Category Archives: Mental Illness

Promising Young Woman (2020)

The astounding Gone Girl, unfortunately, it is not. The disappointing The Girl on the Train it, fortunately, is not. First-time director Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Women (intentional or not) is a film that falls somewhere in between, even if that was never an intention or a consideration by anyone else watching the film. I mention comparing the three because 2014’s nearly flawless Gone Girl was this intense, methodical movie based on a novel centered on revenge against a man she felt had wronged her. Then it felt like 2016’s The Girl on the Train was a movie that was rightfully or wrongfully being compared and expected to be as successful as Gone Girl, partially because it was also based on a very successful novel, had an A-list leading actress (Rosamund Pike, Emily Blunt) had an edgy and creepy vibe to it, and ironically had the word “Girl” in the title. Promising Young Woman has elements of both movies. It has an amped-up revenge plot similar to Gone Girl and the mystery detective aspect of The Girl on the Train. You don’t need to watch either of the movies mentioned above to see Promising Young Woman. While there are some aspects of each, this film carries its weight, though it doesn’t hurt to be in the same conversation as two well-known films in the movie community.

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The Father (2020)

Anthony Hopkins (The Remains of the Day, Amistad) gives the second-best performance of his career (The Silence of the Lambs) in a film that fails to overwhelm, like most of the other best picture nominees. Disguised by the outstanding performances of many of the other movies nominated for Oscar’s most prominent award of the night, The Father (Florian Zeller’s directorial debut) is a very well-made film that we should remember for its story, its performances, its execution, and its all too real haunting reality. I’ll concede to that if these things meet the checklist of a Best Picture-nominated movie. But there was something while watching this highly engaging film that felt like it didn’t deserve to be a movie that was one of the eight best in any year. With that said, 2020 as a whole did not generate many great films. In that regard, The Father merits its acclaim. The counter-argument is that the Academy doesn’t have to nominate up to ten films. Before 2009, only five films were able to receive a nomination. Since then, the fewest number of Best Picture nominated films for a given year has been seven (2018). 2020 would have been a year that warranted the minimum number of selections. However, the top movies, as a whole, were so poor that it would be just as challenging to distinguish five that are that much better than eight.

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American Psycho (2000)

My recent apparent 2020 trend of alternating between Christian Bale, Denzel Washington, and Russell Crowe movies continues with my review of Mary Harron 2000’s cult classic American Psycho. In his first lead role, this film introduced an experienced but still grossly undiscovered Bale (The FighterFord v Ferrari) to the screen.

American Psycho seems like a movie that most people have seen. If you haven’t seen it, you’ve at least heard of it. I’ve seen it three or four times, and each time, I think I will end up liking it more than the time before. And that’s not saying a lot because I wouldn’t say I liked it the first time I saw it and got upset with myself for watching it every four or five years. I want it to be good. It’s just not. The main reason is that it is too obscure. I’m not too fond of zany or batty. I also sometimes like everything laid out before me, so I don’t have to think. American Psycho makes you think, but you have to think too hard, and then you wonder if what you thought was correct or wasn’t anywhere close to being what Harron intended.

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Leave No Trace (2018)

When you are the director who helped the likes of Jennifer Lawrence into stardom, you’ll garner lots of attention. But that doesn’t mean you must capitalize on this and chug out movie after movie. Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone, Down to the Bone) did not do this. Winter’s Bone, which launched Lawrence into the public eye with her first of, as of 2017, four Academy Award nominations, was released in 2010, but this is Granik’s first non-documentary film since then. And, for critics, it was worth the wait. At the time of this review, her new film Leave No Trace has a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. And, just as a recap, Rotten Tomatoes is an aggregate of critics’ reviews. So, a 100% rating doesn’t mean a critic thinks it’s a four-star movie. It just means she gives it a favorable review. And I’ll be the first to say that if I was a Rotten Tomatoes critic, I’m uncertain if that aggregate rating would still be 100%. Ultimately, I do fall on the side of giving this film a favorable review, but it is far from a great movie. Based on the trailer, I thought I would love Leave No Trace. However, I found it to be more than just slow. It was boring. And I wanted to understand one of the two lead characters much more. There was a desire during the middle of the movie for me to learn more. Unfortunately, it never quite quenched that thirst.

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Beast (2017)

The best thing I can say about Michael Pearce’s Beast (in a movie that is rife with good things) is that I can’t think of a movie where an unknown director directing his first feature-length film (Pearce), an unknown lead actress, starring in her first film (Jessie Buckley) and an unknown lead actor, starring in, really his first film (Johnny Flynn – Love Is Thicker Than Water) have excelled more. The direction is purposeful, stylistic, and detailed. At the same time, the performances between the leads are combustible. The story is rich enough to carry you from the starting line to the checkered flag in a movie that ultimately failed to live up to its initial promise primarily due to errors in editing and an overall storyline that might have been a tad ambitious for this novice in their craft. It’s a difficult movie to recommend if you’re not a hardcore independent movie film buff. But, if, like me, you try to watch anything that comes close to looking like an intense, original, emotional drama, this movie will fill that need. And even if you leave feeling a little unsatisfied, you’ll leave knowing that the director and both leads left everything they had on the floor. If nothing else, it’ll encourage you to look for future films with which any of these three people might be involved.

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