Tag Archives: movie

Cleaning out the DVR: Night Nurse (dir by William A. Wellman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Lisa is once again cleaning out her DVR!  She recorded the 1931 film Night Nurse off of TCM on May 3rd.)

Night Nurse follows the sordid nights and quiet days of Lora Hart (Barbara Stanwyck), a high school dropout who dreams of becoming a nurse.  Fortunately, she manages to get hired on as a trainee nurse at a big city hospital.  Along the way, she gets a new BFF (Joan Blondell), a potential new boyfriend named Mortie (Ben Lyon), who is not only handsome and nice but a bootlegger too, and valuable life lessons on how to defend herself against smirky male doctors.  Yay!

Unfortunately, even if you manage to survive the rigorous training program, the life of a night nurse is never easy.  For instance, Lora gets hired to help look after the Ritchie children.  The Ritchies may be rich but they’ve got so much drama going on that maybe it would be better if they were poor.  The kids, for instance, are always sick and their doctor (Ralf Harolde) is apparently hooked on morphine.  The mother (Charlotte Merriam) is always passed out drunk.  Meanwhile, the family’s chauffeur, Nick (Clark Gable!), is a total brute who appears to have dangerous plans of his own.

Made in 1931, Night Nurse is a pre-code film, which is to say that it was made before the production code mandated what was and was not acceptable in the movies.  Occasionally, among film fans like myself, there’s a tendency to assume that any pre-code film is actually going to be some sort of subversive, over-the-top masterpiece.  We always think about the epic orgies that Cecil B. DeMille would slip into his silent films or maybe Douglas Fairbanks playing a constantly sniffing detective named Coke Ennyday in The Mystery of the Leaping Fish or the old stories about anonymous stagehands accidentally getting gunned down during the filming of Little Caesar or The Public Enemy.  However, just as often, the pre-code label just means that a film is going to feature a few winky double entendres, a bootlegger hero, and at last one scene of the film’s heroine getting undressed.  If you want to become an expert on 1930s lingerie, just spend a weekend watching pre-code films.

That’s certainly the case with Night Nurse, which only takes 7 minute to reach its first scene of nurses changing out of street clothes and into uniform.  As for the bootlegger hero, that’s taken care of as soon as Mortie shows up and flashes his charming smile despite having a bullet in his hand.  As played by Ben Lyon, Mortie is not exactly the most convincing gangster to ever show up in a pre-code film but no matter!  He’s got charm and not every gangster can be Edward G. Robinson…

If it sound like I’m being critical of Night Nurse, I’m not.  I watch Night Nurse every time that it shows up on TCM and I actually love the film.  It’s a cheerfully silly melodrama, the type of innocently risqué film that could only be made during the pre-code era.  Stanwyck and Blondell are a perfect team and whenever I listened to them trade sarcastic quips or watched them as they try to get away with breaking curfew, I couldn’t help but think of my own friends.  Seriously, everyone should be as lucky as to have a BFF like Joan Blondell.  And finally, you get Clark Gable as the bad guy.  Gable is really mean and hateful in this movie and it takes a while to get used to seeing him without his mustache.  To be honest, he’s not as handsome without the facial hair.  But still — he’s Clark freaking Gable and, even in this early role, he had so much charisma and screen presence that it’s impossible not to watch him.

I was going to start this review by saying that Night Nurse sounded like a good title for an MCU film.  However, my boyfriend informed me that apparently, there actually was a Marvel comic book called Night Nurse.  Apparently, it had nothing to do with this movie.  That’s a shame but hopefully, someone at Lifetime will read this review and decide to remake Night Nurse with an all Canadian cast.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed on this one!

Anyway, Night Nurse shows up on TCM constantly.  Keep an eye out for it!

Cleaning Out the DVR: Lady In The Lake (dir by Robert Montgomery)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Lisa is once again in the process of cleaning out her DVR!  She recorded the 1947 film noir Lady In The Lake off of TCM on June 17th!)

You are Raymond Chandler’s world-famous private detective, Phillip Marlowe!

Well, no.  Actually, you aren’t.  Lady in the Lake is best-known for being one of the first (if not the first) film to be shot from the viewpoint of the main character but actually, the film goes out of its way to remind you that you’re seeing the story through Marlowe’s eyes but you’re not Marlowe yourself.  There are three scenes in which Marlowe (played by Robert Montgomery, who also directed the film) is seen sitting behind a desk and directly addressing the audience.  He shows up to fill in a few plot details and to assure the audience that, while the film they’re watching may be experimental, it’s not too experimental.  For his part, Montgomery looks and sounds absolutely miserable whenever he has to speak directly to the audience.  One gets the feeling that these scenes were forced on him by nervous studio execs, who were probably worried that the film would be too weird for mainstream audiences.

However, the rest of the film is seen totally through Marlowe’s eyes.  When Marlowe gets punched, we see the fist flying at him.  When Marlowe smokes a cigarette, we see the smoke float away from him.  When Marlowe leers at every single woman that he meets, the camera leers as well.  When Marlowe looks at himself in a mirror, we see his reflection.  When Marlowe passes out after a beating or a car accident, the image grows blurry before fading to black.  There’s even a rather clever scene when Marlowe leans in for a kiss, just to suddenly change his mind and pull back.

Today, of course, the film’s technique doesn’t seem quite as revolutionary.  We’re used to point of view shots and moving cameras.  Last year, Hardcore Henry told its entire stupid story through a point of view shot and the shaky cam effect actually made me physically ill.  In Lady in the Lake, there is no shaky, hand-held camera work and I was happy about that.  Marlowe may turn his head left and right and he may walk forward but he apparently has nerves of steel because the image stays steady and only shakes when Marlowe’s getting beat up.

As for the film’s plot, it opens with Marlowe explaining that, since he’s not making enough money as a P.I., he’s decided to try his hand at writing for a pulp magazine.  While his stories are not accepted, publishing executive Adrienne Fromsett (Audrey Totter) does hire him to track down the missing wife of her boss, Derace Kingbury (Leon Ames).  As Marlowe quickly figures out, nobody’s motives are exactly pure.  Adrienne wants to marry her boss and get her hands on his money.  The wife’s lover (Richard Simmons) claims that he hasn’t seen her in weeks but still lets slip that she may no longer be alive.  The police (represented by Lloyd Nolan and Tom Tully) are corrupt, rather rude, and may know more than they are letting on.  Even a seemingly innocent landlady (Jayne Meadows) might have a secret or two.

And, of course, there’s the dead woman who is discovered in a nearby lake.  Her identity holds the key to many mysteries…

It’s an intriguing puzzle and it actually helps to see everything through Marlowe’s eyes.  If nothing else, it cuts down on the red herrings.  If Marlowe stops to stare at something, you know exactly what he’s staring at and you can be sure that it will prove to be important at some point in the story.

By the way, did I mention that Lady In The Lake is not just an experimental film noir but a Christmas movie?  Seriously, it opens with holiday music playing in the background and the opening credits are printed on cheery Christmas cards.  It’s only after the credits are over that we see that there’s a gun underneath the cards.  As a director, Montgomery does a great job juxtaposing the cheeriness of Christmas with the sordidness of the people who Marlowe has to associate with on a daily basis.  He may be dealing with a bunch of murderers and greedy con artists but almost everyone has a Christmas tree in their apartment.

In fact, it’s so easy to get so wrapped up in the film’s technique that the viewer runs the risk of not noticing just how dark and cynical Lady in The Lake truly is.  Everyone that Marlowe meets is sleazy.  Marlowe, himself, does not come across as being particularly likable.  Every room that Marlowe enters is underlit.  Interestingly, with the exception of the opening credits and a driving montage, there’s not much music to be heard in the film, a reminder that we’re only hearing what Marlowe hears.  And, in Marlowe’s world, there’s no music playing in the background to provide relief from the tension.  There’s just a mix of lies and threats.

Lady in the Lake is an intriguing film and it shows up on TCM fairly frequently.  Keep an eye out for it.

What Lisa Watched Last Night #171: Ten: Murder Island (dir by Chris Robert)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, Drink Slay Love was not the only Lifetime premiere that I watched.  I also watched Ten Murder Island!

Why Was I Watching It?

The obvious answer, of course, is that it was on Lifetime and, whenever I review a Lifetime film, this site gets an upsurge in clicks.

But, beyond that, I liked the commercials for Ten: Murder Island.  They looked moody and atmospheric.  When I read that the movie was about ten people being stalked and murdered on an island, I immediately was reminded of Harper Island, a.k.a. the scariest TV show ever.  How could I not watch, right?

What Was It About?

Ten teenagers have gathered at a house that’s located on an isolated island.  They’re throwing a weekend party but a storm not only knocks out all the power but also everyone’s phone signal.  Add to that, someone on the island is killing everyone, one by one.  Uh-oh!

Why are they being targeted?  Does it have anything to do with Claire Hicks, an unpopular student who committed suicide shortly after homecoming?  Considering that pages ripped from her journal keep appearing at every murder scene, that would seem to be a safe bet.  Will the smart and studious (and kinda boring) Meg (China Anne McClain) be able to figure out what’s happening before everyone’s dead?  And will her pseudo-boyfriend TJ (Rome Flynn) ever come clean about what happened at homecoming?

What Worked?

Both the house and the island were well-chosen locations and, visually, the film had a memorably spooky atmosphere.  If nothing else, while you were watching Ten, you were convinced that anyone could die at any moment.  No one seemed to be safe.  The deaths themselves were, for a Lifetime film, surprisingly graphic and rather mean-spirited.  This killer wasn’t missing around.

I especially liked the flashback scenes that accompanied the reading of Claire’s journals.  They were well-handled, with everyone’s face literally scratched out and obscured, keeping you guessing as to who Claire was writing about.

What Did Not Work?

As I watched Ten: Murder Island, I couldn’t help but be bothered by the fact that no one on the island really seemed to be that upset by the fact that all of their friends were being brutally and gruesomely murderer.  Meg and TJ would get upset whenever they stumbled across a body but, in the very next scene, they would be laughing and flirting and teasing each other about homecoming.

This movie also featured a truly cringeworthy line that was uttered right after Meg learned the terrible truth about what happened at homecoming.  After learning about a truly terrible thing that happened, Meg turns to TJ and exclaims, in all sincerity, “I didn’t realize I meant that much to you!”  Now, I can’t say too much without spoiling the movie but, just to indicate how inappropriate this response felt, this is what I tweeted as soon as I heard the line:

I mean, it’s generally accepted that the majority of characters in a movie like this are going to be douchebags but Ten: Murder Island really abused the privilege.

“Oh my God!  Just like me!” Moments

I totally related to Kumiko (Annie Q), who was the sarcastic girl who had no hesitation about accusing Meg of being a murderer and who seemed to be more annoyed than terrified by the all the lethal drama going on around her.

Lessons Learned

There’s only one Harper’s Island.

What Lisa Watched Last Night #170: Drink Slay Love (dir by Vanessa Parise)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I watched a new Lifetime film, Drink Slay Love!

Why Was I Watching It?

Because it was on Lifetime, of course!

Plus, it was a Canadian film about vampires.  I love Canada and I love vampires!  Ever since that episode of Degrassi where Emma got a “social disease” while playing Mina in a school production of Dracula, Canada and vampires have mixed well.

(Now, I should admit, that, while watching Drink Slay Love, I was also watching a film called The Dead Don’t Die on YouTube.  I’m a big believer in multitasking.)

What Was It About?

Pearl (Cierra Ramirez) has a life that most of us can only have erotically-themed nightmares about.  She’s a sixteen year-old vampire princess.  She’s headstrong.  She’s a little bit bratty.  She’s convinced that nothing can hurt her.  Even after she’s the victim of an attempted staking, she still insists on going out in the middle of the night by herself.  On the plus side, Pearl doesn’t attack animals.  She only attacks humans, especially Brad, the poor guy who works at a 24 hour ice cream parlor and who never remembers Pearl’s nightly visits, in which she always gets a scoop of mint ice cream and a pint of blood.

However, everything changes when it’s discovered that Pearl is immune to sunlight!  She is a rare vampire who can actually walk around in the daylight.  This leads to her parents getting the brilliant idea of sending Pearl to high school.  There’s a big feast coming up and apparently, teenage blood is in high demand.  However, once Pearl arrives at the school, she starts to make friends, almost despite herself.  She starts to do the type of things that teenagers in Lifetime movies always do.  How can she set her new friends up to be the main course?

Of course, some of her new friends have secrets of their own.  You know how that goes…

What Worked?

This was a nice change of pace for Lifetime.  After endless movies about obsessive stalkers and stolen babies and bad celebrity lookalikes, it was nice to see something different on Lifetime.  I’m going to guess that Drink Slay Love was made with October in mind and really, this is a good movie for people who want celebrate Halloween without getting traumatized.  It’s not particularly scary but it’s got vampires and it’s enjoyably silly.

Cierra Ramirez did a good job as Pearl.  Pearl is a very sardonic vampire, which is the best type of vampire to be.  Ramirez delivered her sarcastic dialogue with just the right amount of bite.  (Heh heh, see what I did there?)

If the director’s name seems familiar, that’s because Vanessa Parise has directed several Lifetime movies.  She does a good job with Drink Slay Love, keeping the story moving at a good pace and getting good performances from the entire cast.

What Did Not Work?

To be honest, I liked the whole film.  Even the occasionally sketchy CGI added to the film’s charm.

“Oh my God!  Just like me moments!”

I related to Pearl.  Well, I didn’t necessarily relate to the blood sucking.  But I was really sarcastic when I was sixteen, too.  Plus, I always used to dress in black and then dare anyone to make a comment about it… (Actually, not that much has changed since then…)

Lessons Learned

Canada and Vampires are a good combination!

Film Review: The Wall (dir by Doug Liman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Wall tells a very simple story.

Opening with a title card that informs us that “President Bush has declared victory,” The Wall takes place in Iraq in 2007.  Two soldiers — a sniper named Matthews (John Cena) and a spotter named Isaac (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) — have responded to a call for help that came from a pipeline construction site.  When they arrive, they see only dead contractors.  Matthews and Isaac spend a day watching the site, finally determining that it is safe to investigate.

Of course, as soon as Matthews approaches the site, shots ring out as a sniper opens fire on him.  Matthews falls while Isaac finds himself trapped behind a crumbling wall, shot in the right knee and slowly bleeding out.  As Isaac tends to his wound and tries to determine whether Matthews is alive or dead, his radio comes to life.  The voice, on the other end, initially claims to be an American soldier but Isaac eventually figures out that the voice actually belongs to the man who just shot him.  The sniper is an Iraqi who calls himself Juba.  He may or may not be a legendary and feared sniper that Matthews and Isaac were discussing mere minutes before being attacked.

And that’s pretty much the entire film right there.  For 81 minutes, Isaac tries not to die while Juba alternates between taunting him and demanding to know why he and the American forces have yet to leave Iraq.  Isaac claims that America is rebuilding Iraq.  Juba claims that the wall that Isaac is hiding behind used to be a part of a school.  Isaac tells Juba to fuck off.  Juba replies, “We are not so different, you and me,” revealing that, if nothing else, Al Qaeda snipers apparently appreciate a good cliché.  If anything, it reminded me a bit of The Shallows, except Blake Lively was now a soldier and the shark refused to stop talking.

I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about The Wall.

On the one hand, it’s a very well-made film.  Visually, the film captures the deadly heat of the desert and it makes good use of its limited setting.  It’s far more watchable than any movie that exclusively takes place behind a crumbling wall has any right to be.  From what I’ve read, it appears that The Wall‘s depiction of both combat and dying is fairly accurate and the film does a good job of putting you in Isaac’s boots, forcing you to try to desperately figure out where Juba could be hiding.

Also, Aaron Taylor-Johnson actually gives a good performance.  Since, with a few notable exceptions, Aaron Taylor-Johnon usually bores me to tears, I was shocked to see how good of a performance he gave as the country-accented Isaac.  It’s especially impressive since he’s on screen for almost the entire film.  It was hard for me to believe that the same actor who was so unbearably dull in Savages was suddenly so watchable in The Wall.  However, he definitely was.

And yet, The Wall is also one of the most thoroughly unpleasant films that I’ve ever sat through.  Admittedly, that’s probably the way it should be.  War films shouldn’t be pleasant and I don’t think anyone could ever accuse The Wall of romanticizing combat.  At the same time, the film itself doesn’t seem to be quite sure what it wants to say about war.  Juba and Isaac do briefly debate America’s role in the Middle East but their discussion has all the depth of a twitter fight between Bernie Sanders supporter and a Donald Trump voter.  Neither Isaac nor Juba are particularly deep thinkers.  They’re both fighting and potentially dying for the benefit of others.  Maybe that’s the point.  The problem is that the film itself doesn’t seem to be quite sure.

The Wall is one of those films where I respect the craftsmanship behind it while, at the same time, having no desire to ever sit through it again.

What Lisa Watched Last Night #169: My Baby Is Gone! (dir by Steve Bacic)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last Monday, I watched the Lifetime premiere movie, My Baby Is Gone!  I should have reviewed it on Tuesday but, to be honest, I spent all of last week trying to figure out if Carrie was actually Laura Palmer and if Dale Cooper ever actually escaped the Black Lodge or not.  So, this review is a week late and for that, I apologize even though I think anyone who would require an apology is kind of a jerk.

Why Was I Watching It?

Seriously, what’s been going on with Lifetime lately?  It used to be that every Saturday night saw the premiere of a new Lifetime film.  Live tweeters across the country would look forward to every new Lifetime film.  We transformed several of those films into trending topics.  We did our part.

But, for some reason, this year has seen a different Lifetime.  More often than not, Lifetime airs an old movie on Saturday and saves the premiere for Sunday.  Sorry, Lifetime.  I love you but if I have to choose between a new movie and Twin Peaks, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, The Deuce, Big Brother, and almost everything else that I can watch on Sunday night, anything that Lifetime premieres on Sunday is probably going to end up sitting on my DVR for a while before I actually watch it.

However, My Baby is Gone! did not premiere on Sunday.  It premiered on Labor Day, so, for the first time in what seemed like forever, I was actually able to watch and live tweet the movie as it aired.  Seriously, Lifetime, get it together.  Nobody wants to watch a Lifetime premiere on Sunday.

What Was It About?

Emily (Elisabeth Harnois) is 8 months pregnant.  Her husband (Ryan S Williams) seems to be a good guy but he works too hard and sometimes, he misses Emily’s checkups.  Her best friend (Nicole LaPlaca) is supportive but she also works with Emily’s husband so, of course, it’s reasonable to assume that they’re probably sleeping together.  This is a Lifetime movie, after all.  After you’ve seen enough Lifetime movies, you know there’s no way that men and women can ever just be co-workers.

(Unless, of course, they’re cops.  In that case, they’re just ineffectual and inevitably end up arresting the wrong person.)

Luckily, someone new has moved in across the street!  Kelly (Anna van Hooft) is super-friendly and helpful and — oh my God! — she’s eight months pregnant too!  Kelly says that she’s just staying in the house until her aunt returns.  What no one knows, of course, is that Kelly’s actually got her aunt tied up in the basement.

Oh, and it turns out that Kelly isn’t really pregnant, either.  She’s just wearing a fake belly.  It’s actually kind of obvious but, at first, everyone just takes Kelly at her word.

Soon, Kelly is drawing Emily away from her husband and her best friend.  She even convinces Emily to decorate the nursery with flamingos instead of butterflies!

What could Kelly’s nefarious plan be?

What Worked?

Uhmm… I’m thinking about it…

Actually, I had a lot of fun live tweeting this film.  My Baby is Gone! is one of those movies that literally brings out the best in a snarky audience.  There’s just so many implausible developments and none of the characters are likely to be mistaken for a member of Mensa.  It’s a fun movie to watch if you’re looking for an excuse to spend two hours wondering how people can be so stupid.

Anna Van Hooft did a great job as Kelly.  If you’re going to play a character who is batshit crazy in a Lifetime film, you might as well go all out.  When you’re in a movie with a title like My Baby is Gone!, the time for subtlety is over.

What Did Not Work?

Even by the standards of Lifetime, the plot was just too implausible to work.  I mean, the whole fake belly thing was a lot more convincing when it used in A Deadly Adoption.

“Oh my God!  Just like me!” Moments

My favorite character was Pam (Amelia Burstyn), who was Emily’s doctor’s administrative assistant and who showed absolutely no hesitation about sharing the details of another patient’s visit.  It may not have been the best example of professional ethics but sometimes, you have to break the rules.

Lessons Learned

Butterflies are better than flamingos.

The Things You Find On Netflix: To The Bone (dir by Marti Noxon)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Way back in January, when I first heard about To The Bone, I had high hopes for it.

After all, To The Bone was the directorial debut of Marti Noxon, who is well-known both for her work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and for co-creating Unreal.  To The Bone was reportedly based on Noxon’s own struggle with an eating disorder and it was said to feature an outstanding lead performance from Lily Collins as an artist struggling with anorexia.  Even the casting of Keanu Reeves as a doctor sounded intriguing.

And, to me, it didn’t matter that To The Bone got mixed reviews at Sundance.  Who would seriously expect critics, especially male critics, to understand a movie about body issues and eating disorders?  When I heard that To The Bone had been purchased by Netflix, I did sigh a little.  Far too often, Netflix is where good films end up getting lost in a sea of mediocre offering.  But then again, perhaps To The Bone was exactly the type of intimate character study that would actually benefit from being viewed on a small screen.  After all, it’s not a film about a bunch of space lizard attacking the great wall of China.  It’s a film about a young woman struggling with an eating disorder.

When Netflix finally released To The Bone back in July, I was excited.

Then I actually watched the movie.

To The Bone actually gets off to a pretty good start.  The first 20 minutes or so are dedicated to establishing who Ellie (Lily Collins) is.  She’s 20 years old.  She’s smart.  She’s sarcastic.  She’s an artist.  She’s a college dropout who apparently used to have a very popular tumblr that dealt with being thin.  She’s also anorexic and, from the first minute that we see her, Ellie looks like she’s on the verge of death.  (To the film’s credit, it makes clear that there is a huge difference between being naturally thin and being anorexic.  That’s a distinction that is far too often overlooked.)  We meet Ellie’s dysfunctional family: her frustrated stepmother (Carrie Preston), the father who often can’t be bothered, and the half-sister (Liana Liberato) who both loves and resents her.  The relationship between the two sisters is especially well-handled.  Even if it takes a while to get used to Keanu Reeves playing a compassionate but tough-talking doctor, the film still works during his first few scenes.

Then, Ellie joins Reeves’s inpatient program and moved into a house with six other patients and this is where the film started to annoy me.  Ellie is such a well-drawn and well-acted character that it makes it all the more obvious that the rest of the patients are not.  Instead, the rest of the patients are all easily identifiable types.  As soon as they show up on screen, you know everything about them and you know exactly what is going to happen to each and every one of them.  From the minute that Ellie reluctantly steps into that house, To The Bone starts to feel less like an honest look at anorexia and more like a well-meaning and predictable PSA.  One of the patients is pregnant and always talk about how worried she is that her eating disorder is going to lead to her losing the baby.  Can you guess what happens?

And then there’s Luke (Alex Sharp).  Luke is the ballet dancer who is recovering from a knee injury.  As soon as I saw that Luke was the only male in the house, I knew that he was destined to eventually declare his love for Ellie.  But my problem with Luke has less to do with his predictable character arc and more to do with just how annoying a character he is.  Luke is relentlessly upbeat.  Luke constantly tells corny jokes.  Luke just will not stop talking!  When Luke leaves a room, he starts singing a song called Sugar Blues.  When Luke reenters a room, he is still singing Sugar Blues.  SHUT UP, LUKE!

(Whenever Ellie would visit Luke in his room, I would find myself distracted by the posters on his wall.  The majority of them said “Jazz Festival” and featured some saxophone clipart.  As strange as it may sound, it really started to annoy me that there was no date or location listed.  Why would you go through all the trouble of making — or buying, for that matter — a poster for a jazz festival and then not bother to include a date or a location?  That may sound like a minor thing but, as I watched the film, that inauthentic poster came to represent everything that felt inauthentic about Luke as a character.)

I guess the main problem with To The Bone is that it never succeeds in convincing us that the inpatient program is actually going to do any good for Ellie.  It’s not for lack of trying.  However, the scenes in the house are too overwrought and predictably scripted.  There’s a scene where Reeves takes the patients on a field trip and it’s supposed to be inspiring but it doesn’t work because, as a first-time director, Noxon doesn’t trust her material enough to allow us to draw our own conclusions.  Instead, she beats us over the head with her message.  For To The Bone to work, it needed a director like Andrea Arnold, someone who specializes in a naturalistic performances and who is willing to embrace ambiguity and take the time to let a scene play out.  Noxon makes the mistake of not trusting her audience to draw the right conclusion and, as a result, To The Bone goes from being an intriguing character study to being the cinematic equivalent of the last 15 minutes of an episode of Intervention.

Though it all, Lily Collins continues to give a good performance.  Even when she’s forced to deliver some unfortunate dialogue, she’s the best thing about To The Bone.  Unfortunately, the rest of this movie just collapses around her.

Jazz Festival

 

Playing Catch-Up: The Great Wall (dir by Zhang Yimou)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Remember The Great Wall?

The Great Wall came out in February.  Before it was released, I saw the trailer and I thought, “Well, that looks like it might be fun.”  However, I never actually saw the film when it was in theaters.  I think I was still recovering from Fifty Shades Darker when The Great Wall was released so I put off going to see it.  I thought to myself, “That’ll be around for a while.”  Of course, I was wrong.  The Great Wall played for two weeks and then it was gone.

That may not sound like a big deal when you consider the reviews that The Great Wall received.  If not for the fact that Fifty Shades Darker was released a week earlier, The Great Wall would have been the first critical disaster of 2017.  Seriously, the critics hated The Great Wall with a passion that took even me by surprise.  The comments went beyond the usual snarkiness to outright hatred.  Suddenly, The Great Wall — which, to judge from the trailer, looked like a harmless little monster movie — was being held up as an example of everything wrong with modern filmmaking.

The film was even attacked for starring Matt Damon.  As I said before, I thought the trailer looked like fun but, apparently, other critics watched that trailer and found themselves asking, “How dare Matt Damon appear in a movie that’s set in eleventh century China!?” And you know what?  I get it.  Whenever I’m watching a movie about aliens invading the 11th Century, my immediate concern is whether or not the film is historically accurate.  It’s bad enough that Americans are being taught that Matt Damon could survive on Mars.  Do they also have to be told that Matt Damon saved China from the space lizards!?

Even though I missed The Great Wall when it was playing in theaters, I knew that it was a film that I would see eventually.  Whenever a film gets totally slaughtered by the critics, I feel like I have almost a duty to watch the film and judge for myself.  Some of that’s because I don’t trust the majority of critics.  And some of it’s because, as a natural born contrarian, I’m always hopeful for any chance to go against the consensus.  Last month, I finally watched The Great Wall and you know what?

It’s not that bad.

Now, it should be understood that being not that bad doesn’t necessarily mean that The Great Wall is a good movie.   It’s a deeply silly movie and, occasionally, it’s also a profoundly dumb one.  Matt Damon plays a European mercenary who is sneaking around China, searching for gunpowder.  After he is captured by the Chinese and brought to the Great Wall, he is enlisted to help battle a bunch of space lizards.  Apparently, the space lizards attack the wall every 60 years but, this year, they’re arriving early.  Or something like that.  I really couldn’t follow the mythology of the space lizards and that’s probably for the best.  The Great Wall is not a film that demands or benefits from a good deal of deep thought.  This is one of those films where the best plan is to not ask too many questions because the answers probably won’t make any sense anyway.

As dumb as The Great Wall may be, it’s an undeniably entertaining movie.  Under the direction of Zhang Yimou, The Great Wall is a visual feast, full of epic landscapes and swooping cameras.  When a seemingly limitless number of space lizards appear out of nowhere and suddenly charge the wall, it’s impossible not to get caught up in the exciting silliness of it all.  When the Chinese army takes their positions on the Great Wall and prepare to repel the invasion, it doesn’t matter that none of the characters are particularly fleshed out.  Instead, you’re just overwhelmed by the vibrant colors of their armor and the determined fierceness of their expressions.  The Great Wall is shamelessly over the top and nicely self-aware.  This a movie that knows that it is ludicrous and occasionally incoherent and you know what?  The Great Wall is perfectly fine with that.

For all the criticism that he received for appearing in the movie, Matt Damon is ideally cast.  Whenever Damon is on screen, it’s as if he’s entered into a conspiracy with the viewer.  Matt Damon is one of the few actors who can maintain his balance while walking that thin line between drama and parody.  With every arched eyebrow and slightly sarcastic line reading, Damon is saying, “Sure, this is all kind of stupid.  But aren’t we having fun?”

When The Great Wall eventually shows up on the SyFy channel, it’s going to be fun movie to live tweet.  Some films were just meant to be watched and appreciated with a group of your snarkiest friends.  The Great Wall is one such film.

 

Scene That I Love: The End of the World from Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Over the past few years, there’s been many movies about the end of the world.

A lot of them have been pretty bad.  I never did find the high heel that I threw at the screen while watching Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World.

And some of them have been pretty good.  Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and its sequels come to mind.

And then there’s Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia.  Von Trier is always going to be controversial filmmaker but no one has ever matched his brilliance when it came to capturing the end of existence.  In Melancholia, a depressed woman (played in a revelatory performance by Kristen Dunst) finds unexpected strength in the end of the world.  As can be seen in the scene below, it’s a beautifully sad film, one that ends on a note of triumphant apocalypse:

Here’s The Trailer for Molly’s Game

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Eh.

When was the last time Aaron Sorkin really did anything to justify his sterling reputation?  Yeah, he won an Oscar for The Social Network and he gave one of those annoying, “Daddy just won an Oscar so go to bed now, my daughter” speeches.  And then he was nominated for Moneyball.  Since he didn’t win, he was not allowed to use his daughter as a prop for a second speech.

He also gave us The Newsroom, a misogynistic television program that was so smug and tone deaf in its coastal elitism that it was probably a contributing factor to the election of Donald Trump.  Sorkin also wrote an “open letter” to his daughter after the election, one that pretty much read like a parody of limousine liberalism.

In short, if Sorkin’s going to continue to be known as a great whatever he is, he needs to start delivering.  His latest attempt will be Molly’s Game, which he not only wrote but directed as well.  That’s right — no longer will Aaron Sorkin have to deal with meddling directors saying stuff like, “But all your female characters are portrayed as being simpletons who need a man to save them and tell them what to do…”

On the plus side, Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba are in the movie.

On the other side … Sorkin’s gotta be Sorkin…

Here’s the trailer: