Geek For E!

Geek For E!

Creators of the TwitView! Reviews in 140 characters or less.

TwitView: Unfriended

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Found-footage goes social media, with remarkably spooky results.  Though there’s really no build-up of the Big Haunting Bad beyond “she’s dead”, Unfriended lets you feed your voyeuristic tendencies and delivers genuine chills. Grade: B+

Poor Laura. You go to one backwoods kegger and really get sheisse-faced (almost literally in this case), and some douchecanoe posts your horrible night on YouTube.  What’s a girl to do?  Well, Laura killed herself.  And a year later, a group of her friends — who seem to be hopelessly addicted to Skype — find there’s an outsider in their group call.  An outsider with the subscriber info Laura used to use.  As the night progresses, these six friends go from annoyed to horrified…to dead.  Let’s just say I’ll never again play “Never Have I Ever” without getting a slight chill.

Yeah, this is another “found footage” genre flick.  But as it’s about modern high schoolers — and how technology can get hacked by The Beyond — it works here.  Excellent use of all the social media things; from Skype to Facebook, YouTube to Spotify, they’re used just like you’d use ’em at home.  Director Levan Gabriadze gets a special high-five for his use of Spotify as voice/playlist-from-beyond. Nice touch.  There’s also a nice touch to the film editing, with it’s quick-cuts and constant rapid flashes from one Skype account to another, from Skype to YouTube to Spotify to Facebook and it’s rapidly growing comment feeds.

Two things thew me about this film.  The first?  Laura herself.  Earlier press info had said that Laura was “a vicious bully” before her suicide.  But there’s nothing about the kind of person Laura was before the video, or after.  She’s simply someone these kids knew and were friends with, who had a horrible video posted about her when she was at her weakest.  Perhaps some editing cut the negative view of the victim in order to make the kids that bite it seem more deserving of their fate?  Not sure, but I kept waiting to see more about who Laura was…to no avail. [Note: I notice all mention of Laura being a bully before her shaming has been cut from IMDb.  So perhaps this was indeed a change of direction for the storyline.]

The second?  The complete lack of tech savvy behavior on the part of these Generation Z kids.  They click open JPG images sent from unknown sources, don’t know how to clear Skype, and install strange downloads.  Heck, according to the backstory Laura had been dead for a year, and yet nobody had memorialized her Facebook page?  That helps the story along, but didn’t help me get lost in the moment.  Instead, I kept thinking “why didn’t anyone do [X]?”  And nobody ever thought of ditching their laptops and running over to [X friend who just drew the death short straw] rather than simply watching said friend die on camera?  Of course, I could say the same thing about stupid teens in 80s horror flicks — going outside in the dark when you know there’s a killer?  In your underwear? — so perhaps I’m just being curmudgeonly.  Get off my lawn!

Kudos to screenwriter Nelson Greaves (Sleepy Hollow) for being able to combine cyberbullying, teen suicide and straight-up horror in such an effective, creepy way.  But what really resonated with me was the way Unfriended played with who the Big Bad really was.  Laura might possibly have been a Queen Bee when she was alive (and is definitely a force to be reckoned with after death), but as the story unfolds her former friends end up thoughtlessly turning on each other as things get progressively worse.  Who is the real evil entity?  Perhaps not Laura…

TwitView: Woman in Gold

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No April Fool’s Day joke; Reynolds and Mirren are amazing in this based-on-truth tale about a woman who wins a court case.  Against Austria.  To reclaim her family’s artwork that had been stolen by Nazis.  A riveting film. Grade: A-

Okay fine.  If someone had told me that Ryan Reynolds and Helen Mirren would be co-starring together?  I’d have  said in what universe?  Love some VanCityReynolds, but he’s been on a blockbuster binge of late, whereas Dame Helen knocks drama out of the park.  (Though she literally killed with her comedic timing in the Red series too.)

However, Woman in Gold shows that two great but opposite tastes can definitely work beautifully together.  Reynolds plays against type as Randol Schoenberg, a nebbish of an attorney, who gets roped into helping a friend of his moms (that’d be Mirren, as Maria Altmann) with some paperwork.  Said paperwork is actually a series of letters from Maria’s sister, which point to the possibility that the Austrian government has their family’s artwork thanks to Nazi dirty work.  As Schoenberg digs deeper, it becomes obvious to the pair that a cover-up was orchestrated so Austria could keep the paintings, which included Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, which was for a time renamed Woman in Gold, to hide the lineage of the portrait.  And so begins a struggle that works its way up to the United States Supreme Court — and the courts of Austria — before Altmann and her paintings are finally reunited.  (What?  The real story happened in the 90s, and the theft in the 40s.  Long past spoilers y’all.)

Reynolds does a brilliant job of balancing cutesy nebbish behaviors and full-on dramatic performance.  This story of Nazi theft, Holocaust survivors and bureaucratic hoop-jumping would be absolutely leaden if it wasn’t for the occasional bits of daily-life humor screenwriter Alexi Kaye Campbell slips in.  While everyone knows Mirren could make a list of Triscuits ingredients sound like fine art, it’s Reynolds’ way with comedic timing that’s not only elevates his character, but raises his game so he’s toe-to-toe with the Queen herself.

Tatiana Maslany as WWII-age Altmann shows amazing range…to anyone who hasn’t already loved her in Orphan Black. Fans of hers will nevertheless be blown away by her performance, which could have been heavy-handed but comes off as honest and heartbreakingly poignant.  Antje Traue as Adele, Altmann’s loving and free-spirited aunt, also delivers an excellent performance.

But with all of the fine work done by the actors, it was the story itself that had me on the edge of my seat.  Yes, the ending is a fait accompli.  Yet it’s the getting there that drew me in.  One quibble though; Schoenberg’s wife Pam (Katie Holmes) feels like an afterthought, someone shoehorned in to show that the man has A Life that is pulling at him while his quest for justice goes on.

Still, regardless of that hiccup, this is one Woman worth taking a look at.

Movie Review: The Lazarus Effect

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TwitView: Fantastic setup, believable characters, and genuine chills all get hobbled by a lack of a satisfying ending and a screenplay that’s all over the place.  It’s as if the director was running out of film and said “yeah, one last gotcha scene and it’s a wrap.”  C-

It’s no secret that I’m a horror movie junkie.  So when The Lazarus Effect hit the screening rounds, I jumped at it.  And enjoyed a good part of it…until it got lost in it’s own storyline and cheaped out by pulling the usual “gotcha!” ending that has been beaten to death popular since the 90s.  Pity, as there’s some genuinely unique and well executed moments in this film.

This film got my interest with a killer trailer, and the promise of more from the folks that brought us Insidious, The Purge, and Paranormal Activity.  And by “folks”, I mean the producer.  Director David Gelb has done good documentary work (protip: catch the wonderful Jiro Dreams of Sushi on Netflix.  You’re welcome.)  However, The Lazarus Effect is his first dramatic effort, and it’s a mess, jumping from scene to scene, subplot to subplot.  I’m betting Gelb would have been okay, if he’d had a strong screenplay to rely on, but Luke Dawson and Jeremy Slater are newbies as well, which makes for a hodgepodge of abrupt scene shifts, dangling subplots and unanswered questions.  Luckily they’ve got real talent in front of the screen, and that helps save this film from sinking into total dreck.

What I loved best about this film is Olivia Wilde; she looks like she’s enjoying the hell out of this film.  Her performance is top-notch, as if someone forgot to tell her than a horror film doesn’t exactly need great performances.  She delivers one though, and it elevates the film.  In fact, all the performers here do good work.  Especially Evan Peters — my favorite Quicksilver (sorry, Aaron T-J) — is a hoot as the too-smart-and-cool-for-this-room Clay, and Donald Glover as the passed-over-in-love Niko.  Glover’s comedic work is excellent, but he has strong dramatic chops too, if this is any indication.

I did love the start of this film thought.  The Lazarus Effect not only dives into the idea of bringing folks back from the dead — paging Dr. Frankenstein! — it also digs into the life of the person whose life will be upended by these experiments.  And by upended I mean she dies, is brought to life, and then gets amped by…demons?  Herself?  The serum?  There are no answers, no hints or deeper thoughts beyond “hey, lets’ use the black sclera contacts on Olivia — she’d look spooky!”  She does, no doubt.  And her terror at what she’s becoming is palpable, and a refreshing change of pace from the usual add-water-and-stir instant baddie.  But as soon as her eyes go full black, it’s all dropped by the wayside.  Forget trying to make sense out of what happened to her, it’s the Blinking Lights And Telekinesis Show y’all!

Once folks start dying, all thoughts to keeping this up to the level of films like The Purge and Paranormal Activity get thrown by the wayside.  What I would have liked to have seen was more about Zoe’s past.  Her nightmares, and the truth/history behind them.  Was there more to them than the simple fact that a child could only do so much?  Did Zoe have a hidden bit of evil in her from all those years ago?  Was she a Bad Seed that had done much to try to get over her past, or was she in the wrong place at the wrong time?  But her past is brought to viewers as a tantalizing idea of where the film will go…and then it’s used as a prop, nothing more.  Same goes for the Evil Corporate People who come in midpoint.  Who are they?  Are they up to no good?  Who cares — they’re introduced, and never heard from again.  That sound you hear is another good idea dying.  Digging into character motivation would have had me rooting for these characters to survive, but even though a few delicious tidbits of backstory are thrown to the audience — tidbits that could have been used to build deaths that really mattered — when it’s time to die these folks are nothing but telekinesis fodder.  Bye-bye…

The Lazarus Effect ticks me off more than it should, and that’s because this film showed great promise at the start.  But with a main cast of 5 the kills aren’t big enough (or gory enough; most deaths are off-screen or cut-aways) for the gore crowd, and the screenplay isn’t cerebral enough for the thinking-horror fan.  Add muddled storytelling and a feeling that this film dragged on much longer than it’s scant 83 minute run time, and The Lazarus Effect is a movie that’s big on promise and short on delivery.

Movie Review — The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge out of Water

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SpongebobTwitview: fun for kids & grownup fans of the original series.  Sometimes too silly, but it’s all in good fun. Will probably spawn a hipster drinking game. Grade: B

Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?  And how does that pineapple never suffer from decomposition?  Oh who cares — it’s SpongeBob y’all!  And he’s got all of his buddies (Patrick, Gary, Sandy, Squidward, Mr. Krabs) and even his rival Sheldon Plankton (as well as Plankton’s computer wife, Karen) are here.  It’s the usual Krabby Patty eating good times, with Plankton trying to steal the secret recipe for the Krabby Patty…until a pirate named Burger Beard (Antonio Banderas, totally game for the goofy) enters the scene and makes off with the secret recipe!  Whatever will Bikini Bottom do without Krabby Patties?  And how will our hero get the recipe back and save the day?

Well, first off: Bikini Bottom devolves into a hilarious Mad Max wasteland in the span of 5 seconds without their beloved patties.  Seeing Mr. Krabs in leather is worth the price of admission for any fan of the show.  Second: that’s cheating y’all.  But suffice it to say that the trailer gives you more than a hint.  And when things go from animated to live-action, Banderas gets to pull out all the stops, which is exactly what’s needed when he’s playing against a group of juvenile animated invertebrates.  And Sandy.  (Spoiler alert: Sandy’s transformation to live-action is kinda awesome.)

What’s good?  The fun, the obvious tongue-in-cheek that makes the TV series enjoyable for all ages, and the gorgeous live-action CGI  SpongeBob gang is perfect.

What’s meh?  Sometimes the jokes can go on a bit too long, and be a bit too silly.  Then again I’m not an 8-year-old kid who’d probably love the overly goofy.  There are a few extremely weird bits too, as if the creators were looking towards the stoned teens and undergrads who would ultimately watch this on Netflix.  Space porpoises, crazy kalidoscope Dr. Who-like time travel sequences, and a few almost sexy beach jokes feel slightly off-kilter, but perhaps that feeling of WTHuh? is what they’re going for.

So should you see it or not?  If you’ve got kids that are dying for a movie day, why not?  It’s fun and goofy, and anything aimed towards the adults will most likely sail over their heads (or can be easily blown off by us oldsters).  If you’re a fan of the series that remembers it when?  Why not?  Is it worth the 3D expense?  Well, not so much; the original series was 2D, so going that route won’t be a problem here.  But if you’ve got the clams to spare, it’ll make the action sequences a bit more eye-popping.  Now I want a Krabby Patty…

Movie Review: Mr. Turner

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TwitView: a beautiful look at a beastly man.  Pope’s cinematography is glorious, and Spall’s lived-in performance is a wonder. A-

I enjoy art, but I don’t know much about it other than what I like to look at, and what I don’t.  The art of J.M.W. Turner is alive with color, shadows and emotion.  But Turner himself was a hard man to stomach, if the film Mr. Turner is to be believed. [And it seems as though he may have been much colder and brutish than this film allows.]  For folks like me who are new to the particulars of this artist, Wikipedia sums up his massive contribution to the art world nicely:

“Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting…. He is commonly known as ‘the painter of light’ and his work is regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism.”

Unfortunately, while his work is undeniably beautiful, the life he lived was anything but.  A libertine, he cared little for rules of the day, or “proper decorum”.  And director Mike Leigh shies away from none of it, giving us a look at a man who may have been a brute, but created beauty.

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Movie Review: Wild

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Twitview: fascinating look at one woman’s fall and redemption. Witherspoon is a wonder.  B+

Fluffy foxes.  Heroin.  Toenails.  Quickies on a dumpster.  Corn mush and Snapple.  Wild is a glorious, fascinating mess of a story, detailing a woman’s quest to right her glorious, fascinating, messy life.  Taken from Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail , Wild is a look at how completely a devastating life event can destroy you, and how picking yourself back up is a matter of sheer will and determination that can give you back yourself.  A good pair of Danner hikers thrown into the mix doesn’t hurt.

Cheryl Strayed’s life began a downward spiral after her mother’s sudden death from cancer at 45 (spinal in the film, lung IRL).  Strayed began “experimenting” with heroin and schtupping every guy she came across in an attempt to ease the pain of loss, which caused the death of her marriage.  After all that loss, she tries to pick herself back up by trying to become the woman her mother believed her to be…and she begins getting herself back on that track by hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.  As someone who’s never, ever hiked before.  Ever.  Spoiler alert: she succeeds.

Wild’s crazy blend of voice-over inner monologue, classic rock and timeline slight-of-hand works perfectly, and gets viewers into the heart of Strayed’s torment and her redemption.  Vallée uses the same seamless editing style that made Dallas Buyers Club so gripping, and Wild is just as captivating.  Though this is no 127 Hours, it’s Strayed’s story, and while there are others on-screen, they’re definitely the backing band here.  That said, performances by Laura Dern (as momma Bobbi), Newsroom’s Thomas Sadoski (as ex-hubby Paul) and Gaby Hoffmann (as BFF Aimee) stand out.  Witherspoon has already been tapped for a Golden Globe, and I’m sure an Oscar nod will be in her future.

But the real tip-of-the-hat goes to Nick Hornsby, who took Strayed’s memoir and turned it into a story that translates perfectly onscreen.  Shocked he wasn’t tapped for a Best Screenplay ‘Globe.  Because even with the tiny hiccups here and there, gotta say I was riveted for 99.9% of the film.  There were a few spots where the stream-of-consciousness caused a “wait — what” moment (was she pregnant at her low point?  What happened?) But otherwise Wild is less a story than it is a look inside the mind of a woman trying to pull herself out of the pit, and what happened in her life that put her there.  And though I’m too much of a wimp to hike the PCT, this film is a journey I’d take again.

Movie Review – The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1

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TwitView: Fans will rejoice!  Casual viewers may find the editing patchy.  Still, a worthy entry in an excellent series.  B+

Seems like forever since we’ve seen Katniss, Peeta, Gayle and the gang fight against the man President Snow in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.  Heck, I’ve even watched Catching Fire on Netflix a time or two already.  But it’s only been a year.  Time flies, don’t it?  But it seems like the filmmakers have taken their time and crafted a compelling film with Mockingjay Part 1.  Screenwriters Peter Craig and Danny Strong (yes, Buffy‘s Jonathan) do an excellent job breaking the novel in two, ending Part 1 with a nice cliffhanger of sorts; the Districts readying for civil war (not a spoiler if you’ve been paying any kind of attention).

If you’ve forgotten, when last we left Katniss, she was being air-lifted out of her second Hunger Games, the 75th Quarter Quell.  Rebellion is on the horizon for the Districts, and megalomaniacal President Coin (Donald Sutherland, obviously enjoying his eeeee-vil) bent on her destruction.  In Mockingjay Part 1, she wakes up in District 13, the District that was supposedly burned to the ground.  But they’ve been waiting for a leader to rise, and Katniss looks like their dream come true.  ¡Viva la Revolución!  But where’s Peeta…?

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Movie Review: Whiplash

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Twitview: A fever dream of a film that sucks you into the lives of those that would do anything for their art.  Riveting performances by Simmons and Teller. A-

Who hasn’t taken some sort of music class?  Whether you shook a tambourine in kindergarten, or headed out for piano classes every Saturday for 13 years (just me?), we all have that moment where we’ve tried to coax beauty out of an instrument.  Most of us walk away, choosing other paths, but those that decide to stick with it and strive for greatness?  Gotta give ‘em credit; talent and dedication is tough to come by.  And it’s tough to live with, if Whiplash is any indication.  Director Damien Chazelle takes his Sundance-award winning short film to full-length and it’s a helluva watch.

Young Andrew (Miles Teller) is a first year drummer at a prestigious NYC conservatory, when he gets tapped for a position in “studio band” in the school. (Think Glee, but with more instruments and less buffoonery.)  But conductor/professor Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) isn’t anywhere near the touchy-feely type.  Unless your idea of touchy-feely is a teacher that wings chairs at your head and hurls emotional abuse that would make Joan Crawford blush.  Soon, Andrew must ask himself, is all of the blood, sweat and tears worth it?  Are moments of transcendental bliss on the part of your listeners worth your pain as a musician?  Or is he too far gone to decide?

Teller and Simmons are outstanding.  Their performances are as real as you can get onscreen, and are sure to make many sit up and take notice come awards season.  In fact, Whiplash has already raked in a few top kudos, including the coveted Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.  Chazelle — whose own experience as a student drummer helped shape this story — has a deft touch with the material, knowing when to pull back and when to zoom in.  At first, “Studio Band” seems like a group of the best, flying high.  Closer in, and you see the cracks in the façade, the fear in the eyes of the students.  There’s also the determination, bordering on obsession, as each instrumentalist strives to be the best, and to win Fletcher’s elusive approval.  Chazelle shapes this film with a keen eye, and the result is a film that you can’t tear your eyes away from, even when the emotions are so raw you’d really like a break.  As with Fletcher, there’s no quarter given.

Whiplash is a drama, but there are times when it feels like it’d find a home in the emotional horror genre.  Musicians play until their hands bleed, then they plunge into bowls of ice, turning the clear water deep red.  They practice over and over and over for hours, sweat dripping and pain evident.  Teller’s Andrew walks a fine line between insanity and the drive to achieve, and he’s brilliant.  “Star making turn” has been bandied about, and I agree; this will be the film that fans will point to as the film where Miles Teller showed the world what he’s got.  And Simmons, as the calculating Fletcher, is Machiavellian in his drive to “create” the perfect musician.  Chazelle has said that “…I wanted to make a movie about music that felt like a war movie, or a gangster movie — where instruments replaced weapons…”, and scenes where musicians are performing elicit those same painful, heart-rending emotions.

My only problem with Whiplash is that it focuses so deeply on the Andrew/Fletcher dynamic that all secondary characters fall by the wayside.  Andrew’s father, played by Paul Reiser, is a guy that comes by to give Andrew a hug or some popcorn.  And a dinner scene with Andrew, dad and a handful of other people is a real WTF moment, as there’s no exposition to link these new characters with the ones we know.  IMDb lists ‘em as Aunt Emma and Uncle Frank, and I’d assumed they were family or friends of some sort, but they’re dropped in, and then never heard from again.  Andrew’s love interest Nicole (Melissa Benoist, Glee) fares better, but is little more than a side note to the main melody.  At least Nicole’s lack of presence is justified in the storyline, but the family dinner?  A puzzler that only seems to serve as a bit to show how out of touch Andrew is with The Real World.  Something viewers could have picked up on easily with a sentence or two from Andrew any other moment in the film.

Whiplash is the kind of Deep Thoughts film that will have you scratching your head and wanting to talk about motives, drives and the quest for success long after the credits roll.  Is Andrew using his drumming to escape into a world of music, or to avoid the world altogether?  Does Fletcher have any right to push his students to such extremes; can any good come of such violent behaviour?  As for me, I’d love to discuss this film with a few musicians I know, and hear what they have to say.  And to find out if their talents are thanks to someone else pushing them harder than anyone had a right to.  All I know right now is that the next time I put on some jazz, I’ll be listening with a different ear.