Netflix Does It Again....
"The Ritual"
starring: Rafe Spall, Arsher Ali, Robert James-Collier, Sam Troughton, Paul Reid, Maria Erwolter
written by: Joe Barton
directed by: David Bruckner
Netflix is at it again, trying really hard to put their own stamp on films and genres that seem to have been beaten to death (pun intended). Here they present us with another Original. This one is a horror film set mostly in northern Sweden, along the 270-mile King's Trail. Four college buddies have traveled there to honor a fifth friend, who recently died in a liquor store robbery gone bad.
The filmmaker definitely studied foreign horror films, at least, and builds the tension and suspense of just what the hell is in these woods, stalking these men, but when they decide to reveal the big scary, it seems trite and cheap. The third act loses the film, for me, not just with the reveal, but apparently with the message these men receive about "being men" by standing up and fighting a bad monster, who's been picking them off one by one, as it relates to their own real lives- and how they should've been more macho and stood up to junkie holding up a liquor store, in order to save their friend's life.
I did not like this payoff in the end and it definitely ruined the suspense and horror that had been built up for a solid hour.
...................................................................
"Thumper"
starring: Eliza Taylor, Pablo Schreiber, Lena Headey, Ben Feldman, Daniel Webber, Jazzy De Lisser, Briggitte Kali Canales, Grant Harvey, Allius Barnes
written and directed by: Jordan Ross
Thanks to hard-hitting, brutally realistic television shows like "The Wire" and "Breaking Bad" taking a look at drugs, drug dealers, the police investigating, et al is a hot-button topic and when done right (which the aforementioned shows do perfectly and almost ruin anyone else's chances at getting it right), it can be quite effective. Thankfully, this is an indie film that doesn't have to pull away punches and can be as "real" as it wants. Eliza Taylor is a great actress, sort of flying under the radar for years now. This film dives into the seedy underground/underbelly of the drug world in a small town that has seemingly been devastated by poverty.
Director Jordon Ross introduces us to this world where drugs are deeply infesting this small Southern California town. From the first scene, we are introduced to Wyatt (Pablo Schreiber). He seems like a normal family man who may be down on his luck. He takes care of his children, makes sure they don’t watch too much TV to “rot their brains,” and has a great relationship with his children’s’ mother. Not even one scene later, you see he is a cutthroat drug dealer, untrusting of new faces, and quick to exert his dominance when he feels necessary. This is a prime example to show that there are plenty of gray lines for the characters in this movie.
New to town is Kat Carter (Eliza Taylor), who lets the local boy Beaver (Daniel Webber) cheat on her for an exam he clearly studied for. To show his thanks (and because he really is attracted to her), he wants to ask her out at the nearby hangout spot where the local teen drink and do drugs. However, Kat is holding on to her own dark secret. Whenever she is offered a hit of anything, she has an excuse.
Turns out Kat is an undercover police officer, whose goal is to try and get in close with the local high school drug dealers, in order to bust their supplier. While a film like 21 Jump Street took a comical approach to cops infiltrating high schools to bust drug dealers, Thumper takes a much darker turn. Kat has already ruined her marriage because of her dedication to her job. Her son doesn’t even recognize her and calls his father’s fiancé “Mom.” Kat also is starting to develop sympathy for Beaver, who is a small-time dealer she knows she has to bust, who has a terrible home life complete with a mentally challenged brother he has to take care of and an abusive father to neglects and beats both of them. On top of that, Kat’s boss Ellen (Lena Headey) just wants busts, not caring for those caught in the crosshairs. Kat is good at her job, but it’s at the cost of her conscience and her soul.
All three main actors bring their A-game to the film and the film is just a heartbreaking reality check for small-town America. I love indie films because they present a realistic story and sometimes life just doesn't give you a happy ending. If it's a case study for the drug war, it certainly shows that no one really comes out clean.
...................................................................
"Lay the Favorite"
starring: Rebecca Hall, Joel Murray, Corbin Bernsen, Jo Newman, Laura Prepon, Bruce Willis, Rio Hackford, Frank Grillo
written by: D.V. DeVincentis (Beth Raymer, memoir)
directed by: Stephen Frears
Say what you will about Bruce Willis as an actor, thanks in large part to his roles as a bad-ass, ass-kicking "motherfucker" in the Die Hard franchise and anything else that he was sort of typecasted into. That sort of changed with his comedic role in "The Whole Nine Yards" and people started to look at him a little differently- like, hey, maybe this guy CAN be funny. he even had a brief guest starring role on "Friends" as a neurotic father of a college girl. I like seeing the less-serious side of Willis and think he can handle himself in these roles.
And speaking of stretching yourself out of your comfort zone, Rebecca Hall certainly deserves plenty of kudos for taking on this real-life character and presenting her with more than enough bravado. Hall is usually the girlfriend or girl-in-distress from films like The Prestige, The Town, The Gift, The Dinner (wow, a lot of her films start with "The").
Anyone who has seen Hall before will do a double-take upon first laying eyes on her here as Beth Raymer, a low-rent Florida floozy in the tiniest of jean shorts whose Vegas dreams remain elusive until she encounters Dink (Willis). A sports gambler with a small, smart-talking staff, Dink takes Beth on to make bets, run errands and work the phones and before long realizes she’s a good-luck charm with a genuine gift for numbers.
Starring the ever-classy Rebecca Hall in the unlikely role of a big-mouthed “private dancer” who aspires to become a Vegas cocktail waitress but instead becomes a valued aide to a pro gambler, this broad entertainment also features nice turns by Bruce Willis and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
The extra characters and subplots are not exactly necessary as this is clearly a film about Beth and how she "develops" as a person in this gambling world. You lose a bit of interest when her story veers off a bit because you don't really care about her love life and I think the story was strong enough staying in Vegas.
......................................................................
"The Men Who Stare at Goats"
starring: George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey, Stephen Lang, Robert Patrick, Waleed Zuaiter, Stephen Root, Glenn Morshower, Nick Offerman, Tim Griffin, Rebecca Mader
written by: Jon Ronson and Peter Straughan
directed by: Grant Heslov
Here is one of those memoirs that you sort of take with a grain of salt, where the author/main character is one of those anti-heroes and untrustworthy narrators to his own story. Unreliable. It's impossible to tell what is real and factual in this fictionalized retelling of a military story set in the initial phases of the Iraq War. It's a comedic war film, if you will. And it's certainly interesting, albeit also terrifying if it's actually true.
Reeling from his wife’s infidelity, journalist Bob Wilton (McGregor) leaves his podunk paper in Ann Arbor, Mich., seeking the wilder climes of Iraq, circa the second invasion. Cooling his heels in Kuwait, Wilton more or less bumps into the story of a lifetime, packaged neatly in the mustachioed frame of Clooney’s Lyn Cassady, psychic spy. That’s just one name for the particular breed of soldier that came out of the military’s mid-Eighties’ “New Earth Army,” the brainchild of Bill Django (Bridges), a Vietnam veteran who went out on a fact-finding mission for alternative fighting methods and came back to base six years later a long-haired peacenik proponent of yoga, juice fasts, and the possibilities of invisibility and telepathy for his newly formed regiment of “Jedi warriors.”
Lyn relates all this to Bob as they travel into Iraq together, and the structure is not always an elegant one: Transitions from the training camp at Fort Bragg to present-day desert play abruptly and sometimes too thematically on the nose. These flashbacks are narrated by Bob (“Lyn told me …”) without the addition of any other sources to confirm or deny, which has the effect of legitimizing Lyn’s story for the viewer (at least within the confines of the film), when it’s clear Heslov and his screenwriter Peter Straughan intended there to be some doubt for dramatic purposes.
Clooney knows his way around military characters and films about war as he has had plenty of roles as such. He does a great job playing a deceptively funny and yet serious military man, relating his story to a journalist (who may not himself be a reliable relayer of truth).
starring: Rafe Spall, Arsher Ali, Robert James-Collier, Sam Troughton, Paul Reid, Maria Erwolter
written by: Joe Barton
directed by: David Bruckner
Netflix is at it again, trying really hard to put their own stamp on films and genres that seem to have been beaten to death (pun intended). Here they present us with another Original. This one is a horror film set mostly in northern Sweden, along the 270-mile King's Trail. Four college buddies have traveled there to honor a fifth friend, who recently died in a liquor store robbery gone bad.
The Ritual, based on the novel by Adam Nevill, is besieged with strange happenings, including Runic-like symbols carved onto trees (rather than built out of twigs), but it spoils its tension by elaborating on the nature of the evil—more godlike and primeval than a mere American witch—that plagues the four friends.
The trouble for these men begins when, while footslogging, the emotionally weakest, Dom (Sam Troughton), twists his ankle. The group’s de facto leader, Hutch (Rob James-Collier), suggests that they cut their two-day march back to the lodge down to one by improvising a shortcut through the woods. It’s a familiar mistake made by the characters in these sorts of films, and they’ll make several more, including deviating from their determined course yet again. But you can forgive Nevill and screenwriter Joe Barton because Bruckner creates an eerie and steadily intensifying atmosphere, established not through jump scares, but withheld visual information, creepy discoveries, and badly boding omens.
Slowed down afterward by a storm, the men discover an empty cabin, where Phil (Asher Ali) finds a sort of pagan icon made of antlers, bark, and branches occupying an upstairs room; everyone sleeps on the first floor and each has a disorienting nightmare. Our protagonist, Luke (Rafe Spall), relives the murder of their friend, Robert (Paul Reid)—which he witnessed while hiding behind the liquor store’s shelving unit, filling him with guilt and shame—as he does throughout the film, entering a recurring psychic space that’s half forest and half store, half remembered and half real. The filmmaker definitely studied foreign horror films, at least, and builds the tension and suspense of just what the hell is in these woods, stalking these men, but when they decide to reveal the big scary, it seems trite and cheap. The third act loses the film, for me, not just with the reveal, but apparently with the message these men receive about "being men" by standing up and fighting a bad monster, who's been picking them off one by one, as it relates to their own real lives- and how they should've been more macho and stood up to junkie holding up a liquor store, in order to save their friend's life.
I did not like this payoff in the end and it definitely ruined the suspense and horror that had been built up for a solid hour.
...................................................................
"Thumper"
starring: Eliza Taylor, Pablo Schreiber, Lena Headey, Ben Feldman, Daniel Webber, Jazzy De Lisser, Briggitte Kali Canales, Grant Harvey, Allius Barnes
written and directed by: Jordan Ross
Thanks to hard-hitting, brutally realistic television shows like "The Wire" and "Breaking Bad" taking a look at drugs, drug dealers, the police investigating, et al is a hot-button topic and when done right (which the aforementioned shows do perfectly and almost ruin anyone else's chances at getting it right), it can be quite effective. Thankfully, this is an indie film that doesn't have to pull away punches and can be as "real" as it wants. Eliza Taylor is a great actress, sort of flying under the radar for years now. This film dives into the seedy underground/underbelly of the drug world in a small town that has seemingly been devastated by poverty.
Director Jordon Ross introduces us to this world where drugs are deeply infesting this small Southern California town. From the first scene, we are introduced to Wyatt (Pablo Schreiber). He seems like a normal family man who may be down on his luck. He takes care of his children, makes sure they don’t watch too much TV to “rot their brains,” and has a great relationship with his children’s’ mother. Not even one scene later, you see he is a cutthroat drug dealer, untrusting of new faces, and quick to exert his dominance when he feels necessary. This is a prime example to show that there are plenty of gray lines for the characters in this movie.
New to town is Kat Carter (Eliza Taylor), who lets the local boy Beaver (Daniel Webber) cheat on her for an exam he clearly studied for. To show his thanks (and because he really is attracted to her), he wants to ask her out at the nearby hangout spot where the local teen drink and do drugs. However, Kat is holding on to her own dark secret. Whenever she is offered a hit of anything, she has an excuse.
Turns out Kat is an undercover police officer, whose goal is to try and get in close with the local high school drug dealers, in order to bust their supplier. While a film like 21 Jump Street took a comical approach to cops infiltrating high schools to bust drug dealers, Thumper takes a much darker turn. Kat has already ruined her marriage because of her dedication to her job. Her son doesn’t even recognize her and calls his father’s fiancé “Mom.” Kat also is starting to develop sympathy for Beaver, who is a small-time dealer she knows she has to bust, who has a terrible home life complete with a mentally challenged brother he has to take care of and an abusive father to neglects and beats both of them. On top of that, Kat’s boss Ellen (Lena Headey) just wants busts, not caring for those caught in the crosshairs. Kat is good at her job, but it’s at the cost of her conscience and her soul.
All three main actors bring their A-game to the film and the film is just a heartbreaking reality check for small-town America. I love indie films because they present a realistic story and sometimes life just doesn't give you a happy ending. If it's a case study for the drug war, it certainly shows that no one really comes out clean.
...................................................................
"Lay the Favorite"
starring: Rebecca Hall, Joel Murray, Corbin Bernsen, Jo Newman, Laura Prepon, Bruce Willis, Rio Hackford, Frank Grillo
written by: D.V. DeVincentis (Beth Raymer, memoir)
directed by: Stephen Frears
Say what you will about Bruce Willis as an actor, thanks in large part to his roles as a bad-ass, ass-kicking "motherfucker" in the Die Hard franchise and anything else that he was sort of typecasted into. That sort of changed with his comedic role in "The Whole Nine Yards" and people started to look at him a little differently- like, hey, maybe this guy CAN be funny. he even had a brief guest starring role on "Friends" as a neurotic father of a college girl. I like seeing the less-serious side of Willis and think he can handle himself in these roles.
And speaking of stretching yourself out of your comfort zone, Rebecca Hall certainly deserves plenty of kudos for taking on this real-life character and presenting her with more than enough bravado. Hall is usually the girlfriend or girl-in-distress from films like The Prestige, The Town, The Gift, The Dinner (wow, a lot of her films start with "The").
Anyone who has seen Hall before will do a double-take upon first laying eyes on her here as Beth Raymer, a low-rent Florida floozy in the tiniest of jean shorts whose Vegas dreams remain elusive until she encounters Dink (Willis). A sports gambler with a small, smart-talking staff, Dink takes Beth on to make bets, run errands and work the phones and before long realizes she’s a good-luck charm with a genuine gift for numbers.
Starring the ever-classy Rebecca Hall in the unlikely role of a big-mouthed “private dancer” who aspires to become a Vegas cocktail waitress but instead becomes a valued aide to a pro gambler, this broad entertainment also features nice turns by Bruce Willis and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
The defining aspect of Lay the Favorite is that Beth has a big personality — in fact, a very big personality. She enthuses over everything, reacting to the smallest event or comment as if it was going to be the thing that finally changes her life. She’s an enthusiast, which in many respects is a fine thing, except that she gets silly and out of hand at times, notably when it comes to Dink himself.
Dink’s glamour-puss wife, the wonderfully named Tulip (Zeta-Jones), returns to town, immediately picks up the strong vibes between Beth and her husband and behaves like a queen bitch until Dink is obliged to fire the uncomprehending Beth. At first, Tulip is presented in strictly one-dimensional terms as a haughty spoilsport.
In the meantime, the impulsive Beth picks up a nice fellow, journalist Jeremy (Joshua Jackson), in a casino and moves with him to New York, where she is soon taken under wing by a friendly rival of Dink’s, the flamboyant Rosie (Vince Vaughn), who induces the ever-impressionable Beth to become involved in his illegal bookmaking schemes.
The extra characters and subplots are not exactly necessary as this is clearly a film about Beth and how she "develops" as a person in this gambling world. You lose a bit of interest when her story veers off a bit because you don't really care about her love life and I think the story was strong enough staying in Vegas.
......................................................................
"The Men Who Stare at Goats"
starring: George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey, Stephen Lang, Robert Patrick, Waleed Zuaiter, Stephen Root, Glenn Morshower, Nick Offerman, Tim Griffin, Rebecca Mader
written by: Jon Ronson and Peter Straughan
directed by: Grant Heslov
Here is one of those memoirs that you sort of take with a grain of salt, where the author/main character is one of those anti-heroes and untrustworthy narrators to his own story. Unreliable. It's impossible to tell what is real and factual in this fictionalized retelling of a military story set in the initial phases of the Iraq War. It's a comedic war film, if you will. And it's certainly interesting, albeit also terrifying if it's actually true.
Reeling from his wife’s infidelity, journalist Bob Wilton (McGregor) leaves his podunk paper in Ann Arbor, Mich., seeking the wilder climes of Iraq, circa the second invasion. Cooling his heels in Kuwait, Wilton more or less bumps into the story of a lifetime, packaged neatly in the mustachioed frame of Clooney’s Lyn Cassady, psychic spy. That’s just one name for the particular breed of soldier that came out of the military’s mid-Eighties’ “New Earth Army,” the brainchild of Bill Django (Bridges), a Vietnam veteran who went out on a fact-finding mission for alternative fighting methods and came back to base six years later a long-haired peacenik proponent of yoga, juice fasts, and the possibilities of invisibility and telepathy for his newly formed regiment of “Jedi warriors.”
Lyn relates all this to Bob as they travel into Iraq together, and the structure is not always an elegant one: Transitions from the training camp at Fort Bragg to present-day desert play abruptly and sometimes too thematically on the nose. These flashbacks are narrated by Bob (“Lyn told me …”) without the addition of any other sources to confirm or deny, which has the effect of legitimizing Lyn’s story for the viewer (at least within the confines of the film), when it’s clear Heslov and his screenwriter Peter Straughan intended there to be some doubt for dramatic purposes.
Clooney knows his way around military characters and films about war as he has had plenty of roles as such. He does a great job playing a deceptively funny and yet serious military man, relating his story to a journalist (who may not himself be a reliable relayer of truth).
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