City by the Sea

Two days ago, I watched a movie that I've been drooling over and wanting to watch for probably three days. It was fantastic and it was called City by the Sea.

The first reason I decided that I had to watch this movie ASAP was because James Franco is in it. And he's amazing.

Secondly, I watched a video on Youtube video of clips from the movie with James in them and it was awesome. Plus, there are drugs in this movie. So of course I want to watch it.

From the video I saw on Youtube (which you can view here), I thought the movie would have more to do with James Franco's character, Joey, and his addiction. Instead, it turned out to be more a cop-drama movie, which a tiny bit of Hollywood drug culture thrown in here and there. More of the shots with James had to do with him looking emo rather than strung out, even though, occording to how the plot was set up, he was basically involuntarily going cold turkey. I didn't think of this while watching the movie, but have, obviously, now that hindsight is 20/20 and I'm not sucked into the weavings of the plot.

I will say that some parts of the movie were very nicely editted. Such as when you know that Robert De Niro has sex with his neighbor, but, let's face it... he's kind of old and you don't want to see him doing such grotesque things on screen. Sorry, Robert.

But besides this, the film had other merits. It had plenty of antagonists, such as headstrong cops and an angry drug boss guy named Spider. (Probably spelled with a Y instead, to be a little more hardcore than something we smoosh whenever we see one crawling in our bathroom sink.)

The movie definitely deserves, at least, 3.5 stars out of 5. Some of the characters were thin and some parts of the plot seems a little off with the general vibe of the movie and were just a hassle for the viewing audience. But overall, the movie was really good. The acting was fantastic and the premise was enthralling. I would recommend this movie to my friends. Probably.

Trailer: