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Split (2016)

08/06/2017 · by Joy

I tried really hard to reserve judgment about Split until I had a chance to see it. On the one hand, it looked very intriguing based on the trailers. It obviously had to do with Dissociative Identity Disorder which, me being a psych major, was of great interest to me and is a vastly unexplored avenue when it comes to horror films (for reasons far beyond my comprehension, because what a fascinating ‘diagnosis.’) On the other hand, it was directed by Shyamalan, which isn’t always a bad thing. He’s made some great films, including The Sixth Sense and Signs and… well, that’s pretty much it. He’s also made some also films, such as The Village and The Happening. I can’t take full credit for this idea, because it was David (my boyfriend) who said it to begin with, but it really seems that if you put M. Night in a box with clearly defined borders, he can do some wonderful things in the film world. But… if you let him run free, you end up with the cacophony that is The Village.

The movie gods must have been watching over and mentoring Shyamalan during the production of Split because I really found it to be a solid film. It’s nowhere near perfection, but it is satisfying. James McAvoy is truly an acting force to be reckoned with, playing 23 personalities, however we only “meet” 7 of them. You have Kevin, who is the main personality, Barry, a flamboyant fashionista who was previously the dominant personality, Dennis, a man with both OCD and voyeuristic tendencies, Patricia, a sinister British lady, Hedwig, a child who just wants to belong, Orwell, a scholar we meet only briefly through video (within the film), and Jade, who is apparently a type 1 diabetic teenage girl. Let’s put aside the fact that the type 1 diabetes thing really rubs me the wrong way: if it’s possible to offset your non-functioning pancreas by partitioning your mind, why don’t we have a cure for diabetes? Oh yeah, because it’s just simply not possible. I really appreciate the way that James McAvoy distinguishes each personality. He portrays them perfectly and you can tell before he even speaks as each persona that he has changed just from his facial expressions and his mannerisms.

I felt that the rest of the acting was pretty lackluster, honestly. Betty Buckley as the psychiatrist, Dr. Fletcher, was extremely wooden and very to-the-script. It was almost amateur and managed to take me out of the film more than once. It makes me super sad because Betty Buckley actually played Miss Collins in one of my favourite horror films of all time: Carrie (1976). The kidnapped girls, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, Jessica Sula, and Haley Lu Richardson, were just… okay. Nothing to write home about.

Though there’s some controversy over stigmatizing DID with this film, I really enjoyed it. If mental illnesses are off-limits for making films about or portraying villains who have them is off the table, we lose a lot of really great films. I’m talking Fight Club (1999), A Beautiful Mind (2001), American Psycho (2000), The Machinist (2004) – all films powered by mental illness and all spectacular movies. I can understand, however, why DID patients are upset. There are no films (that I know of or can recall) which portray DID in a positive light. Maybe something for Shyamalan’s next project?

En man som heter Ove / A Man Called Ove (2016)

23/04/2017 · by Joy

It makes me so sad how often people write off a film because it’s foreign and/or because it’s subtitled. Some of the best films I’ve seen have been subtitled and after a while, you get so used to watching movies with subtitles that you start watching English movies with subtitles… and here I am. Doing that frequently.

Anyway, my second movie of the NOFSA Film Festival was A Man Called Ove. Ove is pronounced oh-vay, by the way. I learned this pretty much instantly. It is not pronounced oh-vvvv as I was under the impression previously (I am ashamed, I am uncultured swine). We got stuck at the front because apparently a lot more people wanted to see A Man Called Ove than had wanted to see Hello, Destroyer, which is not surprising since Ove was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year at this past Oscars ceremony! It unfortunately lost to The Salesman, which I’m going to see next Sunday (maybe I’ll get there a bit earlier this time, though).

I was far more impressed with Ove than I was with Destroyer! I almost want to watch it again, it was that good. Ove is a grouchy, yet oddly loveable old Swedish man and while you should hate him in the first 10 minutes of the film for his stringent application of the rules and regulations of his neighbourhood and the way he calls small dogs “winter boots,” you just can’t. From the get-go, he’s endearing in his grouchiness. Throughout the course of the film, you learn Ove’s entire life story bit by bit as he: befriends his new neighbours, Parvaneh, Patrick and their two daughters; fights for his old friend, Rune; mourns his wife, Sonja; and finally, adopts a stray (seemingly purebred Ragdoll) cat.

When we first meet Ove, he’s trying to commit suicide and join his wife in the afterlife, however, it turns out to be relatively difficult since there are so many DARN interruptions going on around him. Each time he tries a new method, continually only to look out the window and notice someone breaking the rules or to have someone knock on his door, which sounds like a gimmicky attempt at getting cheap laughs, but it works. It really, really works.

By the end of the film, I was so attached to so many of these characters that are so quirky in their own ways. The movie spent a lot of time making sure you got to know each character well. I mean, I had questions about certain motivations, but they were flaws I was willing and able to let go because in the grand scheme of the film, they didn’t matter that much. What mattered was Ove, and his character, and his friendships, and his rounds.

A Man Called Ove was touching and heartwarming without going overboard and being too sentimental or sappy. It was really well done and you can definitely colour me impressed!

The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)

18/04/2017 · by Joy

After hearing nothing but good things about The Autopsy of Jane Doe, my interest was pretty well piqued and I couldn’t resist anymore. I had to watch it. So I rented it digitally on the Google Play store and settled in to enjoy a movie that has been hailed on RottenTomatoes as “nearly flawless” and “chilling,” expecting what everyone’s been describing. I don’t know if I was watching a different film or… maybe I saw, like, the director’s cut or something? I don’t know. I really don’t know. But it was anything but chilling and definitely no masterpiece.

They had a really good premise – a woman is found in a basement of a house where a horrific crime has taken place, buried in the dirt (but surprisingly unsoiled and sans decomposition, like at all). Everyone else in the house is covered in blood and viscera and this woman is there, dead, in the dirt in pristine condition. So what do they do? Take her to the local funeral home where a man and his son perform autopsies for the Sheriff’s office. Everything is going fine until they start to uncover disturbing findings and supernatural happenings are about, including, of course, the death of their cat, Stanley. Let me tell you, the whole “killing the family pet because they don’t want to kill a main character but we need to do something that will unsettle and disturb you” thing is getting reaaaaaaaally old. It doesn’t make me scared, it just makes me feel less sympathy for the owners of these pets because, you know, they leave them outside overnight or they let them wander or something stupid like that. Poor Stanley… we hardly knew ye.

Anywho. I found nearly all of the characters in this film dull and incessantly annoying, especially the son played by Emile Hirsch. Every 2 seconds, he had a question for which the answer was entirely too obvious. This kid has no critical thinking skills, whatsoever. I swear to god, at one point I was like, if he says, “Is that what killed her?” ONE MORE TIME, I will throw the remote at the TV. The father, the actual coroner, was slightly more clued in, but only slightly. These two together, underground, in a coroner’s office that is truly not up to code (I mean, come on, it has one entrance that is a cellar door and an elevator, that’s just ridiculous!)

The reason behind the “haunting” is silly. The acting was poor except for the body of Jane Doe because she literally just laid there and did a damn fine job of it. The effects were super-cool, but that’s really all that kept me going. I didn’t want to keep watching because it just seemed to get dumber and dumber and I felt myself losing IQ points watching this father-son duo bumble around, not entirely sure what they’re supposed to be doing. I was truly disappointed and having read numerous positive reviews for the film, I don’t see what they’re seeing. It was average and lackluster at its best moments and horrendous at its worst moments. I think I’ll pass on owning this one on Bluray, that’s for sure.

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.

La La Land (2016)

07/01/2017 · by Joy

I am a huge fan of musicals. I will admit that hands-down I am definitely, 100% biased going into La La Land in the first place. My boyfriend, David, however, is not a huge fan of musicals and therefore, not biased. Actually, going into the theatre, I was prepared for disappointment. My mother-in-law had me pretty convinced that I was going to see a huge, steaming pile of garbage. I was convinced that this was going to be one of those movies… you know, the critically-acclaimed, Oscar-nominated films that are totally pretentious pandering?

Boy, was I ever incorrect.

From the first minute, I was hooked. It was a visually stunning cinematic masterpiece, which is precisely what I went home and said to my Snapchat following (very small, probably didn’t care all that much). I won’t go so far as to say it’s a perfect film, but it is pretty much my perfect film. I’m a big fan of Ryan Gosling (some of my favourites being Blue Valentine, Lars and the Real Girl, The Place Beyond the Pines, and Fracture)… I’m a big fan of Emma Stone (Easy A, The Help, and Zombieland) and like I said, I’m a big fan of musicals (Les Miserables, West Side Story, Rent, Chicago, Little Shop of Horrors, Singin’ in the Rain, Cry-Baby, Hairspray… etc, etc, dot dot dot). One of my OTHER favourite things is a movie that makes full use of colour and La La Land does just that perfectly.

I’ve read some of the negative reviews and I just can’t take most of them seriously. Tossing around terms like “worst movie of the year” simply because musicals don’t appeal to you isn’t valid! The acting is wonderful and beyond believable… Emma Stone is phenomenal, even when she’s acting that she’s acting (act-ception). She plays Mia, an aspiring actress. Ryan Gosling is pretty typecast because he does typically play one character, I find, but that’s not a bad thing because he plays his character well. He plays Seb, a confident jazz musician that’s trying to revive a dying genre of music. The writing is good (I won’t say great, but it’s definitely good). The songs are lovely and while the lyrics are pretty simplistic, they are touching and evocative.

I think the opening scene, which is more typical of movie-musicals with people bursting out of their cars into choreographed song and dance, cajoles people into expecting something that isn’t really coming. La La Land is a musical, for sure, but it’s not filled to the brim with song and every piece of dialogue doesn’t take place within a song. If you go in expecting West Side Story, that’s just… not what the film is.

The film really blew me out of the water when it came to the visuals. It was beautiful. It was imaginative, the colours were perfect and could not have been an iota more perfect. It’s colourful and it’s vibrant and it’s everything wonderful about musicals and it does a great service to the genre of jazz music, which is fantastic because if you don’t like jazz, you’re just wrong.

The first thing I said when David and I left the theatre was, “If and when we get a 4K Bluray player, that is the movie I want on 4K,” and I stand by that. That is my review. That sums up my feelings for this film. I will definitely watch this movie again and again. And again.

2016: A Year in Film

29/12/2016 · by Joy

2016 is almost behind us and I really didn’t watch (or review) as many movies as I wanted to this year. I mean, I can really only look back to about March and you know, my memory only goes back so far. I can’t rely on my brain, that’s just ridiculous!

So in honour of ringing in the new year (which hasn’t happened yet, but whatever, just go with it), I wanted to do a little recap post as my (probably) last post of 2016.

The Best Movie I Saw in the Year 2016 (That Was Also Made in 2016)

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I’m really really torn. It’s a very close call between Arrival and Swiss Army Man. Neither are a flawless film, but both really affected me and I really, truly enjoyed them!

The Worst Movie I Saw in the Year 2016

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Hands down, The Gallows takes the cake. It was so bad, so beyond bad that it was almost mediocre but actually it wasn’t, it was just the worst. The worst. I will not ever watch this movie again. Ever. Not even once.

The One I Couldn’t Believe I’d Never Seen Before 2016

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I am almost ashamed to admit it took me 20 years to see The Frighteners for the first time. I had really dropped the ball for, like, 2 decades by not seeing it sooner. I’d never even HEARD of it. But this will definitely be a Halloween season classic from now on, thanks to Rhiannon and Mel who played it and introduced me to the wonderfulness that is Michael J. Fox’s adventures in the after life(?)

The Best Movie You Probably Haven’t Heard Of or Seen from 2016 That I Saw and Really Liked

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Tallulah was a super pleasant surprise. I love Ellen Page, so I wasn’t expecting a garbage film or anything, it was just a movie I saw and watched on a whim without reading reviews (which doesn’t really happen too often). I can’t say I’ve ever seen a BAD Netflix original, but this was a really underrated (well, not really, it has 84% on RottenTomatoes) and really unmentioned film worth watching!

The Best New TV Series From 2016

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Stranger Things – season 1 was absolutely fantastic. I am waiting what feels like endlessly for season 2. It feels like it’s never going to come! I can’t wait for the young stars of this hit new show to return and show us what they can do… they’ve made a fan out of me!

The Best Older TV Series I Fell in Love With in 2016

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A show I hadn’t seen before this year (even though it premiered in 2013 and I’m obsessed with Norman Bates… I even have a betta fish – bate-a fish if you will – named Norman Bates) was Bates Motel and I’m SO sorry I hadn’t seen it before this year. It was so good! I can’t wait to watch season 4, hopefully in 2017!

The Weirdest Movie I Saw in 2016

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The Housemaid was a super bizarre South Korean film I watched on Netflix this year. I am usually a pretty big fan of every Korean film I watch, especially Oldboy, Memories of Murder, A Tale of Two Sisters, and I Saw the Devil… they really do thrillers well there! They have that genre down… however, I did watch (half of) one just the other night – The Wailing – which I was less a fan of, but alas, another review for another time. The Housemaid was explicit, not what I expected, and had a super weird ending, but I enjoyed it a lot.

Honourable Mentions from 2016

In 2016, I didn’t see or review as many movies as I’d hoped I would… but some of the films I saw that made their way into my heart include The Den, local creation Sleeping Giant, the horribly underrated As Above, So Below, Andy Samberg’s satirical Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, a wonderful horror that surprised me in how good it actually was in Don’t Breathe, and another that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen before, The Loved Ones. All of these (I hope) will be making their way into my Bluray collection. I already own Don’t Breathe as I picked it up at a local pawn shop on Boxing Day for $7! AND HEY, I have a birthday coming up ;)

I can’t wait for the films I will see in 2017! There are tons coming out which I am SO excited for… Split, A Dog’s Purpose, Rings, Beauty and the Beast, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, IT, Pitch Perfect 3… should be a good year in the film universe!

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!

Lights Out (2016)

09/10/2016 · by Joy

Lights Out was the perfect embodiment of a mediocre horror film. It used all the typical horror movie tropes (creepy basements, anyone?) and hit all the right notes for a semi-plausible and wholly horrifying creature. At times, the acting was corny, especially from our main character, Becca, who I couldn’t help but compare to a blonde Kristen Stewart (who maybe, sort of, almost emotes more).

It’s a decent enough film with plenty of jump scares to get those easily gotten, but it just wasn’t what I wanted it to be. Everybody’s scared, to some degree, of the dark… the foreboding… the unknown. There’s so many places that Sandberg could have gone with that, but in the end, he basically just made a film that said that people with depression should totally kill themselves. Good… job? I can only assume that’s the reason that he’s gone about making a sequel that was announced the same month that this film hit box offices – because he done fucked up.

You could call Lights Out a ghost story, but really, our antagonist is no ghost. She’s something far creepier, something that only comes about in the dark. I found that impressive, actually, that they actually explained why the creature could only approach in the dark – they actually gave a somewhat logical reason behind it. That’s a nice change, instead of just saying, “oh ghosts only happen at night time” – WHY do ghosts only happen at night time?

Diana is one of the scariest paranormal entities in a long while, I think… on par with Valak, who was a pretty darn spooky nun. I think Lights Out is indeed worth a watch (or two, in my case) and I’m intrigued to see the sequel, especially since they seemed to wrap up the loose ends pretty damn well at the end of it all. Where can they go from here? We’ll see…

Ghostbusters (2016)

09/10/2016 · by Joy

This is a film I wasn’t ever really that interested in seeing. I figured, how could they possibly improve on the original which had everything anyone could ever have wanted in a film about a bunch of people literally bustin’ ghosts. And the whole “now with women” thing wasn’t all that intriguing either. I’m all for equality and I’m totally all for feminism and empowering women, but that doesn’t mean we need to remake classically male-casted films with women. It’s fate was pretty much already set as “not as good as the original.” Despite that, though, it did an okay job of being it’s own movie. It was entertaining enough and it had it’s moments.

The star of the show, by far, was Chris Hemsworth who played the lovably stupid receptionist, Kevin. I found myself pretty much just waiting for his appearances because they were just downright hilarious. Of course, Kristen Wiig is always funny too, but I was really living for Chris in this one.

But to be honest, the story was lacking – it lacked originality, it lacked depth, and it lacked intrigue. I didn’t honestly care what the outcome was and I didn’t care about any of the characters’ fates. They weren’t fleshed out or given much backstory at all. Okay, so Kristen Wiig’s character is a professor at MIT up for tenure when her friend from yore decides to publish their book about paranormal activity which pretty much asserts that she believes in ghosts over the scientific method. I don’t care if her character gets tenure.

Clearly they had fun filming it and it’s an entertaining time, but it just wasn’t enough to captivate me and I’m sorry to say, but I simply wouldn’t watch it again.

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