Movie Review -- Joker

  Is it just me, or is it getting crazier out there? Entertainment companies are invoking censorship to appease Chinese communist totalitarianism, Bohemian Rhapsody got nominated for Best Picture, and even Star Wars movies are becoming boring now. It's a funny world we live in and sometimes the only sensible way to live in this world is with a smile on that face. If laughter is the best medicine then let's see how this year's Joker treats us. So without further ado let's dance with the devil in the pale moonlight.

  All joking aside, Joker is definitely not a comedy, it's about as grim and gritty as they get. With its serious and unnerving tone, Joker reminds me a bit of 2017's Logan in that it's the rated-R story of a character we've always wanted to see done justice. Joker takes place in the harsh and unfriendly Gotham City of 1981 and I've got to say the attention to detail is astounding with the claustrophobic and messy sets and period-appropriate aesthetic. The story follows Arthur Fleck, a lonely part-time clown and aspiring stand-up comic who takes care of his aging mother. He also has a multitude of mental conditions and as events unfold he steadily loses his grip on sanity. While the story starts off conventionally enough, it soon becomes apparent that this is a dedicated character study of the Clown Prince of Crime and his origin. It's a fascinating tale, one that arguably doesn't require the ties it has to the Batman mythos.

  The star of the show is Joaquin Phoenix, and he is outstanding. His Oscar-worthy, frighteningly energized, and hypnotic performance – for which he reportedly lost 50 pounds – represents a total commitment to what is a textbook example of a villain-protagonist: Arthur Fleck is a captivating guy and while you will sympathize with him from time to time he is definitely not a person you want to be. Robert De Niro stars as a talk show host that Fleck and his mom like to watch. At first it may not seem like he's properly cast to play a comedian but soon you realize that he's believable as a smug, elitist entertainer who intermittently tries to show some morality.

  When I first saw trailers for this movie I jokingly referred to it as “Taxi Driver but with clowns”. It turns out that I wasn't that far off: both films take place in roughly the same time period with comparable settings and lonely characters that aren't quite right in the head. Both films have finger guns pointed at the head, Robert De Niro, a pretty girl who's just out of reach, and a big shot rich guy running for public office. Oh yeah, and those endings... All in all, Joker is a masterpiece thanks to its finely crafted tone, excellent performances, and socially relevant themes that you could debate for weeks on end. If you want a comic book movie that isn't all about loud and flashy superheroics, watch Joker. This more grounded and down-to-earth version of the character is well worth your time.

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Movie Review -- Us

  Us. Yes, another movie with an incredibly short and non-descriptive title has been bequeathed unto the general public so that the good people can ask one another “which one is that?” whenever it is mentioned in conversation. So what is Us? Is it as good as the critics say it is? And is this really my 100^th movie review? Let's take a look.

  Written and directed by Jordan Peele, Us follows Adelaide Wilson, her husband, and her two children who vacation at their beach house in Santa Cruz where Adelaide once had a frightening experience as a child. Her fears come back to haunt her as the Wilsons are attacked by doppelgangers of themselves known as the Tethered. Think of it as The Purge meets a zombie apocalypse movie, and you've got a pretty clear idea of what Us is like. As far as home-invasion movies go, it's decent; it's only towards the end where Us starts to lose steam. Although some of the kills come a little too easily, the film has a good amount of tension and suspense, especially during its opening scene. It also has a commendable sense of humour, with quick little jokes poking fun at the situation the characters find themselves in, and yet these jokes avoid distracting or clashing with the scene's tone.

  However one moment that really didn't work was the pointless twist ending; not only does it add absolutely nothing to the story but it makes no sense whatsoever. Without spoiling too much, let's just say that this twist completely screws up some backstory.

  That's not the only plothole here; Us has loads of them! How did the Tethered know how to mimic their true counterparts? Are they psychic? What's up with their names? What is their goal? Why did some attack the Wilsons but not the others? There's also a Bible verse that's referenced several times throughout, but the film doesn't have the courtesy of actually letting the audience know what it is. It's something I had to look up myself and since doing so this verse's significance to Us is just as dubious as before. Perhaps Jordan Peele simply tried cramming too many ideas into one film.

  The acting is done rather well. Winston Duke gives a fun performance as the enthusiastic try-hard dad, Gabe. And of course Lupita Nyong'o is riveting in her dual role as Adelaide and her doppelganger, Red.

  All in all, Us is alright but it's not as glorious as the critics say it is. From the reviews I've glanced at it seems as if critics are projecting grander themes upon the film that aren't truly there (at least, not in any substantial or meaningful way). The only argument I got from Us is that we need to support the proliferation of firearms – seriously, there isn't a single gun in this whole movie! But no, Us is an adequately entertaining thriller with a good sense of humour, decent acting, and professional direction but also a script riddled with logical fallacies that would have benefited from another round of editing. I can see why it'd be easy to fall in love with it if you don't think too hard about it... but you know me by now. We've been over this one hundred times, you know.

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Movie Review -- Cold Pursuit

  Oh yeah, that's right: there was a Liam Neeson action movie this year about him killing people over problems with one of his children. Because we don't have enough of those, right? To be honest, I haven't seen any of the Taken films but I think I've got the gist of them: don't mess with Neeson's kids. Although Cold Pursuit isn't in that series, one can certainly be forgiven for believing it is after seeing this film's trailer. So does the latest entry in this particular set of genre films – films that have been produced over a very long career, films that are a nightmare for people who don't like action – have anything different to offer? Let's take a look.

  Cold Pursuit is centred around Nelson Coxman, a soft-spoken snowplow driver in a ski resort town in Colorado. After his son turns up dead from a suspiciously out-of-character drug overdose Nelson begins his vengeful campaign against local drug dealers. However this gets the attention of the guys at the top and things quickly spiral out of control. It reminds me a lot of Fargo, just swap out the kidnapping and ransom for good old-fashioned revenge. Not only does Cold Pursuit share that film's snow-covered rural setting but it also shares an interesting sense of dark humour. I like it; the black comedy is what keeps this film from being just another generic action movie. There's even hints of slapstick and self-aware humour as well. The only downside to this is that in the wake of the swift ending the viewer is left with a bunch of unanswered questions: was that one guy paragliding all night long?

  Cold Pursuit is populated by lots of relatable characters who seem normal at first, but each have their unusual quirks. Chief among the oddballs is the main villain Viking played by Tom Bateman. Bateman does a delightful job playing a psychopathic drug lord who's also an unusually uptight father. He steals whatever scene he's in. The other grand performance is of course Liam Neeson's as Nels Coxman. This character truly is an ordinary guy in every sense of the word; he's a small-town, middle-aged man who has no witty quips or noble speeches, is not a convincing liar, and is a stranger to brutal violence. Watching him go through his quest for vengeance and deal with its consequences – and oddities – makes for a fascinating trip.

  In terms of direction, Cold Pursuit is a good-looking movie with plenty of landscape shots, both beautiful and ominous. Editing is handled in a way that enhances the comedy, such as cutaways after certain characters deaths for example. (Revealing anything further would be spoiler territory.)

  In conclusion, I'd say that if you like Quentin Tarantino movies then you'll enjoy Cold Pursuit. It's got all the action-thriller fare of a usual Neeson-type flick but with some quirky gallows humour and sophisticated direction to elevate it into above-average territory.

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Movie Review -- The Girl in the Spider's Web

  Remember back in my Sicario: Day of the Soldado review (this past July) I said that there were three movies this year – Sicario 2, Tomb Raider, and Venom – I was going to watch out of pure curiosity in how the studios were going to pull them off? It turns out that I should've made that number four instead because as I found out only a couple months ago another movie was being made of the Millennium series of books, The Girl in the Spider's Web. Anyone who reads Arnold's Benediction knows that 2011's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is one of my favourite movies ever. Can The Girl in the Spider's Web match the high standard the previous film established? Let's take a look.

  TGITSW serves as a soft reboot of TGWTDT, with an all-new cast, with a new director and crew, and taking place at least three years after the original (with a slight retcon of Lisbeth Salander's backstory). Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander have become estranged after he cashed in on his experiences with her to publish some best-selling articles that may or may not have made her famous (the movie doesn't really make it clear). But the two must now work together to stop some bad guys from stealing some computer program that allows its user to hack into the world's missile control systems. That's right, the series has made the jump from mystery-thriller to espionage-action-thriller. Admittedly, I have not read the book this film is based on but this type of action story seems very out of place when compared to Dragon Tattoo. I've seen people unfavourably comparing Spider's Web to 2016's Jason Bourne and while I don't think this film is nearly that dull it is easy to see similarities in tone, the focus mostly on one character (in this film Blomkvist has been reduced to a mere side character in favour of Lisbeth), and in the action scenes. It's a plot that features tons of vibrating phones, people not paying attention to things in plain sight, and momentary lapses of judgment from characters who are supposed to be smart. For example, why did that whiz kid who just saw [SPOILER] die answer a phone call from [SPOILER] even though he knows that dangerous people are trying to find him? In the words of Carl Brutananadilewski, “you're stupid for a genius.”

  As mentioned earlier, Lisbeth is the sole main character this time around and she's played by Claire Foy. While Foy's performance isn't as haunting or nuanced as Rooney Mara's in Dragon Tattoo, it's still very well done. Instead of a private investigator who keeps to herself, Lisbeth is now a hacker-for-hire vigilante who goes out of her way to reap vengeance on men who mistreat women. The new version of Blomkvist, portrayed by Sverrir Gudnason, is way younger and less prominent than in previous movies. Gudnason's performance is OK, I guess. The only other character of note is the main villain who is rather dull and barely makes any facial expressions (possibly due to her hard-to-spot eyebrows).

  Like a lot of reboots, TGITSW cleans house. Without the likes of David Fincher, Jeff Cronenweth, Trent Reznor, and Atticus Ross Spider's Web's cinematography, compositions, and musical scoring have a very different, much less pronounced style. Opening credits aside, director Fede Alvarez does his own thing. Really the only things of note are a couple long tracking shots, plentiful handheld camera shots, and shaky fight scenes with really choppy editing (speaking of Bourne...).

  All in all, The Girl in the Spider's Web reminds me a lot of Sicario 2 in that they're both artistically downgraded, action-packed sequels to critically lauded, stylish films; they don't stack up with the originals but are entertaining enough. But on the other hand Spider's Web – although I did enjoy it – was only half as captivating as Dragon Tattoo and is a debatably unnecessary film. I don't think audiences are necessarily against another Millennium film, they probably just wanted Fincher to direct it and they wanted it six years ago when the books were still popular. That might explain why Spider's Web is doing so badly at the box office; the cinema was about 3/4 empty when I saw it on opening night! Unfortunately it seems like the time for more English-language Millennium films has come and gone and that this series' continuation can officially be written off as a lost cause.

Grade:

Movie Review -- Searching

  “Gimmicky” is a word that is thrown around a lot, but if you ask me just because something is gimmicky doesn't always mean that it's bad. Case in point, I just saw Searching, the latest in a new subgenre of films that take place entirely on computer screens and smartphone screens, a gimmick which isn't quite as boring as you'd initially think.

  At least it wasn't boring in this movie. I have seen the 2014 horror film Unfriended which runs on the same “only looking at the screen” schtick (does this subgenre count as found footage?). It wasn't very good and so I was a bit skeptical for Searching. But it turns out that there's nothing to fear here; simply put Searching is Unfriended done right, for two reasons. The first is that Searching has more dynamic presentation and editing to it. It's not just a static frame of the whole desktop. The “camera” pans around and zooms in on things so that the audience can follow what the main character, David Kim, is focusing on. It also doesn't take place in real time, it happens across several days and on several different computer and phone screens (and possibly some TV screens; it was difficult to tell at times). While this does undermine the narrative structure's unity it does do a fantastic job of drawing to the viewer into David's point of view, which is the second thing that Searching's visual presentation has going for it. Whereas Unfriended was a horror movie where people on Skype just sit around and watch eachother die – with no worthwhile character for the audience to really latch onto – Searching is a story told from just one man's point of view, displaying the paranoia and despair that he's going through as he tries to piece together what's going on. It's a concept done so well that it makes one wonder why the computer-POV thing hasn't been done with mystery-thrillers before (at least as far as I know). It brings new life into a story which would be considered average for any other movie.

  The story is follows David, a single father whose relationship with his 16-year-old daughter Margot has grown distant since the passing of his wife Pamela. Things get tense as his daughter vanishes without a trace one night. David then does everything he can to try to find her with the help of cyberspace. And it's a good thing he's one of those parents who records/photographs everything imaginable! Isn't it remarkable what one can find out about a person through social media nowadays? It's one of those classic “do you really know those who are close to you?” scenarios, but this one carries a surprising amount of emotional weight. I'd say the story of Searching is basically a more down-to-earth version of Taken. There's plenty of red herrings and the ending is pretty decent, though it is kind of silly when you consider the fact that David was able to figure out who the perp was through a simple Google search. The badguy really should've covered up his/her tracks better.

  The cast of Searching all do a fine job. John Cho's performance as David deserves particular praise. It's a role that takes his character to lots of different places emotionally and he pulls it off flawlessly.

  All in all, Searching is an interesting entry in the mystery-thriller genre, with its seasonable subject matter and unique gimmick. If you like missing person dramas and you want to find something new there then look no further... 

  See what I did there?

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Movie Review -- A Quiet Place

  There's enough horror movies out there that are loud and in-your-face with cheap jump scares, but every once in a while there's one that comes out that emphasizes its atmosphere by making the audience focus on every little sound and movement. A Quiet Place is one of those films.

  A Quiet Place follows a family of four as they survive in a world ravaged by mysterious blind monsters that hunt by sound, killing anyone who makes all but the faintest of noises. This is especially challenging when (1) the mother of the family, Evelyn, is pregnant and (2) the daughter, Regan, is deaf. So as you can imagine, there's not a whole lot of spoken dialogue in this film, perhaps two solid minutes' worth. The rest is all done in sign language. And yet the film still produces a decent amount of drama thanks to its fine writing and capable acting. In the moments when the film isn't leaving you on the edge of your seat the plot portrays what it means to be a responsible parent in difficult times.

  While the characters are nothing we haven't seen before, they are well portrayed. Interestingly, I don't recall ever learning their names so I had to look them up. Writer/director/star John Krasinski brings his everyman sensibility to the role of Lee, the dad trying to keep his family safe. The other character of note is Regan, the rebellious teenager who is actually played by deaf actress Millicent Simmonds.

  Krasinski's direction makes A Quiet Place a film that's sleek, concise, and tense. During the stalking scenes you might find yourself keeping as silent as the characters onscreen.

  However, there are a few plotholes that may disrupt your experience. First and foremost, what are these monsters and where are they from? One could argue that since this is a film told from the perspective of one family that we're not supposed to know all the details of such overarching things. But that doesn't keep me from wondering who the elderly people in the woods were. Or why there was a nail sticking out of the top of the stairs. Or where the leaking water in the barn was coming from.

  Regardless, A Quiet Place manages to be an entertaining flick with a frighteningly original premise. It reminds me of last year's high-concept thriller, Split, though between the two of them I would recommend A Quiet Place for its more thrilling setup and more heartfelt story. Enjoy the silence.

Grade:

Movie Review - Split

   It's time to review Split... no, not the new gaming console Nintendo's announced. The James McAvoy movie where he's got multiple personalities. Yeah, that one. Seriously, what's up with this deluge of crappy one-word titles for movies nowadays? Pretty much everyone I mentioned this movie to asked “which one is that?” You know the situation is dire when your one-word titles are hindering the reputation and publicity of your freakin' movies! Bottom line: stop being so lazy with your titles!

   Rant over. Let's review the movie already.

   My friends, what we have here is an actual good movie from the once-awesome-but-then-for-the-longest-time-pretty-sucky director M. Night Shyamalan. It's true, the man delivers what I think is his first good movie since 2000's Unbreakable, the spiritual predecessor to this film. And his direction here is in fine form. He does some stylish looking shots, but not to an arrogantly overbearing degree that was seen in 2010's The Last Airbender or 2013's After Earth. In Split Shyamalan makes frequent use of extreme closeups to instill a sense of claustrophobia, reminding us that the characters are trapped. There's also a lot of shots that have the scene's menacing force just off-screen or blurry shots for when a character is disoriented. Both techniques effectively heighten a scene's suspense. And while Syamalan's usual trademark twist is missing from this effort, he does squeeze in a director cameo.

   The plot is about three teenage girls who are kidnapped by Kevin Wendell Crumb, a mentally disturbed man with 23 different personalities in his head. The girls try to figure out how to escape, while one of them, Casey, might be uniquely suited to exploit Kevin's mental condition. It's a Hitchcockian premise that has a lot of potential. It kind of reminds me of 1990's Misery, and that's a good thing. It plays out rather well, though there are a few hiccups: the scene with the doctor lecturing at a medical conference is a little boring, plus the girls never try to swarm Kevin (which I'm sure is probably the first thing that most people would try in this situation). The final act may be a little too goofy for some; Kevin basically becomes a cannibal Spider-Man. Oh well, there are worse Spider-Man movies out there. The movie ends with a call back to Unbreakable, which if you haven't seen that movie (like me) will come off as a big WTF moment.

   Perhaps the main selling point of Split is James McAvoy's performance. He plays no less than six personalities in this film, from a nerdy germophobe to an innocent nine year old boy, all with an air of uneasy creepiness. I can't think of a better actor they could've gotten for this role. The other actors all do a fine job, especially Anna Taylor-Joy as Casey.

   On the whole Split is a decent thriller with an intriguing plot, commendable acting, and cool direction. It's hard to believe that such an effective film was made on a budget of only $9 million. If it's a flick that sounds interesting to you, then I'd recommend giving it a try.

Grade: three and a half out of five.