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Reviews
Goon: Last of the Enforcers (2017)
Promising Ideas, Poor Execution
If you are checking out the sequel to Goon, then odds are you watched and liked the original. I've watched the first Goon about twenty times on Netflix. I'd place it in the top twenty all time of sports movies. I really wanted to get behind this movie but ultimately it falls flat. The script isn't bad - in fact it touches on some great ideas: what becomes of a hockey enforcer after they retire? What happens to players when you get older and maybe aren't quite as fast or strong? What would Hot Ice have been in the YouTube age? What do we give up when we start a family and have to think about other people instead of just ourselves?
All of these are interesting questions to explore in a sports movie, unfortunately none of these ideas are really fleshed out. Most are brought up in conversation then dropped. Jokes, which mostly fall flat, are squeezed around these ideas along with a father/son relationship between the owner of the Halifax Highlanders and the new antagonist to Doug Glatt. Almost all of the original cast returns for this film which is both a good and bad thing. Most of them do exactly the same thing as they did in the first movie. Others, such as Allison Pill's Eva spend most of the movie asleep (both literally and figuratively).
The Hockey elements of the story really aren't very good. The lock out story line makes no sense whatsoever. The PA announcer also tells us the Highlanders only made the playoffs 2 times in the last 10 years. So they team went back to being awful after the original Goon? I never felt as if I were invested in the Highlanders like I was in the first movie. There is a lot less hockey in this one so that might be a reason. Another might be the strange timeline in which the movie zooms through weeks at a time and you really have no sense of what is taking place along with players moves which simply don't make sense. The Highlanders are supposed to be one step below the NHL, at that level you simply don't acquire and release players just because you want them or don't.
Liev Schreiber does stand out in his return as Ross Rhea. His character was my favorite part of the movie. A better version of this movie follows Rhea and Glatt and explores in more detail some of the questions it clearly was trying to raise. I wish they could get a do over and take another try at this.
Trash Fire (2016)
Dark Movie that builds tension, well written and worth your time
I came across this movie on Netflix and figured hey, why not? I had never heard of the film but I recognized the cast. Turns out this slow burn of a movie is well worth your time. The film is almost two in one, the first half is a well written drama about a young man (Adrian Grenier) and his girlfriend and the very real problems they face. So often in movies the characters in relationships have fake problems that no one ever experiences (I'm looking at you How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days). This couple has problems that I would imagine many viewers can relate to, enough so that it may be uncomfortable watching with your significant other. Grenier retains a bit of the Vinnie Chase charisma but it almost drowned in his apathy to...well just about everything. I found this part of the movie engrossing and realistic. I enjoyed all the side characters we meet here as well.
Trash Fire then transitions into a Southern Gothic melodrama as our two leads travel to meet Grenier's family. This is the meat of the movie and the tone changes dramatically from the relationship drama we first experienced to something darker. I hope people check this movie out, the low IMDb scores likely reflect the difficulty in putting this film in a genre. It isn't a horror film, it isn't a drama in the traditional mode and it isn't a crime thriller. It is likely fans of all those genre's might check this out and may be disappointed because it resist categorization. However, if you approach the film without preconceived notions I feel you will become immersed in this world. I found the ending somewhat abrupt and unsatisfactory for several of the characters, but let's face it, most movies end badly these days. Aside from that, it was time well spent with this little indie film. I gave it an 8 because I felt my time was well spent watching it and I would pass along a recommendation for others to check this out.
Lost and Delirious (2001)
3 Young Actresses Give Outstanding Perfomances in a Poetic Movie
About 15 minutes into Lost and Delirious I was worried that Piper Perabo was not even going to be the main character, for it seemed that Mischa Barton's character(Mouse or Mary Brave) would be the focus. I was doubly worried when Piper popped up smoking a cigarette and doing her best Lisa imitation(Angelina Jolie's character from Girl Interrupted). Did I really drive an hour and a half to watch Piper try and steal scenes every 20 minutes?
Thankfully, this does not turn out to be the case. Lost and Delirious begins taking you on a poetic journey that explores Love and its effects on different types of people. This journey is deeply engrossing, and it is a journey that simply would not be made with most, if not all, American films(L&D is a Canadian film). I am not talking about the Lesbian relationship, because this is not the point of Lost and Delirious. The Lesbian relationship is merely a setting, much like the boarding school. Lost and Delirious is really about the world being a conservative, cold, realistic place that has no time nor tolerance for dreamers or those who live with their emotions.
Many people will not like Lost and Delirious for this reason. It is simply too far removed from the way people view and live in this world. Americans in particular have lost their ability to dream or aspire to greatness. We Americans are now concerned with one thing only, the pursuit, acquisition and protection of capital. Money has become an intrinsic value to us and we no longer see, nor care to recognize, any beauty in this world. Our society has made us cold carbon copy clones that move amongst the halls of faceless corporations busy in our pursuit of status on capitalism's ladder.
Lost and Delirious attempts to bring some beauty and poetry back into the world. Think of Lost and Delirious as modern day Shakespeare for teenagers and twentysomethings(if you are over 30 you will not like this movie unless you are one of those rare individuals that can still be called a dreamer). Piper Perabo(Paulie), Mischa Barton and Jessica Pare(Victoria) all give outstanding performances - they truly convey the angst of their characters in a variety of challenging scenes. The first part of Lost and Delirious is Mischa's movie, until Piper and Jessica are caught naked in bed together by Jessica's younger sister, then the movie becomes Piper's movie.
One of the best(and subtle) scenes of the movie occurs right before Jessica and Piper are caught(and thus doomed) where you see Piper running across a field at night with her arms outstretched as if she were flying. She is going out into the woods to feed her newly found raptor and appears to be on top of the world. Next morning, everything will change in her life forever - that is how fleeting happiness will/can be for dreamers.
What follows is Piper's painful and realistic decent into the depths of despair. Paulie's character gradually falls apart when she slowly finds out that her love will not be enough. The world(conveyed by Jessica Pare in a number of scenes - all done with a subtileness very rare in movies) will neither tolerate nor accept Piper's views of Love. It is these scenes in which Piper little by little falls apart that will draw the most critisism. Realists will claim they are not realistic and too over the top. They will mock the dialog and the intensity Piper brings to the screen. What they do not realize is that it doesn't matter whether or not Paulie would go into a library in full fencing gear, or if she would be expelled from the boarding school for one of her numerous outburts. The movie isn't about those things - it is what these scenes represent.
One cannot say enough about the performance Piper gives. It is not easy to play a character that is falling apart. Actors usually go too far too soon or they don't go far enough. Piper acheives a perfect blend. A good example of this is Leonardo Dicaprio in 'The Beach'. He tries to have his character all apart or desend into madness and he cannot come close to the level of empathy that Piper achieves. Piper also does things on the screen that most actressess would never do. How many actresses would go an entire movie without any make-up on? Piper brings an passionate intensity to multiple scenes that could very easy have come off as corny with a less gifted actor.
The best illustration of this occurs in what is in my view the best scene of the movie. Near the end of the movie Piper and Mischa are alone in the woods(the scene in filmed almost entirely in shadows, you can't even see the actors faces) and Piper is bringing out Mischa's pent up rage towards her father. They recite a series of lines from Macbeth where Lady Macbeth is attempting to kill the female side of herself that won't allow her to do the deeds she needs to find the courage to do. This scene carries so much passion and the dialog is so poetic yet it remains completely serious and tragic.
I thought the duel between Piper and Jessica's new boyfriend was a perfect conclusion to this movie, it fit very well with the Shakepearean theme(you know that their is a large body count in the end of every Shakespearean tragedy). However, I do think it would have been more fitting if Piper would have killed(accidentially perhaps) the guy instead of just wounding him.
Lost and Delirious benefits from an excellent script that leaves you with multiple scenes and lines that linger in your head for hours and days after the viewing. Lea Pool, the director, also does a magnificent job of allowing the movie to unfold at its own pace, all of which leads up to a flurry of carpe diem at the end(or carpe noctem?) I have already singled out the acting of the three principle actors which is clearly some of the finest we have seen all year. I only regret that so few people will see this movie on the big screen.
Piper's leap off the building is one of the better endings for a movie this year(only Blow's ending being supierior). Unlike the raptor, we cannot just fly away from the world. We can try to soar to great heights and feel the magnificient freedom that a raptor feels, but this world is always going to bring us down. Like Icarus, there is a price for trying to fly too close to the sun. Or like Bellerophon, us mortals are not meant to aspire to the realm of the gods and any attempt to do so will send us plummeting to the hard earth below. Lost and Delirious knows that the world will not be kind to dreamers, but it asks you - would you rather dream a little dream? Is it not better to live life a little bit lost and delirious? I am sure that most of us who watch it will go back to thinking about our future acquisition of capital, its the way of the world we will say, but for a time, for those two hours we spent with Paulie, Mary Brave and Victoria, we will perhaps recall that there was another path, if only we had possessed the passion to take it.