Weekly Movie Reviews: Mar 26-Apr 1, 2017
Favorite Movie of the Week
Silence (2016)
I’ve been looking forward to watching this movie ever since I first heard about it. Martin Scorsese has been trying to make the movie based on a 1966 Japanese novel since 1990, and even if the premise wasn’t fascinating, a Scorsese passion project would have made me excited no matter what.
After hearing rumors that their former mentor, Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson), has renounced his faith, young priests Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Garupe (Adam Driver) secretly enter Japan to try and find him and help the local Christians. The movie is set during the 17th century during a time when Christianity was banned in Japan and Christians were persecuted by any means necessary. Rodrigues and Garupe cannot do anything except watch and hide as the villagers who have taken them in suffer horrible fates.
As the name suggests, Silence is a slow and often agonizing movie. Rodrigues struggles with the horrors that he is exposed to and the silence of God, and he does nothing to deserve what he goes through. Andrew Garfield (who is getting used to playing someone driven by his religion – see Hacksaw Ridge) puts in his best performance ever – it’s restrained but speaks volumes. The whole movie hangs on us finding his internal trials compelling, and there’s not a moment where we don’t.
Other Movies Watched
Y Tu Mamá También (2001)
Y Tu Mamá También is a coming of age story about two teenage boys, Tenoch and Julio, who go on a road trip with an older woman. It’s inspired by traditional American road trip movies, but it’s set in Mexico during a time of political upheaval, which is mostly expressed via the omniscient narrator who comments on the protagonists’ lives and things they come across. I didn’t expect to love this movie as much as I did. Tenoch and Julio are spoiled and young, and they don’t really think about or do much other than drugs and sex, but they’re still somehow easy to relate to. Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal (who I already like a lot from other movies) are childhood best friends in real life, and I’m sure that helped their relationship seem more realistic on screen. Maribel Verdú conveys impatience, sensuousness, and vulnerability in a stirring performance. Basically, everything about this movie is exceptional and you should watch it.
Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Ridley Scott and historical dramas, so I’ve been looking forward to watching this Ridley Scott historical drama for a really long time. I feel pretty connected to Jerusalem during the Crusades because I played the entire first Assassin’s Creed which is set in the same time period. I spent hours running around the rooftops of its simulated Jerusalem and fighting against the Templars, which is fairly similar to what Balian, the protagonist of Kingdom of Heaven does (minus the rooftops.) This movie is based on the real story of Saladin’s siege of Jerusalem, and Balian, Jerusalem’s defender.
Balian’s story is heavily fictionalized – in the movie, he is the bastard blacksmith son of a powerful noble who unexpectedly inherits his father’s barony in the Holy Land. He’s running from his sins and feels compelled to be the best knight he can be. Orlando Bloom’s portrayal of Balian is probably the weakest part of this movie – he’s not bad at all, but he’s very bland. The movie is fantastic though, it’s atmospheric and epic, and the rest of the cast is terrific (Liam Neeson, Eva Green, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson, Alexander Siddig, Edward Norton) and not at all bland.
Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)
Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins has been out of a job for three weeks and needs money to keep up with his mortgage and bills. He’s offered $100 for what seems like a simple job to find a woman last seen in the company of the local African-American community, but soon realizes that he’s mixed up in something out of his league. This is a classic hard-boiled detective noir story set in 1940s L.A. and it stars Denzel Washington. It really draws you into the atmosphere of the time, including the ugly state of race relations, but it tells a focused story with some great characters. Don Cheadle is especially entertaining as Easy’s trigger-happy friend Mouse.
Monsters (2010)
I absolutely loved Rogue One, and I enjoyed the most recent Godzilla movie, so I was looking forward to watching Gareth Edwards’ breakthrough debut, Monsters. I was expecting it to be a horror movie based on the name and premise (two people make their way through an alien infested landscape) but it’s actually a great science fiction drama. The two lead actors (Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able) are married in real life and have great chemistry. The dialogue is very natural (I read that it was all improvised), and the worldbuilding is fantastic, I can’t remember the last time a movie made me so curious about the details of the world. It has a few rough edges – some of the dialogue seems a little odd, and it’s clearly made on a budget, but I can definitely see how this launched Gareth Edwards’ career, especially given that he was the writer/director/director of photography/sole visual effects artist.
Tin Cup (1996)
Bull Durham director/writer Ron Shelton and star Kevin Costner reunite in this movie about washed up golf course Roy “Tin Cup” McAvoy who decides to enter the U.S. Open in order to win the heart of his newest student. It’s a little more comedic than Bull Durham, but has the same great formula of making a sports movie mainly about the people rather than the sport. Kevin Costner makes the main character seem like someone you actually know well, and that adds a big emotional payoff towards the end of the movie. I want to keep watching Ron Shelton’s movies – they might even make me want to watch more sports. I’m definitely more interested in golf now.
Pawn Sacrifice (2014)
Pawn Sacrifice is a biopic of Bobby Fischer, the famous American chess grandmaster and arguably the greatest chess player of all time. Fischer’s brilliance came with serious mental issues, and those are the focus of this movie. Tobey Maguire plays Fischer fairly straight, and that makes his increasing paranoia all the more stark because you can see that he really doesn’t see reality any other way. Liev Schreiber is understated but really good as Fischer’s main opponent, Boris Spassky, and Peter Saarsgard plays one of the most reassuring characters I’ve ever seen on film as Fischer’s mentor, William Lombardy. It’s a pretty good movie overall, although it is slightly too on-the-nose occasionally.
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
CIA researcher Joe Turner (codename “Condor”) returns from picking up lunch to find that all his coworkers have been murdered. Convinced that he’s been targeted for assassination as well, he goes on the run while trying to piece together what happened. This movie felt surprisingly modern for being made in 1975, it’s a compelling spy thriller with good performances (from Robert Redford and Max von Sydow especially.) I was mildly frustrated that Robert Redford’s character was sleeping with someone he’d kidnapped the day after his girlfriend had been murdered, but that seems like a problem with the genre rather than this specific movie.
A Perfect World (1993)
Escaped convict Butch Haynes (Kevin Costner) takes a young boy named Phillip as a hostage and the two of them end up bonding as they try to evade the manhunt organized by Texas Ranger Red Garnett. This movie is directed by Clint Eastwood (who also plays Red) and as with all of his movies that I’ve seen (except Space Cowboys), it’s a good one. It’s pretty weird, though – although you can see and even sympathize with why Butch and Phillip bond, Phillip is still a hostage, and Butch can be quite violent. I don’t think many other people other than Kevin Costner could have pulled off his blend of charm and unpredictability so well. The movie fully acknowledges the complexity of the characters (just like Unforgiven) and left me feeling very conflicted.
Analyze This (1999)
A silly comedy about an insecure mob boss that goes to a psychologist and turns the psychologist’s life upside down in his quest to get over his anxiety and depression. I probably wouldn’t care about this movie except for the fact that Robert De Niro plays the gangster, and who can resist Robert De Niro? It’s exactly as silly as I thought it would be, it’s over-the-top, and it makes no sense, but the actors have good comedic timing, and it’s laugh-out-loud funny at times. I also enjoyed seeing Chazz Palminteri and Robert De Niro together and at odds again after A Bronx Tale.
Collateral Beauty (2016)
I really wanted to like this movie. It has an amazing cast (Will Smith, Edward Norton, Kate Winslet, Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren) and a fascinating premise – a bereaved father writes angry letters to Love, Death, and Time and is surprised to actually receive answers. The acting is excellent all around, but Will Smith in particular did an incredible job, just looking at him made me want to cry. But the movie overall just wasn’t very good – it’s so determined to make you smell the roses (or in the movie’s terms, notice the collateral beauty) that it trivializes everything else, including characters’ real problems. It turns what could have been a profound movie into something trite.
The Gamechangers (2015)
Based on the true story of Jack Thompson, a moral crusader and lawyer, who went after Rockstar Games (the makers of Grand Theft Auto) for making video games that he alleged trained kids to be violent. This is a BBC docu-drama, and it doesn’t make sense for it to be reviewed to the same standards as an actual movie. It does have a couple of great cast members – Bill Paxton plays Jack Thompson with a lot of charisma, and Daniel Radcliffe plays Rockstar Games president Sam Houser as an awkward eccentric (he’s getting good at that archetype.) The rest of the cast is pretty iffy – there’s some bad acting, and most of the American characters are played by British people that are terrible at faking accents. Plus, the movie is trying so hard to portray both sides as sympathetic that it ends up saying nothing at all. But for a TV special, it’s definitely watchable.