Tag Archives: Netflix

CHRONICLE

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2.5 stars (out of 4)

Released 2012

Three teenagers stumble upon an underground cave and encounter something which mysteriously gives them the power of telekinesis.  These are regular boys, not superheroes, and they do not have any exceptional maturity or mental stability to help them handle their newfound “great power”.  We follow them as they experiment with and learn to use their abilities and eventually see the effect they have on the outside world.

There’s the added gimmick of the movie being seen through the lens of a home-video camera and it’s mostly effective and creatively-used, and doesn’t detract from the story.

Coincidentally, CHRONICLE can function as an origin story for the ongoing anime series Shin Sekai Yori (From the New World), which imagines what the world will be like hundreds of years after some of the population acquire telekinesis and become a threat to humanity.  More on that later, maybe…

 

The Descendants

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3 stars (maybe 3.25 stars?)

(released 2011)

George Clooney stars as a man dealing with the imminent death of his wife, trying to reconnect with his two young daughters and make peace with the the shortcomings of his marriage.

Featuring a thoughtful script which slowly reveals the true (and somewhat surprising) natures of each of the main characters, the film starts off with a refreshingly unsentimental depiction of a family dealing with loss, but by the end, earns its emotional final scene.

I think this film deserves to be called “inspired” (which would earn it 3.5 stars) but on the other hand, I don’t think it’s amazing or inventive enough that I would want to re-watch it (which means it only rates 3 stars).  Maybe I will have to start using an intermediate 3.25 star rating after all.

Happy-Go-Lucky

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2.5 stars (out of 4)

Released 2008

Essentially a character study of a cheerful, single, British schoolteacher as she encounters various situations/characters which test her mettle.  Not a whole lot happens in this movie, but the main character does have an interesting and unique take on life.  Directed by Mike Leigh.

Easy A

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3.5 stars (out of 4)

Released 2010

I actually watched this movie about a year ago, but recently re-watched it and thought I would post a rating on it since my recent reviews have been so uniformly negative.

Emma Stone is winning and full of personality in this perfect vehicle for her talents.  Excellent, witty script where even the minor characters (her parents, her best friend) are interesting.

Carnage

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2 stars (out of 4)

Released 2011

I knew I wouldn’t like this movie, based on a scathing review I read when it was first released, but, hey, it was on Netflix, and I was curious to see how bad it could be, given its all-star cast (Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, and John C. Reilly) and director (Roman Polanski).

Well, I finished watching it, but only just barely – I thought about turning it off several times mid-movie.  The story was adapted from a play and is about two couples whose meeting over a fight between their sons quickly descends from stilted courtesy to yelling and hysterics.  The whole thing unfolds in the living room of one of the couples, mainly because at every reasonable opportunity to end the increasingly useless meeting, the characters decide to keep talking.  I might have forgiven that narrative device, if the dialogue had felt more real and if there were more interesting revelations about the characters.

Martha Marcy May Marlene

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Poster of Martha Marcy May Marlene

2.5 stars (out of 4)

Released 2011

This is an independent film which made a splash at the Sundance Festival and won accolades for its star, Elizabeth Olsen (sister of the famous twins).

A young woman, Martha (Olsen), escapes from a cult and is taken in by her estranged older sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson).  As Lucy tries to understand the strange behaviour and haunted manner of her uncommunicative sister, the story is told in flashbacks to Martha’s time with the cult, cutting back to her awkward adjustment to Lucy’s upper-middle-class lifestyle.

I thought the film did a good job of first showing some unsavory aspects of the cult (living in poverty, women being totally subservient to the men) and then showing why it might have appealed to a lost soul like Martha.  Elizabeth Olsen is a very natural actor, but I wasn’t blown away, since haunted/crazy isn’t generally that hard to do.

This movie was building up to a 3-star rating, until it suddenly ended without any kind of resolution.  When stories end like that, it always makes me suspect that the writer could not figure out a good ending and so decided to leave it up to the audience to figure one out for themselves.  There are rare instances when the story is actually better served by an ambiguous ending, but most of the time (as in this one) it just feels like laziness.

Young Adult

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2 stars (out of 4)

Released 2011

Charlize Theron stars as Mavis, a former high school mean-girl who goes back to her hometown with the misguided plan to “free” her high-school flame from his current wife and baby.

The film presents Mavis as the ultimate loser in her adult life – ashamed of her job as a ghost-writer, divorced, lacking real friends, slovenly, emotionally immature, and yet still wanting everyone to be envious of her.  It also sets her up as an object of ridicule, instead of trying to explain or explore why she turned out this way.  Even her parents are presented as nice people who are taken aback and saddened by her bad behaviour.

The whole film felt like rather gratuitous wish-fulfillment made for (and by?) people wanting revenge on their high school tormentors.

Winter’s Bone

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3.5 stars out of 4

(released 2010)

Starring Jennifer Lawrence in a break-out, Oscar-nominated performance, this well-paced, hyper-realistic film follows Ree, a teenager left in charge of her impoverished family, as she tries desperately to find her drug-dealing father.

This film was adapted from a novel and its depiction of hard-scrabble life in the Ozarks feels real.  Ree is tough and shrewd, but she’s still young and not sure of the rules that the other characters play by, which makes each encounter suspenseful.  As a viewer, I really felt that I had been immersed into a foreign world.

Jennifer Lawrence, as Ree, appears in virtually every frame and is riveting.  You can see why the producers of The Hunger Games saw Katniss in her – actually the characters have a lot of similarities – but this performance is the one that really shows off her talent.