Tag: Drama

3SMReviews: At Eternity’s Gate

3SMReviews: At Eternity's Gate

Julian Schnabel takes some chances in At Eternity’s Gate and those chances paid off for Willem Dafoe, who was nominated in the Best Actor category for an Academy Award. It didn’t fully pay off for me as this movie was slow, and I had a hard time keeping my eyes open.* I liked how they dealt with the dreaded accent thing,** and the visual things were interesting, almost enough to get me to stop thinking about the fact that a 63-year-old man was portraying a painter who died at 37.

Verdict: skip, unless the visual things intrigue you

Cost: $1.75 via Redbox
Where watched: at home

Consider watching instead some other movie with Willem Dafoe, like The Florida Project, or The Life Aquatic with Steven Zissou

*Indeed, I took a short break and napped for 30 minutes so I could more fully watch the film.
**You know, when the actors all talk with some sort of quasi-English accent, except they are (mostly) Americans playing people who are say, French. This movie starts in French, which sets the tone, but then most of the film the actors talk in standard American English.

3SMReviews: The Edge of Seventeen

3SMReviews: The Edge of Seventeen

Kelly Fremon Craig’s excellent The Edge of Seventeen has popped up on Netflix and this review is here to convince you to watch the film. Nadine (played by the incredibly talented Hailee Steinfeld) has a life that isn’t hard at all,* and yet it’s very hard.** This film does three things very well: it captures female adolescent angst like few films do; it contains hilarious and (to me at least) familiar depictions of awkward flirting, and oh, my goodness, it is funny.

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: Netflix monthly fee ($7.99)
Where watched: at home. And it was good enough to draw the boyfriend in.

*She lives in a nice house, has a middle-class level of resources, and a best friend.
**She’s the kind of girl who powers through a world that doesn’t operate the way she does, her father died and left her to navigate the world alone, and her best friend just started dating her older brother, whom she cannot stand.

3SMReviews: Support the Girls

3SMReviews: Support the Girls

Andrew Bujalski gives us a great gift in Support the Girls and that gift is Lisa (Regina Hall) as the general manager of a sports bar.* I’m a great fan of slice-of-life stories about people who matter not at all in the global sense, but matter tremendously if you are the person in their orbit and this is that kind of film. All of these women, who could have come off as the worst kind of stereotypes, are complex and interesting and that made for a stellar move experience.

*The kind where the waitresses don’t wear much in the way of clothing.

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: $3.99 via Google Play
Where watched: at home

3SMReviews: The Wife

3SMReviews: The Wife
The Castleman’s are flying to Stockholm

Bjorn Runge’s The Wife is a perfect vehicle for Glenn Close’s seventh Oscar nomination and, aside from her performance, a so-so movie. While Close’s performance is nuanced, Jonathan Pryce was all over the place and mostly a distracting presence.* This exists also as a movie where audiences can say after the credits roll, “Thank goodness it’s not like that today!” which is a statement I wish were true.

Verdict: skip, unless you are in it for the Glenn Close performance

Cost: Free from Multnomah County Library (my first Lucky Day Movie!**)
Where watched: at home

*His accent came and went which was perhaps an attempt to show his informal home-life self and his formal Nobel-winning writer self. This attempt was not successful. It also seemed like he couldn’t quite nail his character’s view of Glenn Close as the wife.
**New movies that don’t go into the hold system, but hang out at the branches waiting for you to snap them up! They’ve had this system for books for years now, I’m excited to see it for movies too.

3SMReviews: Cold War

3SMReviews: Cold War

Cold War is dedicated to director Pawel Pawlikowski’s parents and left me wondering many things. It a beautifully composed movie* with stunning performances, especially by Joanna Kulig. I was fully engaged the entire movie, and yet, it left me rather cold.**

Verdict: Good

Cost: $8.00
Where watched: Cinema 21

Consider also watching: Blue Valentine, Never Let Me Go, Revolutionary Road

*It’s good looking in black and white with whatever aspect ratio makes the film square. Plus, there’s a lot of music.
**I needed more background on the main characters. And I didn’t so much get the ending. I’ll be googling now.

3SMReviews: Wendy & Lucy

3SMReviews: Wendy & Lucy

I avoided Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy for years because I was a little too worried about the dog.* Having overcome my fear, I found another quality movie focused on a small slice of life. Michelle Williams brings another quality performance to a Reichardt film and the stakes are high for such a small story.

Cost: free from Multnomah County Library (my Kenton Library branch is very close to the Walgreens where this movie was filmed. There’s a lot of North Portland spotting for those in the know.)
Where watched: at home** in preparation for Filmspotting Madness best of the 2000s

*The dog is fine, I needn’t have worried.
**Matt was half watching. “Is this a crime or horror movie?” he asked when the movie started. I assured him it was neither, as even Kelly Reichardt’s film that involved crime was not a crime film. As the movie ended he said, “I kept waiting for her to be raped, or harmed in some way.” Though I did fear for the dog, I knew that the trouble for Wendy was not going to involve physical harm. That’s not Reichardt’s way. (Slight exception, Night Moves, though it makes sense in the context of that film.)

3SMReviews: The Sixth Sense

3SMReviews: The Sixth Sense

The Sixth Sense remains M. Night Shyamalan’s directing triumph twenty years on. It’s still scary, still packed with great performances,* still brings the tears. While I mourned a little that I knew the big secret** I spent my time both looking for things I could now see because I did know the secret and fondly remembering my first viewing.

Cost: Monthly Netflix fee ($7.99)
Where watched: at home, as part of Filmspotting’s 9 from 99 series.

*Haley Joel Osment has so much going on with his eyes; this comes from Bruce Willis’ late 90s peak; Toni Collette is, as ever, the actor who is going to do so much with her performance
**As does probably everyone by now, but if you don’t I suggest watching this tout suite, before someone spoils it for you.

3SMReviews: Vice

3SMReviews: Vice
Christian Bale (left) as Dick Cheney and Amy Adams (right) as Lynne Cheney in Adam McKay’s VICE, an Annapurna Pictures release. Credit : Annapurna Pictures 2018 © Annapurna Pictures, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Adam McKay wants to include everything in Vice, and that is the number one thing that sinks the movie.* How much more successful would this film have been if it had just focused on one issue like the Big Short did, perhaps Cheney’s use of the unitary executive theory? Also, despite the makeup and extra weight, Christian Bale never completely disappeared into Dick Cheney, though Amy Adams was good.

Verdict: Skip

Consider watching instead: The Big Short, The War Room

Cost: $10.50
Where watched: Cinema 21

*Also sinking the movie: the conundrum of making a biopic about someone who is intently private. Sure, you’ve got that disclaimer with the f-word at the beginning, but when a lot of your movie moments focus on private conversations, we can guess that those conversations were made from thin air. And then what do we really know about this person?

3SMReviews: Green Book

3SMReviews: Green Book

I’m glad I watched Peter Farrelly’s Green Book in a theater, because it gave me further insight into who is really enjoying this movie.* Both Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen were impressive, fully embodying their characters and taking on a physical persona very different from previous roles. However, every single plot point in this film was incredibly predictable, something that ultimately sunk whatever slim hope there was of me liking this film.

Verdict: skip, unless you are a die-hard Mortensen or Ali fan.

Cost: $6.00
Where watched: Laurelhurst Theater with friend Kelly.

Consider watching instead: Dear White People, Selma

*My theater was filled with white people with white hair, most likely of the early-to-mid baby boomer age. They greatly enjoyed Mortensen’s character. I would love to see this with a younger, less-white audience. I’m guessing the reaction points and noises would be different.

3SMReviews: Synecdoche, New York

3SMReviews: Synecdoche, New York

Synecdoce, New York starts as a standard middle-age-white-guy picture, meaning things aren’t going well.* Then it takes an odd turn and I realized with a start that this is a Charlie Kaufman movie!** What followed was a series of delightfully weirder scenes and interesting performances.***

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home, as part of Filmspotting best of the 2000s

Consider also watching: Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Anomalisa

*In this case, with his marriage.
**It’s been so long! I mean, I watched Anomalisa (2015) last year, but it wasn’t quite the Kaufman whackadoodle weird that was the period from 1999 (Being John Malkovich) to 2008 (this movie).
***I was also quite sleepy when watching this and it paired well that state of being. By the end, it started to feel like a very weird dream.

Also: RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman. It’s been four years and I still miss you.