Drama

The Man Who Invented Christmas

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Man Who Invented Christmas
  • IMDb: link

The Man Who Invented Christmas movie reviewOn television, stage, and in film there have been plenty of adaptations of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol over the years (Mickey Mouse and Bill Murray have provided two of my favorites). The latest from director Bharat Nalluri and screenwriter Susan Coyne, based on Les Standiford‘s book, doesn’t add much new to the proceedings, but proves to be an enjoyable holiday romp focused on the turmoil in Dickens’ (Dan Stevens) life and the creation of one of his most famous works. The script follows a familiar path seen before with authors talking directly to their characters and stealing names and lines from real-life to work into their writing. The later reminded me of Shakespeare in Love, which had far more wit than we find here.

The main takeaway of the movie seems to be that Dickens had as much Scrooge (Christopher Plummer) in him as Bob Cratchit, and only by coming to terms with the fact was he able to finish the book that had ties to his own troubled upbringing. Stevens is likable enough in the role, with serviceable support from Plummer, Jonathan Pryce, Morfydd Clark, and others while the movie brings Victorian London, and various Dickens’ characters, to life.

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The Killing of a Sacred Deer

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Killing of a Sacred Deer
  • IMDb: link

The Killing of a Sacred Deer movie reviewWriter/director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster) is known for unconventional storytelling, and his latest certainly fits that bill. Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) is a respected surgeon with a wife (Nicole Kidman), two children (Raffey Cassidy and Sunny Suljic), and secretive relationship to the son (Barry Keoghan) of a former patient with an equally strange mother (Alicia Silverstone, in a surprisingly small role). When Steven’s son develops odd symptoms that can’t be explained, the doctor is confronted by Martin (Keoghan) who makes veiled threats while suggesting that he is somehow responsible.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a frustrating movie. The film is visually stunning with a haunting score, but every time an actor delivers a torturous line-reading (more appropriate to a group of lonely souls reading publicly from their Twilight fan fiction) the spell is broken. There’s a stiltedness to every performance, no character speaks naturally, and even their reactions, movements, and manners are so affected it will make you wonder if you missed the note explaining that everyone in the film is autistic.

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Good Time

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Good Time
  • IMDb: link

Good Time Blu-ray reviewRobert Pattinson stars as Connie, a criminal who uses everyone he comes into contact with including his mentally-handicapped brother Nick (Benny Safdie) who he ropes into helping him rob a bank. While the score goes off without any issues, the botched getaway leaves Nick in jail and Connie working every angle he can to free him including calling on an old girlfriend (Jennifer Jason Leigh), taking advantage of an impressionable 16 year-old (Taliah Webster), and planning a jail break after his brother is taken to a nearby hospital.

While respecting the tone and pace of of directors Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie‘s film, Connie’s selfishness eventually began to wear on me. There’s a method to Connie’s madness, although his actions rarely lead to the expected outcome. And he does have guilt over Nick being locked up in prison, although it’s hard not to look at these actions as predominantly selfish in keeping himself out of prison.

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Lemon

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Lemon
  • IMDb: link

“I knew you were crazy. I thought it was good crazy. I liked it. I liked it a lot; I thought it was fun. Now I know you’re bad crazy.”

Lemon DVD reviewWriter/director Janicza Bravo‘s oddball dark comedy stars Brett Gelman as a thoroughly-unlikable and constantly-sullen actor and theater teacher with a blind girlfriend (Judy Greer) who wants nothing to do with him, an equally-pretentious prize student (Michael Cera sporting some insanely ridiculous hair) with whom he has a very unusual relationship, and a dysfunctional family (Fred Melamed, Rhea Perlman, Shiri Appleby, Martin Starr, Hannah Heller, and David Paymer).

It’s hard to root either for a man lacking all empathy or against such a sad sack who is little more than the butt of life’s series of jokes. Isaac’s misadventures include belittling a theater student (Gillian Jacobs), fretting about the state of his relationship, accidentally killing his friend’s birds, awkward attempts to woo a new love (Nia Long), and taking jobs as the face of sexually transmitted diseases. More than a little self-indulgent, every character and event in the movie pushes the oddball style past credulity highlighting either the humor or misery of its protagonist (often both at the same time), which makes it difficult to take either that seriously.

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Goodbye Christopher Robin

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Goodbye Christopher Robin
  • IMDb: link

Goodbye Christopher Robin movie reviewBased on the true story of writer A. A. Milne (Domhnall Gleeson) and his creation Winnie-the-Pooh, Goodbye Christopher Robin is more than it initially might seem. Much like Milne himself, returned from war with PTSD and struggling with getting back to work as a writer, the script by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Simon Vaughan struggles before getting the man and his family into the setting which would eventually help create one of the world’s most-beloved fictional characters.

The rest of the household consists of Milne’s wife Daphne (Margot Robbie) who is more concerned with prestige, fame, and money than her husband, their young son Christopher (Will Tilston) whose interactions with his stuffed animals will lead to the inspiration behind Milne’s most-popular work, and his nanny (Kelly Macdonald). The film turns out to be as much about the young boy as his father and how the growing fame slowly destroyed the relationship which the creation of Pooh helped create between father and son. For a film about Winnie-the-Pooh, it’s more melancholy than I expected, but it also proves to have some unexpected depth.

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