My goodness, Joaquin Phoenix is a fantastic actor, but he sure does pick weird movies to star in. You Were Never Really Here is the latest. He is Joe, a hired killer who rescues girls abducted for sex trafficking, and is paid to kill the abductors, often in gruesome ways. We see his violent past in flashbacks, showing his abusive father and hard cases as a member of the FBI. When Joe gets caught up in a convoluted political plot involving the rescue of a Senator’s daughter, he gets more than he counted on. Phoenix is captivating on screen, but the movie is just strange, augmented by the talented Jonny Greenwood’s soundtrack. Worth watching once (if you can stomach the graphic gore) to remind yourself of Phoenix’s supreme ability, but not much more than that.
Disobedience seemed to receive a lot of underground hype, and for much of the movie I didn’t see why, but it ultimately is a lot more than it seems. There are strong acting chops on display, that is for sure. Rachel Weisz plays Ronit, the estranged daughter of a recently deceased Orthodox Jewish rabbi. Ronit returns home to bury him, and runs into the friends and family members she grew up with before running away years before. Two of these include her childhood friends Dovid (Alessandro Nivola), the de facto heir to be leader of the Jewish community, and Esti (Rachel McAdams), who has married Dovid in the intervening years. Ronit’s strong will is on display and we see why she had to leave, even more so when it becomes apparent that she and Esti once had a relationship. When their long-dormant feelings for each other resurface, the community goes nuts and Dovid’s marriage starts to crumble. Also going on is Ronit’s desire to honor her father in her own way, which doesn’t line up with what is expected of her by her father’s faith. A seemingly straightforward look at the the wages of love when it goes up against religion and ingrained customs, it becomes much more in the end. This is not a film for the masses, as you have to let it build slowly for the ultimate payoff in the final 20 minutes, but well worth the journey.
It is rare that the sequel meets or exceeds the original, but that may just be the case for Deadpool 2. Still extremely raunchy and definitely not family friendly (I’d be quite embarrassed to watch it with my mom in the room), but damn if it isn’t laugh-out-loud funny, and actually has a good plot too. Deadpool tasks himself with protecting a young kid with destructive super powers. Supervillian Cable has come from the future where the kid has grown up and killed a lot of people, and is set to kill him before he can do so. As in the first film, there is a ton of dirty humor, maybe even more than the first actually, and lots of breaking the fourth wall as you would expect in anything with Deadpool in it. Despite all the humor, it never takes away from the flow of the film, something that is hard to do, but Ryan Reynolds is up to the task. If you follow the other Marvel films, there is even more to laugh at with all of the small references thrown in. A very enjoyable film for adults. With Disney buying up Fox and the future of the X Men film series in doubt (at least as a separate force from the Marvel Cinematic Universe), Disney needs to find a way to keep the Deadpool movies coming, though how that fits into their family image remains to be seen.
I have a little bit of OCD in me that won’t let me stop something I’ve started. This is great when it comes to projects around the house, and terrible when it comes to bad books and movies. I saw (and actually enjoyed) the first couple Saw movies, so I continue to watch them, long after they’ve stopped being entertaining. The newest in the series, Jigsaw, is just as awful as the last few have been. They are no longer scary (were they ever? Maybe to my younger self) and I just want them to be over. Jigsaw may finally be the one to get me to never watch another. John Kramer seems to be back from the dead, terrorizing a new group of victims in his little game of salvation. From early in the movie, I was rooting for all the whiny people to just die quickly and get it over with.
I found On Chesil Beach to a frustrating movie. Alternately tremendous and tedious, its best selling point is the lead roles of Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle. Florence and Edward are in a hotel on their wedding night in 1962, and their story is told in flashbacks. They are obviously deeply in love, but extremely awkward around each other as their first sexual encounter approaches. They come from vastly different worlds, Florence from high society and Edward from the working class, but they carry equal baggage from difficult parents. When their sex goes very badly (and very humiliatingly for Edward) we learn the reason for Florence’s anxiety, and it drops on the viewer like a bomb. The good parts of the movie make up for the rough patches, and overall still a deeply emotional film.
Jons Movie Takes 