Movie News: drama

Showing posts with label drama. Show all posts

Film Review: Love & Mercy (2015)

The goal of the Love & Mercy and its director Bill Pohlad are clear from the first moment of the film, which show John Cusack as an older Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys who wants to buy a car somewhere in the 1980’s. Wilson, now an unrecognizable middle-aged man, lost all of this drive and creativity that help him create one of the most successful bands in the U.S. history.

Deeply troubled by emotional issues and under the constant supervision of a strange psychotherapist, Wilson loses days and months, maybe even years in a haze of prescription drugs and complete lack of interest in anything in the world around him. Then, without any warning or sign, the story rewinds 20 years into the past, where the young Brian, now at the top of his game, desires to make an incredible album which will break away the Beach Boys from their fake surfer vibe he gradually came to despise.

But at the same time, his mind is eroding, accompanied by audio hallucinations and deterring emotional stability, which is additionally fueled by drug use. At both times, Wilson tries his hardest to follow his vision and share the love he feels with people around him but ends up isolated in the world that is becoming more and more distant to him.

Pohlad made Love & Mercy in a way that really underlines Wilson’s musical genius and his ability to expand the realm of popular music when no one asked or expected that of him. The film shines while it shows famous Beach Boy’s songs being made in the studio and Wilson, who is terrifically portrayed by Paul Dano, both lost in his miraculous world of sounds and terrified by the things he suspects are coming. Unlike the, for example, Benedict Cumberbatch's uneven presentation of Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, Dano makes Wilson’s instantly connectable, even when he’s losing his mind. Because of this, all those who love or at least know these songs will definitely feel at least a spark of jubilation while they watch how Good Vibrations or some other track slowly come into existence. At the same time, they will also some other darker emotions, seeing in what agony they were created.

Pohlad, who isn’t new to movies but is new to directing, can’t evade the lure of the regular protagonist-antagonist plotline, which dampens the part of the story which takes place in the 1980’s. Here, Dr. Eugene Landy is depicted as a tyrant and a madman who keeps Wilson down, while his newfound girlfriend tries to pull him out of this toxic relationship. Paul Giamatti does a great job as Landy, but I feel that this part of the script failed an otherwise wondrous film by making sure the audience had a bogeyman to hate. Like the Wilson’s real life, I feel this uncalled-for Hollywoodization of his story only subtracted from it but didn’t add much an aside of the cheap thrills of having a bad guy in this musical biography.

There is no doubt that the mind of Brian Wilson was and probably still is a marvelous and terrible place. As a gentle soul who wanted to give people the gift of music, he got a life that had way too much suffering and pain. Love & Mercy might not do him justice in every possible way or as much as he deserves, but it is still a window into a fascinating man. It is clear that the world needed that window and having it is a joyful occasion.

Film Review: Child 44 (2015)

There are a lot of hard, fake-sounding Russian accents in this film. Imagine as if every male character tried to sound like an actor from the original C&C: Red Alert game – we’re talking weird emphasis on random words and a tendency to overly dramatize everything being said, because, apparently, that’s how people talked back in the dark days of the USSR.

Its director Daniel Espinosa leaves this to be the strongest impression of the Child 44 film, which meanders through its characters and the soviet state that was organized, according to the film, in a very incoherent manner.

Its case is not helped by the fact that Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman lead a great cast, or the fact that Noomi Rapace once again creates an unusual and engaging character. This story of the film was moved to the big screen from a Tom Rob Smith’s novel by the same name.

Like in his novel The Secret Speech, Smith analyzes the post-war soviet society to the level of the most miniscule details, which ultimately serves the story of the book. This gives the narrative both an environment-as-a-character feel, but also provides a twisted, but a logical motivation for many protagonists of his stories.

In the film, this makes the presented USSR only into an intangible bureaucratic hell, which is more confusing than scary – who is subordinate to whom and who is trying to get rid of Tom Hardy’s character – it’s all too convoluted to be truly entertaining and at the same time, it stopped me from creating a connection with the characters. Finally, all of this steals the story away from the series of murders that should be its backbone.

In a sense, presenting USSR in the early 50’s often comes out as a weird alternative history in which Nazi Germany won the war and simply told its visual graphics department to exchange the swastika for a red star. In Child 44, this notion is obvious and unlike Citizen X, which made me root for the investigators, turns all the characters into frightened and confused jerks in their own right. Because of this, the only thing I could say to Daniel Espinosa is – too bad, comrade.

Film Review: Good Kill (2014)

A long time ago (speaking in video game industry terms) Ron Perlman declared in the opening segment of the Fallout franchise - war, war never changes. While the same might be true in a metaphysical sense, in a purely practical one, war definitely changes. 100 years ago, people still expected to charge the opposing forces using cavalry with real horses and real sabers (once such charge even took place in 1939 when the Polish forces carried this out in desperation). Today, however, people in the Western nations, especially the US, exchanged animals for a much more potent combat sidekick – robots.

Good Kill is about these killing machines, but it’s even more about a deep-rooted longing and ways how people get either lost in it or find a way out of it. The movie follows Ethan Hawke as Major Thomas Egan, a US pilot who was forced to exchange his F16 for a Predator drone.

Even though he is no longer deployed overseas, but does all his killing from an air-conditioned unit on an airfield near Las Vegas, Egan still feels as if a big chunk of him was ripped out when he was “grounded”.

While the days go by and Egan and his team plant hellfire seeds of death and destruction all over the world, he sinks into a dark place where all purpose is lost and ideals that were shaky at best become nonexistent. As Egan brilliantly puts it to his commanding officer, why are all the teams even wearing their flight suit when they are simply sitting in front of computers and pressing buttons.

Good Kill was directed and written by Andrew Niccol, whose interesting vision still continues to produce unusual movies which might not be grabbing as the run-of-the-mill AAA war-related production, but instead open personal questions. Like his old film Lord of War, Niccol seems really grounded in reality, no matter how gritty or unflattering it might be. Here, his cast supports the same vision really effectively, especially through Hawke and Zoë Kravitz, playing a young newcomer in the world of drone warriors.

As the real skies above places like Pakistan become more saturated with actual Predator drones, it is good to have films like Good Kill. They dare to try to make some sense of the rise of the killing machines, even if the answers are not geopolitical but instead takes place in a single man’s broken heart.

Film Review: Final Girl (2015)

Part proxy renege fantasy, part action film, Final Girl is a type of story that tries to produce a smooth visual experience, but offers very low amounts of substance. If follows Veronica, a specially trained killing machine who is planted in the midst of a group of young psychopaths who kidnap girls and hunt them in the forest as their own wrapped form of entertainment.

Veronica enters the pack and begins killing the killers and hunting the hunters. Sadly, this is the entire Final Girl film. As a narrative, it looks more as a draft of a story than the story itself, because it appears to be lacking any divergence from a single line plot. Of course, like Mad Max: Road Fury clearly showed, there is nothing wrong with a one-liner films, but only if they have a strong delivery.

Even though Final Girl starts off in a somewhat intriguing manner, showing the young Veronica being interviewed by her future handler (played by the always creepily intense Wes Bentley) the intrigue does not last. The director Tyler Shields soon tries some interesting shots where he places characters really close to a background surface like a wall and shines a strong spotlight on them.

But then, the movie movies to a forest, where the action includes some whiskey laced with a hallucinogenic drug. Here, Shields gives us some half-cocked tense moments and drug-induced trips which seem to belong in a more ambitious student film. The only semi-impressive thing from that point on are Abigail Breslin (as Veronica) and Alexander Ludwig as the leader of the psychopath pack. The end comes fast and leaves almost no impression at all.

Final Girl includes some interesting moments and Tyler Shields should not be written off. But, as a whole, the film is utterly forgettable, aside from the fact that it shows that Abigail Breslin is now all grown up.

Current Shortcomings of True Detective Season 2


Copyright: HBO

I was trying to figure out what feels less than right in the new True Detective season. Like practically everyone, I really loved the Season one. From the first moment, it had that synergy of place and characters that was just magnetic in a sweaty, sticky, wrong way, but didn’t leave me feeling uncomfortable for a long time (maybe this is its only shortfall from being a truly groundbreaking show like The Wire).

Of course, I had big expectations from Season Two, especially because Collin Farrell (ever since I saw Tigerland, I am certain that the man is a great but underappreciated actor). But, at the same time, I knew that replicating the formula from the first seasons would be impossible, so I was just hoping for something interesting.

For the first couple of episodes, I wasn’t even sure that anything feels wrong or inadequate. After all, just a year later, I forgot what happened in the first season’s episodes (for example, what exactly takes place in episode 3 in the first season?), so I told myself that this is a normal buildup process of the Pizzolatto type.

But after the episode five, I think I finally managed to transform vague feelings into words. It turns out that Season Two of True Detective simply misses many key moments from Season One, but fails to add other elements that could replace them when it comes to the pure factor of engagement found in the show. On the other hand, its characters do not succeed in hooking the audience with one major hook but try throwing many smaller ones, which don’t connect that well. Here are some of the key points of the current Season Two lack of engagement:

Season One had the Yellow king, a ritualistic murder and creepy drawings which were all powerful but unclear symbols. Season Two has none of these and even the main murder mystery is easily forgettable.

Season One had that strong idea that something in the show might be supernatural. Rust Cohle had his visions, the Yellow King had its presence and these blended into an atmosphere of eerie, dark wonder. Season Two has highways and illegal immigrants looking sad.

Character relationships are deeply undeveloped because of lack of screen time and too many character threads. For example, why would Ray Velcoro and Paul Woodrugh care about each other? In the first 5 episodes, they had like 5 minutes of mutual conversations.

Season One used direct narration to foreshadow and intrigue, without giving anything away in any meaningful form. Granted, the same pattern was a one-time trick, but Season Two didn’t try to pull its own trick so far.

Finally, Season One didn’t have Vince Vaughn, which was, in retrospective, a huge plus. Let’s face it, the man is just saying his lines and there’s none of that “I’m changing my career here” fire. Imagine him smiling a lot more and he could walk right into the set of Wedding Crashers 2.

This all does not mean that True Detective Season Two cannot become something great. But the window of opportunity for that is becoming smaller and smaller, while at the same time, the narrative turn that might be coming has only to become bigger and bigger so that it could really impress us.

Film Review: Maggie (2015)

We didn’t realize it, but a zombie apocalypse is an apparently full of depressive potential. Sure, the plots often grazed depression in these types of films, but mostly while their primary emotions are based on anxiety and the need to stay alive. In Maggie, however, the focus is exclusively on depressive shades of a deadly virus outbreak, which turns people into flesh-craving monsters.

To add to the unexpected weirdness of this idea, the film introduces Arnold Schwarzenegger as Wade, the bewildered father of the main character, a girl called Maggie, who gets infected with the virus and has only weeks before she turns into a zombie. On their secluded farm, father and daughter prepare for the inevitable while Maggie says goodbye to her memories and everything around here.

When Henry Hobson directed this film, I’m certain he wanted to make something original above everything else. He managed to do this, but also to cram some nice melancholic tones in this primarily depressive story about loss and change.

At the same time, I’m sure he enraged many people and will enrage others in the future who will be expecting to see Arnold blowing away zombies. In the film, Schwarzenegger is a quiet, truck-repairing type of guy who is preparing to put his dead daughter into the ground or do something even worse. He runs with this notion neither too badly not exactly excelling in his role. Instead, he does okay, which can be said for the entire movie as well.

Hobson obviously has some ideas and Maggie shows this, but as a whole, it keeps an aura of casual meekness which stops it from making some serious emotional impacts, unlike, for example, The Retrieval, which shares its toned-down narrative approach and bleakness. Abigail Breslin is really sharp as Maggie, but the film somehow is not. It’s good that Hobson did not try to say anything about the genre of zombie movies as a whole and simply drove the plot a personal story. It might not have Schwarzenegger raining destruction, but at least it is trying to destroy our emotions by showing a really horrible few weeks for a single family.

Crowdfunding Push: iSyndrome

A new interesting crowdfunding campaign is looking to make a short science fiction film with the topic of terrifying psychological disorder called iSyndrome. The film plans to focus consciousness and the way it is represented in the minds of individuals, but also in a wider cultural context. The iSyndrome official Indiegogo page states:

iSyndrome is a 20-minute narrative short film about a young and brilliant brain researcher suffering from Depersonalization Disorder, losing his mind. His wife, a post-materialist researcher, tries everything she can to save him, even if it means reaching the end of life, and going to the heart of consciousness.

Barak Shavit, an Israeli filmmaker is the man behind this film and it’s impressive to see him go for the mixture of science fiction and hard-hitting drama. Films like these are usually difficult to pull off because most see Sci-Fi as a collection of tech gimmicks and visual amazement that is not primarily cerebral in nature, where the added drama often feels forced and unnecessary. But, Shavit seems to have a clear vision and has already measured up the atmosphere he desires to achieve, making iSyndrome seem very promising.

Currently, the film raised around 30% of its target. Visit the film's Indiegogo page and see how you can help make iSyndrome come to life.

If you're looking for exposure for your film-related project, contact me right here.

So Bad it’s Good: The Counselor (2013)

Many films demand a certain state of mind if they are to be experienced to the fullest. For the Counselor, that state of mind should be something between feeling very sleepy and being exceedingly agitated. In this golden zone of inactivity (sleep) and frantic activity fueled by anxiety and frustration (agitation), it produces a unique experience. Here, the film shines like a true diamond of total overconfidence, in spite of the fact that it was built on devastate foundations of a script that is not simply overly ambitious, but aims for the spot of a modern masterpiece. The result is a funny and pointless film, but not because of its plot holes and illogical series of events, but because it seems to believe that not many thrillers of modern time can be compared with it.

This is seen from the first moment when the basic relations are set. In it, Michael Fassbender plays a successful attorney and a man who desires to get into drug trafficking, but knows nothing of it. Javier Bardem plays Reiner, his guide on this perilous journey, who has more experience and a lot better fashion style. Together, they initiate a financial series of events that gradually summon a Mexican cartel to their lives when all begins to fall apart.

Aside from these two incredible actors, there are many other who know their craft, but nothing of this is relevant next to the script. Here, the writer, who is a brilliant man by the name of Cormac McCarthy, a man who created the masterpiece called The Blood Meridian, managed to cook up a mixture of speeches which are all twice as large as life. Everything in the film is followed by a witty narrative segment and every line is not only a punch line, but a wrecking ball when it comes to its desired impact. In every minute, some character says something worthy of Cesar or Napoleon during their most important battles, and the sheer amount of serious situations clutters everything.

The film’s director Ridley Scott, just like in the case of Prometheus, once again fails to successfully wrestle with inadequate scripts and instead tries to glide through them, resulting in complete calamity. When the talking stops, the film switched gears into a gritty action film with bursts of Uzi automatic fire and machine-induced beheadings, which makes even less sense then the overspent cerebral approach and mastery of introspection, which is a trait of every character that appears on screen for more than one minute.

In some variations, the McCarthy’s script would work, if the setting was rural Arizona where everyone was dirt poor, but still behaved like a Harvard philosophy professor without any explanation who this came to be. Rian Johnson and his movie Brick managed to pull this off a decade ago. But when McCarthy’s work was brought to life using Scott’s blockbuster approach and set in a super-glamorous setting, it lost all meaning and become infused with presumptuousness that is rarely seen in this magnitude. Unlike other badly devised but presumptuous films like Before I Go to Sleep, this one is not flawed when it comes to its story. This is definitely a plus, but at the end, as Linking Park says, it doesn’t really matter.

The Counselor is a hilarious concoction that can only be enjoyed as a disfigured reminder that some things don’t work well together, even if they are great separately. Also, it is a reminder that Ridley Scott really didn’t make a good film since the American Gangster.

Coming Soon: The Stranger (2014)

Written and directed by Guillermo Amoedo and produced by Eli Roth, The Stranger tells a tale about a man who arrives into a small town looking for his wife. He soon finds the thing he is after, but this also unleashes carnage upon the same place.

The film seems really low-key, focused mainly on the actors and the rather ordinary-looking violence (which makes it all the more awful), but also pushes a supernatural premise in the mix. Recently, Roth showed that he is really keen on producing interesting mystery-horror films and The Stranger looks exactly like this.

Its official trailer weirdly reminds me of the No One Lives movie, but I'm not sure exactly why, or even if this should be a good or bad thing for the film.

The film starts its limited cinematic run today in the US and you can watch its trailer below.

Crowdfunding Push: Spectrum

Mystery movies are probably one of the most engaging film genres. At the same time, they are also a genre that is notoriously hard to pull off without seeming goofy, predictable or plain bad. A new IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign is looking to develop a surreal mystery film that will from the get-go embrace its funnier side. This film is called Spectrum and its official page states:

Charlie wakes from a coma into a world seemingly run by the corporation ‘Spectrum’, who offer personality implants to those willing to pay. Not funny? Buy an implant. Want to stop caring? Buy an implant. Reassembling the pieces of his lost life, Charlie is faced with the tough decision of whether he wants to remember who he was or joining the new world, where he can pay to be anything he wants. Occasionally, he finds, the decision will even be made for him.

Michael Henry is the man behind this project and the artists that inspired this film include David Lynch, Paul Tomas Anderson, and Terry Gilliam. At the same time, the film was also influenced by darker things like the Rupert Murdoch and the global trend of corporations intruding into private lives. Watching the trailer, I also noticed bits that resemble the broad feel found in things like the UK TV show Utopia, Upstream Color and maybe even a few hints of the classic TV show The Prisoner. In total, Spectrum seems like an ambitious project that deserves a chance, especially because of its humor and a really modest asking budget. Its IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign just started, but you can check it out here and see how you can help.

If you're looking for exposure for your film-related project, contact me right here.

Film Review: A Most Violent Year (2014)

Both interior and exterior of this film are about control. Inside of its plot, the main character Abel Morales, superbly played by Oscar Isaac, is a young New York businessman who desires to expand his heating oil enterprise. But, he chose to do this in 1981, one of the most violent, crime-stricken years in the history of New York. At the same time, his delivery trucks start to get hijacked, often involving violent attacks on the drivers while the same danger begins to gradually cross over into his private life.

In spite of this, Morales is determined to stay in control and do not stray from the path of doing business legally, even though his wife Anna, played by Jessica Chastain, continually pushes for other alternatives, some of which involve crime figures.

On the outside, J. C. Chandor directed this film by also providing it with a large level of precision and control. Like his miniature masterpiece All is Lost, Chandor has a talent for making compact cinematic pieces that are tightly wrapped, but still manage to feel very natural and organic.

In All is Lost, the sea and the weather made the film seem that way while, in this case, something similar is achieved by a masterful soundtrack. At some points, the film’s music number seem larger than life in their melancholy and without a doubt strike the same tone as soundtracks from films like Once Upon a Time in America.

Alex Ebert, who created the film’s soundtrack, utilized the groove of things like Miami Vice or Scarface, making it laden with the 80’s atmosphere. But, for me, the track work much more as a soundtrack of the city itself, which is an empire built on ambitions, desires, money and schemes, where the streets are dangerous and dreams bigger than the skyscrapers. American Hustle had some of that on its surface, but this film drills deeper and thus finds something more than costumes and haircuts.

While the music colored the atmosphere, the great acting cast provided the main construction of A Most Violent Year narrative. Primarily a crime drama that intentionally struggles to keep its crime element on the margins, where it constantly threatens to erupt into the main fold, the film produces a whole and stable story about the struggle between ambition and principle.

This all makes it a unique movie that shrouds itself in the real history of one of the most fascinating places on the planet, but still remains a clear and hard-boiled thriller. In other words, J. C. Chandor continues to impress me in ways I don’t see coming.

Coming Soon - Monsters: Dark Continent

A few years back, when Monsters came out, it really made an impact on me as a slow-moving, indie drama/social commentary set in a very imaginative science fiction world. Now, Monsters: Dark Continent takes place a decade later when the alien infection spread to the rest of the world.

This time the plot is set in the Middle East, where a US army fights both an insurgency and the aliens at the same time. I'm hoping that some of the same grim feel and subtle US foreign policies metaphors that the original included will be present in this part as well.

Tom Green is directing the film as his first full-length piece, which comes out today, on April 17, in the US theaters. Check out the trailer for Monsters: Dark Continent below.

Coming Soon: Ex Machina (2015)

For me, the most important thing about Ex Machina is its writer/director Alex Garland. Garland already proved himself as a great writer in films like Sunshine and 28 Days Later.

Now, he is making his directorial debut in a story about a reclusive computer genius who summons a younger computer genius named Caleb to his mountain home. There, Caleb discovers a synthetic life form called Ava that might or might not be fully self-aware, sparking the plot of this compact-looking sci-fi thriller.

Ex Machina comes out in the US on the 10th of April and you can watch its trailer below.

Review and Ending Explanation: Whiplash (2014)

Amazed by this film from the first moments, I quickly realized that Whiplash movie is neither about J.K. Simmon’s great acting nor the drama that occurs between his character and the pupil character played by Miles Teller. Instead, Whiplash is about the consuming power of music and the need music plants in those who hear its calling the strongest.

Damien Chazelle, a newcomer to the directorial role, made this film in a very bold way. It includes a lot of jazz, but not in a way that will be interesting to those who think they love this music genre, but prefer to listen to it while they meet friends for a drink in a local classy bar. Instead, Chazelle focuses on the hard mechanics of music seen through the eyes of the students in a Shaffer Conservatory in New York.

There, a student named Andrew wants to become the best drummer in the world. A teacher named Fletcher, played brilliantly by J. K. Simmons, runs a studio band and Andrew is soon desperate to become its primary drummer. But Fletcher method resides on torture, humiliation and mocking his band members.

As a story, Whiplash emits a strong, frantic energy which is both foreign in nature and clear in its drive. I bet that few people know what it is like to be an aspiring student of jazz music, but in the film, Andrew’s desire to become one of the great ones is clear as a mountain stream in the moonlight. Like the acting of Simmons and Teller (who plays Andrew), Whiplash is intense and continuously building its own pressure, leading to an eruption. Simmons already received much praise for his work, but for me, Damien Chazelle should also be congratulated for writing and directing this marvel of cinema.

Whiplash shows us that music is not always beautiful and is often dirty and bloody, but that all of this does not matter if it can deliver that single pinnacle moment of being totally immersed in it. There, greatness is found in all its pain and glory.

Whiplash Ending Explanation

Spoiler Alert

Although this film is really straightforward, Whiplash ending might seem ambiguous. The movie ends with Andrew finishing his grueling solo, with Fletcher looking at him. At the last moment, it is shown that Fletcher gives him only the slightest smile and a weak nod, but their meaning is clear – Andrew did what was expected of him and grew into something that no one could have predicted. He managed to surpass himself and grew through pain and misery into a great player. Fletcher was there only to witness it, as the Whiplash ending suggests and feel moved by it, but the entire notion is at that point, out of his hands.

His role, as Fletcher sees it, was to stage the environment where a new music legend could be born. With his invitation in the bar (after they are both kicked out Shaffer’s), he continued to provide this environment and did not know that Andrew would prevail. He just knew that a brilliant musician has to prevail in those circumstances, which is the reason he is not mad or sad when Andrew finds a way out of his embarrassing moment. Fletcher’s motive was never to humiliate him and get back at him for getting him fired, although he would be fine with the possibility of Andrew walking out of the concert and music altogether. Through Andrew, the notion of grooming a legend came true and in the final last moment, we see Fletcher realizing his life goal is accomplished.

Coming Soon: White God (Fehér isten)

White God (Fehér isten in original) is a strange film that looks beautiful, original and very unnerving. This Hungarian surreal drama was directed by Kornél Mundruczó and it follows a story of a little girl who is torn away from her dog called Hagen thanks to a unjust government regulation. Abandoned, Hagen decides (maybe decides isn’t the right word) to start a revolution against human oppressors. The film did exceedingly well at Cannes Film Festival and now it’s getting a release on March 27.

Watch White God trailer below.

Film Review: Wild (2014)

At some moments in this film, I felt that something very wrong is about to happen. For example, a woman all alone in a desert is about to jump across some large rocks. I was almost compelled to say out loud to the main character of this film:

“What are you doing, haven’t you seen the 127 Hours? Keep it up and you’ll have to cut off your hand with a pocket knife!”

This alone is a big cinematic achievement. In it, its director Jean-Marc Vallée made a devious pack with Nick Hornby, who wrote this screenplay. With Hornby’s talent for making sad tales engaging to a point where Disney went when they killed off Bambi’s mom, Vallée created an inspirational story which doesn’t state the obvious and doesn’t pamper us in happy-go-lucky feelings. Not all the way, at least.

The tale, based on the true adventures of Cheryl Strayed, a woman who hiked the Pacific Crest Trail accompanied only by uncomfortable shoes and some camping gear, is really unique. In it, this trail, which wasn’t really famous outside the die-hard hiking community, plays an equally important role as the main character. Its beauty and indifference are stunning, captivating, and perfect for Vallée to transform it into a mirror for the protagonist, who is in a deep spiritual, emotional and personal crisis.

Cheryl is played by Reese Witherspoon who acts her heart out and it really shows. Along with Hornby’s writing, she made sure that her character didn’t become some bland heroine who is determined to show the nature who is the boss. Instead, her Cheryl is someone who is much realer and a lot faultier than the average nature conqueror.

But, while Wild is a very stunning movie that draws you in a very poetic way, I was really impressed with the director’s readiness to make the film more gritty. Using frantic editing and cuts, he obviously became even more advanced in his trade since he made Dallas Buyers Club.

Still, I feel underneath that underneath all of the grandeur and greatness, there is still that sticky touch of Nick Hornby. While films like All Is Lost have that moment where the viewer is captivated and terrified by the collision of nature with a single human being, throughout this film, there is the slightest but the constant feel of that undercover Disney approach Hornby does so well.

This is why the film forced a verbal ending and few epilogue-type sentences on how all of this fits together, ignoring the fact that it could have ended without it. But then, in that case, the audience might be just a bit less satisfied and a bit more confused, and Hornby just couldn’t let that happen.

Review and Interpretation: Maps to the Stars (2014)

David Cronenberg is clearly very smart, but this special kind of intelligence of his allows him to examine both the current and future world. Back in 1983 he envisioned a TV audience glued to the scenes of death and torture, backed up by a weird financial system which provides the same entertainment to the masses for profit and kicks. Today, in the era when burnings and beheadings present the main fuel for global Breaking News segments, Cronenberg emerges as a dark prophet of our own even darker nature.

In Maps to the Stars movie, he gutters the notion of child celebrities and the wider arena of Hollywood showbiz. The story of this truly scary film begins with a young girl arriving in Los Angeles, apparently shielded by total anonymity. In the same town, Benjie Weiss, a child actor and a superstar is on a strict sobriety regime enforced by his team of parents and agents, in spite of the fact that he is only 13 years old. Of course, this doesn’t stop him from being a total egocentric jerk.

Not far away, an aging actress is desperate to do anything so that she can secure the role of her own abusive mom in a new version of the mother’s decades-old classic and celebrated film. As the stories converge, so does the madness grow on the margins of this glittering world, along with the promise of a violent and nihilistic culmination.

Maps to the Stars is a perfect movie, delivered and executed like almost nothing before it that tells a tale set in the world of Hollywood, especially with this kind of strange and counterintuitive topic. The filmmaking of David Cronenberg is hard to explain but simple to experience. He presents his characters in a raw form, yelling in agony or joyful celebrating a child’s accidental death because it brought them some unexpected benefit. Just a minute or two later, he shows a young girl covered with the blue ink of a star map, reciting a poem both beautiful and haunting.

In his lens, all actors are perfect masters of their skill. Younger cast members, like Mia Wasikowska and Evan Bird, hold the promise of redemption and youth that might overcome the horrible secrets of their predecessors.

Older ones, like Julianne Moore and John Cusack, provide his film with substance and true wickedness, which is not brought about by emotions, but sheer opportunism. I was especially impressed by Cusack, who created a character equal to Frank T.J. Mackey from the movie Magnolia (which is the closes thing to Maps to the Stars I can remember).

Cronenberg made a film that is a eulogy of perceived celebrity glamour and innocence, sang by mesmerizing voices that are not afraid to poke holes in their own fragile skin and reveal the hideous tumors beneath. Like Nightcrawler, it doesn’t want to compromise or tranquilize the impact of its presentation or ideas. Because of this, it’s a masterpiece of enormous weight.

Maps to the Stars Movie Explained

Spoiler Alert

In my view, the key element of the meaning of the film Maps to the Stars is the lethality of parental decisions and secrecy that follows them. In the story of both families (Weiss and Segrand), the decisions of the parents, made for personal gain or pleasure, end up heavily impacting the next generation.

Havana Segrand is haunted by the abuse she felt as a child and contributes it to her mother, although it was committed by her stepfather (as explained in the massage by the pool ghost sequence). Havana is in a desperate need to connect with her mother, even if it means blaming her for what she didn’t do (but was most likely aware on some level). At the same time, she desires to become her mother, just like Agatha Weiss desired to become wed to her brother Benjie.

After she found out the family secret, she desperately wanted to emulate their parents, who are also brother and sister, but added the fire into the equation as a final element that can cleans them all of this transgression, possibly before they evolve into the horrible, calculated creatures their parents were even back then. Benjie, as a small child, just goes along with it all, but later clearly understands why Agatha did what she did, and goes along with it once more.

In this sense, the explanation to the Maps to the Stars is the idea of younger generations living in the sins of their parents (like Havana) or trying to cleanse these sins in themselves (like Agatha and Benjie end up doing). In both cases, the resolutions are either horrible life of suffering and greed (Havana) or an exit from the world of living altogether (Agatha and Benjie).

Film Review: Wild Card (2015)

Wild Card is one of the films that can be listed under the Neo-Statham movies. In these films, it seems like Jason Statham is trying to slightly get away from his previous batch of action films while he still remains grounded in the action and thriller genres. He tries to make this work by playing action guys who are not into being actions guys, but are into drinking and wasting their life. Redemption is a great example of this trend and it definitely continues with the Wild Card.

In this movie, Statham plays Nick Wild, a washed-out Last Vegas tough guy who works as something between a low-level bodyguard and a private investigator (which he claims he is not). The purpose of these jobs is to allow him to drink and gamble, both of which are going into the red for Nick (although not in a extent of the character Bruce Robertson from the movie Filth).

One day, Holly, one of his friends from the Las Vegas strip nightlife, tells him that she was assaulted and molested by a mobster and his goons and begs him to help her get back at them. Nick is dismissive at first, knowing the connection of the mobster in question, but then reluctantly agrees.

The director of Wild Card, Simon West knew where to take the film’s segments. But then as a whole piece, the film still works as a series of episodes, starring Statham, which are connected by an almost transparent thread. Because of this, the entire film could be called Nick Wild Doing Things in Vegas. But, thanks to West’s large experience with action films in general, he wings through this disjointed story with a lot of style, making it hard for anyone to truly focus on the lacking element of a bigger picture.

Statham’s rocky charm offer assistance in this endeavor by making his character someone who the audience slightly feels pity for, in spite of the fact that he can still single-handedly put down a room full of mob enforcers. The biggest aid to the film’s smooth dynamic is Dominik García-Lorido who plays Holly. In this role, the actress managed to pull off a very substantial character living on the border of the Las Vegas criminal underground. Holly is hurt, afraid and confused, but still willing to risk it all for a taste of revenge.

While this was no easy task, García-Lorido successfully made Holly a real human being on which the cold determination of Nick Wild to mind his business slowly erodes. I hope we will see more of this talented actress in the future because she obviously has plenty to offer. Wild Card movie is fun to watch and its problems never arise so much over this layer of entertainment to have the ability to spoil its thriller action vibe.

Movie Review: The Imitation Game (2014)

Alan Turing had it rough, but it was all kind of worth it. This is, in a nutshell, the idea that I got from the film The Imitation Game. This story about the king of computer geniuses of the first half of the 20th century is very polished and the cherry on its top is Benedict Cumberbatch, who is a great actor and the next gigantic crush for all those boys and girls who really loved Ryan Gosling before he became really popular.

Yes, everything is here and all it very compacted and easily digestible, but somehow, for me, something was very lacking and very off in this film. Its director, Morten Tyldum, had a similar effect on me with his previously best-known film Hodejegerne. In it, just like in The Imitation Game movie, I have a feeling that Tyldum strives for bedazzlement and charm, all in a desperate attempt to leave the audience without too many questions, mainly, what did we really learn about its main characters?

Here, the same problem arises. What drives Alan Turing and why is practically everyone his enemy or at best, passing annoyance? The film provides two parallel vectors that never merge into a single human being: one side of Turing cares only for his machine that can decipher the Enigma code, while the other side is forever haunted by his personality that is simply unwelcome in that time and place (primarily his sexual orientation).

Here, the film backs off, not allowing Cumberbatch to make a choice as Turing. He is neither fine with who he is nor is he tormented by it. He is calculated and even cruel in his worldview, but offers a soft human side on practically every corner. He desires to make beautiful computers that can become aware one day, but he also desires to find boyfriends in the local pub. He is everything that the real Turing was supposed to be, but nothing of this truly defines him, mainly because the film doesn’t show him sacrificing anything willingly. Things and people just fall out of his life, but he marches on, even when his supposed life purpose is completed.

A lot of Tyldum’s careful constructed facade that plasters the inherent emptiness and gutlessness of the film is seen in its soundtrack. At some moments, it is sad, while other times it is cheerful, but throughout the film, it remains very whimsical, as if it seeped from a blockbuster film like Gravity, where the music is used to underline the pacing of the action for those who have trouble concentrating on it while they make out, eat popcorn or use their smartphones.

I don’t know much about what kind of man Alan Turing was, but I am also certain that I learned or felt nothing more about him after I watched The Imitation Game.

Film Review: Inherent Vice (2014)

When it comes to reclusive literary geniuses from the US with inkling for deconstruction of worlds where their characters reside, Thomas Pynchon and Cormac McCarthy could be the ideal contenders (I’m not counting J. D. Salinger in here mainly because he doesn’t fit in my main idea, so I will ignore him). In recent years, McCarthy got two phenomenal adaptations that made a huge blessed dent in the hull of the modern cinematography, even its mainstream aspect.

First one is The Road, which is the less known sibling of the pair, while No Country for Old Men already became a modern masterpiece (and it totally deserved this, at least in my view). Hopefully, the Blood Meridian (one of the finest fiction books that came out in the second part of the 20th century from the US) will also become a movie, and this too has the capacity to make something extraordinary.

Pynchon, on the other hand, is not known for the same things. His novel from 2009 called Inherent Vice became a film thanks to the involvement of Paul Thomas Anderson. This film, like the novel, tells a tale of a doper private investigator by the nickname of Doc, who is hired by his ex-girlfriend to find out what, happened to her new lover, a wealthy land developer. Set in the 1970, it features Joaquin Phoenix as the Larry "Doc" Sportello and a lot of elements from the late 60’s and the West Coast, where the hippie wave just got broken on the jagged rocks, as Hunter Thompson would put it. This takes Doc on a very trippy adventure filled with paranoia and a lot of Owen Wilson.

Anderson is without a doubt a brilliant director. His visual approach is full of melancholy and simply feels as if it came from a bygone era, but his narrative is still very contemporary. Also, the man has the right kind of magic needed to produce the best results from his acting cast, and Inherent Vice movie is no different. While everyone sees Phoenix as a brilliant actor, Anderson once again showed the same is true for many other people. Here, I primarily mean Michael Kenneth Williams, Katherine Waterston and especially the completely incredible Josh Brolin. In one of his moments, Brolin performance is enough to make the whole film worthwhile.

But, is the rest of the film worthwhile in equal measure? It’s hard for me to gauge this idea. On one hand, I enjoyed it, but more as a series of weird snippets full of great actors. There is a general lack of focus in the film, which mixes in a strange way with the subversive notions provided by the unique workings of the Pynchon mind. It is also completely free of any self-serving seriousness about itself. Like the thriller Big Bad Wolves (although devoid of much of the violence this Israeli film has), it goes where it wants it to be and doesn't mind if others drop out from this journey.

Here, I’m sure that Anderson remained true to the original material, but at the same time, including the omnipresent narrator in the entire film shows that he was also a bit taken back by this juggernaut of hippie, paranoid plot. And there is nothing wrong with being at least a little intimidated by Thomas Pynchon, especially if we count the fact that Inherent Vice never becomes dull or loses pace.

While it might not have the tightest plot or the ideal composition, Inherent Vice 2014 is as an original film as they come at this level of budget and AAA production. Once again, Paul Thomas Anderson can be seen as an imaginative hero of his generation.