Mish Mash 16 (Clean and Sober, Silverado, Hot Dog...The Movie, Maria Full of Grace)

Clean and Sober

Michael Keaton (Batman, White Noise) plays a coke and booze addict who admits himself to rehab to hide out from the cops, who are suspicious of him after they find an overdosed woman in his bed, and the company he works for, who he embezzled a lot of money from.  The thing is he ends up kicking his drug habit in the process.  So his plan actually backfires.

It’s a solid dramedy with Keaton playing the balance between psychotic drug fiend, remorseful optimist and straight up asshole very nicely.  The movie takes his character in a weird direction though because he becomes obsessed with a woman he meets in rehab.  She’s not really into him but he keeps nagging her until she finally relents but regrets it immediately.  Keaton puts his entire life on hold to forcibly keep her off drugs.  Sobriety is working for him and demands others see the light.  He becomes such a creep that I didn’t care for this guy very much by the end.  This may have been on purpose though because (Spoiler) there’s a tragic end to the story which flies in the face of the good deed Keaton thinks he’s doing.

Silverado

Super screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan’s (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Empire Strikes Back, The Bodyguard) action adventure western picture is kinda not great.  My hopes were high because you have a master of the genre getting to not only write but also direct on a grand scale his version of the type of film he had created with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg for years.  They’re larger than life escapades that could only exist on the big screen filled with characters that are heroic and remarkable yet completely affable and humorous.

Silverado has too many characters and mini stories that don’t really come together.  It tries so damn hard to bring you the kind of action that makes you smile and even laugh but it falls flat.  As I’m writing this I’m struggling to think of what the hell happened plot wise and who some of the characters were.

Hot Dog…The Movie

Just like North Shore and a zillion others this is another movie about a kid who has to find out how good he really is at [insert sport here].  This time it’s skiing.  There’s all that same shit about the kid’s idol turning out to be a douchebag, befriending an older kindred spirit who teaches him the ropes, falling in love with a girl, etc.

However, unlike North Shore the kid in this one has a supernatural ability for skiing right out of the gate.  He doesn’t fall on his face and then train hard to reach a higher level of skill.  Instead he keeps getting screwed over by the judges who give the world renown star skier a better score no matter what.  That’s kinda dumb ‘cause then our protagonist doesn’t have anything to work towards.  Instead his goal becomes learning to not cheat on his girlfriend.

But that’s in line with the type of frat house picture they made here.  There’s plenty of partying, including our main group of skiers who have a drink in their hands at almost every moment, pranks, sex and all around childish shenanigans.  As a result the filmmakers make skiing look pretty stupid and informal like it’s not much different than doing a keg stand or playing beer pong.  The hip kids do it, you’re wasted most of the time and it’s easy enough that you can still compete on a national level.

This is a silly outlandish movie for sure, and I can enjoy that sort of thing (which I mostly did), except there’s one scene that’s really bad.  Our protagonist takes his new girlfriend out to a bar where they’re having a wet t-shirt competition.  At least one woman is dragged onto the stage against her will in front of dozens of drunk horny dipshits and some of the guys grab at the women and it’s simply awful.  The worst thing is the scene is played like it’s all innocent fun with beer spraying everywhere and rock music blasting.  Everyone’s having a ball with these half naked ladies being ogled and groped by a lot of dudes.  The rest of the film is definitely not perfect but this particular part is fairly appalling.

Maria Full of Grace

Holy shit what an incredible movie about a teenager named Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno (Che, A Most Violent Year)) who becomes a drug mule smuggling over sixty pieces of heroin in her stomach from Columbia to the US.  If one bursts in transit she’ll die, if not all are accounted for on the other end she’ll die, if she mentions this to anyone she’ll die.  It’s sort of a risky thing to take on.

Maria turns to this extreme shit because her life isn’t ideal.  She has a miserable job at a flower factory de-thorning roses and her boss treats her like garbage.  She says she’s sick and has to go to the bathroom but the piece of crap doesn’t let her go so she throws up on her roses.  Of course he then makes her clean them up and reuse them as if nothing had happened.

Maria is also pregnant with her boyfriend’s kid but this guy doesn’t really love her.  He takes her for granted so she dumps the prick.  Maria’s family gives her shit all the time too.  They don’t seem to band together very well with constant bickering over money and responsibilities.  They’re barely scraping by so there’s a lot of tension between everyone.

Seeing the journey this character makes from her shitty teenage life to drug runner is told beautifully.  And by “beautifully” I mean sad as hell.  She doesn’t have many options in the small town outside of Bogota where she lives.  The flower factory is the biggest gig there so that’s generally where you’re gonna find work.  Moving heroin becomes very tempting because it’s a helluva lot more money than what you could make in that stinkin’ factory.

I love Maria because she’s got so much fuckin’ courage.  She says fuck the flower job when her boss shows no concern for her well being, fuck the boyfriend when she knows he can’t take care of his own shit let alone a child, fuck poverty when the drug mule offer comes up and there’s one more thing she says fuck this to but it’ll spoil shit.  She’s such a strong woman that doesn’t take shit lying down.  She knows she can have a better life and goes down this crazy path to find it.  You gotta check this one out.

The Trigger Effect

David Koepp is a hotshot screenwriter.  He started off penning cheap action pictures (Dark Angel aka I Come in Peace) and thrillers (Bad Influence) but got his big break with Death Becomes Her.  Now he’s running in the same circles as Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg and collaborating on scripts like Jurassic Park, Carlito’s Way and The Shadow.  Eventually he built up enough clout to try his hand at directing which resulted in the modest suspenseful drama The Trigger Effect.

Based on the Twilight Zone episode “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” the story is about how people cope with a prolonged blackout.  Things progress the way you would expect with tension and animosity becoming ever present in the suburban community.  People can’t go about their normal lives like they always have so they get extremely antsy.  But there are also unexpected consequences like Matthew (Kyle MacLachlan (Showgirls, The Hidden)) and Ann (Elisabeth Shue (Cocktail, Hollow Man)) have a newborn with an ear infection yet they can’t simply go down to the pharmacy to fill a prescription because it can’t be processed through the computer.  This leads to Matthew getting so frustrated that he steals the medicine when the pharmacist isn’t looking.

Matthew and Ann’s friend Joe (Dermot Mulroney (Zodiac, Copycat)) stops by to check on them and he stirs the pot by suggesting they buy a gun to protect themselves.  He also adds some very contrived sexual tension between he and Ann.  I really wish they left that out as it doesn’t add anything to the movie.  Joe’s an alright guy otherwise though who cares about his friends and certainly means well.  Like when a burglar breaks into Matthew and Ann’s house during the night Joe is right by the couple’s side to confront the guy.  Unfortunately a neighbor shoots the thief who was only armed with a small switchblade.  To cover himself the scumbag neighbor plants a gun and lies to the cops about what happened.

After this incident the group decides to leave town for a while until things cool off.  However, the road isn’t any safer.  In fact it seems like a no man’s land post-apocalypse type place where only the brave or truly desperate venture.  Our protagonists soon run into more trouble but that’s as far as I’ll go.  You’ll have to watch.

This is the kind of smart high concept low to mid level budget film that doesn’t get made anymore.  The building of pressure and dangerous scenarios is well done starting with shoplifting and climaxing with people pointing guns at each other.  The story is relatively simple but poses big questions.  And the characters are likeable but flawed giving them some depth.  Matthew is jealous and doesn’t handle stress great, Ann alludes to a “checkered past” and Joe is a hard head who thinks he’s always right.

Race is touched on somewhat but not tackled directly.  Koepp uses the stereotype of black people talking during movies to introduce a character (Richard T. Jones (Event Horizon, Concussion)) who plays a big role later on.  This also shows Matthew’s initial unwillingness to engage in confrontation, even after the guy’s friend tells Ann to “shut the fuck up, bitch!”, and how certain circumstances can change a man.  The ending may be a comment on race but if it is I’m not sure what’s being said.  The picture really sticks to how the blackout affects this white family and their white community.

There’s some caution on technological advancement that can be inferred here.  It’s the old argument about computers ‘n shit being an Achilles heel.  If you take that away then humanity won’t be able to function.  You can’t purchase anything or go anywhere because you can’t buy gas or a plane ticket.

Of course the big idea Koepp wants you to think about is how people react when put in a stressful, confusing and possibly dire situation.  Will we band together to survive or fight each other in a blind paranoid rage?

On a technical level everything looks good.  There’s an impressive shot towards the beginning that lasts several minutes and follows a bunch of people being inconvenienced in different ways like getting a drink spilled on them or being cut in line.  It’s interesting because these little annoyances bug the shit out of all of us but it’s nothing compared to what’s coming.  It’s like you thought this was bad?  You ain’t seen nothing yet.

The opening narration over coyotes gnawing on an animal carcass is a little too on the nose though.  We get it, we all turn primal when the lights go out.

This is one of those steamy hot pictures like Body Heat or Falling Down where everyone constantly complains how damn hot it is making you feel sticky gross just by watching.  It’s always amazing to me when a movie can portray the stifling heat so vividly that it’s nearly impossible to remain passive.  I tend to get almost as uncomfortable as the folks on screen.

Overall Koepp did a really good job with this, especially for his first time out.  I wonder if he was blown out working on huge Hollywood spectacles like Mission: Impossible or if he just wanted to try something smaller for his directing debut, or both.  In any case it did horribly at the box office and was immediately forgotten about.  Fortunately for Koepp this didn’t have any ramifications.  He kept on writing big shit like Raimi’s Spider-Man, Fincher’s Panic Room, Spielberg and Lucas’ Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Tom Cruise’s The Mummy.  It’s also nice to know he kept on directing.  The only other one of his I’ve seen is Secret Window which was not very good but Stir of Echoes and Premium Rush are supposed to be decent.  I wouldn’t touch Ghost Town or Mortdecai though, sorry.

So check out The Trigger Effect.  It’s a neat little film that makes the heady topic at the center of the story feel more accessible than it should.  And I like that aliens aren’t explicitly stated or even alluded to being the culprits behind the blackout as opposed to The Twilight Zone ep.  The movie hits harder by saying that we’ve done all this to ourselves.  The failing power, malicious vibes, poor relations and connections we have with each other is our own doing.  Now we have to deal with it.  Thanks Dave.

Twister

Meteorologist Bill (Bill Paxton (Trespass (1992))) travels out to rural Oklahoma to retrieve some signed (he hopes) divorce papers.  His soon to be ex Jo (Helen Hunt (Rollercoaster)) is also a meteorologist and is hesitant about putting down her signature.  Part of it is she wants to make Bill suffer for walking out on their relationship.  But the other part is she’s still in love with him.

Bill greets his old scientist friends that comprise Jo’s field team and they’re all pleasantly surprised and glad to see each other again.  But uh oh, Jo didn’t sign the last page of the settlement.  She stalls and Bill gets annoyed but suddenly one of the assistants yells out “Jo, major action!”  Everyone knows what that means but they wait for the signal.  After a moment of silently gazing into Bill’s eyes Jo gives the green light and they’re off in a frantic whirlwind to wrangle themselves…a tornado.  That’s right, they’re motherfuckin’ storm chasers.

Ok, ignoring the completely unnecessary scene that takes place before this showing Jo’s dad getting murdered by a tornado when she was a little girl this is a very good setup.  A lot of information gets doled out about the characters without feeling too contrived and having Melissa (Jami Gertz (Renegades)), Bill’s new fiancé, tag along for moral support is a smart move.  She’s basically the audience who the other people have to explain stuff to.  She ends up being the best character in the whole movie and I’m not fucking kidding.  But I’ll get back to her.

First I wanna break down Bill and Jo.  Yes, they’re clearly meant for each other.  They have a mutual fascination with tornadoes, they’re enthusiastic about their research, they’re dedicated to better understanding how a tornado works so they can develop improved warning systems to help people and they’re both bat shit crazy.

Bill goes by two nicknames, “The Human Barometer” and the way more radical “The Extreme” (he’s also called “The Most Out of Control Sonuvabitch In the Game” but I guess that’s too long for a nickname).  Now I’m not saying Bill doesn’t deserve to be called “The Extreme” but it kinda fits Jo a little better.  While Bill will put himself directly in the path of a tornado he always tries to bail out at the last moment.  Jo definitely wants to get sucked up into one.  She has a death wish and it’s frustrating to watch.  In fact it’s a wonder she made it this far in her life without getting too close to a cyclone and dying.  She’s supposed to be a professional scientist and not act like a googly eyed zombie forgetting everything she knows when she sees a tornado.

Hang on a sec though ‘cause I’m not letting “The Extreme” off the hook that easily.  This dude has serious emotional problems.  He’s antagonistic towards Jo when she tries to make polite conversation, he goes into rage mode over a competing scientist stealing his idea for a tornado study experiment and has to be held back, and he insists on driving the truck all the time even though he keeps fucking up and getting too close to the tornadoes.  However, I do love the sorta badass story about how he got his nickname.  You see one time he strolled up to a tornado while drunk and naked and cursing.  He says “have a drink” and throws a bottle of Jack Daniels at the thing.  He was so close the tornado sucked it right up.  Alright, I guess he earns “The Extreme” moniker.

So Bill and Jo are kinda boneheads.  It’s fiancé and therapist Melissa who’s astoundingly reasonable and amiable.  One of the most amazing things she does is ride along on three storm chasing sessions so Bill can share his true passion with her.  She also asks questions showing genuine interest in the topic.  She could’ve hung back from the start or tapped out after the first spin but she keeps going out there because she’s gonna stick by her man no matter how insane this activity may seem.

Melissa is also very nice to everyone, doesn’t look down on Bill’s friends or dismiss their profession.  Nah man, she’s captivated by the world she’s unexpectedly found herself in.  The good doctor even takes patient calls while she’s out there being twirled around by a tornado.  Sure, she’s freaking out but she lets the person on the other end know that she’s there for her.  She’s just a really good person.

On top of all this Melissa knows that Bill and Jo should be together and does the right thing by breaking up with Bill and letting him live the life he clearly loves with the woman he clearly still loves.  Melissa says she isn’t upset either but doesn’t know what that means.  Well I’ll tell ya.  She helped Bill see what was there all along.  He needs to be chasing storms with Jo and the gang and not tucked away in a studio doing weather reports.  He’s “The Extreme” not “The Content” and making him realize that makes Melissa feel at least fine about it.  Happy may be stretching it since she did just lose her fiancé.  But anyway, you get my point.  She wants Bill to be happy even if that means giving him up because she cares for him.  Melissa’s the best.

As for those wily tornadoes they do give you a lot of them, six scenes in total.  We see them destroying structures, flinging debris around and chasing after our protagonists all like you would want to see in one of these pictures.  For something called Twister they certainly deliver on the twister action and I commend the filmmakers for doing that.

But I will stop short of calling into question how realistic the tornadoes behave and if Bill and Jo really should’ve died several times throughout.  Yea I know everyone likes to make fun of them surviving the most violent type of tornado (F5) by tying themselves to a pipe with puny leather belts, the tornado can pick up the truck right next to them but they’re left alone, they can outrun a tornado, the twister roars and screeches like some horrible beast and blah blah blah, etc.  There’s so much in here that seems like total bullshit movie physics/science type stuff that it gets to a point where I simply don’t care.  It pelts me into submission.

The CGI used for the twisters isn’t terrible however.  I mean if you pull up footage of actual tornadoes they all look kinda fake.  This massive swirling cloud that appears randomly, damages a bunch of shit and then suddenly vaporizes seems like something too bizarre to exist in real life.  And they look truly frightening to encounter.  Fuck these things man.

Getting back to the movie, the filmmakers use a lot of wind, lighting and rain effects to stand in for the tornadoes most of the time because CGI was still expensive as hell in 1996 and had limited uses.  If you couple that with all the props like full sized tankers, tree branches, wood boards, farm equipment and etc being flung around and dropped from the sky the effects are nicely done and convincing.

On the negative end there’s a shocking amount of excess stuff that didn’t need to be in this picture.  I already cited the opening scene.  Merely mentioning that Jo’s father was taken out by a tornado is all you need to do, we don’t have to see it with our own eyes.

Another superfluous aspect is the very high number of members on Jo’s science team.  There should be Bill, Jo, two other assistants and maybe that one navigator guy (Alan Ruck (Star Trek: Generations)) with all the maps ‘n shit whose job ironically would be obsolete in a short ten years or so.  But Jo has no less than ten members including herself and Bill.  And it’s not like they all have a specific purpose.  Most of these characters don’t do anything except spew one line of science jabber.

And among the redundant team members is Dusty (Philip Seymour Hoffman (Red Dragon)), who’s there for comic relief and to try to get the audience pumped by yelling shit like “we got one!” and “it’s coming, it’s headed right for us!”  God I hate this obnoxious quasi hippie character.  He’s not funny, he’s not helpful, he’s just a doofus.  Is this asshole even a scientist of any kind?  He doesn’t say anything science-like or observe weather patterns or study data that’s been gathered or anything.  He’s an exasperating pest who contributes jack shit to the field work.

Out of everything though perhaps the most pointless element in the film is the inclusion of the rival storm chasers.  They’re sellouts in it for that sweet life threatening up close tornado observing money, or something.  Everything about them is designed to be a direct contrast to Bill and Jo’s team.  The sellouts dress in stiff slacks and polo shirts as opposed to denim and flannel, they drive uniform black minivans which is definitely less cool than the hodgepodge of vehicles in Jo’s fleet, their tiny tornado sensors are angular cubes instead of smooth orbs and etc.  The film makes you believe these guys are going to play a big role in the upcoming events but it turns out they have absolutely no bearing on the story whatsoever.  If you took them out not a damn thing would change.  They’re only here so the tornado can have someone to kill later, and even then it’s only two out of the entire team.

I actually have something to say on the death of the sellouts and it’s this: what the fuck did they ever do to deserve the gruesome demise they got?  Like one guy gets impaled by a metal lighting truss and then their car gets tossed through the air and explodes in a huge fireball.  Man, that death sentence is severe.  I get that these guys are jerks but as far as we know they never endangered anyone’s life, circulated false science into the community, punched someone in the face or anything.  Yea, they stole Bill’s tornado observation experiment but their goal was to help people by crafting a better early warning system, same as Bill’s.  The tornadoes are the villains here.  They didn’t need human bad guys as well.

One last thing I want to mention is the strange way this movie maligns weather reporters.  Bill gives up storm chasing to become one and as a result everyone kinda gives him shit for it.  I guess relaying weather newscasts to the public who rely on that information to know if a fucking tornado is headed their way isn’t as noble as deliberately and perpetually putting yourself in the path of that deadly force of nature.  What’s with those weather reporters trying to warn people about imminent danger and aiding them in what they can do to remain safe?  Gosh, what a bunch of losers.

Of course I’m being sarcastic but really, for all the glory they bestow upon storm chasers the way they’re portrayed here is probably insulting.  I don’t know shit about meteorology or any of that but I get the strong feeling that this picture makes people who study tornadoes look like irresponsible idiots.  They come off more like thrill seekers in search of a high than seasoned specialists who have enormous respect for what they’re studying.  I dunno.

Anyway, you add all this up and unfortunately you get a movie that’s pretty stupid.  That may sound harsh but none of it makes much sense if you think about it.  At the same time the movie does have that big summer popcorn blockbuster feel which is wonderful.  And I really mean that.  For all the bad mouthing I just did the film goes down no problem.

Longtime cinematographer turned director Jan de Bont followed up his fucking tremendous debut Speed with this.  He had been in the industry thirty plus years by 1996 and that’s what shows up on screen and makes the thing so easy to watch.  The man knows the language of big Hollywood film and how to satisfy a mainstream audience.  He only made five movies during his short directing career but they were all in the blockbuster style and Twister is no exception.  It’s a loud, fast paced, larger than life action adventure spectacular with just the right amount of hokey romance and comic relief sprinkled in to make it appealing to a boatload of people.

This was part of the natural disaster genre comeback in the 90’s and it was a big deal when it came out.  I remember they were showing real tornado footage in the lobby to get folks juiced and goddamn did it work (for the record I don’t recall them showing tornadoes damaging anything so they kept it tasteful, probably, potentially, actually I don’t have any way of confirming that).  The subject matter was deserving of a large scale Hollywood production and it paid off.  Twister was a monster hit.

While this one is a good time overall it has a lot of fucking problems.  The way the characters are introduced and the initial setup scene is well done but other than that things are a mess.  Although, I can’t deny the film does everything you want it to do.  There are plenty of tornadoes, they cause destruction, they put the protagonists lives in danger at various moments and our leads fall back in love by the end.  The essential beats are hit.  And everything else is stupid.

Twister was such a success that Universal Studios made an attraction out of it.  Basically it was a recreation of the drive-in movie scene from the film and we got to see a tornado destroy a bunch of stuff.  It included real sets, props, fire, water, wind, an unconvincing cow flying by on cables and a decent sized tornado all meticulously timed to give you a glimpse of what these things can do.

The attraction is long gone now though and admittedly I never thought too much of it whenever I did it over the years.  But the last time I took a ride I got to experience the front row with maybe only like five other people.  It was like a private showing.  Seeing the special effects demonstration that up close including the fifty foot tall tornado that was created indoors was incredibly impressive (the technology behind the ride is fascinating which involved measuring weather conditions in real time outside to help create the funnel).  It also made me realize how scary that fucking thing is and this is only a fraction of the size of a real one.  This final moment with the attraction earned it a special place in my heart and by association the stupid movie it’s based on.

Mish Mash 15 (Phantom Thread, North Shore, The Fly (1986) Ending, Days of Wine and Roses, The Killing of a Sacred Deer)

Phantom Thread

This is probably Paul Thomas Anderson’s (Inherent Vice) best looking movie and that’s saying a lot.  I guess that makes sense considering the backdrop to the weirdo love story is the world of 1950’s high fashion.  It all needs to be just so and so does the handling of the delicate plot and characters.  Very few filmmakers can make a picture about an abusive relationship work.  In this case both sides inflict massive pain yet they really do seem to love each other despite how ludicrous and childish it looks from the outside.

I liked it a whole lot but it’s definitely not for everyone.

North Shore

My buddy had a DVD copy of North Shore sitting in his basement for who the fuck knows how long.  Of all the people that came through there no one had the courage to put it on.  I don’t think the fear was that it was going to be a very poorly made corny 80’s teen romance picture, but that it was going to be a boring very poorly made corny 80’s teen romance picture.  Well fifteen or twenty years later North Shore finally came knocking.  And it’s really not bad (I know, ringing endorsement).

The movie’s about Rick, a surfing teen from Arizona who makes the journey to Hawaii to find out how good he really is.  He falls in love, gains some friends, makes some enemies, gets disappointed that his hero is a total jerk and etc.  It’s nothing special at all.  We’ve seen this scenario play out a bajillion times before with the likes of Thrashin’, Footloose, Airborne, ‘n shit.

What’s nice about North Shore though is this kid finds out he has to work pretty damn hard to achieve his dream.  It’s not that he’s naturally supremely talented like most of the films in this vein.  Rick travels on his own to a place he’s never been to before and where he has no contacts.  So he needs to figure out where to stay and how to earn money and practice his surfing skills so that he can become better.  Instead of simply learning to believe in himself like would normally be the case it’s cool to see Rick pull himself up and put in a real good effort to make shit workout.

The Fly (1986) Ending

Spoiler on a thirty year old movie

The ending to Cronenberg’s The Fly is a throwback to older pictures where the credits would come up as soon as the bad guy was vanquished.  No need to do a quick wrap up of events or ramp down of the heart pumping climax.  Here there’s only time for a couple of brief reaction shots and then they start those end credits rolling.  I wonder if this was an intentional nod due to it being a remake of a 1950’s joint.  It’s an interesting tactic and I wouldn’t be opposed to more films ending like that.  Maybe one day it’ll come back in fashion.

Days of Wine and Roses

Really wonderful and immensely tragic tale of a drunk named Joe (Jack Lemmon (My Fellow Americans)) and a teetotaling young secretary named Kirsten (Lee Remick (The Omen)) who fall in love.  It’s not too long before Kirsten gets on board with the booze too and very soon they both can’t put the bottle down.  Their alcoholism ruins their lives as well as those around them.

The storytelling may be a little ham fisted at times where it feels like a public service announcement (for AA in particular) but its heart is definitely in the right place.  Director Blake Edwards (10) and co want you to see how horrible alcohol addiction is and that if you or someone you know is wrestling with the disease there’s something you can do about it, the situation isn’t hopeless or endless.

So many aspects are touched on like Joe and Kirsten fail to hold a steady job, they have trouble looking after a small child, they lie and steal to get money to buy more liquor, Kirsten vehemently denies having an addiction and claims she can stop drinking whenever she wants, disappearing for days at a time, relapsing multiple times, severe withdrawal and etc.

Both Lemmon and Remick give incredible performances (ironically Lemmon admitted to alcohol dependency later in life) and Edwards goes all in with almost no comic relief.  The whole thing’s impressive from start to finish.  This is one sad and powerful picture.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Every once in a while I run up against a movie where everyone in it acts in an unnatural way and it makes me feel like an idiot because I don’t understand why that’s happening.  In this case all the characters in the film are emotionless.  They say their dialogue and go through scenes that are supposed to be filled with tons of catastrophe but they all remain calm and stone faced.  This is what I had a hard time getting past.  The story about a teenage boy placing a curse on a man’s family forcing him to sacrifice one of them to save the others is weird enough and sorta interesting.  There didn’t need to be this experimental sterile performance angle on top of it.  It doesn’t really add anything to the picture.  In fact it’s unbelievably distracting.  I would’ve loved to have seen this plot executed more straight up but we got what we got.  It’s an alright movie.