I watch movies every week and then write down my thoughts. Read my previous reviews!
My rating is simple, Watch It, It Depends, Skip it.
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| Room - Intense, gripping, amazing. |
Watch Room
Written by: Emma Donoghue (screenplay, based on the novel by)
Directed by: Lenny Abrahamson
Starring: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Sean Bridgers
Rated: R
Plot:
Jack experiences the world for the first time after escaping captivity with his mom.
Verdict:
This is an amazing movie. I've never see anything like this. It pushes the boundaries of how a movie can make you feel, more than even The Revenant or Mad Max which were front runners for the best picture Oscar. This movie deserves so much praise. Powerful directing and performances create an intense and evocative drama. It's incredibly harrowing and moving.
Watch it.
Review:
I knew going into this what it was about. I tried to imagine how my experience would change knowing nothing about this movie. I suppose it would be a surprising revelation once the situation dawned on me, but knowing the plot doesn't diminish the impact of the movie at all.
I also expected big performances from Larson and Tremblay, and I wasn't disappointed.
The movie begins in a small unkempt room. It has the basics for survival, but why they are in the room isn't apparent. Jack's mom, Joy, is a prisoner and Jack thinks this is the extent of the world. She's shielded him from their stark reality.
We're introduced to their captor Nick through Jack's point of view. Joy puts him to sleep in an armoire. I slowly realized why he was in the armoire. The script does a great job of presenting a clue or hint, and letting it slowly dawn on you what's happening.
After the first appearance of Nick, the camera slowly pulls back and you realize the entire movie has taken place in this cell.
This movie is emotionally draining. Joy has to reconcile her situation of being captive while trying to paint the world as a positive place for her son. She has to deal with a captor who tries to shame her into being thankful when he provides basic necessities. Nick doesn't even know what five year old Jack looks like. Though Jack looks like he's eight and can read and write. I can't blame the movie, an actual five year old would make production incredibly difficult.
The movie has a slow, brooding mood as it slowly reveals more details about this world. Abrahamson expertly films in this room and gets great performances out of the actors. I can't wait to see what he does next. This movie proves his extraordinary talent.
Joy decides to escape by using Jack. When she tells him a world exists outside of room, Jack can't believe it. His mother has told him room is everything. Joy relates her kidnapping and how she has been imprisoned for seven years. It's difficult for her to admit what happened when she has denied it to Jack. Jack's world is upending. It's bigger than he thought and he has to deal with the realization that his mom is admitting she lied to him. She presents it as now that he's five he is old enough to know, but that's a huge revelation for Jack.
It's emotionally exhausting as Joy preps Jack for the escape. What if it goes wrong? Even if Jack escapes what will happen to Joy? It's a huge risk for both of them. Jack has no comprehension of what's happening or what Joy has endured. The only person she loves in the world is leaving. I had complete empathy for her, and the movie slowly increases intensity. She is making the ultimate sacrifice and Brie Larson is absolutely amazing. It an intense sequence.
I had to wonder if either of them have ever been sick. Obviously they've never left the room, and maybe the decreased exposure is why they haven't been sick.
When Nick carries Jack's body, rolled up in a carpet, out of the shed, we see the world for the first time. This prison is an ordinary shed in a typical backyard. It was a surreal moment when Jack gets a glimpse of the sky for the first time. The sequence of his escape hit me like few things in a movie ever have. The emotional impact is huge. The direction is stunning, and this movie is incredible. The scene teeters between will he or won't he escape. Regardless of the outcome, what will happen to Joy?
Jack knows so little about the world. He's only seen it through television and he's never been away from his mom. Even outside of room, he still lives in captivity.
Joy reunites with her parents who have since divorced. Her father is unwilling to even look at Jack. You understand his reasons, but by shunning Jack he's shunning his daughter. The movie hinted at her father's feelings before revealing them. The story has such subtlety.
Joy has to be resentful of everyone that got to keep living their lives like nothing ever happened. She's having trouble adjusting. She had a mission to protect Jack before. Jack has an easier time since he's so young, noting that time has to be spread extra thin since there is no much space. He's constantly being told to hurry up.
I can't say enough good things about this movie. This movie is incredibly well-crafted. It tells a small story in terms of scale, though huge in emotional impact. It never feels slow, and it's always engrossing, engaging, and intense. When Joy and Jack go back to room, at his behest, he comments that room seems so small now that the door is open.
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| The Imitation Game - Come for the Cumberbatch. |
Watch The Imitation Game
Written by: Graham Moore, Andrew Hodges (book)
Directed by: Morten Tyldum
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Charles Dance
Rated: PG-13
Plot:
Alan Turing and his team of code-breakers attempts to crack the unbreakable German Enigma code during World War II.
Verdict:
An amazing story about an amazing scientist, Alan Turing. He cracked the impossible code and invented computers while sworn to secrecy. Cumberbatch is of course amazing, portraying the social abrasive Turing. Everyone does a great job in bringing this story to life. He has to crack a German code, but solving it turns out to be just the beginning.
While Turing is portrayed as unlikable, this sets up great moments of triumph with his colleagues.
Watch it.
Review:
The movie begins with a voice over by Turing urging us to watch the whole thing and see his side before making any judgements. This is good advice as Turing's disdain for social procedure causes him to come off like a jerk. Cumberbatch and the writing depict Turing as passionate and driven instead of just callous. Though, you can't blame his co-workers' feelings of disdain.
Knightly as Joan Clarke helps to humanize Turing, though I'm not sure anyone in real life would take the time. They find common ground in being outcasts. As a woman, she's relegated to being a secretary instead of a code breaker despite her brilliance, and Turing's passion for his work and dismissive attitude towards others isolates them both. Of course Turing's interest in her is purely academic.
In a small moment at her behest, he gives each of his co-workers an apple and laboriously recounts a joke. It's a small moment, but it shows that he's trying, and they know it too. He just doesn't understand how to interact with people.
When Commander Deniston wants to fire Turing, each of his co-workers threatens to quit. I'm not sure Alan quite earned the moment, at least by what the movie showed us, but then again his coworkers realize that Turing's machine is their best hope at not only cracking the code, but winning the war.
The timeline jumps between 1941 where Turing is cracking the code and 1951 where he's been detained in relation to a home robbery. Often the movie flashes back to the 1930's to memories that shaped Turing as a child. It seems like Turing did tell the cop about his work during the war, which seems like a breach of classified information.
The movie does a great job of making you feel the exact emotion desired for each scene. With the Commander on the verge of shutting down Turing's frivolous machine, they have one more chance to crack the code. It's a success, but Alan is the first to realize that they can't stop an impending attack. They must be tactical with the information they act upon so the German's don't realize the code has been cracked and change the encoding.
Turing's group now has to determine the minimal amount of actions to win the war and the maximum amount that won't alert the Germans the code is broken. I didn't understand why Turing couldn't take this information to Commander Deniston. Surely he understands tactics and the repercussion of being cavalier. This point is hand waved as Deniston doesn't like Turing anyway.
I liked the twist of pivoting from breaking Enigma to flying under the radar. I hadn't heard the story that Britain helped win World War II, granted my history lessons were from United States history books.
The movie states a few times that the fact Turing wasn't normal is the reason he accomplished extraordinary feats. Turing's homosexuality provides a parallel to his intellect with the story line from 1950. Homosexuality was considered illegal and his report of the home robbery led to him being charged and chemically castrated. The movie depicts that as leading to his suicide.
If the military had made Turing fit normal, he wouldn't have cracked the code, and he wouldn't have invented the computer. If society hadn't tried to make him fit a certain definition of normal, he may have lived for twenty or thirty more years. Who knows what he could have accomplished.
I had heard of Turing, but didn't know the full story. It wasn't until the nineties that Britain revealed Turing cracked the Enigma code. It wasn't until 2013 that the Queen pardoned him, which seems absolutely insane. How did it take that long?
Read my San Andreas review
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| As Above, So Below - The camera work ruins the movie. |
As Above, So Below (2014)
Watch As Above, So Below
Written by: John Erick Dowdle & Drew Dowdle (screenplay)
Directed by: John Erick Dowdle
Starring: Perdita Weeks, Ben Feldman, Edwin Hodge
Rated: R
Plot:
A group of people traverse the catacombs of Paris in search of the Sorcerer's Stone.
Verdict:
It's found footage in the worst possible way. So many sequences are unintelligible due to the shaky camera. Half the movie I'm wishing I could understand what is happening. It's unfortunate as the concept is ripe for horror, they are in the catacombs under Paris. Because of the camerawork, the mood is never fully established. While the plot undoes itself towards the end, the lack of clarity is the worst part. Found footage is okay, but stabilize the image so I can at least know what is happening in scenes.
Skip it.
Review:
It's part Da Vinci Code and National Treasure with a horror bent. Scarlet, an archaeologist has assembled this team to uncover treasure under Paris.
This movie is disappointing. The concept is great, but the style of shooting makes much of the action unintelligible. I'm sure part of it is budget. If someone drops the camera during a cave collapse you can just show dust in the air instead of the rock crumbling, but this also reduced the effect of many scares. They at least could have stabilized the camera better.
The style works a bit better once they enter the catacombs with tight, enclosed spaces.
When Benji is in a tight tunnel crawling over bones on his stomach, he becomes stuck and freaks out. It felt very real and uncomfortable. This contrasts with some truly bizarre encounters that this group dismisses. Sure they act kind of scared, but some of this stuff is just impossible. Part of the movie is each person confronting their past or their fears, but it's such a chore to watch.
The ending undoes the movie. The entire movie is this group traversing the catacombs. In the last few minutes Scarlet backtracks to one of the initial rooms they encountered, forearm smashing a demon in the process, and then comes back in a poorly filmed parkour performance. The movie just loses it, allowing Scarlet to so easily fix everything.
The final scene was kind of neat. The group has gone deeper into the catacombs and finds a metal cover in the ground. This opens into the streets of Paris, defying physics. If they drop down into this tunnel, they will be up on the street. It sounds weird, and it is, but it works. It's one of the few things that works.
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