The original Trainspotting was an intoxicating blend of Scottish culture, frenetic pacing and a morbid sense of humor that could not be ignored. It was about people who weren’t good to anyone else but themselves because the artificiality of their world wouldn’t let them feel good about life even if they tried. T2: Trainspotting is the same characters acting their charming asshole ways through what happens whenever an important element is added to the mixture of the movie: time. It’s been 20 years and now Renton (Ewan MCgregor) has returned to Edinburgh to seek forgiveness from his friends (i.e. all of your favorites from the original) whom he stole £16,000 from them years earlier. Time as a storytelling device is very interesting. It allows us to better know our characters as they progress and becomes something else. Time changes people. This is a vital part of why it can affect us as audience members so deeply. It allows for drama in contrast and that’s where T2 might actually misstep, creating a film that’s fun like the first one, but hardly has transcendent as it really should be. The problem comes in that there doesn’t seem to be much of a change to all of the characters, not that this is as They just seem like less energetic and more mature versions of their original selves, which on one hand makes them more realistic as 40 and almost 50 year olds, but also seem to rob them of the sharp personality of the first one. It does often seem like this is all intentional, as all of these half joking satirists of the fakeness of their existence slowly start to realize, to their great disappointment, that they might just be right, but it also comes off a little flat. The fact that not all of the main protagonists don’t relate to the main storyline gives it less weight than it already has, which is to say it doesn’t have much, and this takes a chunk out of an otherwise fine film. For the record, T2: Trainspotting is certainly not a bad movie. It’s fast and funny (though less so than the first one), and when it actually does consider it’s group of misfits place in the world, it gets really emotional, with director Danny Boyle and his screenwriter John Hodge employing the use of children to represent the characters at their most vulnerable. There’s an almost desperate consideration of the role of a man who can only live in violence, that turns out to be the movie’s highlight scene, with Begbie (Robert Carlyle), of all of them, truly attempting to find a meaning to his existence. Scenes like this one, the tear-inducing return of “Choose Life,” and a quick detour into another corner of people abandoned by a society that didn’t end up the way they wish all juice up this otherwise somewhat light sequel. Time should do more to this movie than it actually does. After 20 years, all of these assholes are the same assholes that they were before with maybe a little bit of the wind taken from their sails, leaving the film chiefly stranded in the realm of only good rather than the originals perfect. As a film, it’s fun enough to be good but as a sequel to such a classic it disappoints. T2: Trainspotting gets a 7 out of 10. Review by Stephen Tronicek
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Life: Directed by Daniel Espinosa, Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds, and Rebecca Ferguson3/27/2017 Putting extended thought into the film Life (besides being somewhat perfunctory) presents a type of repetition in thought. The words that keep coming up are, “This wouldn’t have worked if ______.” This can almost be applied to the whole movie. The reading of “Goodnight Moon” wouldn’t have worked if it wasn’t Jake Gyllenhaal, the film wouldn’t strike so true if the cast wasn’t so chock full of popular actors, that monster wouldn’t have worked if it wasn't alien enough to be feared but familiar enough to be feared even more. The best thing of all is that it entails that Life as a $58 million B-movie actually works for most of its running time. Life is about a group of astronauts (played by an abnormally great cast of Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds, Hiroyuki Sanada, Olga Dihovichnaya, and Ariyon Bakare) up on the International Space Station who at the start of the film catch a satellite, that is traveling back to Earth, that holds the first evidence of sentient life outside of our planet. The creature, starting off as a single cell and then turning into something else (that’s all I’m going to say about that) soon becomes hostile and starts to attack the astronauts, each of them dying in more brutal and creative ways. This is a familiar setup but divorced from the unoriginality of the premise that it has, Life has a lot to offer. The cast is nuanced and diverse, the screenplay is fine if a bit quippy (we are dealing with the Deadpool scribes here) and director Daniel Espinosa and acclaimed cinematographer Seamus McGarvey seem to be snug and comfortable in their roles of playing gorehounds for a day as they throw these astronauts into just about as much trouble as they possibly can be in. The one thing that actually has any chance of being original, the kills are all handled creatively with all of them presenting something that feels either new in design or execution. Take these four words for example: DROWNING IN OPEN SPACE. Can’t say anything else, but if that intrigues you, then this movie is probably right up your alley. For all the artsy and wonderful films out there to see, sometimes just a simple premise pulled off well can be enough. Life is that type of movie. If you think you can sit back and watch a well-orchestrated horror space movie, then see this. If you need a bit more, I recommend you give this a shot. There’s so much stuff in theaters that is devoid of real creativity. Life has so life in it. Life gets an 8 out of 10. Written by Stephen Tronicek A good way to describe Beauty and the Beast is that it has a pitch perfect cast, it is based off of beloved material...and then somebody hired Bill Condon to direct it. Now, for a moment, I have a great amount of respect for Bill Condon: he’s a fine director , he’s made at least one GREAT movie (I haven’t seen Gods and Monsters), and he should absolutely make those movies. Beauty and the Beast, however, is defined by the fact it can never come alive like any of the other versions, including last year’s weirdly detached French version. Much of the problem comes down to simple direction, though I’m sure the poorly paced screenplay adding some useless padding didn’t help. This is a limply created movie, with almost no gravitas at all, trying to ape the aesthetic of the 1991 version of this same movie and the most recent Cinderella movie. It can’t though and much of it comes down to composition and framing. All the other versions of Beauty and the Beast built the odd romantic relationship out of the mysterious or wondrous camerawork that Jean Cocteau or the many talented animators that worked to craft the animated one were always the best at employing. This version just settles for cutting that is almost lifeless, despite the fact that the cast and material still hold up remarkably well. The best moments of the film come from the cast throwing all the energy they have up on screen: Emma Watson as Belle, the best choice of the movie. Dan Stevens, yeah, nobody could act through all that CGI beast (seriously, the 40s version of this movie has a better looking and more charismatic Beast), but damn it if Stevens doesn’t go all in on the whole thing. Same thing goes for the CGI characters, which do actually look REALLY expressive in motion but overall just uninteresting, with the only two becoming something of a presence being Ewan McGregor as Lumiere and Ian McKellen as Cogsworth. Luke Evans as Gaston does some great work, for the first hour, but then the character is fumbled. Josh Gad as Lefou...you know what maybe that was the best choice of the movie. This is a cast for the ages, with everyone acting and singing and dancing their butts off, but just like Les Miserables, where everyone was doing the same (including Russell Crowe, go away detractors), the overall direction has muted the entire thing. The first minutes aren’t so bad, but things start to become dreadfully depressing when “Be Our Guest” slowly gets worse as it goes along, trying to be something large and wonderful, but just feeling...well for lack of professionalism, “blah.” A lot of the big moments feel like that. The wolves chasing Belle in the woods, the opening number, the death of Gaston, and the headlining dance to the entire thing (sorry Emma Thompson that you had to follow up Angela Lansbury, nobody was ever going to top her) all feel cold and empty, rather than warm and epic. Even the one song that the movie comes alive during, “Gaston” is fumbled by cutting that never seems to be with the beat of the music and never lets us see all the choreography. That’s not nitpicking, that’s just calling attention to a systemic problem for the film in that all of the fun song and dance stuff here is marred by editing that doesn’t let it be fun. Beauty and the Beast is not an exciting movie. It’s a poorly paced, well designed, well acted but empty version of an exciting movie. If you absolutely have to see it, enjoy the cast, enjoy some of the visuals, and enjoy what you can while trying to think of the 1991 version. It’s not an all around horrible piece of work, but it sure is a step down for Disney’s live action projects. I give Beauty and the Beast a 5.5 out of 10. Now that’s a blockbuster! Hollywood these days doesn’t make enough good movies about hot women and giant monsters. Oh sure, they make them. The Transformers films are all parts of this but whereas they created dumb, loud, insufferable giant monsters, and even dumber hot women, Kong opts to just make all the right decisions. A mere perusal of the first sentences in many reviews for this film offer the word “dumb” up as the best descriptor, but it’s selling the movie short. The direction and acting here are far from dumb. In fact, both are smartly executed. This isn’t an ironically good movie, just a good one and after last March gave us Batman v Superman it’s a blast to get something as filmically proficient as Kong: Skull Island. On the legs of its director and actors, Kong is able to run oh so far. The plot is almost nonexistent but the actors are so great that the flimsy structure of the film almost makes the entire thing feel spontaneous. Everything exists to create a groovy, 70’s infused (and therefore actually quite sexy), action movie that just happens to have a bunch of monsters, and Tom Hiddleston swinging around a freaking samurai sword. This leaves the director and the actors to make the best movie with a bunch of monsters and Tom Hiddleston swinging around a freaking samurai sword that they could have and they didn’t waste the opportunity. This is rip-roaring, scary, and thoughtfully crafted action movie, that’s in the spirit of the mind-blowing third act of 10 Cloverfield Lane. Especially, that badass helicopter smash that happens near the beginning of the film. If I’m not writing in a professional way here it’s simply because I can’t believe how thrilling so much of this damn movie is. That is kind of the bottom line too. Kong transcends as a visual experience with perfectly placed archetypical characters, that has some of the best giant monster fights that we’ll ever see up on screen. The archetypes have life too. Brie Larson as a photographer creates so many moments of levity. Her quiet moments with the natives of the island make for a delightful confection in the middle of this blast of a movie. Everything down to the pitch perfect color grading seems to be at beautiful service to the spectacle and that spectacle is well directed so therefore this is a great movie. Besides the common fact that the second act of these types of movies tend to extend to the point that they just become the third act, what has been built here is airtight or at least so unbelievably badass that it almost doesn’t matter. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts is such a master over the whole 70’s era look and the action that comes with the monsters that...well, it’s almost exasperating. Kong: Skull Island is that rare beast (no pun intended) that is just so ungodly fun that I’m left dumbfounded and almost unable to explain the reason it is. The script is thin, but you never feel it because the world feels so real. It’s a film experience. An action movie experience. It’s not perfect, but it’s just intoxicating. Kong: Skull Island gets an 8 out of 10. This is a short film that me and my brother made and we will keep making them. Please subscribe! Kong Review Soon! James Mangold has the odd capacity to take films that are based in generic and comfortable genres and lifting them to a level where they almost mystically feel new. Walk the Line isn’t the most original, but Mangold and his actors squeezed an inspired and wonderfully romantic movie out of the skeleton of a typical script. The same thing is found in 3:10 to Yuma, a literal remake that felt like a shot in the arm for the Western genre and contains the second best performances of this century for both Christian Bale (his crowning American Psycho being the first) and Russell Crowe (The Nice Guys #1). Mangold even made something out of The Wolverine, which script wise is bad, but direction wise feels solid enough to hold together it’s rampant tonal shifts. Logan, Mangold’s second foray into the Wolverine character is the best movie out of all of those, a violent, exploitative adventure into the dark-side of the mutants, all spiced up with Mangold’s trademark style. The comparisons to The Last of Us and other Westerns in the the discussion of the film are sound, but as usual Mangold sure doesn’t let it get predictable or anything in between. Logan is a full blooded world of a movie. “Full blooded world” isn’t something that you typically hear to describe a film but it is the perfect description to use here. The one thing that has been missing from years of entertaining but not euphoric X-Men movies is a sense of reality other than the comic like one of the comics and, while that works well with adaptation, there wasn’t much moving the characters into something that resembled a world that we as an audience could believe. The same is with the Marvel movies. As spectacular as all these get, there’s a lack of unabashed reality. Those films are amazing fantasies. The DCEU are horrible fantasies. Logan is a fantastic reality. The obvious difference between Logan and it’s contemporaries would be the fact that comes brandishing an “R” rating, which actually makes a huge difference. Explicit content in a film, when used correctly can make the world of that film ever more tangible. The cutting of Wolverine’s action in the previous X-Men films made for a disconnect with the audience as we watched each director who took charge try and make the bloodless claws work. They did, for the most part due to creativity, but there was always a lacking sense to the character because he never truly was going to be fully realized, despite Jackman being always damn amazing as the titular character (he’s the best he ever was in Logan). In Logan, that is not the case. From minute one the atmosphere of the mutantless society that Logan, Professor X, Caliban, and a mysterious girl named Laura end up in is solidified in a blaze of bloody glory and as when the claws come out, so do the guts. Worldbuilding violence aside, this is a movie about Wolverine running with the Professor and Laura from some very powerful members of Logan’s past, and if you know what’s coming, the violence and action on the way shouldn’t surprise you. Logan has the best action of any recent superhero film. It makes easy work out of the action letting everything linger long enough to register as brutal and brazen but being fast enough to let you feel it. This is controlled chaos ever so ready to explode, and when it does (which is thankfully multiple times) Mangold seems to let everything let loose. There’s a second act battle with a particularly familiar and powerful figure that just kills it in the action department and then goes ahead and kills it (no pun intended) in the gore department too. Jackman, is always effortlessly this character, but here him having played it for 17 years does a lot for the character up on screen. Jackman is Logan, and it’s hard to believe anyone will find themselves topping his firm grasp of character. Patrick Stewart is put in much the same position. Stewart, a great stage actor, has for years brought his bravado to Charles Xavier, and Logan stretches him more than the other films ever did. It’s a difficult new performance but Stewart almost seems to strut in and show everyone how it’s done. The kindness of his character has persisted on for a long time and is present in Logan. Laura, played by Dafne Keen doesn’t speak for most of the movie and still creates a dynamic with the two older mutants. When she is finally able to speak, her actions compared to her voice and stature become an instantly funny, surprisingly fulfilling reveal. There’s more to Laura than meets the eye and she’s probably the most badass little kid put to screen. Yet, in all this effort seems somewhat misguided. James Mangold has taken a genre that we love (Fury Road and The Last of Us being evidence) and made something exceptional with it. He’s one of the greatest living action directors we have and one the greatest dramatists and Logan is his crown jewel so far. See it before you can’t. I give Logan a 9.5 out of 10. I didn't see everything but I saw most of it.
You know, the thing that pisses me off about Gore Verbinski is that he’s one of our best directors, but has recently been only servicing stuff that kind of sucks. His last good movie might have been Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (because yes it is that good, and Rango has some serious structural problems). And that line about “best directors” isn’t really kidding. Watch the first two Pirates movies, The Ring, and the last 20 minutes of The Lone Ranger and this is obvious. This is a man who knows how to keep the camera rolling on the spectacle (which he does do in Cure) but can’t seem to catch a break on his scripts. This is all inevitably leading to the fact that no, A Cure For Wellness is not that great, but not because of Verbinski. The direction is as good as ever. It’s just servicing something that kind of sucks. For all the posturing as to how this movie is so weird and horrifying that you either can sit through it or run away, the real question should be how long can you put up with the movie continuously getting more and more preposterous and cryptic to the point of making any audience member get up and walk out if the direction and performance weren’t so alluring. The story of a Mr. Lockhart ( a still effective if a little empty Dane DeHaan) traveling to a wellness center in the Swiss Alps, that soon turns into a hydro-infused nightmare, is actually pretty cool, and if it didn’t complicate itself with so much unexplained motivation and convolution and just played like a straight horror story, it might have become a horror classic. Visually it does that, but narratively much like Justin Haythe’s previous script for Verbinski it gets all bogged down in doing an impression of the movie it’s trying to be and forgetting to make sense out of all of it. The first hour or so when the pieces of the mystery going on are up in the air and we’re still guessing is a suspenseful hour of film, pushed by the sumptuous production design and scenes playing out like something a young Tim Burton would present us with, and then the actual goings-on, well, go on and the movie devolves into nonsense. Honestly, a serialistic trip through the various horrors of the wellness center, like at the start, without any real explanation other than Verbinski promptly commanding his audience, “Look at all this beautiful and terrifying stuff,” would probably have left a better taste in our mouths. This film’s ending is akin to something like Crimson Peak and the whole final act of the movie plays out like Verbinski and Haythe trying to ape Tim Burton and Guillermo Del Toro and not getting either right. But all that said, yeah it is kind of hard to hate the ambition that Verbinski brings to the direction of this film as well as the fact that everything else in the movie other than the script is REALLY excellent. The effects are gloriously brutal, with Verbinski never cutting away when he gets the chance to show the audience something that they’ll never forget. Of course, this being a big studio movie, the film never gets REALLY grotesque (the high watermark of recent can be afforded to NWR’s excellent The Neon Demon), but when it gets the chance there are some pretty spine tingling moments. These moments, though, shouldn’t be the ones you appreciate. Verbinski has always had a knack for displaying beautiful canvases and here there are some breathtaking spectacle shots that seem to excite the movie more than when some brutal touch is burning its way into your brain. There are some especially eye-popping stylistic flourishes that do feel a bit empty when seen but are still impressive. The music is also excellent, with Benjamin Wallfisch nightmare inducing score (especially the main theme) framing the events of the movie in an almost odd childish nightmare/fable type way, that does the film a lot of favors as it starts to trip over its own narrative ambition. A Cure For Wellness will probably play better to you if you care little for its plot and more for its look, and for the record, it is miles better than most other horror films that have come out in the past few months. If you have an interest, go see it, just don’t expect it to iron together in such a satisfying way. John Wick Chapter 2 is essentially the “Empire Strikes Back” of unstoppable badass movies. It’s a film that grows on the world of the first film, that over time will probably be regarded as a better overall work, but at the moment having come out in a time when the first one hit as big and worked as well as it did can’t help but feeling a little bit disappointing. It’s a great action movie, crazy from beginning to end in ways that you can’t even imagine, especially now that the ever expanding world is about to become just that, a world, but there’s a missing sense of freshness to the material. This is understandable. John Wick (three years ago apparently) hit so hard and so fast that it’d be hard to follow up that amount of propulsive action. They have, but there are still moments when the action becomes a bit much and the exposition starts to weigh on the sides of the film. John Wick Chapter 2 starts with John “making peace” with the final member of the Russian gang that he destroyed in the first movie. After this, he is confronted about a blood pact that he must uphold by Italian mob leader, Santino D'Antonio leading into another bloody, bullet-riddled ride. This time around we’ve got Rome, New York City “Most Dangerous Game,” and the making of an assassin’s mythic tragedy. All of that is well and good, in fact, most of it is great, but the extra narrative heft is a little bit sloppy, if not underutilized. The character actors here returning all slip comfortably back into the roles that put them back on people’s radars (Ian Mcshane is one heck of an actor, Laurence Fishburne contributes the best new part of John Wick’s world and Ruby Rose, well she’s just cool), but they’re serviced with more exposition heavy dialogue. This is where the movie starts to feel less effortless. If anything, the flaw of John Wick 2 is that it doesn't feel as effortless, and therefore the actual flow of the movie is unable to match the actual method and view of the character in battle. The film slows down for a long stretch where John must first refuse the blood pact and then complete it. These moments are all beautifully executed and designed and it pays off in a crazy death scene that all but gives into the fact that these movies know they’re schlock, but there’s some yearning for the pieces to fit together as well as the fight scenes do. John is a bit less capable now too, which does help equal out the way the flow of the movie is a little weaker. Effectively, Keanu (If you don’t know who I’m talking about then...why are you reading this) seems be having a lot more difficult time beating up the guys, which makes the action just as awesome, but also a bit strained. The added on weakness does make the fights more suspenseful, but it also makes them exhausting. Having seen John Wick, we’ve seen what John can do, and the added exhaustion does add to the aesthetic but is also tiresome. This does mean that three-fourths into the movie, though, one can be a bit burnt out on the action no matter the quality. All of it is pretty damn great, though, with the new elements of the world leading into a tragic and devastating ending that makes for something like a mythic storyline filled with fear, and revelation. John Wick is “The Boogeyman,” a literal myth, so the only way to dress him down and kick him out is to truly break him, and John Wick 2 feels like a dry run for just that. I won’t spoil the inner mechanics of the story, but to say the least, as the credits started to roll, there was a wave a sadness and fear running over me. If you’re a fan of the original, don’t expect John Wick Chapter 2 to feel quite as good as that one did when it first came out, but take it for what it is. A marvelously choreographed, gory action film, that deserves to be held up with Keanu Reeves best. This one, I hope will age like the aforementioned “Empire Strikes Back” where over time, it becomes the darker more complex middle sister to a trilogy of unstoppable badass movies. Here’s to John Wick Chapter 3. I give John Wick Chapter 2 an 8 out of 10. Lion is a fine example of the fact that a great true story can get you everything that you need to be nominated for Best Picture Oscar, but not necessarily to make a great movie. It’s a fine movie that pays off better than it ever deserves to, but overall it’s just another powerful film, cherry picked by the Oscars to be the "international" film. Now, I think that this film being nominated is just as important as anything else being nominated, but you could do better. Seriously, though, while we’re on the subject of the international films from around the world where the heck is The Handmaiden? That’s miles better than Lion and it got nothing! So, if you could guess from my review Lion isn’t great. Lesser so from the review, it’s actually good but heavily marred by bad direction that never lets the harrowing images at its center sink in and a second act that muddles the central character motivations and dynamics into mush that does make for a quiet, moody, feel but just isn’t interesting. The best way to address Lion is to address that each of the three acts is split up between distinct tones and feels. The first, where our main character Saroo (played as a child by a kind of empty but enthusiastic Sunny Pawar) is left at a train station and then accidentally boards a train that takes him very far from home. He eventually ends up on the streets of Calcutta. This is the first part of the movie which has an intensely emotional premise to it but is delivered to the audience in such a bland way that it’s impossible to feel the emotion of the moment. Pawar can scream and reach out of the train car that he’s been accidentally left on all that he wants, but if the compositions don’t hold up their end of the bargain, the movie lacks the bite that it should have. This doesn’t in fact, have the versatile director of Trainspotting on its side, though there are some suggested disturbing themes that come specifically from just the performance and editing that seems to spice it up a bit. Other than that though, despite the subject matter, there’s no urgency to the story when there really should be. A bigger point could be being made in the fact that people simply ignore the stranded Saroo, but it’s not enough to keep the movie rolling. Saroo, after living on the street is then adopted by an Australian couple (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham) and taken to live in Australia. 20 years later, he wants to find where he came from. The film here transitions into a muddle of weepy character drama that seems ultimately neglectful of establishing full personas. That’s not to judge the way that actions were played in real life, just to mention here that the film lacks a bit of character. Nicole Kidman is just the “strong mother,” and doesn’t really transfer into anything special until a scene that herby cements her character as “Jesus.” Dev Patel is fine as grown up Saroo, but it’s hard not to get the sense that the movie’s working too much around his plight to the point that it’s just not fun to watch. It can be appreciated that the film tries to transpose the feelings of its characters onto the audience, but it’s still disorienting and doesn’t go anywhere. Most unfortunate of all is Rooney Mara, who is standing around stranded in a part as grown up Saroo’s girlfriend, Lucy. Their relationship is the main thrust of the passage of time and to say the least it doesn’t really get there. And then there’s the ending. Lion for all its imperfections is a film that with the power of it’s true story does eventually hit peak emotionality. It’s worth it too. This is based on a true story so we all know how it’s going to end, but nonetheless the ending is worth the ever so flawed trip. As Saroo finally makes it back home, as he can finally see his family after years of being lost, the effect is so crushing with happiness, melancholy, nostalgia, and joy that only the most cynical wouldn’t be moved. But an ending can’t save a flawed movie, and that’s what Lion is. It’s not outright bad, as all the flaws still offer up a movie that is coherent and emotional, but it lacks the sheer genius devoted to the direction that the other Best Picture nominees have been afforded. Lion is one of those movies that is nominated for an Oscar just because it is. I appreciate the great true story here, just not the way it was represented on screen. Lion gets a 6 out of 10. Best Picture
“Arrival: Dennie Villeneuve's Arrival may have been one of the smartest and well told science fiction films of recent memory. It's a safe pick for Best Picture, but it's a very good movie that deserves every award it is nominated for. This is a truly human film. MY REVIEW: http://filmanalyst.weebly.com/movie-reviews/arrival-directed-by-denis-villeneuve-starring-amy-adams “Fences:" Fences didn't end up anywhere near the top of my list for the year (which is coming I swear. I need to see a couple more things) but it's still an intense work of drama. Denzel Washington's direction is special as it actually increases the emotional intensity of the play. “Hell or High Water:" Hell or High Water was a special gem this year. A great Western that currently sits at #6 on my top ten list. This is an oddly compelling, funny and brutally honest film that allows you to sink into it's world. MY REVIEW: http://filmanalyst.weebly.com/movie-reviews/hell-or-high-water-directed-by-david-mackenzie-starring-chris-pine-and-ben-foster “Hacksaw Ridge:" Hacksaw Ridge was an interesting beast or corniness and absolute gore heaven. I'm surprised such a fever dream of weird dialogue and violent as hell set pieces is nominated here, but it's certainly cool to see that it is. MY REVIEW: http://filmanalyst.weebly.com/movie-reviews/hacksaw-ridge-directed-by-mel-gibson-starring-andrew-garfield “La La Land:" La La Land is sweeping the Oscars and the awards season, and deservedly so. It's not as intoxicating as some of these other films, but it's a masterpiece of a filmmaking tightrope walk with Damien Chazelle walking. There's Hitchcock, Allen, and everything but the kitchen sink in this movie. MY REVIEW: http://filmanalyst.weebly.com/movie-reviews/la-la-land-directed-by-damien-chazelle-starring-ryan-gosling-and-emma-stone “Manchester by the Sea:” I wasn't quite as warm to this spectacular and intimate drama as many others, but that's only because most consider it the best picture of the year. Kenneth Lonergan has crafted a full-tilt, slow-burn, masterfully written work here and gets performances out of his actors that those same words could describe. MY REVIEW: http://filmanalyst.weebly.com/movie-reviews/manchester-by-the-sea-written-and-directed-by-kenneth-lonergan-starring-casey-affleck “Moonlight:" I didn't give this a full review but this is an engrossing, delirious and beautiful film about love and loss. It's three great movies for the price of one. “Hidden Figures:" I haven't seen this. I will within the next week. “Lion:” I have not seen this as well. I will within the next week. It’s a hot summer day in Austin, Texas. The students of the town are milling around and the tower at the University of Austin forebodingly stands. For the next few hours, the persistent sound of thundering gunfire pierces the sky. The result will be 16 deaths, multiple injuries and a terrifying true tale playing out in one-hundred degree heat. Tower starts quietly, much like the day. The players, each beautifully recreated by rotoscope, don’t know what to make of the moment. Some are viciously forced into it, others come at their own accordance having heard something about an air-rifle. But it was all too real. Tower works best when it is showing these quiet moments of contemplation that the characters are placed under. When things really start going the ever beautiful technology at the center adds an almost dreamlike nature to the ferocity of the story. While to some that might seem insensitive, the animation only makes it more jarring when the through harrowing grainy black and white footage of the still motionless students. The horribleness of all of it is almost too much to fathom that it almost becomes detaching, but the sudden shifts between sobering look of the animation and the reality that slams us back to earth. The events proceed as you’d expect, but with each person bringing their own meaning to it. Some only remember it as a blisteringly scary day, others remember it with an idea that the man who did these things had problems. While overall the documentary seems to play pretty conventionally, besides stylistically, the moments when it’s not just giving an eye-opening history lesson make Tower the gem it is. The scary image of the large tower stretching into the sky. The musings of an old woman simply trying to forgive, and quietness of all the sadness that a few hours on a hot day in Austin, Texas left behind. Tower is a documentary that scares in it’s ever persistent cacophony of the repeating gunshot that rings out over its score but truly lives in the soulful eyes of the people that experienced those hours. This is a small film, but it is one to see. Reviewing it, viewing it even, feels a bit unjust. These are a stressful yet calming 82 minutes, one that only those present could accurately describe. For now, Tower does a consistently fear inducing job of giving us what it must have been to witness this tragedy and what it is to hold onto it. The film ends with images of more recent school shootings, reminding us that this doesn’t only happen once. One day, a new generation of wounded souls will have to take on the burden of their own tragedy. I always spoil the twist of a new Shyamalan movie for myself before I see it. I have a certain affinity to be fascinated by twists, that could lead me to judge a movie higher than I actually might have. The Sixth Sense (not that it was ever bad) was the film that showed me this, and I won’t make the mistake again. The Visit (Shyamalan’s last effort) barring its twist was a rancid, annoying film, and I caught that. I went into Split knowing full well what would happen, ready to feel the superiority of my mastery over the games the movie was playing….and walked out joyous at the fact that even without said twist, Split is kind of fascinating, earnest and beautifully intense. The reviews of The Visit called it too early, but now M. Night Shyamalan has returned to his previous success. Welcome back. Split focusses on Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) who is kidnapped along with two other girls and is kept in captivity by Kevin (James Mcavoy). Kevin has Dissociative identity disorder, which means he has multiple personalities going on in his body, each of which can randomly take the spotlight. So what we have is a thriller where the captor can’t control whether or not he’s a nine-year-old child named Hedwig, or a pedophile named Dennis, or the twenty-three personalities that embody his body. Hands down that is a really interesting idea for a movie, good job on that Shyamalan. Ok, and now that you’ve read that I’d like to say that I’m about to spoil this movie. The reason? Split is a film that is a good movie on its own, but a great movie when you consider its implications and the genre that it actually resides in. See, Split might have been marketed as a horror movie, and it is a pretty solid thriller, but when you get down to it, but it’s actually a superhero film told from the perspective of victims who are often ignored by the stories themselves. Kevin, has in fact, supernatural powers which can manifest themselves as one of his identities. These powers allow him to climb up walls, be incredibly strong, fast and for his skin to be especially rough and unstoppable. Where does this all lead? Well, Split is a sort of sequel to M. Night Shyamalan’s best film (and a contender for one of my very favorite superhero films) Unbreakable. Split is an origin story for a villain in that universe. The film might seem overly earnest and hammly written which is a problem for Shyamalan...when he’s making movies that expressly exist in the real world. In the context of a superhero film and the accepted aesthetics, you can get away with a lot more of this stuff. Take Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 1 and 2 for instance. Those films of course, were silly, but they were allowed to be because the silliness allowed for these larger than life characters to blend ever more into the background of the modern day context that they existed in. This allowance of more silly concepts allows Shyamalan’s usually hard to take dialogue to become believable, almost as if has just been torn from the comic books that one used to read as a child. Shyamalan does the concept of the superhero connected universe one better and finally pulls off the “darkness,” that Zack Snyder and his cohorts have been trying to fake in the DC Extended Universe, and he’s making it look easy. The two villains that have populated the “Pittsburg Extended Universe” (let’s call it that) are both villains, but they aren’t maniacal psychopaths like Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman nor are they overly powerful leaders with many henchmen that simply want to destroy the world, as in every Marvel movie. Shyamalan’s villains are people full of pain and suffering, just like most of the real villains of the world. Not to empathize, just simply to dimensionalize. Of all the “Universes” I’d take Kevin (a villain named The Horde) and Mr. Glass (still a high point for Samuel L. Jackson) over the incarnations of more popular villains that are present in the alternate universes. James Mcavoy putting in way more work than he necessarily needed to into each personality as well as being just scary when The Horde finally emerges puts Split above that pack too. For as much of the dialogue is taken care of by the present genre, some of it probably wouldn’t have sold this well if it weren’t for Mcavoy putting everything he has into the performance. This was the same with Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson almost 17 years ago. The actresses on display here, Anya Taylor-Joy (so great in the best horror film of last year The Witch) and Haley Lu Richardson of The Edge of Seventeen make the best of some of their more oddly phrased lines. Taylor-Joy’s character has a flashback arch going on here that gets downright fascinating once the effect of it is truly shown, and she proves her versatility shown in The Witch was no fluke. She shines in this. Split might not come to be a favorite film of the year, but as the first great genre/superhero movie of the year, this is a show that can’t be denied that title. The writing is back to the quality it contained in Unbreakable, the direction is back to that point, and so seems Shyamalan. Here’s to Unbreakable 2? Please? I give Split a 9 out of 10. Review by Stephen Tronicek Martin Scorsese’s Silence might prompt an especially weird reaction. This is a film that while it plays isn’t resoundingly entertaining and even frustrating to the point of misfire, but when considering the true intention of the film, and what it means Silence is a film that seems to be lifted to the point of masterpiece probably only hindered by the fact that it was cut down from 195 minutes to 161 minutes. This is a flawed but effectively frustrating masterwork and if that sounds confusing than...go see the movie...I don’t know. That might have to do a little with expectation and reality. The trailers make the movie look like a ruggedly intense film about the persecution of Jesuit priests (Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, and Liam Neeson) in Japan in the 1600’s. The movie, in reality, is a slow burning, emotionally frustrating, contradictory piece of work that goes up to the edge of its convictions, but never truly embraces them. It’s a deeply odd and troubling work that when considered as what it is and who it was made by can’t help but seem more important and intelligent than it possibly is. Silence is bewildering, to say the least. There’s a sense that the movie’s attempting to mess with its audience the whole way through. Cut’s look odd, plot is repeated, the characters never really gel to be satisfying people and the message of the film looks to be contradicted by the end. Yet, when one considers the pedigree involved, you can’t let go of the sense that no matter how jarring everything is intentional. This seems a film that despite its subject matter doesn’t actually take itself too seriously. It’s a film about faith as a construct and the way that sometimes the world simply can’t accept certain faiths. It undermines itself because it is about internal struggle. In that way Silence often plays into an illusive and disorienting tone, that is not entertaining, but represents a vigorous horror in the misuse of faith. In his last movie, The Wolf of Wall Street Scorsese explored the way that our boundless consumerism affected our lives, as well as showing ourselves an exaggerated version of ourselves. Maybe in this day and age, that’s the purpose of Silence as well, mirroring our religious aspirations back at us and allowing us to stare at ourselves from the outside. This is often explored throughout the runtime of Silence, but the best moment comes in one where the ruthless governor of the land tells Father Rodriguez (Andrew Garfield as our protagonist) a fable about a man with four fighting concubines. The concubines fought and caused terror and the man got rid of them and now there was no fighting and terror. That is how Christianity is viewed by this man. Simply, a destructive force that needs to be smitten. If all that can be heard is silence, why all the violence? With how the film continues, the contradictory nature of faith is very much explored with good and bad offered up. In the moment it might all seem disjointed but as a whole, it plays very well. Effectively, there seems to be genius in much of what Silence is telling us about religion now, but it’s hard to tell whether or not there’s intention in Scorsese's and longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker's odder and less fashioned cuts. Scorsese is especially disciplined in his use of film form and while previously mentioned that it must all be intentional, there are moments when the film seems undisciplined, rather than a fully coherent, intended work. This might have to do with length. The film was originally 195 minutes long but has been cut down to 161 minutes. This seems to have forced Scorsese to take some shortcuts involving narration that are just about as effective here as they were in the original cut of Blade Runner (which is to say not very). I wonder if a version of this film will come out in the future that doesn’t include this narration because the film is best when it is silent. There are only a few moments of brutal violence throughout the film, and each is played with a delicate, slow and silent disposition. The silence of the moments and other silences throughout the film give you time to ponder the what Scorsese is truly attempting to show us. If only Andrew Garfield would stop talking over it. Silence could very well be a great film, but I’m not sure yet. It could be intentionally created to disorient. To contradict, or it could simply be bad. I don’t know if we’re ever going to figure that out. Scorsese is presenting a hypothesis on the nature of faith that says, “It might all mean something, it might not,” and while it’s exhausting, I can’t wait to see it again. A Monster Calls has three types of descriptors: pitch perfect, visually arresting but not narratively and thematically involving, and visually uninvolving and narratively arresting. The film feels like the screenwriter and the director randomly picking one for each scene and just going with it, while also not being lucky enough to hit “pitch perfect” until the third act. A Monster Calls is a film focusing on Colin, a young boy having to deal with his dying mother. Suddenly, a monster appears and Colin must find out the meaning of the monster as well as his own feeling about the coming events. That is one heck of a premise, and really when the actual drama finally gets informed by some genuine feeling rather than just dragging the audience along some beautiful watercolor stories interspersed with the fascinating picture of making Sigourney Weaver boring the movie soars, but that’s not for a while A Monster Calls is a movie that without the Monster can’t survive. The material barring the beautiful watercolors is trite and honestly a little boring, and when the Monster does decide to show up, which is very few times, the Monster is a successfully underwritten smartass, who seems to enjoy bullying Colin and abstractly telling him the message of the movie. There’s a scene in a great film from this year called The Nice Guys where Russell Crowe’s character talks to Ryan Gosling's character about a man who dies and sees Nixon in order to teach Gosling that there are two ways of looking at something. Gosling asks him why he’s just told this long boring story just to tell him that it is about two different ways of looking at one thing? That’s kind of what A Monster Calls feels like. I do in fact understand that I am a horrible person, but also a good person and that people contradict themselves, why did you tell me the long boring story to get there? Then again it is more asking why did you tell me the THREE uninvolving stories? The Monster each time it shows up tells a story, each one having to do with the main simple revelation. Sure, they are told with a beautiful and stimulating array of watercolors, but I still don’t understand why the already under compelling drama of the actual story of the film is being interrupted by even simpler, contradicting fairy tales. I mean, yes contradiction is intended as a theme of the film, but if there’s not a guided narrative for the momentary plot at that specific moment, the morals just muddle themselves. It might all look good but thematically it’s just a hot mess. It does play well too, though. For all the inconsistency, the actors at the center of the film are all suitably up to their jobs, though technically Lewis MacDougall, playing Colin, has to carry the entire movie on his shoulders. This isn’t because the other actors aren’t fine at their jobs, Toby Kebbell, Sigourney Weaver, Liam Neeson, and Felicity Jones are all making smart choices, but script-wise they are all such nonentities that MacDougall is left stranded in the middle of the movie having to carry the entire thing. MacDougall is very impressive, but I’m not sure any actor of his age could carry a full movie like this. It gets almost sadder and sadder to watch as this kid is pushing hard to leave his mark on a movie that he never could. Not because of any fault of his, but because the film just can’t work on its own. This is until the third act. The film finally catches its footing and morphs into what it was always meant to. A breathtaking image of grief informed by the finally revealed themes about humanity that were better explained in just the performances of Jackie than this entire movie. This came from the director of The Orphanage and The Impossible, J.A. Bayona, and it might be the first film he’s made that could be considered anything close to a disappointment. The overall package isn’t particularly rotten just bland. That is the most unfortunate thing of all. I give A Monster Calls a 5.5 out of 10. Paul Verhoeven is the master at making stuff that isn’t funny, amusing. He made fascism funny in Starship Troopers, he made secret agents and murder funny in Total Recall, and before you yell at me no I’m not about to say that he makes rape funny, nobody can do that. The sheer fact that anyone would try is completely inappropriate and not what Verhoeven has an interest in doing in Elle. He instead makes each of the characters reactions to such a horrible event, slightly humourous, showing us a dark mirror as to how self absorbed we all get in times of conflict for the people around us. Verhoeven’s work is always about finding the perfect balance of things. Fascism and murder aren’t funny, and neither should be the absurdist ways that people react to assault, but just like Verhoeven’s other work it’s all about that perfect balance. Elle is more of a drama than a comedy, but it is infused with just enough absurdity that it can’t help but feel a little bit funny. With as much high brow disturbing content is present, Verhoeven plays everything just as thin and minimalistic as he always did. People might remember the more overblown nature of his satires like Robocop and Total Recall but in drama Verhoeven was kind of a straightforward point and shoot dramatist, which oddly isn’t an actual insult to him, It in fact works to his benefit allowing the subtlety of the entire filmmaking style to contrast heavily with the disturbed and uncomfortable themes of rape, death, psychopathy, and religion. There are moments of great melodrama in Elle that are played incredibly straight just because Verhoeven doesn’t allow them to go off the cuff. The film not treating some developments as scary, even though they should be and still working brings up the absurdity of everything to the point that it’s hard not to make an exclamation of “Dear Lord” or a nasally short laugh. Verhoeven has a cast that is all game to go crazy on screen and just trust him to make sure that the movie doesn’t fly the heck off the rails, and when Isabelle Huppert is on screen blowing through a psychopathic character of hidden depths like she’s done it forever (which she’s actually been doing this kind of ball busting character forever) any restraint from the director is a good idea. This does become a little problem as this is Huppert’s movie and while the other characters play huge roles the subtlety of the direction creates a weird contrast in which Huppert basically sticks out of the screen and everybody else is just there. Each of these characters are eventually satisfied with arches that create the world of the film though so the short drags in the middle act can all be forgiven. If there is one other thing off here Elle meanders a bit. That’s not a big problem because it’s all engaging meandering, but it’s still a little lengthy at times. Elle is an effort that has a lot of problematic stuff in it but it’s all played off with ease. Verhoeven is thankfully back to his great exploitation/genre film well and Isabelle Huppert cements herself as one of the best and most committed actresses of all time. I give Elle a 9.5 out of 10. If Damien Chazelle showed us that he could blow us all away with Hitchcockian suspense in Whiplash and his screenplay for Grand Piano, than La La Land, his ambitious sophomore effort has Chazelle playing Hitchcock, Woody Allen, and Stanley Donen at the same time. That’s a lot of plates in the air and it’s thrilling to watch Chazelle work his directorial ass off keeping them up there. The fact that he doesn’t break one plate is what solidifies the trick and boy is La La Land one of the best of the year. The best way to deconstruct what Chazelle has achieved here is to break down the individual styles that he’s expertly borrowing from and building onto. Early Tarantino (ie subpar direction to some lengths) this is not. This is sprint of glory. La La La follows the story of two people Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) as their story of love plays out. Stone and Gosling are both sumptuous with Gosling turning in his second perfect performance of the year (The Nice Guys being the other one) and Stone bringing something I haven’t seen very much in her work, a Romantic use of her expression. Let me explain. Stone is a great facial actress with her expressions selling a lot of her personality, but many films that lack the hyper energy of La La Land don’t let her use this EXTREMELY vital artistic weapon that she has. Here in La La Land as the story and songs expand into such hyper energy, Stone is allowed to cut loose and the results make for some of the best performing of the year. Okay, now onto that aforementioned deconstruction. See, Chazelle makes La La Land by keeping it interesting. We as an audience can go watch a cute musical or couple movie anywhere else (this reminded me of 500 Days of Summer), so what makes us to effectively care specifically about this one is not about what Chazelle throws up on screen but just how he does it. That’s where the key to La La Land is. He’s very much playing Hitchcock as he allows scenes to play out with emotional time bombs to explode from under the table. The ending (which I will not spoil) is his crowning achievement of this as he allows the emotional bomb of the story to explode in ways that are both joyous, but also destructive. It’s a blast. His work compares to Allen’s in that Chazelle’s showbiz dialogue plays like any wonderful Woody film. La La Land actually plays much like Allen’s excellent Café Society in the way it efficiently jumps across years of love and heartbreak. The film also looks very much like one of Allen’s works using the one shots that match many classical comedian directors like Allen, Billy WIlder, and while not funny, Hitchcock too. This shooting style is often known as the Spielberg oner, but I don’t think that the intention of this is the same. Spielberg doesn’t want you to see these shots, but Chazelle wants you to get lifted by them. This brings us to Donen. The whole point of Donen’s style seemed to be the concept of the suspense of the dance, and that’s what’s going on here too. Chazelle allows his camera to do cathartic pushins and chilling pulls as the dances extend in a flurry of color that is almost unseen today. This, Jackie, and The Neon Demon might be the best looking movies of the year, as La La Land attempts to capture the beauty of old technicolor epic musicals. The music is intimate and energetic capturing the ever so Romantic views of the dreamers in Hollywood. Composer Justin Hurwitz and lyricists Benj Pacek, and Justin Paul all create unique musical compositions from energetic tap to melancholic piano that blend wonderfully into Chazelle’s creation. The fact that La La Land reward the dreamers of music and Hollywood and tells us that all our might come true makes it all the more entertaining and rewarding. In the end La La Land is about the little dreams that come true and the others that don’t presented in the most energetic and enthusiastic way they possibly could be. “Here’s to the ones that Dream, foolish as they may seem” (1), including that one now great director who may have dreamed of being Hitchcock, Allen, and Donen. La La Land gets a 10 out of 10.
Assassin’s Creed is such an incredible failure that any measure of good will that I would have given it due to the fact that it was made by the people who made last year’s Macbeth (my #8 of last year, and a reason for Shakespeare scholars to think I don’t have good taste). I’m one to give films a great sense of leeway if the actors and director bring an artistic clout to them because films do not exist in a vacuum. The presence of two of what may be the best actors of all time, and the director of Macbeth is enough to make me bow down and let plenty go over my head (even if I don’t objectively do so), but Assassin’s Creed is such a horrible, rotting tease of a misfocused film that any goodwill that it had with me was spent within the first hour. For a little context, the film is about a young man named Calum Lynch (Michael Fassbender), who is executed. He is soon revived in a facility where a scientist (Marion Cotillard) conscripts him to help her find the mythical “Apple of Eden” so she can CURE VIOLENCE. Yeah, you heard that right, the villain wants to cure violence. Doesn’t sound too bad, until you see that all of this is delivered in exposition that Fassbender and Cotillard can’t even save and that the dynamic it creates for the assassins is one of a toxic fake edginess that never appeared in the Romanticism of their actions in the games. Anyway, Calum is put into GLADOS from Portal and is transported back in time to the feelings of his ancestor, as he experiences events that lead to the finding of the Apple of Eden. I have played a lot of the Assassin’s Creed games and the misfocus of the screenplay in baffling. Assassin’s Creed, for better or worse, to me at least was never about building a layered, complex story. It was about the player's ability to explore a bygone and fascinating period of history, and that’s where this film drops the ball royally. Not that simply this focus could truly ruin a movie (I mean a focus on the more violent and simple plot points of Macbeth made for a great movie) but because the focus is on plot points that are so thuddingly stupid it can’t help but feel like it’s robbing you of a better movie. This becomes hugely clear when the movie actually cuts back into the Spanish Inquisition, where the Kurzel can actually cut loose. He’s not afforded the heavy carnage that he displayed in Macbeth but the action is consistently center framed and not as hard to see as in many other films. The setting though is what makes this part of the movie. There’s burnings at the stake and black knights and sultans and that’s all pretty cool, if only the movie had not kept cutting back to the modern day and not letting the audience get our excitement out to the Gladiator type stuff. Justin Kurzel, Michael Fassbender, and Marion Cotillard are all reliably doing their jobs, but they can’t even salvage how bad this movie gets. The first act is ok and the second is sorely out of focus but at least has the gall to call its own stupidity, but the third makes you think all three of these players have given up. Jeremy Irons can’t even be great in this. This is a movie that teases you with the sweep of its Inquisition setting but never lets the audience truly explore that more interesting aspect. This is a film of horrid miscalculation, stay home and play the stunning games. Assassin's Creed get a 3 out of 10. The Handmaiden is a pretty perfect film that gets there because it doesn’t censor itself. There’s an unabashed excess to the way it indulges in sex and violence, in a way that a work of more “esteemed” art houseness never would and it comes out on top. The Handmaiden is sexy, funny, terrifying, and best of all touching. It could not have been too. Take this schlocky premise in lieu of Dangerous Liaisons and rob it of the explicit and roughly visceral content that it’s director Park Chan-Wook is so famous for and you’ve got a nice old lesbian love story that in its schlocky ness lacks the bite of anything (ie what Cruel Intentions did to the aforementioned Liaisons), but that’s not what happens here. Wook (and his screenwriter, Seo-kyeong Jeong) is able to work with all the disturbing, yet passionate toolbox he’s always been known for and in that he elevates The Handmaiden. You need to give these passionate stories some arteries that take them from just soap operas to reality and a good dose of explicit and exciting material does just that. It’s also helpful that Wook might just be one of the best filmmakers in the world. Part of the reason why these types of stories are often just “schlocky” is because they’re too often they’re afforded the filmmaking prowess of a simpleton who knows how to do a flat shot, reverse shot and not the guy who did Oldboy. Great direction can take the wild, unkempt emotions of a piece like this and treat them properly. Sexual lust is a feeling that has been bastardized but only by human creations. It in fact when presented at face value is incredibly beautiful. Wook has the smarts to present it as such. That actually leads nicely into the main point of what makes The Handmaiden so well crafted and it’s content so necessary (other than the previously mentioned fact that it really gives the film some life). The story and characters actions revolve around the interpretation of this lust and what it means, and when two characters react to it by falling deeply in love it’s touching, and when another reacts to it by chopping a man’s fingers off in the pursuit of more, it’s funny. The Handmaiden is special because other than just bolstering its world with graphic content, it’s literally built on such content and the way that humanities lustful idiocies manifest themselves. The fact that the cast at the center of the film here, namely Min-hee Kim and Tae-ri Kim (no relation) are turning in some of the best work I’ve seen from this genre since Lust Caution certainly makes The Handmaiden a must see. This is truly the best foreign film I’ve seen all year (Elle comes to me next month). A film based on lustful emotion that isn’t scared to delve as deep as possible into them. Park Chan-Wook has made an excellent follow up to Stoker. The Handmaiden gets a 9.5 out of 10. I love Star Wars and I’ve never seen a bad one in theaters. I never had the experience of watching The Phantom Menace being bad or even worse Attack of the Clones in theaters. That’s an experience that I didn’t think was possible. Star Wars inspires me, The Empire Strikes Back takes me off my feet, and Return of the Jedi marvels me. What does Rogue One do? It bores me. For once on the big screen, Star Wars felt like a letdown. Not a betrayal. There’s not that much at stake here, especially with how decidedly shrug off able this entire production is, just a letdown. Star Wars is fine as gritty, but it doesn’t have to be boring. The problem here is in an almost depressingly uneventful tone. Original trilogy Star Wars might have had very little going on in it, but it was smart enough to find the balance needed to make everything feel involving and epic enough. Rouge One can’t manage to find that balance and instead feels too inconsequential to be effective. The first problem comes in the “character.” Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) is not a classic character. In fact, she only gets a few lines in her own movie. The same goes for the other characters. Diego Luna as Cassian Andor just kind of stands around and is a rebel, Alan Tudyk as the robot K-2SO, is the “comic relief” doing a less entertaining and more blunt version of the TARS schtick from Interstellar, Donnie Yen sure beats the heck out of people and says, “I am one with the Force,” a lot. These aren’t characters these are character sketches, and saying Star Wars lacks a character driven storyline is like saying Indiana Jones doesn’t fight a foreign power. The lack of it kind of allows the magic of the film to fall apart. No, that is not me saying that all the Star Wars films must be the same, or that a genuinely different tone isn’t a good thing for long established franchises. I’m saying that if you’re going to change up the tone and the structure that has worked so far, you have better actually make a sound movie, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is not a sound piece of work. In fact, most of the movie is pretty perfunctory as the film finds itself covering just some Star Wars mythology and continuity for the first hour and a half. Nice for the fans, but doesn’t actually make for well-paced plotting. Rogue One is all over the place, at least for the first hour and a half, going from father daughter stuff, to dark empire killings, to espionage, all of which should work, but are just so boring. Forest Whitaker shows up as this familial friend of Jyn Erso's and is completely scattershot in character ruining the relationship. Many of the epic relationships that better writing could have salvaged feel weirdly stale. It is understood that since this is effectively a spy movie, everyone’s playing on the defensive, but if there’s no connection between the team, we can’t understand the individuals inside, and because the film is so darkly lit and hard to see (that said this might have been my projector. Seriously, I had some eye strain going on) there’s even trouble differentiating them from one another. This is super disheartening because if anything Star Wars was the colorful, but dirty universe not the grimy, I can’t see anything one. Speaking of things you can’t see, Gareth Edwards (not to be confused with The Raid’s Gareth Evans, a true master of the handheld cam) overuses his handheld camera to the point that the action at points doesn’t affect. I mean sure, you can see that Stormtroopers are shot and that ships are flying (If there’s one great thing here the final space battle is nuts), but there are very few just vista shots in the close quarters combat that the film is mostly built on. Another great thing that Star Wars has going for it is that wides of the characters fighting with sabers is just part of the scenery. Wides of blaster fire over precarious falls were as well, but in the effort to become “gritty” Rogue One abandons much of this for intimate combat that doesn’t feel that intimate. There’s also the matter of just how emotion drives action, and how Rogue One can’t really carry that as well as the other films. The action here is much less about the dueling ideologies between epic family members and more coincidence. Not that Star Wars isn’t coincidental, but there’s not really any other emotion than “Run” informing the depth of these characters and this combined with the shoddy action and whiplash pacing spoils Rogue One. This is all in service of saying though that Rogue One isn’t really bad, it’s just boring. There’s an active evolving badness about projects like Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Rogue One thankfully doesn’t go into that. The actors, though not afforded characters are great (but hey Felicity Jones and Ben Mendelsohn are great in everything), the film has good effects, and overall the whole thing actually pays off, even if it doesn’t deserve to. As Rogue One closes it becomes viscerally exciting and violent as the Star Wars we know and love enters the film. Too bad that too much of the earlier minutes just leave to little to care about. Rouge One: A Star Wars Story gets a 6.5 out of 10. Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea is an exploration of the tensions in human connection and a contemplation on guilt that is so honest, yet comforting that it’s therapeutic. This is a film that makes one take all the things they’ve done in the past that still weigh hard on them and shows them hope. Shows them it’s possible to let go. That’s something we all might need. Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) isn’t a nice person. He’s a man with an incredible weight that intentionally shuts people out and as the film starts he shuts us out too. Lonergan is smart enough to not let us connect to this man too early. We see him go to work, we see him fight, we see him, a broken man, a guilty man. And then life happens. Chandler must journey back to Manchester by the sea, the last place he wants to go, where his brother has just died and his nephew (Lucas Hedges in a breathtaking if less informed performance) needs a guardian. There’s a gripping sadness to every moment of the film as Affleck transcends his performance in Gone Baby Gone and takes himself to a whole other level of actor, even surpassing the excellent offerings of his brother, Ben. Lee and everyone else seem under the impression that they need to hide their pain and each of them is an emotional time bomb, just ready to explode. Manchester by the Sea is driven by this anticipation, and while simple as the dominoes begin to fall and the relationships of all these grieved people start to reveal themselves the results are both crushing and even a little funny. The writing Lonergan applies here is the reason for that and the way he directs dialogue scenes helps too. Characters are all consistently on the defensive, ready to yell at each other in a way that resembles just birds randomly and hysterically bickering over each other. Each fueled on by their own sad engines they yell “f” words at each other with the precision of an auction dealer and it’s amusing, yet melancholic stuff. This interrupted by moments of true droning sadness takes the funny sadness of life and the real sadness of life and contrasts them. The film's best moment comes when Lee must make a realization that he won’t get ultimately what he deserves for a wrong he did and Affleck’s pain is enough to make me flush cold. It’s all too easy as well. For all the focus and work that needs to go into the honesty of human interaction, Lonergan, and his actors seem to leave that at the door. There’s no difficulty to the ever expanding world and characters of Manchester by the Sea. Sure, there’s big emotional moments that really don’t feel like they should organically find themselves in the story, but there they do, and they beat you up as they come. Manchester by the Sea is a movie where character is king, and with such pained and wonderful beings at its center, this is certainly an important and well-versed film. Manchester by the Sea gets a 10 out of 10. Review by Stephen Tronicek You know what’s interesting about Disney’s past few movies? They can get away with taking an “original” property, warping the story structure to conform to the structure that all Disney projects must conform to, and then release this new less original, barely standing skeleton, and still pull off making an at least ok movie out of it. Moana is a example of this, just as Zootopia was earlier, but it’s also an example of why this doesn’t actually work if you don’t bring enough of your own stuff to the movie. Sure, Zootopia was effectively Chinatown for kids and about racism, but it had a living breathing world to fall back on. Moana doesn’t really have that, no matter how much perfection is to be found in the animation and the songs. If you’re wondering what movie Moana is taking its bones from, that would be Mad Max: Fury Road. There’s much worse films to steal from, but what made that movie work so well was it was saying something interesting, as well as just being a kickass action movie. Moana is actually kind of a kickass action movie at times (seriously, you wait until the Kakamora show up), since it is effectively Mad Max: Disney Road, but instead of a potent message about the fall of humanity at the hands of the patriarchy Moana has, trust in yourself and you’ll find power. One of those is fresh and other is contrived, and as far as I can understand that’s the reason why Moana doesn’t ever really get going no matter how hard it tries. And boy does it. For all the disheartening stuff that has just been said about Moana, this movie has some master animation. The character models are striking, with the titular character, and Dwayne Johnson’s Maui really sticking out as versatile characters. The songs are also really new this time, even if plot wise they are treading the normal ground. The infusion of more oceanic motifs to the music and some bolstering by Hamilton scribe Lin-Manuel Miranda, allow the score to take on the beautiful chants of the former and the pitch perfect rhythm of the latter. Voice actress Auli’i Cravalho has a very expressive voice as Moana and shines in "How Far I’ll Go", a song that holds familiar themes to other heroine songs, but is a highlight of the film. Hamilton’s Christopher Johnson also leads a catchy exposition song near the beginning that starts everything off with a bang. The vibrant colors of each character and the calming blues of the ocean are suitably distracting, but sadly it can’t get past the fact that what’s going on seems so overdone. The animation and music quality is enough to call this at least a good movie, but I’m still disappointed with this familiar film. What’s Disney going to follow up with next? Dead Ringers? I sure hope so. I give Moana a 6.5 out of 10. If the determination of a good film was based completely on the length of time it feels like it takes to the length of time it actually takes, Loving would be a bad movie. This is a SLOW film, but since that was the real point, that’s actually ok. Loving is about making one feel like they are living the life of the Loving’s with all the anxiety and ever expanding long hours that simply come with that. The film’s pacing and feel seem to parallel the frustration that the Loving’s themselves went through. If you haven’t caught on yet, Loving is not a movie of fast pacing. It’s a straightforward, sparse piece of work that needs to be taken on those merits. That’s not much of a surprise. Even Jeff Nichol’s science fiction “action” movie from earlier this year, Midnight Special, (still a year's best contender if you’re wondering) let itself slowly marinate the audience in Nichol’s personal hang-ups and much like that film Loving is more dependent on the performances that he pulls from his actors than any actually exciting action that comes from the film. Nichols has never been about sensationalism, and in the face of overly dramatic dramas of a similar type Nichols simply tells it how it is. Life is frustrating and long, but it’s in full satisfying and that’s the best way to describe Loving. At the end of two hours that feels like five, one gets the notion that they have in fact lived this life and it’s an enlightening experience. It does help to have a little flair though in your movie, and that comes mainly in performance. For all the muting of that Nichols applies to his own film, it’s still not enough to bring down the almost transformative performances at the center of the film. Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga have had some great roles (Negga in Preacher and Edgerton in Nichol’s Midnight Special), but Loving far surpasses their earlier work. The naturalistic performances at the center of this film take one off guard, and since all the actors are on the same page it’s a top rate acting job. Negga and Edgerton are the Loving’s, that’s simply the one thing we can see. This is the type of movie that’s so slow that it’s really exciting to see some familiar actors hanging around the margins of the movie and I damn near jumped out of my seat whenever a Nichols collaborator showed up for a cameo. Loving should be seen, but only for those willing to take the journey. This feels like an almost infuriatingly wronged, slow, life playing out in front of us and while that’s fine in my book others might not be drawn in enough by the performances to really appreciate what is here. I give Loving a 9 out of 10. Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals is a vicious burlesque show on narrative and noir, taking two stories: one diegetic and the other not and burning down the wall in between them. This is a film almost fully dependent on the richly detailed compositions of Tom Ford, and he uses his attention to detail to force the stories together in a way that is incredibly subtle enough to sneak up on the audience. The film begins with a burlesque show appropriately presenting obese characters dancing stark naked with sparklers. This makes it pretty obvious as to what’s going on. That’s actually most of what can be said of the film. It’s a disconcerting affair, one that feels fragmented and broken as it plays but mends together after careful consideration of the frames. Tom Ford puts too much work into the compositions that he places up on screen for them not to mean anything, and here they are part of making sense of the film. The best example that I can think of has to do with SPOILERS so I’m going to put that up right now. See, Nocturnal Animals is about a modern artist played by Amy Adams whose ex-husband sends her a manuscript for his new book. In said book, a protagonist representing him is traveling through West Texas with his family when a Deliverance type attack (rape and murder) befalls the family. The book’s protagonist is the only one left alive. The shot showing the dead body of the book’s protagonists daughter is a shot of her naked body laying across the screen showing her back. Later in the film, Adams calls her daughter who is shot in the exact same way lying in a bed. It is later revealed that Adams had aborted her child. Ford’s use of duplicating the daughter frame allows us to connect the two events and stories. This spells out pretty well what Nocturnal Animals does, but also why it’s so difficult to piece it together. Through the same compositional detail and technique that director Tom Ford brought to his seriously great A Single Man he lets the biting guilt of Adam's character as she reads the manuscript be shown through subtle inconsistencies representing the way that this guilt is affecting the mind of Adam’s character. Thematically it never quite gels, but it’s so impressive and competent in what it’s trying to do that I predicted after multiple viewings Nocturnal Animals will only get better and better. After one, a few things are obvious. This is an ambitious, detailed and acted to perfection film. Jake Gyllenhaal,is as usual, the most excellent actor, Amy Adams is giving a performance that could rival hers in Arrival and Michael Shannon playing a sheriff in the book’s story deserves to win a best supporting actor award. Tom Ford has burst back onto the scene with an incredibly layered, confounding piece of work. I give Nocturnal Animals a 9 out of 10. |
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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. |