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.

WORLD WAR Z Review

WORLD WAR Z Review

By Darin Skaggs

     ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES!

     Okay, now that I have your attention let me tell you about Marc Forester’s new film World War Z.  The film opens with a loving family going through their everyday routine eventually ending up in their car on the way to school. Then a motorcycle cop runs into their mirror, the dad Gerry Lane played by Brad Pitt gets out of the car wondering why the cop didn’t stop.  Then an explosion goes off in the distant, the family is scared and wonders what is going on until a cop is ran down by a truck.  Gerry follows the truck until he can’t anymore, then they get out of the car and view these “humans” attacking other people.  The family is then on the run after that, stealing an RV and driving away from the city.

     The army eventually calls Gerry to come back to his old job, which he left to be with his family, for his help to try and stop this virus attack.  He joins the fight and leaves his family protected on the boat they are brought to.  From there the film becomes a pretty good action film.

     After Gerry joins the fight to find the source of the virus, which is insanely impossible by the way, has some great action scenes.  There is one where characters escape on bikes, there is also a scene where the zombies bypass a wall and another good scene that takes place on a plane.  Most of the scenes are thrilling and fun, but there are a few others scenes that make no sense.  They are implausible.  They remind me of the dumb stunts that you could find in the Die Hard series.  The action scenes are about 60% good and 40% bad.

     I do respect this film because it is not afraid to shy away from the darkness of what an apocalyptic zombie attack would bring.  Gerry thinks he might turn into a zombie so he stands on a ledge, so if he does turn, his family won’t be harmed.  Also the film is not afraid to kill the innocent.  If the world was over taken by zombies bad things would happen, things that would not be easy to swallow and the movie shows that very well.  This makes the final conflict really suspenseful because you are not totally sure how it is going to play out.

     The film ends with a “next time on World War Z” speech, setting up a sequel.  I liked the film, but I’m not completely sure it needs a second one.  Other than that World War Z is a fun ride that does not totally work, but you’d be glad you saw it.

STORIES WE TELL

STORIES WE TELL Review

By Darin Skaggs

     A documentary can be about many things.  It can be about Disneyland or the history of Monopoly or what is wrong with our food.  Those are good and all but the great, amazing docs are the ones that are just about people.  No facts.  No information. Just people living their lives.  Sarah Polley’s new film Stories We Tell is a film about Polley’s family.

     The film starts out about Sarah’s mother, Diane Polley who had passed years earlier.  While Sarah was conducting interviews with family and friends of her mother she finds out startling life changing news.  She then shows the interview of everyone’s thoughts and feelings about the situation.

     Her news is life changing, her whole world, it should seem, be crashing around her but she does not seem sad she seems excited at the news.  Other characters who should be affected by the news are inspired.  They start to write a story about it, Sarah makes the documentary about it and others say it affected the whole 11family’s view of family in general.

     Polley, who directed a few other fictional films, makes this one her own with its own style.  She hires actors to reenact things from her past.  She uses a Super 8 camera that makes it look like old home video footage.  It is a brilliant choice and is really effective during the narration.  Speaking of the narrator, Sarah chooses her father to do the narration with a piece he wrote for the film.  She makes other fine choices including her own voice asking her dad to redo takes, including a quote that says that the truth will not be told because Sarah gets to choose what part of the interview makes it in the documentary. 

     The doc is insightful and says a lot about forgiving people for making mistakes.  It really makes you think about what would happen if your family made different choices in their life and where you would be because of it.  It truly is a great documentary with a lot of heart.

MUD Review

MUD Review

By Darin Skaggs

     There is something about being a child that when we look back on it, it seems like a perfect, easier time.  That time though is not, it is when we are at our most vulnerable.  It is the time we are learning about life not knowing that the world is harsh, mean and difficult.  Jeff Nichols, who made the amazing 2011 film Take Shelter, directs a film all about this time in a kid’s life dealing with the loss of innocence with the hard reality setting in.

     Mud is a film that begins with two young boys, Ellis and Neckbone, heading up river to try and find a boat that presumably is stuck up in a tree.  They find it and also discover that someone is living in it.  That someone is Mud, played wonderfully by Mathew MaConaughey, who is a fugitive on the run trying to get to the person he loves.  The boys do their best to try to help him even when it gets more challenging for them.

     Much like last year’s Beast of the Southern Wild this film starts with a world that seems to come out of a child’s imagination, cars floating in the water or a boat in a tree, and slowly throughout the film goes into a cold reality.  Also much like Beast both of the kids are strong going through stuff they shouldn’t go through, but they pull through.  Ellis’ parents throughout the film are disconnected and they both explain to Ellis that they will probably separate.  Ellis cannot emotionally deal with this and in a desperate attempt to prove love exist tries to help Mud contact his girl.  He even pushes a grown man to make sure she is okay.  When that doesn’t go how he wants he tells a girl who is a few years older and that has been hanging out with him that he loves her.  She is freaked out and runs away.  Ellis needs to know love exist and fights for it the entire movie.  He does come to terms with reality by the end and lets go of what he needs to.

     He is a character that is growing up way too soon.  Ellis clings onto helping Mud, a character that is late on growing up.  Mud is on the run for murdering a man and cannot find the courage to talk to the women he loves.  Also he lives on a boat on an island with no people around.  They are almost polar opposites while Mud is hiding from his problems, Ellis faces them head on.  He fights two people who are being harmful to women, one being a grown man.    

     The children who play Ellis and Neckbone do great work, some of the better child performances in a while.  Michael Shannon, who is in Nichols other two films, plays Neckbone’s parental guardian and is great in the role.  He plays a man who gets all his belongings from the ground of the riverbed.  He is a wacky character that explains why Neckbone, well is named Neckbone and why he is the way he is.  All Neckbone wants from helping Mud is a pistol, while Ellis is looking for emotional satisfaction.  The film is full of great, well develop characters.

     The film is not quiet on par with Take Shelter, though few films are but Nichols film is quiet amazing.  It is an entertaining film about that life is not as simple as we think it was growing up.  Mud is one of the greatest films of the year and a real joy to watch.