Tag Archives: Emory Cohen

The OA, The Homecoming; Season 1 Episode 1; ALT Title: Reincarnation and You!

Posted on by casewright

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A new year is here, which means I need to get back into the saddle and get writing! The irony is that “The OA” is from 2016…. Dun Dun Dun.  The great irony is that 2016 had creative losses, but the art was amazing: Stranger Things, People of Earth, and maybe …. just maybe The OA.  I was burned before by seemingly good art that turned out to be a steaming shit show – Channel Zero.   However, the pilot for The OA seems to have all of the weird shit that should make it great.

There are parallel dimensions, Indian Mystics, Naked Bullies, Phyllis from The Office, and Brit Marling.  Side note: If Another Earth didn’t convince you that Brit Marling won the talent lottery, this will.  There are also a number of fascinating plot touchstones: visualization of the world and experiences in general through media, clairvoyance,  and spiritual connection to a multiverse, but without The Flash, and THROAT PUNCHES!

We open with a phone video of a woman jumping off a bridge.  It’s hard to watch, but she wakes and is mostly ok, but with an obsession to get online.  The video goes viral and The girl’s parents see the video and get her from the hospital.  The OA (Brit Marling) has been missing for 7 years, but The OA doesn’t recognize her parents; instead she touches her mom’s face and this act allows her to realize it’s her mom.  Why?  Because before The OA or as they knew her -Prairie disappeared 7 years ago, she was blind!  WHAAAAA????!!!!

The OA returns home to a mob scene of well wishers.  The police try to find out where she was and get nowhere, but we do know that she was with others.  She goes for a walk and sees a guy doing Jackass style stunts.   The next scene embarrassed me… alot.  We cut to a Naked Guy and Perfect Student having pretty great sex.  I’m all for sex, but when I saw this scene, I was at the gym on the elliptical and there was a lady next to me, who looked over, looked away, and shot her eyebrows up into the ceiling.  The Perfect Student opines that she just likes Naked Bully for sex and that she has a torch for a guy in choir.  HMMMM.  Okay.  We learn that naked guy is a bully too, who from hence forward shall be called Naked Bully.

The OA is lamenting her lack of wifi access.  She goes on the hunt for it and she goes to an abandoned home and sees Naked Bully is selling drugs.  The OA wants wifi access, but Naked Bully sicks his dog on her and she takes a few bites, gives a few bites, and tames the dog.  REALLY.

The Naked Bully visits the choir and they are all singing like Glee, which makes me wish that we weren’t so effective at stamping out bullying in schools.  Naked Bully follows the guy that Perfect Student has a crush on and throat punches him. BAM!  There is now one fewer acappella singer in the world … let’s all slow clap.

Naked Bully climbs up the wall to The OA’s room and gives her a pre-paid wifi router if she agrees to pose as his stepmom and convince his teacher not to expel him because if he’s expelled, he’ll get sent to a scared straight school in North Carolina.  The OA agrees if he gets five strong people together for some weird seance thing.

Naked Bully takes her to Value Village and damn it doesn’t cost much to make her look hot… Macklemore would be proud …. POPPIN’ TAGS!  At one point, it becomes clear that The OA can read minds.  Also, we learn the OA is in love with a guy named Homer…no not that one…sorry fat guys everywhere; Homer is a briefly dead football star.

She meets with Phyllis and pretends to be his step-mom.  Phyllis says Naked Bully is a bully and sucks.  The OA lays some great new-age jibber jabber and Phyllis is totally charmed.  The plan appeared to work because Phyllis gives Naked Bully a wink, but it doesn’t last because Phyllis runs into Naked Bully’s real mom at Costco.  DUN DUN DUN.

Naked Bully’s parents confront The OA’s Parents and all appears to be lost: no seance thing and Naked Bully will be scared straight- preventing him from stopping the Acapella Hordes.  What does The OA do?  She posts an eyeball video to get people to attend her seance thing.  If you light the candles….they will come.  Yep, 3 smaller part dayplayers come, Naked Bully turns down sex for it, and even Phyllis shows up for the seance thing.

Then, whammo…..roll credits!!! VERY VERY VERY COOL!

We learn that The OA started as the daughter of a wealthy Russian Oligarch (Nikolai Nikolaeff) was her single dad.  She ran in circles of extreme wealth, but was plagued with nightmares of drowning.  Her father has her go into an icy lake to conquer her fears.  This works! Later, she is on a private shuttle to school, but careens into a ravine and everyone drowns, including The OA.  She is pulled into a multiverse galaxy by an Indian Mystic Superbeing who allows her to go back to earth, but blind because she doesn’t want The OA to see what is coming.  I know this reads as some crazy shit, but it’s very well done and truly compelling.

2016, you slipped this one right under the wire and it was awesome!!!

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Here Are The Confusing San Diego Film Critics Society Nominations!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The San Diego Film Critics Society announced their nominees for the best of 2015 and … well, there’s a little bit of confusion.  As Paddy Mulholland of Screen on Screen points out, the San Diego film critics did not list their nominees alphabetically.  But, at the same time, the SFDC hasn’t acknowledged that the nominees were listed as a ranked slate either.  So, when they list Ex Machina as their first nominee for Best Picture and Brooklyn as their second, were they announcing that Ex Machina was their pick for best picture and Brooklyn was the runner up?  Or did they just decided to randomly list the nominees?

The official winners will be announced on December 14th, at which point we will have clarity!

Anyway, here are the San Diego nominees.  And again, h/t on this goes to Screen on Screen:

Best Picture
1. Ex Machina
2. Brooklyn
3. Mad Max: Fury Road
4. Room
5. Spotlight

Best Director
1. George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road)
2. John Crowley (Brooklyn)
3. Lenny Abrahamson (Room)
4. Tom McCarthy (Spotlight)
5. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (The Revenant)

Best Actor, Male
1. Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant)
2. Jason Segel (The End of the Tour)
3. Matt Damon (The Martian)
4. Bryan Cranston (Trumbo)
5. Jacob Tremblay (Room)

Best Actor, Female
1. Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn)
2. Brie Larson (Room)
3. Charlotte Rampling (45 Years)
4. Charlize Theron (Mad Max: Fury Road)
5. Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina)

Best Supporting Actor, Male
1. Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies)
2. Tom Noonan (Anomalisa)
3. Oscar Isaac (Ex Machina)
4. Paul Dano (Love & Mercy)
5. R. J. Cyler (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl)

Best Supporting Actor, Female
1. Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl)
2. Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Hateful Eight)
3. Helen Mirren (Trumbo)
4. Kristen Stewart (Clouds of Sils Maria)
5. Olivia Cooke (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl)

Best Original Screenplay
1. Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig (Mistress America)
2. Alex Garland (Ex Machina)
3. Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi (What We Do in the Shadows)
4. Quentin Tarantino (The Hateful Eight)
5. Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer (Spotlight)

Best Adapted Screenplay
1. Nick Hornby (Brooklyn)
2. Emma Donoghue (Room)
3. Charlie Kaufman (Anomalisa)
4. Donald Margulies (The End of the Tour)
5. Drew Goddard and Andy Weir (The Martian)

Best Cinematography
1. Roger Deakins (Sicario)
2. Yves Belanger (Brooklyn)
3. Dariusz Wolski (The Martian)
4. John Seale (Mad Max: Fury Road)
5. Emmanuel Lubezki (The Revenant)

Best Editing
1. Margaret Sixel (Mad Max: Fury Road)
2. Joe Walker (Sicario)
3. Pietro Scalia (The Martian)
4. Michael Kahn (Bridge of Spies)
5. Nathan Nugent (Room)
6. Stephen Mirrione (The Revenant

Best Production Design
1. Colin Gibson (Mad Max: Fury Road)
2. Mark Digby (Ex Machina)
3. Arthur Max (The Martian)
4. Francois Seguin (Brooklyn)
5. Adam Stockhausen (Bridge of Spies)

Best Sound Design
1. The Martian
2. Mad Max: Fury Road
3. Ex Machina
4. Sicario
5. Love & Mercy

Best Visual Effects
1. The Martian
2. Ex Machina
3. Mad Max: Fury Road
4. The Walk
5. Jurassic World

Best Use of Music in a Film
1. The Hateful Eight
2. Love & Mercy
3. Mad Max: Fury Road
4. Sicario
5. Straight Outta Compton

Best Ensemble
1. Spotlight
2. The Hateful Eight
3. Straight Outta Compton
4. Inside Out
5. The Big Short
6. What We Do in the Shadows

Best Animated Film
1. Inside Out
2. Anomalisa
3. Shaun the Sheep Movie
4. The Good Dinosaur
5. The Peanuts Movie

Best Documentary
1. Amy
2. He Named Me Malala
3. Cartel Land
4. Meru
5. The Wrecking Crew

Best Foreign Language Film
1. Phoenix
2. Taxi
3. White God
4. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
5. Goodnight Mommy

Best Breakthrough Artist
1. Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl / Ex Machina)
2. Jacob Tremblay (Room)
3. Emory Cohen (Brooklyn)
4. Abraham Attah (Beasts of No Nation)
5. Sean Baker (Tangerine)

 

The Detroit Film Critics Announce Their Nominations! Congratulations, Liev Schrieber!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Awards seasons continues as, earlier today, the Detroit Film Critics announced their nominations for the best of 2015!  Like almost all the other film critics groups, Detroit showed a lot of love to Spotlight.  However, unlike previous groups, Detroit did not nominate Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, or Rachel McAdams.  Instead, they nominated Liev Schrieber who, up until this point, had not really figured into the awards race.

If nothing else, the current confusion over who, if anyone, should be nominated for Spotlight might inspire someone to ask why the Academy doesn’t give an award for Best Ensemble.

Another question raised by Detroit: why does the Academy only allow actors to be nominated for one performance per category.  Detroit nominated Alicia Vikander twice for best supporting actress, for both The Danish Girl and Ex Machina.  And why not?  As we saw with Jessica Chastain in 2011, sometimes one performer delivers several great performances in one year.

Here are the Detroit nominations!

BEST FILM

BEST DIRECTOR

BEST ACTOR

  • Christopher Abbott, James White
  • Michael Caine, Youth
  • Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
  • Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
  • Tom Hardy, Legend

BEST ACTRESS

  • Cate Blanchett, Carol
  • Brie Larson, Room
  • Jennifer Lawrence, Joy
  • Bel Powley, The Diary of a Teenage Girl
  • Saorise Ronan, Brooklyn

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

BEST ENSEMBLE

BREAKTHROUGH

  • Sean Baker, Tangerine (director)
  • Emory Cohen, Brooklyn (actor)
  • Bel Powley, The Diary of a Teenage Girl (actress)
  • Jacob Tremblay, Room (actor)
  • Alicia Vikander, Ex Machina, The Danish Girl (actress)

BEST SCREENPLAY

BEST DOCUMENTARY

Film Review: Brooklyn (dir by John Crowley)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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OH MY GOD, HAVE YOU SEEN BROOKLYN YET!?

If I seem a little bit excited, that’s because I am.  I’ve been excited about seeing Brooklyn ever since it was first acclaimed at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.  I was excited before I watched the film, I was excited while I watched it, and now I’m excited about the prospect of you seeing it.

The thing is, it’s a little bit hard to explain just what makes Brooklyn such a wonderful film.  I will admit that, in my case, it probably helps that it’s a deliriously romantic (yet realistic) portrait of a young woman who immigrates from Ireland to Brooklyn in the 1950s.  Since I’m an incurable romantic of Irish descent, I suppose it was somewhat predestined that I would love Brooklyn.  But, ultimately, you don’t have to be Irish to love Brooklyn.  The story that Brooklyn tells is a universal one.

When we first meet Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), she is a quiet and meek girl living in a small Irish town.  She spends her weekends working in a shop owned by the spiteful Ms. Kelly (Brid Brennan) and looks up to her older sister, Rose (Fiona Glascott).  It is Rose who contacts Father Flood (Jim Broadbent) in Brooklyn and who arranges, with him, for Eilis to come to America.

After a nightmarish crossing that is marked by a Hellish case of seasickness, Eilis finds herself in Brooklyn and living in a boarding house, under the watchful and protective eye of Miss Kehoe (Julie Walters).  At first, Eilis is homesick and struggles to adjust to her new surroundings.  It’s only after Father Flood arranges for Eilis to take a night class in bookkeeping that Eilis starts to discover her confidence.  (Somewhat poignantly, Rose is also a bookkeeper.  Even separated by an ocean, Eilis is still trying to impress her big sister.)

Eventually, Eilis meets and starts to date a sweet-natured plumber named Tony (Emory Cohen).  Now, in the past, I’ve actually been pretty critical of Emory Cohen as an actor.  On twitter, I made some unkind comments about the performance that he gave in the TV series Smash.  (He played Debra Messing’s son.)  Though I didn’t make a point of mentioning it in my review, I also thought he was the weakest link in the otherwise excellent ensemble of The Place Beyond The Pines.  So, when I first heard that he gave an excellent performance in Brooklyn, I was a little bit skeptical.  But then I saw the movie and believe it or not, Emory Cohen gives an excellent performance.  As Tony, he is sweet and tough and funny and truly the ideal boyfriend.  He also flashes the sweetest smile imaginable, which is one thing that he was not allowed to do in either Smash or The Place Beyond The Pines.

Brooklyn handles Eilis and Tony’s relationship with a commendable honesty.  This is a wonderfully romantic movie but, at the same time, it retains a realistic edge.  As characters, Eilis and Tony are never idealized.  When Tony tells Eilis that he loves her, we’re just as torn as she is because we’ve gotten to know both of them.  We know that Tony is a good man but we also know and understand Eilis’s struggle to establish a life and an identity of her own in America.  We know how important her independence is to her and it’s equally important to us.

As a result of unforseen circumstances, Eilis eventually finds herself returning to Ireland.  Though Eilis insists that she’s only going to stay for a few months, she soon finds herself torn.  Should she return to her old home, where she is now viewed as being a bit of a glamorous celebrity and is romantically pursued by the handsome and charming Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson)?  Or should she go back to Brooklyn, to Tony and an unpredictable future?

Brooklyn is a deceptively low-key film.  Eilis changes from being a shy and insecure girl to being a strong and confident woman so gradually that both she and the viewer are initially taken by surprise when the new Eilis emerges from her shell.  This is a film that both demands and rewards your patience.  At the same time, it’s also a film about universal desires and experiences to which we can all relate.  At some point in our life and in some way, we have all been Eilis Lacey.

Saoirse Ronan — oh my God, what can I say about Saoirse Ronan?  How can I possibly describe what a wonderful performance she gives?  Ever since she first came to the public’s attention in Atonement, Saoirse Ronan has been one of the best and most underrated actresses around.  In Brooklyn, she gives her best performance yet.  She deserved an Oscar for Hanna and she’ll hopefully win one for Brooklyn.

(Incidentally, Brooklyn was written by Nick Hornby, who also wrote another one of my favorite films, An Education.  Hopefully, Brooklyn will do for Saoirse Ronan what An Education did for Carey Mulligan.)

See Brooklyn and see it soon!

Embracing the Melodrama #58: The Place Beyond The Pines (dir by Derek Cianfrance)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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First released in 2013, the underrated (and, as far as end-of-the-year awards ago, underappreciated) The Place Beyond The Pines is actually three cinematic melodramas in one.  Much like a great novel, this movie is split into multiple pieces with each part telling a different part of a larger story.  It’s an interesting and ambitious concept, the type that we sometimes fear that audiences are no longer capable of appreciating.

The first third of the story centers on Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling), a motorcycle stuntman who performs at state fairs.  During one such fair in upstate New York, he meets and has a brief affair with Romina (Eva Mendes, giving an excellent performance).  When he returns to New York a year later, Luke discovers that he is now a father.  Luke quits the fair and decides that he wants to be a part of his son’s life but Romina, who is now in a stable relationship with a good man named Kofi (Mahershala Ali), asks him to stay away.  Determined to be part of his son’s life and also looking to win back Romina, Luke stays in town and gets a job working with Robin (the always excellent Ben Mendelsohn).  Robin owns an auto garage and, as he explains to Luke, he also used to be a bank robber.  Soon, with Robin’s help, Luke is robbing banks and sending the money to Romina.

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Luke’s story is probably the strongest in the film.  Ryan Gosling is charismatic as the dangerous yet likable Luke and he and Eva Mendes have a lot of on-screen chemistry.  Ben Mendelsohn brings yet another one of his trademark burned out characters to life and Mahershala Ali is sympathetic as Kofi, a man, who despite being good and responsible, is simply no Ryan Gosling.

The second part of the story deals with Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), the cop who chases Luke after one of his bank robberies.  Avery is the politically ambitious son of a former judge (Harris Yulin) and, much like Luke, he also has newborn son.  When Avery is originally hailed as hero for his pursuit of Luke, Avery’s feelings are far more ambivalent.  It gets even more difficult for him when he catches some of his fellow cops (led, of course, by Ray Liotta) stealing the money that Luke sent to Romina.  When Romina rejects Avery’s attempt to return the money to her, Avery is left with little choice but to try to take down the crooked cops himself.  It’s the only way for him to clear his conscience.

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And, finally, in the third part of the story, teenager Jason Cankham (Dane DeHaan) meets and befriends Avery’s son, AJ (Emory Cohen).  What neither one of them realizes is that Jason is Luke’s son.  The interesting thing here is that the two sons have, on the surface at least, turned out to be the exact opposites of their father.  Jason is the good kid while AJ is probably one of the most despicable movie teenagers of all time.  When Jason learns the truth about both of their fathers, he has to decide whether he’s his father’s son or if he is his own human being.

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As you might be able to guess from the above plot description, The Place Beyond the Pines is a big epic of a film and, perhaps not surprisingly, the end results are intriguing if occasionally uneven.  The film starts out so strongly with Ryan Gosling roaring down empty roads on his motorcycle that it’s hard for the rest of the movie to live up to that opening’s promise.  And yet somehow, the film manages to do just that.  Even the parts of the film that didn’t particularly intrigue me — like the whole subplot with the corrupt cops — were saved by the efforts of a perfectly chosen cast.  The third and final part of the film provides the perfect climax, helping us to both understand the legacy of Luke Glanton and Avery Cross but also to understand why both of their stories are important, both as individual tales and as parts of a greater whole.

The Place Beyond The Pines may not be perfect, not in the way that a film like Winter’s Bone is perfect.  However, we should still be glad that films like it are being made.

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