As I watched the beginning of Chinonye Chukwu’s (Alaskaland, Clemency) true story Till, my mind kept returning to two different thoughts. The first was the film’s timeframe, thinking about my grandparents and realizing that the film’s lead character, Mamie Till-Mobley (The Harder They Fall, The Devil to Pay), was about the same age as my grandparents when the film took place (mostly) in 1955. The second was how I thought Till felt like a stage play, as much as it did a feature-length movie. I pondered how a live experience might feel. Sadly and shamefully, I only became aware of Emmett Till’s story for the first time when I saw the trailer. While I knew there were parts that I knew would be brutal, it was it wasn’t until we got to the film’s second act that I truly began to understand the story’s magnitude and felt that this story would be nearly impossible to pull off as a stage performance because of how draining it might be for the actors to go through the experience repeatedly, as well as how a live performance might devastate unprepared attendees.
Category Archives: Haley Bennett
Thank You For Your Service (2017)
Miles Teller (Whiplash, Bleed for This) is an actor I increasingly like with each passing role. Since arriving on the scene in 2010 with memorable roles in Rabbit Hole and the well-made remake of Footloose, Teller has starred in the forgettable 21 and Over, Two Night Stand, and That Awkward Moment. Furthermore, his time has been consumed with the Veronica Roth Divergent / Insurgent / Allegiant franchise. This series fell way short of the fantastic Hunger Games franchise and the lesser The Maze Runner series. Now, I’m not going to knock a guy for picking movies that are going to bring him a hefty paycheck, especially if there’s part of me that believes he’s doing it so that he can take less money in independent movies that can showcase his skill, evoke emotion, and that I can enjoy.
The Girl on the Train (2016)
The Girl on the Train will often be confused with and frequently compared to Gone Girl, 2014’s box office success that also registered well with the critics. Both were highly anticipated adaptations of successful novels by two more popular present-day writers. Both movies revolve around complex female characters who may not be mentally stable. It’s easy to see how some people might say that The Girl on the Train could be considered a rip-off of Gone Girl, but it’s not. The book had already been written, and the movie had already been in the works. The movies are actually quite different from one another. And, with that said, it’s easy for me to see how The Girl on the Train might achieve the same financial success, but how its 43% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes is slightly less than half that of Gone Girl‘s 88%. In addition, the movie was far less captivating and much less memorable. Nonetheless, The Girl on the Train is an okay movie. It is much better than the book. And while it doesn’t offer the same intriguing storyline as Gone Girl, it’s worth checking out.
The Magnificent Seven (2016)
I’m starting to think Hollywood is either entirely out of original ideas or knows they are guaranteed a minimum of a hundred million dollars at the box office if it remakes a movie and has a starting cast of Hollywood A-listers. There is no reason why The Magnificent Seven needed a remake. I have not seen the first one, but I imagine it was probably a pretty good movie when it was made…56 years ago. Not many great Westerns have been produced in this century; while they were good, most have been remakes (3:10 to Yuma, True Grit). There have been others. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and The Homesman come to mind. Still, there are few in the genre. I wouldn’t necessarily call The Magnificent Seven a poor movie. I definitely would call it an unneeded one. Unless you love westerns, there’s no need to see this movie. The Magnificent Seven is a movie you don’t need to see on the big screen.