Drama – Page 8 – Splatter: on FILM

EXODUS (2015) movie review

April 7, 2015October 25, 20151 Comment

Exodus has moments of beauty and potential greatness, thoughtful on so many levels. But Bale is no Charlton Heston. Exodus: Gods and Kings lacks the pizzaz and joy of the original Ten Commandments. Prince of Egypt may not have had a doe-eyed Aaron Paul but at least it never diminished the miracles by making Moses the God-whisperer and attempting to explain the plagues scientifically: alligators, so blood, so frogs, so flies, etc.

False beliefs prevail in Biblical films of late. The heroes must be A-listers, never mind the fluctuating accents, as long as they can wield a blade and train the peasants to retaliate. Why would God bother to intervene when Christian Bale or Russell Crowe can lead an army?

I shouldn’t be surprised that so many renowned directors, like the brilliant, detail-driven Ridley Scott would look to the Greatest Stories Ever Told in the Bible for great screen fodder. To grasp the immortal seems the quest for most Hollywood greats. The gods of myth thought that eternal life is for those who live on in legend. Stories live on, so they must work as conduits…flux capacitors for a new age of inventors who visualize and create widescreen and digital IMAX.

Some also sadly believe that special effects will cover any sub-par plot points or dialogue, or anything that the filmmaker thought too potentially religious. Visual accuracy over biblical. The Pharaoh can look like he grew up in Texas as long as he cuddles with Cobras and paints a mean eyeline.

Egypt is sepia toned, to color the Caucasian cast. And the wilderness a Prometheus blue. The burning bush burst into a less than stunning blue flame.

I’m sorry to say, it’s not the biblical inaccuracies that tanked the multi-million dollar project. It was…boring. Slow and unsteadily paced. It lags so desperately that in the end you almost hope the Red Sea will take them all. But they cross…waist-deep, then the armies drown in a tidal wave.

Many Christians cry and run from theaters over these kinds of oversights. If only the same crowd of movie goers would cry over poorly made films in the B-genre known as Christian films and seek to correct the problem with excellent filmmaking. The Bible will continue to provide a wellspring of stories. The era of Bible-based movies will continue.

So many filmmakers and viewers alike continue the search in a bottomless grave looking for a frozen Savior who they hoped would come to save the world. They have yet to find that He is risen. He is risen indeed.

MAZE RUNNER (2014) movie review

February 2, 2015October 25, 20151 Comment

A short and sweet review for a thrill-a-minute futuristic Lord of the Flies with a Lost-esque flair. One character maintains the fight to stay and survive. One pursues escape at the risk of death. Both fear the Maze.

BOYHOOD (2014) movie review

January 27, 2015October 25, 20154 Comments

One CBC columnist aptly titled his review “12 years a Boy.” 12 years. 12 times an annual reunion with the same cast to produce this one film. THIS one…incredibly dull, purposeless film. Here are 12 reasons to avoid the hullabaloo and redeem the time you would waste by watching this year’s Oscar nom:

Reason 1. MUSIC & TECH. Most reviews have been ooohhh’ing and aahh’ing over Linklater’s use of music which sets the veritable stage as time beats on. This trick is not revolutionary or foreign to film. Being a period film, the occasional Britney Spears hit and a glimpse at the original Oregon Trail game is to be expected.
2. CAMERA ANGLES. The first scene opens on a young boy watching the sky. Most reviews have waxed poetic over reasons why he is watching the sky. So many metaphors could be made, reasons presumed. The reason is unclear, and unnecessary to unfold. The passing of time allows it to matter even less.CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
3. Ethan Hawke’s character, “Dad,” offers constant, ridiculous advice. He proves untrustworthy from the start but becomes a bit less so as time passes.
4. The character known simply as “Mom,” played by Patricia Arquette, obviously wants to do right by her children, but her choices prove selfish and continually deepen her sorrow and confusion.
5. All adult / potential mentors like teachers and employers become more childlike and less trustworthy as the two children age.
6. You get to know a few secondary characters who just disappear in the film. No, you never see them again. But you don’t seem to mind.

7. TITLE & MEANING. The film is called “Boyhood,” which is misleading since the coming-of-age views expressed in this film come equally from the sister and the parents.

8. STRING THEORY. For the same reason as #6, you won’t be bothered by the fact that I am skipping reason #9. Time will skip forward and you’ll just have to move along with it. Don’t worry. You haven’t missed anything.
10. HYGIENE. One fascinating observation that you will allow your mind time to ponder while watching this film, however, is the fact that the characters obviously shower less frequently as they get older. To the degree which your concern for their personal hygiene increases, your interest in the film decreases sevenfold.

11. BOWLING. Bowling is a repeated motif. I wonder if the idea of trying your best and being repeatedly mowed down is symbolic in any way. Nah. Too bad the bowling scenes are the more interesting offerings.

12. CONCLUSION. The pertinent moments of a boy’s life shown over those 12 years are in retrospect…pointless? Is that the point. If so, what a Nihilistic, God-forsaken, frustrating conclusion. Why was any of this nominated for awards?

THE IMITATION GAME (2014) movie review

January 19, 2015October 25, 20156 Comments

I’ve been impressed lately with films that exercise power over time. Jumping time zones, they show scenes during the war and jump seamlessly into post-war scenarios; scrub the screen black and pop right into the past. We follow without a hitch. Perhaps we can thank shows like Lost for allowing our minds the freedom to flash back or flash forward.

This Interstellar loop in a film’s string theory feels effortlessly achieved in Imitation Game.This effect was the film’s greatest achievement…aside from casting half of Downton, reconciling women’s rights issues, causing universal disgust over Britain’s punishment of homosexual behaviors, positing the potential effects of education on children within the autism spectrum, creating the first computer, decrypting Hitler’s Enigma machine, and winning the 2nd World War with math.

Needless to say, it forced a few too many plot lines. Benedict Cumberbatch could have simply saved the world with his math skills. That plot would have sufficed.

MOCKINGJAY PART ONE (2014) movie review

December 8, 2014October 25, 2015Leave a comment

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, as the truism states. I’m starting to understand the genius and momentum of the Hunger Games series. Suzanne Collins’s art does imitate life in that the reign of the Capital and it’s king mimics most historically dogmatic despotic dictatorships. “Moves and counter moves.” I’ve been told that her stroke of brilliance in the books was her use of first person narrative. Every reader’s point of view is through the eyes of Katniss making each reader the hero or heroine of the story. She is the symbol as Mockingjay, but is she savior or pawn? Well titled, well layered, well played. James Newton Howard’s score in this sets the tone, pacing it out to steady build and crescendo. Effie’s delightfully upbeat ignorance mirrors Haymitch’s comical cynicism – both necessary relief in a film about a holocaust which leads to civil war. Once again, these are not lightweight kid flicks. Children should not see them. No one should feel comfortable in theater seats as witness to mind control and murder. The scenes with Peeta are shocking and heartbreaking.This film is a mere echo of true historical events. Life, and art’s echo. No character demonstrates this more beautifully than Plutarch, played by Philip Seymor Hoffman, who has posthumously released a succession of brilliant performances. His premature death reeks of tragedy. Hoffman’s talent was a gift. He is uniquely comfortable on screen. Immersed in his broken characters, he always stole the stage, so to speak. The people he brought to life in his performances were so often weighed down by choice, response, and duty. Yet, watching his characters, you feel he has dice in his hand. At any moment he could throw and redirect course. He is flawed, unsafe, and somehow paradoxically both calculated and flippant. And Katniss, (and subsequently the audience) is caught in the balance of his imbalance. In Mockingjay, he plays cupbearer, navigator, first mate to the President of the future Panem, Julianne Moore. Is she untrustworthy? Perhaps. Unstoppable? No doubt. The stage is finally set. The first two arenas were literally child’s play. The Capital is the true arena, and the real game is afoot.

INTERSTELLAR (2014) movie review

November 22, 2014October 25, 20154 Comments

I like movies that take me a few days to process. Just as Inception was essentially a grand scale ensemble heist film, Oceans 11 without the humor, so Nolan’s Interstellar is an unlikely hero flick, Gravity add Star Trek sans quirk.

Wormhole space-time theories pre-date Einstein. String Theory represents years of mathematical probabilities working out into possibilities. Stories of space travel would be bland without wormhole potential, other worlds, the broadening of our galaxy.

Interstellar is intricate. Most sci-fi films feel heavy on the fiction and light on the science. This film makes the not-so-distant potential for a planet in crisis via natural disaster and global warming seem believable.

Interstellar is intriguing. I have always said that a good actor makes us believe that his or her totally unique world is real. Matthew McConaughey does just this. He’s good. We know he’s good. He knows he’s good. However, ironically, I kept waiting for him to get into his Lincoln and philosophize from the driver’s side. Anne Hathaway won me over by underplaying for the most part. Other phenomenal actors got less screen time than deserved: Jessica Chastain, perfectly cast, and Michael Caine, precious.

Interstellar is mystifying. Masterful. Like a sonata, notes on a page build to glorious melody evoking tension, future suspense, resolving with hope. Beautiful.

My one disappointment was the unnecessary humanist turn at the end. Spiritual hope is not ignorant propaganda. Most of the world claims some sort of spiritual and religious bias. Claiming humanity’s potential for evolutionary future and inevitable deification nullifies the mystery, cheapens it somehow. “It must be us. We got us here. We don’t know how, but we’ll get there someday, somehow.” (Loosely quoting Matthew McConnaughey here). Build up and let down. I prefer to hope in the unknown, not in humanity’s potential but in the paradox of hope in the unseen. I guess I choose faith.

THE GIVER (2014) movie review

October 2, 2014October 25, 2015Leave a comment

It is usually considered better to give than to receive. In this 2014 film, the man known as the Giver must bestow on his new Receiver the entirety of humanity’s hurt, fear, and sorrow as well as its love, joy, and peace. An emotionless society, set apart (but never really explained), lives in safety, secure from all issues brought on by squeamish emotions or daily discomforts. Climate controlled, policed, and vaccinated from human emotion, this society employs the keeper of memory, Jeff Bridges, to provide the wisdom of the ages when necessary. He is the only one capable of empathy, also the only one who lies. He is the one who can see through the thin veneer of the “perfect” society, run by evil silver-fringed Meryl Streep who organizes the ceremony of selection which allows for each member of the community to be selected for his or her . Of course, when the memory is passed on and the younger, hotter Giver knows the truth and is brave enough to follow his convictions, he seeks to end the cycle of servitude and drone work by dispersing the kept memories of the ages to the whole community.

The sheer innocence of these characters makes world peace seem possible and the film feel implausible. Disappointing. Jeff Bridges, illustrious talent, co-produced this film. Perhaps this is why the film feels overly emotional and forced…he was too close close to it. Bridges wanted this film to be made. It meant something to him. He is the Giver, the mentor, the bleeding heart, the true hero.

Accepting this film as a faithful adaptation would require more than “precision of language.” The Lois Lowry novel, written post “1984,” the novel, but pre-Hunger Games and Diversion is the original Gattica. The book is beautiful, subtle, disturbing, intense, mysterious. Jonas is 13. He is gifted. His “stirrings” are only ever hinted at and not the essence of a budding romance but of puberty. There is no boundary. The memories, once given, cannot be retrieved, so the Giver shares once then loses them. Jonas becomes a Giver as he transfers memory to the child. The ending is illusive, questionable, fearful, precious, unresolved. The book is a Jackson “Lottery”-esque thinker left open-ended allowing the reader to imagine a hopeful ending despite the very few vague hints at hope.

Despite my disappointments at the simple-fixes of the film, I still liked it. I liked the characters, the transfer from black & white to color, the stories created, the happy ending. I liked that. It was too easy to fix the whole world. The transition to color was brief. The long slide down the banister was a hard to connect with moment, obviously meant to make more impact. Jonas has innocence and power. Idealistic. Taylor Swift’s overacted cameo makes her portray, well, a dramatic musician. Stretch.

MONUMENTS MEN (2014) movie review

July 27, 2014October 25, 20151 Comment

Learn your A B C’s:A lways trust George Clooney.

B elieve in Bill Murray.

C ast Matt Damon in anything.

D on’t forget Cate Blanchett.

E njoy Bob Balaban as much in this as in Guffman or Moonrise Kingdom.

F eel the weight of loss when you realize that Hitler stole everything from people when he took their lives.

G reet Goodman, as ever, a force and a friend, like a grandfather you fear but can’t wait to see.

H ugh Bonneville, Downton’s Lord Grantham, stayed true to form in his stately address and attire.

I nnocuous as art may seem, when paired with the destruction of so much of Europe, its loss must have felt like insult to the injuries caused by war.

J oin ever sweet Jean Dujardin and the team in rescuing stolen art with their suave personalities and winning smiles.

K eep
L ooking though you
M ay
N ever clear the
O bstacles
P ervading your
Q uest.
R emember that your
S oul is
T he art of the
U niverse’s Creator who
V alues you, knowing you are
W orth treasuring, as
eX tingushable as
Y ou may feel.

NaZ i soldiers obeyed orders, feeling they were right, but Clooney’s troop of Monuments Men sought to remind all why we fight.

TRANSCENDENCE (2014) movie review

July 21, 2014October 25, 20153 Comments

The autopsy reports for the slow death of this movie Transcendence are inconclusive.If I watch films that haven’t done well in the box office, I find I approach it less like a scientist hypothesizing accuracy and success and more as a coroner or homicide detective would. What caused this tragedy? I often agree with the Tomato rating, but this time I found a film with excellent actors, decent writing, great directing & effects, a thoughtful story and meaningful relationships. It wasn’t the haphazard train wreck that I guess I was expecting. It certainly wasn’t the schizophrenic Secret Window. And it wasn’t The Tourist.

The puzzle could be solved in timing. As with all things, timing is everything. Perhaps it was released too soon after the hype of Jonze’s Her since it may have a few similar themes but a vastly different story and outcomes. Ads also made it look like an action thriller. Not true. It’s a sci-fi drama – a thinker.

Blake Snyder, film expert, renowned teacher, and author of the book “Save the Cat” would perhaps call a film that seeks the co-dependence of the brain and technology a “double mumbo jumbo.” It’s like the movie Signs asking people to believe in both God and aliens. For some, that’s a stretch.My brilliant sister Annie Mae believes that people might have had a hard time accepting an intelligent film without sex or a ton of senseless violence. The marriage relationship in the film remains one of deep love and faithfulness. The best friend character is not out to sabotage the marriage or woo the girl. The plot makes you think.To seek the beyond… A higher power …to become …to achieve the enlightenment of soul…

…through technology?

This film poses the thoughtful and future plausible attempts at true AI: artificial intelligence via the symbiotic and simultaneous merging of tech with humanity. It’s bionic. The birth of AI is ever the prequel to The Matrix or Terminator, or RoboCop or IRobot. It’s the moral dilemma ever stemming from artificial creation, from plastic limbs and pacemakers to cloning technology: are we playing God? Can tech register or muster a soul? Will the corruption of pure motives always end in tragedy?

Don’t forget Shawshank tanked in the theater but blossomed into its cult classic status. There is still hope for these lesser loved post- release weekend.

EDGE OF TOMORROW (2014) movie review

June 30, 2014October 25, 20152 Comments

Groundhog Day gets an action makeover with Tom Cruise. It’s about time a sci-fi alien-fighting action film got its epic day in eternity. This film is pure action, but paced well. It’s never Cruise ad nauseam.

Emily Blunt, no longer the frail secretary from Devil Wears Prada (2006), has turned in her stilettos for a pair of army boots and a hard to maneuver 100 lb metal weapons suit. The suit is much smaller than those circa Avatar (2009) and Matrix 3 (2003), but a little more throwback to Sigourney Weaver’s in Aliens (1986).

Tom gives his character the necessary arc beginning as the cowardly recruiter with no field experience and ending as…well as Tom Cruise. Audiences will love the mirror throwback moments ala Top Gun, Cocktail, Jerry Maguire. Less shake it crazy on Oprah’s couch, more show-me-the-money.