Because I’m cynical and older than the target audience, I went into Five Feet Apart expecting to have to carefully write this review. It’s one thing if the movie is actually atrocious and it's obvious to all (so not Twilight, but maybe some of its fantasy romance knock-offs), but if it’s a passable piece of media that just isn’t for me, it’s not my place to tear it down unnecessarily. And given that The Fault in Our Stars really didn’t sit well with me, I struggled with how I would approach my dislike of the dying-kid-romance genre without it being unnecessarily negative to the film.
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It’s not often that I get nostalgic for the VHS era. Yes, there was a lot to love about the mystery of bringing home a video from the rental place with nothing to go on but the cover. But for every hidden gem we uncovered, there was a pile of terrible Rambo knock-offs starring Charles Bronson that put a bunch of retired army guys against some one-dimensional villains that basically exist for our heroes for hire to mow down.
Nowadays, instead of the quirky local video store, we have Netflix, making the same C-movie schlock but putting A-list stars in it instead.
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It’s all but guaranteed that the third entry in a film franchise won’t live up to the heights of the first two. Maybe the original writers and directors moved on, or the previous films didn’t leave enough narrative potential to sustain a third film, but it’s rare for a franchise to remain strong through three entries. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, while a fun conclusion, upholds this rule and does not chart a course for anything but more of what we’ve seen.
Or, rather, you’ve maybe seen. I remember loving the first How to Train Your Dragon...
According to TV Tropes, the Internet’s most addicting repository of storytelling devices, the term ‘lampshading’ is “the writers’ trick of dealing with any element of the story that threatens the audience’s willing suspension of disbelief, whether a very implausible plot development, or a particularly blatant use of a trope, by calling attention to it and simply moving on.” It’s the wink-and-nod to the audience that says “We know we’re making something really cliché, so that makes it okay” and has become an almost essential scripting tool now that audiences have instant access to nearly every movie ever made.
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Not too long ago, I was driving up north at night to work on a project the following morning. I was tired and disillusioned, and was going through a Caribou drive thru to be able to make the journey. It was then I heard Mark Hogancamp on NPR, talking about his town of Marwencol, what happened to him and his recovery, and the photos he took of his town that made him famous enough to get a movie about him starring Steve Carell. Maybe it was the way he spoke about his work that struck a chord with me, or maybe I was emotionally raw and extra receptive to his story, but I was fascinated and wanted to know more. A month later, the first trailer...
Sometimes I wonder if the renaissance of high budget narrative TV shows has spoiled us media consumers. The ability to stretch a story out to better flesh out side characters and give story arcs more of an emotional heft when they come to a climax has been wielded well in shows like Game of Thrones. And attracting A-list talent has fully removed the medium gap that kept movies prestigious yet brief and television cheap yet better developed.
This comes to mind after seeing Mary Queen of Scots. There’s a lot to like about it -- the 16th Century world is...
Biopics tend to go one of two ways. Either they’re a pivotal moment in the subject’s life that’s explored in depth, or it’s a collection of vignettes that are strung together as close to a traditional film narrative as possible to tell a full life story. Personally, I prefer the former to the latter, since we as the audience get to fully immerse in a chapter of history and discover more of the (hopefully not fabricated) behind the scenes build up to the events and stories that are the entire reason for a biopic in the first place.
Having said that, if anyone is going to tell a story...
A Star is Born has two really great things going for it. One, a star/director who really, really cares about the film. Two, it has Lady Gaga.
This is the second time the 1937 film A Star Is Born has been reimagined, and this version bears a closer resemblance to the 1976 incarnation than the original. Washed up rock star Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper) meets Ally (Lady Gaga) and they fall in love, allowing her access to the career and stardom she’s always dreamed of while he continues to be pulled down by his alcoholism and drug addiction....
Peppermint is a frustrating film. Not because of a dense plot, or an unconventional, challenging ending, but because it inadvertently teases better movies as it speeds along down well driven roads.
To start with, we’re introduced to Riley North (Jennifer Garner) as she dispatches a man in a parked car. The opening titles start, with a montage of Los Angeles’ condo towers juxtaposed with the tents and shopping carts of Skid Row. I wasn’t expecting social commentary in this action movie, but hey, I’m game.
Riley’s barely stapled herself back together...
