I wish Jason Patric (Downloading Nancy, Sleepers) would have landed a leading role on a gritty premium cable detective show (think of a darker True Detective that spanned multiple seasons with the same cast). His two best roles are that of an undercover narcotics officer willing to bend the law for the greater good. The first is the underrated Narc, a 2002 film that paired him opposite Ray Liotta. Eleven years earlier, Lili Fini Zanuck’s Rush further defined him as one of the most talented up-and-coming actors, following leading roles in movies like The Lost Boys, The Beast, and After Dark, My Sweet.
Category Archives: Jennifer Jason Leigh
The Jacket (2005)
There is something inherently unique about John Maybury’s (Man to Man, The Edge of Love) that has me wanting to watch it every few years to see if I can pick up something more with it. I’m not sure I’ll ever truly have it figured out, and I’m wondering if it’s a movie meant to be figured out completely. I think Maybury wants you to draw your own conclusions about his film. Sometimes I love that. Sometimes it drives me mad. With The Jacket, I find it riveting because this is a small-budget movie with some big ideas and aspirations. While not a hit with audiences ($6.3 million) or critics (44% on Rotten Tomatoes), The Jacket is one of those movies I refer to as a hidden gem. You might not even know about it unless someone suggests it. This is me suggesting it.
Annihilation (2018)
It took me two watches, some 12 months apart from one another, for me to be able to say emphatically that Alex Garland’s (Ex Machina) Annihilation isn’t a great movie. While I appreciate its ingenuity and ambition, the overall execution, delivery, and continuity could not be overlooked. For as much as I was in awe of Garland’s 2015 directorial debut, Ex Machina, I was even more disappointed with Annihilation, a movie for me that came and went as it felt, broke its own rules, left me bored at times, and hoping for more, while knowing it was never going quite to deliver. With a critics’ score of 88% but an audience score of just 66%, I am comfortable saying that, after watching it twice, some artistry I was missing made this movie so likable by those who review movies for a living. I couldn’t help but remove myself from critic mode and, even after taking off that hat, couldn’t get behind Annihilation to come close to recommending it.
White Boy Rick (2018)
White Boy Rick, the most hyped movie of September 2018, Yann Demange (’71), is one of the most disappointing movies of the year. The narrative could be better. The character development is almost non-existent. Matthew McConaughey (Mud, Free State of Jones) seemed as interested in attempting to earn a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination as he was trying to advance the story (I don’t blame him, as much as I do the script and the director). Newcomer Richie Merritt, who stars as the story’s lead, does his job, but the story is so askew that it leaves the audience not caring about what happens to him. The movie tries to make you feel sympathetic for its lead, but it just doesn’t work. It’s not Merritt’s fault. It wouldn’t have worked with anybody with Demange as the director. Not even the super-talented McConaughey could rescue this movie from mediocrity.
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Anomalisa (2015)
This post is a first. It is my first ever post on an animated movie. After 260+ posts, I had actually to add an animation category under my genres. I have repeatedly said that I wouldn’t review animated films or documentaries (heck, sometimes I don’t know what I can even offer when I review a horror film or a comedy). Still, Charlie Kaufman’s (Synecdoche, New York, screenwriter for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) Anomalisa is not your traditional Pixar or Dreamworks animation. And this isn’t really animation. It’s a stop-motion animation, which is entirely different? Well, it is, and it isn’t, I guess. I don’t watch the F/X show Archer or anything on Adult Swim, so I don’t have much of a comparison (if any at all), but Anomalisa was the most adult-oriented animation that I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t adult-oriented in the X-rated sense. I wouldn’t say that there was anything obscene in this movie. It’s just that the themes were very adult-oriented in nature, and you wouldn’t want to be next to a kid while watching this film. Heck, I’m not sure you’d want to be next to anyone during this film. I would not say that I didn’t like this movie. I did expect to like it much more than I did as I kept hearing great things about it. But the two prevailing thoughts that I had while seeing this film were 1) I wanted to like it more than I really did and 2) It was really uncomfortable to watch at times. It is really difficult to recommend this movie.
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