20140430: Comedy Review--White Reindeer

White Reindeer

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2013, NR, 82 minutes, comedy, drama, indie.
2. IMDB: 5.8/10.0 from 458 audience ratings.  Aspect 1.85
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 89% on the meter; 54% liked it from 278 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.6/5.0 from 18,982 audience ratings.
5. Written and directed by: Zach Clark.
6. Starring: Anna Margaret Hollyman as Suzanne Barrington, Laura Lemar-Goldsborough as Fantasia, Lydia Hyslop as Patti, Joe Swanberg as George, Chris Doubeck as Detective Ross, Marissa Molnar as Latifa, Nathan Williams as Jeff Barrington.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Jeff and Suzanne seem to be happy living in Virginia near Christmas time.  Jeff has a new job starting in January, and they enjoy each other's company deeply.  Suzanne comes home one day before Christmas to find Jeff on the floor with his head bashed in.


2. The police investigation seems rather light and inept at the beginning.  Things pick up a bit after Suzanne starts combing through the files and web addresses on Jeff's computer.


3. Suzanne decides to meet some of the girls that Jeff knew.  Fantasia is one of the dancers.  Suzanne starts into shoplifting, as well as cocaine use.  Neither of these serves her well.  Her old set of friends prove to be less normal afterward.  Eventually, though, she starts to get information about Jeff's secret life: lap dances, cocaine use, and his other love interests.


4. Her excursion into getting to know the neighbors is not too damaging.  Then again, it was not beneficial for Suzanne.


5. Does Suzanne connect the dots?  Does she seek help with the police?  Will she survive the neighbors, or her Internet Christmas-sadness buying spree?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: A Christmas-themed feel-bad film.
2. Two stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 4/10 From overexposure to underexposure to faux blondes to terrible makeup, the sets and lighting were poor.


2. Sound: 7/10 The actors were miked OK.  The incidental music was crappy, but then again, that's pretty much what the story was about: crappy situations.


3. Acting: 4/10 I almost liked the performance of Anna Margaret Hollyman, but not any of the many others.


4. Screenplay: 4/10 There was nothing funny about this film.  It should not be billed as a comedy.

20140216: Drama Review Nuit 1

Nuit 1

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Canadian live action feature length film, 2011, NR, 87 minutes, drama, indie.
2. IMDB: 6.4/10.0 from 353 audience ratings.  The spoken language is French with English subtitles.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 63% on the meter; 55% liked it from 376 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.8/5.0 from 4,929 audience ratings.
5. Written and directed by: Anne Emond.
6. Starring: Catherine de la Leon as Clara, Dmitri Storoge as Nikolai.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Clara and Nikolai meet at a rave.  They go home together.  They have sex.


2. She cannot sleep, takes a bath, then leaves.  He calls her back before she's out the door.


3. They talk, endlessly, in long, pointless, low-energy monologues. Then they talk some more.  The problem is, their lives are flat, failed, undistinguished, prosaic: the lives of two slacker drug users who cannot engage life.  Who cares?  Self-loathing is just not appealing.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Two boring slackers discuss their uninteresting one night stand.
2. Two stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 Fairly good for the difficult low light conditions often chosen by the director.  When there was sufficient light, the visuals were rather good.


2. Sound: 5/10 OK, though nothing great.


3. Acting: 4/10 Meh.  Any high school drama student could have swapped in for either of the principals.


4. Screenplay: 4/10 Plain, boring, non-engaging.  The script is not clever enough to make one care about the characters, who are about as engaging as lichen on rocks.  Write an essay, get it published, get it out of your system, but don't make a film about it, especially one this bad.

20140201: Movie Review--Upstream Color

Upstream Color

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2013, NR, 96 minutes, drama, indie, SciFi, aspect 2.35; spoken word is in English.
2. IMDB: 6.9/10.0 from 10, 456 audience ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 85% on the meter; 71% liked it from 9,717 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.5/5.0 from 109,355 audience ratings.
5. Written and directed by: Shane Carruth.
6. Starring: Amy Seimetz as Kris, Shane Carruth as Jeff,  Andrew Sensenig as The Sampler.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Kris is attacked one night with an electric stun device, then force-fed a worm of some sort.   She gives her money to the scum who attacked her.  She takes equity out of real property in which she has some ownership.  Most things of value that she has she cashes in or surrenders to her abductor and parasite.  Another man abducts her and transfers some of the worms to pigs that are tagged.  Apparently there are other victims of this aggressive identity theft.


2. After the worms are removed, she slowly regains self awareness.  She loses her job when she reports to work again.  She challenges the bank operations she has done, but the bank has photographic evidence that she in fact instigated her own financial meltdown.


3. She meets Jeff, who seems to have gone through a similar process of life rape.  These two broken people spend time together.  Both of them have memory problems.  He can hold down a job doing financial work off the record...until he decides to beat up his co-workers.  She's had some sort of problem where she cannot have children.  About the time he decided to lose his job, she has some sort of work related foul up.  They end up cuddling in the empty bathtub with their clothes on.


4. At one point, the keeper of the pigs gathers up a litter from an infected mother.  He ties the piglets up in a burlap bag on throws them into a stream.  Everything rots.  The worms travel to some orchids.  The orchids are collected, packaged,  and sold, complete with the parasites.  Great.


5. The book Walden is shown, read from, discussed, and referred to during the film.


6. They eventually obtain some of the pig farmer's records. These include information about them, but they turn it into a mailing list.  They mail a copy of Walden, and invite other victims to the pig farm.


3. Conclusions
1. Some of the words and phrases I see applied to this film are cerebral, artistic, intellectual, 'artistic side of the brain,' beautiful, compelling and so on.  I would counter with pretentious, ugly, pointless, unfocused, deficient, ill-planned, bovine scatology.
2. One line summary: It takes considerable skill to make a film this bad.
3. One star of five.  Four black holes for cinematography, sound, acting, and screenplay.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 0/10 Some stretches of this film show expertise.  Based on that, one must figure that the poor quality of the film was a choice.  Poor framing, poor focus, poor depth of field, jerky camera, massive, avoidable flair not avoided, and so on.  The number of abrupt meaningless transitions is rather high, in the hundreds at least.


2. Sound: 0/10 The incidental music is irritating at best, mind numbingly bad at worst.  The voice miking is rather variable.  I had my hand on the volume control just so I could attempt to hear the dialog or not be drowned out by the atrocious music.  In several passages, the visuals have the characters silent while the sound from another scene is being played.  This choice not to synchronise is repellent.


3. Acting: 0/10 Speaking without affect: no smiles, no frowns, no sparkling eyes, no concern.  Fire the casting director as well as the director.  Most of all, lose the two lead actors.  High school actors with calm faces could have done as well.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Death by a thousand (editing) cuts.  Remember the fable of 'The Emperor Has No Clothes.'  This movie sucks rocks.

20140121: Comedy Review--Overnight

Overnight

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2012, rated R, 95 minutes, indie, romance, comedy.  Spoken word is in English.
2. IMDB: 5.1/10.0 from 346 audience ratings. Estimated budget 2.85 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No score yet,' and 36% liked it from 73 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.2/5.0 from 98,732 audience ratings.
5. Written and directed by: Valerie Breiman.
6. Starring: Rachel Blanchard as Jenny, James D'Arcy as Tom, Gbenga Akinnagbe as TMJ, Anthony LePaglia as Tully, Maz Jobrani as Amir, Mousa Kraish as Mohammed, Christina Chang as Lisa, Claudia Christian as Sandy, Kevin Rahm as Chip, Josh Braaten as Derek.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Most of the activity of the film is on a red eye flight direct from Los Angeles to New York City on Valentine's Day.  Tully, the pilot, has anger management issues.  Many of the passengers have problems finding successful romantic relationships.


2. Jenny and Chip have a dinner before she flies back to New York.  He gives her some expensive earrings, though her ears are not pierced.  She tells him that she has decided to move to Los Angeles to be with him.  Unfortunately, he has a second string girl friend and does not want Jenny to move.  They break up.  No surprises there.


3. Tom, a theoretical physics professor, gets hooked into accepting a ride to LAX with his ex, who breaks up with him again, for not kissing her on the lips.  Tom and Jenny bump into each other at on of the gift shops.


4. TMJ (a rapper) is going to NYC without his entourage.  While he is walking to his gate, rap music plays, in which the singer shows his sense of entitlement--to murder whomever he wishes.  This was a good place to stop watching the film.  Hate speak usually does not bode well for a film.  Amir and Mohammed are both 'randomly' chosen for a more thorough inspection before boarding.


5. On the plane, the flight attendants Sandy and Lisa immediately classify Jenny as a high maintenance bitch.  Great: more hate speech.  Amir and Mohammed are immediately pigeon-holed as terrorists.  TMJ immediately shies away from Tom because he's white, while Tom is not positively impressed with TMJ's "I'm the most garish pimp here" clothing.  The male flight attendant has trouble getting TMJ to get off his cell phone during take-off.  After learning that TMJ was on board, Sandy and Lisa sing part of one of his songs which was beyond gross.


6. Tom tries to enable a seat switch between Jenny (in coach) and TMJ, so that TMJ can appear non-elitist to his girl friend.  TMJ objects to sitting next to the terrorists, but Tom talks him into it.  Tom and Jenny try to get to know each other at some length.


7. Tully and his wife have an off and on telephone fight during most of the flight. In between those heated exchanges, Tully and his co-pilot discuss the merits of Christianity.  Tully is an atheist, while Derek is an evangelical.


8. Amir turns out to be allergic to TMJ's dog.  Mohammed tries to talk TMJ into putting the dog back in its carrier.  The dog makes a break for it.


9. Will any of these earnest attempts at relationships work out?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Another failed, low-budget, cliche-ridden, feel-bad, romantic comedy.
2. One star of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 Competent but nothing special.


2. Sound: 5/10 No particular problems on sound qualities.  The choice of the incidental music should have been considerably better.


3. Acting: 2/10 Rachel Blanchard, Christina Chang, Claudia Christian, Josh Braaten, and Gbenga Akinnagbe were considerably more irritating than interesting.  Anthony LePaglia and James D'Arcy were better than competent, but could not make up for the others.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 The singing filled with hate-speak did not help, nor did the touchy-feely conversations, nor did the ugly yapping dog loose on a plane.  I am not looking forward to other efforts by Valerie Breiman.  Belly laughs? Zero.  Smiles?  Zero.  Anything in between?  No.  The endless weepy confessions by men were neither illustrative nor interesting.

20140114: Drama Review--As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2013, rated R, 119 minutes, drama, indie.
2. IMDB: 5.7/10.0 from 996 audience ratings.  Spoken word is in English; aspect 2.35
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 41% on the meter, but 'no consensus yet'; 44% liked it from 2,674 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.8/5.0 from 9,798 audience ratings.
5. Written and directed by: James Franco.
6. Starring: James Franco as Darl Bundren, Beth Grant as Addie Bundren, Logan Marshall-Green as Jewell, James Parrack as Cash Bundren, Tim Blake Nelson as Anse, Brady Permenter as Vardaman Bundren, Ahna O'Reilly as Dewey Dell.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Addie Bundren lay dying in rural Mississippi circa 1930.  Darl and Jewel go on an errand, and promise to be back before sundown.  Their cart gets stuck in a rut in the pouring rain, and they do not keep that promise.  Cash keeps working on Addie's coffin within sight of Addie's sick bed.  Cash continues to work on it after she is gone, in the rain, no less.


2. Cash finishes the coffin,  Darl and Jewel get the cart unstuck. Addie has made Anse promise that she will be buried in the town of Jefferson.  This proves to be more than a bit complicated.


3. There is a lot of talking and angst and back-biting as Darl, Jewel, Cash, Dewey Dell, Vardaman and Anse head to Jefferson to fulfill the promise.  They encounter a number of challenges, such as weakened bridges across streams, dodgy fords, broken carts, lost animals, lost tools, lost coffin.  Aside from that, Cash gets a compound fracture, which the local vet sets.  To get a new team, Anse trades away just about everything the family had, including Jewel's beloved horse.


4. The corpse continues to rot, and the smell increases.  Whenever they are near or in a town, they are not welcome.  Cash's leg does not get better, and they set it with cement.  Jewel gives up his horse.


5. The journey does not get any easier.   Will the family accomplish its mission?


3. Conclusions
1. Adapted from William Faulkner's novel of the same name published in 1930.
2. One line summary: Poor Mississippi family takes matriarch's body home for burial.
3. Four stars of five


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 9/10 Mostly excellent, but has a bit of camera shake to it.


2. Sound: 9/10 Again, mostly excellent.  However, I would have been lost without the subtitles on Netflix.  The century-old Southern accents were thick to say the least.


3. Acting: 8/10 Fine, by and large.


4. Screenplay: 8/10 Difficult story, well told.

20140114: Comedy Review--In a Day

In a Day

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. British live action feature length film, 2006, NR, 84 minutes, comedy, indie,
2. IMDB: 7.0/10.0 from 846 audience ratings. Aspect 1.85
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No score yet,' 65% liked it from 429 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.4/5.0 from 171,235 audience ratings.
5. Written and directed by:  Evan Richards.
6. Starring: Lorraine Pilkington as Ashley Branstead, Finlay Robertson as Michael, Rose Keegan as Judith, Jake Broker as Sammy, Nolan Hemmings as Jasper.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Ashley's day starts badly with an extended interaction with a male aggressor whom she walks away from.  He throws hot coffee on her.  Michael intervenes.


2. Ashley and Michael are both out of work, and get to know each other over tea, then over clothes shopping for Michael's sister.  This was at an haute couture establishment where they were the only customers.  Michael pays for this.  They have a decadent meal at his expense.  Then he demonstrates his 'premonitions.'


3. They visit Michael's sister on her not-so-happy birthday.  They hike through an arboretum of some size, during which Michael carried Ashley pick-a-back.  They talk and visit an old site of Michael's graffiti writing.


4. Michael asks Ashley to decide the next thing that they together.  She asks him to buy a used saxophone for her musician friend.  They give the gift, and find out how her friend lost his earlier sax.  Ashley sings and plays piano with her friend.


5. They go for a drink.  The man who started Ashley's day badly by throwing coffee on her is in the bar.  Ashley points him out, then Michael observes him.  Michael faces him down in a very public way, then returns to Ashley. Turns out the bad guy is a solicitor for abused women.


6. Michael and Ashley have a beer, and Michael tells her why he wanted her to have a nice day.  They had known each other as children. Michael had been rather bad to her then and was hoping to apologise to her now.


7. Will Ashley sort this out?  Will Michael let it go?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Slow, endearing, thoughtful.
2. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 A little fuzzy, but mostly good.


2. Sound: 8/10 A bit soft on conversations, but mostly good.


3. Acting: 8/10 Rather nice.  The two principals were quite good.


4. Screenplay: 10/10 Lovely story, well told.