Joel Edgerton’s (Warrior, Exodus: Gods and Kings) The Gift is easily the surprise hit of the summer. Creepy and suspenseful, this movie is a clinic on developing characters and entrenching viewers fully into the storyline. I saw the film in a probably 75% full theater, and you could hear a pin drop during the film’s quieter moments. Everyone was all-in on the story, and nobody seemed to know where it was headed because of the oohs and aahs at each new twist. Based on its 93% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I did not doubt this movie would be good. However, I did not watch a preview beforehand (purposefully), nor did I know anything about the film other than when somebody said the night before my viewing that they heard it had a crazy twist. Therefore, before I get into my review, I would suggest stopping reading and avoiding as much reading or trailer-watching as possible about the film. Long story short, see the movie.
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Category Archives: Genre
Lions for Lambs (2007)
I think when I first saw the trailers for director Robert Redford’s (Quiz Show, A River Runs Through It) Lions for Lambs, I thought it was a movie I had to see. The previews made the film look exciting, and it was loaded with A-list actors. Well, when the commercials for the movie became 15-second clips after the first week and the movie scored a whopping 27% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, the need to see it quickly waned. The movie earned just $15 million at the box office. Box office earnings don’t necessarily represent the quality of a film, but this movie hoped to garner a lot of money. While the production costs of this movie were low (I’ll explain below), stars like Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise commanded high-dollar figures for their appearances. This wasn’t a little indie movie. MGM produced this movie. On top of a film that was received so poorly by critics was a plot (stories about the war in the Middle East, especially political-driven ones) that had consistently kept moviegoers away back in the early 2000s. Lions for Lambs was a decent movie, but certainly not a great one. And it was by no means as exciting and as drama-filled as the trailers portrayed it to be. Lions for Lambs is a dialogue-driven movie and one that succeeds because it was chalked full of such great actors.
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North Face (Nordwand) (2010)
If I could describe the Germany-released movie North Face in just a single word, it would be the word horrific. Based upon the true story about a competition to climb the most dangerous rock face of the Swiss Alps, the subtitled movie gets better and better with each passing frame. For those moviegoers who aren’t into subtitled movies, I can sympathize. I tend to groan when I know I’m about to embark on one of those too. Subtitled movies are ones that you need to prepare for, and, unfortunately, when a subtitled movie is bad, it almost becomes twice as dreadful to trudge through. But, at the same time, I have seen some fantastic foreign-language movies, and North Face ranks right up there with them. And, as with any good subtitled movie, when you are truly engaged, you don’t even notice you are reading the words anymore. I’m not sure how I came across this movie, other than the fact that I love a good adventure movie (I am one of those people that tends to separate the adventure genre from the action genre).
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The Good Lie (2014)
“Inspired by true events” versus “this is a true story” are two very different things. The first could mean anything. It’s harder to get upset when you find out fact and fiction don’t always meet eye to eye. However, when told that what you are about to see is a true story only to find out later that facts (both minor and major) have changed along the way, you have the right to get a bit more upset. Actual events inspire The Good Lie. And while they bring light to a critical issue, the character story was primarily fictional, as far as I can tell. Now, this brings up an interesting conversation. Would you rather see a strictly factual movie that doesn’t tell the most exciting story or one based on an actual situation but has, for the most part, specific characters and specific conditions that are more fictionalized? I’m careful with what to write here, not because I’m worried that I’ll give away any spoilers, but because I don’t want to knock a movie that I thought was good. And I guess heartwarming might not even be the best choice of words here because the main characters in this movie went through horrific situations throughout their lives. But if the story was all doom and gloom, would it attract the audience a story like The Good Lie hopes to attract? You want to shed light on specific issues while also offering hope. That is what this movie does. Nonetheless, I think the topic is open for debate because I believe a tiny percentage of the stories related to the brutal 1983 Civil War between Northern and Southern Sudan ended as positively as the story told in The Good Lie.
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Southpaw (2015)
History probably will not remember this because he missed earning an Academy Award nomination for the first performance and may again miss out on this one. Still, the physical transformation from Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance as sickly, twisted reporter Lou Bloom in 2014’s fantastically crafted Nightcrawler to the lean, mean, fighting machine Billy Hope in 2015’s Southpaw is remarkable. As people watch either or both of these movies in the future, I think they will fail to remember that he filmed these two movies back to back. But aside from how he changed the physical look of his body for each of these roles, his acting performance in each of these films might be the two best in a career that continues to hit all the right buttons, save for The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. I’ll first see Southpaw that the less you know in, the better off I think you will be. So if you haven’t seen it, I will list my overall score of the film here, and I would suggest not reading any more until after you’ve seen the movie or if the surprise factor isn’t something you are interested in. I will alert you when I add spoilers to this review. I would give Southpaw an overall score of 87.5/100.
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