Tag: Drama

Movie Review: DON’T BREATHE – Doesn’t live up to over-hyped expectations, but worth watching.

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dontbreathegothicposter

I’m not exactly sure when or why I started disliking Stephen Lang.  I haven’t seen a lot of his work, and I didn’t recall him being in Manhunter all those years ago, but there was one movie I actually hated him in, or a TV show, or something.  No idea, though.  I know it was before Avatar, a movie that most people now, thankfully, regard as being mostly crap.  I think it’s something stupid, like his face.  I always have this feeling that he looks childish and petulant whenever I see him – like I said, stupid.  And it’s because of him specifically that I avoided watching Don’t Breathe.  I won’t go out of my way to never watch a movie Lang is in, though – the only moviemaker I refuse to watch these days is Kevin Smith, and my dislike of Lang is nowhere near that bad.  Whatever.  I ended up watching Don’t Breathe at the weekend, so here we are. Continue reading “Movie Review: DON’T BREATHE – Doesn’t live up to over-hyped expectations, but worth watching.” →

Movie Review: TAKE SHELTER – Another great Michael Shannon performance highlights Jeff Nichols’ intriguing movie

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take-shelter

A few months ago, I watched Midnight Special on the recommendation of a friend, and I liked it.  I’d never heard of Jeff Nichols before that, but I was impressed by everything about the production, despite not being overly wowed by it.  It’s definitely one of the best movies I’ve seen this year (to put that in context, I think I’ve watched about 30 – 40 movies so far in 2016.  It’s October 8th, as I write this), and it’s clear to me that Nichols is a name to watch.  His upcoming movie Loving, starring Joel Edgerton seems like a risky outside-of-his-box move, and feels like it Oscar-bait, but I’ll trust the guy based on the two movies of his I’ve watched now.  Other than Midnight Special, last night I watched his 2012 movie, Take Shelter.  I said Loving was outside of his box, and that’s based on seeing these two movies.

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Movie Review: TRUE STORY – a vaguely unsatisfying true crime story that’s more Dateline than In Cold Blood

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true_story

In 2002, Christian Longo was arrested in Mexico for the December 2001 murders of his wife and three children.  In the month or so he’d been hiding out there, he used the alias Michael Finkel.  Not uncommon for fugitives to do that, but in Longo’s case, the name was that of a specific person.  It wasn’t someone he knew – not a neighbor or a friend or a fictional character.  Michael Finkel was the name of a contributing editor at the New York Times who was fired by the paper around the same time as Longo’s arrest for writing a well-meaning, though fictional account of the African slave trade.  When Finkel learns of Longo, he is intrigued enough to contact Longo directly to ask why the accused murderer used his name, of all people.  True Story is the movie adaptation of Finkel’s resulting book that detailed their relationship.

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Movie Review: THE BIG SHORT – terrific procedural about the housing market crash that runs on a great cast, and excellent writing.

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TBS_1-Sht_Intl

I can’t properly define what makes a movie great to me, can you?  I know some people think a movie is “great” because of the visuals, which used to feel shallow to me, until I started looking at movies in better depth.  Movies are, above everything else, a visual medium – why wouldn’t people think that’s the most important part of the experience?  It’s not for me to get all judgy on what people like in movies, but there are particular elements that appeal strongly to me, and when they’re brought together well, that’s what makes a movie great.  Such is The Big Short.

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Movie Review: Z FOR ZACHARIAH – unconvincing post apocalyptic melodrama feels more like a low-key romantic western.

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I’ve often wondered why post-apocalyptic drama is so popular – I count myself a fan of them, but I don’t know if I can fully articulate why.  Almost every single one of them portray a world I wouldn’t want to live in: I’m not ashamed to admit I love my internet, I love my convenient life and all the trappings that come with it.  I also wouldn’t survive long in the kind of world I tend to enjoy in fiction.  Let’s face it, it would suck.  Living day to day, evading the horrors of not having enough to eat, or clean water to drink.  Instead of my current cushy job and the comfortable life it affords me, I couldn’t abide a medieval life of weak, failing crops, anarchy … loneliness.  I admit I would cash in my chips early.

Continue reading “Movie Review: Z FOR ZACHARIAH – unconvincing post apocalyptic melodrama feels more like a low-key romantic western.” →