Drama

The Red Turtle

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: La tortue rouge
  • IMDb: link

“Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”
—Zhuangzi

The Red Turtle movie reviewIt begins with a man lost at sea in a storm. Shipwrecked on a deserted tropical island, for eighty-minutes without a single word of dialogue being spoken (other than a guttural grunt or two) our nameless protagonist attempts to survive but finds his attempts to escape the island thwarted by a giant red turtle. Initially believing the turtle to be and adversary to be overcome, the increasingly-confused sailor struggles to deal with what his eyes show him and the consequences of his actions as he lives out a life he never thought possible.

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20th Century Women

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: 20th Century Women
  • IMDb: link

20th Century Women movie reviewI was a big enough fan of writer/director Mike Mills‘ 2011 film Beginners to include it on my best of the year list. In his first film since Beginners, Mills reuses themes of nostalgia and the awkwardness of life along with some of the same structure (including inter-cut stills and narration to frame a time and place), but although 20th Century Women features a strong cast it lacks the intimacy and magic of his previous movie.

Set during the 1970s, the film focuses on single mother Dorothea (Annette Bening), her teenage son Jaime (Lucas Jade Zumann), and the other women in their lives, Jaime’s longtime best-friend Julie (Elle Fanning) and Dorothea’s friend and tenant Abbie (Greta Gerwig), who Dorothea enlists to help raise her son to grow into a proper man.

The strength of the script is the film’s characters and their interactions (even if Mills struggles a bit a making some of these women, based on the real women who raised him, a bit too cute and quirky for their own good). A notable weakness is the size of the cast leading to a less focused film that while enjoyable isn’t necessarily all that memorable.

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Fences

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  • Title: Fences
  • IMDb: link

Fences movie reviewAdapted from the Pulitzer Prize winning play of the same name, Fences is notable more for its impressive performances than plot. Denzel Washington, who does double-duty as both lead actor and director, does all that he can to make the stage play fit the big screen but there’s little doubt what venue the story is best suited. As a film the story certainly works, but I wonder how much better it may have appeared on stage.

The talky script, adapted from the stage by playwright August Wilson, offers a slice of Americana in a low income area of Pittsburgh where former Negro League baseball player turned criminal turned garbage man attempts to make the best of the life he’s carved out for himself. The small cast focuses on Troy’s (Washington) relationships with close friends and family including his wife Rose (Viola Davis), son Cory (Jovan Adepo), troubled brother Gabriel (Mykelti Williamson), and best-friend Bono (Stephen Henderson). The more we learn about the outwardly charming Troy the less we like him. Troy is a bully, alcoholic, adulterer, and an all-around son of a bitch. The film’s first hour is a slow boil under the which pressure continues to rise until it boils over when the conflict between Troy and his family comes to a head.

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Lion

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  • Title: Lion
  • IMDb: link

LionOnly two films in 2016 offered a profound emotional reaction that forced me to tears. The first was a sobering documentary of an athlete struggling with the onset of an incurable and debilitating disease. Like Gleason, Lion has its basis in fact as director Garth Davis‘ film dramatizes the truth story of Saroo Brierley (Dev Patel) and his long journey to find home.

Offering us two films for the price of one, Davis expertly balances two threads set in different locales with completely different casts. This is no easy task, yet the film weaves both together into a compelling narrative about a sense of self, home, and place in the world.

Starting in the country outside of Calcutta, we meet a young Saroo (Sunny Pawar) and his older brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate). Separated in the city from Guddu, Sarro narrowly escapes a terrible fate on the streets. Even with the help of authorities, the five-year-old can’t find his way back home and is eventually adopted by an Australian couple (David Wenham and Nicole Kidman) to be raised thousands of miles from his home.

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The Most Overrated Movie of 2016

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Jackie
  • IMDb: link

Jackie movie reviewThe goal of a biopic is to offer insight into its subject, to explore the life of an individual and share something new or interesting about its central character. By that definition Jackie is a complete failure. The only takeaway from director Pablo Larraín‘s film is that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was upset by the assassination of her husband. That’s hardly worth the price of admission (let alone the film’s $9,000,000 budget). Natalie Portman may shine in the role, but to what purpose?

Oscar-bait, the film is notable only for its recreation of the time period and for Portman’s peformance. The problem with the former is the glamour is wasted as window dressing on a film without a reason to exist (other than grab Portman some statuettes). The problem with the later is Portman’s performance is undercut by both a questionable accent and Noah Oppenheim‘s script which is never sure who Jackie was, as it jumps from portraying a vapid creature out of touch with reality (as seen in the flashbacks) to a woman of cunning and guile completely controlling an interview with a journalist (Billy Crudup) looking to find the real Mrs. Kennedy.

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