The final movie in AMC’s all-day viewing was Zero Dark Thirty. The story follows the search for the greatest known terrorist to America, Osama Bin Laden. The main character, Maya, is transplanted from a cushy job with the CIA in Washington, DC to Pakistan and parts unknown. She searches with a small team, using any means necessary to discern the truth from captives, those known to associate with Bin Laden or those he works with.
As this plays out in recent history, it was much easier to follow the timeline, meet characters we’d heard about only through reports after their deaths. Seeing the terrorist acts replayed in a movie was a lot to take in, especially some that feel, literally, too close to home. I still feel like talking about 9/11 is too soon, but that might just be me.
Jessica Chastain deserved more than a nomination for her role in this movie. After watching Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook, I was more convinced of this, but I’m not an Academy voter, so my voice doesn’t matter. There was one great scene were Chastain lays into Kyle Chandler’s Joseph Bradley. The intensity in that scene alone was eye-catching and worthy of an Academy Award. The story was still, to me, steeped in conspiracy theory. Even when the big reveal occurs, as a movie goer, I was no more convinced of who had been killed than when it happened in real life. Bigelow is masterful in her storytelling and she should have been given more credit for her work as well. This is a tough movie to watch, but well worth seeing.
The story begins with Pat getting out of a mental hospital after having a breakdown. It is quickly revealed that Pat has been suffering from bipolar disorder, making him occasionally insensitive and not having the same filter that most people have. On his road to recovery, to restore his marriage, he meets a good friend of his who invites him to dinner and he meets a woman who is a little loose with her morals, Tiffany. The two don’t quite hit it off, but they get along enough to help one another. Pat lives with his parents who are ardent Philadelphia Eagles fans (something I personally find abhorrent). After the incident, Pat has a restraining order and a personal cop assigned to him. He lives with his parents and trades help from Tiffany to speak to his wife. In return, he must participate in a dance competition that Tiffany has no partner for.
The story is comical and entertaining, but the depth of it is greatly lacking. I felt the caricature of mental illness was just that for both Bradely Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, the latter winning dozens of awards for what I’d argue isn’t a stellar performance. I found myself scratching my head as to why so many critics were falling over themselves to give Lawrence some reservoir of credit for a role in what is basically a romantic comedy. Since As Good As It Gets, mental illness has been a great harbinger of awards, but that doesn’t mean it was done well or should be sensationalised. The movie was entertaining, but to see awards being given out for a romantic comedy is, in and of itself, laughable.
In what would have been the third movie of the Academy Award docket at AMC, was the second for me as my friend and I skipped Life of Pi due to there being no pie in the movie at all. As the title would suggest, Lincoln follows the former US president as he tries to get the thirteenth amendment passed prior to the end of the Civil War. The story sets the state of Lincoln in an almost comical fashion contrasted with a quiet control that manages to accomplish things that seem impossible. Knowing the overall ending of the story did make it a bit of a cheat, but the movie was very entertaining with very memorable performances from everyone in the cast.
My expectations going in were that I’d be bored to tears. It isn’t that I don’t care for American history so much as I like a good story, a good adventure, and I didn’t think I’d get either in this movie. I wasn’t wrong, per say, the story is very focused on dialogue and little action. The subtlety of the story grows on you as it goes on, making it seem accessible and for once making history not feel so tiresome. I can’t say that I liked all of it. I felt like there was so much going on, a stouter cast might have gave a better impression of the scope of things, though I can appreciate that the president of the United States does indeed have a far-reaching influence. I have seen a lot of Joseph Gordon-Levitt this year and I felt like his inclusion was a bit much and felt forced. Sally Field and Daniel Day-Lewis were superb, as was most of the cast. I don’t know that I’d ever recommend a movie like this, but it was worth watching. I would never have seen it if not for it being included in AMC’s all-day event.
In the same vein as almost every other horror movie out there, Dark Skies sets up a chilling story of aliens and abduction, a sense of helplessness that makes the movie work. The characters are somewhat wooden at times, they all fall into familiar tropes. In almost every horror movie, the father is a disbeliever who turns when he finally begins to see that something is amiss. The youngest son has an imaginary friend, the older son trying to be strong and be himself all at once. Kerri Russell leads the haphazard cast through a somewhat dizzying story, bringing the family heart that didn’t seem apparent.
The story wasn’t surprising, the twist I predicted only a few scenes before the ending. What makes horror movies so compelling, to me, is whether they can pull you out of your comfort zone, give you something to believe, no matter how unbelievable. The idea of the movie revolves around alien abduction, something clear from the very first trailer. I’ve long held a great fear of aliens, mostly due to the unknown about them, whether or not we, as humans, are alone. The idea is terrifying and this movie plays well to that. However, if you don’t find that fear holding any sway over you, this might be an absolute pass.
The first movie in the Academy Award schedule at AMC, Beasts of the Southern Wild follows the story of a young girl who faces great adversity in a bayou community, presumably in the Louisiana area. Hushpuppy lives with her father in a small farm-like space, there doesn’t appear to be any running water or proper homes, as most people would expect. Her mother is out of the picture and her father is very ill. The pair stay in their home no matter the weather, despite the danger when storms come through. They are joined by a few other folks who also stay in the bayou, unafraid of the impending chaos a flood creates. The people band together through a tough storm, only to be forced out of their homes by the government once the place was truly no longer safe. After a short stop in a shelter, they all break out, the father trying to send Hushpuppy on without him, but she refuses.
What is striking about this movie is not just the young actress, Quvenzhane Wallis, who plays Hushpuppy with such heart, it is both stirring and heart-breaking. The story is quite compelling from the very beginning. The relationship between the father and daughter is both familiar and yet not so. The father was left to raise the girl on his own, and he does an admirable job, though questions rise if he had chosen to move, how much easier, relatively speaking, would their lives have been. The supporting cast was quite competent and had passing moments. Unfortunately, the movie ends in a bittersweet sort of way, leaving you hoping for more, almost thankful there isn’t more at the same time.
The trend these days is to take successful, and I use the term liberally, book and base a movie off of it, a young adult book, specifically. In the void that Twilight left, we have Beautiful Creatures, a tepid love story that is overly predictable and tiresome, despite some big A listers joining the cast, such as Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson. The young cast, minus the always lovely Zoey Deutch, Kyle Gallner and Thomas Mann, I was utterly unimpressed. The two leading actors Alden Ehrenreich and Alice Englert lacked any sort of sympathy from the very beginning, despite the various attempts that the story made to make them both seem likable. I found Ehrenreich was just blah throughout the movie, trying to reach some higher level of connexion with the audience, but never quite making it. Englert played the damsel in distress passable, but I found them both obnoxious and difficult to watch.
What makes this movie so unbecoming is that nothing ‘new’ happens, the story is so predictable, it was like I could have written it as I watched it. There was nothing to the story, less to the acting, and even the cinematography didn’t have much to it. As I watched the movie, you could feel there was more there, probably worth reading, but the movie was just not well done. For $6, I can’t complain, but I’d never recommend it either. If you liked the books, maybe, but if you’re looking for something to fill the YA hole in your heart, keep moving.
If you know me at all, you know I may enjoy a good comedy, but I rarely, if ever, pay money to see one. The first trailer had my interest, but I knew there might be something more and committed to seeing it. The story isn’t quite as coherent as I would have liked it to be, and the ‘change’ that happens at the end was somewhat predictable yet not so.
Jason Bateman plays Sandy Patterson, a man named after Sandy Koufax, the famous baseball player. Melissa McCarthy plays Sandy Patterson after she steals Bateman’s identity and charges his credit cards to their max. Bateman decides to take matters into his own hands to find her and cart her back to Denver. Of course, this doesn’t go without a hitch and McCarthy is being pursued by a credit bounty hunter and criminals for bad credit cards she duplicated. The story spirals out of any sensible way quickly, but the laughs are fairly continuous and rather hilarious. A rather stout comedy and McCarthy and Bateman deliver some great scenes that are well worth watching.
