Lion will break your heart. The trail of tears carved along the Indian countryside past too many train platforms to count takes little Saroo too far away from his mama to ever find his way back home.
It’s Fievel’s American Tale journey all over again, but this story is true and doesn’t have the peppy tunes to promise a road back home.
The perfectly cast visual carnival begins in a valley of butterflies, winds into the heart of busy Calcutta streets and flies over oceans all the way to Australia. Our tiny, steadfast hero becomes a man and has to deal with demons from his past, has to reconcile being a little boy lost, and must find his way home with a little help from Google Earth.
If all stories are meant to teach us survival skills, meant to show us alternative ways to live, to give us hope, this film certainly does all of this. Saroo, the lion-hearted will show us all how to live if we take the time to let him tell his tale.
Jack to the rescue. Jack on his own.
Somehow it’s the opposite of what Jack Reacher really does stand for. He’s a rogue on a mission… Always alone, always fighting. What is he fighting for if he doesn’t stand for something? Is he actually a vigilante? We asked the same of Batman… So why not Jack?
Other traditions run askew as many “no mag” muggles get involved in Newt’s quest, from leftover Salem witch-hunters to a bumbling baker who stumbles into the case of wonders.
Colin Farrell is a vision, though he helps turn the film’s tone much darker than trailers intimated it would go. From glossy pluck to murderous violence, Beasts delights then frightens. It’s very dark, and Farrell’s character plays nearly pedophilic in moments as he mentors a younger boy. The death scenes are equally disturbing.
But one glowing report is in the telling of the story. HP author, JK Rowling, tries her hand at screenwriting with skill and success. She carefully builds up her underdogs through circumstances that shape them into confident heroes, and her cruel antagonists get their proper comeuppances.
And yes, the beasts themselves prove to be incredibly resourceful and resilient wild animals: truly fantastic.
Besides the group goal to go out guns blazing, the town prepares for war building giant spike gates and booby traps. Even so, without the Seven the town would have collapsed against the Gatling.
Newish actress Haley Bennett made the film more believable by riding out in tears and fighting in tears. She didn’t play the triumphant heroine, or the oppressed female. She showed an honest side to gun-slinging and territory claiming. She bootstrapped and got to work letting the battle begin, come what may.
So much killing was to be expected, but if they’d decided to go beyond the pg-13 rating, it would have been a bloodbath. How do we care for one specific life on the screen when so many are expendable? Surplus cowboys didn’t make the number of deaths easier to palate.
One brother (Ben Foster – genius in 3:10 to Yuma) is a regular outlaw, always running from trouble, always finding it. He knows he’s bad. He gives himself permission to lie and steal and gamble and cheat and run and kill and fight anyone he can. The other brother, (Chris Pine, showing here his true acting prowess) complex and tortured, fights but holds back, reluctantly moving forward with his plan. His plan. He’s the potentially pure, the wounded, the driven, yet it is his story.
The lead Marshall, played perfectly by Jeff Bridges, speaks his mind letting loose racial slurs and profanities, quick judgements and stereotypes. He is surprisingly savvy and astute as he tracks the boys committing the crimes. The partner patiently takes the brunt of the teasing. He is a Christian man, calm though disconcerted by endless jabs from his partner. He talks easily about retirement and afterlife since he knows where he is going.
These characters rarely say what they mean in dialogue. It’s brilliant writing that stirs and directs a plot without relying on forced verbiage to drive it. Humans rarely say what they truly mean, why should characters?
He’s like an all-American Bond with MacGyver’s intuition. Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vickander, and even Julia Stiles ride along to stop the world-threatening madness by outsmarting one another, getting to Bourne first, and attempting to win him over.
Viggo Mortensen, perfectly cast, plays drill sergeant hippie Von Trapp to his tribe of children that he is raising in the Pacific Northwest woods. In the opening shots, his eldest son proves his manhood by killing a deer for food as camouflaged family members step out of the forest to cheer him on. They eat, sing, read, run, and train together daily from vigorous athletic routines and mountain climbing to gardening and essential yurt maintenance. Daily studies include literature, religion, and philosophy. The children are kind, hearty, smart, gifted individuals who grieve just like everyone else in the world when they learn of their mother’s suicide.
This film is exquisitely unique showing the many sides of grief in a single brilliant brazen family from the backwoods. While some may watch and say, “what an interesting indie,” others will re-grieve any sorrows they’ve set aside and now find that they have company in saying goodbye.
Others, like the wife, tumble in the riptide until fighting the wave feels too difficult and they want to give in to the dive knowing they’ll never resurface to breathe the same air again. Jessica Chastain dives and is reborn. She moves home, cuts her hair, starts over. She takes classes from the perfect teacher, Viola Davis . Sometimes, people inadvertently offer life-giving support just by sharing a coffee or a personal story. Her father, William Hurt, obviously aches beside his daughter but says little. No one can bring Eleanor Rigby back to life any more than they can revive her child. Healing takes time, turmoil, patience, forgiveness, and more love than any of them believe that they can spare.
Dev Patel and Jeremy Irons partner up to prove mathematical equations in a style reminiscent of A Beautiful Mind, but in this film, the major conflict is cultural discord. The director says that the film is actually about nurturing relationships. Layers of relational potential and missed opportunities plague this true story. Here is a beautiful 
The heart was right. But the execution…abrupt and ill-conceived.
The actors, however, proved themselves professionals. Mary Elizabeth Winstead (best as Ramona Flowers in Scott Pilgrim) and John Gallagher Jr. (from the beloved short-lived HBO series Newsroom and the perfect indie Short Term 12) cared that their roles were believable and strong. John Goodman obviously enjoyed playing the crazy bunker-builder. They seemed eager participants in what felt like an experimental suck-up film, each shot an attempted homage to JJ or Spielberg. But even that would have been nice had this not felt more akin to Shayamalan’s more recent tragedies.
It all felt forced, and left too many unsolved mysteries about the characters themselves: like the unsolved main issue of Michelle’s backstory and serious relationship on the rocks. Any real details about her Emmett in the hatch, oh sorry the bomb shelter. Man, good thing they barely had to redecorate the Lost set after Desmond set the place up. Aren’t they supposed to be hitting a button every 108 minutes?
If you wait for breadcrumbs to lead you to truth in this one, you’ll go hungry. They mean nothing in the end. (Wait. Maybe this IS another Lost finale.)
I don’t know. Maybe people don’t go to the movies to think. Maybe I’m alone in blaming sloppy writing / directing. Sure JJ may have paid for it, but his MO is to support up-and-comers. He’s walking in the footsteps of his mentor Steven (Spielberg) and helping the fledgling directors take wing. Unfortunately, this Icharus not only flies too close to the sun, he flies into it inviting strangers from outerspace back with him to take over our planet. After this film, you’ll wonder which is worse: crazies on earth or crude angry aliens.
Splatter: on FILM 