Tag Archives: Gravity

2018, Recent Reviews, Reviews

Roma (2018): Gorgeous Visuals with a Humble Story

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In a wealthy suburb of Mexico City in the 70s, Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a maid and nanny, attends to the affluent doctor’s family that employs her. She lives in a separate apartment with another staff member and spends her days taking care of the four children, husband, wife, elderly grandmother, and pet dog.

The film is shot entirely in black and white. As the much anticipated release from director Alfonso Cuarón, this marks a stark shift from his previous feature Gravity, a $100 million special effects driven thriller. He works on a much more intimate scale here and uses his images to not only set the time period but also to establish the film as a willfully humble story. Cuarón acted as his own director of photography and the visuals are gorgeous. Black and white films often receive unearned praise for their beauty, but that is not the case with Roma. The digital cinematography has incredible detail and the special attention that has gone into use of shadows, reflections, and depth of field show the work of a master visual stylist.

Cuarón has created his own version of an Italian Neorealist film. He is interested in the everyday life of the subjects in his selected microcosm and never shies away from events that could be called mundane. We see Cleo cleaning floors, doing laundry, and dressing the children. None of these actions propels      the plot forward, instead they serve to establish a routine. This is a slice-of-life story and Cuarón embeds the audience in the smallest details of daily patterns. There are a few too many of these scenes, but the film’s greatest success is that most of these banal tasks aren’t boring. The film is on the longer side, but the majority of the additional scenes feel deliberate and necessary to fully comprehend Cleo’s existence.

Cleo’s chores form the bulk of the screentime.

Through her interactions, we see the subtle, but firm, difference between Cleo and her employers. She may technically live in the same house and spend her days with the family, but she is distinctly not one of them. Although the children clearly have affection for her, often saying “I love you” as she tucks them into bed, and the adults care about her well-being when she is in need, they are quick to order her around and occasionally take out their frustrations on her. We never see Cleo do the same to them. No matter what personal struggle she may be facing, she isn’t afforded the luxury of rudeness because she is at the bottom of this social ladder.

There are a few moments that have a sudden impact. Once Cuarón establishes the regular rhythm of Cleo caring for the family, he introduces conflict that creates emotional reactions. These feelings are amplified by Cleo’s subdued body language. Even in the most climactic scenes, her strongest expression is a quiet sob and the resulting effect is that the viewer absorbs the remaining emotions she is unable to exhibit. This can be an incredibly powerful technique and one that Cuarón has used in the past. Unsaid emotions have a greater impact than any dialogue could deliver, but as successful as this method can be, there are too few emotional moments across the runtime and the ones that are present don’t provide a strong enough payoff. Roma is an incredibly well made film that features flashes of emotion, but not enough to take it to the next level.

3/5 stars.

2018, Recent Reviews, Reviews

Bird Box (2018): Weak Knock-off

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Bird Box is told in two timelines. The first follows Malorie (Sandra Bullock; Gravity) as she prepares two blindfolded children, named Boy and Girl, to travel to a community downriver. The second tells Malorie’s backstory and fills in why the world appears to be in a post-apocalyptic state. On the way home with her sister following a prenatal checkup, Malorie realizes that something is very wrong. People are suddenly acting suicidal and jumping off buildings or running into busy streets. As chaos ensues, she finds refuge in a stranger’s house along with other stranded individuals and discovers that some unknown, unearthly entities are creating the havoc by controlling anyone who makes visual contact with them. From that point on, Malorie and company cover all windows and only step outside with blindfolds to protect themselves from contracting whatever frenzy is tearing their world apart.

Within Malorie’s journey is a blunt subplot about her personal growth. Her pregnancy is unwanted and unplanned and she repeatedly states that she is not mother material and has no desire to be. The writers intend the pregnancy and eventual raising of the children to allow for her to realize her parental instincts and see herself as more than she had previously believed possible, but the acting and writing is so heavy-handed that she appears to only have two phases of growth, being completely against the idea of being a mother and wholly embracing motherhood, with neither being believable and without a smooth transition between the two states. Her treatment of the boy and girl seems less like someone unsure of their ability to raise children and more like someone just annoyed that they have an additional responsibility. When she does finally accept them, Bullock acts with unconvincing, forced emotions and delivers the most predictable, corny dialogue. Her growth into motherhood is a flawed, failed attempt at character development that doesn’t engender the desired sympathy.

Malorie’s interactions with the children never create believable bonds.

Bird Box is the amalgamation of A Quiet Place and The Happening that no one wanted. The conceit of needing to cover your eyes to avoid infection could have been an interesting premise but the film does little to exploit the potential. Furthermore, limited sight does not allow for the tense situations that avoiding sound does. There is minimal risk to accidentally alerting the creatures because a simple blindfold negates their power whereas in A Quiet Place even a small false move could create a noise loud enough to lead to death. This danger infused tension into every movement, but in Bird Box their situation is almost entirely within their own control and the creatures don’t directly harm the characters so the narrative doesn’t provide enough reason to be afraid of the unexplained beings. The main consequence, that characters enter a suicidal rage, isn’t as laughably bad as in The Happening but the visuals of people ending their own lives still fail to produce a lasting emotional response. Bird Box is an unnecessary, weak twist on existing horror ideas that doesn’t understand what made them successful or learn from their mistakes.

2/5 stars.

2017, Recent Reviews, Reviews

Song to Song (2017)

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Continuing his rapid pace of releasing movies, Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line) sets his newest film in the music scene. It features a star-studded cast with Michael Fassbender (Shame) as a music producer, Ryan Gosling (Drive) and Rooney Mara (Lion) as performers, and Cate Blanchett (The Lord of the Rings) and Natalie Portman (Black Swan) as other women who get wrapped up in their series of short-lived affairs.

The film’s “plot” is barely present and the few discernable aspects are disappointing. Supposedly, Song to Song is a romance, but there is nothing remotely romantic shown. Malick is known for not using traditional scripts. He relies on actors to improvise scenes based on only the setup and never have the pitfalls of this approach been more apparent than the scenes of what I can only assume was intended to be romantic chemistry. The actors have big smiles on their faces as they attempt to have authentic, playful interactions. Instead, they come off as annoying or severely cringe-inducing, best exemplified in a scene where Fassbender hops around a beach screeching and scratching like a monkey. As painful as these scenes are to watch, I can only feel sorry for the actors that had to perform them.

There is also a worrying trend regarding the treatment of women. Malick has been known for infantilizing his female characters. They are often young, innocent girls or adult women who display a pure naivete, but this previously appeared to come from a good place. It seemed like a celebration of innocence rather than a restriction on what women could do, but his new films have revealed some disturbing ideas. As in his last film, the women here are treated as sexual objects to be used, cast off, then reused when needed. They may have their own motivations but Malick’s portrayal shows them as little more than ways for his hedonistic male characters to satisfy their own desires.

The upscale parties and general opulence offer little reason to feel for the characters.

Visuals have always been Malick’s strong suit, but even that seems to be deteriorating. Using his regular cinematographer, the incredibly talented Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity), he is again able to create some stunning natural-light footage. Yet, there are a few confusing choices that mar his normally perfect images. Several scenes were shot on location at the music festival Austin City Limits and some use GoPro-like cameras. This was likely done to get closer to the action of the mosh pits, but the lower-resolution fish-eye shots do not mesh with the rest of the film. Their low-quality is a glaring fault. There is also a strange overuse of oblique angles. Many scenes are off-kilter close-ups of an actor’s face. Perhaps this was done to convey the subjectivity of the character’s thoughts, but instead it is only distracting. These unfortunate choices detract what would otherwise be the film’s greatest strength.

One of the few changes to Malick’s style is his use of music. His usual ethereal, orchestral score is still present, but, due to the setting, more modern music is also included. These songs offer some desperately needed energy to the film. Their use helps add variety to the soundtrack and breaks up the overused strings. It was perhaps the only modernizing of Malick’s approach throughout the film.

Song to Song is almost a repeat of Knight of Cups but set in the music world instead of the film industry. Like that movie, there are people living in exorbitant wealth while pursuing their dreams that are inexplicably mopey. Characters go after their desires in selfish ways and, when the obvious consequences occur, Malick expects the audience to sympathize with them. But, why would we? He, like his characters, appears to be living in a bubble. There are no sympathetic or relatable characters here, only sketches of vague emotions. The frequent voiceovers are filled with pretentious, pseudo-philosophical thoughts that are often unrelated to anything onscreen and read like midnight scrawlings from the director’s bedside notebook. His narrative films after the flawed, but magnificent The Tree of Life, if you can call them narrative films, have been a continual letdown. Malick’s work has sunk further into incessant navel-gazing and his visual style is no longer enough to make up for it. Song to Song is another exercise in Malick’s recent string of insufferable self-indulgence.

1/5 stars.

2013, Top Lists

Top 10 Films of 2013

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[BS Note: This list was originally written in early 2014]

With the Golden Globes behind us and the Oscars coming up this weekend, it is a great time to celebrate some of the year’s best films. 2013 was a great year for film-making it was difficult to bring this list down to ten entries, but these are the films that resonated.

10. In a World…

Lake Bell (No Strings Attached) makes her feature writing and directing debut with In a World…, a comedy about a vocal coach, Carol (Bell), failing to find a place in the male dominated voice-over industry. Bell smartly mixes humor with the realities of attempting to break the glass ceiling, elevating the film from lighthearted comedy to sharp societal commentary.

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9. Gravity

Gravity, like other films on this list, is about survival. Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side) plays a medical engineer on her first trip to space when a catastrophe occurs. Enough cannot be said about the way this film looks. The computer generated visual effects are stunning and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s (The Tree of Life) long takes with precise direction from Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men) make the Gravity a gripping thrill ride in space.

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8. 12 Years a Slave

It would be easy to look at the story of 12 Years a Slave and think that it is Oscar bait. A film based on a true story about a free man kidnapped from the North and sold into slavery in the South? The Academy should love that. But the movie is directed by Steve McQueen (Hunger, Shame) and he has no interest in the sentimental. The films depicts the horrific realities of life as a slave. What is most frightening is how common these acts were. Each brutality is accepted as a part of the natural order. The film’s traumatic imagery ensures that this period of US history and the film itself will not be forgotten.

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7. Her

Set in a slightly futuristic Los Angeles, Her follows Joaquin Phoenix (The Master) playing Theodore Twombly, a man who writes heartfelt letters on behalf of strangers unable to do so. He is separated and lonely until he falls in love with an artificial intelligence named Samantha played by Scarlett Johansson (The Avengers). Director Spike Jonze (Adaptation) uses Samantha’s lack of a body to emphasize the emotional connection craved by Theodore. He lives in a crowded city but feels isolated from the people around him. The film shows each phase of their relationship and how Theodore changes as it progresses. Her succeeds by making a romance with a disembodied voice feel remarkably human.

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6. The Hunt

The Hunt is probably the most aggravating film of the year. In a good way. Mads Mikkelsen (Casino Royale) plays a kind, well-liked preschool teacher falsely accused of a terrible crime. The film follows him as he is ostracized out of every part of his small town. Because of the nature of the accusation his former friends and colleagues immediately abandon him. Innocent until proven guilty? Not for this crime. His descent continues as the film shows just how easily even the strongest relationships can shatter when someone cries wolf.

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5. The Place Beyond the Pines

The Place Beyond the Pines is really a triptych: three stories linked by one key event. The first story is about a stunt motorcyclist turned bank robber played by Ryan Gosling (Drive). The second is about the cop that tries to catch him played by Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook) and the third is about the sons of the two. Directed by Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine), the film is at its best during small moments. The character interactions have a raw intensity that make them feel honest and real. The film shows that each action has its consequences and how each generation deals with the aftermath of the pervious.

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4. The Past

The Past is a companion piece to Asghar Farhadi’s previous Oscar-winning film A Separation. Both films are about a divorce, but The Past is about characters dealing with the ramifications of their previous actions. It is a film that presents a relatively simple situation, a long separated couple finally filing the paperwork for divorce so the woman can marry her new boyfriend, and peels back layer after layer revealing the complicated, morally ambiguous chaos underneath. Farhadi manages to do this without creating “good” or “bad” characters. Everyone acts in a realistic, understandable way but also commit tragic mistakes that make the situation even thornier and his even-handed direction causes your sympathies to shift with each new revelation.

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3. All is Lost

All is Lost is a demonstration of how great acting can carry a film. Robert Redford (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men) plays a nameless man on a solo voyage through the Indian Ocean whose boat springs a leak. His performance, under the direction of J.C. Chandor (Margin Call), expresses feeling through subtle actions. A grimace or sigh conveys the struggles of the protagonist more than most voiceovers in other films. Despite containing no dialogue and only a few spoken words, it commands attention. The continued determination and resourcefulness of an elderly, but experienced sailor in the face of possible death make the film a tense and affecting adventure.

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2. Inside Llewyn Davis

With Inside Llewyn Davis, the Coen brothers (No Country for Old Men, True Grit) have made yet another excellent film containing their signature dark humor and sardonic wit. Starring Oscar Isaac (Drive), the film has something unusual for the Coens: sincerity. The film is about a folk singer, Llewyn Davis, who wanders from gig to gig trying to find a record deal. He is mean to most of his friends and dismissive of other singers as sell-outs, but his quest for artistic purity gives the film an earnestness that elevates it above most of the Coen brothers’ works. Despite him being more or less detestable, the film creates empathy for the character because he is unwilling to compromise his beliefs even if that means he is never successful.

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1. Before Midnight

The experience of watching Before Midnight is like reconnecting with two friends you have known for decades. Friends that will squabble, joke, and ramble about anything and everything. But that’s the best part: listening to them talk. Set 9 years after Before Sunset and 18 years after Before Sunrise, the Before series continues its tradition of charmingly garrulous dialogue, yet it surpasses its—already excellent—predecessors by confronting the struggles of long term relationships. The warmth of a perfect connection from the previous films is still present but so are the cracks of reality that affect even the best relationships. This allows the film to continue to feel new and fresh while retaining the affection built up in earlier installments. The series, like love at its best, has grown stronger over time. Before Sunrise is great, Before Sunset is even better, and Before Midnight is incredible. It is, in my opinion, the best example of a sequel done right and easily the best film of the year.

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Honorable Mentions: Enough Said, Nebraska, Captain Phillips, The Wolf of Wall Street.