Coming Soon: Incarnation

An independent film from Serbia, incarnation looks like an interesting psychological thriller, mixed with some lo-fi science fiction. The plot sees a young man who he is somehow forced to revisit the same moment in time in a city he does not recognize. Here, he is chased by four men in masks who are determined to kill him every time, while on the other side of reality, he finds himself in a hospital as a patient with no memory about who he is. 

The film was directed by Filip Kovacevic as his first film and hopefully, Incarnation will get some kind of a distribution deal. Check out its trailer below. 

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coming soon, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller,

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Film Review: Last Shift (2014)

Copyright: filmotopia.com

Last Shift is, by all measure, a modest film. As a mystery horror that places a young policewoman in an empty precinct that is going to be abandoned the next day, it creates an environment that is perfectly suited for losing one’s mind in a violent manifestation of demonic madness.

Directed by Anthony DiBlasi, who already made and produced several horrors, Last Shift demonstrates as his strong suit an effective pre-production process and budget management.

The key location of the film is at the same time its only location. The single empty police station could be any communal building, from a DMV to an administrative office belonging to a high school.

Yet, the film does not feel “cheap” in any way. But, through the trials and tribulation of the main character, Jessica Lorren, a rookie policewoman who got her first job to guard the building for one night, the audience buys into the fantasy of a menacing place.

DiBlasi’s veteran status allows him to do this, even though many other elements seem too weak to make the film really believable. One of them is Juliana Harkavy who plays Jessica in a very meek way: to work, a movie like Last Shift has to have a strong lead and Harkavy just doesn’t have what it takes.

The script is also very generic and takes us places where we been many times before. The same problem is especially underlined by fresh and unique horrors like It Follows, which were also created with a small amount of money, but ended up being a lot more engaging. However, no one could call Last Shift a complete waste of time for a horror film. In many ways, it is the setting that pulls the most weight for the movie. This is enforced by the way that DiBlasi uses the camera to infuse the bland space with dread and tension.

Because of this, Last Shift is a modestly entertaining film for any horror aficionado. If you’re not one of these, feel free to take a pass for something like It Follows.

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Horror, Mystery,

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Film Review: The Gift (2015)

Copyright: STX Entertainment

Concepts of a thriller movie and a mystery movie are often strongly connected, especially when it comes to impressive films which encompass both notions. If done right, the source of the tension and suspense can arise straight from the plot’s core mystery.

The Gift is a film that combines these two in the right manner, but also does it in a low-key manner, gradually building up seemingly irrelevant facts on upon the other.

As the image begins to make sense, the film revs its engines to full power, making the experience of a flawless thriller that is both modern and vintage when it comes to its delivery. In more ways, the film hooks the viewer slowly and with utmost precision, which is why you cannot feel the sting until it starts to lure you in.

The story of the film examines a young couple, Robyn and Simon, who are expecting a baby. They moved to a new city so Simon can begin his new job while Robyn is focused on her pregnancy. But, one day, they stumble into Simon’s old friend from school, Gordo. Apparently happy to see his high school buddy, Gordo becomes involved in their life through a simple gift he leaves on their doorstep. But, as time goes by, their relationship becomes more odd and complicated, as different bits and pieces from the lives of the two friends become known.

Directed by Joel Edgerton, who also wrote the script and stars as Gordo, the film makes a fine trip into several psychological domains, mainly memories and true personalities. As the interplay of the main three characters intensifies, the audience is driven to ask a multitude of questions, whether they want this or not. Fueled by the always solid Rebecca Hall and a surprisingly believable Jason Bateman in a non-comedic role, The Gift starts to unwrap as a present that part of you wants to leave unopened.

Ever since The Animal Kingdom, it was clear that Edgerton had some real talent and a layered quality to his acting style. The Gift, as an excellent mystery thriller shows that the same quality definitely spans a lot more areas in the cinematic domain.

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Mystery, Thriller,

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Film Review: Hail, Caesar! (2016)

Copyright: Universal Pictures

However you look at it, Hail, Caesar! is a densely layered film which is immensely enjoyable on its surface. Designed as a weird comedy about the golden age of Hollywood and one man’s mission to keep it that way, the film’s plot quickly branches out into numerous other domains, including religion, workers’ rights and the role of musical interludes.

In it, Coen brothers do what they do best and mix strangeness with latent meaning, but in a way that makes them look more like baboons and not David Lynch disciples. Their best films use this formula to a degree and even though this film is not one of those, it still provides a celebration of some of the most recognizable cinematography in the last 30 years.

For most of the film, the perspective of the plot is split between characters that are somehow connected to a disappearance of a big movie star from the set of a historical epic film. 

The star, played by George Clooney, and its disappearance quickly became a problem for Eddie Mannix, a jack of all trades employed by the studio to make sure that all goes according to the plan.

Eddie is played by Josh Brolin and he does a marvelous job presenting a type of hard-boiled, violent and devoted man that apparently died out with the digital age, which I don’t lament in any shape or form. As he pushes through many cultural regions of 1950’s Hollywood, Eddie allows the audience to soak in the atmosphere of this time naturally enforced through overstatements and sometimes bizarre levels of sarcasm that still keep true to the original intent.

But, the only problem of this fun and enjoyable film is the second part, where a small fraction of direction kind of gets lost in the metaphors and multiple plot perspectives. Here, Coen brothers wanted to make a point whichever that point might have been, most likely including Jesus, faith, communism and righteous distribution of wealth, all in a comedy form, but I failed to properly notice or/and decipher these ideas. That is why, for me, the second half of the film loses some energy.

Thankfully, it was nowhere near enough to make me lose my interest. I’m glad that films like Trumbo can come out together with films like Hail, Caesar! and show a similar era in a manner that is both bold and hard to interpret. Maybe I didn’t get it, but I sure did like it, which is great compared to Trumbo which I did get but did not really enjoy in any way.

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comedy, Mystery,

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Film Review: Irrational Man (2015)

Copyright: Sony Pictures Classics

The talent of Woody Allen knows no limits. His film called Irrational Man is one of the best examples of his current creative period in which he apparently fell in love with simple and basic thrillers. Like Match Point, this film provides an uneasy, self-mocking feel that is rare and precious in Hollywood these days.

Here, Allen puts Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone to work, using them to create a plot where a distraught philosophy professor played by Phoenix arrives at a new college and begins to reevaluate his life through talks, sexual encounters and epiphanies about the nature of humanity. Along the way, murder also becomes involved.

The plot, like Allen’s direction, builds up an environment of intellectualism and an (undeserved) high quality of life, but also a vast and placid emptiness about the purpose of it all.

In Irrational Man, all the characters are looking for that something, completely oblivious to their incredible self-indulgence and a need to see themselves as someone who is living a righteous life according to the latest cultural norms.

While these traits block them in their attempts, they still ask for it, actually, demand it, no matter what or who might get hurt along the way. Internal monologues coming from the main actors go great justice to this concept and further enforce it.
But, because of their social class, eloquent rationalization and unapologetic and unconscious selfishness, others definitely get hurt in a range of ways. Allen shows how this need to put oneself in the center of the known universe is something corrosive and dangerous. In fact, the emotional weirdness combined with valid internal cognitive processes of the characters transform the film into a dark comedy about the toxic hunger of the modern western self-centered philosophy of life.

Towards the end, the audience gets entangled in the web of lies and explanation, settling into the position where it would not be that bad if everyone got punished for what they did and how they acted. This way, Woody Allen managed to create via a classic tale of crime and guilt, set in the modern world of convenience and ego-worshiping individual philosophies.

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drama, Mystery,

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Film Review: Dark Places (2015)

Copyright: A24

From its onset, the Dark Places movie emits that particular vibe that tells that this film will not be a huge success with the audience. As a dark mystery and a thriller, it begins on a really somber note, showing a mass murder of the Day family in which a brother was accused and sentenced for killing his mother and two sisters.

The remaining sister Libby Day, then a small girl, is two decades later a grown woman, (played by Charlize Theron), who still lives off of the charity coming from random people who learn her cruel fate. Libby, now a jaded and detached individual, learns that in spite of this, the money is drying out, so she is forced to listen to an offer from a shady organization, who desires to reopen her case and find out what really happened that night when the murders took place.

The introduction of this group is one of the most impressive and unexpected elements of the film, which is both out of place (in a good way) and extremely intriguing. It is a shame that later on, the same element loses all relevance to the story.

Naturally, as Libby returns to the backwater part of Kansas where the crime took place, grizzly memories, but also new and worrying events, begin to unravel. Like the The Drop, it slowly build that unnerving tension, even though nothing really threatening happens.

As a thriller, Dark Places is pretty good. It builds two parallel narratives while it examines the young Ben Day, who was convicted of the murders, and his demanding pre-crime life of poverty and family instability. The second narrative deals with the present-day Libby and her quest for answers, until the two plot lines collide into a coherent story. Here, the director Gilles Paquet-Brenner uses a cinematographic approach that is reminiscent of the French horror thrillers from the early 21st century, where bleakness and an overall depressive setup add to the overall horror feel. In this movie as well, the Day family struggles as a collective, but also as individuals – Kansas is a desperate place to be poor, and Ben desperately wants to feel something apart from the sadness and irrelevance, no matter what the cost might be.

But, here the film also makes a turn for a more philosophical domain, where it tries to explore the choices that are made and their consequences as the past time frame moves closer and closer to the family murder, but does this in a very meandering way. At the same time, it gradually loses the tempo of the original setup and the organization that hired Libby doesn’t really matter anymore, even though she falls into active danger from unseen forces who wish for the case to stay closed.

The resolution of the film is, strangely, satisfying in an odd way, mainly because it ties up all the loose ends. Here, the film provides a solid conclusion and sets all the characters to their rightful place, but overall, it lacks any of those heart-racing moments (action one’s or other types) that a grizzly thriller mystery needs to have. This makes Dark Places movie a very good cerebral piece but keeps it emotionally at an arm’s length when it comes to connecting with the audience.

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drama, Mystery, Thriller,

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Film Review: Knock Knock (2015)

Copyright: Lionsgate Premiere

It’s not good to be bad, and being bad might end with you being killed, is what Knock Knock movie is trying to tell us. Temptation can be interesting and fun, and it can even dance around in your living room in a shower robe, but at the very end of temptation, something horrible and sharp might lurk in the dark.

Essentially, this is all well and nice, but the cog in the mechanism of this revenge horror film is its main actor – Keanu Reeves. This man has plenty of, shall we say, unorthodox talent and a strong screen presence, but here, the actor transforms into a devastating miscast right during the opening scenes.

Let’s take the first few moments of the film. Here, we see Reeves’ character, a man by the name of Evan Webber, being woken up by his loving wife and family. Webber is an architect in his 40’s and he has a gorgeous spouse and kids straight from a cereal commercial. At this point in time, all is splendid in the Webber household, but still Reeves acts as an alien who suddenly appeared in a human body. This alien studied human culture for a long time and prepared for this situation in simulators, but through an error, he arrived there way ahead of schedule.

Now, the same alien is trying to improvise human emotion and mostly ends up looking weird or as overacting close to the Nick Cage potential. As the family leaves, the strangeness of Evan Webber kind of dies down a bit, but not completely. When Evan’s beautiful future tormentors arrive, the film makes it hard to root for anyone and it also seems pointless to wait for any particular moment, apart from seeing if the ending would be an outright win for either side or with some kind of a poetic tie match. Each of these scenarios was completely fine by me and no option bothered me in any way.

I get that Eli Roth is a smart movie guy in every sense of the word. He produced several very effective horrors by being innovative, on budget and a bit edgy, but not too much. Now, as a director, he does show off his cinematic talent and Knock Knock movie has frames that are pleasant to look at, especially when it comes to the way Roth uses the exquisitely decorated Webber home. On the other hand, he obviously couldn’t find a solution to the Reeves rampant emotional emptiness he infuses into his character. Even worse, maybe this wasn’t even a problem in Roth’s eyes. Ironically, in the last moments of the film, there is something like a mini-catharsis when spit starts to fly from the mouth of a desperate Evan, but it comes too late to make any difference.

I understand that Knock Knock movie was designed as something similar to an inverted revenge fantasy, but the thing that it brought to the table are a bit of nudity and a distant, weird Reeves. There were plenty of places where the film could have introduced some lame twist, for example, like the one that Haunter pulled off (minus the supernatural element) but Roth didn’t even make an effort to do that. Sloppiness, lack of direction and miscasting all made Knock Knock movie a below-average revenge thriller.

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Horror, Mystery, Thriller,

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Film Review: Self/less (2015)

Copyright: Focus Features

There are several key points to this film which really remind me of the movie Limitless, and it’s not just because of its name. In both films, fringe science unlocks something incredible for the main protagonist, but also opens the door to something really dark once the protagonist breaches its chrome and shiny surface. 

In both films, the main character is a person full of energy and the will to live, but who is somehow bound to their current, undesirable state – in Limitless, it was the lack of professional drive that kept its main character down.

In Self/less, the main character is Damian, an incredibly wealthy old man who is coming to the end of his natural life. But Damian can’t accept the notion of mortality that easy, so he seeks a company offering a chance to start all over, using a device that transfers his mind into a new, synthetic body, grown from scratch.

With death being the only other alternative, Damian decides not to shuffle off his mortal coil and accepts the offer of Professor Albright, who’s classic style for fashion is only eclipsed by his thinly wielded evil interior, which the film foreshadows way too much.

At the moment of the switch, the character of Damian passes from Ben Kingsley to Ryan Reynolds. While Kingsley is in the driver seat, the film possesses a nice aura of mystery and intrigue, because the veteran actor does presents really well powerful characters which are dislikable but understandable. Here, Damian’s struggles with missed opportunities and grim possibilities, and Kingsley makes it works. The director Tarsem Singh makes the introduction in a subtle but engaging fashion, making the audience invested in Damien’s plight.

But, once the transition takes place and Reynolds becomes Demine, Self/less just loses it. I like Reynolds, especially his comic talent, but here, he simply melts into the bland surroundings in which the film takes place from that point on. Damian moves to New Orleans, but the film quickly ends up being filmed in plywood houses in the suburbs, small country roads and abandoned warehouses turned secret medical labs, as if the scenes from affordable actions movies like Bangkok Dangerous were suddenly offered to Singh at discount prices. Like the predictable story and uninteresting twists, from that point on, Self/less glides into a really mediocre thriller. This final element really makes the film a spiritual continuation of the equally flawed Limitless.   

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Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller,

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Film Review: Broken Horses (2015)

Copyright: Fox Star Studios

For me, Broken Horses is a strange, ill-fitting mixture of a distinctive cinematic sensibility and a precisely defined time and place in which the film is supposed to be set. The film’s director, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, started working on films over 40 years ago, but in this piece, he only manages to end up as a person who is coming from a completely different place of creative thinking, and gets lost in a strange land of different cultural values and approaches to telling tales.

Broken Horses is a story of two brothers who get separated in a small southern US town when their father and the local sheriff, gets murdered. One brother goes away and becomes a successful musician, while the older one remains, falling under the influence of a local crime boss. Many years later, the younger brother returns, but he is not wanted in the dust bowl of his old hometown.

With a cast of great actors, primarily Vincent D'Onofrio, Anton Yelchin and even Chris Marquette (even though he took his role way over the top), Vidhu Vinod Chopra takes Broken Horses to art-house territory and back into cartel-thrillers in a matter of minutes. These constant transitions are nauseating, even though they take place in really impressive, almost theatre-like sets and feature some fine cinematography in the style of the modern western/neo-noir films. A lot of this is the work of Tom Stern, a director of photography well-known in the AAA realm of Hollywood.

In Broken Horses, it is the main director who doesn’t know how to approach this story of the two brothers, apart from its beginning and its end. Like many films with a lot of style and inadequate amounts of substance, it is the middle segment where the Broken Horses fail to be an impressive work of art, but also to entertain in any way.

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drama, Mystery, Thriller,

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Current Shortcomings of True Detective Season 2

Copyright: HBO

I was trying to figure out what feels less than right in the new True Detective season. Like practically everyone, I really loved the Season one. From the first moment, it had that synergy of place and characters that was just magnetic in a sweaty, sticky, wrong way, but didn’t leave me feeling uncomfortable for a long time (maybe this is its only shortfall from being a truly groundbreaking show like The Wire).

Of course, I had big expectations from Season Two, especially because Collin Farrell (ever since I saw Tigerland, I am certain that the man is a great but underappreciated actor). But, at the same time, I knew that replicating the formula from the first seasons would be impossible, so I was just hoping for something interesting. 

For the first couple of episodes, I wasn’t even sure that anything feels wrong or inadequate. After all, just a year later, I forgot what happened in the first season’s episodes (for example, what exactly takes place in episode 3 in the first season?), so I told myself that this is a normal buildup process of the Pizzolatto type.

But after the episode five, I think I finally managed to transform vague feelings into words. It turns out that Season Two of True Detective simply misses many key moments from Season One, but fails to add other elements that could replace them when it comes to the pure factor of engagement found in the show. On the other hand, its characters do not succeed in hooking the audience with one major hook but try throwing many smaller ones, which don’t connect that well. Here are some of the key points of the current Season Two lack of engagement:

Season One had the Yellow king, a ritualistic murder and creepy drawings which were all powerful but unclear symbols. Season Two has none of these and even the main murder mystery is easily forgettable.

Season One had that strong idea that something in the show might be supernatural. Rust Cohle had his visions, the Yellow King had its presence and these blended into an atmosphere of eerie, dark wonder. Season Two has highways and illegal immigrants looking sad.

Character relationships are deeply undeveloped because of lack of screen time and too many character threads. For example, why would Ray Velcoro and Paul Woodrugh care about each other? In the first 5 episodes, they had like 5 minutes of mutual conversations.

Season One used direct narration to foreshadow and intrigue, without giving anything away in any meaningful form. Granted, the same pattern was a one-time trick, but Season Two didn’t try to pull its own trick so far.

Finally, Season One didn’t have Vince Vaughn, which was, in retrospective, a huge plus. Let’s face it, the man is just saying his lines and there’s none of that “I’m changing my career here” fire. Imagine him smiling a lot more and he could walk right into the set of Wedding Crashers 2.

This all does not mean that True Detective Season Two cannot become something great. But the window of opportunity for that is becoming smaller and smaller, while at the same time, the narrative turn that might be coming has only to become bigger and bigger so that it could really impress us.

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drama, Mystery, Thriller, TV,

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Coming Soon: The Stranger (2014)

Written and directed by Guillermo Amoedo and produced by Eli Roth, The Stranger tells a tale about a man who arrives into a small town looking for his wife. He soon finds the thing he is after, but this also unleashes carnage upon the same place.

The film seems really low-key, focused mainly on the actors and the rather ordinary-looking violence (which makes it all the more awful), but also pushes a supernatural premise in the mix. Recently, Roth showed that he is really keen on producing interesting mystery-horror films and The Stranger looks exactly like this.

Its official trailer weirdly reminds me of the No One Lives movie, but I'm not sure exactly why, or even if this should be a good or bad thing for the film.

The film starts its limited cinematic run today in the US and you can watch its trailer below.

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coming soon, drama, Horror, Mystery,

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Review and Ending Explanation: It Follows (2014)

Copyright: RADiUS-TWC

The beauty of this film is that it really makes you watch it. Unlike regular horrors, or even other films, in its case, watching is not just looking at what the characters are doing, but also what is happening around them. While many scare-based movies go for this, the director of It Follows, David Robert Mitchell took this notion one step further by making the audience into a type of lookout system for the main characters.

In the film, a young woman called Jay has sex with her new boyfriend. But, immediately after, she learns from him that he actually transmitted a curse (sort of) to her, the same one he got from someone else. It involves an invisible creature that walks towards its victim – it does not run, just walks, but can take the appearance of any other human being. If it reaches her, she is dead. After that, he flees and Jay is left with the curse and must find a way to get rid of it or do something about it.

Mitchell uses a weird soundtrack, similar to the film Cold in July, which is also strangely filled with 80’s sounds and synth-pop melodies in a terrifying way. In the film, Jay and other characters are often surrounded by people and some of them do walk towards them. Whenever this happens, the audience has to wonder if they really are stalked by the monster or is the same figure just an ordinary person. This stroke of genius is what makes If Follows a movie full of suspense and terror that comes from expecting something grisly to happen.

Of course, Mitchell is a young filmmaker and the movie is not perfect. Mainly, it rushes to demystify its creature to a certain point, its pacing is uneven and some elements are completely off as if they were taken from some other film of his (the boat scene, for example). But, its strongest suits make it a film that cannot be compared to many others currently out there, especially when it comes to those which try to advance the horror genre.

It Follows is a film that took horror into new and interesting waters of suspense and audience immersion, along with its symbolic message of STD’s. Because of this, it is a small genre masterpiece.

It Follows Ending Explained

Spoiler Alert


This is how I understood the ending of the film (ignoring the notion of sexually transmitted diseases and watching the film just as a horror) – Jay gives the curse Paul after they have sex and Paul is later seen driving by some prostitutes. In the last scene, the figure that is seen following Jay and Paul. This figure is not the monster – it is just a regular person (most likely). Here’s why:

The idea is that Paul had sex with someone who has intercourses many times a day. This means that the same prostitute will spread the curse without even knowing she has it. If the next victim (the prostitute’s customer) is then killed, the curse goes back to her. But then, she once more has sex in less than 24 hours (most likely), giving it to someone else, whom the monster then needs to start following.

This way, Paul brought the curse to a “sex nexus” where it can linger on without anyone noticing that murders are taking place, especially because many of the prostitute’s victims are not locals, but only passing through and the curse is not activated the same second it is passed on. Because of that, the ending explanation can only be that the person behind Jay and Paul in the last scene has been just a passerby.

Because of Paul’s intercourse with the prostitute, both he and Jay are safe for the time being.

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Horror, Mystery,

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Crowdfunding Push: Spectrum

Mystery movies are probably one of the most engaging film genres. At the same time, they are also a genre that is notoriously hard to pull off without seeming goofy, predictable or plain bad. A new IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign is looking to develop a surreal mystery film that will from the get-go embrace its funnier side. This film is called Spectrum and its official page states:

Charlie wakes from a coma into a world seemingly run by the corporation ‘Spectrum’, who offer personality implants to those willing to pay. Not funny? Buy an implant. Want to stop caring? Buy an implant. Reassembling the pieces of his lost life, Charlie is faced with the tough decision of whether he wants to remember who he was or joining the new world, where he can pay to be anything he wants. Occasionally, he finds, the decision will even be made for him.

Michael Henry is the man behind this project and the artists that inspired this film include David Lynch, Paul Tomas Anderson, and Terry Gilliam. At the same time, the film was also influenced by darker things like the Rupert Murdoch and the global trend of corporations intruding into private lives. Watching the trailer, I also noticed bits that resemble the broad feel found in things like the UK TV show Utopia, Upstream Color and maybe even a few hints of the classic TV show The Prisoner. In total, Spectrum seems like an ambitious project that deserves a chance, especially because of its humor and a really modest asking budget. Its IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign just started, but you can check it out here and see how you can help.

If you're looking for exposure for your film-related project, contact me right here.

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comedy, Crowdfunding, drama, Mystery,

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Coming Soon: Man From Reno

Directed by Dave Boyle, Man from Reno is a thriller about two separate stories set in California, connected by the notion of one particular Asian country – first one is an random road accident that includes a sheriff from a small town and a Japanese man, while the other follows a fiction writer from Japan who travels to San Francisco to escape the media pressure of her new book release.

From the trailer, it looks like Boyle created a minimalist thriller with a strong sense of a compact mystery. Currently, the film is hitting the festival circuit, but I’m guessing it will find a wider release date very soon.

Check out Man From Reno trailer below.

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coming soon, Mystery, Thriller,

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Film Review: Gone Girl

20th Century Fox

All narrative art is about suspense of disbelief. This notion works on almost every level, and no film can ignore this. People shoot revolvers without reloading every ten seconds, and drive while they have long conversations when they don’t look at the road (which surprisingly easy leads to crashes in real life). 

Suspension of disbelief means that we play along and accept that things don’t need to be too realistic, first and foremost basic stuff like the passage of time – in reality, a visit to the bathroom can take up to 10 or 15 minutes in which nothing happens (well, nothing too important, usually at least), while in a film during that same time, once in a lifetime love affairs begin and end.

That is why suspension of disbelief is fine with me. But Gone Girl moves is one gigantic a continuation of disbelief that stomps on reality until there is nothing left by a fine powder that gets swept away by the laborious David Fincher. This director is by no means a stranger to hits and misses. He ended the 90’s as one of the visionaries of this weird decade where movies didn’t get things like the Internet, but tried hard. Just two years after Fight Club, a film that might be one of the key works of cinematic works art in this period, Fincher made Panic Room, a complete disaster of low ambitions and emotional detachment.

Now, he sees like he was hell bent on connecting us to the characters in Gone Girl, but somewhere along the way, reason got left eating ice cream, confused and alone on a gas station, while Fincher’s van sped forward. In this van, Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike play a young married couple living in Missouri. One day, husband Affleck returns home and find wife Pike missing. He finds signs of struggle and calls the cops. Soon, a huge media spectacle begins and the audience is forced into reading characters and devising who is or isn’t a sociopath or a psychopath (hey, aren’t those two the same – no, they are not). Movies like Cold Comes the Night present psychopaths in a convincing manner, but this one definitely doesn't do the same.

Fincher was very good at making me like or dislikes a character, until I realized that this wasn’t there to help the film, this was the film. As the perspectives shift, so does the plot begin to unravel into more and more preposterous waters, where desperate improvisation leads to perfect, FBI-fooling crimes. Yes, the film is dynamic and fun, and it pulls the viewer in, but at one point, I felt like I wanted to go out, and the shallow plot couldn’t do a thing to keep me in.

I’m sure that every Gone Girl review will praise Rosamund Pike and her performance. I am also sure that we will see more of her in leading roles and at the same time, see more of her body in magazines and stuff like that. In fact, I suspect that Gone Girl movie will be remembered as her stepping stone (I hope that it does the same to Neil Patrick Harris, who was also very good), which is fine, but David Fincher should definitely ask himself is his talent really well suited for these kinds of endeavors.

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drama, Mystery, Thriller,

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Film Review: The Maze Runner (2014)

Copyright: 20th Century Fox

Wes Ball, who directed this movie, plays his first cards with a lot of style, and also some guts. He doesn’t go the way I expected him to, opening his film with some kind of an info dump. He stripped away almost everything, and opted for presenting a completely bare, almost raw experience.

A young man wakes up in a middle of a field called the Glade, surrounded by boys of different age. He lost all of his memories, but immediately recognizes that others are organized in Lord of the Flies kind of society, but only this one lives in relative harmony. 

The only problem is that they are surrounded by huge walls, and the only way out of this place is through the Maze, an incredible, constantly changing structure that is full of dangerous creatures.

With this minimal verbal setting, the film drives on, basing itself on experience, not knowledge. The audience gets to find out new things along with the main character Thomas, which feels very organic. This is how he gradually learns the power balance in the Glade, shared between a teenage version of hawks, doves and owls archetypes, which differ in their approach to social structure and governance. But at the same time, all strive for the exploration of the Maze and hope to find a way out.

Played by convincing young actors, primarily Dylan O'Brien as Thomas, but also Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Will Poulter, The Maze Runner movies keeps its traction for almost its entire duration. Because of this, it manages to come off as a serious film, clear of many young adult tropes that saturate films like those in the Hunger Game series.

While The Maze Runner 2014 is basically built on the same teenage angst-leaden material, it strips it down to a much emptier space, where it’s easier to be drawn into the story, and where there are also fewer deterrents like shabby romance subplots. Instead, Ball chose to focus on camaraderie and friendship, which is very refreshing. In this aspect Maze Runner is even more successful than Ender's Game, a film that was supposed to be mostly about a boy's dedication to his friends. The only substantial flaw in this adventure film is its corporate designed ending, which jams a generic Sci-Fi explanation (using, ironically, an info dump method) into an emotional and violent outburst, resulting in an overflow of sappy feelings which Ball so successfully avoided up to that point.

This marketing-research powered mud pie of an ending is additionally enhanced with an idiotic order for the audience to come back to the movie theaters because there is a second part coming our way. In it, a character pronounces a line straight from early James Bond villain textbook, which was designed (I guess) to intrigue the audience and keep it guessing, but fails to do everything except seem silly. This extremely sour cherry on the top of that mud pie really spoiled my solid experience of the film, even more because it was a completely unnecessary move.

Without that crippling last 10 minutes, Maze Runner could have made the best young adult adaptation of 2014.

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Adventure, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Young Adult,

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Film Review and Ending Intepretation: Predestination

Copyright: Sony Pictures

My first association to Predestination was the movie Time Cop. Now, after I saw it, I feel like one of those people who, after hearing the word “Mars”, immediately things about the candy bar, not the planet. In the same fashion, Predestination has almost nothing to do with time cops running around the past busting crime before it happens.

Instead, it talks about personal growth and change in the setting that disposed of all the regular constraints of both time and matter. Michael and Peter Spierig, signed under the name of Spierig Brothers, made this film five years after their list project, Daybreakers, which didn’t impress me too much, mostly because of the bland characters it featured. Now, they are again experimenting with core science fiction ideas (Daybreakers was more about Sci-Fi than horror) but with a lot more success.

In their new story, based on a Robert A. Heinlein short piece, an agent working for a time traveling anti-crime organization hunts a man called the Fizzle bomber who continues to evade time alterations and manages to blow up more than 11,000 people in New York in 1975. The agent, known only as the Bartender, meets a man one night in a bar where he is working, and the man tells him he will tell him the most incredible tale in the world.

The really cool thing about Predestination is the fact that it drives home the issue of personal possibilities that arise from one of the most basic time travel paradoxes, all the way into the very natural but still very weird waters. All gimmicks are developed so that they seem very minimal both in visual and narrative terms, so no one should expect Time Machine level of CGI grandeur. After seeing it, I had the feeling that the complete process remained logical and predictable, which makes this film is without a doubt a pioneer in time travel genre. This fact alone is a pretty bold thing to do in today’s movie market.

The only visible down side to this is the fact that Predestination movie might see predictable in general when it is perceived and experienced as a thriller. But, Spierig Brothers managed to harness that wind of predictability and instead of fighting it, use it to fill their sails. This made the film more similar to a mystery drama than a time travel action-adventure, and the main actress Sarah Snook should be commended for the way she delivered an extremely unique role.

In this Predestination review I wouldn’t stand against interpreting this film as an adventure, but I would have to call it a one that carries the viewer into the realm of personal self and the things what truly defines it.

Predestination Movie Ending Explained

Spoiler Alert

To understand Predestination and its ending, it is important to look at the passing of time in the film as a continuous development that never really begins or ends. Instead, it has a continuous cycle. At the end of this cycle, the character of the Bartender finally chases down the Fizzle bomber in the laundromat. He realizes the he is in fact him from the future, and who somehow became certain that killing people would further diminish crime. The Fizzle bomber tries to stop the Bartender from killing him by saying that this already happened, and that the only way to break the cycle is to learn to love him. The Bartender decides not to heed his advice and kills him. He then returns home in his present year of 1975.

But, his time travel briefcase didn’t decommissioned properly, and it is implied that Robertson rigged it so that it didn’t because he needs the paradox to continue. The Bartender, alone and broken, gradually decides to start to use the briefcase because he misses the past versions of himself too much. This leads to him slowly slips into psychosis (which is a side effect of uncontrolled time travel). Because of this impact of time travel, he loses his mind and slowly becomes the Fizzle bomber (aided by his knowledge of chemistry and physics from his youth), completing the circle.

The entire cycle is continuously supported by Robertson as a means of assuring that the entire paradox continues to function.

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drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi,

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Film Review and Interpretation: Before I Go to Sleep

Copyright: Clarius Entertainment

Tackling selective and not-so-selective amnesia is a favorite topic for both thriller and comedy filmmakers. Christopher Nolan made cinematic history with Memento and defined almost a decade worth of thrillers, doing for amnesia-stricken characters what Usual Suspect did for the Unreliable narrator back in the late 90’s. Before I Go to Sleep movie delves into the same murky waters of loss of memory, but unlike Memento, it reached a much shallower place.

Before I Go to Sleep was directed by Rowan Joffe in 2014, who wrote some good screenplays like 28 Weeks Later, but didn’t make many films from his latest position. This lack of experience is telling, and Joffe didin’t struggle with his star cast, where the triad of Nicole Kidman, Mark Strong but especially Colin Firth, all produced great roles. Joffe, in spite of this, made a very lukewarm film, which also managed to come off as very unassertive in several key moments.

The story of Before I Go to Sleep revolves around Christine, who wakes up every morning forgetting everything from her early 20’s. But, Christine is now over 40, and has a husband named Ben, who tries to help her to lead a somewhat normal life. But, one day, Christine gets a phone call from a neuropsychologist who claims that there is a camera hidden in her wardrobe, which contains more information. Christine, totally blank as always, begins to watch the videos of her, and the film takes off.

Its thriller narrative pulls many of the regular tropes when it comes to amnesia, and Kidman has enough talent to make all of them entertaining and relatively fresh. In its miniature runtime, the movie isn’t boring or undirected, but its substance is spread so thin that it is hard to care about anything else than the central mystery. Although there are many emotional outbursts, the film deal with such a miniscule film crew (3+1 actors make up 90% of it) that any connection is short and mostly based on recollection of the main character and its later impact (Ben telling Christine stuff, good and bad), not current action or events.

Because of this, Before I Go to Sleep comes off as a hastily recreated radio drama where the images leave a very pale impression on the viewers, while the story doesn’t do much better. In the end, I was left feeling that there is another mystery, left in the wake of the last reveal, only because the central reveal failed to make any impact on me.

Before I Go to Sleep Movie Explanation and Central Flaws

(Spoiler Alert)

Although the film's immediate story isn’t like this, the film is very linear in its core. Christine has a husband Ben and a small son named Adam. In the first years of 21st century, she enters an affair with Mike that ended with him assaulting her and leaving her for dead. She recovers, but with a recent memory cleaning amnesia. Her real husband, who is shown at the end as the guy with the scar, has tried to live with her for years after that.

This fails, while her child continues to grow, and she continues to recollect him as a baby. 4 years prior to the events of the film, he divorces her and puts her into a nursing home, deeming their life unmanageable. Mike then finds her, and pretends to be Ben, only so he could build up a new relationship with her.  Dr. Nasch bumps into Christine and offers to treat her, while no one anywhere notices that she is gone. The film begins shortly after Christinge begins her treatment with Dr. Nasch.

The events of the film are tightly arranged, but fail miserably on several points. Mike is shown to be murderously impulsive (the reason why he assaulted Christine in the first place), but also a genius when it comes to Photoshop, deception and forgery (how he got her out of her nursing home), deeply emotional, patient and a brilliant planner as well. Then, he visits Dr. Nasch to threaten him like a clumsy New Jersey mafia foot soldier, which made even less sense, and only added the possibility of him getting arrested.

Christine’s real husband and son are shown to be loving, carrying figures at the end of the film, but don’t notice mommy is gone for (I’m guessing) months on end. But, in spite of this, they are, all of a sudden, full of warmths and care for her. With this combination, Before I Go to Sleep produced a very unconvincing development that in the end came of as completely broken. While it didn’t make any rookie mistakes when it comes to sorting the amnesia part out, its characters are extremely flawed.

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Mystery, Thriller,

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