A Quiet Place (2018)

A Quiet Place

"One of my favorite films of the last decade"

     

        If you told me that Jim from 'The Office' was going to be a fantastic filmmaker I would probably not believe you. He's a good actor, but I never realized how he could potentially be one of the great Writer/Director's of our time. I was blown away with his first body of work, 'A Quiet Place,' a horror/drama/sci-fi/thriller in which John Krasinski co-wrote, directed, and starred in.

     

        The story takes place over three months in 2020, and most of Earth’s human population has been decimated by sightless creatures with hypersensitive hearing. We follow the Abbott family — husband Lee (Krasinski), wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt), sons Marcus (Noah Jupe) and Beau, and deaf daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds) — as they continue their efforts for survival by engineering a more sound proof environment and communicating non-verbally through American Sign Language. You see them walking barefoot and scavenging things that don’t make too much sound. The use of the camera was so carefully crafted, making sure every shot was intended to push the narrative forward. Even though majority of the film does not have oral dialogue, we get a lot of clues in the frame and good acting to help tell most of the story. With sound playing a huge part in the suspense of this film, it created a lot of anxiety. This movie had me on the edge of my seat all the way to the end. To my surprise ‘A Quite Place’ might be one of my favorite films of the last decade.

        Written by John Krasinski, Scott Beck, and Bryan Woods, ‘A Quiet Place’ is a special type of film that was forced to take risks. The actors had to use sign language and the audience had to read subtitles for all but maybe 15 minutes of the whole film. I don’t mind subtitles, but I know a lot of people who do. A whole hour went by before we had any speaking lines in this film which was really a bold decision, but I thought it was absolutely necessary. Hearing Lee speak those first words that late in the film was a relief, but it felt almost unfamiliar because of how much time had passed with them being mute. It really helped me empathize our characters year struggle for survival.

"It's refreshing to see someone with a hearing disability in the forefront and rather than making it a handicap it became a strength..."

           It’s fascinating that this film uses American Sign Language for majority of the dialogue. You can imagine a lot of people died during the initial invasion because they couldn’t communicate, but the Abbott Family survived because their daughter Regan had her hearing disability. It's refreshing to see someone with a hearing disability in the forefront and instead of making it a handicap it became a strength for the family. 

       Lee Abbott, played by Krasinski, was such a fantastic character because he played the anchor of this family. He usually plays such a likable character but after watching this, the man’s practically a Saint. He is the most dependable character you could ever ask for in this situation. He was the ultimate selfless-provider, constantly learning and creating a better world for his family. When you see him in his “workspace,” you see he constructed a whole monitoring/defense system, developed research on the enemy, making constant attempts to make contact with other survivors, and even going to lengths to develop a hearing aid for his daughter. It was a beautiful family dynamic and it was almost idealistic how strong they were, but like all families, there will always be a struggle.

       Not everything about this family was perfect though. The family dealt with a loss and it weighed on them throughout the whole film. This completed the family dynamic and gave our character relations so much more depth. Each person blamed themselves for the incident and it feels like there was an elephant in the room that was not addressed for most the film. It was a great sub conflict for the story. Watching a family argue or have emotional stirs when nobody can raise their voice or express themselves verbally really put our actors on display. They had to show their frustrations with the use of body language and facial expressions, and this small tight cast nailed it! Despite Lee being an anchor, he struggled with his loss and it had an affect on his relationship with his children but Evelyn (Emily Blunt) helps with that. She is there to listen and to address the things within the family that Lee doesn’t necessarily have time for. She is the glue, he is the rock, and the children are the future….they are the reason this family goes on.

"It is a terrifying world when we can't yell for help or warn/find people."

        Everything about this production seemed so intentional, which is something you don’t get in most horror films. Krasinski displays a sense of composition and economic storytelling that you don’t come across too often. Since sound is a threat to the characters, he limits it throughout the movie, so when a significant noise is made, you jump up in your seat and prepare yourself for immense danger. Sudden movements cause more noise, so the characters are in big trouble if you screw up. The film heavily relies on the score to create jump scares, but because sound is limited in this world, the scare tactic is magnified. The cinematographer (Charlotte Bruus Christensen) really captured Krasinski’s vision as a Director. We get such beautiful shots of the farm and a sense of it’s geography, which they layout in a way that feels familiar to us. Her chemistry with her Director was a very special one. They made a no-nonsense type of thriller, capturing every little detail on camera. Even during times when Regan is unaware of the monster around her, the camera uses focusing techniques to show that on screen. It was truly a fantastic art piece all around. 

        Let me be clear though. This film is nerve wrecking. It is a terrifying world when we can’t yell for help or warn/find people. Especially in the case of the deaf daughter, Regan, she can’t even hear what is coming. The minute a noise is made, you’re pretty much doomed. So when tension really starts to build due to a small noise, the threat get’s incrementally more worse and the problems begin to stack. I was white knuckle gripping my armrest the whole second half of the film and there is no better high you get after a movie than a good horror/thriller. I give ‘A Quiet Place’ 5 out of 5 stars. 

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Tomb Raider (2018)

Tomb Raider (2018)

"A Franchise They Should’ve Left Buried"

I was brave enough to catch a late showing of the new ‘Tomb Raider,’ a video game-to-movie franchise that we all hoped was finished and buried. Over the years we have learned Hollywood isn’t afraid to bring back these poorly written action films though, because Lara Croft is a pop culture relic, and that provides distributors safe sales at the box office. The character motive was there but her development wasn’t. The film is full of drama and actually has a decent plot, but in the end I was bored to tears with the rushed narrative. Really bad dialogue led to uninteresting characters. Vikander feels like a step down from Angelina Jolie, who was originally casted in the first two films. Despite having a good crew who at least told the story well visually, the action sequences were pretty tamed.

A movie that was based off the 2013 story, the beginning of the film takes place in east London where Lara Croft lives a quiet life as a bicycle courier. Her life seems to be going nowhere because her father has gone missing for 7 years, but when she uncovers clues to his whereabouts, Croft embarks on her first adventure to unlock the mysterious tomb of Himiko - the “mother of death.”

 "No character really has a story arch except for maybe the dead woman in the tomb"

Now, when Angelina Jolie got the role of Lara Croft, we saw a spitting image of what the game developers envisioned our Tomb Raider to look like — She was a tall-strong brunette with gorgeous features who was a sex icon and the ultimate badass female ‘Indiana Jones’. Alicia Vikander is nothing like our typical Lara Croft in regards to being a badass. We see Vikander’s character getting choked out by another female in a sparring match during the opening 10 minutes, so it is pretty apparent that although our new Lara Croft has some hand-to-hand combat training, she is not a skilled fighter. She isn’t tall and she isn’t strong, but she does have brains, which gives her an interesting edge. It’s actually the only Lara Croft quality she bears. Her intelligence is actually countered with a lot of stupid decisions because she is stubborn and defiant. 

I felt like the movie was trying to give the audience “realistic” take on Lara Croft, stripping her of invincible video game traits, but then they constantly put her in scenarios where she’s just extremely lucky. Her character is way in over her head and somehow she manages to survive every dangerous moment by poor aiming and sheer luck. To make things even more annoying, her character doesn’t really develop much. I like where the plot took the character, but I don’t like how they got there. She continues to just stumble through the story rather than grow. The one thing I enjoyed about this film is that I like how they wanted to make this the story of Lara Croft fulfilling her destiny, becoming the hero we love and adore.

It's good that our lead has this drive to discover what happened to her father as a motive that people can connect with. This makes for good emotional drama — something the first two Tomb Raiders lacked. The idea felt right, but it only took away from the our main character after a certain point. She wasn’t developing throughout the film, which actually turned out to be a problem for most of the main characters. They all lacked so much depth that I had a hard time caring.

Our antagonist, Mathias Gogel (Walton Goggins), plays this henchman like guy and he in search of the ‘Tomb of Himiko’ for Trinity, a secret organization he works for. Gogel has no sense of judgement despite how the story keeps unfolding, which left me with a bland villain with no depth. The one character who I did like was Lara’s partner, Lu Ren (Daniel Wu). He starts out the film as this flawed character with a drinking problem who looks like he could be a great supporting character but then he ends up just as stale as the other supporting antagonists. Overall, no character really had a good story arch except for maybe the dead woman in the tomb. Her story is the the best one told when it was all said and done.

Unfortunately for this movie, not even the action was impressive enough to really get praise. Most action films have something memorable— I remember the opening scene of the first Tomb Raider, where Angelina Jolie goes toe-to-toe with this crazy looking robot. This film really had nothing too memorable but it was all beautiful captured.  The Cinematographer (George Richmond), who also was the DP for the first Kingsmen, really did a good job capturing everything on screen, especially the action sequences. There is a whole bow and arrow scene that translated well with his camera movement, which doesn’t surprise me because the Kingsmen shootouts were fantastic.

"I would still recommend watching this movie...."

The Director, Roar Uthaug, Did a great job as well in making this film flow visually. There were multiple action scenes with fast paced movements that I like, like the bow and arrow scene and a couple of chase scenes in the beginning. Despite having such a lazy script, Uthaug did a great job getting the most out of his actors and telling the story. My only complaint was that majority of the action scenes started out with a lot of promise, but just left me kind of disappointed. I cannot remember one action scene that really blew me away. They were able to pull me in, but then every time I was left unimpressed. It felt like I was playing the first level of a video game on an easy difficulty setting.

There is a lot of potential for this franchise because of how they started, but let’s just hope that the writers really figure out these characters in the sequel. I’m almost sure they’ll have a bigger budget so we might get bigger action scenes. I would still recommend watching this movie because I’m almost certain that the sequel is going to be better all around. I hope they keep the same Director and Cinematographer because they have an eye for these type of films. Overall I would rate this film a 2 out of 5 stars.

Please let me know what you thought of this ‘Tomb Raider’ in the comments below. 

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Isle of Dogs (2018)

WES ANDERSON'S: 'ISLE OF DOGS'

Last week Wes Anderson released his second stop motion animation feature titled, “Isle of Dogs.” It’s no surprise that it was released in theaters on National Puppy day, because we get a heart filled whimsical adventure that emotionally connects to any viewer who knows what it’s like to have a dog.

The story follows a young boy, Atari Kobayashi (Koyu Rankin) — who also happens to be the ward of the mayor— is in search for his best friend, Spots (Liev Schreiber) on an island of quarantined dogs with ‘canine flu’. As you may guess, Spots is Atari’s dog who was also sent to the island. 

After a short quirky flashback-narrative used to fill in the blanks, the adventure takes place almost immediately with Atari landing on Trash Island, where a pack of yapping alpha dogs befriend him —Rex (Edward Norton), King (Bob Balaban), Boss (Bill Murray), and Duke (Jeff Goldblum), who are determined to help the boy as a symbol of loyalty of the masters they once adoringly served. Only one dog holds out — the stray Chief (Bryan Cranston), who warns, rather plainly, “I bite.”

“Why should I help him?” says Chief to Nutmeg (Scarlett Johansson), an immaculately groomed show dog who knows “some tricks,” and who captures Chief’s interest. 

“Because he’s a 12-year-old boy,” she responds. “Dogs love those.”

The bond between Chief and Atari is so masterfully crafted by Anderson as we follow these two throughout the journey we are guided to a deeper meaning between the two, as if it was in their genetic code to be bound with one another.

The film is full of a lot of dark moments, which seems to follow with a lot of Wes Anderson films. It actually hits a little close to home, considering the political landscape in America. The antagonist Mayor Kobayashi and his other corrupt  conspirers are not only cat people, but control the political landscape of Japan through their abuse of power. They’ve turned the people of Japan against the most loyal of creatures, in order to achieve the genocide of dogs. There were a few times I lost focus because of the subtle parallels of fascist behavior taking the world by storm and the political behaviors I couldn’t ignore. Either way, I admire an artist who can provide us with that kind of depth, especially in an animation. 

Overall you still get a large dose of comedy and with such a great cast, you are thoroughly entertained with these characters. It’s always nice to see so much talent in a Wes Anderson film, but this one is so stylized per character. The story drifts away from the pack, which is kind of my only criticism, but it’s for story purposes. I would have liked to get a little more of them in the end but it’s only because who doesn’t want more Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Bob Balaban, and Edward Norton constantly chattering amongst one another as dogs.

The detail that went into this film cannot go unnoticed. With 670 crew members, over 30 of them being animators, this film was credited for being the longest stop motion film ever made. Even with such a large team, they had to spend about a year and a half just on the animation of the film. The crew was responsible for making everything out of scratch — The handmade sets, the props, puppets, and even mouths for each character designed for each vowel a human would make (both languages) — making it so hard for you to catch all the hard work on just the first viewing. The “sushi scene” is one of the scenes that really stood when I look back at the film. The way it was crafted and presented in a Wes Anderson-esque style made it such a pleasure to watch. It’s why fans of Wes Anderson go to see his movie. He has a way of using his space with such symmetry that it captures your full attention. 

If I could rate this film, I would give ‘Isle Of Dogs’ a 95%. Historically it may go down as one of the best animated films of our time, and it’s nice to see that we have creatives like Wes Anderson filling seats for quirky whimsical stories like this one. 

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