Quick takes on 5 films

Starting off today on a good foot, with some great films. First up is A Quiet Place, a horror film. Not extremely scary, but certainly creepy and very tense. It takes place in a time where aliens have come down and forced mankind to live in fear. The aliens cannot be killed, but can be hid from. Blind, they rely on superior hearing, basically anything above a whisper brings them charging at the hapless victim, who is torn open before they can move. Real life couple John Krasinksi and Emily Blunt play a married couple with a couple kids, who are getting by on a rural farm. From the opening moments, we can see they live in fear of making so much as a squeak. They walk barefoot even when going into town, and trek across sandy paths that the dad has laid down over time to dampen even foot noise. All sounds are muted. Early in the film, after we get to know the family, the time jumps forward a year or so, and we see the wife has become very pregnant. Knowing that is not a quiet moment in life, from the birth to the baby, we are immediately filled with dread at the the impending danger. The movie slowly simmers until all hell breaks loose on the night of her delivery. A great idea for a movie, with fantastic acting from the adults and the children, this one is will keep you riveted (and weary about making a noise afterwards). Pure horror or slasher films are usually forgettable, but ones with heart like this one stick with you. Great film.

Love, Simon is even better. I adored this film, about a young gay man afraid to come out to his family and friends. Simon (portrayed beautifully by Nick Robinson) is a senior in high school who has known he is gay for some time, but has yet to tell anyone. He lives in a time where being gay is mostly acceptable, in fact, he is pretty sure his parents and life-long friends would accept him, but he is still scared of them being different to him afterwards, and he likes his relationships as they are. When he gets involved in an anonymous email back-and-forth with another closet gay teen at his school, and then a third person at school finds the emails on a computer left open and blackmails Simon, Simon is forced to walk a tight rope balancing his friends, their feelings, and his own hopes for what he wants out of life. There are moments in this film that will choke you up, others that will elicit a gasp of dread. In the end, it isn’t as simple as Simon telling people he is gay. Lots here to digest, this is a truly wonderful film.

Every now and then I watch a movie that, for me, is polar opposite to what the critics are saying. The latest example is Call Me By Your Name. This is an Italian/American film about a young man, Elio, living in Italy with his parents. His dad is an archaeologist who takes on a graduate student, Oliver, for the summer. Oliver is loud and cocky and charismatic, immediately a hit with the ladies, while Elio is inexperienced in relationships. However, Elio is drawn to Oliver, and the two begin a homosexual relationship. The film was lauded by critics as a coming-of-age, “first love” kind of movie, but I had more problems with it than I can list. On a superficial level, the movie just wasn’t very good, with rough acting, worse dialogue, and it suffers from the artistic “fade to blacks” a little too much. On a more serious note, Elio is 17 years old, but seems much younger. He is scrawny and thin, with a boys body, while Oliver is 24 and chiseled. Where some people see love, I see an adult predator grooming a young, inexperienced boy. I admit that if the actor playing Elio had been physically bigger, I probably would have had less of a problem with it, as I think, for the most part, a 17 year old knows what he is doing, but the smallish Elio was dominated by the older, larger Oliver, and it was hard for me to watch.

After that downer, Ready Player One was a good pick-me-up. I was born in 1980 and am definitely of the video game generation, growing up with an Atari, then Nintendo, and so on, and still am an occasional console player today with my trusty PS4, when life isn’t busy. This movie gave me plenty of nostalgia, but didn’t disappoint on its theatrical merits either. It takes place in 2045, in a future where the whole world, people of all ages, spend every available minute in a virtual reality world called Oasis. Since real world is harsh and unforgiving, and inside the game you can be anyone or do anything you want, it is the ultimate escape for the world’s population. The creator of Oasis, Halliday, has left a secret Easter Egg inside, which, if found, will give its winner complete control of the virtual world. While a corporation is trying to find it in order to profit from this power, Wade (Tye Sheridan) and his friends want to find it for the love of the game. This is a brilliantly colored, visual dreamscape of a film, with a warm story of love and perseverance to keep it on track. All of your 80’s and 90’s video game and pop culture nuggets are here, and watching it is like being a kid again. A younger or older viewer may not catch all the references, but there is still plenty to enjoy. People my age who grew up playing just about every video game mentioned will be flooded with fond memories.

Chappaquiddick is a dry, rather uninspired film, which really only heats up in the final 20 or so minutes. It tells the story of the death of Mary Jo Kopechne in 1969, drowned as a passenger when Senator Ted Kennedy drove his car off a bridge near Martha’s Vineyard. While Mary Jo was left in the submerged car, Ted returned to the party they were attending, then went home, and didn’t report the incident until the next morning, nearly 10 hours later. The movie tries its best to tell the truth of that night, as much of the truth as it can since no one knows what really happened. It does portray Ted Kennedy as a sniveling, buffoonish, cowardly character who can’t seem to decide how he wants to handle his predicament, or how to get out of his own way when his family and team try to guide him to freedom. The film is pretty dull unfortunately, until the very end when Ted is confronted by a life-long friend and family member who urges him to come clean and admit fault. This decision ultimately will decide the course of Ted’s life and career.