The Confirmation

Bob Nelson, 2016

IMDB

3/5

There are many angles in which the Father / Son movie dynamic can be approached in film. In real life it's a complicated relationship. Living up to the expectations of each other, letting each other down, reflections of oneself in your own offspring. Being hard on your self, being hard on your son. Martial troubles that trickle down to the rest of the family.

In The Confirmation, you step into the lives of Walt (Clive Owen) and Anthony (Jaeden Lieberher) long after any familial conflict. They are now in a state of reconstruction. Walt and ex Bonnie (Maria Bello) have been divorced for a while, long enough for her to remarry. This is presumably because of Walt's drinking, which reveals itself pretty early on in a conversation between the two when she pleads with him not to drink while taking Anthony for the weekend.

Walt is down on his luck. He's in that sort of purgatory state of existence where he can't seem to get out of his own way. Truck won't start, phones not ringing with construction work. Rent is late, no money to pay the rent. All he really has is this weekend with Anthony. Bad turns to worse when Walt discovers that his antique wooden toolbox has been stolen from the back of his truck while in a local tavern. The film soons morphs into a modern day take on The Bicycle Thief as Walt and Anthony spend most of their weekend together searching for clues. They are forced to approach the (what would be considered) more deplorable people in town that would do that kind of thing (steal toolboxes). Interestingly enough these people don't come off as criminals but more as characters. There is certainly an effort to humanize these types of people in this film. And there is a lot at stake for Walt. With an eviction notice on his apartment door, he desperately needs money right away and not taking the carpentry job on Monday is out of the question.

The Confirmation works largely because of great casting choices. Clive Owen's Walt character solicits sympathy, as the character really needs to. You want Walt to find his tools. You want the relationship between Walt and Anthony to flourish. Walt doesn't take on a victim mentality at all. Not only does he bear the weight of his own mistakes, he bears the weight of his generations mistakes one apologizing to Anthony for leaving his generation with a infrastructural mess to clean up. One should come to expect nothing but an impressive nuanced performance from Owen, who is quietly one of the best working actors in modern cinema. Bello succeeds in her Bonnie role, as she balances the perfect amount of firmness and fairness. Anthony's character works because of its authenticity. He so accurately nails that whole kid being happy with the nothing moments as long as you are with your father. Sitting in front of the TV watching boring black-and-white repeats is enough. Riding shotty in an old pick up truck is enough. The Confirmation is an endearing film that has some appreciation for film history but also has heart in it's own story.

The Shallows

Jaume Collet-Serra, 2016

IMDB

2/5

The shark attack genre is a genre completely saturated with ridiculous premises and generous usage of CGI. Oddly enough at the top of the genre is Jaws, but it's the gold standard. There's a big drop off from there. Nothing has really come close to topping Spielberg's masterpiece that caused an entire generation of kids to be afraid of the ocean. While there is one great Jaws film and three forgettable sequels, there are 4 probably forgettable (wouldn't know, haven't seen them nor do I plan on seeing) Sharknado movies. And then we have Shark Night, Ghost Shark, Shark in Venice, and what feels like a thousand other B-Movies. What separates Jaws from the others is the craftiness of suspense-building, playing with multiple senses and not just throwing visual carnage at your face. Often these movies just take a shark and exaggerate all of the natural behaviors, ultimately making it a bloodthirsty beast that just so happens to look like a shark and live in the water.

The shark in The Shallows is no exception. The shark appears after Nancy (Blake Lively) approaches a dead whale while surfing nearby. This in turn causes the shark to become agitated and eager to defend it's feeding site. Your bullshit detectors should go off here, because one would assume that the shark would just be happy enough with the giant floating meal that is already right there for the taking rather than chase after a much smaller meal that would be more difficult to obtain.

Nancy is able to escape the attack and finds a short term refuge on top of a rock. The film then becomes a limited storytelling piece of Nancy trying to figure out how to get to shore with very little resources and one heck of a shark bite on her leg. She conveniently has a medical school past that helps her in dressing the wound. For what it is, it's not a completely horrible film that wastes 90 minutes of your life. Lively is totally serviceable with her Nancy character and does the best that can probably be done with the character. The cinematography is rather good, along with the editing. The Shallows is not breaking any new ground, but to cut it some slack, it's not really supposed to. Like a slice of decent pizza, it goes down easy enough.

Vikings (Seasons 1-4)

Michael Hirst, 2013-2016

IMDB

4/5

Vikings is probably what Kurt Sutter wished The Bastard Executioner could be. Being quite obvious that Sutter wanted to make his version of Game of Thrones, Vikings has the period aesthetic of Thrones while also managing to possess the volatile relationships and sometimes calculated deception of Sutter's owns Sons of Anarchy series. Vikings own set of characters often generates memories of the Sons characters, most notably the similarities between Ragnar and Jax Teller. I'm certainly not the only one who sees this. But Sutter is not involved with Vikings at all. Who knows if he is even aware of it. In 2016 Game of Thrones continues to get all of the love when it comes to the Fantasy Drama genre, but hopefully Vikings will continue to build an audience because it's pretty great.

Vikings creates an immersive world, at the center of it is the anti-hero Ragnar Lothbrook. Ragnar has big ambitions, an urge to explore the world around him and make his mark in the pages of history. It's this very hunger that made the Vikings important people. Their ability to travel and and make broad impacts on what was considered a small world at the time. They were able to make that world bigger.

Vikings is the first scripted series created by The History Channel, and hopefully it inspires them to continue to create original scripted content rather then mediocre scripted cheap reality shows (*cough* Pawn Stars). And while Vikings is certainly unique and original on it's own, it's probably always going to be compared to Game of Thrones on some level because they exist at the same time. To be fair, there are certainly similarities between the two. Gratuitous violence. Seemingly endless battle. Sudden twists. Successes and failures. Deception. But where Vikings takes a turn is it's focus on the duality of Paganistic religious faith and the spread of Christianity. The evolution of military technology. Of course the biggest difference is Vikings is rooted in some real historical context and Thrones is pure fiction.

Brooklyn

John Crowley, 2015

IMDB

4/5

Brooklyn is an adaptation of the best-selling novel written by Colm Tóibín. Set in the Post WW2 1950's and shown through the eyes of Irish immigrant Eilis (Saoirse Ronan - Hanna, Grand Budapest Hotel), it shows an America that like today shows a country ripe with oppurtunity. Modern day New York City is filled with Irish ancestry but there was a period of time where the Irish/Italian ancestral lines weren't so embedded. Eilis is sort of thrown into this America. A priest sponsors her trip to America with the intention that she will find more oppurtunity and fulfillment there. Staying in her native Ireland means probably working a low-wage job and becoming a slave to the dreary monotony that seems to resonate through her small town. She would likely marry the neighborhood boy that wins the approval of her bitter mother. She would then take care of her mother until she died, and then inherit her home and stay there for the rest of her life. So she boards a ship with many other immigrants, a total fish out of water.

It's here that Crowley is able to capture some real emotion that lands on the screen. Much credit is due to Ronan who is able to display the unbearable homesickness, stranger anxiety, the grieving over a deceased loved one. She is able to balance the wide spectrum of emotions so remarkably, alwhile also showing a blossoming love with Italian man Tony (Emory Cohen). Ronan continues to impress, showing she is one of the more impressive leading performers working today. This film might break your personal record for most goosebumps felt. Brooklyn is a look at a bygone era. Where people looked out for each other more than they seem to do today. People weren't walking with phones in their hand looking down at a black mirror and instead used that free hand to hold a fellow person up. Brooklyn is also just another great example of how New York City is the best movie setting for romantic storytelling. Sorry Paris.