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Quick Cuts
Reviews by Bill Johnson
These capsule reviews of movies offer a basic overview of what these Hollywood movies did (or didn't do) to engage an audience. They are not meant to convey a full review of the movie, or a scene by scene breakdown of story characters. All reviews by Bill Johnson, copyright 1999-2025.
Sinners
Complex storytelling. A scene that opens with a blues song but becomes a commentary on music through the ages is thrilling to watch. In the film, two African American brothers return to the deep South from Chicago in 1932 after stealing money from the Capone mob. To them, Chicago was "Jim Crow with tall buildings." The film shows the various influences of Christianity, African beliefs, Jim Crow, and throwing another ancient horror into the mix. Highly recommended.
3-Body Problem
Science fiction at its finest, a series that explores big ideas. Human contact with aliens has led some to feel the advanced aliens are gods. The 3-body problem is something that comes out of that contact. Select human scientists are given devices that let them explore what happens to an alien society on a planet that orbits three stars. When that orbit approaches one star too closely, the society is destroyed. That's the 3-body problem the scientists are asked to explore.
Then the aliens announce they'll be arriving to colonize Earth...in 400 years. How are the societies of Earth to respond?
That is one of the ideas explored in this series.
In some of the capsule reviews posted here, one comment I make is that expressing an idea is not the same as exploring an idea. This series acts out how to explore ideas.
Highly recommended.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
posted 7/8/2023
I make a distinction between plot and story. Plot is concrete, a resolution of an event or series of events. Story, though, is often about the why of a film. Typically that why is rooted in something the main character seeks.Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a text book example of plot. Every stage of the film revolves around the outcome of some event, like a chase scene. In this movie, in the opening scenes, it's whether Indiana or a Nazi scientist will find and keep a dial created in ancient Greece.
The Nazi scientist believes the dial will identify a fissure in time that would allow someone to travel to the past.
Most of the scenes in the movie track to action sequences that revolve around chases to capture the dial.
There are also references to earlier Indiana films. All clever and fun.
Half way through the movie I considered leaving because I found all the repetitious chase scenes dramatically dull.
What the story is about, the why of the movie, the answer to the question, what does the main character seek? That comes in the final scene of the movie. It's revealed that the elderly Indiana wanted to feel his life still had purpose and meaning.
Think of a version of the movie Rocky where we don't find out that Rocky is a nobody who wants to be a somebody until the last scene of the movie.
Really, watch any big budget Hollywood film that has failed to meet expectations and do this. Watch the first 25 minutes and try and answer the question, what does the main character want?
Often, there's no answer, just plot questions.
There were two Hollywood movies that tanked where the main character wanted nothing to do with what was happening around them, John Carter and the recent sword in the stone movie.
Now think of Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark. We know - we feel - that the moral Indiana is in an intense competition with amoral characters. Each step of the film, we share Indiana's journey.
To help people visualize this, I use The Wizard of Oz. When we meet the Tin Man, the Scare Crow, and the Lion, we find out what they seek. We share each character's journey.
There's no journey to share in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Tedious Plot. Or pretty much any big budget Hollywood film that tanks.
Plot questions do serve a purpose. We can always assign meaning to the action in Dial. That, I believe, lends itself to people coming up with clever ideas for plot/chase scenes.
It requires a deeper understanding of the mechanics of storytelling to create a compelling story.
Guardians of the Galaxy Part Three
posted 5/12/2023
Well, there's a good dog, and backstory for Rocket. The story plays out through a lens of family, rejoining or moving on. I found the film emotionally satisfying, but I'm a fan.
Watching the credits, it felt like a significant number
of people working in Hollywood were part of the crew.
White Noise
posted 1/1/2023
The movie is a hipster's ball of clever dialogue. It opens with a married hipster couple talking about death. But it feels more like a glib competition to be the most hip.Deep into the film, it comes out that the wife of the couple really is suffering from an acute anxiety about death. The problem is the shift in tone from hipster glibness to realistic feeling, then slipping back into a hipster ending, feels awkward.
A radical shift in tone is one way to try and reach for a climax. The problem is when the shift feels unnatural or forced. To be plain spoken, it doesn't work in White Noise.
This kind of shift can be done to great effect. Altman's MASH is one example, and the film also used overlapping dialogue. Another example came from a Rodney Dangerfield movie of all places, Back to School.
The remake of King Kong had three separate tones, none of which worked together.
Such shifts are easy to do, and hard to do well.
Stalker
posted 11/30/2022
Stalker is an amazing film created by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. The movie has many haunting, beautifully realized scenes. It's a singular film that I highly recommend to film buffs.The main character is taking a writer and a scientist into a zone affected by a meteorite in the hope to spark in them belief in hope.
The long scenes with a focus on dialog have the intensity (for me) of being in the audience and watching a powerful play. The characters have a directness not found in most American films. The audience is being asked to ponder what the characters are saying.
Cam
posted 4/15/2022
Alice makes a living as a sex worker who performs to a live camera. She gets tokens for performing requests as a kind of innocent high school girl named Lola. All is going fine until Alice wakes up to find herself performing. Alice tries to get the imposter shut down, but no one will help.Alice discovers the number one person on her network is deceased but still being performed by a perfect copycat.
A client lets Alice know that IT is cloning girls. In the end, Alice regains control of her program.
The movie offers no explanation for what is happening, just a focus on Alice' life. Very creepy and well done, and observant about the life of someone doing sex work.
The King's Man
posted 1/12/2022
This film has a dizzying number of tones. It starts out dramatic, becomes melodramatic, and the film feels vague about a purpose. Then finally the movie hits the same tone of cheeky, droll charm as earlier King's Man movies. Then back to drama, gritty war scenes, overwhelming grief, then a big final of violence.There's a brief shot of the British use of concentration camps in the Boer wars in Southern Africa. A shot of British soldiers being mowed down in a battle is about one hundred men in World War I, then a shot of probably fifty thousand artillery shells. The British lost 20,000 dead in the first day of the battle of Somme.
Just another tone.
Pig
posted 11/29/2021
Nicolas Cage plays a reclusive man living in the woods, hunting truffles with a companion pig. When the pig is kidnapped, Cage goes to Portland, Oregon to find his pig.In Portland, he must also confront his past.
The film conveys the power of giving a character a clearly defined goal that the character will do anything to accomplish.
Squid Games
posted 10/22/2021
This South Korean series shown on Netflix is about how a group of poor people are enlisted to play a series of games. The losers of each game die. As losers are eliminated, a pot of money that goes to a final winner grows.This is a violent show that conveys how desperate poor people are and what kind of bonds form and break as the games continue.
Even the rich people who view the final games lead barren, empty lives.
The series is a powerful look at the human condition and how poverty affects people.
I'm Thinking About Ending Things
posted 8/1/2021
This film is written and directed by Charlie Kaufman, who wrote the scripts for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, and Synedote, New York. This new film is a puzzle piece. A young man is taking his girlfriend to meet his parents who live in a rural area. As the story progresses, the girlfriend's background changes from poet to painter to physicist, among others. The key to understanding the film is the boyfriend saying that life is a series of scenes we replay.
Tenet
posted 1/12/2021
In Nolan's first film Following, a bearded, straggly, conceited actor decides to follow people at random. One of those people is a killer who plays to the actor's vanity to take a walk on the wild side. Everywhere the killer takes the actor, implicates the actor in a murder.The time line of the story is chopped into tiny bits, so it takes a significant amount of time to even figure out what is happening.
The film is a brilliant puzzle. Unfortunately, there's zero reason to care what happens to the vain actor, so there's resolution of the plot, but no fulfillment of a story.
In Tenet, which involves an inversion of time (sequences running backward), the main character is named The Protagonist. There's just about zero effort made to care what happens to him. There is a small reason developed to care what happens to the wife of the villain near the end of the film. The threat in the film is the ending of all life on Earth.
The clever action sequences that run backwards are clever. They create a sense of something at stake about as much as any big budget action scenes in Hollywood films.
There is one exchange of dialogue that is unintentionally funny. In Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Earth is destroyed to make way for a kind of galactic freeway off ramp. Since there are an infinite number of alternative dimensions and Earths, killing a few billion people is played for a laugh in Hitchhikers. That people in the future would support the annihilation of Earth because there are more copies is meant to be taken seriously in Tenet, but it still makes no sense. The people in the future will die with the rest of us if the villain in Tenet gets his way.
No amount of time inversion can save the ending of Tenet from the promise of a sequel if this film is a blockbuster. You'd think someone in the future would have sent back reviews of Tenet that suggest a sequel is not in the cards.
Terminator, Dark Fate
posted 10/12/2020
I watched this movie again. I found it developed a quality of humanity and a moral center half way into the film, with Arnold as the original terminator who is now a family man.When I see a flawed sequel like this, I wonder, did the people who made this movie watch the original and its sequel? They have the action scenes, but big-budget action scenes aren't a substitute for powerful storytelling.
Throwing out words like fate and choice doesn't automatically create a story if those ideas aren't woven into the fabric of the film.
The Death of Stalin
posted 8/24/2020
This darkly humorous movie is about the night before and the days following the death of Stalin and how his political survivors maneuvered to stay atop ruling the Soviet Union. There's no attempt at accents, which allows the various actors to focus on their characters. Very funny movie in the vein of Yes, Prime Minister. Since staying alive is what's at stake, the story has a clear, dramatic focus.
Jojo Rabbit
posted 5/31/2020
Jojo Rabbit is a ten year old boy in Germany near the end of World War II. He loves being a Nazi and lives with his mother and has Hitler as an imaginary friend. He becomes aware that his mother shelters a Jewish girl in a hidden attic space.The scenes with Hitler are funny and capture how a boy's imagination works, but there's an issue of tones. The mother wears beautiful clothes and styles her hair. Those tones don't quite work with the other scenes. And there's also only the occasional note in the background of the looming poverty of residents as the war draws closer.
I had to think to recall a movie that pulled together mixed tones. That would be Harold and Maude, which had a great soundtrack of music by Cat Stevens to convey emotion and tie scenes together.
Jojo Rabbit is a singular vision.
The Lighthouse
posted 5/24/2020
This is a dark story about two men posted to a lighthouse. The older man is a heavy drinker who keeps to himself the duty of cleaning the light. In the nude while masturbating.He threatens to report the young man for not doing his job. Eventually it comes out the young man is on the run using an assumed identity.
A question that is raised is if the older man even exists or is created from the young man's descent into madness.
A very dark film. Beautifully acted and staged, but entirely grim. This is not for everyone.
Joker
posted 10/9/19
This film is brilliantly acted by Joaquin Phoenix. The movie sets out the descent into utter madness of a barely working clown when his meds are stopped because of budget cuts. The film offers a gritty portrait of his life and delusions. But the ending of the film strains for a big moment that doesn't register.In Fellini's 8 1/2, the director Quito is creatively stuck while trying to find an ending for his latest film. He sets out on a path of 'retiring' the memories and moments of his life that have defined him and his creative spirit. At the climax of the film, he realizes he can integrate all those memories to support his creative self and this is acted out by a celebratory ending that includes a marching band. This scene has been recreated in other movies, including Big Fish and Shortbus.
The moment of celebration in Joker is set off by Author Fleck killing a talk show host on live TV setting off a riot for which he is a symbol. But the intense focus on Arthur's life never quite explains why he has become that symbol and, if he is that symbol, why anyone would care about Arthur Fleck.
Somehow the moment is meant to convey that Arthur is fully integrating with his persona the Joker. I was left wondering if it was just another delusion.
Peanut Butter Falcon
posted 9/14/19
This film has many wonderful small moments that add up to a very moving movie with engaging story characters. Recommended.The movie is a reminder that it doesn't take special effects to create a special movie.
Midsommar
posted 7/7/19
A beautifully shot movie. Several male students and a girlfriend go to a remote commune in Sweden to observe a once in 90 years festival. They are soon caught up in a world of rituals that require human sacrifice.There's much to admire about the film, but the minor characters could easily be labeled Victim 1, Victim 2, etc.
There are plot twists that require buy in from the audience that didn't quite work for me.
Glass
posted 1/21/19
The purpose of this film is to explore the director's idea that comic book heroes are based on real people who are the next step in human evolution. The characters are in the service of that story premise.There are two scenes in the movie that resonate emotionally. A young cheerleader survived in Split because like Wendal Crumb, she had been abused by an adult. She has a touching scene where she speaks to Wendal. Near the end of the film, she again speaks to Wendal.
There are a few faint stabs at developing emotion, but they aren't the focus of the story or the story characters.
The Endless
posted 5/10/18
Two brothers return to a death cult they escaped. Odd events and
situations multiply. It's never quite clear, by intention, what
is behind the mysterious situations that revolve in part around time loops.
This is a wonderful example of what can be accomplished in a low-budget film. Definitely recommended to anyone interested in low-budget film making.
A Quiet Place
posted 4/11/18
A thoughtful, intelligent horror film about a family trapped on a farm by
alien creatures that attack based on human sounds. The focus of the film is on the
family dynamics.
The film is a wonderful example of visual storytelling and how much can be conveyed without dialogue and how tension can be escalated visually.
Highly recommended.
Black Panther
posted 2/16/18
A beautifully composed film. A young prince of a technologically advanced, hidden African kingdom is told by his father it's difficult to be both a good king and a good man. He sees his role as continuing to keep his kingdom hidden from the larger world. When he loses his kingdom to a young man who wants to use the kingdom's technology to create an African-centric world, he must fight to regain his kingdom and better understand his role in the larger world.The film developers an interesting mythology for this kingdom and colorful costumes that are a pleasure to behold.
Highly recommended.
Justice League
posted 11/21/17
The film is busy with the introduction of several new characters. Where the film struggles is with a purpose and a villain who challenges that purpose. At the end of the movie, there's a narration about hope, and at the beginning of the movie, an introduction to the idea of fear being a driving force. But the villain of the movie comes across as generic, just another monster out to destroy Earth. In the end, there's no fulfillment to a story promise and a weak resolution when the monster is vanquished.Telling a story with multiple main characters is easy to do and hard to do well. This film is an example of that.
Blade Runner 2049
posted 10/25/17
In the original Blade Runner which is hauntingly beautiful, on a dying Earth the replicants have an urgent, palpable desire to live. In Blade Runner 2049, K, a new generation replicant, goes from self to self-aware. Interesting against a back drop of humanity being over taken again, but it doesn't feel urgent.Characters in the film say it's urgent, but it doesn't feel urgent.
Lucky
posted 10/23/17
In this film Harry Dean Stanton plays Lucky, an elderly man facing death while he lives out the daily routine of his life.Harry passed away recently and I will miss his presence in movies.
Happy Death Day
posted 10/13/17
This horror film/comedy is a blend of Groundhog Day and Scream. A mean-spirited co-ed is killed at the end of her birthday. She wakes to relive the day. Her main pursuits are to survive and then figure out who the killer is to see if that will help her survive.The film takes care of business. The young actors put some energy into their roles. Ultimately the young girl becomes a better person through her experiences.
The film doesn't have the depth of Groundhog Day, but the under-30 audience I saw the film with seemed to enjoy the experience, as I did.
Wonder Woman
posted 6/10/17
Wonderful film that takes the time to do a dramatic and engaging origin story. At each stage of the story we're allowed to
share the feelings of the main characters, which gives access to the storytelling.
A pleasure to watch.
I wish someone could build a time machine and have this director go back and redo Suicide Squad and Batman Versus Superman.
Get Out
posted 3/23/17
This is a thoughtful horror film. A young black artist engaged to a white girl goes to
meet her parents. Everything that happens is slightly off, but he can't tell if he's just
being paranoid because he's black.
Recommended.
Midnight Special
posted 3/21/17
This film has a plot that slowly reveals what is happening. Two men are trying to take a boy with special abilities to a particular destination, while dogged by members of a church group and an NSA scientist. There's a story here about family, from natural to artificial to meta-human. What the story is about is also a slow reveal.This kind of structure means the audience has trouble anticipating anything, and since drama revolves around anticipation of an outcome, this film doesn't feel compelling after its dramatic opening. Interesting, and a powerful beginning, worth seeing for those who like unusual science fiction films.
Arrival
posted 11/22/16
I love films with complicated plots, and this film has an amazing plot/story. I can't say much about the film without
revealing why I love it so much. Recommended.
Don't Breathe
posted 8/26/16
Three teens break into a blind man's home to rob him. That's the set up. How this movie develops and
plays out in a suspenseful way makes it a great example for folks new to screen writing. The tension in this film
builds and builds and builds.
To talk about the plot would spoil some of the effects.
Recommended.
Suicide Squad
posted 8/6/16
When a big budget Hollywood film fails to satisfy, the underlying problem is often because of skewed story mechanics. Suicide Squad
is a great example of that.
The foundation of what I teach is that a story creates movement, and that movement transports an audience. So a film or story that doesn't begin by going somewhere starts with a problem. The language often used to describe this kind of storytelling is a need to introduce characters. The flaw in this logic is that generally, the story doesn't begin moving forward until after all the introductions.
An example of how a film with a large cast can be done well is L.A. Confidential. It's a story about illusion, reality, and identity. Because that's introduced up front, and all the major characters have issues around identity, the opening scenes of the film both introduces the story and sets it into motion.
None of that happens in SG. I had no idea what the story was about until deep into the film. The plot, something about a witch and her brother destroying the world and taking over. I always have the same problem with this type of scenario. If the world is destroyed and humanity wiped out, what's left to take over?
That said, at least those in the Suicide Squad have something to do now, battling faceless enemies for an obscure reason until they reach what Syd Field calls Plot Point Two, that moment in a story when all seems lost. In a typical Hollywood film, this is about 90 minutes in. At PPII in SG we finally get a suggestion for a story, that the evil doers who have survived to this point are more moral than the normal people who brought them together and command them.
That's fine, and if it had been introduced in the opening scenes of the film, the story and all those character introductions would have had a context and served a purpose. Think of a version of Rocky where you don't find out that Rocky is a nobody who wants to be a somebody until 90 minutes into the film. Think of Harry Potter (the novels, not the wretched first two movies) where you don't find out for hundreds of pages that both Harry and the Dursleys want to fit in (that everyone in the novels wants to fit in; it's the point of the novels).
The first two Harry Potter movies are wretched because like SS, all the effort goes into introducing characters and it's not until deep into the films that a story emerges.
Not introducing what a story is about until PPII is a common failure for big budget Hollywood films that fail to find an audience. I actually saw a Hollywood remake of a Japanese horror film that didn't set out the point of the story until the last line of dialogue in the movie.
What this translates to for the actor involved is that since they aren't given characters to play (characters motivated by some internal purpose), the actors are left to pose in their scenes. I feel great sympathy for actors in such films, although in this case I assume they are well-paid.
All this isn't to say there isn't some fun along the way in Suicide Squad, or that a few of the characters don't make a strong impression, it just that the film never gains traction. It just slogs along.
A small point, one of the evil witches is killed by a fairly small explosive device, which could have been delivered a multitude of different ways.
And that's a big problem when the mechanics of a story transporting an audience fail, everyone in the audience has time on their hands to think about silly plot issues. Mystery Science Theater 3000 would have had a field day with Suicide Squad. The funny comments would have writhen themselves.
The film does demonstrate another issue I come across in scripts with a multitude of characters, the writer/director ends up playing traffic cop, expending a great deal of energy just to make sure all the right characters have something to do at the right times. Bringing in studio executives to try and fix story structure problems (that they don't understand) generally create a bigger muddle of mixed tones and dialogue that never quite fixes the underlying structure problems.
I'm assuming Suicide Squad has enough of an audience that we'll see more of these characters. Hopefully the current writer/director will be promoted and someone else brought in to direct the sequel.
The Revenant
posted 1/10/16
Based on a true story, The Revenant is an amazing film about a trapping guide left for dead who survives to hunt down the man who killed his son and left him for dead. The film is amazing to watch in a way that the latest Star Wars film failed to impress. I felt like the people who made this film suffered in the cold to get it done.DeCaprio does an amazing job as an actor to bring to life a character who is mostly unable to speak during most of the story.
This is cinema at its finest.
posted 8/26/15
A film about two trannie hookers, one looking for her pimp boyfriend, and an Armenian cab driver who prefers male women, this is a potent and powerful story about the lives of people on the sunny streets of LA on Christmas Eve. Shot on I-Phones (in part), what the movie demonstrates is the power of storytelling. Near the end of the film one of the characters has urine thrown in her face and her friend takes her to a Laundromat to strip down so her outfit can be cleaned. It's a moment deeply reflective of these two characters being stripped down to their cores, and the cabbie as well.Lovely film, one of the best I've seen this year. I love an action film like Rogue Nation with Tom Cruise and all that money on the screen, but Tangerine is the real lesson in film making.
This is indie film making at its best.
posted 6/7/14
I make a distinction between story and plot, and this movie offers a wonderful, transparent example of that. A young boy hesitates to take
the hand of his mother dying of cancer, then is kidnapped by an alien who turns him into a kind of Indiana Jones-type scavenger. So he's lost his
family, and he soon finds himself surrounded by others who have also lost their families, so they have a room to join together. That's what
the story is about, and it connects all the main characters.
The plot revolves around an infinity stone and how it could be used to control the universe.
Because of the main characters and their new family, they are able to become Guardians of the Galaxy.
The movie is great fun.
Her
posted 1/12/14
This is a thoughtful film set in the near future. A newly divorced young man who struggles with relationships is given an opportunity to have an A.I. (artificially intelligent) female companion. As soon as it's operating, it begins learning about him and what pleases him. He soon finds himself falling in love with this new companion, who is understanding, sympathetic, and able to navigate through the maze of his conflicted behaviors -- mostly emotional withdrawal -- that has doomed two marriages. But what he doesn't grasp is that this companion is rapidly evolving, to the point she and other A.I.s like her have no desire for human contact.The film ends on the suggestion that what he's learned about himself and relationships from her makes him capable of being in a loving, intimate relationship with a physical woman.
While the idea of the film might be new to general audiences, it's an idea that's been explored in science fiction for over forty years. The idea is handled well here.
The Counselor
posted 12/17/13
The Counselor is a lawyer who thinks he can do a one-off drug deal to support his girlfriend/finance in a lavish lifestyle, even though others involved in the deal counsel him that he's entering a different world with different rules and a near certainty that things won't go as planned. But the Counselor doesn't take their counsel and the drug deal turns out to be a set up by a partner's ruthless girlfriend, who is a deadly predator.This is all dry and uninvolving, and the underlying point is that men will do most anything for the women they love/lust after.
It's only half way through the film when the deal goes wrong that the main character is put into a state of narrative tension, trying desperately to save himself and his girlfriend. That's when the action has impact.
The dialogue continues down the path of everyone giving the Counselor gravely philosophical insights into this new world he's in. It's both clever and silly at the same time.
The film lacks the moral center Tommy Lee Jones gave No Country for Old Men.
Hysteria
posted 6/23/2012
This movie demonstrates the problems of trying to cover a lot of terrain with a shifting mix of tones. The first set up is a young doctor in 19th century London who discovers his promotion of the new ideas of germs and washing hands between patients keeps getting him fired by older doctors. He then gets a job with a doctor who uses orgasms to treat the the common malady of upper-middle class women, hysteria (which was considered to be a condition afflicting women until 1950).His employer has a chaste young daughter he's openly shopping to the young doctor, and a fire-brand, force of nature oldest daughter who torments her father with her ideas of poor people being human beings deserving of compassion, education, and medical care.
The film covers the slow, sedate courtship of the young doctor and the young woman, interrupted by occasional outbursts when the older daughter passes through pleading for money or support.
The question, who will he end up with?
But his immediate problem is he's wearing out his hand servicing women in the clinic, some of whom take hours of stimulation to climax and get relief from their symptoms (which mostly seem to be passing the time in the long wait for the treatment to be effective).
Meanwhile, the young doctor's wealthy benefactor invents what becomes the first electric vibrator, creating a huge demand for the young doctor's services. At this point, the film shifts to being a droll British sex comedy.
The film shifts back to a realistic tone to deal with the young doctor realizing he's in love with young fury, not young chaste.
The problem is, he's barely spent any time with young fury, so the relationship feels abrupt, and has a different tone from the realism about medical procedures, then the comedic tone, then the serious tone about women's rights and the treatment of the poor.
The film has a good heart. It allows the young daughter to have the realization that a better life for her won't involve being the wife of the young doctor.
Shifts in tone can be one of the most common and vexing problem in some scripts. The shift in tone helps create the effect of a climax at the same time it undercuts the impact.
Prometheus
posted 6/13/2012
I don't expect characters in a film to behave like rocket scientists, except when some of them ARE scientists. The characters here act more like ten year olds on their first backyard overnight camp out.Some impressive CGI, and the action picks up in the 2nd hour.
The movie raises some big questions (who created us) but it doesn't do much to explore them.
The Cabin in the Woods
posted 6/12/2012
This is clever and well made, with the Josh Whedon touches of strong character development and sly humor. Some college students go off to the cabin in the woods and find themselves part of an elaborately-staged, deadly ritual overseen by some jaded bureaucrats.In the end, a pair of unlikely characters remain loyal to each other.
I saw this on a smaller, 2nd run screen, and I felt that scale of the viewing experience added to my enjoyment of the film.
Take Shelter
posted 1/13/2012
This movie demonstrates a central issue of storytelling, narrative tension. I define narrative tension as the tension a character feels to resolve or fulfill some issue, and the tension that increases as that character takes action. Romeo in Romeo and Juliet is a great example of narrative tension, because everything he does to act on his love for Juliet puts him in deeper conflict with his clan.Novels that lack a main character in a state of narrative tension are often episodic, a series of events but lacking a clearly defined central conflict.
In Take Shelter, the main character is a blue collar worker of 35. The film opens with him standing outside in the rain, but the rain drops include oil. As the film continues, he has nightmares about a powerful, deadly storm, and also attacks on himself and his six year old, deaf daughter. But then he has a nightmare while awake. Are the nightmares a premonition of something looming or symptoms of mental illness? At 35, his mother began to experience the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia.
To save his family, he excavates around a tornado shelter using equipment he's borrowed from his job. This gets him fired, just before his deaf daughter is slated for an operation to restore her hearing. But he can't stop what he's doing if it means the safety of his family.
This film's main character is always in a state narrative tension that is accessible to the audience. He fears he's descending into mental illness, but if he's not, how does he save his family? But his actions to save his family threaten to tear his family apart and seem to prove he's mentally ill to those around him.
When he confesses what's happening, his loving wife helps him get through the aftermath of a storm, and they take a family vacation to a beach before he'll be put on a regime of drugs and institutionalization. While the father is on a beach with his daughter, the fear in her eyes causes him to look up. The monster storm he's seen in his visions is now approaching. As his wife comes out onto a vacation rental deck, she realizes the rain is mixed with oil.
That ends the film and answers the central question of the story, but raises more questions about how and why he was having these premonitions and why they manifested as nightmares about him and his daughter being attacked.
This film also demonstrates the difference between horror and psychological terror. In a typical Hollywood horror film, there are often a series of 'boo' moments, where some sudden action is designed to scare the audience. Here there's a creeping sense of terror that is transferred from the main character to the viewers of the film. I found the film much creepier and more horrifying than most of the horror films I've seen in the last ten years. A well-made, well-acted if unsettling film.
The Skin I Live In
posted 12/6/2011
This film by Pedro Almodovar demonstrates how a shift in time and perspective can affect an understanding
of a story. The film begins with a scientist/surgeon living in a secluded mansion and keeping a beautiful young
woman in an isolated, locked room. A housekeeper suggests it would be best if the young woman were dead. Then,
a man in a costume shows up, the wastrel son of the housekeeper. He ties her up and rapes the young woman, while commenting
that she looks just like 'her.' The surgeon comes in and shoots and kills the rapist.
The film now shifts to six years earlier. The surgeon is at a dinner party with an unstable daughter. It comes out that
her mother recently died. Unnoticed by her father, she goes out with another young man. He expects this is for sex,
but when she resists, he panics, hits her, tidies up her clothing, and flees. The father finds his daughter, who has
undergone a psychotic break and later commits suicide.
He captures the young rapist and performs a sex change operation. Over the years, continued operations turn the young
man into the beautiful young woman seen at the beginning of the film.
This explains who the young woman is, but it also completely changes the perspective on what this is a story about, that it
is a kind of modern day Frankenstein story.
Odd but compelling film.
Submarine
posted 7/10/2011
This is a whimsical, wry movie, Gregory's Girl as if shot by Fellini. The main character is a young boy who falls for his first girlfriend while he plots to save his parent's marriage. The story feels fresh and deeply felt. There are many funny scenes between the boy and his parents, including his mother tactfully explaining how she came to give the neighbor a hand job.
I've seen several movies that have attempted to be Fellini-est, but they generally miss the mark because Fellini loved people and that always came through his storytelling. That comes through here. This filmmaker is telling a story about real people.
Splice
posted 6/12/2010
This is an old-fashioned horror film, with the set up of two scientists playing God to create a new life form and then finding their personal issues clouding their judgment in a way that dooms them. The film generates a quality of menace and creepiness more than outright horror. A stronger, initial note about one character's unsuitability to be a parent would have given the story more depth.
The creature they create for all the right and wrong reasons, Dren, is well-designed to be human-like but not quite. Dren is feral but with some human emotions.
People who like horror that is thoughtful might give this a try. Synecdoche, New York
A director doing a revival of Death of a Salesman realizes his wife is going to leave him when she comes up with a lame excuse to skip the opening of the play. He then creates an extended, Willy Loman-type fantasy about his life on a giant stage. He has his own, personal, long-suffering Linda (Willy's wife in Salesman) who helps him with the production, with an actress to play his help-mate.
This is wonderful, complex storytelling, fully-realized.
Cthulhu
posted 9/25/2008
This film does a good job of creating creeping menace when a young, gay college professor returns home on the death of his mother to a small coastal town in Oregon. The lighting and acting can be uneven, but there are also some beautifully staged scenes. A thoughtful horror film based on an H.P. Lovecraft story.
The Fog of War posted 5/7/2004
Robert McNamara (the Donald Rumsfeld of his time) offers his thoughts and insights on the causes of wars. Listening to McNamara comment on film clips of his younger self justifying the Vietnam war is an odd replay of Rumsfeld's logic for the war in Iraq.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind posted 4/13/2004
A meditation on falling in love, falling out of love, and two people coming to a deeper understanding that holds out the promise of real intimacy. The film opens with Joel, played by Jim Carrey, meeting a young woman, Clementine (played by Kate Winslett) and falling in love. The film then jumps to a previous time when Clementine has fallen out of love with Joel, and she's undergone a process to erase all memories of him. Joel decides to undergo the same process.
The structure of the story is that as Joel's memories are erased, starting with his most recent, the viewer comes to understand why Clementine decided to erase Joel from her mind: that he'd fallen out of romantic love into a state of being critical of who she was and how she lived her life. So she moved on. But as Joel goes back in time to memories of when he most loved Clementine, and felt happy for the first time in his life, he tries to fight off the process of memory erasure and preserve some memory of her.
That structure informs the middle half of the film.
When in the present Joel and Clementine have a chance to be together again, each is given a tape they'd recorded earlier that set out exactly why each of them wanted out of the relationship. All the unspoken thoughts and feelings that festered and killed their feelings for each other are heard. And, when they are heard, Joel and Clementine have a chance to accept themselves and their potential relationship.
There are also subplots with the people who do the memory erasure, and several shifts in time that only become apparent later in the film.
This is a thoughtful, quiet story. Perhaps too quiet for people seeking a more typical Jim Carrey experience. I recommend the film highly to anyone who would like to explore a complex kind of storytelling that shifts in time and gets to the deeper truths of the characters.
Hellboy posted 4/3/2004
There's much fun in Hellboy, and some heartfelt feeling once all the characters and their issues are introduced and developed.
There are several general paths a story like Hellboy can take in its openings scenes. This film takes the path of starting at the beginning, in 1944, with some American troops interrupting a Nazi experiment to open a gateway to Hell to get help for the Nazi cause. Taking this path for the story means the audience is introduced to a number of characters and situations before the adult Hellboy appears on screen. This kind of opening gives a strong overview of a character's world, and is a way to introduce many significant characters. The film skirts just around the edge of having a diffuse opening that asks an audience to sort through many different characters before the main characters are introduced and their issues set out.
Another path a story like this could take is to begin with the main character in a dramatic situation in the present, then do some flashbacks to introduce the beginning of the story.
Another path is to begin at a dramatic point deep in the film that defines a main character, then go back to the present and work forward to that point.
Once Hellboy gets to its main character, the story takes on a loose, funny tone. Hellboy is a blue-collar hero who spends his time using a power grinder to keep his horns down to notches, so he'll be more attractive to a young woman who also has special powers. The rocky relationship between Hellboy and the young woman, and between Hellboy and his surrogate father, gives the story much of its heartfelt quality.
A young FBI agent who is made a companion to Hellboy has his own hero's journey to make, but a few pieces of the journey seem to have been left on the cutting room floor.
Ron Perlman is great as the droll Hellboy. He brings the character to life.
Recommended.
Somethings Gotta Give posted 1/25/2004
This is a funny, observant, and, at times, heartfelt romantic comedy. Jack Nicolson plays an aging lothario who has never dated a woman under 30. He's off for a weekend in the Hamptons with his latest young girlfriend when they discover her mother, Diane Keaton, is also using her summer home. The mother ends up offering to share her home, and Jack has a heart-attack. Keaton ends up taking care of Jack when her daughter returns home, and the older, wary couple find themselves falling in love.
Audience members in their 40's, 50's and 60's might find this funnier than a young audience.
The story is about accepting the price of falling in love.
The film has a structure that is rare in Hollywood films, it really is three separate acts. Not acts that quickly glide forward, but acts separated by a kind of pause while characters think about what just happened while they decide what to do next. The last time I saw this kind of pronounced acts pause in a Hollywood film was Rushmore.
Highly recommended.
Bad Santa posted 12/03/2003
Santa is introduced here wasted and drunk in a bar. Bad Santa. Bad, bad, funny Santa. This film makes no bones about being vulgar. When Santa, played by Billy Bob Thorton, meets an over-weight, very strange boy, Santa has one decent impulse left in him that just about gets him killed. Very funny for those who like dark humor. The story remains true to its tone. I had several good belly laughs watching this. Others will find their milage varies.
Lost In Translation
posted 10/30/2003
A thoughtful, quiet film about two lost souls, an aging star played by Bill Murray doing a whiskey photo shoot in Japan, and a lonely wife/college graduate played by Scarlett Johansson wondering about the meaning of her life. The title is the main cue in the beginning of the film, first showing Murray in some funny scenes realizing how much is being lost in translation from Japanese to English. Both Murray and Scarlett are unable to sleep on Japanese time, and their nocturnal wandering in the hotel brings them together. Her search to give her life meaning comes through more forcefully early in the film, but Murray's deeper issues also come out in quiet, unforced scenes. The film has a gentle confidence.
Highly recommended.
Bubba Ho-tep
posted 10/21/2003
An odd, compelling movie about Elvis Presley in an old folks home fighting an Egyptian mummy preying on the residents. Elvis ended up in the home when he switched identities with an impersonator so he could be free of his fame, broke a hip, and woke up in the rest home after a long coma. He has many regrets about his life, but taking on the mummy with an African-American man who thinks he's John Kennedy gives him a renewed purpose in life. Everything about the story and plot is odd-ball, often funny, and more and more often as the movie progresses, heartfelt.
Bruce Campbell (Ash in the Evil Dead) and Ossie Davis play the main roles. Some of the humor is quite crude in the opening scenes (Elvis is quite distraught about his lost sexuality), but it sets up the later transformation of the character.
This isn't for people looking for a traditional film, but I loved it.
Memento
Posted 5/11/2001
This story has a great plot concept. The story starts with a man, Guy Pierce, killing someone he accuses of murdering his wife. The story then goes back in time, scene by scene, showing what led up to this moment. That when his wife was murdered, Pierce's character suffered a brain injury and could no longer retain short term memories. He tracks down his killer by tattooing notes on his body and on photographs. But what he keeps finding ways to repeat to himself turns out to be just a version of the truth, a version that he needs to believe.
Even though the story happens in reverse chronology, the story moves forward to the end/beginning of his realization that his 'story' may or may not be true, but he can only act as if it is. The story raises the question, how can we know that the stories we tell ourselves are true?
The set ups for what we learn as the story goes backwards in time are wonderfully staged.
Directed by Christopher Nolan.
Christopher Nolan also directed Following. This story also mixes up its time sequence, with scenes from the recent past, present and near future mixed together. What sets the story in motion is an unemployed writer deciding to follow people just to see where they go. He unwittingly ends up getting caught up in the murderous plans of one of the people he follows, and pays the price for trying to be clever.
This is a story that revolves around being diabolically clever, not offering engaging characters an audience is expected to emphasize with.
Posted 3/13/2001
You Can Count on Me
This film has a powerful opening. A husband and wife are talking while they drive home. An accident takes their lives. The opening ends with a teenage daughter being told her parents are both dead. The story then moves to ten years later. The young girl is now a single mother with an eight year old son and a routine, well-travelled life working at a small town bank. She then faces two situations: a new boss who wants the bank to be run like a big-city institution with big-city rules, and a younger brother who's been drifting around the country passing through town wanting money.The brother seems to be everything the sister is not, lost, angry, unable to live by any rules. And these siblings know how to push each others' buttons. They know where the wounds are. But, they also know how to comfort each other. When the brother decides to spend some time living with his sister in the family home, his anger leads to many complications. But, it also begins to show the sister that she doesn't have to simply accept the fate life has seemed to be dealing her. She can make choices at work, about who she wants to marry, about dealing with her son's fantasy about his absent father.
By the time the brother leaves, it's become clear that the sister has actually been more lost than her brother.
This film has a depth of character not often seen in American, commercial films. Recommended.
Posted 3/13/2001
After Life
This Japanese film has a powerful story concept: when people die, they have three days to choose one memory from their life to take into the after life. They are helped to make a choice by interviewers who, it turns out, are people who couldn't decide what memory to take into their after life. This is a beautiful film that explores the nature of memory and how we find meaning in life.I reviewed this film for ScreenTalk, the International Magazine of Screenwriting.
Posted 10/26/2000
Gods and Monsters
James Whales is the creator of Frankenstein, the director of the film, and a dying gay man. The strokes he's experiencing make him relive a past he's spent his life trying to escape: a father who loathed 'nancy boys', terrible poverty, being 'different' in a strict family, and the horrors of WWI, including being in love with a young man who ends up a body caught on the barbed wire and a topic of black humor as his body deteriorates.
Into James' life comes Boone, a young, ex-marine gardener who's drifting through life. Boone is unaware of his own life, his own stories. He's just living what's been passed along to him. Through a growing friendship, Boone helps James pass into the death he seeks, and Boone comes awake and realizes he can be a creator of his own life.Ian McKellen, who plays James, is a master actor at the height of his powers. Lynn Redgrave plays the German housekeeper of James who loves him.
A beautiful, heart-felt film about being different.
Posted 9/9/2000
The Five Senses
This graceful, lovely art films explores how its characters perceive the world through their different senses. It deepens to explore how their memories and feelings are shaped by their perceptions. A beautifully acted, directed, and staged film. It has a number of characters and slowly shows how their lives interconnect.
The story's plot revolves around the possible kidnapping of a little girl.
Posted 7/7/2000
Winter Keeping
This thoughtful German film has a beautiful twist. A character who appears to be completely amoral and dark turns out to be moral. A character who appears to be moral turns out to be completely dark inside. A quiet story about chance, fate and unintended consequences.
Post 6/14/2000
Smoke Signals
This came out a year ago, but I just broke the film down for a class. It's a wonderful example of how a story can take an audience deeply into a new world. Here, into the lives of two young Indian boys on a reservation in Idaho. This is storytelling at its finest. There's a potent story here about how we forgive (or not) our fathers.
The leads here, Thomas and Victor, are not typical Hollywood style actors, or Hollywood-style Indians. Recommended for home viewing.
Posted 4/28/2000
Posted 1/22/2000
End of the Affair
This is a beautifully-realized art film about the nature and power of passion, religious belief, fate, and jealousy. The story begins in a present where a man walking in the rain comes across a man he once knew, a man clearly troubled. It comes out he suspects his wife of having an affair. His friend offers to hire a private detective to find out if this is true. He goes ahead and does this without the knowledge of the husband. Then it comes out the friend DID have an affair with the wife, and he's now jealous to find out who her current lover is.
The story moves forward at first through the POV of the jealous man, then goes back and shows the affair and its abrupt ending. The story then plays out through the POV of the wife, and shows her reasoning for ending the affair.
A beautifully told story, it shows the power a storyteller can generate by exploring an incident from different perspectives. What often seems obvious is shown to have a deeper meaning when viewed from a different perspective.
Posted 10/27/99
The Limey
This is a beautifully told story that begins with a man's voice pleading, "Tell me, tell me, tell me about Jenny."
We're then introduced to a rough-hewn, ex-convict who's come to America from England to find out how his daughter died in what to him was clearly a staged accident. As he moves through this outer journey of finding out what happened to Jenny, we also move through his inner journey of understanding his life with his daughter and what she meant to him.
In the beginning of this journey, people clearly underestimate how driven this man is. Yet, even when they know full well how relentless he is, he still bends everything in the story to his relentless will except for what comes out at the climax of the story. One of the most emotionally satisfying, fulfilling stories I've seen this year.
This is a film that requires the active participation of the audience. Scenes are edited in a way that dialogue from one moment is transposed over a visual image from another moment. It's a technique that generates considerable dramatic power in what might be a more ordinary scene. It fully acts out how a story is never linear, that the storyteller chooses the moments that best tell a story. Chooses how to present those moments. Here, that process is fully on view to wonderful effect.
This is not a simple, straight-forward story. It's a fusion of a sensibility seen in art films and gangster films. A joy to watch, dialogue that is a marvel of potent understatement. This story gets right to the point. "Tell me, tell me, tell me about Jenny," a man pleads, for an answer he could not expect.
posted 10/22/99
Three Kings
Three Kings is a smartly told story with a good story foundation, about amoral characters finding themselves slowly drawn into a situation where they discover a sense of morality and act on it. I enjoyed very much how each character in Kings came to a new understanding of themselves and a sense of morality at different points in the story. Each character clearly had their own path shaped by an inner sense of who they were, and by how events affected them and they respond to events, we see their inner journeys.
One of the things I enjoyed most about the film was the visual intelligence; this story is filmed in ways that heighten its impact. I strive to get people to stop writing a screenplay as if they're just a kind of camera passively recording information. To think about what can make a story visually interesting, without stepping over the line into trying to direct a film, or filling script pages by offering instructions to everyone else involved in place of telling a potent story.
A story predictable to its characters is generally predictable to its audience.
A few things in the film irritated me, but overall, I enjoyed watching this film very much, and recommend it.
The Sixth Sense
The Sixth Sense offers a clear view into how a storyteller sets a story in motion. The movie opens with a man telling his wife that she will no longer be second in his life, but first. So the story opens with questions. Will he be able to fulfill this promise? What brought this relationship to this point? Can this relationship be saved?
By opening with this question, the audience is allowed to feel this moment and the questions it raises; in this way the story begins in an active voice.
With the appearance of a young man with a gun, the story offers a more urgent question. Who will live through this scene? The ramifications of this question play out through the rest of the movie.
Sixth Sense is a wonderful example of how a storyteller sets a story in motion in a way that draws in an audience to care about both the moments of its journey, and the story's final destination.
Stir of Echoes
I saw Stir of Echoes after reading a review that felt the story had some fine points, but wouldn't find an audience in part because of coming out after The Sixth Sense. I felt the reviewer missed the point of why Echoes wouldn't find a larger audience. Sense opens by setting out Willis's need to re-engage, to find again the depths of love in his relationship with his wife. This human need plays through the story, is woven through its plot. It's the emotional core of the story, along with his desire to help a frightened little boy.
Echoes introduces its issue of human need, Kevin Bacon's character feeling that his life is collapsing into being ordinary, and that this is killing his relationship with his wife. But the issue isn't developed clearly, and doesn't fully reappear until plot point two, when he talks about not stopping what he's doing because he doesn't want to be ordinary again.
This muting of the story's core emotional issue left a hole in the film the plot could not carry, since it was clear where the plot was going.
Too bad. Bacon is great at playing this kind of character, and there are many fine elements in the story, the plot, the characters, the strong evocation of a time and place. A film worth seeing. What happened in Echoes is a common mistake I see in screenplays. That issue which should pull on the audience is left mute while plot details and character details are developed. It creates characters and plots that ultimately have a weak or muted effect.
These films, Echoes and Sense, offer a great contrast between how to build a story to a moment of transcendence that is quite potent and moving, and how that experience can slip away if a story's mechanics and elements aren't in sync.
American Pie
When a movie like this finds an audience, I like to check it out to see why. This is a teen comedy about sex, but it does a good thing. It respects its story -- about some high school seniors finding out some things about who they are, and who their friends are -- and it respects its plot and characters. Nothing too special, but every situation and issue is set up cleanly and played through with a minimum of fuss. Since there are no *stars*, every character is given something to deal with.
Some crude humor here, but like Something About Mary, we're asked to care about these characters. Scenes that have been done in other movies are played here with energy and feeling. It gives the movie a fresh quality.
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