2001: A Space Odyssey, Moon, Prometheus, The Martian, Interstellar, Life, First Man, Passengers, Solaris, Alien, Apollo 13, Gravity, it is not. Claire Denis (Chocolat, Friday Night) ambitiously ventured into outer space territory, a territory she had previously not explored, and found herself with a movie that was hard to appreciate, very difficult to enjoy, and left you with a million burning questions, most of which you would never care if they were ever answered or not. I give Denis credit for ambition, just as I gave Alex Garland credit for in Annihilation, a movie that if you enjoy, you might also enjoy High Life. But much like that movie, its plausibility was tossed out the window from the start, and its uneven semblance left you looking at your watch more than it did trying to find answers.
Category Archives: Prison
The Mustang (2019)
Roman Coleman, the career-defining role that journeyman Matthias Schoenaerts (Rust and Bone, The Drop) has been waiting for, does not disappoint. Finally, the 42-year-old actor you’ve seen in the background here and there and everywhere gets his opportunity to truly lead a movie. As the hardened felon-turned-horse trainer proves, anything can happen to anyone, given the right circumstances. The Mustang is a brilliantly directed movie by first-time director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre. Roman seems to desire to serve his time quickly and with as little human interaction as possible. He is nearly unrecognizable with his shaved head, as well as chiseled, tattooed body. But his problem with the latter leads to a longer than expected stay, and his explosive anger to go with that machine of a body suggests that he might not be going anywhere anytime soon.
Papillon (2018)
Had I have known what the 1973 original had truly been about, I don’t think there is any way I would have gone my entire adult life without seeing Franklin J. Schaffner’s cult classic Papillon. With that information stated, I am actually glad I never saw the original before watching Michael Noer’s (Nordvest (Northwest)) remake of the film of the same title. I went into the film fresh, with no expectations. Nor did I know a single thing about the story other than it was a prison movie. But after watching just 30 seconds of the trailer and understanding my own self that prison backdrops are often the set of some of my favorite movies, I knew I would see the film and that I would see it in the theatres. The only problem was that the critics and the lack of moviegoers were shortening my timetable. While this movie has a 76% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it has only a 54% critic rating, and its gross after two weeks is less than $2 million. Long story short, when I went to look at the possible times and theatres for when and where I could see this movie, my choices were few and far between. If I had waited even a week longer, I’m not sure that this movie would have still been in the theatres. And I have no idea why. This movie was absolutely riveting and had me engaged throughout its 133-minute runtime.
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The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Remember, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.
Wrongly accused of murdering his wife and her lover, Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins – Jacobs Ladder, Mystic River), a young, successful vice president of a major bank, is sentenced to serve back to back life sentences in Shawshank State Penitentiary never gets too down in his circumstances, even though he will spend out his days behind bars. In contrast, his wife’s killer roams the streets free. The legendary fiction horror writer Steven King (The Shining, The Mist) introduced himself to a new kind of audience with this quiet and underrated (at its release) The Shawshank Redemption, a film that is nothing like Pet Semetary, IT, Cujo, Misery, Needful Things, Christine, Thinner, Carrie, Firestarter, Children of the Corn or a host of his other adapted horror novels adapted for film. The Shawshank Redemption is the complete opposite of a horror film. It is the crowning achievement of director Frank Darabont’s (The Green Mile, The Mist) career, a movie that has been the highest-rated movie on the International Movie Database (IMDB) in the history of its website. Continue reading The Shawshank Redemption (1994)