In Which I Briefly Review Movies

[909]

Arrival (2016), directed by Denis Villeneuve

I have often complained to many of the people who I know about a lack of quality science-fiction. With such complaints, it seemed to be time to finally tackle Arrival. I should have done so much sooner, but I didn't and that's fine. Quality science-fiction should leave the viewer a bit stumped by the results. There is no need to understand everything, as much as some people complain that they don't. One thing I was thinking as I reached the end of the film was that I wasn't sure if this was even Villeneuve's best film, which is an incredible thing to be thinking about something as good as this was. I am also a little bit pissed off with myself that I never made a rankings list for 2016, but it's way too late to do that now. Arrival is the kind of film that leaves me without words, I was floored to that extent. I was going to do a list of bulletpoints explaining what I thought made a quality science-fiction film, but that's too much. Here's the deal. If you want a film that presents the idea of what I find to be the most likely scenario should aliens make contact with humans, that's what Arrival is. I used to think that we needed a film like this one that dealt with first contact in a more realistic sense, but now that we have it, I'm left with a need for even more. It strikes me as being very difficult for a screenplay that presents these ideas to actually tie them together.

Our film begins with a glimpse at Louise Banks (Amy Adams), a woman who had a daughter that died of an incurable illness. It would seem to me that Louise is driven by these events. She is a linguist and language professor with a very small class, which we should have expected when she was walking to the room and people were freaking out. Louise begins to give her lecture, but everyone's phone is going off. She is asked to turn on the television and does so, at which point we learn that at 12 sites around the world, there are huge spaceships touching down to make contact with us. These ships hover above the grass and emit nothing whatsoever, the ship looking like an obelisk is an excellent creation. The next day when nobody's at class, Louise is visited in her office by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker). They have worked together once on a Farsi project, so Louise has top-secret clearance still to this point. Weber presents an audio tape, obviously recorded from contact with the aliens, where they make some guttural sounds that cannot be understood. She refuses to discuss the matter without being flown to the site in Montana, which leads to her telling Weber to go deal with one of her colleagues who isn't as good a linguist. Whether he does meet with the man or doesn't is irrelevant, because Weber shows up that night and wants to bring Louise to Montana. She complies.

Aboard the helicopter, Louise is greeted by a theoretical physicist, Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner). The point of the mission is simple, the Americans want to know what the purpose of the aliens on Earth is. Once the helicopter arrives at the base in Montana, it is clear that some experiments are going on. There is also coordination between the 12 sites, all of which are in different countries. The reason the aliens chose these 12 sites is incomprehensible, but you should understand as the film goes on. Louise, Ian, and a team of soldiers/equipment operators all need to go on board the spaceship. When they do, let's put it this way, the things required for them to actually get to speak to the aliens are crazy as fuck. Louise is met with resistance from Weber and a CIA Agent Halpern (Michael Stuhlbarg), they don't really care for her proposed method. The method is as such. She wants to write down our words, the first of them being "human" so that the aliens can understand at some point what she's writing down, and what we are. Similarly, the aliens are impossible to understand, so things need to get to a point where they do the same thing. These aliens are called heptapods because they have seven limbs, and it turns out they do have a written language. They communicate in circular symbols and contain a lot of intricacies that could mean many different words. It is Louise and Ian's job to figure out what those are.

I didn't know how to describe the premise of the film, so I did my best. Has everyone seen this yet? I would hope I'm the only one far behind the times. I was so glad that I wasn't watching a movie where aliens blow up shit and humans blow them up too. That isn't to say that all of those films are bad, but I was pleased beyond words with the way this turned out. There are so many little moments that help to bolster the story, and the revelations, once they come anyway, are all quite spectacular. The film is deep, I immediately searched for numerous things that I was wondering the resolutions of only to find that I would have already known them. The last one, about what the aliens themselves want, is actually a very common sense solution that is answered by their purpose. One needs to consider the possibility that Arrival is a film that places humanity in a different context, in the context that if we actually want to do something, we really can. It is possible for us to succeed when we already know something, this film is a firm believer in the idea that humanity can handle the obvious and be prepared for it. Climate change would seem to work against this idea, but I've tried to ignore that. The emotional weight of the scenes throughout the film is quite brilliant in that way and in others.

Arrival is also a triumph of technical aspects, of how the heptapods were formed with visual effects, of the cinematography, and of the overall atmosphere at. The obelisk-like spacecraft is an incredible choice, it is quite ominous and gives real intrigue to the scenes when our characters first walk inside it. The creation of the language, however, is totally ridiculous. It's too bad there aren't awards given out for those kinds of things. I was awed by it in ways that can't be expressed, because this is completely innovative and I've never seen anything like this before. The way the heptapods created black air, that was great too. Unfortunately, I'm also left with sadness that Johann Johannsson won't be able to create another score like this one. I just don't understand how some awards are given out and that's one of them too. I really wish that I'd seen Arrival in a theater as this is a film which seemed to massively benefit from that, and it's lost on me because I didn't. Coke and medication don't go together and that's something I'm going to remember, let me assure you. The sound in general is spectacular, not just his part in it. I am also very confused as to why Amy Adams was not given an Oscar nomination for this movie.

I was deliberately vague with a lot of the things related to the film, because I don't know what more I can say. Great science-fiction leads the viewer on a journey of discovery as the film passes, and from one scene to the next this delivered in spades. Arrival is a little bit slow, but there's a purpose to all of this. A few months ago, my dad tried to sit down and watch this and he just couldn't. It wasn't for him. I feel like that could be the case for quite a few people, but this is a film with intellectual depth even though I haven't gotten far into commenting on the questions the film asks and answers. If people comment on this review and have things they want to say, that would be great as I'd like to have a discussion about this. Arrival was a hell of a surprise for me. I suppose I was expecting something come the end of the film, but not that. The events seemed to pile up leading to something big, but I wouldn't have guessed that's exactly what it was. I thought the aliens were there for good purposes, but I expected the film to go down the road of an attack taking place before a real breakthrough. Sometimes you get what you expect and sometimes you don't, and even more often you get some of what you expect. The best films are those that go beyond your expectations to deliver something that only a visual medium can bring to you.

9/10

 

[909]

Greta (2019), directed by Neil Jordan

I would say that Greta had the best trailer of anything debuting so far this year, in terms of piquing my interest in something I otherwise may not have been interested in a few years ago. Let's put it this way, if you've been waiting for camp since Serenity was released, and particularly if you want better camp than that, Greta might be for you. I am a little confused by some of the things related to this film though. Hasn't Neil Jordan been nominated for awards? I'm a little bit confused how someone could go from that to this, but that could also be said for our cast. Trust me, this is a film that could not have started off seeming more boring. To clarify, that's just at the start. Things pick up so much from that point though, and even though you pretty much know what's coming, it's still fun the whole way. Surprisingly, it took me being the only one laughing at some very funny things in order for other people to stop laughing, but make no mistake here. Greta is a very, very funny film, I cannot believe that these three actresses took part in something so goofy. I'm also happy they did.

Greta begins with Frances (Chloe Grace Moretz) working at a restaurant in New York City, this is something she doesn't seem too experienced in doing and with good reason. It turns out that Frances' mother has died and she is in more than a bit of a funk, and that she went to live with her best friend Erica (Maika Monroe) in Manhattan. While on her way home, Frances finds a nice looking bad on the subway and does what a person should do with such a bag. I don't mean that she stole it, or anything in there, even though Erica really wanted to. Erica has a fascination with bullshit fads like colonics, and she did suggest that they take the money out of the wallet, but in any case, Frances is from Boston and I guess that means she doesn't steal (lol). If you haven't figured it out, Frances is a little dumb. She is also quite a bit lonely. The next day, she heads to Brooklyn with the intention of delivering the purse to Greta (Isabelle Huppert), a lonely Frenchwoman whose family has departed her some time ago. Her husband is dead and her daughter lives in Paris, so there's a potential for a bond between the two women.

Greta and Frances have a very good first meeting, which naturally leads to other meetings between the two. Erica thinks this development is absolutely bizarre and calls it out for what it is, that these two are indulging each other in their grief and that it won't last. It doesn't last. Greta plays the piano and is very good at it, this is something that serves to put Frances at ease. Frances helps Greta adopt a dog, they go to church, and all that good stuff. One night, Frances is going to abandon Erica so that she can go to dinner with Greta at Greta's house. While there, I'm sure everyone who's seen the trailer has seen this, but Frances is asked to look for some candles. Frances does so, and in the act of doing so she opens the wrong drawer and sees a lot of purses similar to the one she returned to Greta. Frances feigns sick and jets on out of there, but there are already some omnious signs. One is that Greta has presented herself as being technologically illiterate when she is not. There's a scene where she spies on Frances' Facebook page, but she had a flip phone and didn't know how to use the camera. Another problem is that she locks her house from the inside with a key. Anyway, I think you know how this one goes. Greta is simply not going to allow Frances to break their bond and get away with it.

Greta is a film much bolstered by its score and cinematography, and I think without said cinematography, a lot of the juice would have been sapped from this film. We know that Seamus McGarvey is a very good cinematographer from what he did with Nocturnal Animals, which I think is a film I underrated when I reviewed it. The score is completely batshit, by the way. Javier Navarrete has also been nominated for awards for his scores, and this probably won't be...but it still fits the film so well. This is love or hate material, I think. You may find this too ridiculous to pay any mind, but I did not. I found that this material was entirely tongue-in-cheek, it just had to be. There's a part where Greta twirls on the floor like a ballerina, one which made me howl with laughter. I mean, come on. Yes, this is a stalker film, but there's no way anyone could possibly think this is supposed to be serious. Talk about a ridiculous movie. At one point I thought that Jordan was trying to make a statement about how ridiculous this subgenre is.

Of course, this all falls apart without the performances of our three actresses. All of them are entirely necessary to the film, but I thought Isabelle Huppert was the standout. That's no surprise. She makes for a perfect stalker, and was shockingly good in the more amusing parts of this story. There are numerous things that were shown in the trailer that I thought would be hard for her to pull off, but none of them were. This was also a very good follow-up to It Follows for Maika Monroe. Since then, she did a bunch of stuff that I haven't watched, some of which I'll certainly never watch. This role is made for her though, and I'm going to leave it at that. I was also thinking that Chloe Grace Moretz is innocent looking enough for this story to actually work. Ultimately, it's the work of the trio that renders this film a success with me, but I wouldn't go too far overboard. This is certainly a film with problems, the largest one being that Moretz's character has to be a really stupid idiot to fall for this stuff. The beginning of Greta is also mind-numbingly boring, I lost track of how many times I yawned, and in truth I also closed my eyes and very well could have fallen asleep. I'm glad I didn't, and while Greta isn't a triumph of cinema, it is very amusing in ways these films often are not.

6.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Arctic
2. High Flying Bird
3. Cold Pursuit
4. Happy Death Day 2U
5. Greta
6. Fighting with My Family
7. Velvet Buzzsaw
8. Alita: Battle Angel
9. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
10. The Upside
11. Escape Room
12. What Men Want
13. Miss Bala
14. Glass
15. The Prodigy
16. Polar
17. Serenity

 

[909]

Wheelman (2017), directed by Jeremy Rush

If anyone had ever told me I'd enjoy a Netflix B movie more than the second Guardians of the Galaxy, I'd have laughed right in their face. I should also note that in early 2017 I never imagined I'd be watching Netflix B movies, if someone told me that I'd also have laughed at them. It's always time to try something new I suppose. Wheelman is pretty much exactly what Netflix should be doing when they aren't giving auteurs the opportunity to make weird shit that no studio would ever give funding to. This is pretty much the definition of weird shit. Wheelman isn't for everyone, that's for sure. The film is extremely constrained, this is something that could bother a lot of people, but I enjoyed the events more than I thought. There are other problems too, but again...did I ever think I would enjoy this more than Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2? Nope. It's always nice when you sit down to watch something, it's really short, and the story is really cohesive. The downside is that the film is very short, the story is constrained to that specific thing, and it turns out you don't like any of the characters all that much. Is that okay?

Wheelman is the story of an unnamed wheelman (Frank Grillo), who will be referred to by his real name. Frank is a man who has just gotten out of prison and is getting a divorce from his wife Jessica (Wendy Moniz), which leaves his daughter Katie (Caitlin Carmichael) caught in the middle of that whole thing. Frank has a job to do on a random night in Boston, and the film starts off with him picking up what is supposed to be an inconspicuous car. Instead, this car has a red trunk and the rest is painted black, which is an ominous sign. That car is very easy to find. The background information with Katie happens on the way to his pickup, and I've already explained all of that, but Frank is trying to call Clay (Garret Dillahunt) about the details of this job. That isn't working, Clay doesn't answer because he's an idiot. So, Frank goes to pick up a guy with a mohawk (Shea Whigham) and Ben Okri (Jeffrey Samai). The ensuing conversation tells us that the mohawk man and Ben are completely insane, or maybe they just want Frank to think that. We subsequently learn that their intention is to rob a bank, and Frank is their driver. Once they get to the bank, it's on.

After they get to the bank, while Mohawk and Ben are in there doing their stuff, Frank receives a call from a mysterious voice. It is absolutely irrelevant who voices these characters over the phone, by the way. Nobody you'd know. Anyway, the voice tells Frank that once Mohawk and Ben get back in the car, they're going to ride to the drop point for the money and kill Frank once he gets out at the drop. This isn't good for Frank, so the voice tells Frank that he needs to leave those guys when they put the money in the trunk. Surprisingly, Frank listens to this guy he's never heard of before, because he really doesn't want to die. Eventually, Frank is able to get a hold of Clay, but there's a problem. Clay doesn't want to tell Frank anything about the handler who called Frank at the bank, and it turns out that Frank owes people some money from when he was in prison. Clay and the handler both want Frank to go to the drop and make an exchange. He does, and it's a drug deal. Will Frank do what he's told? No. Will he continue to be jerked around? Yes. Is there going to be ramifications for him not doing the bank job like he was supposed to? Also yes.

I accidentally buried the lede to a massive extent here, but I should have pointed out that all of these events take place from the constricting viewpoint of Frank's car. The only one that doesn't is at a point when he's switching cars. That's it! So, if he has a conversation with someone outside of a car, or if he's in a car chase, of which there are many, these things take place with cameras mounted on or inside of his car. Given those constraints, I thought everyone involved did a hell of a job. I don't know why the director wanted to do this, but it's a gimmick that should certainly have gotten the attention of a lot of people. It seems that it did not as this Netflix film has less reviews than most of the ones I've seen before. I think this is quite a simple film and there isn't much beating around the bush. The screenplay isn't fantastic because of the phone call concept, we don't ever see the faces of a lot of the people that Frank speaks to. To that end, the voice work ranges from okay to good.

What really matters here is whether or not the car chases actually work, and they really did. I found Wheelman to be quite exciting, which is really what matters most. Frank Grillo did a pretty good job carrying the film as well, which considering how much we see of his face, the entire thing really rests on his shoulders. There is a little thing here in the middle that throws a wrench in the script and makes things a bit difficult to follow, but I thought it was easy enough to pay attention and figure things out. Everyone's noticed the common theme in these reviews, right? If you pay attention, things should be easy to understand. I was thrown off a little bit by the practical car chase scenes, there is a decided lack of CGI and it is replaced by real crashes. There is one of these scenes that is pretty damn cool, and overall, I do think this is somewhat of an achievement in filmmaking. I've seen complaints about these kinds of movies before, like Locke or Phone Booth, but I think Wheelman is definitely better than Phone Booth and I haven't seen the other. When there's a lack of violence to this extent in a film like this one, when it happens, it seems to mean a lot more. This was good and as everyone knows I love car chases movies, so I recommend this for those who also do.

7/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Get Out
3. Logan
4. Wonder Woman
5. Thor: Ragnarok
6. Logan Lucky
7. The Beguiled
8. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
9. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
10. The Lost City of Z
11. First They Killed My Father
12. Spider-Man: Homecoming
13. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
14. It
15. Battle of the Sexes
16. Okja
17. Kong: Skull Island
18. It Comes at Night
19. Split
20. 1922
21. Personal Shopper
22. Chuck
23. Atomic Blonde
24. Wheelman
25. The Lego Batman Movie
26. Megan Leavey
27. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
28. American Made
29. Imperial Dreams
30. The Zookeeper's Wife
31. Free Fire
32. Win It All
33. The Wall
34. Breathe
35. The Man Who Invented Christmas
36. Alone in Berlin
37. A United Kingdom
38. Trespass Against Us
39. The Mountain Between Us
40. War Machine
41. Happy Death Day
42. Justice League
43. To the Bone
44. Wakefield
45. The Hitman's Bodyguard
46. Sand Castle
47. CHiPs
48. Death Note
49. The Belko Experiment
50. The Great Wall
51. Fist Fight
52. Wilson
53. Queen of the Desert
54. Sleepless

 

[Gary]

Saw "Greta" yesterday and actually enjoyed it quite a bit. It's refreshing to see a mainstream thriller that also isn't afraid to add a bit of campy black humor,

 

[909]

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), directed by Peyton Reed

After watching Ant-Man and the Wasp, I am FINALLY caught up on the MCU. Such happiness ordinarily means I would not be able to write my review until the next day, but in this case it should prove quite easy. When Ant-Man and the Wasp was released, I read quite a few major complaints about it. One was in regards to the tone of the film, which people should have known would be the case beforehand, but I found that the film did a nice job of lightening things up after Avengers: Infinity War. The thing is, that isn't for everyone and that's fair. As far as I'm concerned, this was merely a good film, if we can say that a film is merely good these days. Nothing went above and beyond my expectations, but nothing was beneath them either. After the events of the last MCU film, I think this was exactly what it needed to be. Besides, did anyone expect any real resolution to the Marvel saga in this film? It seems that some did, which is pretty funny. Anyway, Ant-Man is supposed to be a goofy character and there's no way to change that because the film would not even exist otherwise. I do realize that I massively overrated the first movie though. There's no correcting that now, but that will explain the difference in scores. These films are near equal.

We jump forward two years after Captain America: Civil War, with Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) on house arrest due to violation of the Sokovia Accords. Clearly he should not have taken Captain America's side. Due to this, the feds believe that Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) were cooperating with Scott and they've had to go on the run. As far as the last Ant-Man film goes, we pick up basically where we left off. Hank and Hope believe that Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) is trapped in the quantum realm and has been for thirty years. Hank wants his wife back and Hope wants her mom, so they've been busy. When Scott visited the quantum realm during the last film, he had entered into a quantum entanglement with Janet, and that leads to him receiving a message from her. I have decided to omit some events leading to this. The message is a vision of Hope's childhood, with her and Janet playing hide and seek. Scott calls Hank for the first time since Scott's been on house arrest, and he decides to tell him about the dream. This leads to Scott being knocked unconscious by a bug flying through his living room. Now let's rewind a bit.

Still leaving out some of these events, I should update on what Scott is doing. He's with his daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson), who has been visiting. Luis (Michael Pena) is there and they've been working on a project trying to save their business, this is not a spectacular situation. While Scott's playing with Cassie, he trips an alarm on his ankle bracelet, which leads to him receiving a visit from FBI Agent Woo (Randall Park). So we know that he will immediately be arrested if he does leave his house. Now let's bring it back. When Scott was knocked out, it was by Hope, who has taken off his ankle bracelet and placed it on a giant ant. After a ride in a miniature SUV that can change its size, they arrive at Hank Pym's lab, a building which can also change in size. Hank and Hope have been building a tunnel to reach the Quantum Realm so they can bring Janet back, they say there's no other way to do so. When Scott describes his vision, they're even more sure of what they must do. Hope has the intention of buying a piece of equipment from a black market dealer, Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins). Burch knows the deal and the gig is up, and he tells Hope that he knows she's a fugitive and could have her gotten rid of. There's a problem though. It turns out that Hope has been followed by Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), a person with incredible phasing powers who can move in and out of anything. There's more to the story, but she wants this quantum equipment and she wants the damn lab.

This movie has more of what's good about Ant-Man, but the expansion of the story leads to a lack of intimacy in the events. Of course, this also means that Scott's family life does fade heavily into the backburner, which isn't the best thing. Still, it's good enough. I also very much enjoyed the Laurence Fishburne scenes, I'd forgotten that he was advertised here. I have a feeling he'll return. Where Ant-Man and the Wasp gets a big boost is in the scenes with shrinking cars and Scott's new ability to grow massively in size. The fight scenes are quite good, but I don't much care for Ghost. This was yet another weak Marvel villain offering, but I don't think it was the point for this to have a strong villain. The villain in an Ant-Man film exists to have Scott Lang and Hope van Dyne do cool shit, that's what happened here. I am a bit confused by some of the things in the film, but I'm not too sure everyone's checked this out yet. There are unfortunately less scenes where Michael Pena rambles on and on, and that was my favorite aspect of the first film, so you can pretty much see where I stand here. The mid-credits segment is also a bit of a problem for me and things would have been more fresh if the roles there were reversed. Anyway, it is what it is.

One's expectations for a solo Marvel offering shouldn't be too high, and in the case of an Ant-Man film, I believe that's double the case. This is the MCU's version of an action-comedy, with emphasis on the comedy aspect. That's fine, and I will give some credit here. It has become very difficult to make a good comedy movie these days. This one works not just because of the humor, but because of how ridiculous the scenarios are with characters that can shrink and grow at the push of a button. I actually think I enjoyed the Wasp's involvement in the action scenes more than Ant-Man. Didn't expect to be saying that. In any case, I would be surprised if they didn't make a third Ant-Man movie, but I should point out that the last time they made one of these, they announced a sequel quite quickly. This time, Marvel has absolutely nothing with a release date for 2020, and they haven't announced a sequel for a movie featuring actors that have signed contracts. It's a bit strange, and they better get a move on with some Phase Four announcements. Other than that we know they're making an Eternals movie and a Black Widow film, there hasn't been any, and we don't know when those are going to be released. Time to get a move on, but at this stage I think it's very unlikely anything will be released next year. It takes too long to make a movie. Not impossible, but unlikely.

7/10

2018 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Roma
2. A Star Is Born
3. First Reformed
4. The Favourite
5. Widows
6. First Man
7. BlacKkKlansman
8. Blindspotting
9. Black Panther
10. If Beale Street Could Talk
11. The Sisters Brothers
12. A Private War
13. Avengers: Infinity War
14. Stan & Ollie
15. Green Book
16. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
17. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
18. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
19. On My Skin
20. Private Life
21. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
22. Mid90s
23. Eighth Grade
24. Sorry to Bother You
25. Vice
26. The Old Man & the Gun
27. Suspiria
28. Vox Lux
29. Boy Erased
30. Bad Times at the El Royale
31. The Other Side of the Wind
32. Searching
33. A Simple Favor
34. The Hate U Give
35. Bumblebee
36. Mary Poppins Returns
37. Creed II
38. Hold the Dark
39. The Land of Steady Habits
40. Halloween
41. Ant-Man and the Wasp
42. Mary Queen of Scots
43. Aquaman
44. Outlaw King
45. Overlord
46. Ben Is Back
47. Monsters and Men
48. The Mule
49. On the Basis of Sex
50. Bohemian Rhapsody
51. White Boy Rick
52. Papillon
53. Game Night
54. Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado
55. Instant Family
56. Alpha
57. The Front Runner
58. The Predator
59. Apostle
60. The Angel
61. The Commuter
62. Beautiful Boy
63. The Nun
64. Operation Finale
65. The Equalizer 2
66. The Spy Who Dumped Me
67. Bird Box
68. 12 Strong
69. Venom
70. Skyscraper
71. The Meg
72. Assassination Nation
73. The Girl in the Spider's Web
74. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
75. 22 July
76. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
77. The Little Stranger
78. Tomb Raider
79. Night School
80. The 15:17 To Paris
81. Peppermint
82. Mile 22
83. The First Purge
84. Hunter Killer
85. Kin
86. Hell Fest
87. Proud Mary
88. Robin Hood
89. The Happytime Murders
90. Slender Man

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

Yeah I enjoyed this movie and I don't know how anyone expected any big reveals in it. It's intended as lighter fare with less "big" plot advances that you can enjoy with your kids or take a date to and I think it did well at that.

Marvel is being very cagey about anything that might reveal plot details about Endgame which is why I think they haven't revealed anything of phase 4, beyond the obvious contract stuff that still is lingering. They have it all mapped out as far as I know but they're keeping it tightly wrapped.

 

[909]

The Big Sick (2017), directed by Michael Showalter

I'm definitely going to eliminate a lot of 2017's most talked about films this month, and I suppose some of the best too. The Big Sick is first up on that list, and I have to say that I'm glad I finally got around to this. I was told at the time of the film's release that I should watch it as soon as possible, but I never did that shit back then. Obviously I should have, and this isn't going to be a problem anymore. For now, I'm focused on ensuring that doesn't happen again. Anyway, yeah, the film. I did not realize it would be possible to make a funny movie about someone being sick to this extent, but that's what we have here. As everyone knows, Emily Gordon wrote her own story into a film, and there are some things used in different light than how they happened, that's cool. After all, it's someone's own story. The thing is, I thought this was the kind of movie some people need to watch, but it's also one that follows the age old trope. It won't reach the audience it needs to reach because those people won't want to watch something like this. That's just a fact. With all that in mind, I'm glad someone found an avenue to tell their own story in a way that is heart-felt, and I thought the film was very pleasing overall.

Some time frames are fudged here to make things work, as this is set in modern times. Anyway, Kumail (Kumail Nanjiani) is an Uber driver in Chicago who does standup comedy, he's trying hard to make his big break and it isn't really working out. Kumail also has a one-man show about his Pakistani background, but it's very dry and doesn't really work for the audience. His parents Azmat (Anupam Kher) and Sharmeen (Zenobia Shroff) are dead set on arranging a marriage for Kumail, and they want him to do things that he's not very interested in doing. One example is that they don't like his standup comedy and they want him to become a lawyer. Another is that they think he's a practicing Muslim when he isn't, he goes down into their basement when it's time to pray near dinner and plays video games for five minutes. Why Kumail plays along with this is something I think someone from my background is not capable of entirely understanding, but I think at the same time, nobody wants to lose their family. That's probably the best way to explain it. Playing along with the lawyer part seemed overboard, but anyway, that's none of my business and it's there to make a point. His brother Naveed (Adeel Akhtar) has played along and has a wife named Fatima (Shenaz Treasury), they are very happy together.

One night during a standup show, Kumail is heckled by Emily (Zoe Kazan), who was doing so in a positive way during his set. Kumail decides to approach her, which leads to a one-night stand. Good job on his part. The thing is, she wants to get an Uber home, and in one of the better laughs of the film, his phone starts going off. Kumail takes Emily home, and these run-ins continue to add up, which leads to a nice relationship. There are problems though. Kumail is very worried about being disowned because that happened to his cousin for marrying a white woman, and he has this consistent issue with his mother trying to arrange a marriage for him. This does not stop Kumail from telling his brother about his current dating situation, but Naveed tells him he should stop. Kumail does not want to stop. After some time, Emily goes into Kumail's things and finally sees a box full of pictures of Pakistani women that he's tossed into it. Kumail has no interest in them, but there's deeper problems. Like, for example, can he marry her? He doesn't think so, and that's it. A few days later though, there's a problem. Emily has fallen ill and must be placed into a coma. Kumail must call Emily's parents, Terry (Ray Romano) and Beth (Holly Hunter). And while he may not have told his own parents about his girlfriend, Emily's parents know everything about him.

Nothing I've said should be this funny, but it is, and I thought beyond that this also featured a great performance from Kumail Nanjiani. His acting felt authentic, and I've said before that I prefer these performances to anything where you put on makeup or fat suits. It's true, and this is another film that bolsters my thought process. I do, however, think it is very weird for Kumail's now wife to be played by someone else. I don't want to harp on that though. Anyway, I do think these kinds of films feel very fresh at this moment. There's some material out there that addresses what it's like to be an immigrant trapped between the old ways and the ways of the country one now lives in, but there isn't enough of it. We need more of this, not only because some of the set pieces are funny, but so that people like myself are more capable of understanding the experiences of other people. The Big Sick is very effective in this way, and I thought that was the case throughout the events of the plot. The dynamic between Terry, Kumail, and Beth is also extremely awkward, and apparently Terry and Beth are creations of Emily Gordon. Those weren't based on her real parents.

I also thought The Big Sick was good at portraying the life of a struggling comic, which also doesn't happen often in film. I know it does on television but I don't often watch those things. I also thought the portrayal of what happens in a moment of crisis when three people who don't know each other are effectively forced to come together in support, that was also spot on. I had this experience when my grandfather died last year and I met a lot of family members I had never seen before. This was obviously written and directed by people who had experience in this matter. This is how real people act. I must admit that I found a lot of the closing scenes to be quite sad, and I didn't know how to balance them with the events that took place before that, so I was left with a strange feeling when the film ended. That said, this is a great story, and despite the sadness of it, I thought it was a very enjoyable and pleasing film. It's hard to spoil something like this because it's based on a true story, but I thought the reveal when Kumail told his parents he was in love with a white woman was a very poignant piece of cinema, and I felt a lump in my throat while he was telling them this. Films don't often resonate like this.

8.5/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Get Out
3. Logan
4. Wonder Woman
5. The Big Sick
6. Thor: Ragnarok
7. Logan Lucky
8. The Beguiled
9. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
10. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
11. The Lost City of Z
12. First They Killed My Father
13. Spider-Man: Homecoming
14. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
15. It
16. Battle of the Sexes
17. Okja
18. Kong: Skull Island
19. It Comes at Night
20. Split
21. 1922
22. Personal Shopper
23. Chuck
24. Atomic Blonde
25. Wheelman
26. The Lego Batman Movie
27. Megan Leavey
28. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
29. American Made
30. Imperial Dreams
31. The Zookeeper's Wife
32. Free Fire
33. Win It All
34. The Wall
35. Breathe
36. The Man Who Invented Christmas
37. Alone in Berlin
38. A United Kingdom
39. Trespass Against Us
40. The Mountain Between Us
41. War Machine
42. Happy Death Day
43. Justice League
44. To the Bone
45. Wakefield
46. The Hitman's Bodyguard
47. Sand Castle
48. CHiPs
49. Death Note
50. The Belko Experiment
51. The Great Wall
52. Fist Fight
53. Wilson
54. Queen of the Desert
55. Sleepless

 

[909]

Paddleton (2019), directed by Alex Lehmann

I was thinking two things at the moment I turned on Paddleton, and one thing after I'd started the movie and realized what was going to be the case throughout. The first of those things was that I just watched a movie about sickness, but I already knew that. No big deal. The second was that this was the kind of movie that...let me say it this stupid cliche once more...WOULD ONLY BE MADE BY NETFLIX. Sorry, it's true, there's no bankability in a story like this one and the film could never make money. The thing I was thinking was that it's completely fitting Paddleton premiered at Sundance. This is the most Sundance of films, one which has only two characters of any consequence, a plot about something controversial, a downer ending, and a great case of stretching out a finality into a full feature film. This is also quirky as Sundance premieres tend to be. I do have one problem though. I was intending to see the latest Madea film today, but the projector broke and I couldn't. I'm pointing this out because I very rarely watch two very good films in a row, and there's a reason for that. I don't like to have my expectations get too high. So, my intention was to split this with that Madea movie, but I didn't, and now I can't do anything about it. Oh well. In any case, I really didn't think this would be any good, so I waited too long once again to watch this after its release. Big mistake.

Michael (Mark Duplass) and Andy (Ray Romano) are two older guys with shitty jobs, the kind that make you lose your soul and become a robot. The only time these two don't feel that way is when they're together. They aren't gay, but it's clear to see that these are two men who love each other and value each other as friends. The film opens straight away with Michael receiving a diagnosis of terminal stomach cancer. It's not going to be good and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Andy wants Michael to fight for survival, but terminal is terminal and that's going to be it. Michael does not want to suffer. They continue doing the things they do, like make pizzas together, or watch kung-fu movies, finish puzzles, all that stuff that people do once they get old even though they aren't that old. Michael and Andy also play paddleton, which is a game the two made up together. There's an old, overgrown drive-in theater in town, where they hit balls off the back of the screen and try to knock said ball into a trash can which seemed to be full of water. This is the shit they want to do.

I buried the lede, but there's something else that Michael wants to do. He wants to take his own life through medication prescribed by his doctor, which makes Andy quite upset. Michael isn't going to change his mind though, and I think I'd be in the same boat at the point of being in massive pain, but he needs to take a road trip to the closest pharmacy that will fill the prescription. In something I found very amusing, the pharmacy is "six hours away," but outside of the story concept it's really just 20 minutes. I know because I've been to this area. Anyway, Andy is willing to come along with Michael, so a road trip it is. They talk about things they still want to do, and we learn that there could be further difficulty in getting the medication. A lot of pharmacists do not want to fill these prescriptions, but to that I say they can go fuck themselves. Let the man die in peace. So, as the road trip goes, getting the medication is their goal, and Michael wants to end his life on his terms.

This movie is very short, and I did my best to pad out the description a little bit. I think Paddleton was only 86 minutes, which is good for material so heavy. I don't always mind when a film with this subject matter is long, but it's better to be short with it. I'm a little surprised by a few of the reviews as I didn't find much of this to be amusing at all. I actually found it quite sad, and at the end of the film I was very bummed out. When the more emotional moments in the story come on, I thought the bond between the two extended to the viewer a little bit, it was hard not to like these guys even though they were both strange. Ray Romano does an excellent job here, the post-Everybody Loves Raymond comeback is real, it is legit, and he needs to be in more films like this one. I think Everybody Loves Raymond was trash, but I'm curious to know what Romano actually thought of the show. His work in the time since then is very different and he's become a very well-rounded actor. It doesn't hurt that he's made enough money to do absolutely anything that he wants to do.

I have to be short here because Paddleton is so short itself, but a film that carries real weight like this one, or like The Big Sick, those are the kinds of films that I find myself most readily wanting to check out. I don't think this was a great film, unlike The Big Sick, in part because the humor here doesn't really resonate with me the same way. It's one of those things where I don't have experience of the situation and don't have the exact same feelings. That, though, is why Paddleton is worth checking out. Assisted suicide is a taboo subject even to this day, although I don't know why anyone would be against it. I don't think pro-suffering is the greatest of positions to take. I also thought Paddleton was a rare case of a film that played around with the reality of same-sex platonic love without resorting to horrible comedic tropes. No other movie I can think of is entirely capable of doing this without those horrible "I LOVE YOU BRO" moments. I won't watch this film again, but I appreciate that 2019 has started off quite nicely. Sure, there was also a lot of shit released at the start of this year, but there's also a fair bit of quality if you look hard enough. Two of my top three films being Netflix offerings is weird though.

7.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Arctic
2. High Flying Bird
3. Paddleton
4. Cold Pursuit
5. Happy Death Day 2U
6. Greta
7. Fighting with My Family
8. Velvet Buzzsaw
9. Alita: Battle Angel
10. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
11. The Upside
12. Escape Room
13. What Men Want
14. Miss Bala
15. Glass
16. The Prodigy
17. Polar
18. Serenity

 

[909]

Beauty and the Beast (2017), directed by Bill Condon

I remember some time ago that there were talks of remaking the cartoon film everyone knows and most people love, but that the idea of remaking it was to reimagine the story and make it something a little different. Having this knowledge in mind was not the best thing to know when I decided to turn on this version of Beauty and the Beast. I kept finding myself thinking that I would like a greater difference in scenes and songs than existed here. I also think that having watched the animated version as many times as I have was probably not the best thing for my opinion of this film either. When I was a kid, my brother and I watched every Disney movie religiously until the point where our VHS tapes wore out. To this point, I have only ever seen two (now three) of these Disney live-action remakes, one being Alice in Wonderland and the other being Jungle Book. I will see the others but I've never bothered to do so before now. There's no particular reason for that, it just is what it is. Disney is leaning heavily into making more of these, so it stands to reason that I'll continue on and on until I die. What I was thinking at the end of this film, once I saw the box office, is that I was surprised Disney hasn't contrived a way to make a sequel or prequel out of this story. Even still, I'm also surprised that this was a complete remake, one with imagination and creativity but lacking in originality. This kind of thing often hurts films badly in my eyes and Beauty and the Beast is no exception to the rule. Does that mean I think it's bad? No.

I think if you haven't seen the animated film before, that's really fucking strange. However, the casting of this version is superb, so I'll roll on with my usual recap. The film begins as does the original, with an old beggar woman arriving at a castle seeking refuge from a storm. When the prince refuses, she reveals herself as a sorceress and curses the prince and his service, turning them into a beast and household objects respectively. The castle and everything related to it are subsequently erased from the memory of surrounding villagers, and the sorceress leaves a rose. She tells the prince the curse will only be broken if he falls in love with someone and she with him, and if he cannot do so before the flower wilts, they'll be doomed to be these things forever. I hate to say it but I genuinely was hoping for more there. Many years later in small town France, Belle (Emma Watson) lives with her music box making father Maurice (Kevin Kline), with Belle hoping for a life better than in said small town. Gaston (Luke Evans) is a piece of shit who wants to marry here, and you know how this story goes. I've always thought that Gaston was one of the best Disney villains, one which is very educational for children. The man is the embodiment of toxic masculinity, and he wants to marry Belle because she's the bet girl in town. Obviously.

After this introduction, which is accompanied by songs from the original animated film, Maurice is headed off to a convention of some kind. He gets lost in the forest and seeks refuge in the Beast's (Dan Stevens) castle, but he's caught stealing a rose and imprisoned for life. Maurice's horse runs into town to Belle, who subsequently heads out into the forest and finds her father locked in the castle dungeon. Then, as things work out, Belle takes her father's place, which sends Maurice back into town to warn people of the Beast's castle. Nobody believes him. As we all know, the household objects sing and all that stuff. I was surprised by some of the casting. Ian McKellen voices Cogsworth, the mantel clock; Ewan McGregor voices Lumiere, the candelabra; Stanley Tucci voices the hapsichord; Audra McDonald is the flamboyant wardrobe; Gugu Mbatha-Raw is now a feather duster after being transformed from a maid; and Emma Thompson voices Mrs. Potts, the housekeeper who has been transformed into a teapot. These were all good casting choices. Eventually, someone does listen to Maurice's tale about the castle, and it's Gaston. Along with Gaston's sidekick LeFou (Josh Gad), they will head out into the forest to find this castle, prove that there really is a beast, and Gaston can win Belle's hand in marriage! Or so he thinks.

The largest complaint I had throughout the film was something I've already addressed, it is the lack of originality. I find it quite amusing that this is the way Bill Condon wanted it. He has said that it was Disney's idea to make a different story out of things, but he said no, and I think that wasn't the best decision in the world for my entertainment value. At the box office though, there's no denying this was the correct decision and what people really wanted. I've harped on the subject of originality many times before, but that's what I'm most interested in when it comes to a film, even one like this. I gave Mary Poppins Returns a higher score than I'll give this because of that originality, but to say it is lacking here would be an understatement. There is nothing original about this at all. The visuals are great, yes, but I didn't find anything original about them either. If I will give praise to one aspect of the film, it's that the performances of "Be Our Guest" and "The Mob Song" are quite a bit better. The latter was my favorite part when I was a kid, and I think saying that a song about killing the Beast was my favorite part is very morbid. It's true though.

Of course, a film like this one falls apart if Belle isn't perfectly cast, and yes, Emma Watson is very well cast here. There are deeper issues though. Luke Evans doesn't make a good Gaston because he isn't burly enough, that's something more suited to a muscle man like Dave Bautista. Seriously, it is. No idea if the guy can sing though. I felt myself tuning out a little bit due to the lack of originality in each scene, which is bothersome. I would be remiss if I never brought up the LeFou being gay subplot, but I think that's totally stupid as well. There's nothing to that, and for the director to play on that as a selling point for the film is totally lazy. There's nothing there and that's not what the story is about. In any case, I think being faithful to the source material is a problem for my tastes, but everyone's different. Another final issue worth mentioning, is that the animated version of this story is very dark for a kid's movie. That's not the case here either, so I genuinely think the director missed the point entirely. There are a ton of people who disagree with me, but I'm not one to follow the pack. Even though this is a decent film, there's something about it that just doesn't sit right with me. It's all the things I already mentioned, but there's also something I can't quite put my finger on. I'm not sure if it's a lack of true inspiration or that so many of the things in Beauty and the Beast just don't feel like authentic storytelling. The film very heavily leans on the idea the viewer has seen this story before.

I realized just before posting this that there's something else I wanted to say, about this year's Aladdin remake. My expectations are very low, but I should point out from the trailer that there is a distinct feeling of originality that Beauty and the Beast is lacking. That doesn't mean the former film is going to be good, and I actually expect that it won't. But I daresay I may be more interested in it anyway because of the differences that seem more apparent in the marketing material. Of course, if tAladdin is just the same damn thing as the animated movie, I'm probably going to shit on it. The degree to which I'll shit on it, I don't really know, because I loved the original a lot more than I loved Beauty and the Beast. Time will tell.

6.5/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Get Out
3. Logan
4. Wonder Woman
5. The Big Sick
6. Thor: Ragnarok
7. Logan Lucky
8. The Beguiled
9. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
10. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
11. The Lost City of Z
12. First They Killed My Father
13. Spider-Man: Homecoming
14. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
15. It
16. Battle of the Sexes
17. Okja
18. Kong: Skull Island
19. It Comes at Night
20. Split
21. 1922
22. Personal Shopper
23. Chuck
24. Atomic Blonde
25. Wheelman
26. The Lego Batman Movie
27. Megan Leavey
28. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
29. American Made
30. Beauty and the Beast
31. Imperial Dreams
32. The Zookeeper's Wife
33. Free Fire
34. Win It All
35. The Wall
36. Breathe
37. The Man Who Invented Christmas
38. Alone in Berlin
39. A United Kingdom
40. Trespass Against Us
41. The Mountain Between Us
42. War Machine
43. Happy Death Day
44. Justice League
45. To the Bone
46. Wakefield
47. The Hitman's Bodyguard
48. Sand Castle
49. CHiPs
50. Death Note
51. The Belko Experiment
52. The Great Wall
53. Fist Fight
54. Wilson
55. Queen of the Desert
56. Sleepless

 

[909]

Captain Marvel (2019), directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck

I think I'll immediately start with an aside here, I don't understand the need for a filmmaking duo as opposed to a single filmmaker, but I need to do some research. Anyway, Captain Marvel. The one instance of Marvel actually being behind DC in getting with the times, I cannot believe it took Disney so long to green light a superhero movie with a female star. The reaction to this film is probably a large reason they didn't, and by that I mean, as soon as Brie Larson said anything remotely controversial, it was blown up into a thing when what she said wasn't a big deal at all. Those things shouldn't matter, but unquestionably they do. People were clearly looking for a reason to get angry, but this was a controversy not remotely in mind when I got into the theater today. Even if it had been, I think the title introduction featuring all of Stan Lee's cameos would have immediately removed thoughts of the controversy from my brain. It appears that nobody else cares either as Captain Marvel is going to clear $160 million in North America this weekend, only some guys who pound on keyboards cared in the first place. I was hoping for something more memorable than the average Marvel movie, something better than Thor: The Dark World, with more lasting impact than Ant-Man, but my expectations weren't so high that this would be another Wonder Woman. I knew better than that, and this wasn't as good as Wonder Woman. However, that does not mean that this wasn't good. It was quite good.

Captain Marvel kicks off nicely and fast, with Vers (Brie Larson) having recurring nightmares that feature an older woman. She lives on the Kree planet of Hala, which shows that the MCU is massively going to branch out into space over the coming years, and I really like that. Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) is her mentor, her commander, and he is trying to train Vers to control her emotions to harness powers that she has been given. Nobody else has these powers, but Vers does, and she is unable to understand how or why. See, Vers lost her memories, but if you know anything about comics, you know who she is and where she came from. Vers has a mission ahead with a Kree team of operatives, including the already mentioned Yon-Rogg, Korath (Djimon Hounsou), and Minn-Erva (Gemma Chan). There are others but they aren't important. Their mission is to rescue a Kree operative who has infiltrated a group of Skrulls, shapeshifters who the Kree have been at war with for a very long time. I'll cut to the chase though, this mission doesn't go very well at all. Vers is captured by the Skrulls, their leader being Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), and he's set on probing through Vers mind.

When he does probe Vers mind, we are privy to very important information. We learn many things, one of them being that she was a fighter pilot who didn't have the best childhood. We don't learn that her name is Carol Danvers, but come on. She's Carol. In addition, we learn that they're probing Carol's mind for a reason, because they want to know more about someone running a program called Pegasus, Dr. Wendy Lawson (Annette Bening). Earlier in the film, when Carol went to meet with the Kree's Supreme Intelligence, she also saw Dr. Lawson. It was said by Yon-Rogg that the Supreme Intelligence is unique to each person who sees it, so we now know that Carol is tied to Dr. Lawson in some way. Carol does manage to escape and winds up piloting an aircraft of some kind to Earth, crashing in Los Angeles. At this point, it is revealed that this film is set in 1995, because Carol is in a Blockbuster with True Lies and Babe memorabilia. Her landing has attraced a crowd, namely Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg). Carol's mission? To stop the Skrulls from infiltrating Earth, and find out why she has memories of being on this planet. Specifically, memories related to Dr. Lawson.

There are some good things about Captain Marvel, there are also some bad ones. I guess I'll start with the bad and segue to the better. My initial reaction when seeing certain Kree characters reappear is that we'd learn more about them, but that wasn't the case at all. This is very much a story about Captain Marvel and not anyone else, but in the process of this story, we learn about things that are pertinent to the Avengers movies both past and in the future. There are also things from the Captain Marvel comic books that have some appearances here, and they're pretty cool. I don't want to spoil more than I've already done, but there's also a nice twist on the usual Marvel way of telling a story with this subject. I will leave it at that. I was also quite satisfied with how Captain Marvel tied into Avengers: Endgame, but I won't say how or give any details as to that at all. This film also plays heavily on nostalgia for the 90's, and I thought it worked entirely. There wasn't a single thing as far as that went that I thought was out of place, or going overboard with things. Bear in mind that I am not entirely aware of the dates of the music used here, but everything else I know was spot on.

I should also point out that I'm biased in favor of this film because I love space related shit, and it doesn't have the nauseating amount of comedy that exists in the other space related Marvel films. Yes, I said nauseating. Most people disagree, but that's how I feel. I did much appreciate the more serious tone here, and when things did get funny, there was a damn good reason for them to be funny and they actually had a real impact. The film's conclusion is good, but as is often the case with Marvel's films, it's horribly drawn out. I couldn't believe how long it took for the credits to start rolling. The thing is though, that this can't be as good as a Black Panther or even a Spider-Man: Homecoming because I didn't find there to be any actual moral of the story. The comment on society is lacking entirely from my perspective, so even though this features a great performance from Brie Larson, Captain Marvel is only a very good film. If I wanted to post spoilers, this review would be so much longer, but I think once everyone watched this film they'll easily be able to figure out where I stand on each given event. I also really liked Samuel L. Jackson's performance as Nick Fury here, and him getting a larger role as in Captain America: Winter Soldier is always something I'm going to enjoy. I would like to see him play Nick Fury in larger roles a few more times before departing the MCU. In fact he deserves his own movie when it's time for him to depart, one where his character gets a dignified death while establishing a big new villain. I'm left to think that even films about side characters like him would make quite a bit of money and should be made.

7.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Arctic
2. High Flying Bird
3. Captain Marvel
4. Paddleton
5. Cold Pursuit
6. Happy Death Day 2U
7. Greta
8. Fighting with My Family
9. Velvet Buzzsaw
10. Alita: Battle Angel
11. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
12. The Upside
13. Escape Room
14. What Men Want
15. Miss Bala
16. Glass
17. The Prodigy
18. Polar
19. Serenity

 

[909]

Chichewa, subtitles

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (2019), directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor

Let's keep it going with debut films, shall we? I intend to see one in theaters next week as well, but this is a particularly interesting debut film in that it is a film not in the director's native language. This would seem to be a difficult task. I decided to look up some reactions in Malawi to Ejiofor's use of the language, and people didn't like it. Well, the thing is, as someone who doesn't know the language, the subtitles suffice and the performances are what shine through. I am, however, not too surprised that this was Ejiofor's first feature effort from the director's chair. This is exactly the kind of story that the Western world is not too aware of, of the struggles that others encounter and their difficulty surviving life on this planet. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is also a film that reminds one of their advantages in life, of the things that we complain about that actually aren't important. What else bothers me is that we have these problems all around the world, including in our own country, and we don't actually do anything about them. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is adapted from a book, it is a true story, and it's one that left me a bit taken aback. I've already explained what my thoughts were, but why did this film pull those emotions from me and those thoughts out of my head?

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is set in Malawi, in a village outside the capital where famine has taken hold. There are reasons why this is, an inconsistent rainy season that leads to either floods or dry land and no crops. Sometimes things are good, but usually not. William Kamkwamba (Maxwell Simba) is a young man who lives with his family in the aforementioned small village of Wimbe, his focus is on school. William also fixes radios for his friends at times, using simple technology from the local junkyard. There is a problem though. The famine has taken hold and even though his father Trywell (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and mother Agnes (Aissa Maiga) have saved money, this isn't going to be enough. All they were able to grow was corn, and not a whole lot of it. Due to this, and due to flooding, these problems keep continuing to add up and Trywell is no longer going to be able to send William to school. The film is set in 2001, before 9/11, times are much different everywhere. The intention was to send William's sister Annie (Lily Banda) to university, but now that's not going to be able to happen. Their hope is that with what they have, and with some of their stores, they will be able to make it through the year.

There are other issues though that lead to more flooding. For example, due to the rainy season, other farmers are selling their land, including some of those with trees on it. That leads to trees being demolished and to more flooding, all of this is happening because the chief (Joseph Marcell) is powerless to stop it. He cannot support everyone else. Eventually, the lack of tuition fees add up, and that leads to William being kicked out of school. This is not good for the family, because he is learning even though nobody will listen to him. Then 9/11 happens. The markets crash, food costs skyrocket, and Malawi is one of the world's least developed countries. It's a country lacking in food for many reasons, but at this time there was a horrible food shortage. Malnourishment was prominent, this was said to be the worst famine in the history of the country. Electricity was also not common for citizens, and certainly not in William's family. His intention is to find a way to help his family and save his village from the drought, he does have a few ideas. His teacher Mr. Kachigunda (Lemogang Tsipa) has a dynamo attached to his bike, the electricity he generates allows his bike to have light at night. William needs to find a way to replicate this so he can create a windmill, but more pressing is the need for immediate food. The situation is not good, and he's booted from school, but he also knows that Mr. Kachigunda is seeing his sister. This information could prove to be a valuable tool.

I probably did a bad job describing The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, but I thought the depiction of famine and what people will do in order to be able to eat was something I really needed to see at this time. It's a reminder to be grateful for what I have, something that people really need. One should not take for granted what has been given to them, and even though this country isn't great, I'm glad I was born here and not in Malawi. I thought the film was good in showcasing famine without falling into tropes where people do all kinds of horrible things that make Africans look bad, the story properly humanized the characters so that people could understand why people do these things for their family. The presentation that people are savages, which has happened in quite a few films about the continent, that isn't here at all. Some of the events here are very sad, and I was left in sadness as some of these scenes played out. There are things people in our country do not account for when a person is really starving. The familiarity of pets, or of school in a country where there is no public school, or of new clothes, or of bathing, those are things that all disappear when one can't eat. This struggle is something anyone can understand if they've truly been poor. I thought the scenes once the famine really kicked in were absolutely heartbreaking, and I had to resist the temptation to minimize. They weren't too painful to watch, but when you see people getting beaten up for having food, that's so sad.

I think Ejiofor was careful to frame Malawi in a way that didn't make the country look bad, and that it's any other place that one could have wound up being born in, and this touch really worked for me. I do think there's an issue with some of his directing though, particularly the placement of musical pieces that doesn't feel too right. That's okay though. What this is, is quite a powerful film. The story is very simple, and even though I did also find there to be some issues with the timeline not being entirely clear to the viewer, or at least to myself, I'm fine with that. For someone's first effort, I think this is a fantastic film. I don't want to discredit someone's first try, particularly a noted actor like Ejiofor. I prefer not to focus on the negatives in that case. His performance was excellent, as always, and so was his effort in directing the whole thing. It seemed clear this was a labor of love, that this was something he really wanted to make, and he did well enough with the language that he felt comfortable speaking quickly and screaming as he's known to do in pivotal scenes. I also loved seeing Geoffrey finally return from exile post-Fresh Prince. I haven't seen him do ANYTHING since then. Lastly, I was left with the thought that this year has started off very nicely. There are more good films at the start of this year than last, with this being among the best of them. I recommend checking this out.

7.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Arctic
2. High Flying Bird
3. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
4. Captain Marvel
5. Paddleton
6. Cold Pursuit
7. Happy Death Day 2U
8. Greta
9. Fighting with My Family
10. Velvet Buzzsaw
11. Alita: Battle Angel
12. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
13. The Upside
14. Escape Room
15. What Men Want
16. Miss Bala
17. Glass
18. The Prodigy
19. Polar
20. Serenity

 

[909]

Murder on the Orient Express (2017), directed by Kenneth Branagh

So, remakes of extremely famous adaptations of great novels. I don't really know what to think of that, but I think that in the case of Murder on the Orient Express, it was a wise decision to produce this film. That way, the producers would know if there was a greater appetite for Agatha Christie adaptations. As we now know, there is, and as a result there are probably going to be many more of these. Even though Murder on the Orient Express is not a particularly great film, said adaptations are quite welcome. There are very few murder mysteries made these days, even less of them set in a different period, and the setting for Death on the Nile is obviously a bit unique to Hollywood. I'm very happy with this. Now, that all being said, I think the quality of the films is going to have to improve at some point. This was simply the story everyone knew, but could the actors really add anything to the version everyone's aware of? Look at the difference in casts, and while this was a very strong cast, there's no comparison at all. The more familiar film featured Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, Albert Finney, Vanessa Redgrave, Michael York, Jacqueline Bisset, and Anthony Perkins. That's major star power, and that's a cast. Hollywood can no longer truly do such a thing. So, with everything in mind, is it surprising that Kenneth Branagh was unable to create a film that was different from an adaptation that has already been remade many times? I should note that if you don't know the story, it's actually quite alright.

This is a film set in 1934, with Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) solving a theft in Jerusalem. I will leave out some of the details. After solving the case, he's given a message that tells him he needs to return to London for another case. In order to do so, he must travel to Istanbul and take a ride on the Orient Express, even though that isn't what he wants to do. His original intention is to travel to Istanbul for leisure, but his friend Bouc (Tom Bateman) is related to someone affiliated with the Orient Express line, and as such he can get a ticket on short notice. In the station in Istanbul, we are introduced to numerous characters. I will wait a while to get to that, but I'm stunned this film had a $55 million budget. It simply doesn't stand to reason. Once Poirot gets on the train, it's quite a long trip through snow all the way to London, a look at a map will tell you that. Another thing is that some of the passengers naturally take interest in Poirot because he's very noted around the world for solving these cases, something which Poirot finds to be a problem and a bit difficult to handle. His services are consistently in demand and it's hard to balance his life properly.

Now, the passengers. There are many of them, including Gerhard (Willem Dafoe), a Nazi who says a lot of bad shit; Princess Dragomiroff (Judi Dench), old European royalty who travels with her second, Hildegarde (Olivia Colman); Mary Debenham (Daisy Ridley) and her partner Dr. Arbuthnot (Leslie Odom Jr.), the latter of whom is the only black man on board; Pilar (Penelope Cruz), a newly religious individual; Marquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), a man just passing on through; Caroline (Michelle Pfeiffer), an older woman who seems to be interested in Poirot; and two members of royalty we hardly see, Count Rudolph Andrenyi (Sergei Polunin) and Countess Helena (Lucy Boynton). But, those are not the most nefarious people on this train. Those honors reside with Edward Ratchett (Johnny Depp) and Hector MacQueen (Josh Gad). They're accompanied by a man called Edward (Derek Jacobi), but his role here is not large. Hector is Ratchett's assistant, but Ratchett himself is messed up. Our first encounter with him is one where he attempts to hire Poirot as a bodyguard, pulling a gun on him because he's received threatening letters he doesn't know the origin of. That's not going to happen. The thing is, after some events that occur, an avalanche derails the train. Ratchett has already been a piece of shit to many people on board, and when everyone wakes up the next morning...he's dead. Now watch the movie or read the book.

It's hard to talk about something like this if you don't know the story, because it's the kind of thing that's easily spoiled, but the fact remains that this is a great story. This is also not an original presentation of the story, and there are ways which one could tell the story in a different fashion. You could, for example, update things to modern times and change stuff. Or tell the story in a different setting entire. But that seems to defeat the purpose of adapting something and it's a weird criticism. No, the film is not like the original, that much is clear. How could it be? This is a great cast but the talent level is lacking particularly among the male actors, there's no Sean Connery here. I don't have anything against anyone who participated in this production, but that is what it is. I also thought there was an instance of this film trading on your knowledge of these actors rather than creating cohesive characters for all of them. Some do and some don't, but the original film was 131 minutes and did not have the Jerusalem scene. I should also point out that I won't hold too much against the film because this is obviously a gateway production to something greater. Murder on the Orient Express is also ridiculously focused on Poirot to its detriment, but directors always do that when they feature in their own film.

The juice though, it's in the story and the mystery, and as long as the film has that, it's going to be alright. I think I would say it's alright, wouldn't go further than that. The cast needed to be utilized better, but I did appreciate the introductory scenes in Istanbul. If one pays attention, they can see some of the early building relationships, but I must admit that I did not see the conclusion coming. I will watch the original film at some point, but that probably won't be for a while. The real intrigue is in whether or not Death on the Nile is any good. If it isn't, then Branagh should step aside as the director and let someone else have a crack, because there really is a lot of potential here for a long running franchise. People miss stories like this, or even like Gone Girl, so when they're made, the general public is going to get hyped for them. I would ordinarily comment on the performances of the cast, but I found that there were too many characters in general and as a result too many people to mention. This is probably why the cast was attracted to the project, there weren't too many scenes each individual person would have to participate in. I did, however, really appreciate learning that Daisy Ridley could act. All I've seen her in is Star Wars, of course, but this was nice to see from her.

As always, if there are inconsistencies in my list relative to the scores I gave those movies, it's because I had time to think.

6/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Get Out
3. Logan
4. Wonder Woman
5. The Big Sick
6. Thor: Ragnarok
7. Logan Lucky
8. The Beguiled
9. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
10. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
11. The Lost City of Z
12. First They Killed My Father
13. Spider-Man: Homecoming
14. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
15. It
16. Battle of the Sexes
17. Okja
18. Kong: Skull Island
19. It Comes at Night
20. Split
21. 1922
22. Personal Shopper
23. Chuck
24. Atomic Blonde
25. Wheelman
26. The Lego Batman Movie
27. Megan Leavey
28. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
29. American Made
30. Beauty and the Beast
31. Imperial Dreams
32. Murder on the Orient Express
33. The Zookeeper's Wife
34. Free Fire
35. Win It All
36. The Wall
37. Breathe
38. The Man Who Invented Christmas
39. Alone in Berlin
40. A United Kingdom
41. Trespass Against Us
42. The Mountain Between Us
43. War Machine
44. Happy Death Day
45. Justice League
46. To the Bone
47. Wakefield
48. The Hitman's Bodyguard
49. Sand Castle
50. CHiPs
51. Death Note
52. The Belko Experiment
53. The Great Wall
54. Fist Fight
55. Wilson
56. Queen of the Desert
57. Sleepless

 

[909]

The Kid (2019), directed by Vincent D'Onofrio

So, debut directing efforts. This is a subject which has continued to be prevalent in my reviews because I watch a lot of independent movies, but this one is not an independent. Instead, this seems to be a few things. One possibility is that this was a favor to D'Onofrio, another is that Lionsgate actually really wanted to make the film. Something else that's coming to mind is that it didn't cost too much to make this Western, and I really don't think that it did. D'Onofrio was able to get a good cast and use family members to fill other roles, but more than that, he found someone to fund their kid being in a movie. That, more than anything else, is how someone can get their debut film made. The thing is, even though this did feature a first time teenage actor in a very important role, his performance was not bad. I wouldn't say great, but not bad. More like above average or good. I think anyone who wants to direct their first movie would do what it takes, but I think I would say that if someone was directing their first movie, character development is a necessity. Some of that would go a long way, but The Kid does not have character development where the film really needs it.

The Kid begins with a messy prologue, but quite an effective one even though we never get a good look at all the participants. Rio (Jake Schur) is a teenager who lives at home in the Old West, New Mexico to be specific, with his sister Sara (Leila George) and his parents. There's a problem at home though, his father is very abusive. The first series of scenes features his father trying to beat his mother to death and succeeding at doing so. Rio, as alluded to, is too late to do something about it. The thing is, guns are quite prevalent in America at this time. Rio's able to get one and shoot his dad to death, which leads to a commotion from outside. Rio's dad was a piece of shit, seemingly nothing compared to Rio's uncle Grant (Chris Pratt). Grant intends to kill Rio for what he's done, but Rio takes a piece of glass and stabs Grant in the face, gashing him open. Afterwards, Rio and Sara make their escape, running as far as they can and eventually stealing some horses. Let's move forward to the next morning, when after some rest they intend to go to Santa Fe. They aren't getting to Santa Fe. When they finally stir, they are joined by some interesting folks, namely among them Billy the Kid (Dane DeHaan). Billy wants to know what they're doing, but Sara has made it very clear to Rio that he shouldn't tell anyone what's happened.

Unbeknownst to everyone, they have also been joined by some lawmen. Pat Garrett (Ethan Hawke) has a warrant and he'd just been elected sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico. He's only been on the job for two weeks, but he wants to capture Billy the Kid. Garrett doesn't have any trepidation about what he must do to accomplish this, so after a gunfight that has some crazy stuff in it, Billy is captured. Here's the thing though, Sara and Rio still need to get to Santa Fe. They're going to hitch a ride with Garrett, and obviously Billy wants to escape. Rio is just a kid, and he's torn here. He doesn't seem to understand what Billy has done, and it doesn't matter to him. He knows that Billy killed people, but so did he, and it's easy for people in that era to paint murdering as justified. I must reiterate that Billy is absolutely going to escape, there's no way he's going to be held in a jail cell. There is an issue though. Eventually Grant catches up to Rio and Sara, which leads to Rio having to make a decision. Would he rather enlist Billy or Garrett's help? This is an important decision, one which could form the rest of Rio's life.

This isn't a great film in part because the story is convoluted and the obvious decision on Rio's part is very predictable, but I did think that D'Onofrio did a good job casting things. It's nice seeing Chris Pratt have a role with some meat to it, where he acts like an unrepentant piece of shit. I thought I would have a hard time buying him in this part, but that wasn't the case at all. Some of the things that he said, for a minute I thought they had to be dubbed over due to his own beliefs. It appears they were not. I thought Ethan Hawke was Ethan Hawke, there's nothing to be said about his performance and he's been in many Westerns. Dane DeHaan was a little surprising too as I wasn't expecting him to really bring anything to the table here. I also thought that guy was actually very young and he's already 33, so it's time for him to start putting in quality performances. If he doesn't, we know what happens to actors as they get older. I was also surprised by Vincent D'Onofrio's daughter, but again, this is one way to make a movie that it seems there would be no real justification for making.

The weakness in this film beyond the story being convoluted, is that the script isn't too great either. The Kid is a film that thrives on atmosphere more than anything else, of knowledge of some of the characters, and on the fact that there simply aren't very many Westerns anymore. These things all combined make for a decent film, but I'm still surprised by the lack of character development (Rio) in a film directed by one of our greatest character actors. I must also admit that I haven't seen any of the other movies about Billy the Kid. If I had, maybe I'd feel differently and dislike this, but this also wasn't truly a film about Billy the Kid. It's about the moral choice between being truly bad or not so good yet halfway decent. It's a choice many people had to make in the West, and the film examines that purely if only on a superficial level. Again, The Kid was decent, there were good performances, but there needed to be a better script.

6/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Arctic
2. High Flying Bird
3. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
4. Captain Marvel
5. Paddleton
6. Cold Pursuit
7. Happy Death Day 2U
8. Greta
9. Fighting with My Family
10. Velvet Buzzsaw
11. Alita: Battle Angel
12. The Kid
13. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
14. The Upside
15. Escape Room
16. What Men Want
17. Miss Bala
18. Glass
19. The Prodigy
20. Polar
21. Serenity

 

[Baby Shoes]

Very disappointed that had nothing to do with the Bruce Willis movie of the same name. They shouldn’t be reusing the names of classics.

 

[Brocklock]

Very disappointed that had nothing to do with the Bruce Willis movie of the same name. They shouldn’t be reusing the names of classics.

Spencer Breslin was available for a role in this movie if they wanted to pay tribute.

 

[909]

Hindi for half the film, subtitles

Lion (2016), directed by Garth Davis

Things have turned out so that I have numerous Best Picture nominees from the last few years to watch this month, and I had not yet made a dent in that list. I thought I should start off with the one that there was somewhat of a campaign against, so it was time to finally watch Lion. I also haven't watched a real feel good movie for some time, a lot of I've watched lately has been somewhat devastating. That is also somewhat the case with Lion, but doesn't last throughout the film. I must admit that I also felt a little dirty when I saw that Weinstein Company logo come on the screen when this began. That's something which really needs to be removed from these films, I don't care that his company made them, just get rid of it. It's a bad reminder. The story in Lion seems to ridiculous to be real, but it is real even though there's been some heavy detail editing in order to bring the story to screen. I am sure nobody wanted to make a film featuring Saroo eating out of a garbage can and going through severe struggle on a daily basis. Now, before I get into the meat of the film, and even though I thought this was a very good film, I must address the other elephant in the room. There is absolutely no way Lion should have been nominated for Best Picture. That was the reason I decided to watch this before the rest, because I was aware that was probably the case. I should have made a list for 2016, but it's way too late for that now. I'm not certain this would be in my top 25 and I'm still not done.

Lion is a tale of two stories about the same person, both of which are radically different stories with different casts. I will try not to spoil either one too much. Set in 1986, Saroo (Sunny Pawar) is a five year old who lives with his brother Guddu (Abishek Bharate), mom (Priyanka Bose), and much younger sister in Khandwa, India. Guddu and Saroo both get up to no good during the day, because that's what life in a third world country really is. They steal coal from freight trains so they can trade it for milk and food, this is not a good life at all. One day, Saroo insists on accompanying Guddu to the train station for a job that takes place at night, but Saroo is too tired to continue once they arrive. Guddu does not return, so Saroo gets on a train thinking that Guddu is there. Five year olds would do that. Saroo subsequently falls asleep, wakes up on it, and is trapped on the train for many days. Saroo then arrives in Kolkata, 1600 km away from his home, unable to speak Bengali. This sounds like the worst thing that could happen to a child. I will skip over some of the details to bring up that Saroo is entirely unable to find his family, nor is anyone able to find his family for him, and this leads to Saroo being sent to Australia to be adopted.

Upon arriving in Australia, Tasmania to be specific, Saroo meets his adoptive parents, John (David Wenham) and Sue (Nicole Kidman). We then flash forward 25 years, to Saroo (Dev Patel) as an adult, with his adoptive brother Mantosh (Divian Ladwa) having had major psychological problems after his adoption many years before. Saroo is moving to Melbourne to study hotel management, but Mantosh is absent at the going away dinner. Mantosh's problems have also given Sue health problems over the years, she is very worried about him. Upon arriving in Melbourne, Saroo starts a relationship with Lucy (Rooney Mara), a fellow student at his school. They are invited to a dinner at their Indian friend's house, which leads to a triggering emotion. After Saroo is clearly unable to eat with his hands and not used to the cuisine, he sees jalebi in their kitchen, a delicacy from his childhood in India. This brings back a flood of memories, which he tells his friends about. Their suggestion is to try this new thing people may be aware of, called Google Earth. See, Saroo had a tenuous grasp on Hindi when he was 5, no ability to read, didn't know where he came from in the first place, but he knew which train station he wound up in once he arrived in Kolkata. From there, he could find out where he came from, but what about the things he doesn't know, what he doesn't remember?

I tried hard not to reveal too much about either part of the film, but the stories are very different. They're different to the point where one is clearly much better than the other as well, and it doesn't take a genius to realize which one of those two stories it is. The first, with newcomer actors, and faces I'm not familiar with, in a foreign language, focusing on a kid getting separated from his family...nothing is really going to match that part of the film. Danny Boyle was able to weave three narratives together in Slumdog Millionaire, but there's nothing woven in here, instead they are entirely separated from each other, which leads to a natural comparison. Not everyone has the skill Danny Boyle has though. The films are also very similar and not just because they're about India and feature Dev Patel. I don't think everyone's seen Slumdog Millionaire, but the main character's mother is killed in a pogrom, which leads to the child being abandoned. So those are similarities, and I think the fact is that those stories of child abandonment do often feel very hard hitting. It seems that only good filmmakers have the balls to take those on. I would say that both aspects of the two films are equal, but Lion fails in that the story of Saroo attempting to find his family just doesn't match up.

I thought the performances in the film were strong, particularly that of Dev Patel, but back to the point of Saroo attempting his family, there are scenes there that aren't so good. I dare say the reunion scene with Saroo and his mother doesn't feel authentic. I'm sure a lot of people cried over it, but that was how I saw things. I thought it was more interesting when Saroo was trying to find himself during the process of these Google Earth searches. I don't think I'm a negative twat or anything like that, but I think a lot of people feel the same about the two stories feeling disjointed. Nicole Kidman's performance was similarly strong, I think a lot of people don't understand what it's like to be an adoptive mother. Even when the kids are horrible, a lot of adoptive mothers still feel the same ties as a biological mother. They chose to have the child after all, for most normal thinking people that is how it is. They are tied to the child for life. Even though the second half of the film isn't fantastic, her performance is. I also thought that there would have to be something wrong with you if you didn't feel anything during the first half of Lion, this is exactly what I watch films to see. The emotion derived from such stories is what it's all about.

Technically, I thought this was excellent, featuring great cinematography and a very strong score. The pictures of India are simultaneously beautiful and haunting, it's a country that we all know should be something more, but haunted by its past. Sometimes the things we see in these kinds of films bother me very deeply, this is no exception. This feeling, like it or not, also does make the second half of a disjointed story difficult to pay attention to. There's a large gap between great and good here, it's a tale of two halves. The finale, as already alluded to, not only didn't feel authentic but felt like hokum. I already said this shouldn't have been nominated for Best Picture and that's true, but I think the finale is also the reason it was nominated for Best Picture. Just look at how Green Book won this year. Awards voters love that stuff, bottom line. Still, the things that open the story, even though this doesn't go to the depths that Slumdog Millionaire does in showing how bad life is for impoverished children, those moments are very heavy and I think the film should have been more focused on them. The journey is a greater story than that of someone who learns something and feels like they no longer belong, in my opinion.

7.5/10

 

[909]

Danish and German, subtitles

Land of Mine (2016), directed by Martin Zandvliet

As I've said before, I need to watch one foreign film a month. Land of Mine makes two, and I have another that makes three. Some claim that this is a film that has gross historical inaccuracy in that supposedly Danish officers did not command German soldiers to remove landmines in the way it is done so in this film. A lot of Danish historians were angry about this because German sergeants led the work of clearing these land mines, but I must be honest, I do not really see the difference. Anyway, now you know what this is about. Land of Mine was submitted to the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2017 Oscars, and it was nominated for the award as well. The film ultimately lost out to The Salesman, and although by no means will I ever watch all these submissions, there are some I do very much want to watch. Land of Mine is not quite as strong an offering as The Salesman, but it's pretty good anyway. I'll stay out of the part related to whether or not these kinds of things happened exactly as stated, I just don't know. What I will say is that the director made this film to point out that there were mistakes made in the past by all countries, and he makes a good point. I also believe the same as him that we have not learned from these things. Another thing I would like to say before I started is that I'm glad Sony Pictures Classics picks up films like this. I'd never watch it otherwise.

After Denmark was liberated from German occupation in May 1945, the Wehrmacht was to evacuate the country. They were defeated. The film begins with a Danish sergeant, Carl Leopold Rasmussen (Ronald Moller), coming across a German POW who he believes looks at him funny. Not good for that POW. He punches that guy in the face over and over, and when another German asks him to stop, that guy gets messed up too. Afterwards, a group of young Germans are handed over to the Danish army and trained in the art of defusing land mines, not something that anyone wants to do. Danish Captain Jensen (Mikkel Boe Folsgaard) is responsible for training these kids, and he decides to do it the very harsh way. He smacks them on the hands with a stick when he thinks they'd kill themselves, this is a harsh training. Once, when they're defusing live land mines, they are sent into a room. Jensen believes many of them will kill themselves, but in fact it's the one he least expects that blows himself up. I should mention in this paragraph that the reason Germans were removing these land mines was because they were placed on the west coast of Denmark, facing the North Sea. It was believed that there could be a British invasion, so it was decided to make sure. Thousands of land mines were placed on the beaches, and nobody wanted good Danish boys to remove them. So, German slave labor.

In case you didn't understand the point, the Danish really fucking hate the Germans. We learn after the explosion scene that Rasmussen is in fact going to be in charge of these land mine removals. The neighboring farm hates Germans, but nowhere near as much as him. These kids are told that nobody will feel sorry for them, certainly not Rasmussen. Some of them become prominent enough to recognize by face, and all of them are stripped of rank. Sebastian Schumann (Louis Hofmann) effectively becomes their leader, and he's the only one that Rasmussen seems to want to talk to at the start of this work. Helmut (Joel Basman) was seemingly the highest ranking of these individuals, but that doesn't matter anymore. I'm also just guessing. Ludvig (Oskar Bokelmann) seems to be the oldest, and some of the others are practically children. Ernst (Emil Belton) and Werner (Oskar Belton) are twins, they probably haven't even shaved yet. Sebastian tries to discuss plans for when they finish their work, but Helmut doesn't want to hear any of that shit because he thinks they'll die. There are a few major issues as it relates to this work. The POWs are not given food because there isn't enough to go around, so they must starve. The most major issue though, is that the work is very dangerous. Wilhelm (Leon Seidel) is starving like the rest, to the point of vomiting repeatedly while out in the field. One of the times he does, his arms are blown off. This will not be the only time someone explodes, but time will tell if Rasmussen can keep his mettle in a country that is very fervently anti-German. His superiors even more than him.

Land of Mine is effective in that it doesn't tell us what these young men did before defusing the land mines, so we don't know what they did in Denmark prior to their capture. This is the wise choice, there is no reason to automatically feel sorry for them or to prejudge them based on actions that took place in war. War is bad. You could conversely say that their participation in war is bad enough and that's your right. The fact remains that some of the people shown here probably barely grew hair on their balls. This is not a true story based on someone's recollection of matters, but a dramatization of what happened on the west coast of Denmark. Half of the POWs who performed this task died, it was extremely dangerous work. I don't think I need to describe it, but if you want to know, just check out the film. The point is that war is fucking bad, and the act of dropping those land mines is going to have victims regardless of whether or not there's an invading force. I don't believe in war in general, but these are tools that should be banned. The Ottawa treaty has not done so becasue countries like ours do not participate.

Land of Mine itself, well, it's almost a great film. There are limitations with the story, but the tense moments here are very tense. Given the framing of these German soldiers, it is hard not to feel something when they're going to defuse these mines. One of the film's weaknesses is that some of the German POWs are difficult to differentiate from one another and simply blend in with the pack. Nothing here feels like an attempt to mine (no pun intended, I swear) for sympathy, the events feel authentic and this story is told very well. The ending is also very goddamn effective, and for that matter so is the rest. The characters are naturally sympathetic though. Rasmussen's anger is borne from things that happened during the war, the POWs are kids who were effectively drafted in at the end of the war. It is also easy to understand why Rasmussen wouldn't give a shit about them. Land of Mine is nicely short, it tells its story in a rather quick manner, towards the end I'd lost track of time and was surprised the film was concluding. That rarely happens with me. Some of the explosions are also very gory, this is not a film for the faint hearted. Neither is war. I think I shouldn't judge whether or not this is a film that merited Oscar nomination, because I'm not going to ever get to that point of watching all its competition, but this is a very strong, raw film. What I would say is that I can see why this got picked up for distribution in this country, and that any film which makes me audibly gasp "NO", those are the films worth watching.

8/10

 

[909]

Life (2017), directed by Daniel Espinosa

When watching a film like 2017's Life, I have the grand total of one hope heading into it. It's that the derivative nature of such a film is kept to a minimum, replaced with some element of originality or something that derives material from lesser known works. That's something Life does not do, sad to say. When this film was released, I was thinking about how it's impossible for a film with these actors to deserve such mixed reviews, but a lot of time has passed since then. I now know exactly how that happens. When a film does have mixed reviews, oftentimes some people thought it was really good or really bad. In this case, the reviews are similar to my thoughts. This is a very average film. The question I was pondering at the end of Life was which side of average I thought the film landed on. A film so similar to Alien needs to do a lot of work to land above that positive side of average, but I thought this was merely alright. These kinds of films rely entirely on the characters being stupid as fuck, but I would like to know about one of these stories where they weren't. I'm sure one exists somewhere, I must find it, but in any case I thought Life was a film that could have been better, but featured some strong visual effects and a nice ending.

Set sometime in the future, an unmanned space probe returns from Mars to Earth orbit with samples of soil that potential contain evidence of life on Mars. This probe has run into space debris at some point, which leads to it very slightly going off course. In one neat scene, we're shown the crew on the International Space Station capturing the probe with a robotic arm. The crew itself consists of the commander, Ekaterina Golovkina (Olga Dihovichnaya); the exobiologist responsible for dealing with the Martian life form, Dr. Hugh Derry (Ariyon Bakare); systems engineer, Sho Murakami (Hiroyuki Sanada); the engineer and repairman responsible for capturing the space probe returning from Mars, Rory Adams (Ryan Reynolds); the quarantine officer, Dr. Miranda North (Rebecca Ferguson); and lastly the medical officer, Dr. David Jordan (Jake Gyllenhaal). Among this group, two are American, two are British, one is Japanese, and one is Russian. They all get along quite well. Dr. Hugh is paralyzed from the waist down, but this is not relevant in space. He takes a cell from the sample that came from Mars, and learns that it very quickly grows into a multicellular organism. On a video conference with Earth, a school is chosen to name this thing, and the name of Calvin is chosen.

Calvin is a strange creature, and this is an experiment, nobody knows how the organism will react to anything. One day, there's an accident in the lab that leads to Calvin becoming dormant, not moving at all. Everyone onboard is displeased by this, Hugh of course being bothered the most, but eventually everyone gets the heart to push on. They have no idea what the accident will have done to Calvin. It turns out that Calvin is now very hostile. Hugh attempts to revive the creature with electric shocks, but it attacks Hugh and crushes his right hands into bits. Calvin is also much more intelligent than it would seem. Hugh had placed the sharp electric shock tool in the enclosure, this was not a good idea. Calvin subsequently stabs through the gloves and is able to escape his glass cage, which leads to the creature also devouring a lab rat. This event leads to Calvin growing massively in size, eventually resembling an octopod or something similar. Rory decides that he needs to get into the lab, even though that breaks quarantine. If he doesn't, this thing will kill Hugh. He does not expect that David will lock him in the lab, but of course he will. They can't break quarantine. I will not spoil what happens specifically, but during this lab encounter, someone fucking dies. Badly. And Calvin gets out, growing in size by the minute, devouring any liquid it can.

This is, of course, very similar to Alien. You just need to watch Life to realize that, and once I did, which was about thirty minutes into the film, that was pretty much that. At that point, I was hoping for big effects shots and crazy deaths, and that's what I got. Make no mistake, this film does fail to make any grand statement of any sort. Even though there's an obvious case of "this is what could happen if we found sentient life," nothing is really made of this at all. There are also some weird scenes at the beginning of the events that don't serve any purpose. Yes, Jake Gyllenhaal's character prefers being in space to being on the planet, but I don't think that really matters. I did think some of these scenes were effective though. The kills all work. The one with people on Earth rushing to give this crazy creature a name, that was perfect. Nobody even know what it was or what it could do, but we must relate to it somehow and the way to do so is by having children name it. The spacewalking is always nice. Unfortunately, the plot here just does not have any depth whatsoever. You probably know this instantly, it doesn't take a genius to figure that out. The way that Hugh is able to activate a hibernating piece of Martian life after discovering it is laughable. That seems like something which would take an extremely long time.

The film is unrealistic, but I think I've already said all I need to stay about that. I thought Life did have a pretty good score, it was one of the things keeping me fully engaged in the events. The cinematography and visual effects are very good, even though they aren't as good as in Gravity. The natural similarity between those films is that they feature scenes where elements of space stations are torn to pieces. Gravity is a much better technical achievement though, the effects are better and although the story is limited, it is also better. Even having an alien with tentacles killing people is not going to make Life a much better film, and in the end I'm left to think about everything that it wasn't. Being derivative is a huge sin, but I do think this is somewhat redeemed by how good the ending is. Ultimately, this is just a workmanlike film. I don't want to give it a bad score because in my book, anything under a 6/60 would be a failing grade. This isn't a bad film, it's just too similar to ones that I've already seen, and there are so many more like it. I also have my own baseline film for the margin something like this would have to clear. It did. There are too many good scenes for me to give Life a failing grade.

6/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Get Out
3. Logan
4. Wonder Woman
5. The Big Sick
6. Thor: Ragnarok
7. Logan Lucky
8. The Beguiled
9. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
10. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
11. The Lost City of Z
12. First They Killed My Father
13. Spider-Man: Homecoming
14. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
15. It
16. Battle of the Sexes
17. Okja
18. Kong: Skull Island
19. It Comes at Night
20. Split
21. 1922
22. Personal Shopper
23. Chuck
24. Atomic Blonde
25. Wheelman
26. The Lego Batman Movie
27. Megan Leavey
28. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
29. American Made
30. Beauty and the Beast
31. Imperial Dreams
32. Murder on the Orient Express
33. The Zookeeper's Wife
34. Free Fire
35. Win It All
36. The Wall
37. Life
38. Breathe
39. The Man Who Invented Christmas
40. Alone in Berlin
41. A United Kingdom
42. Trespass Against Us
43. The Mountain Between Us
44. War Machine
45. Happy Death Day
46. Justice League
47. To the Bone
48. Wakefield
49. The Hitman's Bodyguard
50. Sand Castle
51. CHiPs
52. Death Note
53. The Belko Experiment
54. The Great Wall
55. Fist Fight
56. Wilson
57. Queen of the Desert
58. Sleepless

 

[909]

Triple Frontier (2019), directed by J.C. Chandor

I wonder how it's possible for a film to be in production hell for ten years. For ten years this was in pre-production, with so many stars attached at one point, back when Kathryn Bigelow was tabbed to direct. Even after J.C. Chandor took over, the same thing was the case. Eventually Netflix acquired the film and it was made, but talk about a troubled production. Oddly enough, I can see why this was a troubled production yet I also see some value in this film. Very rarely do studios make movies like Triple Frontier these days. Ten years ago, there were a lot more, and this would have had no real impact at all. Now, maybe it does. It's released on Netflix, budget probably around $75-125 million, and I know there's no real financial return but I do think a lot of people will watch this. Whether or not it's a lot depends on many things, this doesn't have the meme potential of Bird Box or the quality of Roma, but this is Netflix making a traditional Hollywood blockbuster type of movie. What I thought this was also like, was a worse Three Kings set in South America. That isn't to say it's bad, but a lot of the more subtle commentary in the film needs to be spelled out much more clearly. Because it isn't, what we have here is a film that could have been much better, but it wasn't bad regardless of those mistakes. I still have no idea why anyone would give a crew this much money to go out and shoot in the Andes Mountains. There's a reason that doesn't happen!

Triple Frontier is a very ambitious film, as already alluded to, and it's very difficult for me to figure out how I'm going to review such a production. The film starts in Colombia, with Santiago "Pope" Garcia (Oscar Isaac) working for private military trying to stop drug crime. Said private military is also affiliated with the US government, and while there, Pope has encountered an informant named Yovanna (Adria Arjona) who wants help smuggling her and her brother out of the country. They work for a drug lord called Lorea, and she tells Pope that Lorea lives out in the jungle in a house which contains at least $75,000,000. Sounds good, right? Pope wants to get it, and he could bring in the CIA to help, but he has ulterior motives. It's also not entirely up to him because he can't retrieve this money on his own. It's time to do some recruiting. Of course, Pope was in the military at some point before this, which means that he heads off to America to find some new guys. Did I mention that there was a big shootout before this? I should have.

Over in America, his first stop is with current military motivational speaker William "Ironhead" Miller (Charlie Hunnam). Of course he's in, he doesn't have that much money. His brother Ben (Garret Hedlund) is a club fighter, so of course he's in too. Again, all these guys are ex-military. Francisco "Catfish" Morales (Pedro Pascal) is going to serve as their pilot, and lastly, there's Tom "Redfly" Davis (Ben Affleck). Redfly is perhaps the most screwed of them all, he's divorced and working as a realtor selling very shitty condos, there's no life for him back home in Florida. Redfly's job on the mission is to do reconnaisance, he's their leader and he does not want to engage in any killing. The thing is, there's a hell of a lot of money involved. He just can't resist. Upon arriving in the jungle, they see that this is going to be more difficult than imagined in the first place. There are a lot of guards, and there are children. Here is their mission. They do not want to kill the kids or even want them to be there. What they are doing is illegal and they aren't getting bailed out at any point. If they get shot, they will have to mend it themselves. Nobody's coming to help them, but they do have some assets. They need to retrieve money from the house, the $75,000,000 they've planned for, take it over the Andes Mountains on a helicopter, and meet a boat in the ocean so they can get home. The thing is, greed is going to kick in at this level, and if there's more than they can carry, you know how men are. They're going to carry it anyway.

The commentary about greed is too subtle, but it is mentioned enough that it was coming to mind during the closing events of the film. I do have complaints though. Can films stop using nicknames for military guys? This has gotten ridiculous a long time ago, it's really bad now. I don't want to hear any of that shit in a movie anymore, it sucks. The script is also very thin, I thought. Triple Frontier isn't short on moments or atmosphere though. There are numerous things I didn't see coming as the film went on, I was left with the thought that this was at the least quite original. Triple Frontier also is filmed in the Andes, or at least it seems that way, but the mountainous atmospheres in this film are in any case very unique to a film. I just don't see things like this enough. There are also chase scenes through jungles filmed on a helicopter, and I don't know where they filmed that, but this kind of thing is again not too common. As I've said before, Netflix is too willing to spend money on things that other studios won't. It's nice of them as I'm not used to this, but I also thought Triple Frontier was something that belonged in a theater. The scenes were grandiose like that, and it felt weird seeing an excellently filmed helicopter crash released for the first time on a streaming service. That just doesn't make sense and I don't see how a film like this one can make money for Netflix.

I think I've addressed almost everything, but I should point out that even though I dislike Ben Affleck, he was very well cast here. When you watch this you'll see what I mean. That is, if you watch this. I am surprised J.C. Chandor would do this unless he was paid a hell of a lot of money, it isn't similar at all to the other films that he's done. A Most Violent Year could really not be more different than this is, and I don't understand the tonal shift. A Most Violent Year is a very slow burner, Triple Frontier has big moments happen quite frequently. I thought it became amusing at some point, but the way these heists never pan out the way someone wants them to, and the way people think they can get away with doing stupid shit, that's where this film really succeeds. Everyone had their own goals for this heist, but more than anything else, they wanted to get away with it no matter what. This kind of unbridled hubris makes a film worth watching, and I also don't think I've seen this much fake movie money ever before in my life. Unfortunately some of the characters are far too similar to one another, with Affleck and Isaac's being the only two who really stand out.

6.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Arctic
2. High Flying Bird
3. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
4. Captain Marvel
5. Paddleton
6. Cold Pursuit
7. Happy Death Day 2U
8. Greta
9. Triple Frontier
10. Fighting with My Family
11. Velvet Buzzsaw
12. Alita: Battle Angel
13. The Kid
14. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
15. The Upside
16. Escape Room
17. What Men Want
18. Miss Bala
19. Glass
20. The Prodigy
21. Polar
22. Serenity

 

[909]

Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral (2019), directed by Tyler Perry

Is this really going to be the end for Madea? I have my doubts, but I must admit that I don't really want the character to go away. Everyone winds up becoming attached to a horrible film or television character at some point, but Tyler Perry deserves the right to move on. That being said, I genuinely don't know why he would. This character requires very little effort, the direction of these movies also seemingly requires no effort, but I can imagine that it's still difficult to find a cast and go put on all that makeup and prosthetics every day. Admittedly, there is also no more mileage in the real MCU, with every story that could possibly have been told being long exhausted. These movies really are what they are, but I haven't reviewed one of them yet. I have seen some, but that was before I started these reviews. Is it wrong to feel guilty for laughing at some of this? Spike Lee's comments really stuck with me for a while, he said some things that were very harshly against this movie, but did I have the shame to stay out of the theater? The answer is no. Come on, do I really have shame? The only reason I haven't seen certain movies is because I don't always have time.

I don't even know how to describe a movie like this one, so maybe I won't. Instead I'll answer some questions people may have. David Otunga does not beat anyone up. Madea does not die. There is no actual bad guy in this but rather there is a confluence of events that leads to someone dying of a heart attack. Secrets are kept. Tyler Perry plays multiple characters again, including one who doesn't wear makeup. I do not know the backstory of this character in its entirety, but I'm sure there's some things that I'm missing. I laughed some, I thought some of this wasn't all that funny at all. A few of Tyler Perry's characters really whiffed for me, and the two women accompanying Madea are terrible. I have absolutely nothing good to say about either of them.

What I wanted to say about this movie, was that I think Tyler Perry is a really, truly bad director. I've liked him in other parts, but this film lacks imagination. All of these are directed in very similar ways, they're on budgets that aren't all that large, and they use actors who haven't really done anything before. I must admit I didn't recognize much of anyone in the film, but I do see that the budget for Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral was up compared to other prior entries. I also saw this was filmed back in 2017, I'm not sure why it wouldn't be released until now. Unfortunately, one of Tyler Perry's new characters, a Vietnam War vet named Heathrow, was really not funny even compared to the other characters I didn't like. Joe (also Tyler Perry), on the other hand, he pretty much saved the movie. I laughed hardest at the things he was saying, but make no mistake, you should feel bad for laughing hard at these things. I really do feel bad too.

Of course, the nature of these movies is that they will never have good stories, everyone knows that by now. That's why most people hate them, and Tyler Perry has no self-filter to prevent him from putting bad jokes in the movie. He leaves everything in even if it isn't funny, and I give some credit for that level of ridiculous hubris. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral is a film packed with absurd melodrama, with people who have to take their clothes off in a PG-13 way, with actors having to react to the things Madea is saying or pretend that she isn't saying them at all, and you know, that's really what I needed today. I've had a pretty shitty week, I just wanted to laugh, and I did. I'm sorry that I couldn't properly describe what this was, but I couldn't figure out an angle to take with this story.

4/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Arctic
2. High Flying Bird
3. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
4. Captain Marvel
5. Paddleton
6. Cold Pursuit
7. Happy Death Day 2U
8. Greta
9. Triple Frontier
10. Fighting with My Family
11. Velvet Buzzsaw
12. Alita: Battle Angel
13. The Kid
14. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
15. The Upside
16. Escape Room
17. What Men Want
18. Miss Bala
19. Glass
20. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
21. The Prodigy
22. Polar
23. Serenity

 

[909]

City of Ghosts (2017), directed by Matthew Heineman

After 2018's A Private War, I felt the need to understand why the director would want to make a movie about Marie Colvin so badly. It's also not just that as the reason I watched City of Ghosts, I needed to watch a documentary this month and inch forward with things I've seen from 2017. The question of why he would make a movie about Marie Colvin was answered, it was something we needed. I know that by every real standard, A Private War bombed very hard at the box office, but it was one of the best films from 2018. It ranks high on my list and nothing will really change that, but the subject matter is too heavy for a general audience. That's also the case with City of Ghosts, a documentary which ranks among the best I've seen. That's high praise, but bear in mind I haven't seen all that many. I think City of Ghosts is a comprehensive documentary about reporting in Syria and what happens when people have to flee, the kind which we really needed two years ago when this was released. The situation on the ground has changed since then. Assad has taken back control, ISIS is nearly defeated, but as City of Ghosts points out, ISIS is merely an idea. The group may die but the idea will not, this is something that is going to continue on for some time. What I also thought as this documentary was coming to a conclusion was that I was really glad to have been born here, it is things such as this that make me appreciate my life a lot more.

City of Ghosts is about Raqqa, and specifically the activist group, Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently. The group was founded with the intention of publicizing atrocities committed by ISIS in Raqqa, after ISIS had attempted to cover some of these things up. Inevitably ISIS started creating their own videos, but there are many things those videos do not talk about. RBSS was started to ensure that the West is aware of these things. RBSS was founded by 17 Syrians, and when ISIS moved into Raqqa, the group started secretly posting information about ISIS. According to an RBSS member, they posted a lot of videos of crucifixions and executions, which is what really got things moving along. ISIS did not like this, and they started a campaign to assassinate the individuals who were feeding RBSS their information, as well as kill RBSS members who lived outside of the country. It turns out that ISIS was moderately successful in killing some members, doing so in broad daylight over in Turkey. However, the organization will push on, and nothing will stop them, not even threat of death or in some cases actual death. There are two brothers here who saw a video of their father and older brother being executed by ISIS as a consequence of their reporting on these atrocities. As far as a documentary carrying weight goes, I don't even know what to say about that. That's so sad.

Of course, a documentary featuring so much ISIS related material is going to have some real gory things in it, so you're well warned of that should you choose to turn this on after reading my review. I thought that Matthew Heineman was very adept in ensuring none of these things felt like they were being drawn out for shock effect, but more than that, it's the story of the group that really wins out. Whether they go from Raqqa to Turkey, to Germany, to New York City, back to Germany, you really feel their plight. There's an intelligent inclusion of an anti-refugee rally in Berlin, so if you think the Germans really banned Nazi shit, you can just think again with that. That trope should be dead to anyone if they've seen this. I think City of Ghosts is so incredibly effective in telling its story, and if you haven't seen any of those Islamic State propaganda films, they are in this. I found them to be upsetting and I know that was the purpose, sometimes it hits too hard, but again, that's the point. There are enough talking points where I could go through this for a very, very long time, but I think I should describe the film instead of doing that. I honestly don't know why anyone here wouldn't watch this, I know some of you care about this subject.

I thought it was important to watch this film after what happened in Christchurch today. I can't really explain my logic, but I thought there was a parallel between what ISIS did to people and what shooters do when they randomly walk into a place of worship and kill a lot of people. What films like this do, for me anyway, is paint the correct picture in showing that people are all the same. Some have been brainwashed, yes, that is true, but at a base human level, we are all the same. I do not understand why things have to be this way, and truly I'll never understand, but I have immense appreciation for those who break stories about conflict zones. It's an unbelievably difficult and ultimately underappreciated job, but the impact of this job on our subjects is shown at multiple times in a movie. There is nothing more a documentary can give than to show you a clip of a son watching an ISIS propaganda film where his father is shot in the head. For what it's worth, this wasn't grief exploitation, in fact the son said that he watched this all the time for motivation and because he couldn't not watch it. That's the kind of thing I can't really understand, something foreign to me, and I have great appreciation for people who tell these stories knowing that something like this could happen to them. The fact is that we need those stories, so I perfectly understand now why Matthew Heineman would go on to direct A Private War.

9/10

 

[909]

Fences (2016), directed by Denzel Washington

So, adaptations of plays. I'm not a play person and I have never went to see one, much less one that was made for Broadway as Fences. It seems that people have what I'd consider to be a surprisingly mixed reaction to this story. It seems that I'm on the extreme end of positivity, but the Academy did nominate Fences for Best Picture, so I'm going to stick with what I think. Fences is obviously an adaptation of a play, directed by one of the best actors ever, also featuring that same actor putting on arguably the best performance of his career. If you care about this sort of thing, yes, he has had practice and time to refine his performance in this role, but I don't think that really matters. What transfers over to the screen is spectacular, even though there's a third act that really tapers off. I haven't watched a Denzel Washington film in a while, I thought this was the right time to do so. Once I watch Silence, I believe that's everything most people thought should be nominated for Best Picture. If that isn't, then I have more work to go, but I'm going to move on to 2017 in full. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but anyway, I just wanted to explain myself. In any case, I can think of only a few films from 2016 that I liked more than this one, Moonlight chiefly among them. This was a great cast doing their thing.

Fences is set in 1950s Pittsburgh, where Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington) lives with his wife Rose (Viola Davis) and their son Cory (Jovan Adepo), with Troy working as a trash collector riding on the back of a truck. Troy rides the truck with his best friend, Mr. Bono (Stephen McKinley Henderson), and they've apparently been friends for a very long time. You learn how and why they became friends at some point in the film, I will not reveal how. Troy has a younger brother, Gabriel (Mykelti Williamson), and Gabriel suffered a head injury during World War II that left him very mentally impaired. He received a $3,000 government payout, but he was unable to use it, and Troy used the payout to purchase a home for his family. Gabriel was living with him and instead decided to move out. Due to Gabriel's problems, in addition to Gabriel being black, this leads to him getting in trouble with the police. Troy is unable to keep Gabe at his house, and I'm not sure he wanted to anyway, so this situation is what it is. He wanted Gabe to keep his freedom, and that happened, but that cost Troy a lot of his money.

I'm not going to explain what the deal is exactly with Troy, it's better to not know and watch the film to find out. However, some of this needs to be mentioned. Troy was a baseball player in the Negro Leagues, he was never able to make it to Major League Baseball. He was too old by the point at which Jackie Robinson came along. Troy also claims to have faced the Grim Reaper in his youth, this allowed him to survive pnuemonia. The thing you have to understand about Troy is, he's a classic bullshitter. Troy also has a son from a previous relationship, his name is Lyons (Russell Hornsby), and he visits Troy every payday to borrow money from him. This makes Troy very upset because Troy believes a real man takes responsibility for himself and provides for his own family. There's another issue as well, this one with Cory, and Cory is trying to play college football. Troy's not okay with this, he believes that black people are only on these teams to get screwed over, and that Cory will not get a real chance. He also obviously does not want Cory to fail and will not allow him to see a recruiter that would allow him to play college football unless Cory completes some very specific tasks. The long and short of it is, he wants his two sons to be what he thinks a real man is, he wants to have things going on right at home, and he wants everything to be his way. You know how it works with control freaks like that? It's never always their way.

Denzel Washington's electric performance carries this film very far, but this is also an achievement in script writing. The two in combination with each other make for something great, but Fences is a film that repeatedly features actors stealing scenes and making the most of the work they're given. This isn't an achievement of cinematography or of set design or anything like that, this seemed to have been done in a very minimalist way. I thought the story was enthralling as a whole, but the third act simply wasn't as good as the rest. There's a reason for that and I don't want to say why, you'd have to watch the film. I could not more strongly recommend that you watch this film. There's lots of commentary on the time, but the story does an excellent job of wrapping everyone up into it. I was thinking about so many things when I went to write this review, but I'm left without an ability to actually paint a picture of the film to my liking. There are the usual classic scenes where Denzel Washington decides to go full bore into ranting at an invisible object, and these do seem a little out of place at times, but they're also scenes made for him to show the full capabilities of his acting prowess. I thought Viola Davis was nearly as good, but her role is more limited. Regardless of that, this is a film where these two effectively spend their entire time acting in and around one little house.

This is a great drama, even if it doesn't bring anything truly unique to the table. The monologues Denzel Washington gives as Troy, particularly the ones targeting his son, those are too good. Viola Davis has a few that are just as good, one of which made me actually clap like a fool. I watched Fences last night, but I still feel 12 hours later that the film is just as good as I thought once it ended, and that's also a big achievement. Many times I do not feel that way, but I write my reviews so quickly after viewing a film to ensure that I do not forget the events in it. Registering at 134 minutes before the credit, Fences is quite a long movie, but it's one with some good moral lessons. Troy Maxson is a picture of someone who had a bad father, so many people who had bad fathers turn out like this, particularly in that era when it was a more commonly held practice to treat your sons this way. Of course, if someone is familiar with the play, this could be a huge nothing to them and they may find nothing great about this at all. On the other hand, I find that cinema really lacks in telling these kinds of stories about black people, even to this day. This seems to be getting better and better, but it's something that always sticks in my mind. Hollywood has to get better than offering one or two strong films featuring black people in one given year. Even more than that, people need to watch movies that don't feature guns and ridiculous special effects. Good luck with that.

9/10

 

[909]

Captive State (2019), directed by Rupert Wyatt

When I went to see The Predator way back in September, the best teaser, as well as the only one I hadn't seen before, was for Captive State. If you've seen said teaser, you know exactly what I mean. It looked somewhat like Cloverfield, and we saw a glimpse of alien ships in addition to John Goodman wearing a mask while strapped into something that looked like a chair. When this was being filmed, I also remember a lot of promotional material related to that. Of course, now I will mention that said promotional material disappeared entirely once the film got closer to releasing. That's usually not a good sign. In this case, I see why it disappeared, this is an impossible film to market. People don't care about original stories anymore, that's very clear, but even more than that, this is a film that I would consider to be somewhat lacking in action. This is a major problem considering what the story really is, but this is science-fiction and there's very little of that released these days. So, I was happy, but the longer this film went on, the more annoyed I became, this does not really land with the stories it is attempting to tell. There are others that are for whatever reason not included in this plot at all. Why someone would make a movie about an alien occupation of our planet and not show how they came to occupy it in the first place is a total mystery.

You should disregard the Wikipedia description because it spoils the film and in general it's complete nonsense. Captive State begins and stays in Chicago, with our eyes set on a computer screen describing some of the events that have happened since aliens took over Earth. What's most important though, is that we see what happened to some of the people involved. There's a family of four, with two boys in the back seat and a husband and wife in the front. They are talking about an insurgence, and it is clear that people are being cordoned into areas in Chicago that they are allowed to inhabit. Instead of doing that, the husband decides that he's going to turn around and go his own way, attempting to take a route out of the city or into a zone he isn't allowed to go into. This situation is chaos, but for him that won't last much longer. There are aliens, which can best be described as of the crawling kind. They can stand up too, and they had the ability to easily kill the parents. The children in the back seat, on the other hand, the aliens decide to let them leave. I wasn't able to figure out why because it doesn't make sense. I can admit that I don't know exactly what scene came after this one, but I know that we then see our antagonist, a police officer named William Mulligan (John Goodman), meeting with a prostitute (Vera Farmiga) and having sex with her (unseen) in a neighborhood called Pilsen.

The situation on the ground in Chicago is not great. The aliens have called themselves the Legislators, and the Legislators have created a zone in the middle of Chicago where only they and specific collaborators are allowed to travel. The two children have grown up, but Rafe (Jonathan Majors) has died as an insurgent while his brother Gabriel (Ashton Sanders) is still trying to make his way through life. Gabe is friends with Jurgis (Machine Gun Kelly), and together they are both hustlers. They both badly want to get the hell out of Chicago, where people are trapped and not allowed to leave. The aforementioned Mulligan takes part in what is now a heavy surveillance state, and apparently he's watching Gabe. Mulligan also believes very strongly that the insurgency is still going, and that the Legislators were not able to kill them all when they'd had a failed attack. The Legislators have taken over the world, every major city is now run by them, and so are the governments. People do not do anything without them knowing, and they've planted living bugs inside of people that track them. Rafe had joined the insurgency despite this, but he's supposed to be dead. Or is he? Captive State is a film that presents so many ideas I literally do not know how to keep track of them or how to explain them, but the prevailing one is that they're destroying the planet by stealing our resources at a very rapid rate. They also take prisoners and send them to work off planet, and there are talks that eventually they will take some people with them to leave Earth behind, destroyed as it is.

Did I make clear that I can't possibly explain the plot? This is totally ridiculous and presents so many ideas that I don't know how to explain them all in the context of the film. It's easier to do so outside of context. How about the idea that living outside of the city would be considered freedom? These people don't even know what's going on outside of the city because the aliens have completely destroyed the capacity for people to know. There are also ideas about what insurgency entails, the passing of information from one person to the next, and the commitment that goes into said insurgency. I really liked the presentation of that. I also liked the idea of aliens implanting live trackers onto humans. Yes, they would totally do that if they wanted to take over our planet, but now effects have finally come far enough for them to actually show it. The insurgency thing, that's something which frequently came to mind as an allegory for a fight against an oppressive government, but the film just doesn't have enough depth and weight to it. There are frequent sequences of scenes that are horribly edited, where we go from one character to the next, leaving me with the feel that there isn't a true main character. This is not good.

This is not good is a sentence that applies to the film as a whole, it isn't exciting enough even though there's good concepts, and there's a serious inconsistency with the quality of the editing from one part of the film to the next. When you don't get to see how aliens occupied the planet or how humans decided to start getting rid of them at the end, this just sucks a lot of enjoyment out of the movie. The ending is horrendous, they clearly didn't film enough to actually explain the conspiracy in depth, and because of that this left me with a sour taste as I was walking out of the theater. Some of the CGI is also quite bad, but I didn't actually notice this until the very end of the film. There are too many characters and I don't understand all of their situations, and this is a lesson that not all of the directors who write films should be allowed to make whatever they want without there being some kind of restrictive force. Due to budget restrictions, there's also not the ability to show these aliens often enough, and that's a really big problem. Oh well, they can't all fulfill my wishes. I would say though, that this would be a film I classify as a small failure. It is at the very least extremely interesting, and John Goodman is on screen a lot, so it can't really be that bad. I'm still left with thoughts of what it could have been.

5.5/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Arctic
2. High Flying Bird
3. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
4. Captain Marvel
5. Paddleton
6. Cold Pursuit
7. Happy Death Day 2U
8. Greta
9. Triple Frontier
10. Fighting with My Family
11. Velvet Buzzsaw
12. Alita: Battle Angel
13. The Kid
14. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
15. The Upside
16. Captive State
17. Escape Room
18. What Men Want
19. Miss Bala
20. Glass
21. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
22. The Prodigy
23. Polar
24. Serenity

 

[909]

Sleight (2017), directed by J.D. Dillard

It's back to the first time feature film well once again, something that is becoming a staple in these reviews. First time films have fresh ideas and Sleight is no exception to that, and this featured a lot of things I wasn't quite expecting. However, at the same time, this does have a lot of the same things I've watched in other movies. Kid living in Los Angeles with parents who are gone, and he's left to take care of his younger sibling. I've seen this story a lot, but I watch a lot of material and this is merely a case of me becoming fatigued due to seeing it so much. With that in mind, I think this is an interesting concept, but we really needed more scenes of the lead character doing magic. Due to how short this film was, my review will also be short, and I must reiterate that this is a movie that needs more magic. Have I made that clear yet? There's some quality here, but ultimately I'm left thinking about the things this film could have had and didn't have. It's still an achievement though, you try making a film with $250,000. That shit is hard.

Bo (Jacob Latimore) is a young street magician who has been fucked over after his parents died, of course none of that is anyone's fault. Bad things happen to people. Bo has turned to selling drugs in order to keep a roof over his and his sister Tina's (Storm Reid) heads. He doesn't have a choice, there's no other way for him to make money and put food on the table. He does have a neighbor who helps him out, her name is Georgi (Sasheer Zamata), and without her, I'm not sure what this kid would be doing. In the day, Bo performs magic tricks, he is able to somehow control metal things and keep them floating in the air. He has done this because he has an electromagnet implanted in his arm, I don't understand how this happened or even if it's actually possible. There's some backstory to this, but it appears that he controls this device with his fingers and thumb, with the battery running to his thumb. Again, I don't know how this is possible. In the process of doing these magic tricks, he eventually meets Holly (Seychelle Gabriel), who becomes his girlfriend. Holly has her own problems, it appears that she is abused by one of her parents, whom she lives with.

At night, Bo does a lot of other, very illegal shit that I have already alluded to. He sells cocaine and ecstasy, and Angelo (Dule Hill) is his supplier. I don't know why Angelo became his supplier or how, there's not a lot of character depth as far as that goes. Unfortunately, at the time in which the events of this movie occur, someone new has came on the scene and started selling drugs in Bo's spot. Angelo isn't going to tolerate this, he wants Bo to find this guy. So, Bo uses his ability to do magic tricks to find out who the supplier is. Going to leave it at that. Angelo also has Bo do worse things than sell drugs, I will also not divulge what those are. Eventually, this leads to Bo doing something very dumb. He doesn't want to sell drugs anymore, in fact he wants to leave Los Angeles behind and take his sister with him. His idea is to cut a kilo of coke into two, this is not a wise decision. The possibility this gets back to Angelo is strong, and keep in mind that Bo is just a kid. He's incapable of doing anything should he get in trouble, and that thing in his arm is infected.

I think this is simply a solid film, and I'm appreciative of the effort to the point where I don't want to critique. This is a neat take on superhero stuff, with our lead character having the ability to do that and nobody knowing about the magnet inside of his arm. I don't know if this is realistic or not, I assume that it isn't and I don't understand how that could ever work. The conclusion of the film is nice though, and it's weird to see Dule Hill playing a bad guy and cursing up a storm. That's weird casting. The script and the ingenuity has kept the film from being merely ordinary, and there are some good ideas here. Realism is not something we always need, but I'm a bit shocked by the level of special effects considering this film was nearly budgetless. As I said, this would be short, but I think there's also some good commentary on what happens to people who lose their parents. Society does not account for when that happens to young people.

6/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Get Out
3. Logan
4. Wonder Woman
5. The Big Sick
6. Thor: Ragnarok
7. Logan Lucky
8. The Beguiled
9. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
10. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
11. The Lost City of Z
12. First They Killed My Father
13. Spider-Man: Homecoming
14. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
15. It
16. Battle of the Sexes
17. Okja
18. Kong: Skull Island
19. It Comes at Night
20. Split
21. 1922
22. Personal Shopper
23. Chuck
24. Atomic Blonde
25. Wheelman
26. The Lego Batman Movie
27. Megan Leavey
28. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
29. American Made
30. Beauty and the Beast
31. Imperial Dreams
32. Murder on the Orient Express
33. The Zookeeper's Wife
34. Free Fire
35. Win It All
36. The Wall
37. Life
38. Breathe
39. The Man Who Invented Christmas
40. Sleight
41. Alone in Berlin
42. A United Kingdom
43. Trespass Against Us
44. The Mountain Between Us
45. War Machine
46. Happy Death Day
47. Justice League
48. To the Bone
49. Wakefield
50. The Hitman's Bodyguard
51. Sand Castle
52. CHiPs
53. Death Note
54. The Belko Experiment
55. The Great Wall
56. Fist Fight
57. Wilson
58. Queen of the Desert
59. Sleepless

 

[909]

Silence (2016), directed by Martin Scorsese

Many times recently I have had very long films listed to watch, but it nearly always turns out that I don't have the time or willpower to actually go through with doing so. It turns out Silence is a big exception to that, but I always knew it was going to be. I simply could not go without ever watching Martin Scorsese's passion project, what kind of person would I be? This is an adaptation of a novel, and it has already been adapted before, but I'm not sure if the Japanese adaptation was any good. The novel must be really damn good or it wouldn't be adapted twice, that's the way I look at it. Martin Scorsese is seemingly obsessed with the idea of people struggling with their faith, and this has to be because he has done so himself. How wouldn't that be the case? Anyway, I have read that the budget was tight enough that many people were forced to work for scale, and I can see how that was. The locations in Silence are numerous, there's a large cast, a massive amount of extras, and there's amazing cinematography that required some incredible capabilities. I wish I'd seen this in theaters, but I'm not surprised that a film with this subject matter and length bombed at the box office. What really gets me is that this wasn't nominated for any Academy Awards. The fuck? This is so much more worthy of nominations than many different productions, I do not understand. I also realize that with this, I've watched nearly everything that got an Oscar nomination for the 2017 show in an important category. Wow! I should say that the foreign language and documentary categories are important, because they are, but there's just a few entries in both of those that I haven't seen. Still though. Wow!

Silence begins in similar fashion to many of Scorsese's works, with a scene establishing the following events. This one is a prologue where we see a Portuguese priest named Cristovao Ferreira (Liam Neeson) witnessing the torture and death of five missionaries in Japan. Ferreira is helpless to stop this, and Japanese authorities are eager to partake. A minor history lesson is needed, this was a response to the Shimabara Rebellion. Some local Japanese Catholics had decided to rebel against the shogunate, and it was decided by Japan to drive out Catholicism because they thought Europeans had spread the fires of rebellion. A few years later in Macau, an Italian priest named Valignano (Ciaran Hinds) has received word that Ferreira has committed apostasy over in Japan after being tortured himself. Ferreira had tutored two priests, Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Garupe (Adam Driver). The two Portuguese absolutely refuse to believe that this is true, they know their mentor would never have apostatized. These Jesuits believe they need to make their way to Japan and find news of him or find him, and Valignano agrees to their request. First, they need to find someone in Macau who is from Japan so they can do a moderate translation as the priests do not know the language, Their man is Kichijiro (Yosuke Kubozuka), a drunk who the priests cannot trust, but ultimately they are powerless to do anything else.

When Rodrigues and Garupe arrive in Japan, it is at a village called Tomogi. Christians are no longer allowed into Japan nor are people allowed to practice Christianity, with everyone living in fear of the Inquisitor (Issei Ogata). Kichijiro takes it upon himself to go find Christians in the village, and in the end he finds a group of them who subsequently lead the priests to a safe house up in the mountains. The priests are told to stay hidden during the day, but at night they come down and minister to the people in the village. The village leader is a man named Ichizo (Yoshi Oida), and Mokichi (Shinya Tsukamoto) is another who are very, deeply Christian. They tell the priests that they've needed a priest for so long, and eventually the Jesuits become a necessary part of the village. Persecution, however, has run rampant. It is pictured above. The villagers are not able to keep any relics, nor a Bible, and we get to see what happens if someone does. Kichijiro has his own story, but you should watch the movie. Eventually, as you might suspect, the Inquisitor does come to Tomogi. It was going to come out that there were priests in the village, that was inevitable. Here is what the Inquisitor wants. He will give out silver to anyone who has information on Christians, because he was told there were Christians in the village. He also wants four hostages, and they must pass a trial in order for him to believe that these four villagers are not Christians. They must spit on a Cross, say that the Virgin Mary is a whore, and only then will he really believe them. If they don't do it? See above.

There are very few films of this length that are consistently intriguing throughout, but even less of them seem to carry real emotional weight. There are some questions I have about Silence, particularly related to Kichijiro, because I don't understand how he lives for so long. I'm not surprised that people didn't want to watch this. It's a story that critiques religion and at the same time leans into it, this is an incredible film. There's no other way to put it and in some ways I'm left without words. The harshness of the atmosphere was truly amazing, the priests invading a very cruel and tough land. Taiwan was a great stand-in for coastal Japan, finding these locales was an excellent piece of filmmaking. These backgrounds serve to establish the priests as entering hostile ground, with some yearning for hope but others unaccepting of their ideas. The start of the film does get a little bogged down, but these scenes only serve to give the film more power as it continues, one builds to the next and the conclusion of the film is everything I wanted it to be. If you don't have any feelings while watching this, I really don't know what to say. The scenes where people are persecuted are very difficult to watch, and there are a lot of them, Silence is not a film for the faint-hearted.

I thought Silence was a film with a strange existential dilemma, with our priests being Portuguese yet them not speaking the language. Sometimes Portuguese comes up and sometimes it doesn't, but this is weird and probably the only reason I'm not giving this a perfect score. The language thing is merely a distraction though, I thought Garfield and Driver gave spectacular performances. So did the Inquisitor for that matter, but I have seen some complaining about the "villains" in this film being Japanese. Villain is of course a very relative term, and in any case you can't change history. Stories about whether or not someone is going to doom other people to death as a result of their own beliefs, there just aren't very many of those. Of course, there is also always the lurking question of what will happen if or when they find Ferreira. Did Ferreira truly apostatize, or is he dead? This is something else one must watch the film to find out. These scenes carry so much wait, but I can see that if someone is disengaged from the story after about 20 minutes, there is no reason on Earth to continue watching this. I imagine that it would only get worse if that's how one felt.

I'm not familiar with other films like this one, including Scorsese's other efforts, as I just haven't watched them before. Silence is a truly great film though. I know why people have a hesitancy to watch long films, but when they're this good, there's something to be lost if you don't watch it. One thing that was coming to mind, is what someone would think if they believe negative things about the Catholic Church in the first place? This kind of thing, it's answered in the film. I assure you of that. There's one thing I know, I have to keep going to the theater this often because I cannot wind up missing out on something else like this. Considering I'm basically done with 2016 other than some random tracking back in the future, I'm left stunned that this film was not given any amount of true recognition. It just doesn't make sense to me, and this is better than so many other films. I repeat, so many other films. I was left with some questions abuot my own place in the universe after watching this, I don't have the answers to them and I will probably be thinking of them for a long time. I was surprised that this film actually bothered to explain the Japanese point of view, but that's probably why it was so long in the first place. I really appreciate that it was.

9.5/10

 

[RedJed]

Yeah, Captive State was a total fucking mess.

There was just too much disconnected and confusing stuff going on here, it was like Rupert Wyatt must have had too much leeway in development of this or something. It just came across as a concept that maybe sounded better on paper but the development of it (or lack there of) showed in the final product.

I went in blind except the main trailer so certainly expected something drastically different than this. That was problem number one. Then came the massive and incredibly confusing plot holes from scene to scene, the lack of a flow or transition from one supposed plot point to another, the incredible number of characters that had such little development that you couldn't even keep track who they were and what their relation was to this muddled story....I could go on and on but you get it.

I had a hard time as well even staying awake during this (granted, this was my third film on Saturday, but still...). The story had little engagement to it. And most importantly, it was not built well from start to finish and I found myself if I should just split out of this since nothing redeeming was keeping me there except a comfortable reclining seat. So I ended up just dozing off for 5 minutes at a time.

I guess the only good things I can say is that there was the twist at the end that kind of tied up some extremely loose ends, but it still didn't satisfy me at all. I liked the general looks of the alien tech and aliens in general, but the effects sure didn't do them any favors either. Much less an explanation about this alien life form.

Looking back, I think I would preferred them to think of whatever this long winded story was, to slow it down and just have the first film be an alien invasion to the max hook with the events they talked about in the first five minutes being a basis for a first film. That might have helped this out tremendously and could have potentially set up a trilogy if done right. But that was not the plan obviously.

I don't know if this was the worst film I've seen this year, but it most certainly was the most confusing and tonally dull one for sure.

 

[909]

Snatched (2017), directed by Jonathan Levine

I had a pretty shitty day, so I thought that the best way to deal with that was by throwing on some trash tonight. Snatched is certainly trash, but it's also the first Amy Schumer movie or television program that I've watched. How is this possible? That's simple, you just be like me and don't pay attention to shit. Eventually, I'll probably watch a lot more even though I know this is trash, but make no mistake my hopes were not high. I wanted to laugh at some stupid things, and for the most part that's what happened, although said laughs were few and far between. My expectation was that having Goldie Hawn in this would level things out a little bit, but I'm not cool with the kind of brownphobia that exists in Snatched. There's so much of it, it's prevalent throughout the opening of the film as well as the parts that are actually important, I'm just not cool with that. That being said, if you want to see Amy Schumer's nips, this just might be the film for you! In reality though, you should steer clear. Steer very, very clear of this mess.

Snatched focuses on Emily, a woman who works in a clothing store at the start of the film, but is fired for vapid, poor behavior. She is also dumped by her boyfriend not long after that, but she has a trip for two to Ecuador that she's unable to get a refund for. Nothing's going to stop Emily from going on her vacation, so inevitably, she turns to her mother, Linda (Goldie Hawn). Linda does not want to go to Ecuador, she just wants Emily to move on from her failed relationship. Emily has a brother, Jeffrey (Ike Barinholtz), and he stays inside all the time so he definitely isn't going on a trip. In the end, it turns out that nobody else will go, and that Linda is very afraid of foreign countries. All I could think about this shit, was fucking hell. It's coastal Ecuador, who wouldn't want to go there? What's wrong with you? Anyway, with that out of the way, Linda does agree to come along and off they go.

There's no padding in any of these scenes, they come very quickly and the film is quite short as a result of this. Upon arriving at their hotel in Ecuador, Emily meets a man named James (Tom Bateman) at the bar, and they get their drink on. At the same time, Linda and Emily also meet Ruth (Wanda Sykes) and Barb (Joan Cusack), some weird people traveling to Ecuador as well. I don't know how to describe this shit. Anyway, Emily embarrasses herself repeatedly, but none of that matters. The reason? James takes Linda and Emily on a sightseeing trip, and during their trip, a white fan rams into James' car. This leads to Emily and Linda being abducted, and Linda is very certain that James was in on this the whole time. Anyway, the leader of these kidnappers is a generic villain called Hector Morgado (Oscar Jaenada), and he calls Jeffrey to demand $100,000 in ransom money. Jeffrey subsequently calls the State Department, coming in contact with Morgan Russell (Bashir Salahuddin), and it turns out that Morgan hates this guy's fucking guts. Anyway, the women are to be transported to Colombia, and who knows for what reason, but they are. That's that, they're kidnapped.

It's dififcult to know what to say about something like this, but the rampant anti-Latinx racism and the way this presented a picture of Ecuador being inherently unsafe, I felt like that was negative propaganda. Usually these kinds of films receive a fake country name or something like that, this one does not. I thought everything about this was so easy to dislike, bar the appearance of Christopher Meloni. I kept hoping for him to reappear and he didn't, so that was too bad. Amy Schumer's character is so easy to dislike, I find this incredible with all the backlash she's received over the last few years. It doesn't make any sense that she would play this role. She's a complete idiot, a typical basic bitch. That stuff is not funny. Goldie Hawn does have some good jokes, but there aren't all that many of them. I can't believe how short this film is and that it features absolutely nothing that sticks with me other than Meloni's character. I can't believe that. The caricature of Jeffrey, I did think that was a little funny too I must admit. With incels being what they are now, to see one on screen, it always gets some amusement out of me.

This film is also a mess, with things taking around 35 minutes to actually get to the point where Schumer and Hawn are kidnapped. I could not tell you why it took so long, but before I looked back up what felt like a few minutes later and matters were already coming to a conclusion. If that sounds like shit, that's because it is shit. Unfortunately, this is just missing absolutely everything that a film like this needs to have. The side characters have to be memorable and really need a chance to ham it up. The main characters have to be engaging in some way and one of them is not. The racism that seems to loom around this kind of film, particularly when it was made in 2017 when people were all well aware of these things, that's something that isn't good. The action scenes a film like this requires are also non-existent, so overall I am very confused by what I just watched. I really don't know how someone could become famous like Amy Schumer if this is what their material is like.

3.5/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Get Out
3. Logan
4. Wonder Woman
5. The Big Sick
6. Thor: Ragnarok
7. Logan Lucky
8. The Beguiled
9. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
10. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
11. The Lost City of Z
12. First They Killed My Father
13. Spider-Man: Homecoming
14. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
15. It
16. Battle of the Sexes
17. Okja
18. Kong: Skull Island
19. It Comes at Night
20. Split
21. 1922
22. Personal Shopper
23. Chuck
24. Atomic Blonde
25. Wheelman
26. The Lego Batman Movie
27. Megan Leavey
28. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
29. American Made
30. Beauty and the Beast
31. Imperial Dreams
32. Murder on the Orient Express
33. The Zookeeper's Wife
34. Free Fire
35. Win It All
36. The Wall
37. Life
38. Breathe
39. The Man Who Invented Christmas
40. Sleight
41. Alone in Berlin
42. A United Kingdom
43. Trespass Against Us
44. The Mountain Between Us
45. War Machine
46. Happy Death Day
47. Justice League
48. To the Bone
49. Wakefield
50. The Hitman's Bodyguard
51. Sand Castle
52. CHiPs
53. Death Note
54. The Belko Experiment
55. The Great Wall
56. Fist Fight
57. Snatched
58. Wilson
59. Queen of the Desert
60. Sleepless

 

[909]

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017), directed by Guy Ritchie

When King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was released, my initial reaction was one of surprise, similar to when Robin Hood was released last year. I could not believe that a studio would decide to make either of those stories again, but this is said with the benefit of hindsight. It is now clear to everyone that these stories can no longer make money, and that they are probably buried for good. I do not think it's a matter of execution, that a studio can make money if they do them right. That's total crap. Also, those two movies are very identical, although both have differing aspects. I just don't understand how both Warner Bros. and Lionsgate could believe those two movies would launch a cinematic universe for them. That's putting their heads in the sand. Oddly enough, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword has much less sequel-bait than Robin Hood. They both shouldn't have any of it at all. Someone thought they could make six movies about King Arthur. What? I don't get it. Anyway, with that in mind, this isn't exactly like any other King Arthur. Guy Ritchie directed it, so there's going to be his touches. Unfortunately, that also means he wrote it, and this isn't the kind of movie he's used to writing. The odds that this would be bad are quite high, and I wasn't remotely surprised by how things turned out. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I also have no idea why anyone would let him direct Aladdin, but by that point it was too late. What we have if that stinks, is a case of someone being given the keys to make their career and that person subsequently destroying it.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword begins in Camelot, as it should, but this situation is a little different from what I understand. Mordred is a warlock whom we never see again, who decided that he wanted to ignite a war between mages and humans. Uther Pendragon (Eric Bana) is the British King, and he is leading the humans. He saves Camelot by beheading Mordred after a scene where we see some gigantic elephants, everything seems to be fine. Instead it is not. Vortigern (Jude Law) is Uther's brother, and he's a traitor. In order for him to become King, he sacrificies his wife to some bitches who live in the moat (yes, this is definitely a fantasy movie), which leads to Vortigern becoming a demon knight. Vortigern subsequently kills Uther's wife, Uther himself, and Arthur escapes on a boat to Londinium. Upon arrival in Londinium, Arthur is raised by prostitutes. We are given a very long montage of how he grew up, something I thought was awful storytelling, but it turns out this is decent direction covering up for Ritchie's own bad script. Anyway, we move forward through the years to Arthur as an adult, where he has shockingly become a skilled fighter and a street urchin of some kind. He confronts a group of Vikings who treated a prostitute like garbage, and forces them to pay restitution. This works out in Guy Ritchie fashion as well, with someone telling the story as the action goes on. You should be familiar with this if you've seen his movies.

While Arthur was telling this story to Jack's Eye (Michael McElhatton), all I could think was "here we go again with the goofy names," but at least it fit in this context. Jack's Eye breaks some unfortunate news to Arthur, that these vikings were under the protection of King Vortigern, so now Arthur's in some trouble. He attempts to escape the city, but he's captured and spotted for not having a brand on his arm. This leads to him being put on a ship with many other men, and it turns out that some water has vacated an area near Camelot to reveal a sword in a stone. Laugh all you want. Anyway, Arthur's able to pull the sword out as you know, and his true lineage is revealed. King Vortigern wants to kill him, but he cannot. Arthur escapes, and subsequently he joins a resistance movement against Vortigern, even though he may not want to. Notable members are the mage (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), a woman working for Merlin, who has turned into an eagle. There's also two former knights of Uther's, Sir Bedivere (Djimon Hounsou), the leader of the resistance, and Goosefat Bill (Aidan Gillen), a great archer. Then there's Arthur's friends from London, a guy called Wet Stick (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Percival (Craig McGinlay), Back Lack (Neil Maskell), and Back Lack's son, Blue (Bleu Landau). What more can you say about this?

There are obviously far too many characters, and I left out some wives and a few other members of the resistance, or of Arthur's mother, the Lady of the Lake, of David Beckham's cameo, of Vikings, do you get the point yet? There are too many people you have to recognize on face alone, and due to the nature of a film with a lot of white looking people from the British Isles, some of them do look very much alike. That's probably the point of some of the ridiculous names, but I know that some of them are also part of the story. I feel like this is a film both enhanced and ruined by Ritchie at the same time. Ritchie's skill with scenes similar to what I mentioned with Jack's Eye, this is one of the only things actually holding this mess together. His script is completely uninspired, and by the middle of the film I was getting fucking bored. I really was, and no amount of giant elephants and fantasy CGI is really going to change that. I also must admit that I don't care about the story of King Arthur whatsoever. I could never give a fuck about something like this, it isn't for me. The kind of fantasy story I want to see is something that hasn't been done before, like Game of Thrones. I do not need this. I also thought the film was more interesting when Arthur was tramping around Londinium and telling those stories, but such joys were short-lived.

I believe I've said before that I think Charlie Hunnam is an underrated actor, and I do, but he's given nothing of quality to work with here at all. He's also absolutely terrible at picking his roles, this year's Triple Frontier was no exception to that. The Lost City of Z, on the other hand, now that was quality work. That second film and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword came out in the same year, I am loathe to compare them because one is quality cinema and the other is not, but it's something that regularly came to mind. Jude Law is also well cast and so is Aidan Gillen, but it's strange to see Gillen playing a bad guy. Law is more naturally suited to it, he does his best with the material, but the material is not good. The film is just boring, I don't know how else to describe it. There are so many things here that shouldn't be boring, but it is. There's a deluge of this kind of material and a lack of original fantasy stories being released as films these days, so when a film is as trite as this, you really notice. This is also two hours, which isn't surprising considering the amount of characters, but there is no depth given to any of these. Part of that is because there were supposed to be six of these movies, but I guess I just don't care. Guy Ritchie is a lot better than this, he obviously got up in his own ass when he wrote this, and it's best that this bombed so everyone could move on. I have no idea who Warner Bros. thought was the audience for this, I could never imagine an American audience going to see this film regardless of who made it or the quality of it. I could drone on and on, but I've already said more than this deserves. At least The Man from U.N.C.L.E was fun.

4.5/10

2017 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Dunkirk
2. Get Out
3. Logan
4. Wonder Woman
5. The Big Sick
6. Thor: Ragnarok
7. Logan Lucky
8. The Beguiled
9. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
10. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
11. The Lost City of Z
12. First They Killed My Father
13. Spider-Man: Homecoming
14. I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore
15. It
16. Battle of the Sexes
17. Okja
18. Kong: Skull Island
19. It Comes at Night
20. Split
21. 1922
22. Personal Shopper
23. Chuck
24. Atomic Blonde
25. Wheelman
26. The Lego Batman Movie
27. Megan Leavey
28. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
29. American Made
30. Beauty and the Beast
31. Imperial Dreams
32. Murder on the Orient Express
33. The Zookeeper's Wife
34. Free Fire
35. Win It All
36. The Wall
37. Life
38. Breathe
39. The Man Who Invented Christmas
40. Sleight
41. Alone in Berlin
42. A United Kingdom
43. Trespass Against Us
44. The Mountain Between Us
45. War Machine
46. Happy Death Day
47. Justice League
48. To the Bone
49. Wakefield
50. The Hitman's Bodyguard
51. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
52. Sand Castle
53. CHiPs
54. Death Note
55. The Belko Experiment
56. The Great Wall
57. Fist Fight
58. Snatched
59. Wilson
60. Queen of the Desert
61. Sleepless

 

[909]

French, subtitles

Climax (2019), directed by Gaspar Noe

In things that matter only to me, I struggled with which list to place Climax on, but I decided that due to some other listings I have made it will go on this year's. In the end I don't think that really matters. What does is what I think of Gaspar Noe. I've heard a lot of things, but in truth this is the first film of his that I've watched. I've also seen comments saying that this was his most accessible film, and I have seen some descriptions of his others. Enter the Void sounds like the only other one that I'd like, but what I thought about Climax was that I was waiting for something to be like this. When I went to see it today, someone inexplicably got a seat right next to mine, which led me to go sit in the back of the theater. This was a wise decision. I should also say that when I left my house, I wasn't sure that I actually wanted to go see this. I was having second thoughts, but I should point out that I thought the subject matter would be worse than it actually is. It's like when I went to see Suspiria. Being uncomfortable is the point, but I would daresay that Climax is more enjoyable, and to me is also the better film. Talk about things I did not expect to say. Part of this is because Climax is an hour shorter, but the other part is because all of the events are distilled to a more personal level. We also get to know the characters just a little bit more, and as a result this is absolutely insane.

Climax starts with a woman bloody and crawling through the snow in Paris, circa 1996. Our view is from overhead, one of many interesting perspectives we'll have over the course of these events. After Noe rolls the end credits, Climax then shows a series of audition tapes, with strange books and VHS tapes alongside of the television. Some that stuck in my mind were Harakiri, Salo, Suspiria, and a book about homosexuals. Do not look this stuff up for your own benefit. Anyway, these audition tapes are far more important than I'd realized, as they give insights to the mindset of the case. This is a film with a lot of characters, you need to pay attention to them, and some of them are beyond description. As the film goes, you just know who they are. After the audition tapes, the dancers have gathered in an abandoned school and have an incredible 12 minute long take, five of which is an insane dance. Apparently this took 16 takes and only two of them were usable. After this scene, it's time for an after-party, with copious amounts of sangria supplied by them by the troupe's master, Emmanuelle (Claude Gajan Maull). The lead choreographer is Selva (Sofia Boutella), and after this, we are introduced to the rest of the group we've seen in the tapes.

Everyone from the tapes has now been there for a little while, and they gossip like crazy about one another. There are also several personal issues with the group. Selva's current hookup David (Romain Guillermic) has apparently been sleeping with just about everyone, there are problems between Taylor (Taylor Kastle) and his sister Gazelle (Giselle Palmer) because she's interested in guys who aren't her brother (wtf), and that's not even scratching the surface of this situation. However, I just can't get into everything. So many of these people have slept with each other, many of them are bi or gay, and over the course of these events, we find that a lot of them just have really sick thoughts. Noe puts together about twenty minutes of conversations that enlighten the viewer on this point, but one thing's clear, their mindset is wacked before the catalyst for the events that follow. The catalyst itself, is that someone has spiked the sangria with LSD. You don't find out who did it until the end of the film, but things spiral so far out of control once the drugs start to kick in. Of course, people are going to be blamed for spiking the LSD, but more than that, everyone has their personal issues and everyone wants to fuck each other as it is. This, obviously, is not good. Did I tell you that Emmanuelle's son is there and that he drank some of the sangria too? Did I mention that he's like 7 or 8 years old?

I didn't want to go through the entire cast because there's a lot going on here, and you either want to watch this or you don't. It's the kind of movie you'll really like, or you're really hate it. There's no room for anything else. Even though I thought the film was very good and borderline great, there were some things I didn't like. The long-take scene closing out the film is genuinely fucking amazing, 42 minutes without cuts, but I hated the way the camera turned upside down for the last ten minutes of it. I found that aspect to be a little nauseating. What I did like was that the film was super intense and was committed to keeping the viewer on their toes, and I also liked the way the events were set up from one to the next. Nothing was really missing from this as far as my tastes go, there are only things that either go too far or creative decisions that bother me, like the upside down camera. The mayhem and conflict of these scenes, I just don't know how to describe it. Eventually everyone stops focusing on who spiked the drink and anarchy sets in, and the long take passes off from one character to the next while other people scream in the background, sometimes because they've nearly burned themselves to death, or done other things.

Again, I don't know what to say about something like this because this film is so self-indulgent, Noe is clearly full of himself. There's a sequence of credits before the mayhem where his name is plastered all over the screen over and over again, so you know, that is what it is. I did more research and found that the actors besides Boutella had no prior experience, but I thought all of them had great performances. Boutella is on screen the most and is given the more emotional parts of the plot, she carries them very well. Overall, I just can't believe what I watched. I was entranced by the great selection of dance music, the dance scenes were all incredible, and so were the long takes. Climax is so fucking weird. The manner of this film is so disorienting, and the placement of the audition tapes is something I found to be another negative. It's not like anyone could have realized what was to come from those scenes, but this also could simply be a lesson that I need to pay more attention. It's still a very jarring way to be introduced to other characters, but that's one of the only negatives I have for this. It's a very strong film, very enthralling. Someone might think it's trash, and while I disagree, I can't completely dispute it. The subject matter here is inherently divisive.

8/10

2019 Films Ranked

Spoiler

1. Arctic
2. Climax
3. High Flying Bird
4. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
5. Captain Marvel
6. Paddleton
7. Cold Pursuit
8. Happy Death Day 2U
9. Greta
10. Triple Frontier
11. Fighting with My Family
12. Velvet Buzzsaw
13. Alita: Battle Angel
14. The Kid
15. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
16. The Upside
17. Captive State
18. Escape Room
19. What Men Want
20. Miss Bala
21. Glass
22. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
23. The Prodigy
24. Polar
25. Serenity

 

[909]

Patriots Day (2016), directed by Peter Berg

For once it appears I have a lot of things I was thinking about prior to starting this review. First is that I can't believe how many movies Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg have done together. It is very ridiculous and the movies are progressively getting worse as shown by Mile 22. Another thing coming to mind was that I apparently lied about being done with 2016 for a while. I really thought I was, but I forgot I had this listed. Then, there's the more obvious thing, that making a film about the Boston Bombing less than four years after the bombing itself, that's really strange. I should also point out that filming started not even three whole years after the bombing, and production started not even two whole years after the bombing, which I think is insanity. Yes, a film like this does feel like exploitation, particularly when everyone is so aware of the events surrounding it. Deepwater Horizon was another film produced after a disaster, but in that case the film is a message against corporate greed. In the case of Patriots Day, the film is very much about what the terrorists actually did, but there's major appreciation towards first responders so that people understand how much of a toll it takes. There are also scenes related to those who survived and lost their limbs, and the struggles they endured.

I'm going to toss my usual format because I need to talk about the idea of exploitation. Hotel Mumbai is coming out very soon, I'm going to review that too, but I'm left to wonder if that film also falls in the same category. More to the point, how much it does because they all do? The Mumbai attacks took place over ten years ago now, but living in the West, I don't remember a lot of the details of the attack itself. I think that's the case for a lot of people and that the attack as a whole was much less publicized in the United States. What I'm wondering is whether or not it's okay for me to have more interest in seeing Hotel Mumbai because I don't know the details? That's something I don't know how to answer so I'm sure a lot of people also don't. The fact is that there is a market for these films, but more to the point, a lot of the people who had these things happen to them also want to have their stories told. Some don't, obviously. Should the victims be deprived of telling their story because it doesn't feel good to see? The marketplace ultimately decides that. Also coming to mind is the way that people were just slaughtered in a terrorist attack in Christchurch. I don't think there's any story to be told there at all, that may not stop someone from trying. That's where exploitation kicks in. In this case, I'm sure some people wanted to know how Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was caught, and I guess that's a fair justification for making the film. I do think that ultimately these kinds of films do not serve to unite the community and the reaction shows that, so you can take it for what it's worth. I would suggest that we need more time than four years to realize whether or not there's any moral lesson or perspective to be garnered from these kinds of terrorist attacks.

With all that in mind, I suppose I have to set this up and explain who plays these parts. Tommy Saunders (Mark Wahlberg) is a composite character who serves as a sergeant in the Boston Police Department. I am very surprised that Peter Berg had the caution to ensure that this character was not someone who solved anything, but was rather there for the events to witness them from on the ground. More directors should take note of that. Tommy has a really bad knee and he's also been suspended, and in an awkward scene to kick things off, he is ordered by the Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis (John Goodman) to patrol the line at the Boston Marathon in order to kick his suspension. The subject of the suspension never comes up again, which is also good. In the following scenes, we are introduced to a few people who play a part in the events to come. Jeffrey Pugilese (J.K. Simmons) is a sergeant with the Watertown Police Department, Sean Collier (Jake Picking) is an officer at MIT, Jessica (Rachel Brosnahan) and Patrick (Christopher O'Shea) are a married couple going to the marathon, and Dun Meng (Jimmy O. Yang) is a Chinese student with a nice car. The Tsarnaev brothers, nefarious as they are, have also made plans. Tamerlan (Themo Melikidze) is obviously the leader of the two, and Dzhkohar (Alex Wolff) is the follower, both of them were fucking idiots. They lived with Tamerlan's wife Katherine (Melissa Benoist) and their daughter, doing all of this shit in the living room. Somehow, as you may know, Katherine has entirely evaded punishment on all of this shit. It doesn't make any sense.

Composite characters like Tommy being what they are, they are also given wives, and in this case he is given a nurse named Carol (Michelle Monaghan). Before the bombing, he is having some knee problems and Carol brings down a knee brace, but she escapes unscathed from the pressure cookers that the Tsarnaev brothers detonated. Everything else plays out about exactly how you'd expect. In comes Deval Patrick (Michael Beach), and along with him is Richard DesLauriers (Kevin Bacon), a Special Agent in charge of the Boston field office. As I have already alluded to, while Tommy is the film's lead character, there is a great focus on what the Tsarnaev's were doing, and Tommy is merely there to see what happens rather than being a fictional participant in the events. I think the only real contributions he makes are to respond to the 9-1-1 call for the carjacking that happened to Dun Meng, and to point out the order of some buildings on the street so that the agents could follow a trail of surveillance cameras. Again, I am surprised by this, but that was hardly a big deal. I think everyone knows how this went down, but at the end of the film, there are some comments from survivors of the bombing, as well as officials who played a part in the manhunt for both brothers.

I have some critiques because obviously I do, but the one sticking with me to a point where I need to immediately mention it is that there is a paucity of material related to how the Tsarnaev's became radicalized. We are given one sentence from Katherine, but that's it, and that's just a really thin way of looking at things. On the other hand, that's not the worst thing either. The less time given to a bad ideology, the better. Patriots Day is intensely focused on the Tsarnaev's actions, the first responders, and the regularity of the lives of some of the people who were harmed by the Tsarnaev's. I think to that point, this film is just about as good as Deepwater Horizon, which I think I gave a 7. The message of corporate greed does land hard with me, but ultimately I'm left with thoughts about the depiction of what the Tsarnaev's did. Some of that stuff is a little vague now that I don't remember every little detail, but I remembered a whole lot of it before I turned this on. I thought this was an effective presentation of the events, and I do think this film has some merit. I think there's also disturbing lessons to be learned from what can happen when two idiots get a lot of weapons, but this is something I think we already know.

Perhaps the best way to judge these kinds of films is on a case by case basis. Who would've thought? The performances of the brothers, I hate to say, were quite good and extremely effective. The entitlement of Dzohkhar really made things even more difficult to understand, the attacks themselves seemed to reside in a strange place in his mind. But, one must keep in mind that the film eschew any thoughts of exploring their jihadist ideology, so one shouldn't take that aspect too seriously. The movie is very focused on the effects on the communities in Boston, and how they pulled together, all that Boston Strong kind of stuff. So, with that in mind, and because I thought the end of the film addressed matters very nicely, I think this film was exactly as good as Deepwater Horizon was. Judging on a case by case basis, Patriots Day was worth the time it took to make it. The performance by Jimmy O. Yang also really stands out when you consider his role in the events was the most heroic civilian role of them all, that he ran away from a gas station to call the police when those dopes had him kidnapped. Those scenes were extremely effective.

7/10