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Serious and plot-driven

Patriots Day (2016)

19/04/2017 · by Joy

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about America, it’s that they love to make movies about America. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I just see a pattern. Regarding Patriots Day, all I’d heard was rave reviews from all around, so naturally, I was more than excited to see it. I actually purchased it on Bluray before seeing it for the first time… because I like to take risks like that. To say that I’m unhappy I did would be a lie as I very much enjoyed it.

I actually really like Mark Wahlberg in this film, where I normally am not a huge fan. I don’t think I’ve seen a movie and been left thinking, “Wow, you go Mark Wahlberg!” since… Four Brothers in 2005. I wasn’t necessarily in awe of his performance this time around, but he played his role convincingly enough that I wasn’t taken out of the story by the fact that they used a big-name actor, and that’s something.

Patriots Day really managed to take a story that I, for one, was already pretty familiar with, including the ending, and make it something suspenseful and keep me on my toes. That’s a feat that I think is difficult to accomplish when you’re taking a true (and widely televised) event and making it into a dramatic film. Even though I knew the final outcome, I’m glad it kept the tension coming.

My boyfriend’s first thoughts upon starting the film were, “oh, I hope they don’t spend too much time leading up to the actual bombing,” and his wish was granted! They cut to the chase, but still managed to make it effectively jarring and uncomfortable. They didn’t go overboard with gore, they didn’t make it more or less than it actually was… it was done very well.

The only real complaint with this film, and it’s a semi-large one, was that I didn’t really feel any emotional ties to the characters. I wasn’t particularly attached to Wahlberg’s character, Sergeant Tommy Saunders, and, while obviously I had sympathy for them, I just wasn’t drawn to them the way I usually am. It’s not a difficult thing to get me to be attached to a fictional character either, so I’m not sure if it was maybe a writing flaw or a directorial flaw, or maybe even Wahlberg’s portrayal. I just didn’t feel it!

Patriots Day did, however, succeed in giving more context to a documentary I watched a while ago entitled, The Thread (it’s on Netflix) about the Reddit thread which was basically a mass gathering of vigilante manhunters trying to find out who bombed the Boston Marathon in 2013. While I’d give Patriots Day a solid 75%, I think I’d almost prefer The Thread.

Moonlight (2016)

03/03/2017 · by Joy

I went into Moonlight knowing nothing about the plot. All I knew was that there was a character somewhere in the film at some point named Chiron and only because the Twitter-verse told me so. I had high expectations, though, of course, because it was this year’s Best Picture!

Moonlight was different… but different in all the right ways. It was intimate and revealing. It was beautiful, but at the same time, so incredibly, appallingly ugly. The acting was amazing. I’m not at all surprised that Mahershala Ali won Best Supporting Actor, because I was awestruck by his performance. But really, everyone was great. There isn’t a single performance in Moonlight that I can honestly say didn’t blow me away.

It’s definitely not a film I’d suggest for say, a group of friends to watch together, or for a date, because it’s slow. It crawls along, but I feel like that gave it more of an edge and made it feel that much more real. I also feel like not everyone is going to like it. As much as it is a film that speaks to the issue of race, it’s a film that speaks about masculinity and what is “expected” of a man, black or otherwise, in society.

What Moonlight does best is introduce us to the character of Chiron. When you finish the movie, you feel like you knew Chiron because it does such a great job of really showing you who Chiron is as a person and how he came to be that way.

In sum, it was something I was not expecting at all because I read nothing about the plot or the characters or any reviews before starting it. I watched it because of the people pulling for it on Twitter to win Best Picture – because of the people who were so crestfallen when La La Land “won” the Oscar – and I regret nothing.

Nocturnal Animals

27/02/2017 · by Joy

I don’t really know where to start with Nocturnal Animals. I just have a lot of feelings about it and none of them are all that positive! I went into this film intrigued by the plot summary provided by the Google Play Store and I came out so thoroughly disappointed. I hadn’t (and still haven’t) seen his other film A Single Man (2009), but I really don’t think I’m that excited to ever see it.

Nocturnal Animals is a very stylish film, but really, I feel like that’s where the compliments end. It was all style and so little substance? The story-within-the-story was more interesting than the overall story and even then, I don’t think it was enough to pull its own weight… as in, I don’t think it could have stood on its own. I think that, more than anything, I was expecting a thriller and what I got was… a bore. It was only 2 hours long, but it felt like 4. That’s never a good sign. I was left saying, “Thank god that’s over,” and feeling a wave of relief combined with absolute bafflement at the ending, or lack thereof. It felt like Tom Ford was like, “I really don’t have any idea how to end this film… so I won’t.” And then he subsequently does not. You spend the whole time waiting for some kind of ultimate pay-off after this pretentious, gruelling two-hour spectacle only to be letdown. SPOILER ALERT: Amy Adams gets stood up. That’s her ex-husband’s big revenge. That’s the big finale. The Big Finish.

Even with A+ performances from Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (etc. but those were the ones that stood out the most for me), it’s just not enough. It leaves you feeling like you’ve just watched some film student’s incomplete project. I just felt depressed.

Most of the reviews I have glanced over have mentioned something about it being a film that “makes you think,” but all it made me think was that I should have spent the last 2 hours of my life watching something more enjoyable. Like paint drying, perhaps, or maybe grass growing.

I mean, maybe there’s something I’m totally missing, but I can see where it was trying to go: fantasy revenge is awesome, reality revenge is chickening out and being totally petty; “You killed my child so I’m going to write a book about how your actions totally wounded me…” But it just fell so flat for me. It’s definitely not something I’d go so far as to recommend or to watch again, and I certainly won’t be adding it to my collection.

Arrival (2016)

23/11/2016 · by Joy

Arrival may be comprised of many alien movie cliches, but it itself was not your average creature feature. It’s not for someone who’s looking for a modern-day War of the Worlds or the next Independence Day. It is emotional and, at times, visceral. I was not prepared for the number of times I would shed a tear or two (or many more) during this 116 minute long Denis Villeneuve film. I hesitate to compare films, but I feel strongly that 2014’s Interstellar surpassed Arrival by quite a bit. Having said that, it is it’s own film and I was truly impressed.

We open to Amy Adams, a linguist and a professor, reminiscing on her life and her understanding of the linearity (or lack thereof) of time. We learn that she has lost her daughter to a rare form of (probably) cancer at a pretty young age. We’re quickly whisked away into a new world where Amy Adams’ character is suddenly part of a high-level team trying to crack an alien language being spoken by aliens who have landed in vessels parked in 12 locations around the world. We learn pretty early on that she’s very good at her job and that she has previously translated things for the government. Arrival also stars Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker, which was kind of a letdown for me. I find that Forest Whitaker only ever plays… well… Forest Whitaker. Forest Whitaker is playing Forest Whitaker AS lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh (The Shield), Forest Whitaker AS Major Collins (Bodysnatchers), Forest Whitaker AS Colonel Weber (Arrival)… he only has one character and that tends to take me right out of any role he plays. And that… is pretty much my only complaint about the cast or the acting. Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner were fantastic – phenomenal even.

There were a few plot points that kind of didn’t gel with me… I don’t want to speak them aloud because that would spoil the film, but they’re pretty big, gaping holes, so from that point of view, I was kind of like, meh. But the film was beautiful. I felt empathy for the aliens, even, which you can’t expect out of most alien films which demonize the visitors.

All in all, this is a film I will probably buy on Bluray and watch when I’m feeling like something cerebral and touchy-feely… I really enjoyed it and think it’s definitely worth a watch or two!

Tallulah (2016)

11/08/2016 · by Joy

I have never seen a film starring Ellen Page that I did not enjoy and Tallulah was certainly no exception. Within the first half an hour, I knew I was in for a treat. In Juno, she played a teenager who conceived a child and didn’t want to keep it. In Tallulah, she plays a homeless young adult who ends up “accidentally” kidnapping a one-year-old.

The acting of everyone in this film was phenomenal. Ellen Page plays Tallulah was a fabulous, off-beat and quirky girl who flies by the seat of her pants, living in the back of her van, Jim. Evan Jonigkeit, who I didn’t recognize from anything but is apparently in stuff, plays Nico, Tallulah’s wayward boyfriend who doesn’t really belong in her lifestyle. Deciding to return home, Nico takes off in the night, leaving Tallulah to fend for herself. Tallulah, doing just that, ends up in a hotel scrounging for leftover food. Caught in the act, she is invited into the hotel room of a mother (Tammy Blanchard) who is dying to be rid of her infant daughter, Madison, so she can cheat on her husband. She leaves Madison in the care of Tallulah who shows more compassion and understanding for the child than her own mother did in the short time she spends with her. Her mother returns and promptly passes out, leaving Tallulah with an awful decision to make. She tries to leave, only to find Madison distressed and screaming, and decides a split second later to take her down to the van to sleep. Trying to return her the next morning, she finds the hotel lobby filled with cops, and does what her impulsive mind tells her to – she takes off to Nico’s mom’s apartment, tells his mom, played by Allison Janney, that the child was fathered by Nico. Reluctantly, she is allowed to stay and you’re left wondering how long it can possibly be before she is found out.

Despite a few plotholes (really, if a woman is screaming “STOP THAT WOMAN, SHE HAS MY CHILD,” I highly doubt that everyone in her near vicinity is going to ignore her), some bigger than others, this movie made me feel so many things. It was thought-provoking, the dialogue was witty, sometimes deep, and sometimes funny, but never too much of one thing at the wrong time. This was a fantastic directorial debut for Sian Heder, and it’s something I will definitely rewatch, probably a few times.

All in all, this was something I really enjoyed and I agree with Rottentomatoes – it fully deserves the 82% it currently has!

Sleeping Giant (2015)

23/04/2016 · by Joy

Today my friend Paula texted me at like 10:30 this morning and asked if I wanted to go see “that Thunder Bay movie” with her. So, naturally, I was like, “What Thunder Bay movie??” and she sent me the trailer. I went in with zero expectations and no idea what the film was actually about and to be honest, I’m still not 100% sure. We went to the 4:45 PM showing on a Saturday, hoping to beat the rush, but we didn’t quite succeed – the theatre was pretty packed!

Here in Thunder Bay, it’s definitely not an everyday occurrence to see our city’s landmarks on the big screen, so that’s an exciting thing for most of us. However, I feel like maybe the film focused too much on being THUNDER BAY and less on having an actual plot to follow. I get it, it’s supposed to be a coming-of-age story, which I guess it fulfills, but it just felt… a little bit too in-your-face about being local. I really wanted to like it and to come back and write about how this is THE best film to grace any film festival ever, but I can’t really do that.

I can write about how the lead actors, Jackson Martin, Nick Serino and Reece Moffett portrayed their characters really well. I was especially taken with Jackson Martin’s acting because his seemed the most authentic which makes sense as he’s been in other things before, this being his first feature film. Nick Serino’s character, Nate, is indisputibly an asshole and I found that really difficult to get around. By the end of the film, I was really rooting for something bad to happen to him because he was SUCH a huge douche. That’s terrible to say, because his character is a 14 year old adolescent boy, but it’s true.

The three boys worked really well together, which again makes a lot of sense, because Nick Serino and Reece Moffett are actually cousins in real life… and seeing as Jackson Martin’s character is supposed to be a little bit of an outcast in their trio, it really works. Another thing I really enjoyed was the camerawork – there were a lot of really fantastic shots of the landscapes, waterscapes, and different creatures in nature, including the horrifying and well-known (in Thunder Bay, anyway) spruce beetle.

Basically, to sum up, this film was a lot of teenage boys smoking weed and drinking stolen beer and showing off their masculinity… which is actually incredibly accurate when you’re shooting a movie about teenage boys in Thunder Bay. It really took a hard look at both the sensitive sides of adolescence and the crueler underbelly, I just think it was too “HEY LOOK IT’S THUNDER BAY” for it’s own good – it felt a tad gimmicky by the end of the film. It is definitely worth a watch, though, especially if you were born and raised in Thunder Bay, like I was.

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