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jeene23
Reviews
The Revenant (2015)
Stunning locations and incredible aesthetics
DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, for roughly 30 minutes, then allows the viewer to not have to hear his voice for the remaining 2 hours of the film. And I'm sorry to say that his attempt to illicit my emotions with just his expressions was a failure and only made me wish the bear had finished him off...sorry. Nothing about this performance screams Oscar, and none of his previous performances do either, which is why he doesn't have one!
Tom Hardy plays Fitzgerald, your standard ruthless, racist, Texas d-bag, which he completely pulls off, with the exception of his voice. If he had hit his mark, then perhaps this was award worthy but instead, as with most of his other roles, he struggled with the accent and he succumbed to mumbling and incoherent speech. A shame really, so close to a perfect performance.
Forrest Goodluck is perfect as Hawk, and honestly he could have pulled off main character status had the film been centered around him! He was flawless!!! I felt what he felt and all I wanted was more of all of it. This kid will have no problem getting work in the future.
If anything the DP deserves an Oscar for the stunning locations and incredible aesthetics in this film but that unfortunately is all it deserves. Cinematography was definitely the 12th man that brought this film to its peak.
Chambers Gate (2014)
A film worth watching.
This is a very maturely written, photographed and acted movie.There'll be more questions than answers as the movie progresses where the end will allow the viewer to fill in the blanks with an implied causality from connecting the dots looking back which is the best way to write a movie and view it. Don't explain everything. The audience has a better imagination and intellect.Not to spoil the movie but the plot twist towards the end is probably in my opinion the high point of the film in which the viewers' jaws drop.
Over all an excellent movie, with great character development, great acting, clever cinematography,truly a film worth watching alone or with a friend.
I rate it 8.5
The Choice (2016)
Nice Locations...
The movie uses many open shots of lakes, beaches, stars and so on to romanticize everything in the film from something as prominent as the protagonists' relationship to even minor details. Everything looks perfect. This movie is like an advertisement. It glorifies its' settings, praises its' characters and unrealistically portrays a life of
perfectness. It's an advertisement. You want to have a relationship like this, you want to live in a place like this and you want to be as happy as all of the perfect people in the movie. Anything that does go wrong is soon shown as a good thing because it showed how much characters loved each other or it helped in some way that wasn't obvious at first.
The dialogue is cheesy, but the actors are competent enough and do sell the emotion. Especially on Benjamin Walker's part playing Travis, I admit he turned out to be pretty likable even after being initially unlikable. I even felt a little for him in the final act. Whether they are phoning it in or not, I believe that the actors do a good job here. Nothing ground-breaking in terms of film acting but nothing illusion breaking either
The Boy (2016)
A job well done until end
The Boy is about an American nanny who takes a unique position with an old-money family in the British countryside to look after the couple's son while they are on a long awaited holiday. Upon meeting the child, Greta (Lauren Cohan) is perplexed as to why mom and dad are treating a porcelain doll as if he was their son. According to the parents, the doll IS their son and Greta must follow a strict set of instructions in order to satisfy the needs of Brahms (the boy). Worried she will be alone in this mansion with only the doll for company, Greta meets the attractive local grocery delivery man Malcolm (Rupert Evans) who informs Greta of the history of Brahms and his parents. Thinking that Brahms is merely a doll with obsessed parents, it isn't long before Greta begins to feel that something is quite wrong after hearing voices and the doll mysteriously moving from place to place. Join Greta and Malcolm as they come too close to a long-kept secret with a devastating history.
Despite being a January horror movie, The Boy had my attention and respect for a job well done until the end. Often horror movies may not provide us with the ending that we anticipated or were prepared for, but this film really took a turn for the worse when it played out in the manner in which it did. What I find remarkable about this modern old-school tale is the instant feeling of dread or fear of the unknown from the very beginning. From the dialog to the characters, each element of the story helps to continue to reinforce the ominous presence that Greta feels in the house. Unfortunately, there are just way too many unexplained, underdeveloped, and unanswered questions by the end of the movie to give the film the credit that it would have received otherwise. It is possible that the studio is setting up the audience for a prequel or a sequel, but usually these January movies do not see future installments.