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Reviews
Black and Blue (2019)
A genuinely fun movie
In an age where everything is either a big budget action film or goes straight to streaming, I'm glad a movie like this got a wide release. As a value the experience of going to a theater, sitting down, and eating popcorn, sometimes it's fun to watch a mid-budget thriller rather than the heavier genre fair.
Despite the topicality of the premise, which sees Naomis Harris police officer, witness the execution of a group of African-American drug dealers by some corrupt cops, the film doesn't expect to much from the audience. The movie doesn't question the nature of policing except for a couple of lines and the evil cops are portrayed as a few bad apples. Still, points for portraying Mike Coulter's drug dealer more sympathetically than Frank Grillo's crooked police officer.
Still, if you like mid-budget action thrillers this movie is for you. The heroes are likable, the villains are hatable, there are some genuinely suspenseful scenes, and the obligatory scene where Frank Grillo has to explain his motivations is well done. In other words, the prefect movie to waste an afternoon watching.
I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016)
A film thats more unsettling than outright horror
A caveat is necessary here: I don't give this movie 5 out of ten stars because I disliked it or think that the film is only average. In fact, I think there's a lot to like, if not exactly love about this film. I highly recommend that you see it.
The movie follows Lily (Ruth Wilson) who comes to work as a live-in nurse for the elderly horror writer Iris Blum (Paula Prentiss). Unfortunately, strange goings on begin to happen and Lily becomes convinced that the house is haunted by the ghost of Polly Parsons (Lucy Boynton), a woman who was the subject of Blum's novels.
If I have reservations about the movie, it's because I don't quit know what to make of it. The scares are well-done, this movie focuses most of its efforts on crating an atmosphere of wrongness rather than having the ghost come out and yell "boo" at the audience. In fact, Polly is more pitiable then malevolent, the horror coming from the idea that haunting a house is equivalent to being trapped in a self-made hell created by her own traumas. The movie also establishes early on that Lilly is going to die at the end, creating a sense of impending doom as we wait for her inevitable end.
Unfortunately, this is somewhat undercut by Ruth Wilson's performance which I found bizarrely off-putting. I hesitate to blame the actress when this could just as easily be a directorial choice but her Lilly seems oddly wooden. In the scenes where she's asked to engage in dialogue, rather than narrate, she seems to be reading off a script rather than actually having a conversation.
In addition, she seems to talk and act like someone from decades before the movie actually takes place. The film is set in the past but we see characters watching a VCR at one point meaning that, at it's earliest, the film is set in the late 1970s. I have trouble believing that even that far back anyone under the age of 40 used phrase like "Heavens to Betsy" in actual conversation or referred to themselves as a "Silly Billy". Unfortunately, the leading performance is distracting which undercuts, but ultimately doesn't completely undermine the atmosphere of dread the film works to build. It's a good movie which could have been a great one with a better central performance.
The Interview (1998)
A solid police procedural but I kind of wish it had just stayed that
This movies is a fun thriller with a superb performance by Hugo Weaving. The film stars Weaving as Eddie Fleming, a man arrested and dragged into a police station about an interview about the theft of a car. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that Weaving's character is suspected of more than just car theft.
I will (SPOILERS) save you the suspense of whether Weaving's character is guilty or not: The fact that he's played by Hugo Weaving is itself a pretty good indicator that he's up to no good. (I will maintain to my dying day that Weaving was horribly miscast in "The Lord of the Rings": Evil just seems to come more naturally to him.)
Unfortunately, things go off the rails once the confession is delivered and they have to let the killer go because of a technicality. I always find this plot twist to be rather reactionary: Look at how much safer we would all be if only cops waived aside pesky concerns like civil rights and just beat confessions out of everyone. This giver the film an uncomfortably conservative bent and makes the last half hour or so hard to enjoy.
Apollo 11 (2019)
A technical masterpiece but not much else
Let's get this out of the way: Yes, this film is remarkable historical archive of the first space flight. It shows the hard work, the human ingenuity, and the sheer bravery of the people who went to the moon. This film is valuable if only as a look at what, in my opinion, might be the human race's greatest achievement.
That being said, the film is also really, really really boring. Technical competency aside, it is just incredibly tedious to watch all the shots of people looking concerned at computer panels. I, at least, thought the film could have done with closed captioning as I could not understand half of what anyone was saying and thus missed important context. Being unable to follow the dialogue, I actually found myself drifting off in the theater (which almost never happens to me). This movie is great for history buffs but most people would be better off and get just as much watching the original film of the moon landing.
The Circle (2017)
The Circle makes an interesting point despite itself
While it is not the best movie you will see in the theater this year, The Circle makes a pleasant enough afternoon's diversion. The movie follows Emma Watson as Mae Holland, a young woman who gets a job as a customer service rep at the titular Circle, a seeming progressive tech company that if you have seen the trailer you know turns out to have a sinister side.
The film has clearly been edited to remove the darker elements of the book it is based on but that inadvertently proves a strength. The villains are no longer out to take over the world but are now simply corporate suits willfully ignoring the downsides of their new technology in their bid for corporate power. They are friendly faces, perfectly portrayed by Tom Hanks and Patton Oswalt, whose pasted-on affability never wavers even when they are doing demonstrably immoral things. They're not monsters, they're just businessmen.
My major complaint with this movie is that Mae's old friend, Mercer, played by Ellar Coltrane seems superfluous. He's just not as good an actor as the rest of the cast and he comes off as a creepy stalker in this interactions with Mae. I know that he is an important character in the book but the conflict he presents, forcing Mae to choose between the Circle and her friends, could have been given to Karen Gillan as Mae's other friend Annie.
As a result, Gillan's character is not given much to do other than a subplot that seems a bit rushed. Also underutilized is John Boyega's potential love interest character. However, despite this, the Circle is an intriguing look at how in business, ruthless acts hide behind a kind smile.