Hi friends. I hope you are doing well and enjoying movies at the cinema. I have a few to update you on and I will be doing a full detailed review of The Wild Robot coming soon.
MERCHANT IVORY-
First up we have a new documentary called Merchant Ivory about the famed partnership between director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant. Of course we all know about their famous projects together like Howard’s End (my favorite) and A Room with a View but they made 44 films together! I had no idea there were so many. I also didn’t realize how limited the budget was on these films. They all feel so lush and expensive but they had very limited funding. In fact, some of the actors like Emma Thompson say they dreaded being in one of their productions because of how challenging the conditions were but the movies were always worth it. At one point Merchant was even making the catering for the cast of one of his films.
I’ve seen similar documentaries in recent years that felt more like an expose- as if to say ‘see these people weren’t as good a friends as you thought. The documentary on the Sherman Brothers called The Boys comes to mind. While I guess there is some value in such revelations it can feel deflating so it was nice to see how positive Merchant Ivory collaboration was and how the two really balanced each other out.
If you are a fan of their films than I’d recommend Merchant Ivory. It’s a solid entertaining documentary and worth your time.
Smile Worthy
SUPERMAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY
Moving on to another documentary this week we have the highly anticipated Superman: The Christopher Reeve Story. I really wanted to catch this at Sundance but was unable to do so and then the trailer is one of the best of the year so it got me excited to see this film. I’m not the biggest celebrity person but Reeve and his story was something I followed back in the 90s when he had his accident. I even read his book Still Me as a college student and found it very moving.
There are a lot of aspects that really work about this documentary but most importantly it doesn’t just chronicle Reeve’s life but it is the story of a family and how everyone in his life was impacted and responded to his journey. Especially with a man who played Superman in 4 films it would be easy to make this film patronizing and cloying but instead it always feels sincere and moving.
I remember when his wife Dana passed away so soon after Reeve feeling so heartbroken about it and so concerned for their son Will. Needless to say when they get to that section there is not a dry eye to be found in the theater.
It might sound cheesy to say but we sometimes need inspirational stories and here is one from the man who just happened to play Superman in the movies but was a pretty super individual in real life with a very super group of family and friends.
Smile Worthy
THE CRITIC-
As soon as I heard about the film The Critic I knew I had to check it out. A movie about a theatre critic starring Sir Ian McKellen seemed tailor-made for me. Unfortunately it ended up as a disappointment for this critic.
I think the most deflating aspect of the film is it doesn’t really dive into the mind of a critic or the challenges of assessing material like theatre. Instead it spends most of its time on a love triangle and blackmail plot between McKellen, Gemma Arterton, Mark Strong and Ben Barnes. I guess this is based off of a play called Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn and perhaps it works better in that setting but was an underwhelming and frankly boring plot for a film.
Another aspect that was odd in The Critic is it took me a while to figure out when the film was set. In reality it is 1934 but there were times it felt quite modern, other times seemed to be turn of the century, 1950s, 1920s. All the period details needed to be stronger to give a more clear sign of when events are taking place so we can have context for the characters behavior and choices.
The acting is good enough that it’s impossible to pan this film but it could have certainly been much better and I wish it had actually been about the experience of being a critic. It’s a definite missed opportunity
Frown Worthy
NEVER LET GO-
I was actually quite excited to see the new horror thriller Never Let Go because I’m a big fan of its director Alexandre Aja’s last film Crawl (I have a whole theory about how Crawl is the ideal date movie if you ever want to hear it.) Unfortunately despite some good performances Never Let Go is a let down suffering from a muddled mess of a script.
The problem is the movie can’t decide what story it wants to tell. It supposedly has the setup of a paranoid Mother, played by Halle Berry, who has survived a dystopia with her boys by never letting go of a rope tied to a protected house. The movie flirts with her being an unreliable narrator. The movie flirts with a lot of things. One child seems to believe the Mother, another does not. It seems like the one who believes is a demonic child we see in horror movies but then he’s not. They seem to imply that the religious angle is hokum but then the power is a visible force. Which is it? There’s zombies but then there’s not but are there. Again the movie flirts with these ideas and many more but doesn’t finish any of them in a satisfactory way. The last shot of the film is literally more questions.
I don’t mind ambiguity or twists but the film needs to have some focus and consistency in characters and plots. As it is it feels like all they cared about was making things look nice and then just made the script up each day they were on set.
In addition to this frustration Never Let Go puts children and a dog in peril making the experience unpleasant and frankly gross. I would definitely skip this one.
Frown Worthy
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