This morning, the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences released their list of nominees for the 88th Academy Awards. In my look at this year's Golden Globes, I considered the Globes to be the first concrete benchmark of what to expect, and what can I say? I'm right. There are only a few tweaks I didn't expect, so, like last time, I'll post the full list of nominees below, with a quick "Who will win, should win, and win in my spherical-cow-populated world?" sum-up below each category (wherever I can be honest and knowledgeable).
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Best Picture
The Big Short
Brooklyn
Bridge of Spies
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight
Who Will? - The Revenant
Who Should? - Room
Spherical Cow? - Room
Best Actor
Bryan Cranston - Trumbo
Matt Damon - The Martian
Leonardo DiCaprio - The Revenant
Michael Fassbender - Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne - The Danish Girl
Who Will? - Leonardo DiCaprio
Who Should? - Leonardo DiCaprio
Spherical Cow? - Jason Tremblay - Room
Best Actress
Cate Blanchett - Carol
Brie Larson - Room
Jennifer Lawrence - Joy
Charlotte Rampling - 45 Years
Saoirse Ronan - Brooklyn
Who Will? - Cate Blanchett
Who Should? - Brie Larson
Spherical Cow? - Brie Larson
Best Supporting Actor
Christian Bale - The Big Short
Tom Hardy - The Revenant
Mark Rylance - Bridge of Spies
Mark Ruffalo - Spotlight
Sylvester Stallone - Creed
Who Will? - Tom Hardy
Who Should? - Tom Hardy
Spherical Cow? - Tom Hardy and Sylvester Stallone share, then do a ridiculously bad-ass 70's cop movie together.
Best Supporting Actress
Jennifer Jason Leigh - The Hateful Eight
Rooney Mara - Carol
Rachel McAdams - Spotlight
Alicia Vikander - The Danish Girl
Kate Winslet - Steve Jobs
Who Will? - Kate Winslet
Who Should? - Jennifer Jason Leigh
Spherical Cow? - Alicia Vikander - Ex Machina
Best Director
Adam McKay - The Big Short
George Miller - Mad Max: Fury Road
Alejandro González Iñárritu - The Revenant
Lenny Abrahamson - Room
Tom McCarthy - Spotlight
Who Will? - Alejandro González Iñárritu
Who Should? - Alejandro González Iñárritu
Spherical Cow? - Alejandro González Iñárritu
Best Original Screenplay
Matt Charman, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen - Bridge of Spies
Alex Garland - Ex Machina
Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley, Ronnie Del Carmen - Inside Out
Josh Singer, Tom McCarthy - Spotlight
Andrea Berloff, Jonathan Herman, S. Leigh Savidge, Alan Wenkus - Straight Outta Compton
Who Will? - Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley, Ronnie Del Carmen - Inside Out
Who Should? - Josh Singer, Tom McCarthy - Spotlight
Spherical Cow? - Josh Singer, Tom McCarthy - Spotlight
Best Adapted Screenplay
Charles Randolph, Adam McKay - The Big Short
Nick Hornby - Brooklyn
Phyllis Nagy - Carol
Drew Goddard - The Martian
Emma Donoghue - Room
Who Will? - Nick Hornby
Who Should? - Emma Donoghue
Spherical Cow? - Emma Donoghue
Best Animated Film
Anomalisa
O Menino e o Mundo (Boy & the World)
Inside Out
Shaun the Sheep Movie
Omoide no Mânî (When Marnie Was There)
Who Will? - Inside Out
Who Should? - Anomalisa
Spherical Cow? - The Peanuts Movie
Best Foreign Language Film
El abrazo de la serpiente (Embrace of the Serpent)
Krigen (A War)
Mustang
Saul fia (Son of Saul)
Theeb
Best Cinematography
Edward Lachman - Carol
Robert Richardson - The Hateful Eight
John Seale - Mad Max: Fury Road
Emmanuel Lubezki - The Revenant
Roger Deakins - Sicario
Who Will? - Emmanuel Lubezki
Who Should? - Emmanuel Lubezki
Spherical Cow? - Adam Arkapaw - Macbeth
Best Editing
Hank Corwin - The Big Short
Margaret Sixel - Mad Max: Fury Road
Stephen Mirrione - The Revenant
Tom McArdle - Spotlight
Maryann Brandon, Mary Jo Markey - Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Who Will? - Stephen Mirrione
Who Should? - Hank Corwin
Spherical Cow? - Hank Corwin
Best Production Design
Adam Stockhausen, Rena DeAngelo, Bernhard Henrich - Bridge of Spies
Eve Stewart, Michael Standish - The Danish Girl
Colin Gibson, Lisa Thompson - Mad Max: Fury Road
Arthur Max, Celia Bobak - The Martian
Jack Fisk, Hamish Purdy - The Revenant
Who Will? - Jack Fisk, Hamish Purdy - The Revenant
Who Should? - Jack Fisk, Hamish Purdy - The Revenant
Spherical Cow? - Mark Digby - Ex Machina
Best Costume Design
Sandy Powell - Carol
Sandy Powell - Cinderella
Paco Delgado - The Danish Girl
Jenny Beavan - Mad Max: Fury Road
Jacqueline West - The Revenant
Who Will? - Jenny Beavan
Who Should? - Jenny Beavan
Spherical Cow? - Joanna Johnston - The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Love Larson, Eva Von Bahr - Hundraåringen som klev ut genom fönstret och försvann (The 100-Year-Old Man who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared)
Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega, Damian Martin - Mad Max: Fury Road
Sian Grigg, Duncan Jarman, Robert A. Pandini - The Revenant
Who Will? - Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega, Damian Martin - Mad Max: Fury Road
Who Should? - Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega, Damian Martin - Mad Max: Fury Road
Spherical Cow? - Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega, Damian Martin - Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Original Score
Thomas Newman - Bridge of Spies
Carter Burwell - Carol
Ennio Morricone - The Hateful Eight
Jóhann Jóhannsson - Sicario
John Williams - Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Who Will? - Ennio Morricone
Who Should? - John Williams
Spherical Cow? - Harry Gregson-Williams - The Martian
Best Original Song
The Weeknd, Belly, TBD, Stephan Moccio - "Earned It", Fifty Shades of Grey
Diane Warren, Lady Gaga - "Til It Happens to You", The Hunting Ground
J. Ralph, Antony Hegarty - "Manta Ray", Racing Extinction
Sam Smith, James Napier - "Writing's On The Wall", Spectre
David Lang - "Simple Song #3", Youth
Who Will? - Sam Smith, James Napier - "Writing's On The Wall", Spectre
Who Should? - David Lang - "Simple Song #3", Youth
Spherical Cow? - Meek Mill, Jhené Aiko & Ludwig Göransson - "Lord Knows / Fighting Stronger", Creed
Best Sound Editing (They Design Sound Effects, Either Making New Ones or Boosting the Old)
Mark A. Mangini, David White - Mad Max: Fury Road
Oliver Tarney - The Martian
Martín Hernández, Lon Bender - The Revenant
Alan Robert Murray - Sicario
Matthew Wood, David Acord - Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Who Will? - Matthew Wood, David Acord - Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Who Should? - Matthew Wood, David Acord - Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Spherical Cow? - Matthew Wood, David Acord - Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Best Sound Mixing (They Blend On-Set Sounds and Ones the Editors Make and Balance All Together)
Andy Nelson, Gary Rydstrom, Drew Kunin - Bridge of Spies
Chris Jenkins, Gregg Rudloff, Ben Osmo - Mad Max: Fury Road
Paul Massey, Mark Taylor, Mac Ruth - The Martian
Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montaño, Randy Thom, Chris Duesterdiek - The Revenant
Andy Nelson, Christopher Scarabosio, Stuart Wilson - Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Who Will? - Andy Nelson, Christopher Scarabosio, Stuart Wilson - Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Who Should? - Andy Nelson, Christopher Scarabosio, Stuart Wilson - Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Spherical Cow? - Andy Nelson, Christopher Scarabosio, Stuart Wilson - Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Best Visual Effects
Andrew Whitehurst, Paul Norris, Mark Williams Ardington, Sara Bennett - Ex Machina
Andrew Jackson, Tom Wood, Dan Oliver, Andy Williams - Mad Max: Fury Road
Richard Stammers, Anders Langlands, Chris Lawrence, Steven Warner - The Martian
Richard McBride, Matt Shumway, Jason Smith, Cameron Waldbauer - The Revenant
Roger Guyett, Pat Tubach, Neal Scanlan, Chris Corbould - Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Who Will? - Roger Guyett, Pat Tubach, Neal Scanlan, Chris Corbould - Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Who Should? - Roger Guyett, Pat Tubach, Neal Scanlan, Chris Corbould - Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Spherical Cow? - Roger Guyett, Pat Tubach, Neal Scanlan, Chris Corbould - Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Best Documentary, Feature
Amy
Cartel Land
The Look of Silence
What Happened, Miss Simone?
Winter on Fire
Best Documentary, Short Subject
Body Team 12
War Within the Walls
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah
A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness
Last Day of Freedom
Best Short Film, Animated
Historia de un oso (Bear Story)
Mi ne mozhem zhit bez kosmosa (We Can't Live Without Cosmos)
Prologue
Sanjay's Super Team
World of Tomorrow
Best Short Film, Live Action
Ave Maria
Day One
Alles wird gut (Everything Will Be Okay)
Shok
Stutterer
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As far as Oscar lists go, I must admit I'm not mad, an opinion, when I spoke to my college advisor earlier, which isn't as equally adopted. Are there snubs? Of course. However, according to IMDB, Aaron Sorkin's screenplay for Steve Jobs was "snubbed", and I found it the weakest of the Golden Globe nominees (which it won). They thought Michael Keaton should've picked up a Best Actor nomination for Spotlight, and I wholeheartedly disagree. Wherever your allegiances lie, we must always remember that the Oscars are not the sole marker of cinematic excellence. As cult classics and lists of "The Worst 'Best Picture' Winners" remind us, we don't all agree on what's great or what thousand movies are a must-see before death. Art is subjective. Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is an egomaniac and moron.
The Oscars serve as a celebration of film, a New Years' party for movie lovers to reflect on 2015's best. The Academy may nominate a movie you've never heard of over your favorite, and that's okay! Take that as an opportunity to try something new, experience stories and performances that would never be on your radar had it not been for the awards. I also suggest you not let the contest cloud your judgment on those films. It's rare that the Oscars pick films that flat-out suck (I await the flood of comments proving me wrong).
Before the ceremony on February 28th, I urge you to, at least, watch the Best Picture nominees. This year, like last, I'll be doing another showcase, where I rank them from #8 to #1, in terms of what I think should win the Oscar. Some films I've reviewed, some I've haven't, and this will (finally) force me to check out Mad Max - from the first movie to Fury Road. These weeks can be a fun time for all of us, so let's grab our popcorn, throw it at the idiot texting in front, and enjoy some great movies!
Thank you all for reading; I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.
Thursday, January 14, 2016
Monday, January 11, 2016
Some Thoughts on the 2016 Golden Globes
If the Academy Awards are the Super Bowl, the Golden Globes are the Pro Bowl, but while not having as illustrious or weighty an impact on the industry, the Globes serve as the first concrete benchmark of what we should expect for the rest of the awards season. Each city's critic association has their list, and the American Film Institute publishes their list of the year's best (in 2015, I think they hit the nail on the head), but the Golden Globes is like a dress rehearsal for the actual show. Result may vary, but the winners are usually the smart bet for the Oscar. Without further ado, let's get to it!
Best Motion Picture, Drama
Mad Max: Fury Road
Carol
The Revenant - Winner
Room
Spotlight
(Thoughts: I've yet to see either Fury Road or Carol - hopefully, I can catch a screening of the latter tonight - but it doesn't take long for me to disagree with the choice. I love The Revenant and Spotlight, but Room is an extraordinary picture that moved my heart more than I can fathom or grasp after only two viewings. I'm not too pissed or confused, however. The Revenant is a masterful epic, a survival/revenge thriller realized to a bloodthirsty, colossal degree by its filmmakers; and are you really surprised when names like DiCaprio, Hardy, or Iñárritu are involved?)
Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
Joy
Spy
The Big Short
The Martian - Winner
Trainwreck
(Thoughts: I've never agreed with the Globes' notion of splitting up Best Picture into Drama and Musical/Comedy, seems to condone a line of thinking that two films of different genre can't be judged on the same front. If you're good at what you do, you're good, no handicaps needed. I find this category as an excuse for nominating films or performances that'd be scoffed at by *real* critics. Golden Globes, if you want to call Spy one of the ten best pictures of the year, just nominate it with everyone else. It'd save us time and pretense.)
Best Actress - Drama
Saoirse Ronin, Brooklyn
Cate Blanchett, Carol
Rooney Mara, Carol
Brie Larson, Room - Winner
Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
(Thoughts: I agree wholeheartedly.)
Best Actress - Musical or Comedy
Jennifer Lawrence, Joy - Winner
Melissa McCarthy, Spy
Amy Schumer, Trainwreck
Maggie Smith, The Lady in the Van
Lily Tomlin, Grandma
(Thoughts: Lily Tomlin in Grandma gave a lifetime in less than eighty minutes: a concerned grandmother, a frustrated mother, an almost-jaded rebel, a widow, an acerbic wise-ass, a regretful ex-girlfriend (on two occassions), and a reinvigorated woman.)
Best Actor - Drama
Bryan Cranston, Trumbo
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant - Winner
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl
Will Smith, Concussion
(Thoughts: It's a fearless, no-holds-barred performance like Hugh Glass that cements Leonardo DiCaprio's legacy as not only one of our best actors today, but of all time. Simply put, Leonardo DiCaprio is too good for the Academy.)
Best Actor - Musical or Comedy
Christian Bale, The Big Short
Steve Carell, The Big Short
Matt Damon, The Martian - Winner
Al Pacino, Danny Collins
Mark Ruffalo, Infinitely Polar Bear
(Thoughts: I argued for a bit between Damon and Bale, but Damon's humor and quiet tenacity won me over. I think other actors could do Bale's role; no one could play Mark Watney better than Matt Damon.)
Best Supporting Actor
Paul Dano, Love
Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation
Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
Michael Shannon, 99 Homes
Sylvester Stallone, Creed - Winner
(Thoughts: When I heard Stallone was receiving Oscar buzz for this role, I arched my eyebrow. I saw Creed, loved it, put it as my 5th favorite of the year. Now, Stallone's won the Golden Globe. This Oscar may become a reality, and it would be 100% earned. Raw, vulnerable, and nuanced, this takes Stallone's best role and pushes it even further than I ever expected. It is excellent in every sense of the term.)
Best Supporting Actress
Jane Fonda, Youth
Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight
Helen Mirren, Trumbo
Alicia Vikander, Ex Machina
Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs - Winner
(Thoughts: Vikander should've won. Her mastery, of not only emotional, but also physical manipulation was breathtaking. She was the best part of Ex Machina, delivering a stunning, career-best performance.)
Best Director
Alejandro González Iñárritu, The Revenant - Winner
Todd Haynes, Carol
Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
Ridley Scott, The Martian
(Thoughts: From what I've seen of Fury Road, I think I'd praise Miller's world-building and control of that story's anarchy, but I've yet to see it. Iñárritu's The Revenant is a visual marvel, laden with themes of faith and justice, expressed through some of the most powerful imagery I've seen in the past year. His control of the frame is unbelievable, but what else would you get from last year's Oscar winner?)
Best Screenplay
Emma Donoghue, Room
Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, Spotlight
Charles Randolph and Adam McKay, The Big Short
Aaron Sorkin, Steve Jobs - Winner
Quentin Tarantino, The Hateful Eight
(Thoughts: I mean the following statement, not as a slight on Sorkin's writing, but a question of judgment on behalf of the Globes' voters: every other option was a better choice. Sorkin's script had a unique structure and his trademark snappy, intellectual dialogue, but not much that merits an award. I choose Randolph and McKay's well-paced, refreshing script that balanced comedy and tragedy with aplomb.)
Best Original Score
Carter Burwell, Carol
Alexander Desplat, The Danish Girl
Ennio Morricone, The Hateful Eight - Winner
Daniel Pemberton, Steve Jobs
Ryuchi Sakamoto, The Revenant
Best Original Song
"Love Me Like You Do," Fifty Shades of Grey
"One Kind of Love," Love & Mercy
"See You Again," Furious 7
"Simple Song #3," Youth
"Writing's on the Wall," Spectre - Winner
(Thoughts: For as much as I despise Youth, I enjoy "Simple Song #3", and do so in spades over Sam Smith's dirge.)
Anomalisa
The Good Dinosaur
Inside Out - Winner
The Peanuts Movie
Shaun the Sheep Movie
(Thoughts: No surprise here, Inside Out was a juggernaut. I preferred The Peanuts Movie. I didn't get to see Shaun the Sheep Movie or Anomalisa, though I hear both are brilliant.)
Best Foreign Language Film
The Brand New Testament
The Club
The Fencer
Mustang
Son of Saul - Winner
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There were awards given out for television, but you know what kind of blog this is. The full list can be found here. On the 14th, the Oscar nominations will be revealed, but if the Golden Globes list is anything to go by, I think this award season, with the exception of the Best Picture, Screenplay, and Supporting Actress runs, are going to be in pretty good hands. All that's left to do is wait.
Thank you all for reading; I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.
The Winners
Best Motion Picture, Drama Mad Max: Fury Road
Carol
The Revenant - Winner
Room
Spotlight
(Thoughts: I've yet to see either Fury Road or Carol - hopefully, I can catch a screening of the latter tonight - but it doesn't take long for me to disagree with the choice. I love The Revenant and Spotlight, but Room is an extraordinary picture that moved my heart more than I can fathom or grasp after only two viewings. I'm not too pissed or confused, however. The Revenant is a masterful epic, a survival/revenge thriller realized to a bloodthirsty, colossal degree by its filmmakers; and are you really surprised when names like DiCaprio, Hardy, or Iñárritu are involved?)
Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy Joy
Spy
The Big Short
The Martian - Winner
Trainwreck
(Thoughts: I've never agreed with the Globes' notion of splitting up Best Picture into Drama and Musical/Comedy, seems to condone a line of thinking that two films of different genre can't be judged on the same front. If you're good at what you do, you're good, no handicaps needed. I find this category as an excuse for nominating films or performances that'd be scoffed at by *real* critics. Golden Globes, if you want to call Spy one of the ten best pictures of the year, just nominate it with everyone else. It'd save us time and pretense.)
Best Actress - Drama Saoirse Ronin, Brooklyn
Cate Blanchett, Carol
Rooney Mara, Carol
Brie Larson, Room - Winner
Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
(Thoughts: I agree wholeheartedly.)
Jennifer Lawrence, Joy - Winner
Melissa McCarthy, Spy
Amy Schumer, Trainwreck
Maggie Smith, The Lady in the Van
Lily Tomlin, Grandma
(Thoughts: Lily Tomlin in Grandma gave a lifetime in less than eighty minutes: a concerned grandmother, a frustrated mother, an almost-jaded rebel, a widow, an acerbic wise-ass, a regretful ex-girlfriend (on two occassions), and a reinvigorated woman.)
Best Actor - Drama Bryan Cranston, Trumbo
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant - Winner
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl
Will Smith, Concussion
(Thoughts: It's a fearless, no-holds-barred performance like Hugh Glass that cements Leonardo DiCaprio's legacy as not only one of our best actors today, but of all time. Simply put, Leonardo DiCaprio is too good for the Academy.)
Best Actor - Musical or Comedy Christian Bale, The Big Short
Steve Carell, The Big Short
Matt Damon, The Martian - Winner
Al Pacino, Danny Collins
Mark Ruffalo, Infinitely Polar Bear
(Thoughts: I argued for a bit between Damon and Bale, but Damon's humor and quiet tenacity won me over. I think other actors could do Bale's role; no one could play Mark Watney better than Matt Damon.)
Best Supporting Actor Paul Dano, Love
Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation
Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
Michael Shannon, 99 Homes
Sylvester Stallone, Creed - Winner
(Thoughts: When I heard Stallone was receiving Oscar buzz for this role, I arched my eyebrow. I saw Creed, loved it, put it as my 5th favorite of the year. Now, Stallone's won the Golden Globe. This Oscar may become a reality, and it would be 100% earned. Raw, vulnerable, and nuanced, this takes Stallone's best role and pushes it even further than I ever expected. It is excellent in every sense of the term.)
Best Supporting Actress Jane Fonda, Youth
Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight
Helen Mirren, Trumbo
Alicia Vikander, Ex Machina
Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs - Winner
(Thoughts: Vikander should've won. Her mastery, of not only emotional, but also physical manipulation was breathtaking. She was the best part of Ex Machina, delivering a stunning, career-best performance.)
Alejandro González Iñárritu, The Revenant - Winner
Todd Haynes, Carol
Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
Ridley Scott, The Martian
(Thoughts: From what I've seen of Fury Road, I think I'd praise Miller's world-building and control of that story's anarchy, but I've yet to see it. Iñárritu's The Revenant is a visual marvel, laden with themes of faith and justice, expressed through some of the most powerful imagery I've seen in the past year. His control of the frame is unbelievable, but what else would you get from last year's Oscar winner?)
Emma Donoghue, Room
Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, Spotlight
Charles Randolph and Adam McKay, The Big Short
Aaron Sorkin, Steve Jobs - Winner
Quentin Tarantino, The Hateful Eight
(Thoughts: I mean the following statement, not as a slight on Sorkin's writing, but a question of judgment on behalf of the Globes' voters: every other option was a better choice. Sorkin's script had a unique structure and his trademark snappy, intellectual dialogue, but not much that merits an award. I choose Randolph and McKay's well-paced, refreshing script that balanced comedy and tragedy with aplomb.)
Best Original Score Carter Burwell, Carol
Alexander Desplat, The Danish Girl
Ennio Morricone, The Hateful Eight - Winner
Daniel Pemberton, Steve Jobs
Ryuchi Sakamoto, The Revenant
Best Original Song
"Love Me Like You Do," Fifty Shades of Grey"One Kind of Love," Love & Mercy
"See You Again," Furious 7
"Simple Song #3," Youth
"Writing's on the Wall," Spectre - Winner
(Thoughts: For as much as I despise Youth, I enjoy "Simple Song #3", and do so in spades over Sam Smith's dirge.)
Best Animated Film
Anomalisa
The Good Dinosaur
Inside Out - Winner
The Peanuts Movie
Shaun the Sheep Movie
(Thoughts: No surprise here, Inside Out was a juggernaut. I preferred The Peanuts Movie. I didn't get to see Shaun the Sheep Movie or Anomalisa, though I hear both are brilliant.)
The Brand New Testament
The Club
The Fencer
Mustang
Son of Saul - Winner
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There were awards given out for television, but you know what kind of blog this is. The full list can be found here. On the 14th, the Oscar nominations will be revealed, but if the Golden Globes list is anything to go by, I think this award season, with the exception of the Best Picture, Screenplay, and Supporting Actress runs, are going to be in pretty good hands. All that's left to do is wait.
Thank you all for reading; I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.
Saturday, January 9, 2016
"The Boy" Review
January is the month synonymous with "terrible movies, and even worse horror films." This month is my warm-up, the time for an easy lob over the plate and a subsequent home run smash of CONDEMNATION out of the park. My level of anger exceeds "flurry of F-bombs", on the verge of "speaking in tongues." And if we're being honest with each other, reader, I kinda love it. So what opinion of volcanic proportions does the Man Without a Plan have towards The Boy, a movie about a woman haunted by a creepy doll?!It's ok. In fact, I'd recommend it. (Don't worry, this is weird for me too.)
When Greta (Lauren Cohan) accepts a job to nanny for the Heelshires (Diana Hardcastle & Jim Norton), an eccentric, old English couple, she's stunned to discover their "son", Brahms, is in reality, a porcelain doll. Mrs. Heelshire gives Greta a schedule for taking care of Brahms, including feeding him, reading books out loud, and playing classical music at the volume I reserve for Mastodon's Blood Mountain, stressing that he is very "particular" about each task being done just right. Greta is (naturally) weirded out, choosing to ignore the doll, but as shoes go missing, floorboards start creaking, and strangers start breathing heavily into the phone, she begins to suspect a more malevolent force between Brahms' glassy eyes.
I'd have an easier time recommending this if it were directed with a subtler hand - the movie will follow jump-scares with awkward slow motion; show the audience an object, and not half a second later, zoom in to remind us of its importance as if we needed our hands held; interject digitally imposed effects with quick edits. For a film that wants me to constantly question if what's happening is real or not, all the flashiness is distracting, and pulls me out of the illusion. On top of this, for the first half of the movie, the "creepy" stuff that's supposed to convince us the doll is alive is the same kind of stuff we've seen in other scary films: the jiggling doorknob, the ghostly child giggles, the doll randomly appearing and disappearing. It's not done poorly, just done before.
The movie borrows from a handful of horror - The Others, Sinister 2, and Friday the 13th Part 2, to name a few - but the choices made to cobble the story together are well selected, and serve to give the later half some fair twists from what I expected. Just when I was slipping into boredom, the film grabbed me; so if you're a horror nut finding yourself bobbing in and out of boredom, give it a chance, it'll get there.
I'm probably giving The Boy the benefit from lowered expectations, but as far as horror movies go, this one intrigued me and got better around the end. It got creepy and took some chances that paid off. In no way is this a masterpiece, but given my usual crop, this is a step in the right direction. Go on a matinee and have some fun. The Boy comes out January 22nd.
Thank you all for reading; I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
My Top 10 Favorite Movies of 2015!
Writing the "Worst" list, as purging as it was, emotionally drained me; there's only so much anger one can course through their body at a time before it gets exhausting. Returning to my keyboard today, I feel a lot better, more energetic. So, with a sense of rejuvenation in tow, here's the fun part of this year-end retrospective: my top ten FAVORITE movies of 2015!
Honorable Mentions (think of this as #15-11):
- Bridge of Spies
- Dope
- Jurassic World
- Macbeth
- Crimson Peak
10) Spotlight - The night I saw Spotlight, it was the second film in my double-feature with Love the Coopers, and I'll put this in perspective: Spotlight is as good as Love the Coopers is bad.
"Spotlight" is the name of the Boston Globe's investigative team, and the movie recounts their 2001 look at the Catholic Church's cover-up of pedophile priests since the '70s and '80s. As the team (played by Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Brian D'Arcy James) investigates, they learn how entrenched the cover-up really is, as the story mutates from a local presence to an international epidemic.
No review I've read mentions director Tom McCarthy's and cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi's use of space; they'll often shoot conversations from a distance, or put the characters at the bottom of the frame and leave the rest wide open, usually with a church looming in the back. The Catholic Church's power is always felt, and even when characters converse about these highly sensitive topics in public, in a way that honestly, anyone should be able to become privy to with ease, no passerby ever does a double-take - they just keep walking. McCarthy perverts our visual understanding of what makes up a normal conversation to highlight how the Boston community's awareness of this behavior; everyone knows about these stories, but because of the Church's cultural influence in the city, especially in its lower-income neighborhoods, no one wants to speak out and undergo a stigma from the rest of the community.
The film doesn't glorify its protagonists; at one point, it highlights how, initially, the Globe buried the story in the Metro section, putting Keaton's character in a poor light. It doesn't shirk blame from anyone, not the Church, the community, the police, or the media. Ultimately, it's a combination of all these people, intertwined, that led to this institutional cover-up. As the film peels back layer by layer, I found myself disgusted; after a while, these cases feel like a virus, consuming every corner, every home, rotting a community from the inside out. Spotlight is important for this reason: it highlights how power can lead to an overall moral degradation, and how the extent of corruption can grow, exponentially, when justice isn't sought out. This is a tense, thoughtful, important film.
9) The Big Short - The Big Short is CNBC-meets-Schoolhouse-Rock, a populist's answer to the following questions: What the hell caused the 2008 recession, and where were the signs? The movie answers the latter: "They were always there. You never bothered to look." As for the former, I'm gonna keep this spoiler-free.
Writer-director Adam McKay soaks the world of Wall Street in pop culture, to showcase where the average person's focus was at the time. While Steve Carell fails to get it through to a stripper that she won't be able to refinance on her six mortgages, Finn Wittrock and John Magaro's characters are brushed off by stock traders, who'd rather play at the gun range than discuss the faultiness of subprime loans. In a brilliant move, the film uses celebrity cameos to teach concepts that sound scary to most, like 'collateralized debt obligations'; it gets us laymen in the know while making it easy to understand.
The film does a great job of using comedy to deal with tragedy; I can't help but chuckle as Christian Bale talks to the two Goldman Sachs reps about setting up a bet against the housing market, and they (like so many in this film) have the best "Are...are you kidding me?" looks on their faces. We know Dr. Burry is right, so for the rest of the film, we're waiting on the punchline, waiting to see these idiots get their just desserts.
However, when the bomb drops, it's not funny. It's foreshadowed by Brad Pitt's character, as he equates every percentage point of employment to the death of 40,000 people, but it's when the market crashes that the film sobers up, from hearing a giddy Ryan Gosling scream, "I'm jacked to the TITS!" (a line I hope to God people start yelling at him as he walks down the street), to watching a husband, wife, and two preschool kids reduced to living in a sedan.
Carell and Bale (in an especially top-notch performance) do inspired work, and while the star-studded cast gets in great performances, check out lesser-known actors, like Wittrock and Magaro as a young trading duo, and Jeremy Strong as one of Carell's team.
The Big Short delivers a dark chapter of American history with heart, humor, and wit. If you come out of the film as pissed and outraged as I did, good. That's how it's supposed to be.
8) It Follows - Now, this is how you do it! After so many years of mediocre-to-downright-awful horror flicks making it to my local cineplex, I'm so glad David Robert Mitchell's It Follows broke out of an indie hellhole into the mainstream consciousness. This is one of the most well-directed and chilling horror films of the decade, and with time, will stand tall next to films by Carpenter, Craven, and Cronenberg.
This movie relies solely on execution, because if you were to tell me a year ago that I'd honor a film about a sexually-transmitted demon stalking teenagers as one of the best films of the year, I'd punch you in the gut. But from the first trailer, with its unapologetic '80s vibe, complete with a synth-laden masterpiece of a score (shout-out to Disasterpiece), I was hooked and hyped; subsequently, the film didn't disappoint.
Maika Monroe is great as Jay, a Detroit teen, who falls for a guy named Hugh, and they have a budding romance. However, as soon as they hook up, she wakes up under a bridge, tied to a wheelchair. Hugh begins to explain that the "thing" that's following her is passed on sexually, and will hunt her down until it either kills or Jay passes it on to someone else. The thing only walks, which feels easily avoidable, but the rub is, it's smart, and can look like anyone, even people in Jay's life. This demon preys on her psychologically, whittling down her sanity, all the while waiting for a chance to get her in a corner.
The film does a great job of using wide landscapes, that seem to stretch a mile wide, in contrast with our heroine, usually in the middle of the frame. I find myself constantly looking in the background, and the tension that hits my chest whenever I see someone walking towards Jay and her friends sent shivers up my spine. Most of the film is spent in anticipation, to the point that when the monster does appear, it hits the right level of shock and terror.
Mitchell uses the demon to comment on female sexuality and how it factors into a woman's identity. After Jay has sex with Hugh, everyone approaches her hesitantly, with caution, even though there's no way they'll get the demon chasing after them; this is Jay's fight, and ultimately, she has to confront the consequences. Throughout the movie, most of the supporting cast's conversations with Jay are specifically about sex; luckily, we get enough in the beginning to get a sense of Jay's personality, but because her sexuality is forced to the front of every conservation, she ends up becoming objectified (Hugh at one point, remarks Jay shouldn't have a problem passing it on because of her physique). Even a towel-covered Jay, in one scene, looks down at her vagina in horror, in an attempt to externalize it from herself. It Follows highlights the psychological deterioration that can occur in someone's mind from being identified primarily through sexual terms, serving as a biting critique of the horror genre's clichéd "virgin-whore complex".
Are there technical problems and lapses of logic from our heroes? Of course, especially in the third act (seriously, a toaster?), but what works here, works so well. If you're in the mood for a chiller, It Follows is a must-see.
7) Ex Machina - In a recent string of AI films - Chappie, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Transendence, Her - Ex Machina is the best, a claustrophobic thriller that analyzes the biology of being human, to the point where I unconsciously check myself to make sure I'm human, still. Domnhall Gleeson plays a good innocent, naive but in no way stupid, and Oscar Isaac delivers on eccentricity and an unhinged demeanor (blame it on the alcohol), but Ex Machina doesn't work without Alicia Vikander as the android, Ava.
Vikander, in a word, is deliberate. In a move that'd ensure Robert Downey Jr's character from Tropic Thunder a headache, Vikander is a human, disguised as an android, who's supposed to walk and talk like a human, but not the stilted, mechanical Bishop from Alien way, just 15 degrees shy of full-blown human - you never go full human. She delivers a masterful performance, adapting in the slightest gradients, according to what the audience is meant to perceive about her "humanity."
The film isn't a seminar; Ex Machina is visceral & violent, with a dark sense of humor and foreboding atmosphere, drenched in crisp, saturated colors. Equals parts Paul Verhoeven and David Cronenberg, Ex Machina challenges and disturbs, yet leaves me with a hopeful feeling. It feels strange to say, but I'd enjoy a sequel that could explore AI interaction on a wider social plane.
6) The Martian - The Martian does one of the most refreshing movies I've seen from sci-fi in years: it takes the piss out of space.
Botanist and last man on Mars Mark Watney (Matt Damon) doesn't have time to fixate on the fearsome majesty of the Red Planet; he's gotta grow potatoes out of poop and set up solar panels for his dune buggy (c'mon America, if a guy who perpetually lives inches away from implosion can sustain himself using solar energy, what's stopping us?)! It's this matter-of-fact, do-or-die attitude, sprinkled with healthy doses of optimism and sarcasm that sets the film apart from Gravity and Interstellar, and makes for Ridley Scott's best film since Gladiator.
The Martian is always Damon's movie, but as soon as NASA gets involved, and we introduce Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jeff Daniels, Donald Glover, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Benedict Wong, the film starts to feel like a class project in middle school, where everyone's working to solve each puzzle. The solutions these characters come up with to unprecedented problems are fascinating, and do a service to the ingenuity behind Andy Weir's original novel and Drew Goddard's screenplay (an Oscar nom is all but announced). The spirit of collaboration really shines through in this film, and while the entire film isn't sunshine and rainbows (the scene where Mark performs emergency surgery on his gut comes strikingly to mind), I always leave this film with a positive feeling and a smile on my face. But maybe that's just the disco...
5) Creed - I'm going to take a brief moment here to brag, because I feel like the only one of my friends who truly believed in this film. I was ready since the first rumors. When I saw Michael B. Jordan shadowboxing in the trailer, got a taste of his physical prowess and transformation, I knew this was a must-see. When my screening ended, a week before the film's release, I knew this was one of the year's best films. 96 million dollars, a 93% "certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a Golden Globe nomination for Sylvester Stallone later, I think the rest of the world has (finally) caught up with me.
Creed and the rest of the Rocky franchise has a way of getting me excited about movies, not in the bombast a superhero picture will bring, but in the form of escapism that seems attainable. Philadelphia has an actual statue of Rocky Balboa, and when watching Sylvester Stallone's Rocky or Michael B. Jordan's Adonis, I feel a connection to these characters, a sense of realism I rarely feel. These people are so fully realized, so well-performed, that they leap off the screen; Rocky feels like a grandfather, Adonis a cousin. Their stories and hopes stem from such an honest place - the feeling of wanting to pursue one's dream, the desperate search for a justification to continue living - that I never feel I'm in a movie.
As a boxing film, director Ryan Coogler gives the film youth, girt, and flair, and that's what we want from our genre pictures: a fresh way to tell an old story. We can talk about the "one-take fight" or the chicken-chasing, seeing Mick's gym and the almost-possessed gasp to life Adonis has after being knocked down, and these are fantastic choices made by Coogler and team, used to entertain and evoke nostalgia.
However (and I just realized this as I'm typing), my favorite shots in my favorite Rocky movies: VI, I, and this one are the exteriors, the landscapes of the city. In some inexplicable way, this is where these movies transcend their plot, their genre trappings and husky Russians. I get an overwhelming feeling that this neighborhood, this fictional version of Philly, is sincerely alive; this is a product of filmmakers' hard work and collective visions. It's rare to come across characters who inspire you. It's even rarer to believe in them so much, that we allow ourselves the indulgence of thinking we could become them.
4) The Gift - I heard The Gift, when first reviews were trickling out, was being compared to Hitchcock, deemed worthy of the master of suspense. I don't know if the head of marketing needed to be dunked in ice water, but the trailer didn't sell me at all. I got a laughably bad Lifetime stalker flick with a goofy villain. I certainly didn't think I'd get the scariest film of the year.
The goofy villain I initially scoffed at was Joel Edgerton's Gordon, an old high-school friend of Robyn's (Rebecca Hall) husband, Simon (Jason Bateman). I thought Gordon's blank stare and awkward demeanor was going to be ridiculous, but the film (also written and directed by Edgerton) gives off the vibe that Gordon's not all the way there from the beginning. We see him through Robyn's eyes most of the time, and what works so well is that she conveys that universal feeling with all authenticity, that moment when you get a bad vibe from someone, can't quite place your finger on it, but just know that all you want to do is leave.
Edgerton directs this film like a clock, precise and mechanical; each aspect of the film works to wind you up emotionally, and silence the theater to the point where you can only hear yourself breathe. Robyn and Simon live in a swanky California home with many large windows, she's often framed to the side with lots of blank space available, and at points, you can see Gordon in the background - he's not drawing attention to himself, but he's there. This movie, both physically and emotionally, leaves our characters bare and always scrutinized, and preys upon our fear of losing privacy.
As the film unravels, the laundry list of fears grows; the movie ramps up to a nail-biting, horrifying climax, and I really don't think I've heard so many people over 30 scream before, but I think at the core of The Gift lies an abysmal fear: what would happen if everyone knew your dirty secrets...and you were to embrace the ugliness? Our brains tend to kick us in the teeth so often, in an attempt to keep us from swelling the ego, but I think what we often don't realize is that our brains do this in order to curb the bad thoughts, to stop us from enveloping ourselves in self-destructive behaviors and attitudes. It's so strange, in this modern world of everyday acceptance and always embracing your "inner self", that it would feel healthy to keep some of this closed off, but what The Gift reminds us is, as the extraordinarily cheesy tagline sums up, "not every gift is welcome."
3) Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens - What can I write about The Force Awakens that almost literally EVERYONE hasn't? Honestly, I feel it's too early to do a retrospective on what this movie means to me, because I'm still living in it! The Force Awakens is currently $10 million away from Avatar's domestic box-office record, landing on everyone's top ten lists (guilty), revitalizing the fan base who refuses to agree on one theory about any character, from Rey to Luke to the damn Stormtrooper with a spinning baton. The hours I've spent in restaurants while my friend Matt regurgitates every piece of knowledge he has of the extended universe are almost innumerable...and incomprehensible (hehe).
The talk of the movie as a phenomenon eclipses the conversations of its quality, which are both good and bad - I've never seen a theater experience quite so anticipated and revered as this, but it does skew the public's reaction to the film. I tried not to see any trailer on YouTube; any info on The Force Awakens was to be discovered in-theater, which I found helped temper any ridiculous expectations.
I was ready to be transported back into the world I loved, and that's exactly what I got. Spacecraft battles, lightsabers, droids, crazy-lookin' aliens, smugglers, Stormtroopers, the Force - they're all here. I love Rey, Finn, Poe, Kylo, and BB-8; there's no doubt in my mind I'll grow to love them, and my future kid will grow up learning to love them as we watch films together. I think that kind of statement is the best part about the whole thing; Star Wars is lodged in the firmament of our culture, not only in America, but worldwide. It spans races, creed, and generations, celebrating our love of boundless imagination and eye-widening storytelling. What can I say, Star Wars is back, in fine form and here to stay.
2) The Man From U.N.C.L.E. - The first time I saw The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was the most fun I've had in a theater in 2015. Talk about a film that brings you back to childhood - I felt like James Bond on an Aston Martin careening down the highway in my Camry afterwards. This is, without a doubt, my favorite spy movie. It's immaculately designed, filled to the brim with action, laugh-out-loud funny; and it revels in the joys of fantasy.
A lot of people are pointing out Finn and Poe's bromance (or potential romance, we'll have to wait till Episode VIII); I point to Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) and Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer). These gentlemen are magnetic, quipping back and forth, arguing about the superiority of their nations like grade-schoolers over a baseball team, leaving Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander) to step in and keep them focused on the mission. For all the chases, stunts, and fights, the movie's best enjoyment comes from the comedy, and specifically, the comedy derived from our dual leads.
Guy Ritchie is the perfect director for this; he doesn't stop for a second, always giving the audience something to look at, whether it be a joke in the background, a dynamically lit close-up of Napoleon's eyes, or a group of extras dressed in gorgeous 60's-era dresses. He consistently tries out different moves with the camera - different angles, zooms, lenses - and curates the selection so well that the end result is exhilarating. There's so much bang for your buck here, and it is all wonderfully worth it.
1) Room - Room blindsided me. Up until December, I would've told you my favorite film of the year was The Man From U.N.C.L.E., but 45 minutes into this film, I had a realization: not only was this my favorite movie of the year, but one of my favorites, period. It's one of those rare movies that gives me an honest appreciation of life and the inherent beauty of it and what the future holds.
Jack (Jacob Tremblay) is five years old. He lives with his mom (Brie Larson) in Room. Every day, they wake up, eat breakfast, do stretches, watch TV, and color. Jack is infinitely curious and likes to ask his mom a lot of questions, which she happily and readily answers. Jack tells us about his understanding of life: there's Room, then TV, then Space. He and his mom are real, but the people in TV are flat and made of colors. Space is seen through Skylight and full of stars. The movie tells the story of their lives from Jack's 5th birthday forward.
And honestly, that's all I can tell you.
In the spirit of discovery, and having an audience discover things for themselves, you're going to have to trust me with this and only use what I've given you. Don't worry, I've tested this with my girlfriend - it's better to go into this thing cold . What I can tell you is that Tremblay and Larson are an incredible duo with Oscar-worthy performances; there's never a moment where I forget they're not really mother and son. The script, written by the novel's author, Emma Donoghue, is masterful, loaded with passion, love, intelligence, tension, and the sincerest joy. Director Lenny Abrahamson tells it all faithfully through Jack's point of view; we experience everything through his eyes, his resilience, exuberance, frustrations, and love for his mom. He never lets Jack know more than he should for the audience's sake; we're right here with him, and Jack is a delight to spend two hours with. Two hours feels way too short.
Jack and his mom represent two sides of my sentiments towards time. His mom finds herself caught by the pains of the past, finding it difficult to move on with life. In contrast, Jack is open, always looking forward to the future and new experiences. He helps her overcome personal traumas, and likewise, I feel I should do the same. Room is a heart-changing experience, one that broke me down and built me back up. It's a testament to the spiritual experience film can provide, in allowing us to connect with other human beings, and both the darkest and brightest parts of ourselves. It is great art, great storytelling, and my favorite movie of 2015.
Thank you all for reading; I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.
Honorable Mentions (think of this as #15-11):
- Bridge of Spies
- Dope
- Jurassic World
- Macbeth
- Crimson Peak
"Spotlight" is the name of the Boston Globe's investigative team, and the movie recounts their 2001 look at the Catholic Church's cover-up of pedophile priests since the '70s and '80s. As the team (played by Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Brian D'Arcy James) investigates, they learn how entrenched the cover-up really is, as the story mutates from a local presence to an international epidemic.
No review I've read mentions director Tom McCarthy's and cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi's use of space; they'll often shoot conversations from a distance, or put the characters at the bottom of the frame and leave the rest wide open, usually with a church looming in the back. The Catholic Church's power is always felt, and even when characters converse about these highly sensitive topics in public, in a way that honestly, anyone should be able to become privy to with ease, no passerby ever does a double-take - they just keep walking. McCarthy perverts our visual understanding of what makes up a normal conversation to highlight how the Boston community's awareness of this behavior; everyone knows about these stories, but because of the Church's cultural influence in the city, especially in its lower-income neighborhoods, no one wants to speak out and undergo a stigma from the rest of the community.
The film doesn't glorify its protagonists; at one point, it highlights how, initially, the Globe buried the story in the Metro section, putting Keaton's character in a poor light. It doesn't shirk blame from anyone, not the Church, the community, the police, or the media. Ultimately, it's a combination of all these people, intertwined, that led to this institutional cover-up. As the film peels back layer by layer, I found myself disgusted; after a while, these cases feel like a virus, consuming every corner, every home, rotting a community from the inside out. Spotlight is important for this reason: it highlights how power can lead to an overall moral degradation, and how the extent of corruption can grow, exponentially, when justice isn't sought out. This is a tense, thoughtful, important film.
Writer-director Adam McKay soaks the world of Wall Street in pop culture, to showcase where the average person's focus was at the time. While Steve Carell fails to get it through to a stripper that she won't be able to refinance on her six mortgages, Finn Wittrock and John Magaro's characters are brushed off by stock traders, who'd rather play at the gun range than discuss the faultiness of subprime loans. In a brilliant move, the film uses celebrity cameos to teach concepts that sound scary to most, like 'collateralized debt obligations'; it gets us laymen in the know while making it easy to understand.
The film does a great job of using comedy to deal with tragedy; I can't help but chuckle as Christian Bale talks to the two Goldman Sachs reps about setting up a bet against the housing market, and they (like so many in this film) have the best "Are...are you kidding me?" looks on their faces. We know Dr. Burry is right, so for the rest of the film, we're waiting on the punchline, waiting to see these idiots get their just desserts.
However, when the bomb drops, it's not funny. It's foreshadowed by Brad Pitt's character, as he equates every percentage point of employment to the death of 40,000 people, but it's when the market crashes that the film sobers up, from hearing a giddy Ryan Gosling scream, "I'm jacked to the TITS!" (a line I hope to God people start yelling at him as he walks down the street), to watching a husband, wife, and two preschool kids reduced to living in a sedan.
Carell and Bale (in an especially top-notch performance) do inspired work, and while the star-studded cast gets in great performances, check out lesser-known actors, like Wittrock and Magaro as a young trading duo, and Jeremy Strong as one of Carell's team.
The Big Short delivers a dark chapter of American history with heart, humor, and wit. If you come out of the film as pissed and outraged as I did, good. That's how it's supposed to be.
This movie relies solely on execution, because if you were to tell me a year ago that I'd honor a film about a sexually-transmitted demon stalking teenagers as one of the best films of the year, I'd punch you in the gut. But from the first trailer, with its unapologetic '80s vibe, complete with a synth-laden masterpiece of a score (shout-out to Disasterpiece), I was hooked and hyped; subsequently, the film didn't disappoint.
Maika Monroe is great as Jay, a Detroit teen, who falls for a guy named Hugh, and they have a budding romance. However, as soon as they hook up, she wakes up under a bridge, tied to a wheelchair. Hugh begins to explain that the "thing" that's following her is passed on sexually, and will hunt her down until it either kills or Jay passes it on to someone else. The thing only walks, which feels easily avoidable, but the rub is, it's smart, and can look like anyone, even people in Jay's life. This demon preys on her psychologically, whittling down her sanity, all the while waiting for a chance to get her in a corner.
The film does a great job of using wide landscapes, that seem to stretch a mile wide, in contrast with our heroine, usually in the middle of the frame. I find myself constantly looking in the background, and the tension that hits my chest whenever I see someone walking towards Jay and her friends sent shivers up my spine. Most of the film is spent in anticipation, to the point that when the monster does appear, it hits the right level of shock and terror.
Mitchell uses the demon to comment on female sexuality and how it factors into a woman's identity. After Jay has sex with Hugh, everyone approaches her hesitantly, with caution, even though there's no way they'll get the demon chasing after them; this is Jay's fight, and ultimately, she has to confront the consequences. Throughout the movie, most of the supporting cast's conversations with Jay are specifically about sex; luckily, we get enough in the beginning to get a sense of Jay's personality, but because her sexuality is forced to the front of every conservation, she ends up becoming objectified (Hugh at one point, remarks Jay shouldn't have a problem passing it on because of her physique). Even a towel-covered Jay, in one scene, looks down at her vagina in horror, in an attempt to externalize it from herself. It Follows highlights the psychological deterioration that can occur in someone's mind from being identified primarily through sexual terms, serving as a biting critique of the horror genre's clichéd "virgin-whore complex".
Are there technical problems and lapses of logic from our heroes? Of course, especially in the third act (seriously, a toaster?), but what works here, works so well. If you're in the mood for a chiller, It Follows is a must-see.
Vikander, in a word, is deliberate. In a move that'd ensure Robert Downey Jr's character from Tropic Thunder a headache, Vikander is a human, disguised as an android, who's supposed to walk and talk like a human, but not the stilted, mechanical Bishop from Alien way, just 15 degrees shy of full-blown human - you never go full human. She delivers a masterful performance, adapting in the slightest gradients, according to what the audience is meant to perceive about her "humanity."
The film isn't a seminar; Ex Machina is visceral & violent, with a dark sense of humor and foreboding atmosphere, drenched in crisp, saturated colors. Equals parts Paul Verhoeven and David Cronenberg, Ex Machina challenges and disturbs, yet leaves me with a hopeful feeling. It feels strange to say, but I'd enjoy a sequel that could explore AI interaction on a wider social plane.
Botanist and last man on Mars Mark Watney (Matt Damon) doesn't have time to fixate on the fearsome majesty of the Red Planet; he's gotta grow potatoes out of poop and set up solar panels for his dune buggy (c'mon America, if a guy who perpetually lives inches away from implosion can sustain himself using solar energy, what's stopping us?)! It's this matter-of-fact, do-or-die attitude, sprinkled with healthy doses of optimism and sarcasm that sets the film apart from Gravity and Interstellar, and makes for Ridley Scott's best film since Gladiator.
The Martian is always Damon's movie, but as soon as NASA gets involved, and we introduce Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jeff Daniels, Donald Glover, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Benedict Wong, the film starts to feel like a class project in middle school, where everyone's working to solve each puzzle. The solutions these characters come up with to unprecedented problems are fascinating, and do a service to the ingenuity behind Andy Weir's original novel and Drew Goddard's screenplay (an Oscar nom is all but announced). The spirit of collaboration really shines through in this film, and while the entire film isn't sunshine and rainbows (the scene where Mark performs emergency surgery on his gut comes strikingly to mind), I always leave this film with a positive feeling and a smile on my face. But maybe that's just the disco...
Creed and the rest of the Rocky franchise has a way of getting me excited about movies, not in the bombast a superhero picture will bring, but in the form of escapism that seems attainable. Philadelphia has an actual statue of Rocky Balboa, and when watching Sylvester Stallone's Rocky or Michael B. Jordan's Adonis, I feel a connection to these characters, a sense of realism I rarely feel. These people are so fully realized, so well-performed, that they leap off the screen; Rocky feels like a grandfather, Adonis a cousin. Their stories and hopes stem from such an honest place - the feeling of wanting to pursue one's dream, the desperate search for a justification to continue living - that I never feel I'm in a movie.
As a boxing film, director Ryan Coogler gives the film youth, girt, and flair, and that's what we want from our genre pictures: a fresh way to tell an old story. We can talk about the "one-take fight" or the chicken-chasing, seeing Mick's gym and the almost-possessed gasp to life Adonis has after being knocked down, and these are fantastic choices made by Coogler and team, used to entertain and evoke nostalgia.
However (and I just realized this as I'm typing), my favorite shots in my favorite Rocky movies: VI, I, and this one are the exteriors, the landscapes of the city. In some inexplicable way, this is where these movies transcend their plot, their genre trappings and husky Russians. I get an overwhelming feeling that this neighborhood, this fictional version of Philly, is sincerely alive; this is a product of filmmakers' hard work and collective visions. It's rare to come across characters who inspire you. It's even rarer to believe in them so much, that we allow ourselves the indulgence of thinking we could become them.
The goofy villain I initially scoffed at was Joel Edgerton's Gordon, an old high-school friend of Robyn's (Rebecca Hall) husband, Simon (Jason Bateman). I thought Gordon's blank stare and awkward demeanor was going to be ridiculous, but the film (also written and directed by Edgerton) gives off the vibe that Gordon's not all the way there from the beginning. We see him through Robyn's eyes most of the time, and what works so well is that she conveys that universal feeling with all authenticity, that moment when you get a bad vibe from someone, can't quite place your finger on it, but just know that all you want to do is leave.
Edgerton directs this film like a clock, precise and mechanical; each aspect of the film works to wind you up emotionally, and silence the theater to the point where you can only hear yourself breathe. Robyn and Simon live in a swanky California home with many large windows, she's often framed to the side with lots of blank space available, and at points, you can see Gordon in the background - he's not drawing attention to himself, but he's there. This movie, both physically and emotionally, leaves our characters bare and always scrutinized, and preys upon our fear of losing privacy.
As the film unravels, the laundry list of fears grows; the movie ramps up to a nail-biting, horrifying climax, and I really don't think I've heard so many people over 30 scream before, but I think at the core of The Gift lies an abysmal fear: what would happen if everyone knew your dirty secrets...and you were to embrace the ugliness? Our brains tend to kick us in the teeth so often, in an attempt to keep us from swelling the ego, but I think what we often don't realize is that our brains do this in order to curb the bad thoughts, to stop us from enveloping ourselves in self-destructive behaviors and attitudes. It's so strange, in this modern world of everyday acceptance and always embracing your "inner self", that it would feel healthy to keep some of this closed off, but what The Gift reminds us is, as the extraordinarily cheesy tagline sums up, "not every gift is welcome."
The talk of the movie as a phenomenon eclipses the conversations of its quality, which are both good and bad - I've never seen a theater experience quite so anticipated and revered as this, but it does skew the public's reaction to the film. I tried not to see any trailer on YouTube; any info on The Force Awakens was to be discovered in-theater, which I found helped temper any ridiculous expectations.
I was ready to be transported back into the world I loved, and that's exactly what I got. Spacecraft battles, lightsabers, droids, crazy-lookin' aliens, smugglers, Stormtroopers, the Force - they're all here. I love Rey, Finn, Poe, Kylo, and BB-8; there's no doubt in my mind I'll grow to love them, and my future kid will grow up learning to love them as we watch films together. I think that kind of statement is the best part about the whole thing; Star Wars is lodged in the firmament of our culture, not only in America, but worldwide. It spans races, creed, and generations, celebrating our love of boundless imagination and eye-widening storytelling. What can I say, Star Wars is back, in fine form and here to stay.
A lot of people are pointing out Finn and Poe's bromance (or potential romance, we'll have to wait till Episode VIII); I point to Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) and Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer). These gentlemen are magnetic, quipping back and forth, arguing about the superiority of their nations like grade-schoolers over a baseball team, leaving Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander) to step in and keep them focused on the mission. For all the chases, stunts, and fights, the movie's best enjoyment comes from the comedy, and specifically, the comedy derived from our dual leads.
Guy Ritchie is the perfect director for this; he doesn't stop for a second, always giving the audience something to look at, whether it be a joke in the background, a dynamically lit close-up of Napoleon's eyes, or a group of extras dressed in gorgeous 60's-era dresses. He consistently tries out different moves with the camera - different angles, zooms, lenses - and curates the selection so well that the end result is exhilarating. There's so much bang for your buck here, and it is all wonderfully worth it.
1) Room - Room blindsided me. Up until December, I would've told you my favorite film of the year was The Man From U.N.C.L.E., but 45 minutes into this film, I had a realization: not only was this my favorite movie of the year, but one of my favorites, period. It's one of those rare movies that gives me an honest appreciation of life and the inherent beauty of it and what the future holds.Jack (Jacob Tremblay) is five years old. He lives with his mom (Brie Larson) in Room. Every day, they wake up, eat breakfast, do stretches, watch TV, and color. Jack is infinitely curious and likes to ask his mom a lot of questions, which she happily and readily answers. Jack tells us about his understanding of life: there's Room, then TV, then Space. He and his mom are real, but the people in TV are flat and made of colors. Space is seen through Skylight and full of stars. The movie tells the story of their lives from Jack's 5th birthday forward.
And honestly, that's all I can tell you.
In the spirit of discovery, and having an audience discover things for themselves, you're going to have to trust me with this and only use what I've given you. Don't worry, I've tested this with my girlfriend - it's better to go into this thing cold . What I can tell you is that Tremblay and Larson are an incredible duo with Oscar-worthy performances; there's never a moment where I forget they're not really mother and son. The script, written by the novel's author, Emma Donoghue, is masterful, loaded with passion, love, intelligence, tension, and the sincerest joy. Director Lenny Abrahamson tells it all faithfully through Jack's point of view; we experience everything through his eyes, his resilience, exuberance, frustrations, and love for his mom. He never lets Jack know more than he should for the audience's sake; we're right here with him, and Jack is a delight to spend two hours with. Two hours feels way too short.
Jack and his mom represent two sides of my sentiments towards time. His mom finds herself caught by the pains of the past, finding it difficult to move on with life. In contrast, Jack is open, always looking forward to the future and new experiences. He helps her overcome personal traumas, and likewise, I feel I should do the same. Room is a heart-changing experience, one that broke me down and built me back up. It's a testament to the spiritual experience film can provide, in allowing us to connect with other human beings, and both the darkest and brightest parts of ourselves. It is great art, great storytelling, and my favorite movie of 2015.
Thank you all for reading; I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.
Monday, January 4, 2016
My Top 10 WORST Movies of 2015!
Well, it's that time of year again, the time to wipe the cinematic bird shit off the windshield of my mind. In 2015, I actively avoided a lot of junk, so you won't see any mentions of Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, Hot Pursuit, or Fifty Shades of Grey. However, you can't dodge 'em all. So, as part of my tradition, the first part of my annual retrospective begins, with my top 10 WORST movies of 2015!
A Few Films For Whom I Spared the Axe:
- Poltergeist
- Insidious: Chapter 3
- Chappie
- '71
- The Transporter Refueled
10) Project Almanac: This was last January's addition to the "_____-crossed-with-found-footage" genre. For a few years, horror was the only one paired with the style, but if it's easy to make and profit's all but guaranteed, why not spread the love?
Because the result is a time travel picture that's riddled not only with lazily-written archetypes and plot, but now features the additional hurdle of explaining why a camera is filming EVERYTHING.
Three teens (the smart one, the crude one, and the minority) build a time machine out of Xbox parts and partake in the wish fulfillment one expects: they get rich, get the girl, fight bullies, etc. Problem is, this only fills up twenty minutes, so in the span of a few scenes, the stakes go from "Can I date the girl?" to "Can I stop the implosion of the space-time continuum?" so fast, it causes whiplash. The latter half of this film is so sloppily laden with cliches and rip-offs from other films, that by the end, if only to prevent a migraine, I gave up trying to understand, and settled for one of the movie's twenty explanations that felt familiar. Familiar is not a synonym for satisfying.
9) The Last Witch Hunter: Didn't this kind of movie die in the mid-2000's? With Constantine, Van Helsing, and the Mummy series? Let's take an action hero and have him save the world from some poorly CGI'd supernatural forces - rinse, wash, and repeat. Welcome to The Last Witch Hunter.
I feel this film's running on autopilot, but Vin Diesel isn't. He genuinely seems excited to play this character, to swing around a fire sword and be the hero who punches rock spiders in the face; it wouldn't surprise me if Vin Diesel was the product of a Big-style wish, where he was twelve and wished to be a 30-year-old muscleman. The glee and exuberance he brings to this otherwise hackneyed, stale product is the film's only source of light.
Otherwise, there are one-liners, magic fights, a hot girl, some shallow backstory involving the death of family, a fish-out-of-water element; I've seen these things before, and the fact that Michael Caine is involved only cements the thought further in my mind that paychecks needed to be made, and the thought process behind it was nigh-bankrupt.
8) Max: What do you get when you cross the director of Remember the Titans and the writer of Rambo III? A heartwarming story about a boy, his PTSD-ridden dog, and an arms-smuggling cartel of course! Doesn't that sound like the greatest of family-friendly entertainment?
Max is a maddeningly stupid film with good intentions. It's important to recognize the work dogs in the military do, serving as scouts and trackers. The film's initial scenes, where Max helps his handler's troop sniff out weapons, being thrust into battle, laden with explosions and all sorts of gunfire, is hard to watch. It helps us understand the kind of trauma Max undergoes from war, especially when his handler dies.
If the film were focused solely on the relationship between the handler's brother and dog, each dealing with their grief and anxiety, the movie could turn out a touching drama. However, Max feels the need to waste time with a pointless love interest, a racist Mexican stereotype, and a forced '80s-era action subplot, masqueraded behind patriotic iconography and atmosphere, because apparently, the filmmakers think we'll find it impossible to criticize anything with an American flag on it.
It's in the last thirty minutes the film gets ridiculous, as Max and the boy take on cartel thugs (who happen to have their own Rottweilers, because the playing field needs to be even). The characters make the dumbest tactical decisions, not least of which being the boy's mom, who just lets he and his friends bike off alone into the forest without any police support. This latter conflict is completely unnecessary, and reeks of a screenwriter who lacks the confidence to let the strength of the drama play out naturally.
Max came out the same weekend as Ted 2, made in an attempt to grab all the box office from the anti-Ted crowd. It's a film that feels manipulative, tugging at heartstrings and using key images of patriotism, the Marines, and right-wing values in order to appease its market share, even if the story is lazily written and executed. War dogs don't deserve this kind of tribute.
7) Taken 3: The budget for Taken 3 was around $48 million. $20 million went to Liam Neeson. Say what you want about the film, the man knows how to get paid.
Taken 3 reminds me of a short film I made for a class sophomore year, where I showed a character going up the stairs in two steps - from the floor to the stair and the stair to the second floor. In my mind, I had to use two cuts to convey one motion. I didn't give my audience enough credit to understand what I meant; I was in high school and had never made a film. So why does Olivier Megaton, director of Taken 2, Colombiana, and Transporter 3, films produced for commercial release, with million-dollar budgets, think he can get away with using SEVEN cuts to show Liam Neeson jumping a fence?
This is the worst-directed action film I have ever seen, with camerawork that makes it look like the operator's undergoing a gang initiation, lifeless fight sequences, and a cast who's making it too apparent they're there to collect a paycheck. There's a highway chase that's filmed so incomprehensibly, I let the seizure of 18-wheelers and sports car squeals wash over me, without any attempt to make sense of it. By the end, my friend had a migraine.
It bodes worse for Taken 3 that not four months had passed before Run All Night, the gruff, hard "R" mafia/cop chase flick brought Neeson back to form. That film is no masterpiece, but he shows more life, personality, and dirty charm than in both Taken sequels combined. And the best part is the camera stays still.
6) Jupiter Ascending: February's Jupiter Ascending is an anti-masterpiece, an infinitely ambitious, completely misguided, cosmically beautiful and bloated mess of a film. Made on a $176 million budget and grossing only $47 million, this was 2015's first truly colossal bomb.
Honestly, there's a soft spot in my heart for it, because the movie is directed by the Wachowskis (The Matrix), so the production design, costuming, makeup, and visual effects (as far as backgrounds go), are top notch. This duo is so good at building a world, showing an audience something that's both inspired by science fiction of the past, but done in a completely new way. The film has a gloss that feels right at home with what would be something like a soap opera set in space.
Unfortunately, that soap opera element is what plagues Jupiter Ascending. For all intents and purposes, this is a $176 million version of Dallas set in space. The basic plot involves Mary Sue - I mean, Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) - being whisked from alien bounty hunter to alien half-wolf/half-human hero (Channing Tatum) as she learns she's the genetic owner of a load of planets (including Earth) and star systems in the galaxy. That's weird, but not too hard to follow...until you add in three siblings and their subplots involving each of their attempts to swindle, steal, or otherwise influence Jupiter to give them her planets. There's a lot of space law mumbo-jumbo (even a scene set in this world's version of the DMV), erratically dorky metaphors (all of Earth's bees surround her in a protective cloud armor because bees can, ya know, sense royalty), and some of the most cringe-worthy and yet, wholly wonderfully quotable lines of the decade.
Had this film been trimmed down half an hour and the plot kept relatively simple, I could recommend this as a great movie to riff, but in a packed theater on a Friday night, I found myself bored, confused, and eventually annoyed. Eddie Redmayne, mere weeks before he would win the Best Actor Oscar for The Theory of Everything, gives a performance that suggests the Wachowskis slipped quaaludes and speed in his drinks before every scene; he goes from an effeminate cooing lull to a psychotic rage in the snap of a finger. Needless to say, he's the best part of the movie - a dash of goofiness in a film that takes itself too seriously.
5) Youth: Welcome back, Michael Caine, to your second inclusion on the list. This choice may be my greatest point of contention with the general populace, because Rotten Tomatoes gives this a 75%, the film's earned Golden Globes and Palme D'Or nominations, in a film that thoroughly reeks of pretension and apathy.
Caine plays a retired composer on vacation with his daughter (Rachel Weisz) at a Swiss mountain resort. Along with Caine is his best friend, an auteur director player by Harvey Keitel, who's working with his team of twenty-somethings on the last draft of his "testament", his legacy project. They come across a cast of strange characters, including a mustachioed actor known only for voicing a robot (Paul Dano), a stupidly-rich, rotund South American (Roly Serrano), and an always-horny, Just Dance-playing massuese (Luna Zimic Mijovic).
The movie slugs around aimlessly, as Caine and Keitel engage in conversations about how life isn't what it used to be, artists search for the truth, and music requires not experience or understanding to appreciate it. None of these mini think pieces feel connected, and are inter-cut with odd musical performances or abstract transitions, filled with gorgeously composed shots - "a tale...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
In reflection, I'm grasping at straws to find how each person's story and adventure relates back to youth, but in the grand scheme, the film is such an ordeal to watch, that when a scene featuring Caine and Keitel spying on an elderly couple having sex in the forest appears...what the hell do you even say to that?
4) Scouts' Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse: The night my friends and I went to go see Scouts' Guide, the theater I work at wasn't playing it, so I couldn't get in for free. That night, I spent $33 on three tickets for me, my girlfriend, and friend. I'm pretty sure this was the worst financial decision I've ever made.
Scouts is an idiotic film, and if you enjoy such winning jokes as taking selfies with a topless zombie cop, or an undead Cloris Leachman licking a teenage anus, you may be able to nestle comfortably in its chokehold of stupidity. The film was sold as a balls-to-the-wall goofy horror-comedy, where the main characters' scouting skills would be put to perfect use against the zombies, full of D.I.Y. weaponry. Sadly, this only takes up about ten minutes of the climax. Watching the boys kick ass is fun, when the cinematography is intelligible, a feat achieved about 30% of the time. Devoid of the cheerful slapstick featured in something like Evil Dead II, this film relies on its characters: vapid, disgusting, misogynistic stereotypes of millenials.
As a zombie film, it breaks its already arbitrary rules to create an unconvincing invasion. As a comedy, the jokes fall flat, when they don't appeal to anyone who finds genitalia the apex of humor. The horror is non-existent, left only to a smattering of jumpscares. When the film tries to have a heart and be earnest about friendship, it's awkward, because the bulk of the film is spent with characters who could really give a rat's ass about each other. As Paramount heavily promoted the trailer in the middle of the ending credits of Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, the true intentions for Scouts' Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse are revealed: to make a buck - quick, cheap, and effortless.
3) Unfriended: Any novelty that Unfriended has will die within the next three years. With the quickening pace of technology, the demise of a program like Skype, in favor of some hologram or virtual reality communication simulator is all but certain. So, if a movie based entirely on watching someone's computer screen, navigating between Skype, Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube is going to be old news in a couple years, the only thing that could propel Unfriended into long-term relevance is its quality as a movie - characters, plot, cinematography, dialogue, etc.
There's not a chance in hell.
Unfriended director Levan Gabriadze and writer Nelson Greaves take inspiration from the kind of film criticism that dismissed Friday the 13th as a misanthropic youth's torture porn. A horror audience, in their minds, is only there to revel in murder, playing out high school revenge fantasies, so in order to really get a crowd worked up, Gabriadze and Greaves make their characters petty, loathsome, and obnoxious. They reduce teenagers to hormonal sociopaths, who, when faced with the prospect of death, will place more attention on eating-disorder rumors and "Never Have I Ever" than the creepy Skype ghost killing off their friends one by one.
It's not like awful teenagers in horror movies are uncommon, though I must admit, these stereotypes have gotten more extreme since the films of the '80s. Where Unfriended steps out of "obnoxious" and into "insulting" is when it tries to interject an anti-bullying message. The awful teens are getting their fair dose of karma, and at the end, it looks as if the last person standing will have to bear the weight and scope of the consequences, stemming off of a stupid and vicious joke.
Or the ghost will just lash out at the screen and kill them. The end.
To trade out an ending, that while not executed effectively, belies the promise of some sense of morality, for a cheap scare; to trade out significant commentary about cyber-bullying, an act which serves as one of the motives for the approximately 4,600 suicides of youth aged between 10 and 24 (TEN YEARS OLD), for a ten-second spook, is morally condemning.
And the fact it sits at a "fresh" 62% on Rotten Tomatoes sickens me.
2) Love the Coopers: I had a tough time debating between this and my #1 choice; I'll tease the next spot with this - I never thought I would leave a movie theater as angry throughout the latter half of 2015 as I did leaving the next film in the list. Love the Coopers missed being the year's worst by the skin of its ass.
At face value, this should've been something I loved. For those who don't know, my favorite movie is A Christmas Story. In particular, I'm a fan of its realistic portrayal of all sorts of people's sentiments about the holiday - good, bad, and even the "Bah, humbug!" I'm also just a sucker for Christmas movies in general; I love the wintry atmosphere and even with a crude or adult-oriented flick like Bad Santa, the heart and joy of the holiday manages to squeak out. I enjoy movies based around an ensemble: Birdman, Silver Linings Playbook, Love Actually, Trumbo, Reservoir Dogs, 12 Angry Men, Valentine's Day. Damn it, I get a kick out of freakin' VALENTINE'S DAY, a kitschy, star-studded holiday movie. Why do I hate Love the Coopers so much?
After thinking about it in bursts of fury for a couple months, I think the film is indecisive on what it wants to be. It tries to present Christmas in the way all kinds of people think about it, but its characters are all offensive, punchable stereotypes: Olivia Munn is an alcoholic failed writer who demonizes a soldier, without provocation, for his Christian and Republican beliefs; Marisa Tomei squawks and chatters in the back of Anthony Mackie's cop car as a woman whose petty jealousy towards her sister leads her to steal a brooch and walk out the store with it in her mouth; the final straw to break John Goodman's forty-year marriage to Diane Keaton is their inability to take a safari trip to Africa (oh, boo-hoo). These characters aren't charming or funny, given any redeeming qualities to help me overlook their pathetic attitudes towards their families.
And I wouldn't have quite the problem I do if the film was meant as a complete lambaste on the fake smiles we give each other at the holiday table ever year, but in the last half-hour, the movie tries to go sincere, and it doesn't earn it. It doesn't matter how cute the resolution is; I had to sit through eighty minutes of people being absolutely awful to each other. I'm just saying, if you punch me in the face, a candy cane won't make it any better. Love the Coopers was an absolute slog to sit through; luckily, I got to see Spotlight afterwards, and all was right with the world.
1) The Gallows: If you've been reading my work since July, any time I make reference to horror, I use this film as a benchmark. In a strange admission, I have to thank this movie for giving a name to my pain, an example of everything that is wrong with this genre. The Gallows is moronic like Scouts and maddening like Unfriended, but the contempt it holds for an audience condemns it further, not as just a failure, but rather an affront to all moviegoers.
A ghost haunts a high school; stupid teens are rummaging around at night. Add some found-footage and a heap of jack-in-the-box jumps at the screen, and you've got a 2000's-era scary movie. However, The Gallows adds Ryan.
Ryan (Ryan Shoos) is a repugnant, morally bankrupt bully, picking on "geeks" like it's the '80s, with the most infuriating, snide, crackling whine in recorded history (if Whitey's from Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights is the 8th circle of Hell, Ryan's is the 10th). He is the person the movie follows for 80% of the running time, and we also have the misfortune of having him as our camera operator. My blood is about to evaporate.
The ghost's motive makes no sense; neither does our heroes' (I feel dirty writing that) solution. It doesn't take a master of metaphysics to realize correlation doesn't equal causation - just because the ghost kills using the gallows doesn't mean it's a good idea to go over there and abandon the open door to freedom. And with that move, the movie spits in our faces, mocking us by acknowledging their writing is shoddy and refusing to fix our suspension of disbelief; they don't care about the story, but rather the width of their wallets.
What hurts me the most about The Gallows is that in 2015, like every year, there were imaginative films, like Room, Turbo Kid, It Follows, and Ex Machina, who received little to nothing in the way of support from major production companies or distributors. The Gallows was released by New Line Cinema, distributed by Warner Bros.
A Few Films For Whom I Spared the Axe:
- Poltergeist
- Insidious: Chapter 3
- Chappie
- '71
- The Transporter Refueled
Because the result is a time travel picture that's riddled not only with lazily-written archetypes and plot, but now features the additional hurdle of explaining why a camera is filming EVERYTHING.
Three teens (the smart one, the crude one, and the minority) build a time machine out of Xbox parts and partake in the wish fulfillment one expects: they get rich, get the girl, fight bullies, etc. Problem is, this only fills up twenty minutes, so in the span of a few scenes, the stakes go from "Can I date the girl?" to "Can I stop the implosion of the space-time continuum?" so fast, it causes whiplash. The latter half of this film is so sloppily laden with cliches and rip-offs from other films, that by the end, if only to prevent a migraine, I gave up trying to understand, and settled for one of the movie's twenty explanations that felt familiar. Familiar is not a synonym for satisfying.
9) The Last Witch Hunter: Didn't this kind of movie die in the mid-2000's? With Constantine, Van Helsing, and the Mummy series? Let's take an action hero and have him save the world from some poorly CGI'd supernatural forces - rinse, wash, and repeat. Welcome to The Last Witch Hunter.I feel this film's running on autopilot, but Vin Diesel isn't. He genuinely seems excited to play this character, to swing around a fire sword and be the hero who punches rock spiders in the face; it wouldn't surprise me if Vin Diesel was the product of a Big-style wish, where he was twelve and wished to be a 30-year-old muscleman. The glee and exuberance he brings to this otherwise hackneyed, stale product is the film's only source of light.
Otherwise, there are one-liners, magic fights, a hot girl, some shallow backstory involving the death of family, a fish-out-of-water element; I've seen these things before, and the fact that Michael Caine is involved only cements the thought further in my mind that paychecks needed to be made, and the thought process behind it was nigh-bankrupt.
Max is a maddeningly stupid film with good intentions. It's important to recognize the work dogs in the military do, serving as scouts and trackers. The film's initial scenes, where Max helps his handler's troop sniff out weapons, being thrust into battle, laden with explosions and all sorts of gunfire, is hard to watch. It helps us understand the kind of trauma Max undergoes from war, especially when his handler dies.
If the film were focused solely on the relationship between the handler's brother and dog, each dealing with their grief and anxiety, the movie could turn out a touching drama. However, Max feels the need to waste time with a pointless love interest, a racist Mexican stereotype, and a forced '80s-era action subplot, masqueraded behind patriotic iconography and atmosphere, because apparently, the filmmakers think we'll find it impossible to criticize anything with an American flag on it.
It's in the last thirty minutes the film gets ridiculous, as Max and the boy take on cartel thugs (who happen to have their own Rottweilers, because the playing field needs to be even). The characters make the dumbest tactical decisions, not least of which being the boy's mom, who just lets he and his friends bike off alone into the forest without any police support. This latter conflict is completely unnecessary, and reeks of a screenwriter who lacks the confidence to let the strength of the drama play out naturally.
Max came out the same weekend as Ted 2, made in an attempt to grab all the box office from the anti-Ted crowd. It's a film that feels manipulative, tugging at heartstrings and using key images of patriotism, the Marines, and right-wing values in order to appease its market share, even if the story is lazily written and executed. War dogs don't deserve this kind of tribute.
Taken 3 reminds me of a short film I made for a class sophomore year, where I showed a character going up the stairs in two steps - from the floor to the stair and the stair to the second floor. In my mind, I had to use two cuts to convey one motion. I didn't give my audience enough credit to understand what I meant; I was in high school and had never made a film. So why does Olivier Megaton, director of Taken 2, Colombiana, and Transporter 3, films produced for commercial release, with million-dollar budgets, think he can get away with using SEVEN cuts to show Liam Neeson jumping a fence?
This is the worst-directed action film I have ever seen, with camerawork that makes it look like the operator's undergoing a gang initiation, lifeless fight sequences, and a cast who's making it too apparent they're there to collect a paycheck. There's a highway chase that's filmed so incomprehensibly, I let the seizure of 18-wheelers and sports car squeals wash over me, without any attempt to make sense of it. By the end, my friend had a migraine.
It bodes worse for Taken 3 that not four months had passed before Run All Night, the gruff, hard "R" mafia/cop chase flick brought Neeson back to form. That film is no masterpiece, but he shows more life, personality, and dirty charm than in both Taken sequels combined. And the best part is the camera stays still.
6) Jupiter Ascending: February's Jupiter Ascending is an anti-masterpiece, an infinitely ambitious, completely misguided, cosmically beautiful and bloated mess of a film. Made on a $176 million budget and grossing only $47 million, this was 2015's first truly colossal bomb.Honestly, there's a soft spot in my heart for it, because the movie is directed by the Wachowskis (The Matrix), so the production design, costuming, makeup, and visual effects (as far as backgrounds go), are top notch. This duo is so good at building a world, showing an audience something that's both inspired by science fiction of the past, but done in a completely new way. The film has a gloss that feels right at home with what would be something like a soap opera set in space.
Unfortunately, that soap opera element is what plagues Jupiter Ascending. For all intents and purposes, this is a $176 million version of Dallas set in space. The basic plot involves Mary Sue - I mean, Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) - being whisked from alien bounty hunter to alien half-wolf/half-human hero (Channing Tatum) as she learns she's the genetic owner of a load of planets (including Earth) and star systems in the galaxy. That's weird, but not too hard to follow...until you add in three siblings and their subplots involving each of their attempts to swindle, steal, or otherwise influence Jupiter to give them her planets. There's a lot of space law mumbo-jumbo (even a scene set in this world's version of the DMV), erratically dorky metaphors (all of Earth's bees surround her in a protective cloud armor because bees can, ya know, sense royalty), and some of the most cringe-worthy and yet, wholly wonderfully quotable lines of the decade.
Had this film been trimmed down half an hour and the plot kept relatively simple, I could recommend this as a great movie to riff, but in a packed theater on a Friday night, I found myself bored, confused, and eventually annoyed. Eddie Redmayne, mere weeks before he would win the Best Actor Oscar for The Theory of Everything, gives a performance that suggests the Wachowskis slipped quaaludes and speed in his drinks before every scene; he goes from an effeminate cooing lull to a psychotic rage in the snap of a finger. Needless to say, he's the best part of the movie - a dash of goofiness in a film that takes itself too seriously.
5) Youth: Welcome back, Michael Caine, to your second inclusion on the list. This choice may be my greatest point of contention with the general populace, because Rotten Tomatoes gives this a 75%, the film's earned Golden Globes and Palme D'Or nominations, in a film that thoroughly reeks of pretension and apathy.Caine plays a retired composer on vacation with his daughter (Rachel Weisz) at a Swiss mountain resort. Along with Caine is his best friend, an auteur director player by Harvey Keitel, who's working with his team of twenty-somethings on the last draft of his "testament", his legacy project. They come across a cast of strange characters, including a mustachioed actor known only for voicing a robot (Paul Dano), a stupidly-rich, rotund South American (Roly Serrano), and an always-horny, Just Dance-playing massuese (Luna Zimic Mijovic).
The movie slugs around aimlessly, as Caine and Keitel engage in conversations about how life isn't what it used to be, artists search for the truth, and music requires not experience or understanding to appreciate it. None of these mini think pieces feel connected, and are inter-cut with odd musical performances or abstract transitions, filled with gorgeously composed shots - "a tale...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
In reflection, I'm grasping at straws to find how each person's story and adventure relates back to youth, but in the grand scheme, the film is such an ordeal to watch, that when a scene featuring Caine and Keitel spying on an elderly couple having sex in the forest appears...what the hell do you even say to that?
4) Scouts' Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse: The night my friends and I went to go see Scouts' Guide, the theater I work at wasn't playing it, so I couldn't get in for free. That night, I spent $33 on three tickets for me, my girlfriend, and friend. I'm pretty sure this was the worst financial decision I've ever made.Scouts is an idiotic film, and if you enjoy such winning jokes as taking selfies with a topless zombie cop, or an undead Cloris Leachman licking a teenage anus, you may be able to nestle comfortably in its chokehold of stupidity. The film was sold as a balls-to-the-wall goofy horror-comedy, where the main characters' scouting skills would be put to perfect use against the zombies, full of D.I.Y. weaponry. Sadly, this only takes up about ten minutes of the climax. Watching the boys kick ass is fun, when the cinematography is intelligible, a feat achieved about 30% of the time. Devoid of the cheerful slapstick featured in something like Evil Dead II, this film relies on its characters: vapid, disgusting, misogynistic stereotypes of millenials.
As a zombie film, it breaks its already arbitrary rules to create an unconvincing invasion. As a comedy, the jokes fall flat, when they don't appeal to anyone who finds genitalia the apex of humor. The horror is non-existent, left only to a smattering of jumpscares. When the film tries to have a heart and be earnest about friendship, it's awkward, because the bulk of the film is spent with characters who could really give a rat's ass about each other. As Paramount heavily promoted the trailer in the middle of the ending credits of Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, the true intentions for Scouts' Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse are revealed: to make a buck - quick, cheap, and effortless.
There's not a chance in hell.
Unfriended director Levan Gabriadze and writer Nelson Greaves take inspiration from the kind of film criticism that dismissed Friday the 13th as a misanthropic youth's torture porn. A horror audience, in their minds, is only there to revel in murder, playing out high school revenge fantasies, so in order to really get a crowd worked up, Gabriadze and Greaves make their characters petty, loathsome, and obnoxious. They reduce teenagers to hormonal sociopaths, who, when faced with the prospect of death, will place more attention on eating-disorder rumors and "Never Have I Ever" than the creepy Skype ghost killing off their friends one by one.
It's not like awful teenagers in horror movies are uncommon, though I must admit, these stereotypes have gotten more extreme since the films of the '80s. Where Unfriended steps out of "obnoxious" and into "insulting" is when it tries to interject an anti-bullying message. The awful teens are getting their fair dose of karma, and at the end, it looks as if the last person standing will have to bear the weight and scope of the consequences, stemming off of a stupid and vicious joke.
Or the ghost will just lash out at the screen and kill them. The end.
To trade out an ending, that while not executed effectively, belies the promise of some sense of morality, for a cheap scare; to trade out significant commentary about cyber-bullying, an act which serves as one of the motives for the approximately 4,600 suicides of youth aged between 10 and 24 (TEN YEARS OLD), for a ten-second spook, is morally condemning.
And the fact it sits at a "fresh" 62% on Rotten Tomatoes sickens me.
At face value, this should've been something I loved. For those who don't know, my favorite movie is A Christmas Story. In particular, I'm a fan of its realistic portrayal of all sorts of people's sentiments about the holiday - good, bad, and even the "Bah, humbug!" I'm also just a sucker for Christmas movies in general; I love the wintry atmosphere and even with a crude or adult-oriented flick like Bad Santa, the heart and joy of the holiday manages to squeak out. I enjoy movies based around an ensemble: Birdman, Silver Linings Playbook, Love Actually, Trumbo, Reservoir Dogs, 12 Angry Men, Valentine's Day. Damn it, I get a kick out of freakin' VALENTINE'S DAY, a kitschy, star-studded holiday movie. Why do I hate Love the Coopers so much?
After thinking about it in bursts of fury for a couple months, I think the film is indecisive on what it wants to be. It tries to present Christmas in the way all kinds of people think about it, but its characters are all offensive, punchable stereotypes: Olivia Munn is an alcoholic failed writer who demonizes a soldier, without provocation, for his Christian and Republican beliefs; Marisa Tomei squawks and chatters in the back of Anthony Mackie's cop car as a woman whose petty jealousy towards her sister leads her to steal a brooch and walk out the store with it in her mouth; the final straw to break John Goodman's forty-year marriage to Diane Keaton is their inability to take a safari trip to Africa (oh, boo-hoo). These characters aren't charming or funny, given any redeeming qualities to help me overlook their pathetic attitudes towards their families.
And I wouldn't have quite the problem I do if the film was meant as a complete lambaste on the fake smiles we give each other at the holiday table ever year, but in the last half-hour, the movie tries to go sincere, and it doesn't earn it. It doesn't matter how cute the resolution is; I had to sit through eighty minutes of people being absolutely awful to each other. I'm just saying, if you punch me in the face, a candy cane won't make it any better. Love the Coopers was an absolute slog to sit through; luckily, I got to see Spotlight afterwards, and all was right with the world.
A ghost haunts a high school; stupid teens are rummaging around at night. Add some found-footage and a heap of jack-in-the-box jumps at the screen, and you've got a 2000's-era scary movie. However, The Gallows adds Ryan.
Ryan (Ryan Shoos) is a repugnant, morally bankrupt bully, picking on "geeks" like it's the '80s, with the most infuriating, snide, crackling whine in recorded history (if Whitey's from Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights is the 8th circle of Hell, Ryan's is the 10th). He is the person the movie follows for 80% of the running time, and we also have the misfortune of having him as our camera operator. My blood is about to evaporate.
The ghost's motive makes no sense; neither does our heroes' (I feel dirty writing that) solution. It doesn't take a master of metaphysics to realize correlation doesn't equal causation - just because the ghost kills using the gallows doesn't mean it's a good idea to go over there and abandon the open door to freedom. And with that move, the movie spits in our faces, mocking us by acknowledging their writing is shoddy and refusing to fix our suspension of disbelief; they don't care about the story, but rather the width of their wallets.
What hurts me the most about The Gallows is that in 2015, like every year, there were imaginative films, like Room, Turbo Kid, It Follows, and Ex Machina, who received little to nothing in the way of support from major production companies or distributors. The Gallows was released by New Line Cinema, distributed by Warner Bros.
I bring this up to urge you all: vote with your wallets. If you love a movie, don't pirate it. Go to the theater and enjoy an unique experience. When we support art, and support can be anything from sales to time to promotion, the business side takes notice, and gives us more of what we want. When we pay to see crap, crap is what we get; isn't that common sense? Show business is a two-way street, so let's make sure ours is clean before we start complaining.
Thank you all for reading throughout this last year; I'm the Man Without a Plan, more appreciative of anyone who's stuck around to the end of this than anyone will truly ever know, signing off.
Thank you all for reading throughout this last year; I'm the Man Without a Plan, more appreciative of anyone who's stuck around to the end of this than anyone will truly ever know, signing off.
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