Gideon58's Reviews

I absolutely love Hitchcock's Marnie, and I think it's one of his more underrated films, Frenzy falls in that category as well.

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I'm probably the most critical, picky and hard to please moviegoer, ever.

Honestly, I really wouldn't know the difference though...this genre isn't exactly my long suit so any help I can get would be appreciated. Your replay proves it...I never caught that Colassus was ever human.

First, I don't really know why Colossus was in the movie. I'm not a follower of Deadpool, but I don't know of the two characters having any real relationship to each other (guess it was just to link Deadpool to another X-Men property?).

Second, come to think of it, there's no way anyone not familiar with the character would have known he was not a cyborg since his background and nature of his powers was not explored in Deadpool! One of my complaints was that they never showed Colossus in his human form, or transforming from human to organic steel (in a couple of the X-Men movies he's shown as both human and steel - but a major ball they dropped in those movies was denying him of his Russian heritage and his accent - on this item, Deadpool got it right).

Third, (this is really minor) but Colossus seemed very middle-aged in the movie, just by the way he spoke. He just came off as much older to me. Don't know how old he's supposed to be these days in the comics, but initially he was in his late teens - and we all know that characters can remain the same age for decades.

P.S. Why did you describe him as politically correct? Is it because of the way he reacts when the woman he's fighting has a "wardrobe malfunction"? Yes, that was characteristic... Piotr always was shy, old-fashioned and a bit of a prude.

ROOM
Think about that little gardening shed in the back yard, you know the one where you keep the lawn mower, the weed eater, and all your gardening supplies? Now imagine living in a space that size for seven years and you have the premise for an emotionally charged 2015 drama called Room.

As this harrowing story begins, we are introduced to Joy and Jack, a mother and son who are living in a tiny room furnished with all the basics, but obviously cut off from the outside world, their only exposure to the outside world being a tiny skylight. Joy works tirelessly at keeping Jack safe and keeping him from asking too many questions that Joy really doesn't want to answer. We learn that Joy has been living in this shed for seven years, a virtual prisoner of someone referred to as Old Nick. The story opens on Jack's 5th birthday so some quick math reveals that Joy was imprisoned in this shed for two years before giving birth to Jack and that Jack has never been exposed to anything outside of this shed and hasn't really missed anything because Joy has made it her mission to make Jack think there is nothing abnormal about the way they are living.

This way of living is having its toll on both Joy and Jack and Joy decides that they have to get out and the only way she can do it is through Jack. She tells Old Nick that Jack is sick and needs to go to an ER and when that doesn't work, she devises a deceptively simple plan that involves Jack pretending to be dead. The ruse works and Jack and Joy are eventually rescued but this is only the beginning of a new and very complicated chapter of their lives.

Director Lenny Abrahamson perfectly captures that claustrophobic atmosphere that the first half of Emma Donoghue's screenplay, adapted from her own novel, requires. It is made clear immediately that these two people have been living in this tiny room for more than a minute, documented by their baking a birthday cake together for his 5th birthday and Jack being upset because they couldn't get candles from Old Nick. Yes, there are questions left unanswered, like why Old Nick imprisoned Joy in the first place and though it is hinted at in an interview Joy does, Old Nick is never confirmed to be Jack's father, but it couldn't really be anyone else.

We think Joy and Jack's rescue is pretty much the end of the story, but it's just the beginning as Jacks health must be monitored closely as whether or not the child has any kind of immune system is unclear. We watch Joy's tense reunion with her parents, which isn't as smooth as we might think, evidenced by Joy's father's inability to deal with his new grandson. It's heartbreaking watching Jack not to want to communicate with anyone but Joy, and worst of all, my heart sank as it is quietly revealed that Jack misses the room.

This film is not an easy watch, but it is a worthwhile one, thanks to Abrahamson's atmospheric direction and the performance by Brie Larson as Joy, which won her the Oscar for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role and she is matched note for note by Jacob Tremblay's extraordinary work as Jack, one of the best performances by a child I have seen in a long time. I also enjoyed seeing Joan Allen and William H. Macy onscreen together as Joy's parents, the first time they have worked together since 1998's Pleasantville. This was a heartbreaking and unique motion picture experience that did actually have me shedding a few tears...this is one of those movies that leaves you frozen as the credits roll.

Never seen Frenzy...I need to add that and Family Plot to my watchlist.

That phrase came to mind when he was trying to convince Deadpool not to kill Ajax...maybe "politically correct" isn't the correct term, but it seemed very important to Colossus for Deadpool to take the high road. He put a lot of effort into trying to persuade Deadpool to let Ajax live.

THE SESSIONS
Director/writer Ben Lewin triumphs with an endlessly imaginative, edgy, and often prickly cinematic journey called The Sessions, a fact-based story that is an intelligent and emotionally charged look at a refreshing topic not really broached before.

This is the story of Mark, a soulful poet who is paralyzed from the neck down and lives in an iron lung. He can only be away from the lung for three or four hours at a time and can only move his head. As you can imagine, Mark's thinks about sex a lot and becomes obsessed with losing his virginity. Because of the special problems that sex would cause for Mark, he finds he has no option but to enlist the aid of a sexual surrogate named Cheryl to help him achieve his goal.

This film fascinates from jump due to an instantly likable lead character in Mark, who reminded me of Rocky Dennis in Mask, a man resigned to his life and still being able to laugh and smile about just about anything. Mark doesn't speak without filter, but he is always honest, one of the few movie characters I can recall who is rarely caught in a lie. It is revealed that Mark's condition stems from polio, but flashbacks reveal a normal childhood so we don't know exactly how long he's been in this condition and it is never documented, but for the first time with a movie character like this, I really didn't care...Mark was such a breath of fresh air that all I cared about was his present and his future.

The film also provided an eye-opening look at the difference between sex surrogacy and prostitution, which is beautifully explained by Cheryl who makes it clear to Mark minutes into their first meeting that they will only have six sessions together and that she is a private woman with a private life. The work of a sex surrogate, according to this film anyway, can be quite the emotional roller coaster and it is fascinating watching Cheryl do her best to leave her work at the office, so to speak. We are almost shocked when it is revealed that Cheryl has a husband and a teenage son and during their first scene together, her husband refers to Cheryl as a "saint"...I was thinking the same thing about the husband.

Things get complicated, which was a bit of a surprise because prior to meeting Cheryl, we had already witnessed Mark scare off a caregiver by being a little too free and easy with his emotion, but I loved the way Cheryl remained the consummate professional throughout...there's a great moment where she's recording her progress with Mark and documents the fact that the man is developing inappropriate feelings for her. Mark's emotions bring the story some dark directions and there is a really scary turn in the final act, but this is a story that it is impossible to look away.

John Hawkes' powerhouse performance as Mark is endlessly charming and Helen Hunt received her second Oscar nomination for her crisp and controlled Cheryl, a character whose intelligence, compassion, and professionalism are a marvel to behold. Also loved William H. Macy as Mark's priest/sounding board, Moon Bloodgood as Mark's caregiver and Adam Arkin as Cheryl's husband. Lewin's screenplay is thoughtful and filled with warmth and laughter and the film is beautifully photographed and scored. Drink this one in because you're not likely to see anything like this again.

THE SHALLOWS
It borrows elements from films like Jaws, Cast Away, and 127 Hours, but 2016's The Shallows hits an effective and economic bullseye because it provides the scares that the story sets up, but provides something that is so rare in films like this, something that Hitchcock was a master at producing...suspense.

The story is simple: Nancy (Blake Lively) is a nursing student who has left her girlfriend at the hotel and been driven to a special section of beach that has personal meaning to her and plans to do some surfing, but before she even realizes what's happening, Nancy finds out the area she is surfing in is the feeding ground for a great white shark, who has other meals before his final battle of wills with Nancy.

This film features meticulous direction by Jaume Collet-Serra that has a real Hitchcock influence to it...he makes you think he's playing all his storytelling cards when he's not and he doesn't shove all the scares at you at once...viewer patience is required and said patience is how suspense is manifested here. During the opening scene, we see a helmet with a camera on it found by a young boy and we see footage of a shark attack on the camera and we think the story is being telegraphed, but it really isn't. The opening scene is just a warning to the viewer as to what kind of terror is possibly on the horizon.

But instead of bringing us straight to the terror, the director takes the time to let us into the middle of Nancy's life...he lets us know that this is a real person going through stuff and that her life already is not sunshine and roses and that this vacation is a bit of an escape for her, as she immediately distances herself from human contact as quickly and politely as she can, including two fellow surfers who she ends up needing later and regrets her quick method of dispatch.

Collet-Serra creates amazing suspense here and even gives us a couple of false starts...there's a fabulous moment where we see Nancy being surrounded by a group of large fins surrounding and jumping over her and it's a few seconds before we realize they're dolphins, not sharks. We get the scares that the opening scene promises, but the director makes us wait for them.

Lively works hard at being believable in this role...a role which requires a lot of talking to herself and establishing a relationship with a small bird, similar to Tom Hanks' relationship with Wilson in Cast Away, but this movie so not about acting...this movie is about scares and the suspense of trying to figure out exactly when they're going to happen.

Hey cool, you liked it! I think me and you are the ones here who do.
I like that comparison, it's very astute observation. I actually liked the scenes with the bird, I thought they gave a little 'down time' from the danger below.

Sounds pretty good - I'll keep an eye out for it!
Would you call it a "survival film"? (That's one of my favorite genres. Started a thread about them once.)

You can add a third to that list.

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Look, Dr. Lesh, we don't care about the disturbances, the pounding and the flashing, the screaming, the music. We just want you to find our little girl.

It's another one I watched after reading your review of it, Citizen...if you hadn't watched it, I probably wouldn't have, but I liked it...honestly, it pretty much scared the bejesus out of me, Wait Until Dark.

I was absolutely loving the room until the escape, but I thought that was the high point and the rest felt anticlimactic.

I didn't think much of The Shallows. I strongly prefer Open Water.

Does she get stranded on an island like in Cast Away? Or do things take place more so on the water?

She's in the water going from object to object.

I was going to say she spends a good amount of time on that rock. But not always of course.

And the irony of it all is that she's only about 200 feet from the shore!!!

10 CLOVERFIELD LANE

A compelling story and a bone-chilling performance from John Goodman make 2016's 10 Cloverfield Lane, an effective nail-biter worth checking out. It initially appears to borrow from other movies, but definitely establishes its own cinematic credentials.

The film stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Michelle, a woman who gets into a car accident and when she wakes up, she finds herself chained to a dirty mattress and an IV coming out of her arm in what appears to be a basement of some kind. Michelle is then introduced to her host, Howard (Goodman) who has brought Michelle to his underground shelter in order to protect her from the air being attacked by all kinds of deadly chemicals. Howard has apparently spent all his life constructing this bomb shelter, which hearkens back to the 1950's...it is fully equipped like any home except that it is underground and there is seemingly no way in or not. Michelle initially doubts Howard's story until she meets Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), who is also in the shelter and helped Howard with its construction, who supposedly at the time of the attack was trying to get into Howard's shelter and broke his arm trying to get in.

To say anymore at this point would be wrong, but suffice it to say this is a film seems like it's going in one direction and does a 180 just when you think you've figured out what's going n. The screenplay by Damian Chazelle (Whiplash, LaLa Land), Matthew Steuken. and Josh Campbell is rich with enough red herrings to pique viewer interest but not too many that we get bored with what's going on. Most of the conflict and entertainment in the story comes from this character Howard, who initially appears to be just a male version of Annie Wilkes in Misery, but there's an unsettling layer to Howard's insanity that is hard to categorize specifically. Howard offers just enough details to his story and his motives while keeping things equally murky, never explaining anything thoroughly. Howard is one of those creepy movie characters who you're not sure whether or not he's telling the truth or if you just hope he's not telling the truth.

Director Dan Trachtenberg creates a brilliantly claustrophobic atmosphere for this story with a big assist from set director Michelle Marquand II. Goodman is Oscar worthy creating a character who kept the hair on the back of my neck standing up. Winstead is a durable heroine who never loses her head and Gallagher is a charmer as Emmett. Film editing, sound editing, and music deserve mention as well. A first rate chiller that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

I really enjoyed that movie. Did you see Cloverfield?

No...is it a documentary? Is the film I watched fact-based?