Mud

Jeff Nichols, 2013


4/5

Two boys, Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), venture on to a nearby island with their motor boat. They are looking for a boat that has been rumored to be suspended in the trees after past flooding. They find it, but soon discover that a homeless man named Mud (Matthew McConaughey) has been living in it. They befriend Mud and soon get pulled into his rather complicated life story.

It's a 130 minute drama, rich in story, that combines the southern grit of Nichols' past film Shotgun Stories with a youthful dynamic reminiscent of Stand By Me. At times you are seeing things through the eyes of children, with the curiosity of Super 8 combined with the grit of The Sandlot. Other times you are pulled into adult-oriented drama, where Nichols once again examines the concept of revenge and the cost in seeking it. McConaughey delivers what's probably the most fitting role of his career. It's hard to picture anyone else in the Mud role. He possesses that southern charisma, a friendly twang that doesn't threaten Ellis or Neckbone. His character is almost immediately sympathetic, where he's quick to consume a can of beans that Ellis provides for him. He quickly becomes a father figure to the two boys, who are desperate for the attention with Neckbone never having met his father and Ellis' distant from his cold disciplinarian father. The film is well acted on all fronts. It's nice to see Nichols using Michael Shannon again, if even in a more limited role as Neckbone's uncle Galen. Sarah Paulson is convincing as Ellis' downtrodden mother, sick of living her destitute life on the river in the houseboat and eager for a change of scenery.

There's some notable shots of the Arkansas landscape. As the camera rides in the back of the pickup truck with Ellis, you get the view of the blue-collar town with shots of the aged ice cream stand or the run down Piggly Wiggly. Constant shots of mother nature at work, critters crawling up rocky cliffs and water moccasins wandering through the murky waters of the Mississippi River. Nichols gives the film time to really let the story breathe, and let's his characters develop. By the final act of the film you are well invested in them and some of the final moments of the film are quite gripping.

State of Emergency

Turner Clay, 2013


1/5

An explosion at a chemical plant causes a toxic chemical to leak. Local residents become infected and turn into flesh hungry monsters. Jim (Jay Hayden) finds a few other uninfected people in a nearby warehouse and teams up with them to pool resources.

The opening of the film shows a bit of promise, but that soon turns sour. The noticeable use of sound early on in the film begins to feel augmented, and soon becomes distracting. The dialogue begins and it soon feels like an 8th grader wrote the script. Completely elementary. Bad CGI with the helicopters flying over at night. And then, the poor editing. Oh no. There is a moment where one of the characters gets attacked and you only see him fall with the attacker missing from the shot. Jim goes to scream and the audio is not even aligned. Devoid of any flare, completely forgettable characters. Amateur hour.

The film lacks any moral dilemmas or any social commentary. No satire. Just a group of people, in a warehouse, lots of noises outside. Even the newscaster on the choppy news broadcast was uninspired. These horribly made zombie films really just reinforce how well made 28 Days Later was. Or even borrow a chapter from The Walking Dead. With that series, you become so invested in the characters that it's like losing a family member when you see one go. George Romero could have done a better job with this film if he were drunk.

This film completely lacks character development. When there are jumps in timeline, you only go back to see Jim in the not so far past where he's just as muted and flat as his present day character is. Jay Hayden looks like Richard Gere mixed with Peter Facinelli (Can't Hardly Wait) without any of the acting chops. Jim meets the girl that doesn't talk, because shes been through some traumatic event. Little does Jim know, that all he has to do is be mildly persistent and she'll open right up. She opens up and you hope for some much needed acting. It doesn't come, and you wish she would have stayed muted. It's hard to get behind characters that you really are not invested in. Not only that, but the survivors locked up in the warehouse appear to outnumber whatever is outside! Can you really call it a zombie infestation when 50 minutes into the film you have only seen one of them? Not sure where the $1.5M budget went on this film. The makeup artist and the sound editor should leave this film off of their resume, because they should be entitled to some future work. Turner Clay, however, I don't know. I hope this wasn't the film he set out to make. Maybe this just isn't his genre.

Only God Forgives

Nicolas Winding Refn, 2013


3/5

Set in Bangkok, Refn's followup to Drive once again features Ryan Gosling in the lead. Gosling plays Julian, gangster & fight club owner. Julian gets news that his brother Billy has been killed. Julian's mother arrives in Thailand eager for revenge, while the renegade cop who was responsible for the death is on their heels the entire time.

First off, it's a wonderfully shot film. In fact, there's not one bad shot in the entire picture. The glowing of red through the beginning, the scenes with the very neon-like aesthetic. It paints Bangkok in a way that's very much like the way Gaspar Noe painted Tokyo in Enter the Void. The stunning look of the Karaoke bars are similar to the scenes in Hanna where the villain is whistling the catchy "The Devil is in the Details. There's a disconcerting element to the streetscape, but it's very easy on the eyes.

The film combines the sudden disturbing elements one would come to expect from Refn along with some of the abstract characteristics of a David Lynch picture.  Refn always has a clever use of sound. The score to this film is much more immersed than the electro-pop soundtrack in Drive. There's certainly no Kavinsky to be heard here. Refn certainly finds new ways to end human lives. Refn works his craft as the body count rises.

Gosling's character Julian is quiet, reserved (surprised?). The lack of dialogue is very much similar to his role in Drive, but there's certainly some distinction here. Any heart that his character had in Drive is absent in this piece. Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm), the blade-wielding retired cop, could go down as one of the more memorable villains in cinema. His renegade-like attitude is very similar to fellow cop Stansfield (Gary Oldman) in Leon: The Professional. Both are cold and lack hesitation to slaughter at will. Both lack the moral structure one would expect from a man of the law. When you first see Crystal (Kristin Scott Thomas), Julian's mother, it further constructs his past. And it ain't pretty. Her vitriolic tongue spits out whatever venom is on the surface and there's no hesitation. It's quite clear that the only affection she had was really spent on his brother Billy.

It's a controversial piece. Rumors of booing as Cannes started circulating, along with rumors of people vomiting during some of the scenes. Refn is a true auteur, unaffected by public opinion. He appeared to make a film here for himself, and you can come along for the ride but he doesn't care much if you enjoy it. There's something to this film. At times hard to watch, but for the right reasons. Some people may be hungry for more story, and it's a fair argument. While some of the moments are hard to watch, there's still a very adhesive quality to the film.

The Truman Show

Peter Weir, 1998


(REWATCHED)

4/5

Truman (Jim Carrey) is the star of a popular reality television show where everything in his life has been filmed. His birth, his schooling, first kiss, his marriage - is all part of the show. He is unaware he is the star of The Truman Show, for now, but his suspicions grow as unusual occurrences seem to be happening around him.

Carrey steps into one of the better dramatic roles of his career as Truman. The film really makes an immediate jump into the story, and never really loses its momentum. The attention to detail in crafting the artificial world that Truman lives in is both imaginative and impressive. Carrey quickly solicits sympathy as the vanilla insurance salesman protagonist who works the daily grind, picks up the daily newspaper, and goes home to eat dinner with the wife and watch I Love Lucy episodes. The limited selection in television shows could be compared to the gray-scale landscape of Pleasantville in it's very overt oppression of art. Christof (Ed Harris) created the show and has been directing it for the entire duration of Truman's life. His imagination is evident, but so is his inflated ego. His artificial town of Sea Haven that he has created is like a 1950's Utopian Suburbia concept. His desire to be a god-like figure sitting high inside the artificial moon must be intoxicating to him. He may be able to spend millions of dollars on his creating his fictional Sea Haven, but he doesn't realize that you can't inhibit the human desire to branch out and see what's out there. True reality is absolutely priceless and impossible to completely emulate. Truman naturally has curious instincts, and as soon as he starts to test his native boundaries, he begins to notice some flaws in the Truman Show world. It's certainly a brilliant social experiment, played out beautifully. Laura Linney is brilliant as Meryl, Truman's wife, as she plays a Stepford Wife-like figure who tries to keep Truman domesticated and unadventurous. The film is also an obvious satirical piece, examining Americas obsession with the modern reality television show. The film really stands out on its own, more than similarly themed EdTV (1999) because it really pulls you in and turns you into one of the many people watching and rooting for Truman. The film's impact on American culture is quite long ranged. A Bellevue psychiatrist named Joel Gold said that he had several schizophrenic patients who claimed that they were being filmed for a reality show similar to that in the film.