David and Lisa

Director: Frank Perry
Cast: Keir Dullea, Janet Margolin, Howard da Silva
Genre: Drama 1962
Running time: 93 mins.
Rating:★★★★

Two emotionally disturbed teenagers drawn to each other in a mental institution. The painfully shy Lisa (Janet Margolin) can communicate only through rhyme, and David (Keir Dullea) cannot bear being touched. Attracted to each other, they soon develop a deep bond that changes both of their lives.

David has a lot of anger and is quick to dismiss/dislike activities. Lisa has this child-like innocence. They both share an internal fear that they are trying to suppress and hatred of being caged like an animal. A desire for a friend that will except one another for who they are. Pushing and pulling each other's limits which there for helps and forms their bond and illnesses. Their personal journeys and transformation is very easy to relate to, even now in the twenty-first century.

There is a lot of surreal imagery used which extremely appropriate for place the characters are in and the time the film was made. It is obvious that this film was influenced by such films as A Streetcar named Desire, where there is more realism in dialogue, cinematography, and performances. No overly predictable lines, predictable story line, and predictable performances. A refreshing and an inventive period in cinematic history. This is film is just one example. It help pave the way for the psychological elements for the film, Bunny Lake is Missing (1965).

Antichrist

Director: Lars Van Trier
Cast: Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg
Genre: Drama/Thriller 2009
Running time: 108 mins.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★



In this graphic psychodrama, a grief-stricken man and woman (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) retreat to their cabin deep in the woods after the accidental death of their infant son, only to find terror and violence at the hands of nature and, ultimately, each other!

A very provocative and intense film. It leaves you to wonder "who's at fault?" and "who is the bad guy?" As true to a lot of his films, Dafoe has a seemly natural knack for giving bone-chilling and authoritative performance as the foe. His character seems numb to the death of his son as he guides his wife through the natural psychological grieving period. The woman (Gainsbourg) is in agony, winding down and eventually up the mental spiral, of trying to hold onto the memory of her son. However, as the story unfolds, you are thrown off balanced and through a loop of haunting events and visuals. To see Dafoe partnered up with Gainsbourg is astonishingly beautiful. Why haven't they acted with each other before this film? They have great chemistry together on screen!!!

The film use of the crow, fox, and doe to represent the stages of grief was very subtle, but also very important role in helping you understand underlying message. The crow being death, fox being perhaps aggression, and the doe indicating a loss of innocence or paradise. They are introduced separately and reappear as a group near the end of the film. One noteworthy moment, when Dafoe's character leaves the cabin and descends down the mountain. It is here that I realized the Dante's Inferno reference. The cabin having been one circle and the descent transforming into the beginning of the next, all the mean while grief is constantly following behind him. Perhaps, the man and the woman continuing to have sex, in the beginning of the film, in the mist of the son's accidental death, was the first circle of hell.

What is fantastic about this film is that it is one of those rare cinematic masterpieces, that you could watch over and over again, and still pick up on something new. 

Beasts of the Southern Winds

Director: Benh Zeitlin
Cast: Quvenzhané Wallis, Dwight Henry, Levy Easterly, Gina Montana, and Philip Lawrence
Genre: Drama/Fantasy
Running time: 93 mins.
Rating:★★★★

Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis), the tenacious six-year old force of nature in an isolated bayou community. When her tough but loving father, Wink (Dwight Henry) succumbs to a mysterious malady, the fierce and determined girl bravely sets out on a journey to save him. But Hushpuppy's quest is hindered by a "busted" universe that melts the ice caps and unleashed an army of prehistoric beasts. Learning the ways of courage and love.


A girl, who is a force to be reckoned with, knowledge-sneaker, and survivor living in a ratty, free, and tightly knitted community that couldn't be happier. Even the animals are given the freedom to roam. Separated from, what a lot of us would think, are necessities: television, internet, phones, supermarkets, and other material things. Hearing from her father, hot-tempered and loving, that the world outside of the community have and need these things, seems outside her comprehension. Nature, her father, community, and her imagination is all she needs. A very much return to a hunter-gatherer society. Then you have her teacher, Miss Bathsheba (Gina Montana) giving an abrasive lesson of the circle of nature and the release of prehistoric creatures called "Aurochs" from the melting ice caps. 

Wallis's performance is amazing to watch. She brings a sort of playful, questioning the status quo, and matter-of-fact attitude to her character inviting you to come along with her on her journey, re-releashing your own child-like imagination and curiosity. Whether the storm was real or psychological: perseverance, courage, and love will help guide her through it. A great lesson to remember.

The earthy blues/greens mixed in with the vibrant reds/oranges and the unsteady camera movement makes you feel like you're right along with Hushpuppy, that you are a part of her world. Wallace's voice over provides a dynamic background of where her mother's at and how she came to live in this community. The movie is simply magical!!

Back to the Future

Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thomson, and Crispin Glover
Genre: Comedy/Action/Sci fi 1986
Running time: 116 mins.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

The year is 1985- but not for long. Because teenager, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is about to be blasted back to 1955 aboard the plutonium-powered DeLorean created by eccentric genius, Doc Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd). But when Marty accidentally keeps his parents-to-be from falling in love, it triggers a time-shattering chain reaction that could vaporize his future...and leave him trapped in the past! Now, Marty's last hope is to change history before the clock runs out on his only chance to get himself back Back to the Future!

This movie is a classic that most of my generation grew-up on! It doesn't hit you over the head that time is the overall theme like you're an idiot, instead its the gateway that leads you to question your own existence and the power of science. The opening sequence of the various wall clocks to the start up of all Doc's equipment, especially the can opener opening Einstein's food and the claw dumping the food into the bowl thats already filled with days of uneaten food, is subtly brilliant. A lot questions are brought up in the film which in turn makes science cool again because the audience is able to relate it to their own lives. Is time travel possible? If so, what are the rules? Are there ways to change those rules without tremendous consequences?  How much has changed in the last thirty years? How did Marty's parents get to where they are and how they met? What were his parents like at his age? How much is he like his parents?

Questions you may never ask yourself or even want to, but what if you were put in the same situation Marty was and your life depended on it? The development of this ideal that time travel so believable and well-thought out that you don't question why its possible, but dying to travel this journey with Marty. So many memorable quotes that you can't go anywhere without lighting up with excitement, when hearing a stranger saying one! The special effects and the make-up are so ground-breaking.

Lastly, the song, Power of Love by Huey Lewis and the News, will forever keep this movie in my top twenty list of favorite movies!!!

The Thing

Director: Mathijs Van Heijiningen
Cast: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen, Eric Christian Olsen
Genre: Horror/Sci-fi 2011
Running time: 103 mins.
Rating:★

When paleontologist, Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) travels to an isolated outpost in Antarctica for the expedition of a lifetime, she joins the international team that unearths a remarkable discovery. Their elation quickly turns to fear as their experiment has freed a mysterious being from its frozen prison. Paranoia spread like an epidemic as a creature that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish.

This movie is more of a television movie or a poor flash back to nineties Sci-fi television show than it does a major motion film. Aside from some good-looking Scandinavians and nostalgic visuals of my middle/high school days, the movie fails to hold my attention. The special effects and the story is predictable and unimpressive. Its also hard to see or take seriously, Eric Christian Olsen. He will always be seen as a character actor, who portrays the douche bag friend in comedic movies such as Not Another Teen Movie and Hot Chick.

This Must Be The Place

Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Cast: Sean Penn, Eve Hewson, Francis McDormand
Genre: Comedy/Drama 2011
Running Time: 118 mins. 
Rating:★★★★

Cheyenne, a wealthy former rock star (Sean Penn), now bored and jaded in his retirement, with his firefighter wife, Jane (Francis McDormand) in Dublin, embarks on a quest to find his father's persecutor, an ex-Nazi war criminal now hiding out in the U.S. Learning his father is close to death, he travels to New York in the hope of being reconciled with him during his final hours, only to arrive too late. Having been estranged for over 30 years, it is only now in death that he learns the true extent of his father's humiliation in Auschwitz at the hands of former SS Officer Aloise Lange - an event he is determined to avenge. So begins a life-altering journey across the heartland of America to track down and confront his father's nemesis. As his quest unfolds, Cheyenne is reawakened by the people he encounters and his journey is transformed into one of reconciliation and self discovery. As his date with destiny arrives and he tracks down Lange, Cheyenne must finally decide if it is redemption he seeks ....or revenge.

The high contrast of everything and everyone in the beginning grocery store scene, perfectly illustrates how bored Cheyenne has become in his life. Well, that and the granny cart. I don't know if I've ever seen Sean Penn play a character who is so flamboyantly washed out from too many drugs and living in the past that its absolutely fantastic. Francis McDormand, who is just mind-blowingly brilliant anyway, portray an excellent balance to Penn's character. Penn beautifully and subtle takes you in the emotional/psychical transformation and journey to fulfill his late father's goal. To imagine and watch the transformation, Penn's character having lived in a child-like innocence and ignorance to be bombarded with the reality of the Holocaust entrapment that both his father and thousands of other Jews suffered through, is glorious and heartbreaking. Nothing about the film is contrived or forced.

The biggest lesson in the film is it's never to late to live and start over. Better late than never!

Willard

Director: Glen Morgan
Cast: Crispin Glover, R. Lee Ermey, Laura Harring, Jackie Burroughs
Genre: Drama/Horror/Sci-fi 2003
Running time: 100 mins.
Rating:★★★

Loosely based on the novel Ratman's Notebooks by Stephen Gilbert and a remake of the 1971 film Willard. It was not billed as a remake by the producers, but as a re-working of the themes from the original, with a stronger focus on suspense. For years, William Stiles (Crispin Glover) has been trapped in a dead end job with no friends and no future. Willard's life seems hopeless until he makes an eerie discovery: he shares a powerful bond with the rats that dwell in his basement. Now a guy who has been trampled in the rat race his whole life is suddenly ready to tear up the competition beginning with his boss (R. Lee Ermey). 

The introduction and main body of the film, is either an homage or a rip off to the animation, mood, cinematography, and music that was made famous by directors: Stanley Kubrick (A Clockwork Orange and The Shining), Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho and Birds), Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Batman, Beetlejuice) and the brilliant team of Peter Lord and Nick Park (Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit). Yet to see the "original" version with Bruce Davidson, it's clever to see a painting of him on the mantel indicating that he is the late father of the "newer" version's Willard, played by Crispin Glover. For this social-misfit to be trapped in his parents house and in a company built by his late father, it is almost understandable that he would retain his child-like antics and befriend the rats in his basement. Especially when he has to deal with an asshole and power-hungry boss, who takes pleasure in torturing him. I would want to take revenge too, in an ideal and consequence-free world. Eerie for sure, but right up my alley! What makes it perticularly eerie is, not only Glover's amazing performance, but also the feeling that this film is intended for children. Making the events that follows so terrifying making your skin crawl. However, when you name two of your rats, Socrates and Ben, having favoring one over the other, you realize there is no world without consequence! And you get an Animal Farm revolt!

The scene after Willard comes back from his mother's funeral and one of his co-workers gives him a cat to help with the grief, terrifies me to no end as a cat-owner. The partly fictitious and partly truthful actions that thousands of rats could do is chilling. It is shortly after this that Willard realizes what he must do and therefore gain the confidence he needs. He also learns that all good things must come to an end and alter the rat race that had once controlled his life! But is it enough to save him?