Alex Proyas has always been spectacular at building worlds of science fiction and fantasy that are excellent to build stories in. His work on Dark City, The Crow, and I Robot is self evident.. Consistently his stories have been engaging as well with Dark City, and The Crow creating beautiful noirs. Gods of Egypt is a horrid piece of drivel. The trailers looked bad, but not this bad.
All of that is what can truly sum up this piece of work. It’s horrid, but it’s done by a director that really needs to work on better projects. This is the type of movie that’s so broken and scary on its own that an attempt to analyze it doesn’t make for anything interesting, but nitpicks. That’s not what I do, but now I must resort to it.
I give Gods of Egypt a 1 out of 10.
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The Witch proves that the complexity of a film’s direction can make it great, but only for those willing to look for it. Writer/director Robert Eggers has achieved an astounding piece of work, taking an almost bafflingly simple premise and laying complexities all over it, creating a film that only gets better the more you’re left to think about it. That’s a nice surprise, especially since most horror films are very much in the moment. So many of them use the same cheap tactics to get at you, but The Witch seems more concerned with slowly seeping into the viewer's brain as it shows you the tension that can be taken from what happens when sexual awakening in the children of isolated Puritan Christians starts to cause problems in a family. I bring up that specific element of the film because I REALLY want people to like this and understand it. However, that requires a lot more reflection than most people are probably going to give this film. If you don’t, the film is a fine horror drama, just as affecting as any well rated horror film through crazy imagery (think The Babadook, pretty overrated but still intense). It’s not particularly scary and may be a little silly if looked at in this context, especially since the film is overacted intentionally to benefit the effect. You should not do that though. Instead you should look at everything going into the film and think about the choices that are made making in building the story: the way that two twins act, and how that might come back to get them; the initial way that that sexual perversion leads to the young boy of the family's perception of the witch. Both of the things that were just described are deeply disturbing in their own ways, but they become even more intense under the Puritan context that the film is under. These complexities do cause the film to seem a little overstuffed and might have a few too many moving pieces but the stark production design and screenplay keeps the film on an understandable level. The actors also keep the entire production streamlined too. Anya Taylor-Joy makes for a strong lead. She’s not the usual push over of a horror lead, and she has an inner darkness that manifests in interesting ways. We don’t often see horror movie characters that are skewed toward the bad side yet seem so innocent and Taylor-Joy is absolutely illuminating. Less so, but still taking the movie and running with it is Ralph Ineson who plays the father of the family. He’s a domineering actor due to his stature and deep voice, but he’s kinder than his appearance implies. This makes his venire very noble when everything goes wrong, but also makes it punishingly sad. The Witch is film that continues to rise in my standard because of the continuous little things I find that bolster it: the importance of character movement; the way the film uses religion as a creepy thing in the first place to build its horrors off of. There is no better horror film of the past two years then this. Go see it, but don’t just let it comb over you shallowly. Get into it, and enjoy one of the best experiences of the year. The Witch get's a 9.5 out of 10. REVIEW BY STEPHEN TRONICEK This is going to seem really lazy, but I can't really comprehend this... An utter contrast of two great things can make a blissful movie. That’s what the two parts in play of Tim Miller’s Deadpool do. Create a blissful, and blissfully sexy, funny and violent movie. I’d like to leave it there too. Deadpool is so deceptively un-cynical about its proceedings that nothing prevents it from blowing through them. It sets a simple goal: GET DEADPOOL TO WORK IN A MOVIE, and then prompts to do it with so much ease that there’s almost nothing to be said for its success. There’s just good people doing great jobs, and pulling off work so clever, and funny that it just catches you off guard and takes you for a wild ride. If there’s one thing that could be a thematic reason for the film working it’s the contrasting sides of the fun romance of the film’s incredible love story, and the violent slapstick that so informs the title character. All of this just shouldn’t work, but it does. Ryan Reynolds is spectacular, the direction is wonderfully dynamic, the X-Men and the jokes built around them –especially Colossus (Stefan Kapicic)– are quite realistic and well intentioned. For all the dirty jokes that permeate Deadpool the happy charm that is brought by these characters really helps. Deadpool will ultimately go down as a surprise film. This is not a film that should be this good, but it is. There’s not way around it. It just is. Deadpool gets a 10 out of 10. Hail Caesar falls into the same problem that most Coen Brothers comedies do. It’s silly, a little scattershot, and it seems like the Coen Brothers might be the only ones in on the joke. Not that this is a bad movie. Hail Caesar is at first glance still a funny, B- effort from the Brothers, but that’s not all there is to the film. There was a mention of the Coen’s maybe being the only ones in on the joke, and I mean that very much. The Brothers have always made comedies that made you have to think, but not in the conventional way. They want you to think about that characters, and the way that the actors play them. That’s all in good in their dramas (True Grit, and Inside Llewyn Davis seem to be film’s specifically about doing that) because the point of a drama is to use dramatic irony and action to reveal ever more and more about the characters until they finally learn something or change. The comedies however need room for the...comedy. That leaves a lot of the slack to be picked up by the audience as to what the characters are, and to what the Coen’s find them to be. They themselves have probably spent months with these characters shaping them, but we haven’t. They seem to know them, but sometimes we don’t. That’s why only they are in on some the jokes. They want you to be too, and you have to think to truly get what the characters are thinking. That’s actually all well and good to me, but it just makes it so hard to determine whether or not I’ve seen a work of genius or only a pretty good work. For example, and spoilers ( even though all clips and trailers have given this away) Scarlett Johansson plays a woman who is in mermaid movies, and is looked at as America’s innocent sweetheart. She’s an entertaining character on the surface, albeit a little cliched, as the ironic twist is the fact that she’s a smoking women with a tough Brooklyn accent, who is pregnant out of wedlock, and has married (and divorced) two mobsters. Now the joke there is pretty funny irony and all, but then you consider what the Coen’s have built here. She’s a scolding parody of other innocent young women who have become so tired of being the “innocent young women” that she’s become cynical about it. That’s dark, but it’s also much funnier than the caricature that she’s at in face value. However, none of that is really explained to you. You have to look for that part of the character, and assume it. I admire the Coen’s for being so confident in the audience with their characters, but I get the feeling that they shouldn’t be. It’ll take a couple more viewing to appreciate what I saw there for each character, but I’m sure I will. That said there is a lot to appreciate here. The story is light, and fuzzy and works in a lot of ways. It doesn’t amount to anything without the digging that I mentioned earlier, but it’s still a fun time. It simply focuses on Josh Brolin as a Hollywood manager trying to keep everything together after the studio’s main star, Baird Whitlock, disappears. The reason why he’s disappeared does turn out to be a clever and unexpectedly realistic one, and the jabs on the pretentious glorification of “forward thinking” (I’ll say that much) people is hysterical. For that matter a lot of the satirical punches that the film has to offer are pretty funny too, especially one of the biggest middle fingers I have ever seen going straight to Ben Hur. There’s still a thin sloppiness to all of it, but the actors help pick up some of the slack, especially since they all embody the aforementioned character comedy above. Josh Brolin runs the film and his performance makes for a good center to the entire production. Newcomer Alden Ehrenreich makes for one of the most smile inducing and innocent presences on screen. George Clooney is very much the same. Hail Caesar is a film I’ll fondly think of as the film that reveals what truly makes the Coen’s funny, but I’m still a little muddled on it. I just can’t figure out whether or not it’s great. I give Hail Caesar an 8 out of 10. HONORABLE MENTIONS: Bone Tomahawk, The Danish Girl, True Story, Love and Mercy, Cinderella, Kingsman The Secret Service, Mustang, The Hateful Eight, The Big Short, Legend,
Inside Out, Carol, Bridge of Spies, Sicario, The Martian, The Walk, Everest, Black Mass, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, The End of the Tour,Trainwreck, The Gift, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,Far From the Madding Crowd, Mad Max: Fury Road, What We Do in the Shadows, Maps to the Stars, Cartel Land, Spy, Maggie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Slow West, Mistress America, Straight Outta Compton, Tangerine, Phoenix, Room. Tough year to narrow down the list in but eventually it has to run. All the honorable mentions were masterpieces on their own, but only these 10 could make it: 10. CREED-Creed is a film that moment to moment is amazing, and it holds it's own against any boxing movie that has ever released. It's not as good as Rocky but it's close. 9. ANOMALISA- Inside Out or Anomalisa? That was a tough question for all critics this year. I personally liked this one little bit more because of the themes, but both are great. 8. MACBETH-What can I say? Violent, engrossing, and cathartically compelling Shakespeare. What better can you get? Michael Fassbender, and Marion Cotillard are excellent. 7. BROOKLYN-Was there a nicer movie this year? Brooklyn is a love story for the ages, and the performances are lush and beautiful. 6. SPOTLIGHT- This is a perfect piece of work. It's the only film this year that was. There's a difference between "perfect" and "favorite" though. That said this movie was perfection in it's performances, direction, and screenwriting. 5. CRIMSON PEAK- Guillermo Del Toro's Crimson Peak is the most beautiful film of the year, and the most deliciously thrilling. The gore, sex, and costumes create a frenzy of energy and color. 4. EX MACHINA- This was my favorite movie of the year up until October, and it probably could be the best; Alex Garland's film is one of big ideas and expert actors. 3. THE REVENANT- What a brutal show of acting, and directing force. I've seen The Revenant twice, and I'm still trying to decide whether or not to watch this movie for the brutal money shots or surprising depth. 2. STEVE JOBS- The best screenplay of the year makes for an intense ride of a three act play on film. Aaron Sorkin's screenplay really sells this incredible, and inspiring piece of work. 1. SON OF SAUL- Last year I knew for sure my #1 was Boyhood. This year I thought it would be Steve Jobs, but at the last minute Son of Saul, the most gut punching film of 2015, took that top spot. It's a hard watch, but the film sport some of the best moments ever put to film. I can't think of a better film this year. It’s a good thing that the film Son of Saul is squarely focussed on it’s protagonist because if it let us see everything around him the film would become almost unwatchable. Right now it’s just horrific. But that’s in subject matter. Most films about the consistent grinding life of a prisoner helping keep the furnaces of Auschwitz running would be scary as hell (and it is), but the filmmaking craft here turns the film into a suspense juggernaut that’s one of the best films of all time. It keeps the drama personal and close up quite literally, the camera rarely leaves actor Géza Röhrig’s face, and the horrors around him are kept metaphorically fuzzy (in that the close up allows the the insanity of the situation to be visually displayed by a more blurred background). Röhrig and his director László Nemes are mainly in charge of making the film cogent enough to be a great movie even if it’s made up of people being shot into pits, and burned in furnaces. That’s hard to pull off. Yes, the “Holocaust drama” has always been powerful, but to ultimately put the audience in a POV for a man made to gas and kill his people. That’s a whole different beast. Still, they make it work as a film because Saul’s simple arch fits in with the simple story, and ideas behind it. The horrifying reality happens around Saul and the film keeps the audience just enough detached from it...at first. Saul near the beginning seems almost resilient to the whole situation doing his job, and planning something with his friends. His arch comes from that whole facade being ripped to the ground. The moment when it does is one of greatest silent scenes ever put to film. That does sound heavy and with all the violent Holocaust stuff IT IS, but as a piece of art going through the emotion of watching Saul break is resoundingly upsetting but cathartic. On top of that the film manages to feel like a life or death thriller consistently because of the camerawork… and the fact that THIS IS ACTUALLY TAKING PLACE IN A REAL LIFE OR DEATH SITUATION. The looming threat of death by “I pissed off the wrong guard” plus the letterbox 40mm look of Son of Saul allows the film to make an intense scene out of every scene. Spoilers but small ones. An example of this is a scene in which Saul and his friend stand in a line, and have to yell out “Here” after their number is called. The scene is shot extremely close of Saul’s face just like the rest of the film, and his facial intensity creates suspense out of this whole scene. Then before allowing that to pay off the scene cuts, and does the same suspense teasing again. Son of Saul is already a movie that messes with you, but then you realize that the scenes are in fact structured to create this intensity. Son of Saul is not a movie that everyone should see. It’s punishingly realistic in its subject matter, but as a piece of art, it’s absolutely excellent. I give Son of Saul a 10 out of 10. NOTE: I paused before I called the movie good when I exited the theatre. I was scared by it, and so saddened but struck by it’s power that I cried… twice. The movie will kick the shit out of you so all you squeamish people don’t see this movie. REVIEW BY STEPHEN TRONICEK. |
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December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |