CAPTAIN PHILIPS

CAPTAIN PHILIPS Review

By Darin Skaggs

     Captain Philips is a film about a true life tale where a cargo ship heading trough treacherous waters is invaded by four pirates.  Eventually the crew gets the upper hand and sends the pirates on the escape boat, but not without trapping the captain of the ship with them.  Then the rest of the film is the struggle to get Captain Philips out safely.

     The first half of this film is all about the set up to getting on the lifeboat, which is completely enclosed.  It begins so well with Philips, with a great performance from Tom Hanks, complaining about his kid not having enough discipline in school.  In the scene he is driving to the ship to set sail.  It is just a normal day for him, not expecting anything different is going to happen.  It also shows Muse, the main pirate, going through his day which is being hired to go steal off freighters near the area.  Just a normal work day for both these men.  After getting to know these men the action begins. 

     The pirates attempting to get on the boat, which goes on for a while, are tense scenes.  They are ones that make you almost want yell at the screen to warn the heroes.  When they get on the ship is even tenser.  The acting in the film sells the fact that they crew is terrified, and so are you.  The pirates are determined and mentally unstable, so you are even more terrified.  There lots of little touches like Captain Philips being a terrible liar while trying to keep his hidden crew members safe.  He also is not the smartest protagonist, but it is believable because he is not in the best circumstances so his common sense would be inadequate.

The movie is mostly tense, edge of your seat film, but the film is about twenty minutes too long. There are parts that drag until the next intense scene.  Also there are a few moments that feel like the film wants you to feel something, so it over does some of its lines or actions.  There is a teenager involved with the pirates that Philips keeps saying is so young, so when his fate is revealed you feel the impact because it has been pushed down your throat that he is just a child.  Also the film mirrors Muses and Philips as captains of their vessel once too many.  Some of the moments are a bit too “I want my Oscar” and also too cheesy, but the end is what makes the film worth all these minor complaints.

     The film is really gripping and I was enjoying while it was playing out.  The conclusion of the movie is what makes the film great, maybe even amazing.  While watching the film it just seems like your average, save the hero from peril and everything will be fine.  The end of the film says that no matter if the rescue goes as planned there is no true “happy ending” for a man who has been kidnapped and has gone through hell.  

     The film is great, possibly amazing.  It somehow is an Oscar bait film and a gripping tale of trauma.  It has great performances and is one of the tensest films of the year.

GRAVITY

GRAVITY Review

By Darin Skaggs

     Every once in a while my mind wanders and ends up thinking about what if I was stuck in the middle of the ocean.  I’m not drowning but I don’t know which way to go.  These thoughts terrify me.  Alfanso Cauron’s new film Gravity takes that idea and puts it in space and ends up terrifying us even more.

     Gravity begins with three astronauts including Ryan Stone, played by Sandra Bullock and Matt Kowalsky, played by George Clooney. They are outside their space ship doing some fix-it-ups.  Soon enough a bunch of debris heading towards them at top speed knocks them loose from their station.  The station is destroyed and eventually Matt gets to Ryan after much trouble. They spend the rest of the film trying to find a way home.

     This film has so much going on.  It is a film about learning to let go of the stuff that is hard to deal with and come back to reality.  Also it is a film about the fear and calmness of loneliness.   The film has so much going on your idea of it could probably change with each viewing.  Ryan has been dealing with grief for a while and spends her life not communicating or interacting with the outside world.  It is like when she was on earth she might as well have been in space all alone and far, far away from humanity.  The film says so many things about life.

     The film while having so many metaphors is also incredibly tense.  When the station is hit the first time it is so intense and the film does not let up from there.  There are so many times you hope that Matt or Ryan can hang on to a part of the station before they are propelled into space forever.  It is a true edge of your seat thriller.  The film is also filled with little moments, like when Ryan gets out of harm’s way she is given a moment to herself.  She gets out of her suit and just stops moving.  She takes a moment just to breathe before chaos returns.

     Bollock does great work carrying the film, in one of her greatest if not the greatest performance of her career.  She holds your attention for the whole film, which is a challenging task when your one of the only actors in the film and for the most of the film the only visible part of her is her face.  This film is incredible and one of the most intense and meaningful films of the year.

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2 Review

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2 Review

By Darin Skaggs

      In 2009 Phil Lord and Chris Miller released their adaptation of the classic children’s book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.  It was one of the funniest films of the year and also one of the funniest of all time.  Now Cody Cameron and Kris Pearn give their try with the sequel Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2.

     The film starts where the last one left off.  Flint has just stopped his machine from making any more food; the island is left a mess with giant pieces of food and everyone has lived happily ever after.  Then Chester V, the head manager at Live Corp and what is revealed to be Flint’s childhood hero comes to announce he is going to clean up the town while they are relocated.  It is obvious from there that Chester V is up to no good.

     As I said the first Cloudy is one of the funniest films ever made, so living up to it was going to be difficult.  Sadly it doesn’t and while being an enjoyable experience the film falls far too flat to be a good predecessor.  The film as it goes along gets more and more clunky.  Flint, our hero, is convinced way too easily that a scientist does not need friends.  After all he learned in the first film about his dad, his girlfriend and even chicken Brent, it was too strange that he went against them at all.  At times the film is just going through the motions of a “kids” film.  The hero is selfish, his friends are in trouble, and then he learns a lesson and becomes unselfish. 

     Another kid movie troupe is the humor in the film.  There are some big laughs that the film got out of me.  The food puns are all amazing, like Tacodile or my personal favorite Hippotato.  It has enough laughs to keep a smile on your face, but in between are a bunch of roll your eye jokes.  The “kid” humor in the film, which the first one didn’t have much of, is over used. There are several bodily fluid jokes.  Other jokes that are in the film are adult related humor which is a sign that the filmmakers had no faith that the adults bringing their children to the film would enjoy themselves.  It seemed they needed to throw in some crude humor so mom and dad wouldn’t be bored.

     The film is not bad but nowhere near great.  I wish Lord and Miller, who were probably busy making the hilarious 21 Jump Street, had been a part in the writing and directing of this film.  I saw its potential, but sadly it was not reached.  It could be fun to watch but probably not going to be a long lasting memory.

DON JON Review

DON JON Review

By Darin Skaggs

     Honesty is the best policy.  When I say honesty you probably think not keeping secrets from people.  While that definition is correct and important it could also mean being honest with yourself.  It’s probably hard to admit it but you are not perfect and you do not give yourself everything you need emotionally and mentally.  You probably even give yourself things you don’t need. In the new movie Don Jon, written and directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the characters and themes of the film do just that.

      Don Jon is a film about Jon, a man who says he cares about a few things: his body, his pad, his ride, his family, his church, his boys, his girls, oh yeah and his porn.  He meets this girl named Barbra, played by Scarlet Johansson, who he starts dating.  He loves her, his family loves her and everything goes well for a while.  She eventually catches him watching his porn and they break up.

     The relationship with Jon and Barbra is handled really well.  During the time they get to know each other, it is treated like a real relationship that eventually goes sour.  At the beginning he likes her.  She meets his family and they like her.  We the audience like her as well.  As the film goes on they have a few ups and downs that are very subtle like Jon going to a romantic movie with her, which is the biggest laugh in the film, even though he does not care for them.  He even says in the voice over that he doesn’t like them, but it seems he is just going because it is what she wants.  You can later figure out that he was probably dragged to the film.  Then we see their first fight in which she does not want him to do his own cleaning even though he says he likes it.  It is not treated like a big moment that will destroy their relationship, but a small moment leading towards the slow burn to the end of their love for each other.  When she finds out he watches porn he lies and says it was a video that his friend sent him and he hasn’t done that in a long time.  Then she catches him a second time and that is the final straw for her.  The rest of the film is Jon dealing with the break up and getting back to living life.

     He learns several things about himself about all the things he loves.  He also admits to his porn addiction which no one is questioning throughout the film, mostly because no one knows, except a woman named Esther, with a great performance by Julianne Moore.  She calls him out on it and helps him through it.  He learns how to be a better person being honest with himself.  He wants what the people in the porn have, great sex.  He cannot find it so he returns to the porn over and over again.  He learns that real sex is nothing like that and it is a beautiful experience between two people who care for one another.

He was even dating someone who is obsessed with romantic films where the guy sacrifices all for the woman he loves, much like in Titanic, a poster found on Barbra’s wall.  Jack sacrifices his life so that Rose can live.  That is all good but that is not what a regular “no danger” relationship should be, it should be fifty-fifty compromise, sacrificing for each other.  Neither Jon nor Barbra saw that while dating each other so the relationship crumbled.  He comes to term with the situation he is in and does his best to fix it.

     Joseph Gordon-Levitt has made one of the best written and directed films of the year.  He gets great performances by everyone; Johansson, Moore and especially by Tony Danza who plays his father.  It’s a movie that is so honest with its self that it is sometimes uncomfortable and at the same time is really funny. 

ROOM 237 Review

ROOM 237 Review

By Darin Skaggs

     At first glance Rodney Ascher’s Room 237 seems like a movie about crazy people with too much time on their hands who have spent way too much time thinking and making theories about Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film The Shinning.  And while it is about crazy theories the film is also about so much more.

     Like I said the film takes these people and they say what they think The Shinning is trying to tell us.  Some of the theories include how the film is about how this is Kubrick’s confession on how he played a part in faking the moon landing because the kid in the film is wearing an Apollo shirt, or if you play the film backwards and forwards at the same time many shots of two people talking has another character in the middle almost watching them.  My personal favorite is that while a character is trying to get to the hotel that the family is staying at he sees a semi-truck has crushed a red Volkswagen.  The film was based on a book by Stephen King and Kubrick decided not to follow the book, changing many things.  One of the minor things he changed is that Jack, the main character, drives a red Volkswagen yet in the film he drives a yellow one.  So the man’s theory is that the crushed Volkswagen is a message that this is his story not King’s.

     Half way through the film I wondered why the director only focused on theories of The Shinning and not any other of Kubrick’s films or really any other film at all.  All this was interesting to watch, but besides listening to these regular people talking about what they care and think about, I found out this film is about how art can affect people and make them think.  So many people can look at The Shinning and see a great horror movie or they can see a movie about a crazy person or a man confessing faking the moon landing.  All this could happen with any piece of art.  You could look at the Mona Lisa and see a good or bad painting of a women, someone else could look at it and see a women in love or a women in a state of depression.  They could even see a women feeling both those things. 

That is what makes this film so amazing that it is living proof that anyone could consume a song, TV show, movie, painting, sculpture or speech and have so many different emotional and intellectual thoughts on it.  If you’re a true film fan it will rejuvenate your film mind and you may never look at anything the same ever again.