Had a touch of the flu, so stayed home and watched some small independent films today. Generally I only try to review movies that are less than a year old, but while some of these are a little older, there’s a good chance you missed them, as they all made next to nothing (less than $100k) at the domestic box office. All are on Netflix.
What a piece of melodramatic horse poop. White Bird in a Blizzard seems to try to get by on Shailene Woodley’s acting chops alone, where she has flourished in Fault in Our Stars and The Spectacular Now. Unfortunately she can’t save this one, and even she seems bored. She plays a 17 year old in the late 80’s whose depressed and possibly bipolar mom walked out suddenly. The rest of the film shows Woodley’s character trying to deal with her emotions from this, and trying to get down to the big mystery of why her mom left. The “why” revealed in the ending is somewhat surprising, but out of character for the rest of the film. Overall feels like a bad teenage angst or coming-of-age that is just poorly written.
Frequencies is an interesting movie. A British independent film, it was obviously made on a small budget. The plot is a bit twisted but has a great premise. It takes place sometime in the near future when mankind has discovered that each person is attuned to frequencies that interact with the nature around them. People are tested at an early age to determine their individual frequency. Those on the higher scale will always have good luck in life, and those on the lower will always have bad, regardless of intelligence. The movie follows Marie (high frequency) and Zac (low) as they grow up in the same school. He likes her from the start, but because their frequencies are so far apart, they can only be around each other for 1 minute a year or bad things happen (fire alarm goes off, luggage falls from passing aircraft). Marie grows up always arriving to the train station on time, finding exact change for her bills, and not even having to look to cross the street as cars are always just before or just after her. Zac on the other hand always shows up to friend’s houses at inopportune times. Eventually he stumbles upon a way to have their frequencies match, bringing his luck up and hers down, so they can spend time together. The movie starts out as a romance drama but gets heavy into science fiction by the end. They definitely did a lot here with little resources, it is a good movie overall though a little weird at times, especially when the source of the frequencies is explained in the end.
Don’t waste your time with this one. I tried it thinking, “Hey, that’s the guy from Game of Thrones!” (Nicolaj Coster-Waldau) but should have thought instead, “Hey, that’s the girl from The English Patient….” (Juliette Binoche). She plays a front-line war photographer that narrowly misses death when she is near a suicide bomber that goes off. She returns home to try to reconnect with her family. I don’t know how her bore fests keep getting good reviews, including this one. I gave it about 40 minutes, before I had to pick between turning it off or banging my head into a wall.
Filth is a pretty demented film. It stars James McAvoy as Bruce, a dirty cop in Scotland. The film starts out showing his truly awful nature. He sleeps with prostitutes, does copious amounts of coke, and forces sexual favors from suspects. He wants more than anything a big promotion at work, going out of way to demean and embarrass his coworkers who also want it. His family is never shown except in straight-to-the-viewer dialogue by his wife; in breaking the 4th wall she tells the audience how much her husband needs this promotion. You think he is a pretty terrible person with absolutely no conscious, but as the movie progresses, Bruce’s demons are shown. He is hiding from a terrible past, and as hallucinations get worse and his world starts to crumble around him, we learn exactly what he has been running from. In the end, it is hard to forgive his behavior, but we can at least start to understand. Extremely well acted by McAvoy, but his behavior will leave you squeamish in spots.
Breathe In is about a music teacher, Keith, and his family, wife Megan and daughter Lauren. Keith was a musician who wanted to spend his life making music in the gigging professional musician, Bohemian style life in New York, but when the daughter was coming he dropped it, moved to the suburbs, and became a teacher. He still longs for that life and now that their daughter is getting ready to go away to college, he wants to move back, to his wife’s reluctance. Their world is turned upside down when they take in Sophie, a foreign exchange student. Sophie is dealing with the loss of her uncle, who taught her to play the piano quite well. Sophie’s and Keith’s shared love of music brings them together, and he starts an emotional affair. It doesn’t take long for everything to crash apart for Keith and everyone involved. The movie feels some definite building tension, but unfortunately it never reaches the heights I feel it could have. The supreme acting of leads Guy Pierce and Felicity Jones keep your attention throughout though. A good way to spend 90 minutes, but ultimately a forgettable movie.
Jons Movie Takes 