BOYHOOD

By Darin Skaggs

     In the art of film we have cliché moments that we all know is going to happen.  We have the guy finally getting the girl, the bad guy dies or a family finally comes together and apologizes to each other.  Other more cynical filmmakers have moments of loved ones dying, a couple breaks up for the last time or the villain of the piece gets away with his plan.  Richard Linkleter’s Boyhood is one of the few films that is true to life, no big reveal, no emotional conflict just a kid growing up.

     For the last twelve years Linkleter has filmed a few scenes of Boyhood to show the true passage of time.  It stars Ellar Coltrane as Mason, who we first met in his schoolyard at the age of six.  He is looking at the clouds as Coldplay’s “Yellow” plays in the background.  His mother comes to pick him up and Mason immediately starts asking questions a young boy would ask.  This sets up the film perfectly and is an ongoing theme throughout the film.  Mason, as he grows up, is always wondering as kids often do.  This leads to many of the films funny, poignant and beautiful moments.

     As mentioned once a year Linkleter and the team would come and film a few scenes.  This happened for the last twelve years starting in 2002.  There is no title card to indicate that a year has passed.  The edits are seamless; there are moments that you won’t instantly know he has aged.  This speaks to the themes.   This is all about life and also about how life happens so fast.  Mason is growing up before our eyes.  In almost three hours he ages from six to eighteen.  Linkleter takes the concept of “You’re growing up so fast” and puts it to film.  By the end you’re proud of Mason and his sister Samantha, played by Linkleter’s daughter, Lorelei; but you are also sad that they have grown up so fast.  Linkleter somehow makes you feel joy and sadness with filming these children for years and years and compiling it into one three hour film.

     Coltrane does fantastic, with a few bumpy moments, but that is to be expected with being filmed for twelve years.  Lorelei does good work as well along with the kid’s divorced father Ethan Hawke.  Patricia Arquette the mother and care taker of the children does sensational.  She goes through many troubles but never plays it over dramatic.  You can blame the writing for all these wonderful characters but the acting of Arquette does the best with the role she is given.

     Besides the premise the best part is that Linkleter captures childhood so well and specifically a generation.  A big part of the first scene is the use of its music.  In the opening Coldplay’s “Yellow” plays, in other instances Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up The Sun” plays and Samantha sings “Oops! I Did It Again” by Britney Spears.  These songs will take you back to memories you had at the time.  Music continually reminds us what year this takes place along with some technology, like the Nintendo Wii or the evolution of cell phones.  Another great aspect that is explored in the film is just memories of children.  There are great small moments that Mason goes through like moving to a new school and the teacher introducing him or when he is getting a haircut against his will.  One of the best moments being an awkward conversation between 8^th grade Mason and another 8^th grade girl that rings so true it is amazing this moment, among others, is not a documentary.

      Boyhood is an amazing achievement.  It is a story that is so true to life you might find yourself saying “Life is beautiful” or shedding a few tears.  It has a few moments that you could roll your eyes with but ultimately the film works so much as a whole these moments just seem to fit in.  This is truly one of the best films of the year and of the decade.

JOE

By Darin Skaggs

     Nicholas Cage has become a go to punch line; making a career out of so bad they’re good films.  However, Cage is a talented actor who because of the many crazy performances his true talent has been buried.  David Gordon Green, who cast Cage in his new film Joe seems to know of Cage’s talent and lets his true ability shine in this strange and darkly optimistic movie.

     Joe is about a young boy named Gary (Ty Sharidain) that is attempting to become a responsible man despite having an alcoholic father and an apathetic mother.  When searching for a job he runs into Joe (Cage) who runs a group of men who poison trees so they could be cut down and new, better trees could be planted.  While Gary is trying to be a responsible young man he also has to be responsible for his family.  Joe and Gary form a father and son like bond even though Joe has his flaws.

     Joe is a strange man.  He kills trees for a living; he owns a dangerous dog but hates other dangerous dogs.  He lives in a trailer alone and knows seemingly nothing about his family.  Throughout the film he does not make good decisions.  Yet he is giving Gary good advice, protecting him and sacrificing a ton for the happiness of Gary.  Gary needs this, he is doing well on his own, finding his own job, helping his family, but his father figure is an abusive alcoholic that is not afraid to murder to get what he wants.  So the fact that Joe takes over the father figure even though he does not need to.

     All these moments are truly beautiful, including the last scene, which is a real accomplishment because the film looks visually unappealing.  This is not meant a compliant, for the way the film looks is all intentional, from the sets, to everyone’s clothes and the filter of the cinematography.  It is all so ugly that when the ending comes everything almost looks better for this world and not to mention the scenes right before this is the ugliest in the film and the ugliest to look at.

     David Gordon Green’s Joe is a tour de force of acting, writing and directing.  It looks gritty and ugly which makes it all the more beautiful.  It is a film all about the concept of beauty from pain and how humanity has a certain need to protect others seemingly out of nowhere. 

ENEMY

ENEMY Review

By Darin Skaggs

     Film can be used to show many emotions.  It can bring so many metaphors, visually and verbally.  It could be viewed as pretentious to make a film that is full of these metaphors.  Every once in a while they could also work as brilliant works of art.  Sadly in Denis Villeneuve’s new film Enemy these attempts at visual and vocal metaphors fail and become an unnecessarily confusing mess.

     The film is about Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal), a bored professor who doesn’t have much of a life and normal routine that he seems not to care about or care to change.  One day he finds out that there is a lowbrow actor that looks just like him named Anthony (also Gyllenhaal).  Adam searches out to meet Anthony which takes a crazy turn that turns into the film just trying to be many metaphors.

     The film does obsess with making us wonder what is up with these two men.  Could they be twins?  Or could they be clones?  Does it matter?  In the long run, it doesn’t.  The film spends so much on the mystery of the identical look of these men and spends so little time to solve it.  It is clear after leaving the film that there is some deep meaning to these look a likes.  Instead the whole film is a mess of secret meanings.  It does not flow to well together, while other movies work well as a confusing mess that when you put your mind to it, the meanings will all come together.  This one is too confusing and messy to mean much to someone.  There are doppelgangers that never figure out anything and a weird load of spiders that could be anything and most likely nothing.

     The film is not a total failure.  It looks incredible and the score is fairly effective.  They are so good it could make you believe the story being told is worthwhile.  Gyllenhaal is spectacular in both roles playing a boring teacher and also an active out of work actor.  Every technical aspect of the film is astounding.  The film is a honorable failure and with last year’s Prisoners also directed by Villeneuve and a solid thriller, this really shows promise for the director.  Sadly this part of his filmography will most likely just have to be near the bottom of his hopeful career.

UNDER THE SKIN

UNDER THE SKIN Review

By Darin Skaggs

     Film is an unique art form.  You can edit scenes together, add sounds that all culminate in a certain feeling of emotions that can’t be felt in any other format.  In Johnathon Glazer’s Under The Skin, he uses these tactics and creates one of the most emotional and effective films of the year.

      Under The Skin tells the tale of a mysterious being in the form of Scarlett Johansson, in one of the best performances of the year, that lures men into her van and traps them in black goo.  She does not use money or violent force, she uses sex.  She compliments the men’s looks and flaunts hers to get them to come into her home where they are trapped in black goo, where any number of things could be happening.

     This film is not concerned with solving your mysteries or telling you plot points.  These men are sunk into the black goo and there are very little hints of why these men are being trapped.  The film gives off vibes that Johansson is an alien, but it never really says.  It is not concerned with these facts because it has more to say then what is happening factually on screen.  It wants to explore the male gaze and the sexual awakenings and nightmares of being a woman.  She starts as just letting the men admire her body but never giving them what they want.  About half way through the film there is a change and this being starts to get curious which leads to some beautiful and haunting moments.

     The film works on a visual level with beautiful sets and visual effects.  It also has some great sound effects and the score is striking.  As technical effects go, this is a masterpiece.  It uses all the unique aspects of film; the score, acting, sound mixing and editing, subtle writing, to make you feel the emotions.  It lets you react to the moments not because you are told to feel something or that a character is feeling something, it is all the surreal magic that film can bring.

     Scarlett gives one of the greatest performances of the year and of her career.  She plays this strange being again never saying what she is feeling or thinking.  All she has to work with is the subtle script and the minute emotions on her face.  The film is unique and strange in the best way possible.  It chooses to take everything about film, except dialogue, and make it just as emotional as any film with people procliaming what they are feeling. 

NON-STOP

NON-STOP Review

By Darin Skaggs

     Liam Neeson is an actor that gets cast into a certain type of film.  In the last five plus years he has played the over qualified undercover fighter that is going through something that finds himself in a Die Hard-esque situation.  There were the two films where his family members were, well, taken and he had to use his action film skills to get them back.  Then there was the one where he had to fight the wolves in the snow filled wilderness.  In his most recent outing, Non-Stop, Neeson plays Bill Marks the Air Marshall, finds himself on a plane that is secretly being high jacked.  He knows this by the texts he is receiving on his secret line. 

     The ultimate goal of this venture is to have fun.  For the most part it succeeds.  There is a good sense of mystery of this who-done-it.  The mysterious texter is threating to kill a person every twenty minutes unless a large amount of money is transferred into a certain bank account.  This attacker is somehow succeeding and the bank account ends up being in Mark’s name.  It makes you feel like you need to know what is going on and gives you plenty of character set up so you could go back and forth on who you think is up to no good.  All this is done in a fairly entertaining way.

     The true problems here stem from the social commentary and even a bit of why the perpetrator is committing this act.  The plane is believed to be high jacked, it has turned direction which gives us the line from a passenger “Any of this sound familiar?”  As said before the film is fun, too fun to need any allegory for 9/11.  If the film was less silly and action packed it could stand for this, but those elements make the 9/11 moments make you roll your eyes.

     While this film is enjoyable, Liam Neeson can only do this for so long.  We can’t keep seeing him become an action star in silly situations.  This film you might leave feeling cool, but when you get far enough away from it, it probably won’t be top of list material.