We have us a contender.
I’m not sure if this will take the spot for the best film of the year
(Moonlight) but it’s really close. This
is a new landmark in science fiction film making. Director Denis Villeneuve just crafted one
darkly beautiful and emotionally exquisite drama. Amy Adams, giving us another powerful
performance, plays a linguist brought on board to communicate with an alien
species that has arrived to Earth. Why are
they there? Are they invading or are
they here for some other reason? Jeremy
Renner and Forest Whitaker costar and give equally solid performances. What I especially loved about this film was
the creature design and their circle-pictograph language. I hope this film gets a lot of love come
Oscar time. Grade: A
My Grading System
A+ = Masterpiece (I hold back on this one.) / A = Great. / A- = Really Good. / B+ = Good. / B = Decent (Serviceable). / B- = Flawed but okay (For those times there's something redeeming about the work). / C+ = Not very good (Skip it). C = Bad. / C- = Awful. / F = Complete Disaster (I hold back on this one too).
Note on Spoilers: I will try to avoid ruining a story by going into too much detail. But if I wish to include some revealing points to my analysis I will try to remember to add a separate spoiler paragraph.
Note on Spoilers: I will try to avoid ruining a story by going into too much detail. But if I wish to include some revealing points to my analysis I will try to remember to add a separate spoiler paragraph.
Saturday, December 10, 2016
Sunday, December 4, 2016
Westworld (Season 1)
A re-imagining of the 1973 film by Michael Crichton, this
HBO series pulls you in with a great concept and many exciting characters, some
of them are human and some of them are not.
What if you could go to the old West and pretend to be an outlaw, gun
down innocent bystanders, rob a bank, sleep with a prostitute in an old time
saloon and then go home without any retribution? That’s what this vacation spot provides, an
escape if you will (if you can afford it) to go back in time and live a
different life. Yes, they might be
robots, but what if they’re alive? Does
pretending to be a villain actually damage your moral being? And what if you’re the robot? Are you doomed to follow a program? Can a robot have free will? There is a lot to celebrate about this new
series. Creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa
Joey gather a fantastic team. Anthony
Hopkins plays the master mind and “God” like designer of the park and its
robots. Jeffrey Wright is his
assistant. Evan Rachel Wood is a robot
heroine programmed to be a victim. James
Marsden is her lover designed to fail.
Thandie Newton runs the brothel, who has memories of another past. And then there’s Ed Harris in a role that
lets him eat up the screen with villainy as the man in black on a mission to
uncover the “real” game in the park. The
art design is excellent and the way they build these organic robots is about as
cool as it gets. Sign me up for Season
2, I can’t wait to see where else they plan to go. Grade: A
Spoilers: Damn
it! A friend spoiled the twist for me so
I’ll never know if I would have figured it out or if I would have been blown
away by the last episode. I hate
spoilers! I have to say that I think
the structure of the entire show was great and the reveal that Ed Harris and
Jimmi Simpson are the same character is fantastic. Robots don’t age people! Duh. I
want to believe I would have figured it out but alas I’ll never know. Can they come up with another cool twist for
season 2? I hope so.
Saturday, December 3, 2016
Home (2015)
I loved this fun, zany animated film about the friendship
between an alien named Oh and a girl named Tip.
The Boov, purple blob beings, are on the run from a dangerous alien
race called the Gorg. To hide, they
invade Earth and succeed at relocating every human into one place. That’s except for Tip who is left behind with
her cat named Pig. Oh and Tip become
outlaws and work together to reunite Tip with her mother. Along the way, they learn the meaning of
friendship. Jim Parsons and Steve
Martin provide their voices and it's fantastic how well they bring their
characters to life. The writing is
hilarious and the action clever and exciting.
This is director Tim Johnson’s best film by far. I say bring on a sequel. Grade: A-
Friday, December 2, 2016
The Imitation Game (2014)
I finally got around to watching this Best Picture
contender from last year. Benedict
Cumberbatch plays Alan Turing, the real life mathematician who works with other
cryptologists to break the Nazi’s infamous Enigma machine. He created the Turing machine to do it and in
doing so helped usher in modern computing.
Unfortunately he was homosexual in a time where being so was not safe as this film demonstrates with great dramatic tension. Cumberbatch is great in this and I loved the actors who played his
team. Overall a solid film that’s
deserving a watch. Grade: A-
Spoilers: I’ve
read that some of this film is just made up.
But films don’t have to be historically accurate they need to be good
stories. Or, one could suggest that
writer Graham Moore (winner of the Academy award for Adapted Screenplay, by the
way) could have made a story that was just as entertaining while being more
accurate than what was produced. It’s a
very subjective concept, and one I’m not willing to delve into until I know
more about the true story. Life is
complicated and yes, in film, you have to simplify it to make it fit the
parameters of a screenplay. No one should learn history from fiction, but alas many do.
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