Confessions with Theresa – Part 2

Confessions with Theresa - Part 2

By: Theresa Dillon

“I’ve got another confession to make!” – Dave Grohl, Foo Fighters, Best of You

I, Theresa Dillon, am a 35-year-old woman who still enjoys middle grade fiction. 

I will gladly pick up the latest Brandon Mull book to read over any Oprah Book Club picks (and she has great ones). 

Why can’t I just grow up? Maybe because a part of me honestly doesn’t want to. And why should I? I already have so many responsibilities as adult, the adventures and innocent growing pains are refreshing to read – and watch.

My latest middle grade obsession is the Netflix series “The Babysitters Club.” 

I was obsessed with those books (at the deemed-appropriate age of 11). I had every single book in the series. I watched the original TV series from the 90s on the Disney Channel. I saw the “The Babysitters Club” movie the first weekend it came out and bought the soundtrack during our family trip to Best Buy (I also miss those days).

Author and producer, Ann M. Martin.

When I had to pack up my room before college, I was torn about giving all my BSC books away. But I chose to keep a few of my all-time favs for future reading and gave the rest away so another girl (or boy) could get the same satisfaction I did with every page I read.

And now those same girls and boys, can watch this latest revival of “The Babysitters Club.”

It is probably one of my favorite series of the year. Not only did Netflix stay true to the characters and story arcs of the series but they masterfully introduced today’s tech and culturally landscape and made the BSC an even stronger anthem of girl power.

As author and series producer, Ann M. Martin said in a recent People interview, “It’s incredible to be talking about the series in 2020 and I’m proud that the series reflects the different landscape, 34 years later. A lot has changed. I love that they made Dawn [Schafer’s] father gay and that they introduced a transgender babysitting charge. As someone who is gay, I know how much positive representation matters, especially to kids.”

And that’s not all, The Babysitters Club was always known to touch on tough topics such as divorce, health, death and diversity. One of the most poignant episodes features character Claudia Kishi coming to terms with her family’s history as Japanese Americans. 

I wish I had a daughter I could share this with right now. Instead, I’ve resorted to telling all my mother-daughter friends that “The Babysitters Club” is a must watch. One day, I may be lucky to share this great series. Until then, I watch it for my 11-year-old self.

Into the Dark: Good Boy Film Review

Into the Dark: Good Boy

Dir: Tyler MacIntyre

Starring: Judy Greer, McKinley Freeman, Steve Guttenberg, Ellen Wong and Chico as Reuben the Dog

I’m going to be honest; I haven’t had a real desire to watch Hulu’s Into the Dark series. Which is bizarre because I love holidays (basically the concept behind the Into the Dark series) and horror.

Then I saw the trailer for “Good Boy.” Finally, Judy Greer gets her own spotlight in what looks like a horror comedy with the most adorable dog? Grab me a glass of wine and popcorn, I’m in. 

When we first meet Maggie Glenn (Judy Greer), we learn she is struggling in the dating scene at 39 and her biological clock is loudly ticking away. Then after 12 years as a seasoned journalist, she is forced into freelance work and a part-time job at a coffee shop to make ends meet. Basically, she is stressed, anxious and struggling. Greer’s performance makes it incredibly easy as a woman to empathize with her character.

A stroke of good luck then comes Maggie’s way when she is encouraged by her boss (welcome back Steve Guttenberg) to adopt an emotional support dog. Viewers get a short, sweet scene at the adoption center and a montage of Greer becoming the ultimate dog mom to Reuben.

Then the fun starts to happen. Unbeknownst to Maggie, Reuben is more than she bargained for as he is not what he appears to be. The emotional support end of the deal takes a deadly turn as Reuben undertakes Maggie’s many anxieties, such as dating douche-bags and dealing with an unfair land lady, by eliminating them with bloody force.

Once Maggie discovers her land lady’s body and the truth about Reuben, she does her best to keep him calm and locked up to prevent further deaths. She also begins to date a cop (McKinley Freeman) she meets while working at the coffee shop, foreshadowing that all good things may come to an end. 

Finally feeling at ease with Reuben, Maggie loses her shit when she is only paid $250 for her freelance work. She drives over to boss’ office with Reuben in tow and Greer finally saying “Good boy” when Guttenberg is taken out. 

Life starts looking good for Maggie as she is promoted to her boss’ position, she quits the coffee shop, her relationship with the cop is thriving and she undergoes IVF treatments to finally have that family she always wanted. 

But anxiety never fully leaves Maggie’s side and becomes her undoing as the California police force is hot on her trail for Reuben’s murders and an unfortunate demise pops her perfect world bubble. In the end, Reuben is back at the shelter, ready to take on emotional support elsewhere.

“Good Boy” is a fun hour and half watch. It’s by no means deep but is an enjoyable and creative story around the horrors of anxiety. There are times when the director tries to be artsy with his filming but it doesn’t quite work and feels out of place for such a simple production. 

But I what I really applaud the writers and director for is not using the “crazy woman” troupe to ultimately explain all the death. SPOILER ALERT: As cute as Reuben is, he actually is the real monster. 

If you’re looking for something a little quirky, somewhat heartwarming, and full of blood, add “Good Boy” to your streaming list.

Theresa's Rating

3.5 out of 5.00

The High Note Review

The High Note

Dir: Nisha Ganatra

Starring: Dakota Johnson, Tracee Ellis Ross, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Bill Pullman, and Ice Cube

There’s a moment in Nisha Ganatra’s new film “The High Note” when a young musician does a cover of “You Send Me”, a song made famous by the legendary Sam Cooke. It’s my favorite kind of music cover, one that isn’t the same as the original but tries to compose its own unique style. 

This might be the best way to describe “The High Note”, a sometimes sweet and many times completely charming film about chasing dreams and making beautiful music in many different ways along the way. The film is familiar, cliched at times, but its pulse accomplishes an appealing rhythm of notes that have great feel-good qualities all over them. 

Grace Davis (Tracee Ellis Ross) is a superstar, a musician with a storied career big enough to warrant the prospect of holding residence as a Las Vegas attraction. However, in the eyes of Maggie (Dakota Johnson), Grace’s overworked and underappreciated personal assistant, the songstress is an icon with many more stories to tell and songs to write. Grace, on the other hand, isn’t sure of her relevance in the music industry and her oversized ego creates concern about making a comeback. Grace’s longtime producer Jack (Ice Cube) is pushing for remix and greatest hits albums, but Maggie secretly wants to be a music producer and is hoping Grace will give her the chance to produce a new album. 

“The High Note” moves a bit awkwardly at first, the introduction of Grace and her considerable ego alongside Maggie and her somewhat starry-eyed, naïve approach to the music business takes a few scenes to find its footing. But once Tracee Ellis Ross and Dakota Johnson settle into the relationship of their characters, the chemistry between them holds the remainder of the film together, especially when predictable familiarity takes control of the journey. 

The narrative keeps everything fairly simplistic, even while it hints at some deeper conversation starters regarding issues of race and age in the music business. There is no doubt that Ms. Ross could have deftly handled some deeper subject matter explorations. Whether dealing with a boardroom full of men telling her what is best for her career or listening to a smug music producer trying to explain that her music isn’t relatable to younger generations, Ms. Ross does an exceptional job of displaying her true emotions through simple physical movements like eye glances, hand gestures, or the movement of her body. 

One of the most admirable aspects of the film is that all the actors do their singing; Tracee Ellis Ross, daughter of Diana Ross, easily steals most of these scenes with her impressive voice, while Kelvin Harrison Jr., playing a singer named David who likes performing at hipster grocery stores, has a couple of really good moments performing well-known covers, and Dakota Johnson even has a small moment to showcase her melodic abilities. 

“The High Note” is easy comfort cinema right now, a movie that succeeds primarily because of a dedicated cast doing great work with modest characters and an understanding that sometimes fun, heartwarming music moments will make up for the shortcomings of a narrative. 

Monte’s Rating

3.25 out of 5.00

Blood Quantum Review

By Emery Snyder @leeroy711

Director: Jeff Barnaby

Starring: Forrest Goodluck, Michael Greyeyes, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Kiowa Gordon, Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs & Stonehorse Lone Goeman

Shudder Original – April 23, 2020

Set on the Miꞌkmaq Red Crow Reservation in 1981, a mysterious virus is reanimating dead salmon in the communal waterways. Within the first hours of this discovery, the outbreak quickly spreads to the surrounding human population. Ravenous infected quickly and violently attack and consume anyone they can get to, rapidly spreading the infection.

A title card flashes us forward six months to the new reality. It turns out, the Indigenous Miꞌkmaq appear to be the only known immune population. They have make-shifted a camp, offering refuge for the survivors and a quick disposal for the remaining infected. But as we soon find out, not everyone is so ready to welcome in a vulnerable population of colonizers. As the community tears apart over their differences, Joseph (Goodluck) tries to keep his pregnant girlfriend and their unborn baby safe from both sides.

It’s been pontificated that Nazis and Zombies are the two groups that any filmmaker could kill with impunity. If you just want to compose a fun ninety minutes of cool death scenes, add a horde of either and no one will bat an eye. Nobody will complain about gratuitous violence or that the villains weren’t given enough complexities or inner struggles. Parts of this film feel just that skin deep. I have no grievance with this, mind you. The practical effects were very well done and I’ll bet this was a fun set to be on.

On the other hand, the great genre filmmakers have always been able to use the threat of a mindless mass as a metaphor to invoke provocative social commentary. Romero’s films did this always and to great effect. It’s in this way that BLOOD QUANTUM shines as something more special than most films of the same ilk. The role reversal of the ‘haves’ & the ‘have-nots’ gives us a familiar world in which those with resources still fight amongst themselves about how best to keep their community safe.  Of course, this is Canada. And their refugee policy during a zombie outbreak is still more compassionate than anything we’ve seen in the U.S. under our current administration.

While this film does a good job at reflecting on this continent’s dark history of colonialism

and immigration, I think that it did an even better job encapsulating something far more pressing. I couldn’t help but be reminded of mankind’s tendency to look out for only ourselves in a time of crisis. To be fair, in our current state of affairs, this isn’t something that we need to be reminded of. I think of it every time I go out looking for toilet paper. Or when I see the lines of people wrapped around the ammunition store I drive by on my way home. Or when I see footage of the crowds breaking quarantine to gather in places like Lansing, Denver and Phoenix. A time of crisis is when a community is at its most vulnerable. It’s at times like this that small minorities of that community can inflict irreparable damage on us all. It’s in this way that I think Barnaby’s second feature, if even unwittingly, hits the chainsaw on the head.

By and large, the technical aspects here are mostly well done. The film was shot very well. It can be complicated shooting a lot of zombie siege fight sequences in a way that the audience can actually comprehend what’s going on. This film looked far better than anything in the final season of “Game of Thrones”. The acting was a bit of a mixed bag but I would give additional kudos to Stonehorse Lone Goeman. He doesn’t have much experience as an actor but is rather well known as a trainer MMA world. Here he plays sort of a First Nations Samurai Grandpa character that’s a delight whenever he’s on screen. I would also highlight the ultra-hip animated sequences that pop up throughout the film. I don’t really know anything about animation but it looked really cool.

I think the story falters a bit in its pacing and tonal shifts. At times it seems like it’s trying to have a little too much fun with the “zed” murdering badassery to be taken seriously as a social commentary. Most of this is easily forgivable but from time to time, it’s unclear where the film’s heart it.

My biggest, and only true gripe was with the underdevelopment of its characters and relationships. Sometimes it’s the tendency of a storyteller aiming at a universal truth to give less time for the details that flesh out the finer points. It’s hard to understand that specificity allows greater empathy and identification but I’ve found this to always be the case. Our main characters give lip service to their back stories but a few flashback scenes would have gone a long way for the audience. This was a bit extra disappointing considering the fact that Barnaby’s first feature, RHYMES FOR YOUNG GHOULS didn’t suffer from this issue at all.

This is Barnaby’s second feature. The aforementioned RHYMES FOR YOUNG GHOULS is a better film that I’ve grown to love a little bit more with every additional viewing. It takes place in the same area about a decade earlier than BLOOD QUANTUM. And although it’s an imperfect film, it succeeded in many ways. And I’m very excited to see what he comes up with next.

Emery’s Rating

3.5 out of 5 Stars

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Jessica Forever Review

By Emery Snyder @leeroy711

Director: Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel

Starring: Aomi Muyock, Sebastian Urzendowsky & Augustin Raguenet

Shudder Original – February 20, 2020

Jessica (Muyock) is the matriarchal leader of a group of orphaned boys in a post-apocalyptic, dystopian world that hunts and kills them. They train together, eat and nap together, always moving to keep from being caught by the “special forces” of weaponized drones that shoot on site. They live in a world of clinical ugliness and marvel at anything pretty. Throughout their journeys, their isolation and loneliness manifests itself in angst, materialism, jealousy, greed and all types of insecurities typical of young, undisciplined masculinity. Jessica replies with only love, constantly attempting to maintain a safe place for these lost and damaged boys.

Like most post-apocalyptic visions of the future, this film certainly seems to be making an earnest attempt at warning us of the future of our logical progression. There is a lot going on here. And I’m unfortunately unconvinced that this story ever achieves the focus required to properly convey anything that could be considered a thesis. Elements of fascism, Marxism, consumerism and anarchy all seem to take rather insignificant turns, coloring a world that was never sufficiently contextualized by the film’s setting.

We get some glimpses and ideas about why these young men are on the lamb but only Lucas (Raguenet) is given a full back-story. Our titular character, Jessica is the vaguest of the lot. She unfortunately ends up feeling like a purely reactionary character less than a driving force for our story. I won’t always find fault with these types of indistinctions in a film, but when the rest of the film seems satisfied with tossing together a smorgasbord of thematic elements, I end up unfulfilled with the result. The story could have, at any moment, taken the momentum built from one of its many plot points and expanded. The filmmakers chose rather, to stall out and change pace and directions. This constant exploration gives the film the imprint of ambiguous morals, at best.

But I digress, I will always concede that it is not the film’s fault that it did not satisfy what may very well be my subjective impression of what I expected it should be. I am in no way suggesting that the filmmakers were in any way, promoting any sort of hateful ideology. If anything, the film was attempting to promote unconditional love, redemption and forgiveness. This is what Jessica gives to her boys and maybe this would have been more evident had she played a larger role in the film.

The technical aspects on display are a bit of a mixed bag as well. All of the performances work well, specifically those of Muyock and Raguenet. Marine Atlan’s cinematography is crisp and does a great job at capturing the beautiful locations and contrasting them with the heinous acts of violence. The music was a mix of a Ulysse Klotz score with contemporary rock soundtrack.

There is also a healthy dose of CGI used here, dangerously set over the top of some of the film’s slow-motion scenes. This typically doesn’t mix well but I although the effects were far from great, I didn’t find them distracting. I think the finishing editor did a great job of mixing the colors, so it didn’t end up looking too fake. I credit the overall evolution of this technology as much as anything else.

All in all, I can’t fault this film too much. I appreciate its ambition. I just think its lack of focus and thesis kept me from buying in all the way. It’s a beautifully shot concept that you could have probably pulled three or four compelling stories out of. Just not all at once.

Emery’s Rating

2.5 out of 5 Stars

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Horse Girl Review

By Emery Snyder @leeroy711

Director: Jeff Baena

Starring: Alison Brie, John Reynolds, Debbie Ryan, Molly Shannon & Paul Reiser

Netflix Original – February 7, 2020

Sarah (Brie) is a young, nervous and awkward woman that spends her time crafting, hanging out with her horse, impending mental collapse and/or being abducted by aliens. In the meantime, she sparks up a new romance with Damien (Reynolds) while still navigating her semi-tumultuous relationship with her roommate (Ryan). When her hallucinatory dreamscape starts to intrude on her real life, she dives down the investigatory rabbit hole into her family history. Results vary...

“I have the rainbow sprinkles with the cone. Every time I talk it’s a fucking poem…” – Actual rap lyric from Sarah’s roommate’s boyfriend (Jake Picking)

The first half of this film really had me invested. Sarah was a well-conceived and well-

written character that I felt for. I can easily identify with the type of person that religiously pauses whatever they’re watching when others enter the room. Seriously, I’m not trying to be rude. I just want you to leave me alone now… She’s sweet and goofy, awkward but not reclusive or abrasive in the least. I think my favorite moments were the organic and clumsy courtship scenes between her and Damien. The film was at its best when it was being silly, hinting at more. But every bit of positivity shown in the earlier parts are tainted by an unsettling and heartbreaking sense of dread.

The overall construct of the genre bends here is quite unique. The comedic elements don’t do much to soften the tone because the sense of impeding doom is so strong. The supernatural/sci-fi/psychological thriller aspects of the film reminded me of things like Panos Cosmotos’ BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW, with a tiny dash of Glazer’s UNDER THE SKIN. This is especially true in the constantly shifting score. From scene to scene, we range from bouncy synth-pop to ominous strings. Rather than inform, these shifts sometimes seem only to confuse and conflate the tone. A lot of films are ambiguous about how literally we’re supposed to interpret what we see. But here, it’s hard to tell how seriously we’re even supposed to take the story. The aforementioned doom that we’re dreading is always present, but often undercut by the films humorous tone. But by the third act however, this playfulness between themes begins to tread into very uncomfortable territory.

As Sarah’s grip on reality becomes increasingly loose, the story dives deeper into her paranoia. Always shrewdly switching between the hints of supernatural and mental health explanations.  Brie’s performance is more believable, the less seriously I take her. She’s a fantastic comedic actor. But I found she had trouble expecting the audience to follow her mood shifts. To be clear, although I had trouble with this, I think this may actually be specifically what the film is going for. On one hand, it may have been making the case to take a more realistic look at the still overused ‘manic-pixie’ character. Unfortunately, it may have simultaneously undercut the significance of real mental health issues.

In its cleverness, I am a bit concerned that this film lacks the sensitivity and nuance that may be required to tackle this type of topic. At times, I was seriously bothered by how glib the entire first act was in setting up what was supposed to be a heavily weighted conclusion. But even as I write this, I’m not sure if I’m properly arriving at the filmmaker’s intention. And maybe that’s my point. As much as this film has going for it, I was disappointed that it seemed much more content in endlessly circling multiple interpretations, loosely wound around mixed themes and genres, than it was in expressing any sort of tangible truth.

In summary, there’s plenty enough good here to outweigh the bad. But don’t be surprised if it leaves a sour taste in your mouth.

Emery’s Rating

3 out of 5 Stars

The Amazing Johnathan Documentary Review

By Emery Snyder @leeroy711

Director: Benjamin Berman

Starring: The Amazing Johnathan, Benjamin Berman, ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic & Eric Andre

Hulu Original – June 16, 2019

Veteran of comedy television, Ben Berman (Lady Dynamite, Tim & Eric) documents the swan song tour of beloved comedian/magician, The Amazing Johnathan (Johnathan Szeles) … At least that seems to have been the original intent of this film. Very quickly however, we find that all is not as it seems. Szeles, who has been given a terminal heart diagnosis has apparently invited more than just Berman along to document his final days. Competition, skepticism and the ominous presence of the subject’s penchant for ‘slight-of-hand’ all play a part of this story’s (mis)direction.

Around fifteen minutes into the movie, we find that Johnathan has, unbeknownst to Berman, invited a second documentary team to make a film about him. Both camera crews are present, filming his tour, his health issues, his drug use and each other. The second crew is associated with Oscar Award winner, Simon Chinn (MAN ON WIRE, SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN). This immediately puts an entirely different twist on the film, pitting two storytellers against each other, in a marketplace that is already over-saturated with documentaries. As access to the subject is played out in this tug-of-war, even more filmmakers emerge, all working on the same subject matter. 

Is Johnathan simply trying to get the most out of his legacy? Or is this all part of some elaborate and boorish prank he’s playing? And if it is a prank, who is it even directed at? The filmmakers? The audience? And most importantly, how much of what is seen here can even be taken as factual? Is Johnathan even really dying? At one point, Berman’s friend even metaphorically speculates, “Put this in real life terms…” as if magic, comedy and/or filmmaking are not real jobs and terminal illness is not real life.

This metatextuality of the film, for better or worse, couldn’t help but immediately change what the story was about. And in that, I was a bit disappointed. I’ve been a fan of The Amazing Johnathan since I caught one of his acts on a late-night stand-up show in the nineties. He’s always been a fascinating character with a wholly original act and I would love to see a ‘bio-doc’ of sorts about his life. But the moment that the second crew shows up, the subject of this doc changes to include Berman as well as the film itself. Throughout the runtime, we see more and more of Berman questioning and pontificating what story he’s actually trying to tell, and less of Johnathan. I’m quite sure that Berman’s friends and family end up with more screen time Johnathan’s. All of this coupled with the additional metatextuality of the streaming wars and I was quickly reminded of the dueling Fyre Festival docs released within a week of each other by Hulu and Netflix earlier this year. This still makes for a very interesting doc, but I constantly felt that I was missing out on what is likely a great story about a fascinating performer.

At the end of the day, if you take this film at face value, I think it served as a learning experience and an exploration for the filmmaker that likely began this process with an entirely different idea about what kind of story he was telling. It actually reminds me of early Herzog in that respect. I think most of the best documentaries ever made went wildly off the rails at some point of their production. This one is especially unique because it essentially serves as its own ‘making of’ special feature.

But on the other hand, I’m still not entirely sure how candid or authentic any of this is. Johnathan is a self-described prankster. And the competition in the genre today almost requires filmmakers to have a hook that can shine though to the audience. The only question left is “to what end?” This film has no interest in answering it.

Emery’s Rating

3.5 out of 5 Stars

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Yardie Review

By Emery Snyder @leeroy711

Director: Idris Elba

Starring: Aml Ameen, Shantol Jackson, Sheldon Shepherd & Stephen Graham

Amazon Original – June 17, 2019

The story begins in Jamaica 1973. Our young lead, “D” lives in a rural village in the hills, far away from the gang violence of Kingston. He idolizes his older brother who is shot down while preaching a message of peace to the street thugs. As D (Ameen) grows, his rage leads him into the same life his brother was trying to protect him from. The gang’s leader, King Fox (Shepherd) takes him under his wing. Before long, he finds himself transporting dope to London where he reconnects with his lost love (Jackson), his daughter and the ghosts of his past.

The plot this film navigates is not exactly original. It’s a story about the challenges of breaking cyclic violence and the perilous quest of revenge. From The Iliad to Hamlet to The Count of Monte Cristo, we have been telling each other these types of moral tales throughout the ages. It has been retooled and adapted to every time and place imaginable. In cases like this, if you can accept the premise of unoriginality, you can still enjoy the template as it’s applied to a unique setting. Judge the film based on technical achievements. Pacing, performances, cinematography and music all play a role in overcoming inherent predictability and pulling out empathy from the audience. That being said, and almost in spite of itself, this film still succeeds, although not greatly.

YARDIE is the directorial debut of fan favorite actor, Idris Elba. I was happy to see that he’s got a bit of flare to his style. A great color palette and interesting camera angles fill the frame for 101 minutes. The Jamaican sets and costumes look just like the cover of Jimmie Cliff’s The Harder They Come. And his Hackney, London locations provided a great and stark contrast for D's ‘fish-out-of-water’ story.

The casting choices shine more than any other aspect in this film. Ameen’s charisma is magnetic. This is necessary because the survival and success of his character rely on it. Sheldon Shepherd and Stephen Graham play the film’s menacing baddies. At times hammy, they are both a lot of fun to watch. And I was particularly captivated by newcomer, Shantol Jackson. I’d like to see this be her breakout role. Her IMDB list is far too bare for her talents. Her performance was strong and confident yet still yearning and vulnerable. And she has a very photogenic look. These are all British actors doing thick Jamaican accents. My American ear is not properly tuned to know if these were good accents, but I found them at worst, believable.

The screenplay has three credited writers, including the novelist, Victor Headley. The biggest issues I had with the film as a whole were all related to the writing. At times, the pacing seemed so ramped up that the story broke away from the conventional plot beats that avid moviegoers have come to expect. This made some of the events extra unnerving and off-kiltered. And while I appreciated this break from trope, it took away from some of the weight of the narrative’s tragic events. At other times, this pacing simply made the motivations of the characters questionable at best. Nothing that happens here really gets a chance to breathe properly for the audience to appreciate how it effects the characters. This is an epic story, spanning over a decade in time. I think it was a mistake to attempt to condense it down to this short of a runtime.

In summary, the good outweighs the bad in YARDIE. And there’s a lot stylistically to cling to for the future of Elba’s directorial career (if he chooses one). Some breakout and breakthrough performances combined with a very cool Reggae soundtrack make for an interesting and enjoyable, if not completely successful film, well-worth its runtime for existing Amazon Prime subscribers.

Emery’s Rating

3 out of 5 Stars

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Triple Frontier Review

By Emery Snyder @leeroy711

Director: J.C. Chandor

Starring: Oscar Isaac, Ben Affleck, Charlie Hunnam, Pedro Pascal & Garret Hedlund

Netflix Original – March 13, 2019

A group five of disaffected and financially stressed special ops adrenaline junkies all suffering from varying levels of PTSD get together to pull the ever-fated “one last job.” The plan is to break into the fortress of a ruthless Colombian cartel kingpin and steal his $75 million, then smuggle it out of the country and retire. All goes exactly according to plan, the bad guys all perish, and the soldiers spend the rest of their days sipping rum drinks on some beach without an extradition treaty…. That would be a pretty lousy movie.

The film was co-produced by Kathryne Bigelow and Mark Boal and it was co-written by Boal and Chandor. As expected from a Boal screenplay, the military procedural aspect is the film’s highlight. The stakes are heightened by situation only while characters remain largely stoic and wooden. We are meant to extrapolate the men’s emotions strictly from their backstories, never from their faces. I’m not degrading the film because of this. This type of indifference has its place. And Boal spent time as an embedded reporter in the earlier years after the invasion of Iraq, so I trust that his writing draws from the soldiers he witnessed in combat. Suppression of emotion is seen as a necessary survival tactic here.

So much of how successful a movie like this is to me will always depend on how well the scenes are shot. This film boasts several very well composed shootouts. The spaces are beautifully scoped in 2:11:1 ratio, giving the audience a clear perspective of the action presented. This is something that I always tend to mention because it is something that is so often done poorly. But here, I was glad to be able to easily follow along with each set piece, always having a good sense of where the threat was coming from and where our protagonists were moving towards. Cinematographer Roman Vasyanov has already made a name for himself in action cinema with films like END OF WATCH (’12) and THE WALL (’17) and I see his work continuing to improve.

I was also pleased to find that this, unlike many similar films, seemed to have an acute awareness of the moral ambiguity of what these men were up to. Although the characters were easily able to overcome their individual crises of conscience, the film itself keeps its thumb down on them as they struggle to keep themselves and each other convinced that what they are doing is righteous or even justified. It doesn’t take much to draw the parallels between their actions and the duplicitous nature of our own government’s involvement in Latin America over the past century. This is a moral tale more than anything. The fruits of ill-gotten gains are heavy, and fraught with peril. The money they steal becomes the reason they have such a hard time escaping the region. It weighs on them, both physically and metaphorically.

Unfortunately, this film suffers from some strange pacing issues. I think this is what separates it from better works. The scene from the trailer, that you would expect to be the climax, happens about thirty minutes in. Nothing afterwards manages to live up to the promise of the first act. It actually feels like the stakes dwindle the longer you watch, as does your overall interest. And this is a problem when your running time is over two hours.

In summary, TRIPLE FRONTIER is a well-made and better than average action flick that refreshingly acknowledges the faults of its own heroes. But fall well short of greatness in its overall delivery.

Emery’s Rating

3.25 out of 5 Stars

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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind Review

By Emery Snyder @leeroy711

Director: Chiwetel Ejiofor

Starring: Maxwell Simba, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lily Banda & Aissa Maiga

Netflix Original – March 1, 2019

A small tribal village in Malawi is facing a “hunger season” due to a combination of flooding as well as a lack of foreign aid and an economic structure that devalues the crops of the farmers. William Kamkwamba, a local child engineering prodigy helps them build a wind turbine to power an electric well pump after reading about it in his school library, enabling their survival.  This film is based on his true story.

This is Ejiofor’s feature directorial debut, but it doesn’t show. The film was made with the steady and competent hand of a more experienced filmmaker. Of course, with 50 acting credits to his name, it’s not as if he’s a stranger to the medium. He’s worked with accomplished directors like Spike Lee, Stephen Frears, Steve McQueen and Alfonso Cuarón and I’m sure that his experience with technical craftsmen like that helped.

What we are given here is a fairly ‘paint-by-numbers’ plot with the technical flourishes to elevate it a bit above par as well as some nice subtext to chew on. To be clear, the plot’s predictability does nothing to lose points. It’s based on a true story and the title essentially gives away the film’s triumphant ending. We’re here for the journey, not the destination. The screenplay, adapted by Ejiofor hits the cinematic beats we have all grown accustomed to for the past century. But again, I’m not knocking it for this, familiarity is not always a bad thing. It is a compelling and inspiring story and I’m glad that it’s being told through film. Frequent Mike Leigh collaborator, Dick Pope provided the beautiful sweeping cinematography. The film is shot wide and does a great job of capturing the isolation and vastness of the region.

The subtext that Ejiofor used this film to elude to is what I found to be of particular note. What we are watching is a region that is caught in between two worlds. William is struggling to gain an education he can’t afford that would lift him up above his station. The full knowledge that this education would not only benefit him personally but also his village as well as the entire country does nothing to change the immediate fact that his able body is needed to toil in the fields. School is a luxury for those not currently facing starvation.

The country is seen as struggling to transition towards some form of democracy. But these early stages only pay lip service to the concepts of free expression and equality. And when bottom-line capitalism, meant to promote individual liberties quickly devolve into the cut-throat economics of desperation, the constituents begin to wonder what good the democratic process is at all.

William’s parents as well as the village elders are stuck in a similar struggle as they try to find the balance between their ancestral traditions and the modernization of the rapidly encroaching Western World. Trywell (Ejiofor) and Agnes (Maiga) lament that they always identified themselves as ‘modernists’ and that they had promised themselves that they would never ‘pray for rain.’ At the same time, they actively work to block the progress of their own children, dismissing William’s invention as ‘a toy’, blind to its potential. I found this to be the most prescient and interesting allegory of the film. Progressiveness is more than just abandoning the values and traditions held by previous generations. It also requires the embrace and acceptance that future generations will do the same to you. True progress will always need the rejuvenation of youth. This film, above all is a hopeful look at how this can and does work and I appreciate it for that.

Emery’s Rating

3.5 out of 5 Stars