Weekly Movie Reviews: Apr 30-May 6, 2017

Favorite Movie of the Week

Thelma and Louise (1991)

I’ve been wanting to watch Thelma and Louise for a long time – it’s a classic, plus Ridley Scott is one of my favorite directors, and I like when he branches out from the epic films he’s so well-known for. I knew very little about it going in and wasn’t sure quite what to expect.

Diner waitress Louise (Susan Sarandon) and repressed housewife Thelma (Geena Davis) set out on a two day vacation, but when they end up shooting a potential rapist, they end up on the run from the law and events start escalating. I’m not quite sure what genre this movie falls under. It’s got a unique tone, part black comedy, part drama, part road movie, part tragedy, and probably a few other things as well. It’s funny and heartbreaking, and it has one of the best endings I’ve ever encountered. Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis are amazing in it. It’s not a perfect movie – Harvey Keitel’s character was a bit on the nose – but it’s very good.

I’ve heard that Thelma and Louise was a controversial movie when it first came out, and I can see why. Usually my husband and I end up having very similar opinions about the movies we watch, but we talked about this movie for weeks afterward. He found the characters (mostly Thelma) annoying, but they made perfect sense to me and I had nothing but sympathy for them, even when they made bad decisions.

Other Movies Watched

Split (2016)

James McAvoy plays a character suffering from dissociative identity disorder (he has 23 personalities) who kidnaps three teenage girls for nefarious purposes. I’m not usually a big fan of psychological horror, and I haven’t been too impressed by M. Night Shyamalan’s recent work, but once I heard that Split was set in the same universe as his earlier movie, Unbreakable, I was much more excited to watch it. Unbreakable was a terrific and grounded superhero story, an original story made to be a film rather than an adaptation of another medium. Split is a very different movie, but it has the same underlying DNA. James McAvoy does an outstanding job, there’s a particularly memorable scene where he cycles through a bunch of different personalities in the same shot. I was worried about the horror aspects of the movie (I scare easily) but it is really more of a slow drama than a horror movie and it never gets very scary. I’m excited to watch the next movie in the trilogy!

The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)

The Motorcycle Diaries is based on Ernesto (Che) Guevara’s memoirs of his motorcycle/hitchhiking journey across Latin America when he was in his early twenties. It’s a biopic that also fits into the road movie/coming-of-age genres, which is unusual. Che starts off the journey not really knowing who he is or what he really wants to do, but the people he meets on the road instill convictions in him that he didn’t realize he cared about. Any movie about famous people, especially revolutionary figures, risks being too much of a hagiography, but The Motorcycle Diaries makes Che seem like an ordinary and relatable person, thanks in large part to Gael Garcia Bernal’s portrayal.

Far From Heaven (2002)

Cathy (Julianne Moore) is a 1950s housewife with a successful husband, a thriving social life, and a beautiful house. When she finds out that her husband is attracted to other men, her life starts to fall apart. Her only solace is her friendship/burgeoning romance with an African-American gardener, but of course, that’s pretty scandalous for the times. This movie is very interestingly shot, the colors and camera angles are reminiscent of a 1950s film (Wikipedia tells me it is imitating the style of a particular director, Douglas Sirk, but I’m not familiar with his work). The actors all do a fantastic job, especially Julianne Moore. I thought this was an ambitious movie that succeeded at what it was attempting, but I didn’t love it because the characters didn’t display a lot of emotion and I found it hard to connect with them.

The Space Between Us (2017)

Gardner Elliot (Asa Butterfield), the first person born on Mars, has the opportunity to visit Earth for the first time, and goes on a roadtrip with a girl he met online to try and find his biological father. I had high hopes for The Space Between Us when I first heard of it, but I knew it had terrible reviews by the time we watched it. Still, I’m a sucker for anything related to space, and I find teen drama comfortingly nostalgic, so I wanted to watch it anyway. It’s a terrible movie – the plot is drivel, the science is bogus, and some of the actors seem to be phoning it in – but I enjoyed watching it. The first part before Gardner gets to Earth is actually decent, but it devolves into cliches (street smart girl, fish-out-of-water boy) quickly.

Deep Blue Sea (1999)

Hyperintelligent genetically engineered sharks get tired of being experimented on and decide to destroy their creators instead. I knew this movie would be really dumb going in, but sometimes stupid disaster movies can be fun, and this is certainly one of those. There are people being picked off one-by-one, a silly half-developed romance, ominously moving fins, and of course, plenty of explosions. The emotional payoff was surprisingly good, usually in movies like this, the characters you like the most end up getting killed, and that wasn’t quite the case in this movie. There are also some scenes that are pretty funny, the movie clearly doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is good. But still, a really dumb movie.

One Eight Seven (1997)

One Eight Seven is a weird thriller starring Samuel L. Jackson as a teacher who is stabbed by a student in a gang-dominated neighborhood in New York, and then moves to L.A. to another gang-dominated neighborhood where he encounters some more threatening students. I really did not like this movie. The way it is filmed and acted is clearly intended to make the audience feel uncomfortable, and it definitely succeeds at that. It seems to want to be inspired by The Deer Hunter (which is explicitly referenced), but it’s really not in the same league. I had a hard time getting invested in any of the characters, even though Samuel L. Jackson does his best.

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