After two movies, the jury is still out on Joel Edgerton as a director. After catching fire with 2015’s surprise hit The Gift, Edgerton tried his hand with material based on a true story, adapting and writing the screenplay for Garrard Conley’s novel Boy Erased. To be perfectly transparent, I had extremely high expectations for this film. This was a novel I read a couple of years ago, well before I knew that a movie based on the story was in the process. I enjoyed the book, and when I saw that the cast was to include Edgerton, Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, and Russell Crowe and that it was already being mentioned in Oscar discussions before it was released, I was more than excited. However, I knew that the topic of this film was controversial. When I read the book, I was not dissatisfied with the ending but felt rushed quite a bit. Boy Erased was one of my ten most anticipated films of the year. And like a few others in my ten most anticipated films of the year (namely First Man), it ultimately failed to impress. A film that should have been ripe with emotion left me completely unaffected.
Category Archives: Nicole Kidman
Lion (2016)
Prepare yourself. I’m unsure if I’ve had a movie theater experience with a more constant stream of tears since 1997’s Titanic. I know there have been movies that have scenes that have affected me more, and there have been home viewings where I don’t feel the same pressure to hold it together as I would in the theater. So, while I was having sort of a sentimental day before I engaged with this movie, for whatever reason, I was wiping away tears early and often in this movie. In some ways, it was eerily reminiscent of 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire. It starred Dev Patel (Chappie, HBO’s The Newsroom) and revolved around the story set, mostly in the present, with flashbacks to childhood memories in India. Much like the fantastic Slumdog Millionaire put Patel on the map for the first time, Lion will certainly launch him to leading man status for years. Though he didn’t appear on screen until the movie was about 40% over, he commanded every scene he was in from that point going forward to transform this movie from extraordinary to must-see. In a year where the top lead actors have portrayed characters riddled with guilt, doubt, regret, and self-loathing, Patel holds his own with the more accomplished Denzel Washington (Fences), Ryan Gosling (La La Land), and frontrunner Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea).
The Hours (2002)
Oh, man, what a fantastic movie is. This was my second viewing of The Hours. I first watched it in 2010 and remember being extremely surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I would not have given this movie a chance back when it came out in 2002, but my interest in films has changed dramatically since then. Now, that’s not to say I still can’t enjoy a blockbuster (I watched Captain America: Civil War earlier in the same day and loved it). Still, I am much more into the human aspect of independent dramas like The Hours than I am about action movies or comedies. This movie deals with depression, a topic that I am, unfortunately, very familiar with. It does it from three different periods with three stories that are sometimes loose (and not so loosely) during others. This movie knotted Nicole Kidman (Cold Mountain, Rabbit Hole) with, surprisingly, just her third nomination to date (as of May 2016) and her first and only win. With a prosthetic nose, she was virtually unrecognizable as Virginia Woolf. But it wasn’t her physical characteristics that stood out. It was how she immersed herself in the role of a woman who you would think had it all but was so mentally troubled that she could not find any happiness in her life. An accomplished actress, this is the performance of her career in a movie that shouldn’t be missed by anybody who views life with a cup-half-empty sort of mentality.
Secret in Their Eyes (2015)
Billy Ray’s (Breach, Shattered Glass) Secret In Their Eyes is a movie with a trailer that makes it look amazing. With an all-star cast that includes two Academy Award-winning actresses, a mystery/suspense/drama, and the murder of a teenage girl with close ties to the main character’s plot, this movie was sure to be a bona fide hit. Not so fast. As the mixed reviews started rolling in, you had to wonder what was holding this movie back from being great. There were enough negative reviews that would have saved me from seeing this movie, or at least had me wait for a home viewing if I weren’t a person obsessed with seeing as many movies as possible in the theater. It turns out I could have easily waited for or skipped it entirely. While entertaining, it’s not a movie that needs to be seen. When all is said and done, I can’t see this landing as even one of the 25 best movies I’ve seen this year. It wasn’t the most disappointing movie I saw this year because I had tempered my expectations, and it still held my interest for a brief moment. However, it was very uneven, pretty far-fetched, and didn’t have an audience for it.
The Railway Man (2014)
The biggest flop of 2014? Possibly. Jonathan Teplitzky’s (Burning Man, television’s Broadchurch) grossed under $5 million in the theaters but cost $18 million to make. This movie should have been great. But then again, so should have been Unbroken, the underwhelming Angelina Jolie vehicle that showcased the 47-day survival of two men living on a raft after their plane was shot down during World War II, only to be held in a prisoner of war camp. This movie did just fine at the box office (doubling its budget costs), but it still did not come close to expectations. The Railway Man had fewer expectations than Unbroken, but it did have a better cast and weaker competition at the time of its release. A 66% on Rotten Tomatoes isn’t bad, but usually, you want to see a slightly higher (at minimum) rating for a true story-based historical drama. I am uncertain of why I watched this film. I had convinced myself I was not going to. However, it appeared on my Showtime OnDemand list one day when I was searching for a movie to watch and decided to give it a try. I’m glad I did. It is certainly not a great movie, but it is better than expected. It is a much more complete film than Unbroken.