"Horror" Movies That Disappoint and Some Indie Films with Cred
"Venom"
starring: Agnes Bruckner, Jonathan Jackson, Laura Ramsey, D.J. Cotrona, Rick Cramer, Meagan Good, Bijou Phillips
This is the kind of ridiculous horror that I just cannot buy into. When an average, yet spooky enough man becomes the villain solely because of voodoo and poisonous snakes- turning him into a larger than life angry, evil, blood-thirsty soulless creature- it just begs to be laughed at. But, the way the story and film is made, it seems as if everyone is kind of in on the joke and are laughing at themselves, too. They know this isn't a serious horror film. Thankfully. But it's still not really enjoyable. It's more of a waste of time.
The poor, average Joe in question here is a truck driver named Ray Sawyer who stops on the side of the road one night to help an elderly lady who's car has been left teetering over the edge of the road and a bridge, hovering over water in the dark, misty bayou of Louisiana (I guess that's the only reason why the voodoo aspect of the horror works, but it also seems a bit too cliche and overused, for me). Ray gets trapped in the car, which has a suitcase full of poisonous snakes and Ray gets bitten by their mysticism. Ray dies, but of course is brought back to life rather quickly, in the morgue. And that's when he exacts his revenge. And of course, the reapers of his revenge are a close-knit group of teenagers, including the granddaughter of the old voodoo woman, named CeCe; her best friend Eden (played by Agnes Bruckner), and then a few more teenagers who all meet their inevitable demise at the hands of a reanimated Ray.
"Venom" is definitely the kind of horror film you have to set your standards low for and basically know what you're getting yourself into before you watch it. It's the kind of horror film that is ridiculous from the beginning and just rides that train the whole way. Nothing much to write home about, but really what more can you expect from Kevin Williamson- the guy who wrote and created "Dawson's Creek" and "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer."
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"Better Living Through Chemistry"
starring: Sam Rockwell, Olivia Wilde, Michelle Monaghan, Jane Fonda, Ray Liotta, Ben Schwartz
written and directed by: Geoff Moore and David Posamentier
I ran across this movie randomly on Netflix. I like indie films, i'm sure that is well-known at this point. And I do think Olivia Wilde can be a decent actress if given the right material (you should see her guest spot on last season's "Portlandia" hilarious). She can sometimes be rather one-dimensional, but I think a lot of her acting relies on her eyes and her face. She can be quite expressive in this regard. She can either scare the hell out of any guy that comes across her- her beauty is rather intimidating- or she can seduce you into doing anything she says; and sometimes she can do both at the same time.
"Better Living Through Chemistry" suffers from seeming to be bipolar, which maybe was borne from the fact that it was made by two guys, who probably had different ideas with what they wanted the movie to be: at times its a film noir, other times its a satire on the pharmaceutical industry, as well as being an romantic-comedy (in which Olivia Wilde's character is stuck being the "manic pixie dream girl" with a bit of a drug-friendly twist). There's far too many elements within this bipolar affair of a film to really pin down the story. There's pieces of a man being seduced into a better way of living by a femme fatale, dysfunctional youth mania where a son is acting out clearly for attention and the father gets him/it but the mother is too stuck in her own world to really pay either of them any mind. The pace, the editing, the chopping of the story all seems to be paying homage to Wes Anderson (who is perhaps the king of quirky satirical films). but it just comes off as cheap.
Sam Rockwell plays Douglas Varney, a pharmacist at his wife's father's drug store. His idea of the American dream has never really materialized and he mopes around and goes through the motions of life, waiting to get his piece of the American Dream pie that just has to come to him at some point, but really never does. He's never really been in control of his own life, it seems. His wife, Kara (played by Michelle Monaghan, whom I just recently watched in the HBO series "True Detective") is the alpha female, bike enthusiast in his life. Doug's life is ho-hum, until one night when he has to go make the pharmaceutical home deliveries and he happens to stop at the house of Elizabeth (Wilde) who is an unhappy trophy wife living in a vacuous mansion (with a husband who is never home) with probably anything she desires, and yet she is empty inside and fills her voids with prescription drugs and wine (a bit cliche). Of course, Doug is quite smitten with Elizabeth from the get-go, and they seem to be draw to each other because of their shared misery in life. Elizabeth gets Doug to break out of his shell a bit, even if it comes in the form of dipping into his own drug supply at the store. That's really when the film loses its steam and just becomes too quirky for its own good and just is rather over-the-top.
The three main actors: Rockwell, Monaghan, and Wilde, really give their characters two-dimensional depth, and help make this film better than it probably was on paper. Who knows what could have happened if they were given a less disjointed script and a more focused idea. It is still worth watching and enjoyable.
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"At the Devil's Door"
starring: Naya Rivera, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Ashley Rickards, Mark Steger
written and directed by: Nicholas McCarthy
I'm all for begging, borrowing, and stealing some of the best pieces of film genres, especially when it comes to horror films, but make sure you pick perhaps one (maybe two, if you are a considerable director and can pull it off) element and build the story/film around what has seemingly worked well for films over the years. "At the Devil's Door" unfortunately suffers from being a disjointed mess with the film's acts each being different elements but without something to connect them together.
It starts with a presumably middle class girl slumming it a bit with her boyfriend in an undisclosed location. The young lady (Rickards) is convinced by her boyfriend to go play a sort of soul Russian Roulette/where's the hidden object in the shell game for a wad of cash (for some, inexplicable reason). She loses and is told that she has been "chosen" by Him (presumably the Devil). The "He" for which she has to tell her name to is an omnipotent presence of evil. The villain is neither human nor benevolent, instead he overtakes her body, in an "Exorcist" fashion and then stalks His prey, several years later, in the form of this missing girl.
In the next part of the film, the story focuses on sisters: one, Leigh, is a real estate agent trying to sell the house the missing girl used to live in, which is apparently haunted now with the entity sort of just hovering and loitering in the house; the other sister, Vera, is an artist, trying to survive on her own, while reconnecting with her sister. I thought Vera was a rather unnecessary character and that's really where the film lost me, because the story could have survived with just Leigh and the missing girl (as well as with the evil force stalking around). I'm thinking in the same vein as "The Grudge" or even "The Ring."
The film's texture is rather dark throughout and sometimes that makes it hard to see the action. The scares, few and more between, seem also rather unearned and forced. There's really no backstory development of the sisters, Leigh and Vera, let alone character development that begs for your empathy, which leaves the film feeling flat and the resolution of the emotional conflict plaguing the sisters is unearned as well. I would definitely skip this one and find a different horror film.
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"Dream House"
starring: Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, Naomi Watts, Elias Koteas
directed by: Jim Sheridan
This is probably the definition and poster child for films that look good on paper but then translate to an utter mess of a disaster on the screen, thanks in large part to starting off as a promising type of haunting film but then taking a turn for the worse in a completely different direction, leaving the audience wondering "what the hell happened here?" Ever since I started this movie review blog, I've been doing research on each film that I watch and reading about the history and story behind "Dream House" really helped explain a lot. Let's start with the fact that it has the wrong director in Jim Sheridan, who is widely known for his emotional (and family-related for the most part) films like "My Left Foot," "In the Name of the Father," and "In America" (the ladder one actually brought me to tears the first time I saw it, in the theatre). Apparently, the film he wanted to make is not the final product the studio put out. The studio-heads demanded reshoots to the point that Jim Sheridan was completely dissatisfied with the film and actually asked, begged, and/or pleaded for his name to be taken off the credits. He, along with the three main actors in the film (Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, and Naomi Watts) ended up refusing to do any press for the film (which probably led to its lackluster performance in theatres. "Dream House" was marketed as a haunting horror film, but it is neither haunting or much of a horror film, at all. Even with the actors the film has, it falls apart as soon as the twist occurs and the story goes in a completely new direction, turning into something else entirely- the type of film seen often before, unfortunately. After watching it, I can see why the people involved wanted nothing to do with it, as an end product, and perhaps would like it erased from their resume.
Craig is New York writer Will Atenton who moves his family – wife Libby (Weisz) and daughters Trish and Dee Dee (Taylor and Claire Geare) – to the burbs so he can escape the big city and work on his novel. It's all shiny, happy family until his neighbors Jack (Csokas) and Ann (Watts), who are engaged in a bitter custody battle over daughter Chloe (Fox), start looking at him funny and acting as if they already know this new guy on the block. Will's daughters start seeing figures lurking outside; Will begins to hear ominous voices; and the suburban-gothic tone, complete with mounting dread and half-repressed nightmares, blossoms into full-on crazy. No spoilers here, but the aforementioned Martin Scorsese film is a close family relative of this shopworn story.
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"The Double"
starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Mia Wasikowska, Wallace Shawn, Yasmin Paige, Noah Taylor, James Fox
directed by: Richard Ayoade
written by: Richard Ayoade (novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky)
First off, I was surprised to recognized the name of "The Double's" writer/director: Richard Ayoade, because I'd watched him the the British comedy series, The IT Crowd, and loved his comedic chops. He has apparently made another film, "Submarine," which is in my Netflix queue, and apparently much better than this rather dark and depressing reimagining of a Dostoevsky novella titled the same thing.
Ayoade's interpretation of the story is told within a dark and nondescript world, ruled by the all-consuming bureaucracy of competition and materialism, in a weirdly bizarre office-type world (much much darker and dank than the world of "Office Space" which really kind of tells the same type of story minus the "double" identity aspect). The mood within this world is unerring misery that the director never really puts into context for the audience, to make the main character's struggle compelling enough for us to care about how his world seems to unravel quickly. The story's interest is in the marginalized within a nightmarish industrial world, that's quite obvious. But there is absolutely no hope or good to be found, just utter and complete cynicism and depression (not uplifting if the viewer is looking for a happy ending, especially if they are familiar with or perhaps live within the real world of the industrial revolution and factory or office lifestyle). Movies should, to a certain degree, be a sort of escape for the depressing reality that people may find themselves within, not make them hate their lives even more.
Now, I know I might be asking for more than the story can really give, since it is based on Dostoevsky, but for the director to focus solely on the fatalism and dread of the story, along with the victimization of the protagonist (played by Jesse Eisenberg, in perhaps the only way he knows how to act), just makes this film a gloomy and pessimistic rant against "the man."
Ayoade builds the world around Simon as a complex of identical hovels, decrepit factories, and dreary offices that stretches out into seeming infinity and exists in endless night. One occupant of this dystopia is Simon (Jesse Eisenberg), a workaday drone who depends on his job as a clerk and is belittled and antagonized by every square foot of his surroundings. Indeed, the grimly stylized environs Ayoade realizes, often encrusted in grime and filth, seem calculated to strip Simon of his already meager confidence. Technology rules over everything, but nothing ever seems to pan out for Simon, whose work is ignored while he's glad-handled into staying in his miniscule position. What's worse, he arrives at work one day to find himself working alongside his doppelganger (Eisenberg), who quickly usurps and takes advantage of Simon's intellect and diligence to cozy up to the company's head honchos (James Fox and Wallace Shawn).
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"All the Lights in the Sky"
starring: Jane Adams, Sophia Takal, Simon Barrett, Lindsay Burdge, Larry Fessenden, Lawrence Michael Levine
directed by: Joe Swanberg
written by: Jane Adams and Joe Swanberg
Knowing that Joe Swanberg is really in his element with mumblecore films, where he sketches the idea of the story he wants to tell and film, but then really lets the actors flesh it out through improvised dialogue, I really wanted this small film to be more than what it is. It is very short, only an hour and 17 minutes long, but not enough happens in that short amount of time for the viewer to really become invested in the players or their story/troubles.
Jane Adams sort of plays herself, an aging actress who can only seem to get small, bit parts in films, but ironically is the focus on Swanberg's character study here. She is the sort of character that is quirky and fragile, whom you root for, laugh with/at sometimes, and ultimately want to wrap your arms around and protect. The story, which Adams cowrote with Swanberg touches on two subjects probably quite relevant to actresses in Hollywood (both older and younger): the concept of aging as an actress and the superficiality of the movie industry that doesn't really want or allow these real women to age without threatening the discovery of someone younger, perkier, and slightly better than them. I've heard several women in my own life say that it's not fair that when men get older than are sexier, look more distinguished, etc. I hear them.
starring: Agnes Bruckner, Jonathan Jackson, Laura Ramsey, D.J. Cotrona, Rick Cramer, Meagan Good, Bijou Phillips
This is the kind of ridiculous horror that I just cannot buy into. When an average, yet spooky enough man becomes the villain solely because of voodoo and poisonous snakes- turning him into a larger than life angry, evil, blood-thirsty soulless creature- it just begs to be laughed at. But, the way the story and film is made, it seems as if everyone is kind of in on the joke and are laughing at themselves, too. They know this isn't a serious horror film. Thankfully. But it's still not really enjoyable. It's more of a waste of time.
The poor, average Joe in question here is a truck driver named Ray Sawyer who stops on the side of the road one night to help an elderly lady who's car has been left teetering over the edge of the road and a bridge, hovering over water in the dark, misty bayou of Louisiana (I guess that's the only reason why the voodoo aspect of the horror works, but it also seems a bit too cliche and overused, for me). Ray gets trapped in the car, which has a suitcase full of poisonous snakes and Ray gets bitten by their mysticism. Ray dies, but of course is brought back to life rather quickly, in the morgue. And that's when he exacts his revenge. And of course, the reapers of his revenge are a close-knit group of teenagers, including the granddaughter of the old voodoo woman, named CeCe; her best friend Eden (played by Agnes Bruckner), and then a few more teenagers who all meet their inevitable demise at the hands of a reanimated Ray.
"Venom" is definitely the kind of horror film you have to set your standards low for and basically know what you're getting yourself into before you watch it. It's the kind of horror film that is ridiculous from the beginning and just rides that train the whole way. Nothing much to write home about, but really what more can you expect from Kevin Williamson- the guy who wrote and created "Dawson's Creek" and "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer."
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"Better Living Through Chemistry"
starring: Sam Rockwell, Olivia Wilde, Michelle Monaghan, Jane Fonda, Ray Liotta, Ben Schwartz
written and directed by: Geoff Moore and David Posamentier
I ran across this movie randomly on Netflix. I like indie films, i'm sure that is well-known at this point. And I do think Olivia Wilde can be a decent actress if given the right material (you should see her guest spot on last season's "Portlandia" hilarious). She can sometimes be rather one-dimensional, but I think a lot of her acting relies on her eyes and her face. She can be quite expressive in this regard. She can either scare the hell out of any guy that comes across her- her beauty is rather intimidating- or she can seduce you into doing anything she says; and sometimes she can do both at the same time.
"Better Living Through Chemistry" suffers from seeming to be bipolar, which maybe was borne from the fact that it was made by two guys, who probably had different ideas with what they wanted the movie to be: at times its a film noir, other times its a satire on the pharmaceutical industry, as well as being an romantic-comedy (in which Olivia Wilde's character is stuck being the "manic pixie dream girl" with a bit of a drug-friendly twist). There's far too many elements within this bipolar affair of a film to really pin down the story. There's pieces of a man being seduced into a better way of living by a femme fatale, dysfunctional youth mania where a son is acting out clearly for attention and the father gets him/it but the mother is too stuck in her own world to really pay either of them any mind. The pace, the editing, the chopping of the story all seems to be paying homage to Wes Anderson (who is perhaps the king of quirky satirical films). but it just comes off as cheap.
Sam Rockwell plays Douglas Varney, a pharmacist at his wife's father's drug store. His idea of the American dream has never really materialized and he mopes around and goes through the motions of life, waiting to get his piece of the American Dream pie that just has to come to him at some point, but really never does. He's never really been in control of his own life, it seems. His wife, Kara (played by Michelle Monaghan, whom I just recently watched in the HBO series "True Detective") is the alpha female, bike enthusiast in his life. Doug's life is ho-hum, until one night when he has to go make the pharmaceutical home deliveries and he happens to stop at the house of Elizabeth (Wilde) who is an unhappy trophy wife living in a vacuous mansion (with a husband who is never home) with probably anything she desires, and yet she is empty inside and fills her voids with prescription drugs and wine (a bit cliche). Of course, Doug is quite smitten with Elizabeth from the get-go, and they seem to be draw to each other because of their shared misery in life. Elizabeth gets Doug to break out of his shell a bit, even if it comes in the form of dipping into his own drug supply at the store. That's really when the film loses its steam and just becomes too quirky for its own good and just is rather over-the-top.
The three main actors: Rockwell, Monaghan, and Wilde, really give their characters two-dimensional depth, and help make this film better than it probably was on paper. Who knows what could have happened if they were given a less disjointed script and a more focused idea. It is still worth watching and enjoyable.
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"At the Devil's Door"
starring: Naya Rivera, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Ashley Rickards, Mark Steger
written and directed by: Nicholas McCarthy
I'm all for begging, borrowing, and stealing some of the best pieces of film genres, especially when it comes to horror films, but make sure you pick perhaps one (maybe two, if you are a considerable director and can pull it off) element and build the story/film around what has seemingly worked well for films over the years. "At the Devil's Door" unfortunately suffers from being a disjointed mess with the film's acts each being different elements but without something to connect them together.
It starts with a presumably middle class girl slumming it a bit with her boyfriend in an undisclosed location. The young lady (Rickards) is convinced by her boyfriend to go play a sort of soul Russian Roulette/where's the hidden object in the shell game for a wad of cash (for some, inexplicable reason). She loses and is told that she has been "chosen" by Him (presumably the Devil). The "He" for which she has to tell her name to is an omnipotent presence of evil. The villain is neither human nor benevolent, instead he overtakes her body, in an "Exorcist" fashion and then stalks His prey, several years later, in the form of this missing girl.
In the next part of the film, the story focuses on sisters: one, Leigh, is a real estate agent trying to sell the house the missing girl used to live in, which is apparently haunted now with the entity sort of just hovering and loitering in the house; the other sister, Vera, is an artist, trying to survive on her own, while reconnecting with her sister. I thought Vera was a rather unnecessary character and that's really where the film lost me, because the story could have survived with just Leigh and the missing girl (as well as with the evil force stalking around). I'm thinking in the same vein as "The Grudge" or even "The Ring."
The film's texture is rather dark throughout and sometimes that makes it hard to see the action. The scares, few and more between, seem also rather unearned and forced. There's really no backstory development of the sisters, Leigh and Vera, let alone character development that begs for your empathy, which leaves the film feeling flat and the resolution of the emotional conflict plaguing the sisters is unearned as well. I would definitely skip this one and find a different horror film.
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"Dream House"
starring: Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, Naomi Watts, Elias Koteas
directed by: Jim Sheridan
This is probably the definition and poster child for films that look good on paper but then translate to an utter mess of a disaster on the screen, thanks in large part to starting off as a promising type of haunting film but then taking a turn for the worse in a completely different direction, leaving the audience wondering "what the hell happened here?" Ever since I started this movie review blog, I've been doing research on each film that I watch and reading about the history and story behind "Dream House" really helped explain a lot. Let's start with the fact that it has the wrong director in Jim Sheridan, who is widely known for his emotional (and family-related for the most part) films like "My Left Foot," "In the Name of the Father," and "In America" (the ladder one actually brought me to tears the first time I saw it, in the theatre). Apparently, the film he wanted to make is not the final product the studio put out. The studio-heads demanded reshoots to the point that Jim Sheridan was completely dissatisfied with the film and actually asked, begged, and/or pleaded for his name to be taken off the credits. He, along with the three main actors in the film (Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, and Naomi Watts) ended up refusing to do any press for the film (which probably led to its lackluster performance in theatres. "Dream House" was marketed as a haunting horror film, but it is neither haunting or much of a horror film, at all. Even with the actors the film has, it falls apart as soon as the twist occurs and the story goes in a completely new direction, turning into something else entirely- the type of film seen often before, unfortunately. After watching it, I can see why the people involved wanted nothing to do with it, as an end product, and perhaps would like it erased from their resume.
Craig is New York writer Will Atenton who moves his family – wife Libby (Weisz) and daughters Trish and Dee Dee (Taylor and Claire Geare) – to the burbs so he can escape the big city and work on his novel. It's all shiny, happy family until his neighbors Jack (Csokas) and Ann (Watts), who are engaged in a bitter custody battle over daughter Chloe (Fox), start looking at him funny and acting as if they already know this new guy on the block. Will's daughters start seeing figures lurking outside; Will begins to hear ominous voices; and the suburban-gothic tone, complete with mounting dread and half-repressed nightmares, blossoms into full-on crazy. No spoilers here, but the aforementioned Martin Scorsese film is a close family relative of this shopworn story.
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"The Double"
starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Mia Wasikowska, Wallace Shawn, Yasmin Paige, Noah Taylor, James Fox
directed by: Richard Ayoade
written by: Richard Ayoade (novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky)
First off, I was surprised to recognized the name of "The Double's" writer/director: Richard Ayoade, because I'd watched him the the British comedy series, The IT Crowd, and loved his comedic chops. He has apparently made another film, "Submarine," which is in my Netflix queue, and apparently much better than this rather dark and depressing reimagining of a Dostoevsky novella titled the same thing.
Ayoade's interpretation of the story is told within a dark and nondescript world, ruled by the all-consuming bureaucracy of competition and materialism, in a weirdly bizarre office-type world (much much darker and dank than the world of "Office Space" which really kind of tells the same type of story minus the "double" identity aspect). The mood within this world is unerring misery that the director never really puts into context for the audience, to make the main character's struggle compelling enough for us to care about how his world seems to unravel quickly. The story's interest is in the marginalized within a nightmarish industrial world, that's quite obvious. But there is absolutely no hope or good to be found, just utter and complete cynicism and depression (not uplifting if the viewer is looking for a happy ending, especially if they are familiar with or perhaps live within the real world of the industrial revolution and factory or office lifestyle). Movies should, to a certain degree, be a sort of escape for the depressing reality that people may find themselves within, not make them hate their lives even more.
Now, I know I might be asking for more than the story can really give, since it is based on Dostoevsky, but for the director to focus solely on the fatalism and dread of the story, along with the victimization of the protagonist (played by Jesse Eisenberg, in perhaps the only way he knows how to act), just makes this film a gloomy and pessimistic rant against "the man."
Ayoade builds the world around Simon as a complex of identical hovels, decrepit factories, and dreary offices that stretches out into seeming infinity and exists in endless night. One occupant of this dystopia is Simon (Jesse Eisenberg), a workaday drone who depends on his job as a clerk and is belittled and antagonized by every square foot of his surroundings. Indeed, the grimly stylized environs Ayoade realizes, often encrusted in grime and filth, seem calculated to strip Simon of his already meager confidence. Technology rules over everything, but nothing ever seems to pan out for Simon, whose work is ignored while he's glad-handled into staying in his miniscule position. What's worse, he arrives at work one day to find himself working alongside his doppelganger (Eisenberg), who quickly usurps and takes advantage of Simon's intellect and diligence to cozy up to the company's head honchos (James Fox and Wallace Shawn).
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"All the Lights in the Sky"
starring: Jane Adams, Sophia Takal, Simon Barrett, Lindsay Burdge, Larry Fessenden, Lawrence Michael Levine
directed by: Joe Swanberg
written by: Jane Adams and Joe Swanberg
Knowing that Joe Swanberg is really in his element with mumblecore films, where he sketches the idea of the story he wants to tell and film, but then really lets the actors flesh it out through improvised dialogue, I really wanted this small film to be more than what it is. It is very short, only an hour and 17 minutes long, but not enough happens in that short amount of time for the viewer to really become invested in the players or their story/troubles.
Jane Adams sort of plays herself, an aging actress who can only seem to get small, bit parts in films, but ironically is the focus on Swanberg's character study here. She is the sort of character that is quirky and fragile, whom you root for, laugh with/at sometimes, and ultimately want to wrap your arms around and protect. The story, which Adams cowrote with Swanberg touches on two subjects probably quite relevant to actresses in Hollywood (both older and younger): the concept of aging as an actress and the superficiality of the movie industry that doesn't really want or allow these real women to age without threatening the discovery of someone younger, perkier, and slightly better than them. I've heard several women in my own life say that it's not fair that when men get older than are sexier, look more distinguished, etc. I hear them.
The woman at the center of this piece is Marie (essentially a stylized version of Adams); an aging actress in her 40s with a lengthy career that has made her a known commodity, but not necessarily a star. The few roles that were coming her way are now going to Kristen Wiig, but she's content to take gigs on no-budget art house films because they're better than nothing. She lives on the shores of Malibu, jumping out of bed early every morning, changing into her wetsuit to paddle board. Her life is calming, free of entanglements, and more than a little lonely. It's also free of any excitement, until Marie's niece Faye (Sophia Takal, who looks strikingly almost like she could be Anna Kendrick's sister) arrives in town for a few days. Faye is 25-years-old, an aspiring actress, and clearly someone who looks up to her experienced aunt. Marie revels in the chance to impart the wisdom she's learned from years in the business.
The film hits its high moments while Marie and Faye are discussing the many hardships faced by actresses in Hollywood. Marie was never famous, but she knows people who are, and the feeling of being left behind still stings her deeply. She reflects on her waning sexual power, and the effect it's had on her not just professionally, but in her personal relationships with men. Now hitting middle age, she's unsure of herself sexually and unwilling to make compromises with her life. She has an older best friend, a sort of Zen paddle boarder, who she keeps finding reasons not to commit to. Marie begins what appears to be a fulfilling relationship with another man, and when it gets too serious drops it like the veggies in her complicated health smoothies.
All of this should make for an intriguing character study, especially with a younger aspiring actress tossed into the mix, but the film is remarkably free of any drama. While Swanberg gives the film a naturalistic look and Adams fully embodies a woman still in self-discovery, there's very little that truly digs beneath the surface. Marie has extended conversations with an electrician that go absolutely nowhere, and there's the not-so-subtle comparison to her and the beautiful, picturesque beach homes slowly being worn over the years. Despite the many keen observations "All the Light in the Sky" makes, ironically it's too superficial to take us anywhere interesting.
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