REVIEW: Burlesgue

This is the final film that I have to review for losing a bet, and in four months I will most likely be losing the same bet once again.  For those unaware, on the podcast that I co-host, The Movie Breakdown, a yearly bet takes place.  We do a draft where we each select ten summer movies, and the feller whose picks cumulatively made the most in their opening weekends is the victorious champion.  I always lose.  Thusly, I am doomed to the punishment which is watching and reviewing three movies that are picked to inflict pain.  This is my last hurdle to jump, and if I didn't get it reviewed before the next draft takes place (this upcoming weekend), then I am subjected to a further three films.  Let's jump in then, shall we?

Released in 2010, Burlesque strives to appeal to music fans by bringing together two huge names.  Firstly, we have Cher, an Oscar winning singer and actress.  Seceondly, we have Christina Aguilera, a singer who identifies as a genie in a bottle that you have to rub the right way.  Not to much surprise, one of these people conveys emotion in the film, and the other... well, I guess she sings, so points for her.

Aguilera plays Ali, a girl who needs money (if I remember correctly.  I saw the first half of this film about four months ago and just got around to finishing the darned thing).  Wandering into a club with music and performers, Ali wants in, but Cher's character, Tess, will have none of it.  Ali finally proves she can sing, and then unveils her worth as she points out that the girls in the shows are simply lip-synching, and the product would be a thousand times better if they actually sung the songs.  Well played, because she is correct.  However, the ironic cruelty of this plot point is that director Steve Antin misses the logic in this and the performances in the film are recorded and then lip synched.  There is a much different sound to something that is recorded in the studio and something that would have been recorded while filming.  If you don't believe me, listen to the over produced songs in this and compare it to the songs in A Star is Born.  Honestly, I am fine that they did it that way, it just needs to be brought up when a character literally makes an argument against a technique used by the director.

I forgot to mention that the club Tess owns is in financial trouble, because you can't have a movie like this without that cliche.  Also, SPOILER, Tess ends up not only winning the hearts of her peers, but also saves the club.  Didn't see that coming.  Along the way, there are just so many empty scenes where the film is just doing what it feels it must.  Of course there is going to be a romance that takes a while to blossom before running into trouble exactly with half an hour left.  The tension that separates them (before they reconcile, of course) is painfully forced and lacks any reality or logic.  These moments always happen in films, but they at least need to be believable.

One of my biggest problems in this film is the character of Ali, and how she is written in regards to men.  Maybe I'm the only person that didn't like this, and it could be that I'm creating an issue that isn't actually there.  My problem is that Ali doesn't seem to have her own mind when it comes to the men in her life.  If they want something, Ali goes with it.  When really tired after a day of working and just wanting to go home, a guy takes her purse and says she needs to go out with him to get it back.  A sigh that seems to say, 'oh, those silly boys,' and Ali is off with him.  A guy breaks up with his fiancé, and literally only a few hours later and he wants to get physical, and once again it doesn't seem to be that she has her own mind.  This is a character that is supposed to be strong, but I couldn't get into that when her life seems to revolve around what the men want.  At the end she gets mad and does her own thing, but that's part of the scene that was without reality or logic.

The concept of the film is fine, and while cliche it could have still been a decent enough experience.  Unfortunately the writing is uninspired and tired, just going through the same motions of the better movies that came before it.  Cher is fine, and Aguilera isn't horrible, but it is clear that acting is not her day job.  If you love music, watch it.  If you love music and respect yourself, the choice is yours, but choose wisely.  Don't choose poorly.

Rating - 1 out of 4 stars

NOTE - I always go back and proof read my stuff, but sometimes I am writing and I just don't want to return to it ever again.  This is one of those times.

REVIEW: Den of Thieves

A good heist movie can be a lot of fun.  There is a lot of entertainment in watching the robbers work through their plan and then seeing the entire, convoluted mess come together at the end.  Of course, a good heist movie also has some sort of twist.  And a moustache.  Well, they may not all have a moustache, but it doesn't hurt the flow of the film when there's a dusty upper lip (Edward Norton knows what I'm talking about).

With Den of Thieves, we don't really have a good heist film, but it isn't bad either.  This is one of those movies that occupy the middle ground, where it just sort of exists and nothing is very memorable.  There is something to say about the well shot action sequences, but what we get outside of those moments is far from compelling.

The film focuses around a group of skilled bank robbers and their big plan to rob the Federal Reserve in Los Angeles.  Leading the group is Ray Merrimen (Pablo Schreiber), a former special forces bad ass that assembled a solid team.  Standing in their way is a group of detectives led by Nick O'Brien (Gerard Butler), a rough and tumble cop who plays by his own rules.  Essentially, he is a super hyped up version of almost as many cliches as you could think of.

Part of the issue with Den of Thieves is that we spend most of our time with O'Brien, and I guess he is supposed to be the protagonist that we should be rooting for.  The problem is that O'Brien is a total Neanderthal.  The degree to with Butler takes the 'manly' aspects of O'Brien are so annoying and irritating that I won't shy away from being redundant in my description.  The pursuit of his alpha-male, top dog performance brings us a lead that is such a dick that I feel he was better suited for kicking sand in people's faces at the beach while belching out the few letters of the alphabet that he could remember.  Honestly, I could not stand this character and I didn't get the feeling from director Christian Gudegast that we were supposed to dislike him.  

One of the villains is a quiet bartender named Donnie (O'Shea Jackson Jr.) that gets kidnapped by O'Brien and his jackass friends who beat him into giving them information.  For some reason O'Brien later makes it clear to Merrimen that Donnie talked.  I believe that Gudegast did this to show some sort of unorthodox style of O'Brien, but it is so enormously stupid.  There are a few times where I think we are being shown the smarts of O'Brien when it is all actually dumb, dumb, dumb.  And stupid.  And dumb.  At the end of the movie, the robbers are stuck in traffic and O'Brien, who knows that the villains have body armour on and that they will be seriously armed, decides that they should engage in a gunfight with so many civilians around.  They are in a traffic jam.  They aren't going anywhere.  Police officers could literally block off the road ahead of them and arrest them, but O'Brien is too smart for the logical options.  Heck, the police could also have just set up lawn chairs and waited for the baddies to eventually get there.

Gudegast is really reaching for this film to be both dramatic and gritty, something that never quite gets delivered properly.  As I mentioned above, the action sequences are well shot.  They are tight, engaging, and look great.  However, because Gudegast is trying for Den of Thieves to be dramatic we have much of the movie being people talking.  I'm not against this sort of thing, but the dialogue needs to be sharp for it to work, and the script for this film isn't up to that level.  The film is an absurd two hours and twenty minutes,  another indicator that Gudegast believed he had more on his hands than just an action heist movie.  Numerous scenes didn't serve the overall narrative and should have been trimmed.

This isn't a horrible movie.  The only real issue is O'Brien is a disgustingly irritating character that ticked me off, making the movie really feel worse than it was.  Other than that, Den of Thieves exists simply in a state of being okay.  It's heft is rather light, and the drama is without impact.  The twist of the movie isn't as smart as it believes it is, and it will probably have you asking questions over the logic of it.  If you are curious about this film then I won't say stay away from it if you have a method of seeing it where you don't have to spend any money on it, such as a Netflix subscription.  If you are wondering if it is worth rental dollars, it isn't.  There are too many quality and intriguing heist movies available that are more worthy of your money.

Rating - 2 out of 4 stars

REVIEW: Mission: Impossible - Fallout

As far as the Mission: Impossible franchise goes, I really didn't get into the first movie.  The fact that the crew got killed off right away with it turning into a Tom Cruise vehicle was disappointing.  I wanted to see the team in action.  The second film I liked even less.  The third was alright.  After that, though, I believe it has become the premier action franchise.  There is a lot of selection in the theatres for popcorn munching good times, but little has come close to touching a franchise that is spitting out near perfect films.

As Mission: Impossible - Fallout starts, there is a good sense immediately that the stakes for this film will be huge.  Nuclear bombs could end up in the hands of a very dangerous person, and it comes down to Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team, consisting of Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg).  As needed in such an impossible mission, there are many twists and turns in the plot, and it needs some mental acrobatics at times to remember who is doing what.  Sometimes I hate when there is too much going on in a script, but writer/director Christopher McQuarrie uses it to enhance the feeling for the audience.  We are watching and knowing that there are so many factors in play, and it really does add to the feeling that this is all an impossible task.

With the consequences of failure being huge, it is nice that there are some personal elements that are treated just as significantly.  Ethan Hunt needs to work through aspects of sacrifice for the greater good, something that crosses his path a few times in the film.  We also have some interesting backstory and motivation for Rebecca Ferguson's character, Ilsa Fuast.  Having these added layers keeps the film from only being about waiting for car chases and explosions, lending to more points of connection for the audience.

Seeing the film, it is hard to notice that this is only Christopher McQuarrie's fourth time directing.  He was also in the director's chair for Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, and that effort combined with Fallout allows him to put on display masterful techniques.  There is such a wonderful, fluid nature to all of the action sequences, and the stunts are mind blowing.  As I watched it, I had no idea for the most part what was done practically and what was CGIed.  There are a few moments where you can detect a green screen moment, but those are tied into really imaginative shots that are wonderful enough that it doesn't matter.

The casting of this franchise is so spot on.  If there is someone in Hollywood who works harder and gives more effort than Tom Cruise, I would like to know who they are.  Despite getting older, the man seems to refuse to slow down, and the lengths he goes to to bring a realism to incredibly technical stunts enhances the film greatly.  Ving Rhames is able to bring a cool demeanour, and Simon Pegg naturally uses his comedic abilities to add some laughs.  The great thing here is that those laughs don't detract from the tension that is happening, and it is used sparingly.  It would be a sin for me to forget to mention Rebecca Ferguson returning to the franchise, and kicking ass just as much as the boys do.

I know that there are a lot of people that have a hard time wrapping their minds around Tom Cruise.  He jumped up and down on a couch and he is heavy into scientology.  I get how some of what he does alienates people.  It can be difficult getting into a movie when the connection you have with a talent is negative.  With that said, I really hope that people are able to put that aside and watch these movies for what they are.  They are a slick combination of intrigue, tense dialogue, suspicious environments, and unparalleled action.

To all of the people that enjoy popping up some kernels and smothering them in butter to sit down to fun escapism, McQuarrie has twice in a row done it better than anybody.  The big names at the box office are all Marvel related, and those are fine films.  Heck, they can be great films.  Are they all consistently up to the same standard as the past few Mission: Impossible films?  I don't think so.  The blending of all the wonderful elements of cinema are done with Walter White precision, and what we get is a perfect experience.

Rating - 4 out of 4 stars

REVIEW: Avatar

It's been almost a decade since the biggest blockbuster in history came out, and I finally got around to seeing it.  I felt like the only person on the planet that hadn't seen it, with everyone rushing out to see the technical mastery of director James Cameron and how the movie incorporated 3D.  I also feel like the only person on the planet who thought Inception was 'meh.'  Sometimes, I have learned, I stand alone.

Cameron had a definite vision for this movie, and he has been pushing the boundaries of special effects and environment his entire career.  He doesn't seem to be able to give something less than 100%, and Avatar was his biggest masterpiece.  The visual world that he created was imaginative beyond compare.  The contrast of light and colours on the fictional planet of Pandora was glorious eye candy.  That being said, I didn't see this film in theatres.  I didn't see it in 3D.  I saw it on a laptop screen, and the CGI was obvious in some of the actions of the alien species, the Na'vi. That's minor, because when it came out it was without any contemporaries.  It was a massive hit, got nine Oscar nominations, three wins, and made $2.78 billion worldwide.  I cannot see it getting dethroned any time in the near future, so it's status as a mega-hit will remain.

But...

This is an example of insanely simplistic storytelling.  Yes, it blew minds and people ranted and raved, but the actual tale that's being told is incredibly generic, and the entire plot of the film (which means the film itself) had no reason to exist (I'll expand on this a bit later).  If you doubt me about the poor quality of its story, look at what happened when the film was no longer in theatres.  I don't know of anyone that owns a copy of Avatar.  I am never talking to friends of mine who are parents who excitedly tell me that they just showed their child Avatar for the first time.  Once the glamour of the film is pulled away, the ground breaking use of 3D, there isn't much left to excite people.  This is the biggest movie of modern cinema, and it didn't take long for it to stop being talked about.

This movie is easily the biggest 'white saviour' movie that has been told.  If that term is new to you, it refers to the fact that the problems of a different group of people are overcome by a white guy (seldom a female).  Not only is the main character, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) able to prove his worth to the Na'vi, it is him who ultimately has the courage and determination to lead them to victory when they are unable to do it themselves.  Movies like this should have gone extinct a long time ago, and yet they still happen.

Normally by this point in a review I would have said at least something about the plot of the movie I am reviewing.  Notice how I haven't done that yet?  It's because the plot has no reason to exist, and that's not based off of my interpretation, it is based off of the script.  Humans have a program where they take highly educated people with PhDs and essentially get them to drive around Na'vi bodies, which they call avatars.  They use 50% DNA from the human and 50% DNA from a Na'vi to create a creature that has a biological connection to its operator.  The human then goes in a pod and is able to bring the Na'vi body to life and control everything it does.  Because this program needs highly educated people who have trained for years on Na'vi culture and language (as well as it taking five years for those people to get to the planet), I assumed that all of this effort was for humans to infiltrate the Na'vi.  Why else would they have such an elaborate program?

Well, my friends, this isn't the case.  We learn quickly that the Na'vi know that the people coming to them aren't native to the planet, as they refer to them as 'sky people.'  "Okay," I thought, "obviously the humans have gone through all of this work because the Na'vi will have their minds blown if they saw someone in human form approaching them."  Not the case at all.  At the end they are presented both the human driver and their avatar they don't even do a double take.  In fact, they are so comfortable with it that I assume they must have known the entire time.  The fact that the human has been controlling the avatar is laid in front of them, and it is clear they aren't surprised by this.  There is no actual reason presented in the film why it is they have to resort to using avatars when they could just meet with the Na'vi in person.

The movie's entire plot is useless.  It is about a far-fetched program that would be costly as heck, take almost a decade to train and re-locate someone to drive an avatar, and is is inefficient as feeding unleaded gasoline to a mule to get him to go faster.  We are never given any reason why this entire avatar initiative is required, and people could have been meeting with the Na'vi in jeans and a tank top the entire time.

Add on to this the lack of subtlety in the film, and we aren't really looking at something that should have been nominated for a best picture Oscar.  The humans want something that they can't have because the Na'vi are situated on it, and it is called, 'unobtainium.'  Seriously, that is what it's called.  It has the poetic sting of a Limerick scrawled on the bathroom stall at a run down truck stop.  The main villain is a hard core military man who is about as cartoony caricature as you can get.  Seeing him walk around with his chest puffed out made me smirk almost every time I saw him.

Luckily there are a few things that are present to try and save the film.  The world that is created is absolutely beautiful.  The experience, even when not seen in 3D, is incredibly immersive.  There was such imagination and artistry that were poured into the film that it almost makes up for its flaws.  The action is well directed and well paced, which isn't a surprise since it's James Cameron.  It's just too bad the plot literally makes it so that the plot doesn't need to exist, and actually shouldn't exist.

It can be said that Cameron also had a very simplistic story in Titanic, and that would be true.  However, with Titanic we were given leads that were likeable.  While the story may have also had a cartoony villain in Billy Zane's character, the core of the tale was nice enough that it wasn't insulting. James Cameron is undeniably one of the most talented directors ever from a technical standpoint.  He can create content that relocates the theatre audience and places them in brilliantly created environments.  Storytelling, though, is not his strong suit.  I believe that he has story ideas that would cause him to create the next two Avatar films that are going to come out, but I don't believe they are guaranteed to be good.

Rating - 2.5 out of 3 stars

REVIEW: Santa Claws

Children are interesting creatures.  They can sit through a feature length film, blissfully unaware of the fact that what they are watching is, in reality, slowly ripping apart their parents from within.  Yes, there may be shiny objects or cute, fuzzy animals on the screen.  These can be enough to capture the attention of a youngling, bringing them into some sort of odd state of curious entertainment arousal while the fix they are seeking is poison to any caregiver within twenty five feet.  While they giggle, we, the dying, cough and pray that it will mercifully be all over soon.

Kids can like crap.  It has always been that way, and it will never change.  Revisiting many of my childhood favourites has taught me that when it came to quality entertainment, I was as dumb as a strudel.  Because of this, movies like Santa Claws get made.  Brought to us by the mock-buster behemoth The Asylum, the cinematic goo that is hacked up onto the screen is a contagion meant to annihilate any mature, sentient being.

The movie is about a bunch of talking kittens, who end up causing Santa to have an allergic reaction which takes him out, leaving them to win the day and deliver all of the toys.  I'm not sure why this and a few other movies (if I am remembering them right) treat Santa the same as a pirate captain on an island fortress.  Just like that island pirate captain, whoever is able to defeat him gets to be in charge.  For some reason, this power structure also applies to Saint Nick.  Whatever person, or kitten, can neutralize him can have his job.

In this film, there are two adults that are jerks.  One is a mother, and the other is a neighbour who is infatuated with Santa and is a total creep.  Speaking of creeps, have you ever taken a second to really think about Santa Claus?  Let's face it, he is a creepy, bearded stranger that we have heard about through word of mouth, never hearing directly from someone who has seen him and lived to tell the tale, much like Keyser Soze.  He sneaks up on your household using silent transport before breaking into your home to pass judgement on your innocent little children, laughing with joy the entire time.  He will also eat any food you happen to leave out.

There is really not much interesting that happens in this movie.  Because it is made by The Asylum, the special effects are horrendous.  While that works to their favour in creature features, is is merely a contagious rash in Santa Claws.  Because of their low budget, we really only see the cats mouths 'moving' while they talk at the beginning of the film and then for a few times at the end.  Ninety eight percent of their dialogue happens when they are either off screen or are seen from an angle that would not show their mouth.

That's all of the actual film criticism I am going to give to this 'movie.'

I believe that too often studios are fine making children's movies that aren't great.  Well, maybe they don't need to be 'great,' but at least the people making the film should strive to make a good product.  The fact that some of these films are aimed at children intentionally keep from being polished isn't right.  Just because your children may not understand at this moment that the people making it didn't care about them, they will quickly learn it years later when they seek out that movie they enjoyed in their youth.  Children shouldn't be treated like idiots just because others can get away with it.  They should be treated with respect, and those creating the content should at least have some minimal desire that these children will still enjoy that film years later, creating an experience that will live in proper nostalgia for their lives.

Rating - 0.5 out of 4 stars

REVIEW: Leave No Trace

One of the great, quiet films of 2018 is Leave No Trace, a very emotional father-daughter movie.  For any of you who get teared up when watching movies about the bond between a parent and their child, this one may choke you up.  Director Debra Granik works through the entire film to build in the audience an understanding of the key relationship, both the positives and the negatives that flow from it.

The film is about Will (Ben Foster) and his daughter, Tom (Thomasin McKenzie), who live in the forest together.  For the most part they exist off of what the land has to offer, but they do venture into town to get supplies when needed.  To get money, Will would visit the hospital to get his prescribed medicine as a military veteran, and then sell it.  Their existence is peaceful and serene, much like the beautiful forest that surrounds them.  The tension that looms over them is that of being discovered, and Will works to make sure Tom can hide her tracks and flea if needed.  Of course, they do get found and brought back into society.  Will is set up with a job, but Ben Foster's face shows that this type of living is painful for him.  The temptation to return to the forest never leaves.

One of the really nice elements of this film is the incorporation of the landscape.  Our characters are put against a number of backdrops, and Granik does a wonderful job of having them weave directly into their location.  We see how where they are affects them mentally and emotionally, and the world around them is always dynamic and working with them to tell the story.

Three times throughout the film, pets are introduced to Tom.  The first time it happened, I wondered if Granik was trying to say something.  When it happened two more times, it was apparent that she is making a point about both Tom and Will.  While it is the father's responsibility to take care of his daughter, the use of the animals shows us that their relationship is not what it should be.  Will isn't like a domesticated animal, but one meant to be in the wild, and his handler (Tom) must come to make some major decisions.  I could be way off in my interpretation here.

I always knew Ben Foster was talented, but had never heard of Thomasin McKenzie before.  This is a young lady who was thrown in a movie with a veteran actor and charged to be the lead.  McKenzie was able to show so many different sides and emotions.  Her character was written to experience almost all of the feelings a human could go through, and not a single one feels forced.  She is a talent that has a great deal of potential, and I am sure she has an incredible future ahead of her.

In a way this is a coming of age story, but the reality of the relationship Tom has with her father makes it deal with very mature themes as well.  She is turning into an adult, but I think she eventually realizes that she was already the adult.  The emotions that are cultivated throughout the film make it a rich experience, and there is a universal message in here that I believe goes beyond just the parental relationship.

Rating - 3.5 stars out of 4

REVIEW: BlacKkKlansman

Spike Lee has been around for a while, and through his career he has been able to reach an iconic status.  He has been extremely prolific over the years and has created some classic films.  Like every director, not all of his movies have been successes.  His last commercial hit was in 2006 with Inside Man, and he is back as strong as ever with BlacKkKlansman, which has made just shy of $90 million world wide.

Personally, I think the reason why this film has been such a hit is because of the passion that he has poured into it.  This is Spike Lee at his best, pushing and poking the audience in many different ways to get a reaction.  Some people may be rubbed the wrong way by some of Lee's movies (as they may well be with BlacKkKlansman), but he isn't out to please with some of his films.  He is an instigator and he wants you to think both about what you are seeing as well as how you are reacting.

In this film, we follow Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) as he becomes the first black man to serve as a police officer in the town of Colorado Springs in the 1970s.  He does not have a glorious beginning to his career, but through his ambition he soon gets undercover work infiltrating a rally held by a black civil rights activist who preaches revolution.  For his next investigation he responds to a recruitment ad in the newspaper for Ku Klux Klan members.  Over the phone, Stallworth pretends to be a white supremacist, gaining a chance to meet the Klan in person.  Obviously because of his race he is unable to do that part, and relies on the help of fellow detective Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) to fill in for the face to face time.  As the investigation continues, Stallworth is on the over the phone persona, while Zimmerman does the in person work.

The process that the two detectives go through to gain membership into the KKK pushes both Zimmerman, who is Jewish, and Stallworth.  Spike Lee keeps us from seeing the personal effects that being in the orbit of such toxic people would create.  The two are professions, and, for the most part, able to keep the investigation all business.  There are a few times that we do see the characters crack slightly, and the power that those scenes bring is subtle yet powerful.

John David Washington's portrayal as Stallworth is exceptional.  A lot of the larger emotions that he goes through are all internal, so the audience relies on a nuanced performance to understand the protagonist.  Nearing the end of the film, we do see the emotional side to Stallworth, and Lee makes sure those moments have maximum impact.  Like the build up to a good final confrontation in an action film, the emotions of Stallworth are teased to lead towards the payoff.

Spike Lee uses this film to look at both black radicalism as well as white radicalism.  While he is investigating both, he is far from putting both on par with each other.  One was born from the other, its existence solely a reaction to the devastation and societal oppression formed through the idea of white power.  I did get a feeling in one scene that Lee was putting the two beside each other to show that in some regards they may actually have some similarities.  Was that actually what Spike Lee was getting at?  I don't know.  As I said, he is an instigator, and he wants his audience to think about his content in numerous different ways.

BlacKkKlansman is a powerful film, that delivers both tension and comedy while looking at a true story.  There are some obvious dramatic interpretations added to the tale of Ron Stallworth, but the fact that a black man won his way into the Ku Klux Klan is a tremendous story.  Lee takes the concept and adds some richness, bringing us through the journey of Stallworth from investigating his own race, to pretending to be the worst of another race.  Other than a few small directorial choices of style that didn't quite work for me, this is a strong film that sadly ties to the present.  Racism will always be in our landscape.  It's the sad truth of the world we inhabit, and we probably won't evolve past that.  As long as we continue having artist like Spike Lee digging into this topic in intelligent ways, the idea of combatting racism will be impossible to forget.

Rating - 3.5 out of 4 stars

REVIEW: Searching

To be honest, Aneesh Chaganty's Searching should not have worked.  It is a film ensconced in a gimmick, and gimmicks are barely enough to carry 1980s professional wrestlers, let alone wide release movies.  The movie is told through what is happening on a computer screen, with only a few moments where it rely's on footage that would be from a television broadcast.  Such a method should burry a movie in a hole of limitations, but Chaganty shows that he not only can manage the gimmick, but actually use it to enhance the story telling.

Searching follows David Kim (John Cho) as he tries to find out what happened to his daughter, Margot (Michelle La) when she mysteriously goes missing.  What we see is the screens of the computers that he uses to try and unravel not just her disappearance, but the daily life that she lived.  With David tragically losing his wife recently, he learns that his grief has kept him blind to the needs of his daughter.

This realization is well told through what we see.  Chaganty makes every move of a cursor link us to what is going through David's mind.  I really wouldn't have thought that this was possible, but it was through hesitations, deleting words in texts, and rapid clicking that give us an insight into the feelings of our protagonist.  We can understand what is going on, and tension is built through this as well.

Cho's performance in Searching is what really bridges this backdrop of technology with the viewing audience.  He has always been a very good talent, but this may be his best work.  The majority of what we see is digitized, and the humanity that he is able to put into the film is needed for this entire project to work.  Without a good performance from Cho, we are at best amused by watching a well done gimmick.  With the powerful acting of Cho, we feel the tension, the hope, and the desperation.

A lot of what we see in Searching is very clever use of technology in a way that makes sense to the audience.  This isn't someone who can hack into the national defence grid with an off the shelf laptop (as seems to be the case in many technology based films).  This is a person who uses actual methods that are realistic to the types of computers he is using.  You may be thinking, 'well, of course that would be the case,' but so many movies are unrealistic in their portrayal of what computers do and how people use them.  Often they can either magically do something, or oddly be unable to do another.  The fact that everything that we see happen is true to real life adds a lot to the film.

I often get upset when people say that there are rules to art.  There are some things that people say should never happen, and they instantly dismiss movies when they tread into those forbidden areas.  As much as I try not to be that person, it is easy to go down that road.  However, the most important thing is that we all need to be open minded when we watch something, willing to have our expectations changed by what we are witnessing.  Ultimately, I believe that pretty much anything can actually work in a movie.  There are those things that should be stayed away from as a general rule because they almost always lead to failure.  That doesn't mean that the right people with the right idea can't make them succeed.  This is the case with Searching.  It really should not have worked.  Not only did Aneesh Chaganty pull it off, but he was actually able to make the film stronger through the format he chose.  As much as I didn't think I would say this, Searching needed to be done in this format to have the powerful impact that it wields.

Rating - 3.5 out of 4 stars

REVIEW: Baby Geniuses

If I didn't lose a competition then I never would have seen this film.  I will make that very clear right now.  Netflix, I know you see what I watch and you probably believe that because I clicked on something then it is worth keeping on your service.  It is not.  I made sure to give Baby Geniuses a thumbs down, but I am concerned that isn't adequate.  Picture the world's thumb wrestling champion turning their roided up opposable digit to the ground with the emphasis of thirteen William Wallace's screaming 'FREEDOM', and then multiply that by a factor of ten and we are starting to get into the neighbourhood.  It still isn't a good neighbourhood.

Interesting, Baby Geniuses doesn't have a single baby in it.  If we are playing the semantics game (and I think we should be up for playing any game possible because it will all be more fun than the movie) the film is populated by toddlers.  It's toddlers.  Not babies.  In this mess of a movie, any human being below the age of two knows all of the secrets of the universe.  Yes, toddlers (not babies) apparently know everything from the meaning of Stonehenge to the Caramilk Secret.  Essentially they are Google Kids.

This film starts in a horrible state.  In the first five minutes we have ugly fish eye camera, awkward and poorly framed tight shots of people's faces, titled cameras (because we all know that tilting a camera is a good substitute for a script), semi-extreme closeups (Wayne knows what I'm talking about), and hideous slow motion.  Just because a movie is made for kids doesn't mean it should have absolutely obnoxious directing.  It is terrible.  I called it quits at the five minute mark and had to wait a day before I was able to return to it.

For some reason there is an underground facility that houses lots of baby geniuses.  Kathleen Turner and Christopher Lloyd are bad people, and I guess the kids are good.  Remember, they're Google Kids, so they're going to advertise to you if they can.  I would like to tell you the exact reason for these kids being used by evil people, but I seriously couldn't care at the time of watching it, and I couldn't care less while writing about it.  Director Bob Clarke did everything he could to tell me what was going on.  After the first opening sequence, the next ten minutes are simply bang you over the head expository dialogue.  It is so bad that we have Christopher Lloyd's character for some reason asking a computer voice to tell him the synopsis of their evil program.  Ugh.

Look, director Bob Clarke missed the mark on this one.  To me, he is someone who brought two very important movies to audiences.  He did the immortal A Christmas Story, and he was almost ahead of his contemporaries in a way with Black Christmas.  Oh, and he did Porky's, for which I don't believe he ever apologized.  He did some bad things, but he also made some classics.  Any abilities that were evident in other films were absent in Baby Geniuses.  Technically, this thing is about as low quality as you can get from a wide release movie.  There is so much dialogue that is dubbed.  I'm not sure what happened in the audio department, but the sound difference between what is dubbed and what isn't is plenty big.  It sounds horrible, and it looks ugly as the words we hear aren't even close to syncing with people's lips.   This. Is. Bad.

People may say, 'oh, it's not too bad, and it's just for kids.'  Sometimes it seems as though people have the thought that movies for kids shouldn't be held up to similar standards as other films.  No matter what a movie is about, the people making it should care about their work.  Some of my favourite movies of the past five years have been family films, and I enjoyed them because their creators cared about them.  With Baby Geniuses, it is evident that nobody in production or post production pushed for this to be a quality product, and I'm talking simply from a technical standpoint.  The script is another mess completely, and the acting is from people who appear to have lost a bet.  What is really sad, and I'm not exaggerating on this, is that made for TV movies have better polish and audio than this thing.

The main event of the film, the 'babies (two year olds that are super brilliant but don't know a single English word), could be described as cute at times I suppose.  However, with the special effects employed to move their mouths to dialogue and to get them to do things like dancing can make them creepier than Paul Reubens as the Tooth Fairy.  To the film's credit, there are a few moments where they seem to have gotten the exact expressions and motions out of the kids as they needed, but that really doesn't happen often enough to forget just how bad things look at times.  And also, the horrible, grainy looking slow motion shots that make an appearance at the beginning and end of the film are amateurish.

Music is a bit of a curiosity in this film as well.  I don't know a quality movie that would choose to un-ironically use Taco's version of 'Puttin on the Ritz.'  Yes, it is the song with the music video where the two black face people chant 'super duper' for some reason.  Oh, and then they ol' timey tap dance.  The song is about as 80s of a song as you can get, and it is cringe worthy.  Why they didn't use the original, quality version is something I will never know.  Also, and even more baffling, there is a final song that seems to function as a send off to all of the antics of the 'babies' at the end of the film.  We are seeing cheerful clips of the 'babies' while there is a life zapping country song playing.  The rhythm is soooo dreadfully dull, and the enthusiasm in the singer's voice makes it sound like he was burying his dead horse when his wife left him after getting a notice that the bank is foreclosing, which means they are going to lose the farm that's been in the family for five generations of McCanty's, and there is no way that she is going to let her kids grow up in the home of a failure McCanty.  The song for that final montage is such an atrocious pick, and it is better suited for some sort of drunken funeral march than for a film about 'babies,' genius or no.

I love A Christmas Story. I've been in love with it since I first saw it as a young kid, and I doubt I will ever change the channel if it is on the television.  I only saw Black Christmas a few years ago, but it instantly stood out as a horror that was predicting things to come.  Bob Clark was a skilled director, but for some reason he decided to forget everything he had learned about the process of making a movie over the decades and trade it in for the creation of a mockery that the KGB would use to extract information from captured spies.

Yes, this is a kids movie, but that shouldn't stop a reasonable adult from wanting quality.  You don't feed old batteries in pesto to children just because they are kids and they won't appreciate prime rib, so why feed them something like this.  They still deserve attention to detail, care, and a modicum of respect for their time.  Some of the world's greatest films are for the whole family (such as Wizard of Oz), and they are that way because the people making them believed in what they were doing.  The folks behind Baby Geniuses couldn't be bothered to make sure audio syncs up with what we see, something that even a novice can do, and I'm speaking as someone who did video editing for community television when I was a teen.  The issues of this film are so easily overcome, but they exist because there are some out there that believe your cherished children aren't worthy of effort.

If you're cruising around for something to watch, this shouldn't be it.  Burlap sacks are more intriguing than anything you will find in Baby Geniuses.  Enough people liked it for them to make a sequel, but don't be fooled by that.  This is a technically sloppy film that literally has someone asking a computer to for some reason tell him the entire plot for the movie.  Or maybe he got the computer to tell him the backstory.  I don't know, and it doesn't matter.  It was a slothful device.  I cannot think of a single movie I have seen with less effort in a script in what is one of the laziest forms of expository dialogue that you will ever find.  Resist.  Stay away.  Watch something like Inside Out, The Lion King, The Princess Bride, or The Secret of NIMH, each of them wonderful works that know to treat your family with respect, films that toil to nail each aspect of story telling.  Or, you could pull out that burlap sack from behind the thirty year old cross country skies in the shed and let your kids contemplate the significance of such a sack. They will enjoy that a whole lot more than Baby Geniuses, and you will know that deep down you gave them the better, more fulfilling option.

Rating - 0.5 out of 4 stars

REVIEW: Eighth Grade

The years of an early teen can be very turbulent.  I am sure that everyone out there can remember what it is like to worry about acceptance and attention, struggling to have a life of confidence.  Physical changes happen, hormonal changes take place, and social structures become more exclusive.    Director Bo Burnham's debut feature film, Eighth Grade, investigates this time of transition by looking at a few week's in the life of Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher) as she nears the end of grade eight.

Kayla isn't a person that mirrors all of our experiences directly.  She fas no friends, no voice for herself, and absolutely no confidence.  I know that only a small number of people out there will have been in a very similar situation, but Burnham knows that isn't the point.  The universal struggles of Kayla, the desire above everything to be noticed and to belong will hit home with anyone.  I was most certainly socially awkward, but I also know that the kids that had it all together faced the scary fear that they may not fit in and be accepted as well.  Kayla, although she is portrayed in an extreme, represents the emotional hurdles for all in that age range.

Acceptance is a big lust of Kayla's, and she believes that she must aim high.  The girls she tries to befriend are the coolest in the school.  Kayla is obsessed with Aiden (Luke Prael), her dream hunk.  Kayla's desire to date the cool boy is strong, as is the need to be befriended by the particular girls.  Elsie Fisher delivers a performance that conveys to the audience just how important this is to her, and how she needs this above everything else.  Life for Kayla, it seems, will have meaning should she achieve her goals.

Kayla's desires inevitably bring about some issues for her, as she needs to come to decide what lengths she will go to in able to get what she wants.  In the case of this film, Kayla thinks that sexuality is the way to get Aiden, that she needs to be exactly what he would want.  What is completely awkward is that Kayla really has no clue of what she is talking about, and is repulsed when she does a little research.  This is the treasure that is Kayla.  While the pressure of being socially accepted appears to override everything in her life, her character ultimately refuses to give away her innocence.

The realm of sexuality in young people is definitely something that Bo Burnham is addressing with Eighth Grade.  This is something that these kids are unable to escape, and Burnham shows how difficult it can be to stay true to yourself.  Kayla faces a few situations where she believes that she is supposed to act a certain way, that it is expected of her, and her conscience and her own comfort are tested.  I know that some people would probably prefer that sexuality isn't addressed in movies about kids, but the reality is that Kayla's struggles are real.  This is what kids face, and, as we see with Kayla, it takes courage to make the right decisions.

This brings up the issue with the movie's rating.  In Canada, it is rated 14-A.  In the United States, it has the R rating.  The film has a little bit of swearing that could be cut out, but Burnham's quest here is to reflect the harsh truth of life at this age.  Because of the rating, the audience that needs to see this the most, the group of people that should see Kayla's story and the decisions she makes, are unable to because of their age.  The rating system really misses the point of movies like this.  What is depicted here, while deemed inappropriate for kids in their early teens, is the truth of their life.  It is unfortunate that what they face every day at school is deemed too mature for them in a film that is not glamourizing these issues, but looking at the toll that they can take.

Social media and living online are a big part of this movie.  Kayla is almost constantly on her phone.  It is the life she lives, and it is a realm where she is not the nerdy kid.  She can be anything at all online.  Interestingly, Kayla creates Youtube videos where she gives life advice and guidance.  None of what she says is anything that she does in real life, and it is the perfect way for Burnham to show how different an online presence can be compared to what people are like offline.  The videos that Kayla makes are terrific, as she tries to spit out confidence, but can't stop over using words such as 'like.'

A part of the film that shows just how isolated kids may feel in their issues is Kayla's relationship with her father, Mark (Josh Hamilton).  Kayla's mother left the family, so it is just the two of them.  The want from her father to have a connection bleeds from the screen, and Hamilton portrays the longing of a parent to understand their child as well as to be understood.  While a lot of films may have focused largely on just what the character would face at school, here we have a touching and heart wrenching depiction of just how far away from their child a parent can be even while sitting at the same table.

All of the wonderful aspects of the story are created with realism through the acting of Elsie Fisher.  She is very young, but the pure range of nuance that is evident in her performance is something that many mature and weathered talents aren't capable of.  I have talked a lot about the heft of this movie, but there are many hilarious moments, and they are all perfectly earned thanks to Fisher.  This is some legit high level acting, the kind that really needs to be well considered for an Oscar nomination.  As I said earlier, Kayla is a conduit for all of us, regardless of if we were awkward like her or not, and Fisher is largely to thank for that.

This really is a wonderful tale.  There is ample humour, relatability, sadness, and triumph.  Bo Burnham created what feels like an authentic experience.  While I would say its target audience is young teens, it is a film that will speak to many adults.  It is a reminder of just how intense the battle for acceptance and identity is at that point in life.  What ultimately stands out is the courage of Kayla, someone who believes they are willing to do anything for friends, but seems to almost surprise herself when she refuses to act out of character.  While difficult at times, this film delivers laughter and, most importantly, connects us deeply to our protagonist and the outcome.  It is a beautiful tale that is easily one of the best films of the year, one that speaks to both kids as well as adults.

Rating - 4 out of 4 stars

REVIEW: War Room

If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.  Yeah, I'm not going to be following that advice.  Sometimes things do need to be said, and I believe that is what should happen in the case of the faith based film, War Room.  I know that there are a lot of people that enjoyed this movie based on the fact that it has an 87% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.  The film was also a financial success as it made $67 million on a budget of $3 million.  To all of the people that like this film and its message, I need to make it as clear as can be that I found this movie to be incredibly upsetting.

The story is about a married family that has struggles.  The wife, Elizabeth (Priscilla C. Shirer), suffers at the hands of the sternly controlling, borderline verbally abusive, and affair seeking Tony (T.C. Stallings).  They have a wonderful little girl, Danielle (Alena Pitts), who gets stuck seeing mommy and daddy fighting.  The story takes off when Elizabeth comes across a cliche named Clara (Karen Abercrombie), an elderly woman that has no boundaries that pries her way into Elizabeth's life to then mentor her.  The guidance that Clara gives, which is in fact the message of the movie, is where the serious issue arises.

Elizabeth is told to pray for her husband.  Sure.  Fine.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.  The problem is that this is ALL she is told she should do.  Clara, and the movie as a whole, is saying that in this situation, with a husband that is controlling, borderline verbally abusive, and actively seeking an affair, all the woman should do is pray.  She is not to assert herself.  She is not to stand up for herself.  She is not to question him on who this other woman is.  And, insultingly, she isn't even to express her feelings.  Nope, all she should do, as a good wife, is pray.  This, friendly reader, is absolute bullsh*t.

I understand that director Alex Kendrick is trying to show that people need to rely on God and trust Him, but try actually sitting down with a woman in an abusive relationship and telling her that she isn't even to call her husband out on what he does.  Elderly cliche, prying Clara nails home the fact that Elizabeth has to pray and get out of the way.  That is what Alex Kendrick is saying is to be done in such a situation.

Of course, this is all easily said within the safe confines of War Room.  A lot of faith based films that I have seen have tried to take 'gritty' topics (like the unhealthy marriage in War Room) to address, but then glaze everything over in a happily ever after fairy tale.  This film is no different.  The husband quickly comes to his senses and everything becomes picture perfect, and the real life questions are worse than ignored.  What happens if the prayer isn't answered?  What happens if the behaviour not only continues, but gets worse.  I guess that doesn't matter.  Apparently the woman is just supposed to take it and never even tell her spouse that she is hurt by what happens.

If you disagree with what I am saying, watch the movie again.  This is what Kendrick is saying, and I do not know how it could be argued otherwise.  The character of Clara is essentially the moral compass of the movie, and it is through her lips that the message is told.  Not only is Clara a cliche, but she is a dangerous cliche that tries to convince people that real life serious issues can be looked at with such simplicity.

  Six percent of females in Ontario report being physically or sexually abused by a spousal partner.  That's only the people who report it.  The real percentage is much higher.  What justice is being done to those poor sufferers (and the males that get abused as well) by saying that the only thing they should do is pray.  Maybe Kendrick would say that physical abuse is different, but, once again, where is the line drawn?  At what point would elderly, cliche, prying Clara advise a woman that she should actually do something for her own mental or physical health instead of just existing like a prisoner?

The message of this movie is quite brutal and is beyond tone deaf.  I mostly had female friends in high school, and had lots of female friends beyond that.  Sadly, I got to see the reality of these relationships that eat away at them and break them.  Never once, and never will I ever, would I have told them they needed to take the kind of fantasy, everything is always going to work out way that War Room puts forth.  There is much more than this simplistic approach.

I have no problem with spirituality being looked at through film.  I honestly think that is something that audiences are open to.  Everyone, regardless of their thoughts on religion, has had moments in their life when they have connected with something on a different level.  Whether it's looking at their new born child for the first time or sitting around a campfire with the magnificent starry sky overhead.  The problem is when movies address these things like War Room does.  It serves to only preach to the choir, and, as with most faith based films, presents themselves as dealing with 'real issues' but never showing actual struggle or consequence.  They come off as fantasy, missing out on opportunities to highlight what actual people deal with when confronted with faith.

There were a few aspects of the film that I do feel the need to point out as positive.  This is the first Kendrick brother film that looked like a real film.  For so long I have despised faith based films for having the same visual presence as Hallmark made for TV films.  People have argued back with me that I need to remember the budget that they were made on, but it doesn't take much knowledge of independent cinema to know that there are films made for a whole lot less that look a whole lot better.  The technical aspect of these films has always been embarrassing, so it is nice seeing that perhaps a corner has been turned.  The audio quality was legit level as well.  Having said all of that, I don't know if it's actually a praise to say that a movie that came out in theatres looked like a movie that would be distributed to theatres.  I don't say that about any other film.  I didn't last year say, 'Oh, wow!  Christopher Nolan made Dunkirk look like a movie!'

Young Alena Pitts, playing the daughter, was very fun to watch.  She had a great emotional range, and the only times in the movie where I felt any kind of connection to the state of the family was through her.  Also, at the end of the film there is a music montage (sigh... one of three music montages in the film... sigh...) that shows freestyle double-Dutch skipping.  I never knew such a thing existed, but there were some serious skills on display.

This movie was nothing but fantasy.  It is so far from feeling real world applicable, and, while seeming to claim a grittiness, it is candy coated in a world where there is no consequence.  I get what Kendrick was trying to show, but that's not what actually came out.  It's the same thing with the offensive Sucker Punch by Zack Snyder.  He believed the movie was really about female empowerment, when what his movie showed was that the only way women could be empowered was in their imaginations because they couldn't take what happened in the real world.  Both directors thought one thing, but, when the base premise is inspected, the films are really just tripe from men who don't seem to have a flippin' clue what women deal with.  People liked this movie, and feel free to argue with me over it.  We can go through the script line by line and nowhere will you find elderly, cliche, prying Clara (who is the bringer of the movie's message) saying anything that disproves what I have said.

Rating - 0.5 out of 4 stars

REVIEW: A Quiet Place

A Quiet Place is a tender story about family bonds, dealing with loss, and forgiveness while also being a cutting edge creature feature.  The typical modern horror movie is very loud, with the quiet moments generally happening just before a boisterous scare attempt.  Noise is applied often in formulaic ways that actually make predicting jump scares an easy task.  There are some movies that stand out for how they use sound (I remember The Others was a great theatre experience because of this), and A Quiet Place is possibly the best example of utilizing audio to tell the story.

What we have is a family of five that are trying to live in a world where alien monsters have arrived and hunt people for food.  The creatures cannot see and use heightened hearing to find their meals.  People need to be quiet to survive, and the Abbott family has three children, and kids can't help but make noise at times.  The parents are Evelyn (Emily Blunt) and Lee (John Krasinski), and it is not long before something tragic happens to their family leading to friction between the father and Regan (Millicent Simmonds), the eldest daughter.  Regan is def, so the family knows how to use sign language, which comes in handy.

The majority of the film takes place on one day.  Evelyn is very pregnant, and there is a great deal of tension over when the baby is going to come.  With monsters hunting by sound, the audience knows that giving birth to a crying infant could mean death.  A lot of what happens in this movie comes down to the sounds that get made.  With almost everything quiet, the times when director John Krasinski taps into the small sounds of life, such as footsteps and children playing a board game make an impact.  The subtle noises make it so that when something loud happens it jolts us, being very alien to the experience we are a part of.  Everything we hear tells as much a tale as what we see.  Krasinski's attention to the auditory side of the film is masterful, and creates a full body interaction with the movie.

Playing off of the sound effects is the terrifying score from Marco Beltrami, who has had two Oscar nominations for his work on The Hurt Locker, and 3:10 to Yuma.  Even though the year isn't yet complete, I will already say that he deserves to be nominated for A Quiet Place, and he deserves the win.  What he writes weaves organically with the script, making the power of sound so dynamic and overwhelming.  It has been a while since I have heard a score as good as this one.

A Quiet Place is all around technically masterful.  The editing stands out through just how tight the shots move from one to another, with scenes ending just at a point that will have your brain imagining all sorts of things.  We get slow moments that last not a second too long, and taught build up to tense moments.  Exactly how this movie is composed and structured shows that Krasinski has a built in understanding of how long any scene or individual shot needs to be.

The story that is told is very touching, and I would only guess that for those out there who are parents, the movie may end up hitting the emotions more than it did for me.  I felt that through Krasinski's writing and the acting of everyone involved I understood the emotions of the parents.  Many people, while the events may not be as tragic as the Abbott's, can relate to the hurt that can arise and just how our relationships are affected.  Make sure you let others know how you feel, and embrace what you have.  The themes of family are strong, a deeply heartfelt voyage through a time of trial that just happens to have monsters as well.  The creatures aren't the real villain here.  The real antagonist is what happens when we don't know just how those close to us feel.

A Quiet Place may not have the smart social commentary written in Get Out, but that doesn't mean that it isn't as deserving for getting some Oscar nominations.  This is a film that is much more than the scares, a movie that brings the viewer on an emotional journey that has significant heft.  The power of the film, as well as the scares, comes from a combination of many different techniques that are all executed in a way that allows them to lean on each other.  All aspects of A Quiet Place are phenomenal, and they all serve each other, creating a masterful piece of cinema that is unmatched.

Rating - 4 out of 4 stars

REVIEW: Get Out

Is it racist when people have simplistic, fond thoughts on people of a certain skin colour based on stereotypes?  Heck yes, it is.  In Get Out, writer and director Jordan Peele highlights what may seem like a different kind of racism, a more kind racism, but really it is just as ignorant as its meaner sibling.  It is a fascinating concept to look at, and Peele delivers a film that is primed for starting discussions.

The story is based around the relationship between Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) and her black boyfriend, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) as they head off to her whiter than white parent's house for the weekend.  This is the first time Chris will meet the parents, and he is curious about what their reaction will be to his skin colour.    The parents Missy (Catherine Keener), and Dean (Bradley Whitford... hey, isn't this the second time this week we're talking about him?) are charming, and Dean seems to do anything possible to show Chris that he's not racist.  The interesting aspect about this is the basic fact that, even without mean or alienating intentions, Dean is treating Chris differently because of his skin.  The racism that is looked at in Get Out is much different than what we normally see.

It is clear that Chris is used to being treated differently.  On their way to Rose's parent's house, she hits a deer.  This incident will actually lead to some interesting points about Chris' life and his survival.  Anywho, a police officer is called.  After talking to Rose, he nonchalantly asks Chris to see his identification.  Rose immediately gets upset, but Kaluuya's expression is that this is just a daily occurrence for him.  It is quite sad to see that at this point in the film, he is resigned to this sort of experience.

As the Armitage's throw a big party, Chris begins to really encounter some very odd white folk.  It seems as though everyone wants to comment on the fact that he's black.  This, to me, feels like it is looking at white privilege.  Caucasians feeling that because they aren't talking negatively that they can give insight to the minority, before being able to turn away and carry on conversations with others while Chris would be left with what was said.  Jordan Peele takes white privilege to absurd heights in this film, but I'm afraid I cannot tell you how that happens.

The concept and the conversation that Peele brings with Get Out is indeed quite fascinating.  After numerous viewings, I always seem to walk away from the movie believing that the point of the film was something other than what I had previously thought.  This is the true power of the film.  Because there can be many different ways to interpret it, there are a great number of conversations that could be started after the movie is over.

Daniel Kaluuya is strong as Chris.  This is a character who is inserted into so many different awkward situations and conversations, and Kaluuya sells it all brilliantly.  There is a determination in him that says he will not allow race to be an issue in his relationship with Rose, but it is tested often.  As the film travels on, there are many more different sides of Chris that we see.  Overall, the acting in Get Out is top notch, and the different characters are developed and coloured in with complexities.  The most joyous character in the film is Chris' friend Rod (Lil Rel Howery), a caring person that is committed to the friendship.  Rod brings the comedy to the film.  There isn't too much of it, and there isn't too little of it.  Coming from a comedy background, it is very evident that Jordan Peele knows how to use it in moderation to add flavour to a film.

Of course, because this is a horror, there needs to be some scares.  This is a movie that works at a simmering slow build instead of trying to constantly dive-bomb the audience like many horrors.  There are small scary occurrences in the first two acts of the film, but it is in the third that it really gets crazy.  I think Peele offers enough enticing moments that it doesn't feel like the audience is waiting forever to get to the horror part of the film.

Throw into the equation some otherworldly pacing and editing, and this film flies by.  Four times viewed for me, and there still isn't a scene where I look at the time and maybe run to grab a soda from the fridge.  There is a really good reason why this movie got Oscar nominations.  It is smooth in its flow, with scenes just melding into each other, bridged by smart dialogue and fantastic acting.

I really hope that the Academy never includes a 'popular film' award.  Yes, that sort of thing will give much more mainstream films recognition, but the negative effect that it will have is much worse.  People who make genre movies that are usually considered children's table material will never be considered for the 'legit' best picture award.  If the popular category was around a few years ago, Mad Max: Furry Road wouldn't have gotten the best picture nom, and the same would have happened with Get Out.  What I'm getting at here is that because horror is a pushed aside genre, truly great material needs its chance to get recognized as on par with the typical dramatic Oscar bait.  We already had films like The Witch and The Babadook get nary a closer look, and the fact that Get Out earned four nominations with one win changes the way that the market looks at this product.  Smarter horrors have now proved to be currently financially viable.  The more acclaim for these films, the more interesting ideas will get green-lit.

Rating - 3.5 out of 4 stars

REVIEW: The Witch

If you are a fan of period movies that take great effort to create a truly detailed and immersive experience, you can't do much better than The Witch.  Apparently it was filmed a stone's throw away from my old stomping grounds in North Bay after quite a search to find the right forest for what writer and director Robert Eggers had in mind.  A great amount of research was invested to make sure the colonial New England town in the story was as authentic as possible.  The effort put into The Witch is a great accomplishment, and it is difficult to watch it and not feel like were are right there with the characters.

The story is around a family of British settlers that head off into the woods to create a life of their own after some type of argument with the church.  We aren't told what exactly the issue was, but the main thing is that we learn that spirituality is of high importance to this family.  The father, William (Ralph Ineson), is the reason behind this relocation.  The film revolves around the eldest daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), and her relationship with her siblings and parents as their faith is put to the ultimate test.

Life goes sideways for this family with the sudden disappearance of their baby boy.  From there, items disappear, crops die, and the thoughts that witchcraft is behind these misfortunes slowly starts making its way into the mind and mouth of the mother, Katherine (Kate Dickie).  She is emotionally destroyed from the loss of her infant, and claims from her young twin children point the finger at Thomasin being a witch.  From there, well, things devolve pretty quickly.

Eggers seems to know that the scariest part of this movie may not be the creepy events that happen, but rather what happens amongst the characters.  Suspicion and judgement grow to a horrifying height, and there is a true sense of having no idea just how things are going to play out.  It is this that really makes the experience haunting as we see how people react when the foundations of their faith are tested in the darkest of ways.

The audience is shown in the first act that there is indeed some sort of malevolent force that inhabits the forest at the edge of the family's land.  Eggers doesn't shy away from eliminating the whole 'is it real' aspect from the viewing experience.  Many other directors would love to play with their audience, making them question if there is indeed some sort of supernatural explanation.  With The Witch, we know right away something evil exists.  This knowledge enhances the movie when we see the family implode and knowing that the problem isn't Thomasin.

The existence of the witch, and in what form it would take, is played with through the film with the young twins.  They are probably around ten, and they like spending time following a goat around that they call Black Phillip.  They sing songs about him, and some of the lyrics hint that something isn't right.  One of the twins claims to Thomasin that Black Phillip talks to them, giving us a sense that there is some sort of wicked manifestation in the goat.

Up there with the set design as a monumental achievement is the dialogue.  I really couldn't tell you if this was indeed how people would have talked in the 1600s, but it is so much more interesting and engaging than just having people with a British accent speaking normally and only adding 'hath,' 'thee', and 'doest.'  The unique form of speech did cause an issue for me when I had first seen this movie in theatres.  Being able to see it again on Netflix with subtitles aided me a lot.  It also gave be a greater appreciation for the work put into the dialogue.

The acting in the film is great across the board, but with two standout performances.  Ralph Ineson (who I knew from The Office) is commanding as a patriarch that seems to feel that he must be the backbone of strength for his family.  It could be that motivation comes from him taking the family away from the plantation where they were living, bringing them to a location that was secluded and brought many problems with it.  Ineson really dives into the character of William, which adds much to the tension that takes place in the final act.

The other outstanding role was that of Anya Taylor-Joy.  I hadn't seen her previous to The Witch, but it took next to no time to understand that this young talent was someone to pay attention to.  Since The Witch, I have seen her in three movies, and she never disappoints.  The skill that she brings to Thomasin is very nuanced.  This is a character that we attach to, that we side with, and that we end up getting scared for.  We don't know what end her father may bring upon her, and we don't know what the supernatural evil will have in store for her.  Her panic and her isolation transfer onto us, making this movie extremely scary for numerous reasons.

For some reason I had only given this movie three and a half stars when I originally saw it.  The Witch had some more to reveal to me on the second viewing.  When movies can still live as vibrantly on repeat viewings there is something special about it.  The Witch is set in a spooky location with a downward spiral of a family, all of it was just as terrifying as when I had seen it in a dark theatre.  No, scratch that.  It was much more scary the second time.

Rating - 4 out of 4 stars

REVIEW: The Babadook

Chances are that you may have never heard of this movie, and, if that's the case, you really need to do yourself a favour and view The Babadook.  This Australian film, written and directed by debuting filmmaker Jennifer Kent, made most of its money in the foreign film scene, grossing just shy of $1 million in North America.  However, just because people didn't flock out to see it doesn't mean that this movie isn't an undeniable horror classic.  I would easily put it in the top ten horrors from the last decade, and if someone proclaimed that it was a top ten horror movie of all time, they would be justified in saying so.  Heck, if I heard a person say this is actually the best horror movie ever made, I don't know how I would be able to go about arguing against that.

Watching it yesterday for the fourth time, it does not diminish at all.  It is just as impactful in what Jennifer Kent is saying about human nature, and the emotional impact of the story hits just as heavy.  The story is about a widowed mother, Amelia (Essie Davis), trying to take care of her son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), who constantly acts out.  The toll that her son's behaviour takes on Amelia is devastating, with her emotional fragility bringing her close to collapse.  One night Samuel brings his mother a bedtime book to read.  It's cover is simple, red with the words 'The Babadook' and a back silhouette of a creepy being.  The book begins curious enough, but then turns from lightly disturbing to flat out dark.

Samuel, who has always believed there are monsters in the house, now cannot stop talking about The Babadook, which constantly occupies his mind and affects his behaviour.  It is just another incident that Amelia has to deal with, and, by this point, there is just no more energy to handle it properly.  Not only that, but soon enough she comes to have her own encounters with The Babadook.  From there, reality distorts itself, and her small family is in jeopardy.

The beauty of this script from Kent is the fact that the monster is merely symbolic.  The Babadook isn't just a horror, but an allegory for what happens when we don't deal with grief and loss.  Amelia has not been able to let go and move on from the death of her husband seven years prior, and the collapse of her family and personal mental health is solely because of her intense suffering.  The monster can only be overcome when she reclaims her life, choosing to care for her son in the present instead of living emotionally in the past.  Kent makes an interesting point here in that coming to this point doesn't vanquish The Babadook.  Those things, she seems to say, will never leave us, and that is okay.  Dealing with grief doesn't mean forgetting, but rather keeping that monster close by and managing it.

The stresses of Amelia are heartbreaking, and Kent makes sure to portray that there is no aspect of her life that she has all to herself.  Everything is invaded either by The Babadook or her son.  The relationship with her son seems to be a bit hyperbolic to illustrate that Samuel's health and development is directly connected to how Amelia interacts with the past and the loss of her husband who died while driving her to the hospital when she was giving birth to Samuel.  In a way, she hates Samuel because of this.  Even with that baggage, Kent continually shows us that Amelia knows her duty to her son and that she does want to properly love him.

This is a weighty script, with many different aspects that could be explored for their significance.  One technique used by Kent is to use a grey filter throughout, making life appear without vibrance and hope.  That visual also makes what we see in the film line up with the black and white pages of The Babadook book.  What is interesting is that she never reveals true colours, even after the resolution at the end, perhaps another way of stating that the past will always still be with us.

With all of its interesting complexities, I need to draw attention to something about this film that you need to know.  Yes, it's dramatic, and hopefully what I have written about gets some interest flowing. However, this is still a horror movie, and it is absolutely terrifying.  Jennifer Kent wraps her message up in a vessel that both unnerves and scares the audience, using pacing techniques, environment, atmosphere, visuals, and audio to rattle the viewer.  I have seen countless horror films and can see a scare coming a mile away.  Not only was I frightened when I first saw it three and a half years ago, but I was still affected on my fourth viewing.  That is something special.  To be able to have that continued impact on a repeat viewer almost never happens.

Quality horror films are becoming more plentiful these days, and I believe a lot of that success is coming off of the back of movies like this.  Well, there really aren't other movies like this.  Kent uses all of the techniques of a horror in a way that doesn't feel redundant, and applies elements only when needed.  There isn't anything superfluous in the entire movie.  For that reason, it is a modern work of art.  When you throw in the symbolism of what the monster represents and the journey that the protagonist must undertake you have a film that sticks with everyone who encounters it.  The Babadook, I believe, has opened the door for horrors to once again focus on themes.  You may not have heard about it, but this is a timeless work that is one of the very best that cinema has ever seen.

Rating - 4 out of 4 stars

REVIEW: Conjuring

Director James Wan made a name for himself with the low-budget, high concept horror film, Saw, a movie that kicked off a massive franchise.  From there, Wan teamed up with Saw scriptwriter Leigh Whannell (who has grown into a very talented director as well) in a movie that I couldn't stand called Dead Silence.  From there it was Insidious, a second hugely popular franchise created by Wan and Whannell.  In 2013, Wan worked with different writers, Chad and Carey Hayes, on a 'based on real life' film, The Conjuring.  The resultant product nailed it with both critics (86% on Rotten Tomatoes) and fans, making $320 million world wide on a budget of just $20 million.

Landmark movies are easy to spot, whether you like them or not.  I saw Paranormal Activity in theatres, and, as much as I didn't enjoy it, it was undeniable that the audience was enraptured and that movies would be changed going forward.  Seeing The Conjuring in theatres, the audience experience was so different.  While in Paranormal Activity the scenes only were constructed to lead to a moment that would make the audience jump, The Conjuring gripped people in a different way.  It was through old school story telling that viewers were being immersed.  This appreciation was echoed in the box office.  Paranormal Activity, the financial juggernaut of a franchise, tallied up $890 million world wide from six movies.  The 'shared universe' that was created from The Conjuring has racked up $1.5 billion from five movies.

What I would pick as Wan's greatest strength is the fact that you can easily tell that he learns from his movies and works to tighten elements up and further explore compelling ideas.  When he got to The Conjuring, as mentioned above, there was a sense of old school story telling, something that was quite fresh in a time of the poorly premised found footage films that were all over the place.  A downside to calling on the old school was the fact that there is a scene at the beginning of the movie when a family is moving into an old house where the dog refuses to enter.  Mild spoiler, but the moment a horror fan saw that scene they knew that the dog would later be found dead, probably by a young child that would scream.  Other tropes include a child talking to an invisible ghost that wants to be their friend and a haunted trinket.  At least there are no birds flying into things without explanation.  Oh, wait...

The story is about a family with five kids that find themselves living in a haunted house.  Lili Taylor plays the mother, Carolyn, and Ron Livingston plays the father, Roger.  In an attempt to find relief from the pestering of the dark spirit, real life paranormal investigators Lorraine and Ed Warren are called upon.  Take these people with a big ol' grain of pink Himalayan salt, as they 'investigated' the famous Amityville house and said it was truly haunted, even though it came out that it was nothing but a hoax devised over wine.

However, be them snake oil salespeople or not, Wan and the Hayes siblings are smart enough to know that these characters are going to be key in how the audience accepts the movie as a whole.  There are scares, but then there is also the art of making everything mean something as an entire package.  Paranormal Activity made the entire audience jump, but, from the people I have talked to, it failed to make them really connect with the story.  Wan knows that the Warrens are important, and he crafts them as people who are likeable, who care deeply about others, but who also have learned that there is a line in the sand (sorry for the cliche) that they can no longer cross.  This is the backbone of the film, as they desire to help, but the repercussions could be massive.  All of this is developed even more-so in the The Conjuring 2, which I feel is a much stronger movie.

Playing the Warrens are the incredible Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson.  It is clear that they really care about the characters they are portraying, and they slip into their skin with finesse and ease.  They are relatable, and it is easy to feel the impact of the decisions they must make.  The casting here is so brilliant, giving a grounded connection to the audience.

It is because there is an actual story to care about that makes The Conjuring really stand out from others of its time.  There were so many atrocious movies that really didn't care about their overall stories, much less their leads.  Things aren't necessarily deep and reflective in this film, but it just goes to show the difference that caring about the entire product can do.

The Conjuring really felt like James Wan's scariest film when it came out.  As I said, it is clear that he grows and learns from each project, and the spoils of that culminate in The Conjuring (and even much more in the sequel).  In the film, we do have some jump scares, but there are also many moments where it is all about the build and the atmosphere.  The house itself is a character, and not utilizing the location is a fault more common than you would imagine.

This was supposed to be Wan's final horror.  He had moved on to direct the box office Goliath Furious Seven, but he couldn't stay away for long.  It is clear that this is in his blood, and it is something that he is undeniably successful at.  How many other directors have created three mega hit franchises?  Those franchises alone, forgetting the $1.5 billion from Wan's Furious Seven, have made over $3 billion.  James Wan knows how to connect with audiences, and I couldn't be more excited about his upcoming Aquaman.  I know that movie's going to do well.

You may look at my rating of three stars for this movie and think that it shouldn't be considered a classic.  The Conjuring gave us something to care about in a time when story telling was beyond secondary to jump scares.  It used atmosphere, and it reminded audiences that there was so much more to the movie experience.   It could never be said that it didn't leave a massive impact on the entire horror landscape.  It isn't deep, it isn't insightful, but it is joyous fun, and the mark that it left on popular cinema was a positive one.

Rating - 3 out of 4 stars

REVIEW: The Cabin in the Woods

In April of 2012 a movie entered theatres without me really knowing much about it, but it didn't take long to understand that there was an incredible buzz surrounding it after its opening weekend.  I overheard many a conversation about The Cabin in the Woods, with people signing high praise.  I didn't see it, and then forgot all about it until a friend intervened in my life and set me straight by getting me to view this film.

The movie follows five college students who head out for a weekend excursion to the new vacation home of a cousin.  Their destination turns out to be a very run down and old cabin in the woods (hey, isn't that the title?).  It doesn't take long before everything to turn into a mess as they find themselves trying to have to survive against ghoulish creatures.  However, it turns out there is much more to the equation.

I cannot say much more about the plot.  It is incredibly unique, and brings an entirely new premise to what would be an over-done story.  While it would be an enjoyable film for almost who would watch such a movie, it is true horror fans that will get the most from The Cabin in the Woods.  Script writers Joss Whedon and Drew Godard (who also directed it) insert so many brilliant easter eggs as they play on dozens of tropes of the genre.  The greater your knowledge of horror and its history, the more you will get out of this film.  This is something that is made by fans for fans, while taking genre staples to new levels.

The casting of the film is really well done, with everyone involved hitting every note they need to.  Dana is out main character, played by Kristen Connolly who would most likely be known for being in television shows As The World Turns and House of Cards.  Anna Hutchinson plays Dana's friend Jules, with her boyfriend Curt played by Chris Hemsworth (an actor who doesn't seem to get enough recognition for his diverse talents).  New to the group is Holden (Jessie Williams from Grey's Anatomy), who is a possible hook-up for Dana.  And, of course, there is a stoner.  Marty is played by Fran Kranz, a character that enjoys spending time with a bong.  A pot head is used in many horror movies, and that is the reason for this character.  The fun part of the film is that it plays with the other four from the group to hit on the other character types that seem to be in ninety five percent of slashers.

Humour is abundant, with the character of Marty doing most of the heavy lifting.  I can't say what their roles in the film is, but the brilliant duo of Hadley (Bradley Whitford) and Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) bring continuous entertainment and joy to the viewer.  You may not be familiar with their names, but if you saw either of these incredible actors I'm sure you would recognize them.  They are both on fire each scene they are in, and, after seeing this, I can't help but wish they were both in mainstream stuff more often.

Because this is a horror film, be it even a self aware and comical film (it takes the self awareness from movies like Scream to an entirely new level), there are villains, kills, and blood.  Drew Goddard may not be able to get the same sort of suspense that a straightforward horror could mine, but that doesn't stop him from making intense scenes that are well paced and entertaining.  I should warn people that there is some gore in here and more blood than I could think possible.

Apparently, Goddard and Whedon wrote this script in just a few days and part of the purpose was to make a commentary on the rising sub-genre referred to as 'torture porn.'  Director Eli Roth's film Hostel was one of the early examples, followed by Saw (which is viewed as torture porn, but the original film had very little of that in it).  Many people have disdain for torture porn, as in many cases the only reason for these movies is to show people getting subjected to brutal acts.  When the full concept of the film is revealed, it is quite interesting just how Goddard and Whedon addressed the issue.

With a rumoured budget of $30 million, The Cabin in the Woods didn't set the box office on fire, as it only took in $66 million world wide.  When it comes to classic movies, however, financials seldom tell the true story of their impact.  With The Cabin in the Woods there is a film that absolutely tickled the fancies of critics (it is at 91% on Rotten Tomatoes) and genre fans alike.  With certain types of film, especially genres like horror and science fiction, there are movies that fans will hold on tightly to, even if they are forgotten by the world a year after their release.  The Cabin in the Woods is a movie that will be continually making the rounds in horror circles for years, and probably decades, to come.  It may be a horror without legitimate scares, but it is the smarts behind it, as well as the execution, that solidify The Cabin in the Woods as a horror classic.

Rating - 3.5 out of 4 stars