Friday, January 30, 2015
Boyhood
Most actors commit themselves to a 3-6 month shoot with the possibility of the need for scenes to be reshot. The principals in this movie made a twelve-year commitment to a recurrent project. Seemlessly we see Ellar Coltrane grow from a 5-year-old to 18-year-old manhood college-bound. The others who follow Mason on this journey are the actors who play his Mother, his sister, and Ethan Hawke who plays his biological Father. We see hair styles change, limbs lengthen until ‘mother’ looks up at son, beards and moustaches come and go and hair show signs of greying.
Intelligence is no guarantee of wise decisions and Mason watches mom marry and divorce three husbands resulting in too many moves to count. Where his Father is concerned the child is father of the man. Though a recurring presence in Maaon’a life the child who fathered a son remains very much a dilettante throughout. Mother’s and Sister’s growth are not neglected. These characters are more than props. An interesting sociological study, a decent movie. I probably need to watch it again. The DVD provides no extras and the previews are execrable.
Intelligence is no guarantee of wise decisions and Mason watches mom marry and divorce three husbands resulting in too many moves to count. Where his Father is concerned the child is father of the man. Though a recurring presence in Maaon’a life the child who fathered a son remains very much a dilettante throughout. Mother’s and Sister’s growth are not neglected. These characters are more than props. An interesting sociological study, a decent movie. I probably need to watch it again. The DVD provides no extras and the previews are execrable.
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
The Grand Seduction
Can they make a movie in Newfoundland without Gordon Pinsent? Taylor Kitsch abandons his hunk persona here to play a doctor being wooed by an outport. Kitsch notwithstanding a movie about creating employment opportunities for a remote community certainly was an employment opportunity for a parcel of Newfoundland Actors, seems only fitting. If there’s a Newfoundland cliché that gets missed I didn’t detect it. However you will look in vain for the famous recreation of the publicity shot of the three stooges with the gaping cod fish. The landlubber sick over the side in calm seas does play. All in good clean fun though the movie does begin and end with bedroom gymnastics garnering it the PG Rating.
Friday, January 23, 2015
The Giver
Rarely does the adaptation of a good book result in a great movie. Meet the exception, but then the Bridges Family have been working on this project for 20 years. Do watch the family reading of an early script to see Lloyd, dynastic sire of film royalty do the part of The Giver clad in pajamas and robe with his young grandson the receiver. Son Jeff takes the role of Giver here. Credit them for going outside the family to find a blue-eyed Jonas in the person of Brenton Thwaites, brown-eyed by the way. Those eyes are not in evidence for most of a movie shot in black and white. The movie concentrates on the 12-13-year-old Jonas and his work with the Giver. In so doing in a 98-minute film we do not get the same chance to become immersed in Sameness as we do when reading the book. Nor does the menace of this Orwellian society grip us to the same extent. The horror of the release process is glossed over in a film meant for a G rating. Included is a study guide intended to invoke the moral issues of a managed society.
Monday, January 05, 2015
The Perks of Being a Wallflower: The Movie
Stephen Chbowsky is accorded the rare opportunity to direct the film adaptation of his own book. So the question becomes how good is Chbowsky the director at interpreting Chbowsky the writer. Can he capture on screen that nascent sexual awakening, that youthful struggle for independence and rebellion that is puberty. Does the story come to life on screen? He got to choose his own cast and mold their performance, does he succeed?
The consensus opinion is that yes he does. A movie is a far different medium from a book and details from the book appear in a different order as in one of the thoughts that ends the book being used to begin the movie. The majority of the actors are in their twenties but they appear and act like teens though I’d have trouble differentiating between the upper and lower class-men.
The movie provides details not given in the book including a sense of locale, Philadelphia where it was shot. It also supplies Charlie’s last name and changes that of his teacher who significantly is not addressed familiarly by his first name. And, of necessity a lot of detail is dropped.
Although the story ends on a positive note this is not a feel-good movie. We are left with the open-ended question as to how Charlie’s Aunt may have molested her young nephew and what part that plays in his mental turmoil.
The consensus opinion is that yes he does. A movie is a far different medium from a book and details from the book appear in a different order as in one of the thoughts that ends the book being used to begin the movie. The majority of the actors are in their twenties but they appear and act like teens though I’d have trouble differentiating between the upper and lower class-men.
The movie provides details not given in the book including a sense of locale, Philadelphia where it was shot. It also supplies Charlie’s last name and changes that of his teacher who significantly is not addressed familiarly by his first name. And, of necessity a lot of detail is dropped.
Although the story ends on a positive note this is not a feel-good movie. We are left with the open-ended question as to how Charlie’s Aunt may have molested her young nephew and what part that plays in his mental turmoil.
