Interesting Films and Two Concerts.
Saturday night in Portland, Anna Nalick ended her brief tour run by playing at the Asylum (a rather small venue). I cannot believe it's taken me this long to see her, because I've always liked her, ever since she first hit the scene with her massive hit "Breathe (2 A.M.)" which was almost set to guarantee her instant success. Apparently that was not what she wanted though. She wanted to be a serious songwriter and the industry wanted something else for her- to become a pop star. She fought against it and stuck with her integrity (applaud her for that). Anyway, she's only put out one other album, largely unheard, but still rather good. She played a very mellow, stripped down set of old songs and new songs as she is preparing for a new album. She was great with the small crowd and I wish more people had come out to appreciate her.
Boston-based band, Palehound opened for her and did a pretty solid job, as well.
.................................................................................................
"The Last Survivors"
starring: Haley Lu Richardson, Booboo Stewart, Max Charles, Nicole Arianna Fox, Michael Welch, Jon Gries, Michael Massee, Rena Owen, Leo Lee, Barbara Crampton, Jacqueline Emerson
written and directed by: Thomas S. Hammock
This is a pleasant and surprisingly decent film. Writer/directer Hammock has successfully blended the post-apocalyptic world with the Western one, made familiar most successfully with John Wayne.
Opening with the tagline “Oregon, a few years from now,” the film depicts an eerily desolate landscape where teenagers Kendal (Haley Lu Richardson) and Dean (Booboo Stewart) are two of the few holdouts left in a region that hasn’t seen rain in a decade. Their outpost at the former Wallace Farm for Wayward Youth is one of the few left with a working well, which delivers a rapidly dwindling supply of fresh water as the underground source steadily diminishes. With Dean crippled by advancing kidney failure, the pair take shelter in the secluded attic of the farmhouse, keeping in touch with scattered nearby settlements by ham radio and planning their escape in an old crop-dusting plane that’s critically in need of spare parts.
Kendal spends much of the blistering-hot daytime hours cautiously searching abandoned vehicles for a very specific distributor cap compatible with the plane’s engine. She’s armed with an outsized pump-action shotgun and a rusty hatchet as protection against various aggressive vagrants and scavengers, trying to stay below the radar of violent water-hoarder Carson (JonGries) and his gang of marauding thugs.
Young actress Haley Lu Richardson really carries this film and carries it well. She seizes the opportunity to take the lead in this film as a reluctant but necessary guardian of "the well." Richardson really delivers a dynamic performance that centers around holding fast to her hope for a better future somewhere out there as well as her convictions to protect the threatened water supply. Kendal is like Katniss Everdeen, in a less remarkable post-apocalyptic world type of film, but still, nonetheless, a good film. Worth it.
............................................................................
"Adult World"
starring: Emma Roberts, Evan Peters, John Cusack, Chris Riggi, Shannon Woodward, Catherine Lloyd Burns, Reed Birney, Cloris Leachman,
written by: Andy Cochran
directed by: Scott Coffey
The title is meant as a double entendre. It is the name of the adult-sex toy shop in upstate New York where wannabe-poet Amy (Emma Roberts) takes a job, reluctantly. But, it also describes the greater stakes of the story, of anyone's life, the battle we all fight at some point: being a self-centered twentysomething who faces the reality of growing up and transitioning into the real world. Lena Dunham has explored this aspect of growing up quite well, in my opinion, with her HBO show "Girls." This film has many similarities to "Ghost World" (which was better, in my humble opinion).
Terry Zwigoff's film is a paragon of empathy, exploring its protagonist's many flaws without wallowing in them,Adult World employs a dubious strategy of maximizing Amy's obnoxious exterior without cluing the viewer into her internal life. The result is a character that resembles less a person than a simulacrum of disparaging clichés about the millennial generation.
Adult World establishes several things about Amy very quickly, and bluntly: she wants to become a renowned poet, she's determined and confident to the point of mania, and she doesn't understand anything about the world around her.
And herein lies the problem: Amy is not an interesting enough character, because she is not allowed to grow; or she does not want to grow. The filmmaker is not interested in making Amy into a likable character. There are really no attempts to humanize her. She stays as annoying and self-centered as she showed up.
Amy spends most of Adult World tripping and falling, accidentally offending people, losing cars and ineptly navigating public transportation systems, and aggressively stalking her favorite poet. That poet's name is Rat Billings, and as played by John Cusack, he's Amy's vicious and miserly opposite: Retreating from the world just as Amy is bullishly entering it, he spends the majority of the film either evading her or degrading her. Though he eventually enters a half-hearted mentorship position, he remains Adult World's de facto villain, if only because he makes Amy so much more likable by comparison.
And then, there's the added "love interest" plot between Roberts and Peters' characters. It seems unnecessary and just thrown in for extra value, when it ultimately does not add any value to the story. Although, this is the film that brought the actors together in real life and they are/were apparently engaged at one point.
Boston-based band, Palehound opened for her and did a pretty solid job, as well.
.................................................................................................
"The Last Survivors"
starring: Haley Lu Richardson, Booboo Stewart, Max Charles, Nicole Arianna Fox, Michael Welch, Jon Gries, Michael Massee, Rena Owen, Leo Lee, Barbara Crampton, Jacqueline Emerson
written and directed by: Thomas S. Hammock
This is a pleasant and surprisingly decent film. Writer/directer Hammock has successfully blended the post-apocalyptic world with the Western one, made familiar most successfully with John Wayne.
Opening with the tagline “Oregon, a few years from now,” the film depicts an eerily desolate landscape where teenagers Kendal (Haley Lu Richardson) and Dean (Booboo Stewart) are two of the few holdouts left in a region that hasn’t seen rain in a decade. Their outpost at the former Wallace Farm for Wayward Youth is one of the few left with a working well, which delivers a rapidly dwindling supply of fresh water as the underground source steadily diminishes. With Dean crippled by advancing kidney failure, the pair take shelter in the secluded attic of the farmhouse, keeping in touch with scattered nearby settlements by ham radio and planning their escape in an old crop-dusting plane that’s critically in need of spare parts.
Kendal spends much of the blistering-hot daytime hours cautiously searching abandoned vehicles for a very specific distributor cap compatible with the plane’s engine. She’s armed with an outsized pump-action shotgun and a rusty hatchet as protection against various aggressive vagrants and scavengers, trying to stay below the radar of violent water-hoarder Carson (JonGries) and his gang of marauding thugs.
Young actress Haley Lu Richardson really carries this film and carries it well. She seizes the opportunity to take the lead in this film as a reluctant but necessary guardian of "the well." Richardson really delivers a dynamic performance that centers around holding fast to her hope for a better future somewhere out there as well as her convictions to protect the threatened water supply. Kendal is like Katniss Everdeen, in a less remarkable post-apocalyptic world type of film, but still, nonetheless, a good film. Worth it.
............................................................................
"Adult World"
starring: Emma Roberts, Evan Peters, John Cusack, Chris Riggi, Shannon Woodward, Catherine Lloyd Burns, Reed Birney, Cloris Leachman,
written by: Andy Cochran
directed by: Scott Coffey
The title is meant as a double entendre. It is the name of the adult-sex toy shop in upstate New York where wannabe-poet Amy (Emma Roberts) takes a job, reluctantly. But, it also describes the greater stakes of the story, of anyone's life, the battle we all fight at some point: being a self-centered twentysomething who faces the reality of growing up and transitioning into the real world. Lena Dunham has explored this aspect of growing up quite well, in my opinion, with her HBO show "Girls." This film has many similarities to "Ghost World" (which was better, in my humble opinion).
Terry Zwigoff's film is a paragon of empathy, exploring its protagonist's many flaws without wallowing in them,Adult World employs a dubious strategy of maximizing Amy's obnoxious exterior without cluing the viewer into her internal life. The result is a character that resembles less a person than a simulacrum of disparaging clichés about the millennial generation.
Adult World establishes several things about Amy very quickly, and bluntly: she wants to become a renowned poet, she's determined and confident to the point of mania, and she doesn't understand anything about the world around her.
And herein lies the problem: Amy is not an interesting enough character, because she is not allowed to grow; or she does not want to grow. The filmmaker is not interested in making Amy into a likable character. There are really no attempts to humanize her. She stays as annoying and self-centered as she showed up.
Amy spends most of Adult World tripping and falling, accidentally offending people, losing cars and ineptly navigating public transportation systems, and aggressively stalking her favorite poet. That poet's name is Rat Billings, and as played by John Cusack, he's Amy's vicious and miserly opposite: Retreating from the world just as Amy is bullishly entering it, he spends the majority of the film either evading her or degrading her. Though he eventually enters a half-hearted mentorship position, he remains Adult World's de facto villain, if only because he makes Amy so much more likable by comparison.
And then, there's the added "love interest" plot between Roberts and Peters' characters. It seems unnecessary and just thrown in for extra value, when it ultimately does not add any value to the story. Although, this is the film that brought the actors together in real life and they are/were apparently engaged at one point.
Comments
Post a Comment