Meticulously crafted and tenderly executed, Baltasar Kormákur’s (Everest, 2 Guns) Adrift is a journey not to be best on the largest screen you can find at your nearby cinemas. Being lost in the sea is one of my favorite movie subgenres. This movie stands on its own against such classics as The Perfect Storm, Dead Calm, Life of Pi, Lifeboat, All is Lost, The Deep, and even Academy Award-nominated pictures like Cast Away and Life of Pi in the sense that it is based on a true story and that the true story is real in the sense that we know what happened because, spoiler, the survivor lives to tell the story. While such stories as Titanic, The Perfect Storm, Open Water, and The Heart of the Sea are based on true stories and are fantastic movies, there is so much fiction added to these stories because we don’t have full accounts of what did happen because there either wasn’t someone left at the end to give the proper details or there were so many fictional elements added to the anecdotes that the plot from which the movie was based on has been entirely changed. That is not the case with Adrift, which makes this movie great. It isn’t “based on” or “inspired by” a true story. It is a true story; ultimately, that’s what we want.
Category Archives: Romance
On Chesil Beach (2018)
Based on Ian McEwan’s (Atonement) novella by the same name, director Dominic Cooke proves that just because you have flint and tinder doesn’t always mean that you can make fire with his memorable and poignant, yet sometimes underwhelming and often slow On Chesil Beach. Not only did Cooke have McEwan’s novel to work with, but the author wrote the screenplay himself. Now, I’m not a huge fan of comparing the book to the movie in my reviews (most of the time, as in the case of this one, it’s because I haven’t read the book), but I have read a couple of reviews that say that the movie did not do the book justice, that the final scenes of the film weren’t even in the book, and that even what McEwan’s main novel points were changed or not flushed out. But since I liked the movie, as did most critics and other moviegoers (68% and 94%, respectively, on Rotten Tomatoes), I’m willing to forget the omissions mentioned explicitly in the unfavorable reviews on Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper’s websites. Nevertheless, I felt a relatable component of this 1962 English set movie to 2018. The relatable component could be applicable in many specific situations in physically romantic relationships between two people.
Disobedience (2017)
Soft, subtle, disciplined, loving, sad, purposeful, and real. Sebastián Lelio’s (A Fantastic Woman, Gloria) Disobedience is all these things and more. But as well as it does most of these movies, there are a couple of things that it just doesn’t hit on. I’ll have a spoilers section for this film later in this review. First, I will say that the film is very well made, but it doesn’t leave me feeling very emotional when it is over. At its base is this life story, but Lelio fails to draw us into it soon enough, and then when he does, it feels very uneven and leaves you uncertain of each of its lead characters’ decisions. Ultimately, it becomes a movie that lacks the poignancy it set out to achieve. However, it does dig deep into the important topic of same-sex attraction and same-sex relationships. It’s so unfortunate that, as a society, we have not fully embraced same-sex relationships yet.
Call Me By Your Name (2017)
As the release of 2017 movies slowly (and mercifully) comes to an end, each review provides an opportunity to reflect deeper and deeper on the year that was. I’ve mentioned a few times in recent reviews that 2017 has, by far, been the worst year for movies since the inception of this blog back in 2010. Some movies may finish at the end of my year Top 5, but they wouldn’t even come close to finishing in my Top 10 in any other year. Unfortunately, for this review, Luca Guadagnino’s (A Bigger Splash, I Am Love) Call Me By Your Name did not benefit from a weak 2017. This movie has done very well with the critics and likely will earn multiple Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Actor (Timothée Chalamet – Lady Bird, Interstellar), Best Adapted Screenplay, as well as potential nominations for Best Supporting Actor (Armie Hammer – Nocturnal Animals, The Birth of a Nation) and Michael Stuhlbarg (The Shape of Water, Arrival), Best Original Song, and others, it still didn’t captivate me in the way I expected it to. For those expecting this to be the most excellent movie about gay love since Brokeback Mountain, you may be disappointed. Brokeback Mountain is an A+ movie. Guadagnino’s (A Bigger Splash, I Am Love) Call Me By Your Name is a B at best.
The Big Sick (2017)
I was all set to review this movie and talk about its major flaws before I did one thing first. I looked at other reviews and learned this film is based on a true story. So rather than belabor the point I wanted to make, I’ll reference it later in the review and discuss its merits and minor flaws. Before I begin, I’ll mention that I didn’t think Michael Showalter’s (Hello, My Name is Doris) The Big Sick was marketed well when released over the summer. First of all, the movie’s title, its poster, its actors, and even its plot could have made more sense. Through in that Judd Apatow’s name was attached to it, and you had the thought that this was a raunchy comedy, much in the mold of Trainwreck, This Is 40, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and a host of other movies he didn’t even direct but was affiliated with as a producer or screenwriter. The Big Sick felt out of place from the start. It took word of mouth for this movie to get noticed and appreciated by audiences (despite its 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes).