all of the mindless, style-over-substance 3D fare Hollywood is churning out lately. It’s a throwback to the days of classic courtroom dramas and police procedurals, with enough interesting twists and turns to keep eyeballs glued to the screen. Matthew McConaughey is superbly cast as the smooth operator lawyer. The rest of the casting is also exceptional, down to some of the bit parts like the bail bondsman, the jailhouse snitch, the biker, and the busted hooker. (I especially appreciated William H. Macy as the private investigator; I do wish that Marisa Tomei had a meatier role that allowed her to shine as she did in “My Cousin Vinny.”) Michael Connelly is one of the best current authors in the hard-boiled police procedural genre, and the adaptation stays pretty true to his spirit. As someone who works in the criminal justice system, I appreciated the realism. Money, connections, backroom wheeling and dealing, and simple twists of fate often trump justice. Just four stars because although it was solid and great fun to watch, it lacked a profound message or deep impact that would make it memorable. You certainly won’t regret watching it.
CAUTION: If you have not seen this movie, do not watch the trailer. It spoils the plot.
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|Craig Whittle
June 25, 2011 at 5:34 pm
The Lincoln Lawyer Review,
THE LINCOLN LAWYER
STARRING: Matthew McConaughey, Ryan Philippe, Marisa Tomei, William H. Macy, Michael Pena, John Leguizamo and Josh Lucas
WRITTEN BY: John Romano; based on the novel by Michael Connelly
DIRECTED BY: Brad Furman
Rated: R
Genre: Drama / Thriller
Release Date: 18 March 2011
Review Date: 18 March 2011
The Lincoln Lawyer was a refreshing film for two paramount reasons: it’s one of the top films of the year and its Matthew McConaughey’s best performance to date. I generally like McConaughey movies but he’s played a lot of goofballs.
More often than not he’s a buffoon or a slacker who has beautiful women flocking to him and we never question it because he’s Matthew McConaughey. The ladies in his films never question it for this same reason and because he usually has his shirt off. But here he’s charming, intelligent, slick, and meticulously perfect at everything; particularly the work he does from the back seat of his Lincoln. We’d believe any woman’s attraction to him. Ironically, only one woman shows interest in him and it’s an old flame.
She’s Maggie, played by the lovely Marisa Tomei. The two are lawyers who remain friends who may want a little more. The iceberg between them is that they are on either sides of the fence when it comes to the law. She wants bad guys behind bars; he couldn’t care less if they’re on the street so long as they can afford his hefty fees.
McConaughey slides into the role of Mick Haller with great ease and does a tremendous job. Mick lives to be in a courtroom and finds great euphoria in winning and knowing that he will win without question. We love watching him in action. As good as this film was, I imagine the detail that went into the novel, of which it’s based, was even more enticing. Even John Grisham is likely a fan.
We spend the first several minutes of the film being acquainted with the big sleaze ball Mick is. He handles multiple cases at a time: hookers, drug dealers, whatever; and seems to have them settled in his head before he even steps foot in court.
All that changes however with his latest client: a rich kid accused of a brutal rape (Ryan Philippe). All fingers point to his being guilty, but he insists otherwise. Ryan Philippe isn’t as good here as he was as a similar rich snob in Cruel Intentions, but he’s pretty close.
To reveal what happens next would be inconceivable to anyone who’s seen the film. It spirals out of control over and over and it’s the kind of film that makes you think while entertaining the hell out of you. It’s one of those rare movies that actually could happen yet still has us captivated. Oh, and McConaughey only removes his shirt once.
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|Tony Heck "Twitter me - @pantherpremiere"
June 25, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Brilliant movie about the flaws in the justice system, and one man who tries to correct them. I love this movie. I say A+,
How far would you go to correct a wrong? After agreeing to take on a case he assumes is an easy win Mickey (McConaughey) soon learns appearances are deceiving. When he finds out the truth and tries to expose it his friends and family are put at risk. I have to admit I actually think McConaughey is very good at playing parts like this. As in “Time To Kill” and “Two For The Money”. The smooth man pushed to the edge. Saying almost anything about the movie will give too much info away but I will admit that after being in the “Movie Business” for over 10 years I’ve seen enough that it’s very hard for me to be surprised at a movies ending. The twist at the end of this one had me totally thrown and I love when that happens. I had high expectations for this and it surpassed them all. Watch this movie, you will not regret it. I loved it. As a plus this is a movie that exposes the flaws in the justice system, which will make you mad, and at the same time make you wish more lawyers are like Mickey Haller. I love this movie. I say A+.
Would I watch again? – Absolutely, Im going to buy it!!!
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