Brooklyn

Much like Brooklyn’s main character, Eilis, this film is fairly quiet, sad at times, but so naturally charming, beautiful and elegant.  Unfortunately, I doubt many movie-goers put Brooklyn on their must-see lists.  It’s a very level headed film from the UK, it isn’t flashy or pandering to Hollywood’s usual target demographics.  And I think that makes it better.  The film’s skillful storytelling hooked me in and kept me captivated the entire time.  I sincerely hope to see more wonderful films like Brooklyn in wide distribution.  

Directed by John Crowley and based on Colm Tóibín’s novel, it is the story of a young Irish immigrant in the early 1950s, Eilis (Saoirse Ronan).  With a priest’s help setting things up for her, she leaves her little Irish town, her mother and sister to start a life on her own in Brooklyn.  After a bumpy journey across the Atlantic, she finds herself in a boarding house with other young Irish women and a job working a department store counter.  She becomes very homesick and feels guilty that her sister, Rose (Fiona Glascott), has to watch over their mother from now on.  Brooklyn starts to feel more like home when she meets Tony (Emory Cohen).  The two fall quickly in love, but tragedy brings Eilis back to her hometown.  There, she becomes conflicted about the life she could lead there as opposed to the one she has made in Brooklyn.  

The long ship ride across the Atlantic shows just how naive and vulnerable Eilis is.  The combination of the terrible food and the rocky ship makes her horribly sick and the awful girls in the next room have locked her out of the toilet.  Thankfully her roommate for the voyage is a classy, more experienced woman who helps her through, gives her some makeup tips and  makes sure she walks through Ellis Island like a pro.  I love how this kindness is passed on later.

Saoirse Ronan plays Eilis and has earned her first Academy Award nomination for best lead actress.  She makes Eilis such a relatable, earnest and honorable person.  We celebrate her joys with her and feel her sadness within ourselves.  Watching Eilis discover her new world and come out of her shell is an amazing thing, but watching her start to regress back into her old life is just as fascinating.  I’m not sure where Ronan stands among the powers of Cate Blanchette and Jennifer Lawrence, but I am just happy she got the nomination and would enjoy it if she were to take the Oscar.

Brooklyn’s Oscar nominations only total to three, but they are three very big awards.  Besides Ronan’s lead actress nomination, there is the award for best adapted screenplay and, of course, best picture.  I believe these nominations simply show what a well crafted story this is and what a wonderful character Eilis is.  

The truth is, I only have praises to sing for Brooklyn.  The film keeps perfect rhythm with its its impeccable storytelling and puts its faith and heart in Ronan’s skillful depiction Eilis.  While many complain about a lack of good films about women in Hollywood, I advise filmmakers to take a good look at Brooklyn and take note.  And keep an eye out for Domhnall Gleeson in the third act, he has been in so many great movies this year!

“Try and remember that sometimes it’s nice to meet people who don’t know your auntie.”

The Revenant

The other night, a storm rolled through.  There are a few trees in my yard I always worry about falling over.  With the wind gusting and the rain pouring down, theses trees were shaking every which way.  But then I remembered a line in The Revenant.  “When there is a storm. And you stand in front of a tree. If you look at its branches, you swear it will fall. But if you watch the trunk, you will see its stability.”  It’s true, the trunk was steady.  That tree wasn’t going anywhere.  Another storm weathered without having to replace my neighbor’s fence.  

But that’s too literal.  We are all trees and in the storms of our lives, our branches are going to be shaken.  Shaken so hard we may lose a few.  But our trunks, anchored by strong roots are not going to let go so easily.  The Revenant is about a man with one hell of a strong trunk.  He’s not going down, even when he’s been mauled by a bear, helplessly watched his son murdered right in front of him and left in a shallow grave to die.  

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, the one with the strong trunk I mentioned above.  He and his son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck) are leading some fur traders around the American frontier, in wild lands full of angry Native Americans who are looking for whoever took Powaqa, the chief’s daughter.  They lose a lot of men when they are attacked in the first big scene of the film.  The fact that Glass’s son is half Native American does not win him many friends among the fur traders.  After Glass is brutally attacked by a bear, Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) decides to leave three men to take care of Glass until he can make the trip back, or bury him when he dies.  Hawk, Bridger (Will Poulter) and Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) volunteer, though it’s obvious Fitzgerald only does so for the extra money.  Fitzgerald kills Hawk and tricks Bridger into leaving Glass.  And Glass rises up from the grave he was left in to seek revenge on Fitzgerald.

If Leonardo DiCaprio does not win an Oscar for this brutal role, I don’t know if he ever can.  The scene where he is attacked by the bear is intense, frightening and convincing.  From then on, being dead weight in a stretcher made from tree branches and slowly recovering DiCaprio does not let up.  After he is abandoned, he does not give up. We watch him drag himself across the dirt and snow.  In one scene he really eats a raw bison liver.  In another he crawls inside a real dead horse as if it were a damn Tauntaun. Like a Luke Skywalker on the frozen frontier.  Just imagining all the suffering DiCaprio and the rest of the crew went through schlepping through the snow to make this film they all deserve the highest awards.

Tommy Hardy becomes a remarkable villain in this film and it earned him his first Oscar nomination.  He seems to have survived a scalping and obviously has a bad relationship with the Native Americans.  With Glass having a “half breed” son, he picks Glass and his son as enemies immediately.  The way we love to hate Fitzgerald helps us justify Glass’s motives for revenge, even if he doesn’t seem the sort for revenge.  

The Revenant is nominated for a whopping twelve Academy Awards, the most of any film this year.  DiCaprio is nominated for lead actor while Hardy earns nomination for supporting actor.  Director Alejandro González Iñárritu received his third directing nomination.  The rest are for cinematography, editing, production design, hair/makeup styling, costume design, sound mixing, sound editing and, of course, best picture.  I’m sure The Revenant will not leave Oscar night empty handed.

While I do not recommend this film for a date night, I do think it is a great and well done movie.  It has a rare mix of natural beauty and old grit that is amazing to see in a modern film.  I was very happy to read that Iñárritu decided to use no CGI and only natural light in nearly the entire movie.  And while DiCaprio’s performance here is far from glamorous, it is amazing and not to be missed.  

“No… Revenge is in God’s hands.  Not mine.”

Ex Machina

In Ex Machina, it is too simple to ask ourselves if a man is falling in love with a robot, though she is a remarkable and beautiful work of machinery.  However, does the fact that Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is a human, flawed, heterosexual male cloud his judgement when Ava (Alicia Vikander) confides in him so earnestly while her creator seems like such a heartless monster?  I highly suggest watching Ex Machina to find out all the fantastic twists and mysteries this wonderfully crafted film holds.  

The film starts when Caleb, a lowly computer programmer, wins a contest to fly out to Nathan’s (Oscar Issac) estate for a week to test a new experimental work of artificial intelligence.  The goal is to see if Caleb can believe that the subject, Ava (Alicia Vikander) could be mistaken as human.  Over the week, Caleb is put in a little glass booth in Ava’s room and the two converse between the glass.  All around are cameras, with Nathan watching Caleb interact with his creation.  

As the week wears on, Ava and Caleb seem more and more drawn to each other.  They discuss where they would go on a date and Ava bashfully surprises Caleb by putting on a dress and wig to cover up her obviously robotic parts.  Ava also triggers power outages, moments where the cameras are down and out of Nathan’s view.  During the outages she begins to confide in Caleb that she fears Nathan and warns Caleb not to trust him.  

Nathan’s quiet dominance grows heavier and eerier throughout the film.  When Caleb shows up at his estate, Nathan is hungover.  He continues to drink throughout the week getting belligerent and passing out multiple times.  But he also lets Caleb know he is smarter than him and in just a glance, we know he is much stronger too.  He lifts some weights and does impressive sit ups to prove it.  

Ex Machina feels like a modern version of a lonely Frankenstein and his monster.  Apart from Nathan’s young, beautiful servant (Sonoya Mizuno), who conveniently doesn’t speak English, there is only Nathan, Ava and now Caleb in the vast secluded estate.  It’s no wonder Nathan regularly binge drinks, has created a revolutionary A.I and has muscles on top of his muscles.  With not much to do and no one to talk to, what genius meat-head wouldn’t build robotic women?  

As Caleb’s week with Nathan wears on, the film feels tense and claustrophobic, mirroring Caleb’s emotions.  The room Nathan gives him has no windows and while technologically advanced, feels spartan.  The way Nathan asks Caleb about Ava is almost hostile at times, and when Caleb decides to hide the unsavory things Ava has said about Nathan, the conflict rises.  

I was very disappointed that Ex Machina was counted out of the Best Picture race.  From the nominees I’ve seen so far this year (The Martian, The Revenant, The Big Short, Spotlight and Mad Max: Fury Road) I believe that Ex Machina is just as well done and tells a great story.  I guess the Academy voters simply were not as impressed as I was.  I also hoped Vikander would snag a supporting nomination for her role as Ava, but alas, she did not.  At least the film got two Oscar nominations, for best original screenplay and best visual effects.  

Honestly, there hasn’t been this much sexual tension between man and robot on film since Her.  But Ex Machina is different, it’s a suspenseful, intelligent and thrilling sci-fi film.  Ava is different, she’s intelligent, captivating and can be seen as a damsel in distress.  She was created by Nathan to be as real as possible, even physically.  Perhaps she has feelings, feelings for Caleb, for freedom, to be a real woman in out in the world.  Even so, inside she is still wires, gears and microchips.  The mystery is wondering if there is more.

“Isn’t it strange, to create something that hates you?”

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I don’t remember exactly when I saw my first Star Wars movie. It was early enough in childhood that the story and characters became a constant background in my young mind.  I’ve known Luke, Leia, Han and Chewie longer than any friends I can call up.  To bring them back and extend their stories is a treasure, not just for me, I’m sure, but for every other life long fan.  And The Force Awakens does not disappoint.

In The Force Awakens, Luke Skywalker is missing.  Both the Resistance and the First Order (the leftovers of the Empire that just won’t die) are looking for him.   A map to Luke ends up with a droid, BB-8, stranded on the desert planet of Jakku.  Rey (Daisy Ridley), a scavenger girl, happens upon BB-8.  When a runaway Stormtrooper, Fin (John Boyega), finds them, he, Rey and BB-8 have to outrun the First Order and get the map to the Resistance.  There’s a lot of great action and old friends to help along the way.

While the Empire is dead, The First Order are just as threatening, if not more.  They have created another planet destroying machine, even more powerful than the Death Star.  While at first glance Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is a Darth Vader wannabe, and General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) seems like a Weasley brother gone bad, they are both prove to be characters we can love hating to add to the Star Wars saga.  And while we only see Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) as a giant hologram, he is a powerful and menacing presence.  

One of my favorite scenes is the only one filmed in IMAX.  It’s the grand return of the Millennium Falcon.  Visually, it is one of the best chase scenes in the entire saga.  Rey maneuvers the Falcon just above the sand and in and out of old Star Destroyers with Tie fighters on her tail and Fin swerving around firing the cannons and BB-8 bouncing around in the back.  Fin and Rey make a great team we quickly grow to love.  The incredible moves young Rey pulls in the galaxy’s most notorious hunk of junk makes us believe she is destined for amazing things.  

While the film is full of action, fun references for fans and intense Dark Side moments with our new villains. there is a perfect amount of heart for old fans.  The love story that was budding between Han and Leia in the previous episode now walks a delicate line between sweet and sad.  I don’t want to spoil anything, but Han and Leia have gone from star-crossed lovers to an old estranged couple whose family was torn apart from the inside.  I’ll keep my theories quiet here, but I believe we will find out more in episode VIII.  Just seeing Han and Leia again for the first time in over 30 years itself is a love story for the ages.

I could gush on and on about The Force Awakens.  It gets so much right for the fans.  It brought some nostalgia, shows some new tricks, thrills, breaks hearts, yet left me and others completely satisfied and itching for the story to continue.  Seriously, if you still haven’t seen The Force Awakens, go now.  Don’t risk letting anyone spoil this for you.  

“How do we blow it up? There’s always a way to do that.”