Bridge of Spies - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Bridge of Spies  

Starring: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Scott Shepherd, Amy Ryan, Sebastian Koch, Alan Alda

Director: Steven Spielberg

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

In the 1950s Americans lost their collective minds looking for communists. Many innocent people were caught up in the “red scare” and Joseph McCarthy’s televised witch hunt. Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies is not about one of the innocent victims of the era, but an actual communist, a spy sent from the Soviet Union to steal American secrets in the event of — gulp — nuclear armageddon.

The Cold War does not have the sweeping appeal of World War II, or its tanks and soldiers blasting away at each other on panoramic battlefields, but it’s stories are just as revealing about the soaring heights (and plunging depths) of humanity, and the morality of a silent warfare that turned American against American.

In 1957, the United States government reached out to attorney James Donovan (Tom Hanks), an insurance lawyer in Brooklyn. They asked him to take the case of Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), a KGB infiltrator caught spying for the Soviets. They have Abel dead to rights, but they need a talented lawyer to defend him rigorously to keep up appearances that, indeed, America is a bastion of democratic, Constitutionally sound values and principles. Donovan agrees and is quickly stonewalled by a biased judges, a kangaroo court, an overzealous prosecuting attorney and a pitchfork-wielding public that sees Commies in its soup.

Presented as a legal procedural, the early segments of Bridge of Spies are expertly choreographed and fascinatingly presented. Here’s Donovan, doing Uncle Sam a favor, being spied on by Uncle Sam. Hanks, at his most feisty, has a great sequence with a CIA agent, who asks Donovan to violate attorney-client privilege by revealing what Abel actually did for the Soviets. The lawyer bristles at the request, and pounces. “Don’t nod at me and smile you son of a bitch,” Donovan tells the American spy. It’s wickedly fun, and Hanks hits all the right notes to get the audience on Donovan’s side, regardless of what his client has been accused.

In a concurrent sequence of events, four young pilots are being briefed on a new mission, one that will take them 70,000 feet up over Soviet Russia in a U2 spy plane. Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) is one of the pilots, and on his first flight encounters the loving embrace of Mother Russia. Powers and Abel quickly find themselves as pawns in a political game of chess that has global stakes. The players in the game are proxies, stand-ins who don’t have official status: for the Soviets it’s several communist-friendly power players, and for the Americans it’s Donovan, a pudgy Brooklyn insurance attorney whose wife thinks he’s fishing in England.

If you know history, you know what happens next, and it’s fascinating stuff, particularly when Donovan heads to East Germany to negotiate with his counterparts on the other side of the still-forming Berlin Wall. These scenes on the other side of the Iron Curtain are photographed in gloom, with cold colors and chilly concrete. The setting must have felt hopeless for Donovan, who’s robbed by a street gang, jailed by border guards and tactically outmaneuvered by an array of communist bureaucrats with conflicting of agendas.

Spielberg is known for his big movies — Raiders, Jaws, Saving Private Ryan — but I would argue that his smaller character-driven pictures show just as much mastery of the medium as the blockbusters. Here he tells a story about a man fighting for American ideals that America itself doesn't want to be bothered with. Hanks is terrific — when is he not? Rylance as the Soviet spy Abel is especially electric. He has a refrain that appears frequently, “Will that help?” You don’t seem worried about the death penalty, Donovan tells him in court. “Will that help?” Abel is a curious character, one that Rylance wraps in mystery and self sacrifice. Few actors can keep pace with Hanks, but Rylance does, and with apparent ease.

Mostly, though, Bridge of Spies is a collection of tiny victories: the lighting is nuanced and effective, the camera work is modestly unassuming, the sets and locations invoke the paranoia of the time and place, and the small details of East German life, such as an indoor hallway for bicycle messengers, gives the film its unique cinematic identity.

Spielberg makes too few movies, and it’s movies like Bridge of Spies that makes me yearn for more.

99 Homes - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

“The foreclosure film ‘99 Homes’ serves stressful theatre”  

Writer/director:  Ramin Bahrani

Starring:  Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon, Laura Dern

A bank foreclosing on a family’s home is a stressful nightmare for the household members in question.  Not keeping up on mortgage payments, waiting for dreaded phone calls and staring at eviction notices plastered on one’s door is quite the opposite of dreams coming true.    Even worse, the actual eviction – in which a real estate broker with two police officers suddenly appear at the front door and instruct the (now) former homeowners that they have two minutes to gather their belongings and leave the premises – is beyond gut-wrenching.

This is the early premise of “99 Homes”, and over the course of the 1 hour 52 minute film, it takes the audience on an even more traumatic ride.    Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) – a 30-something roofer who struggles to make ends meet in a difficult job market – is thrown out, along with his mom (Laura Dern) and son, of his modest Orlando home by Rick Carver (Michael Shannon) in the aforementioned life event.    With shoddy credit and nowhere to turn except an equally shoddy motel, the Nash family begrudgingly accepts their new fate in a 500 square-foot room in a noisy and less than desirable area of town.

With no job prospects and his financial hole growing by the day, Dennis makes the truly unthinkable choice of working for Rick to make ends meet, which, quite frankly, feels like an inmate on death row making best friends with his executioner in the afterlife.

Writer/director Ramin Bahrani does not pull, but yanks on our empathy strings, as he portrays a man in desperate need of immediate solutions, but, unfortunately, only one ugly one appears in his narrow view of the world.    While Bahrani sends Dennis on a questionable new career, he also presents a frank and brutal picture of the real estate business during the recent housing collapse.   According to Rick, in a world of winners and losers, America is about bailing out and celebrating the winners, and he intends – using legal and illegal methods – on financially keeping his victorious standing in a sick market.

The filmmakers perfectly casted Shannon as Carver.   He has a knack for playing off-center, caustic characters, and with Rick’s morally bankrupt (pardon the pun) persona mixed with a bit of sociopath, Shannon plays a fearsome and distrustful on-screen villain.   For example, when a random foreclosed homeowner takes his own life, Rick nonchalantly shrugs, “I can’t bring him back to life.”

For Rick, he simply is a vulture praying on the dead carcasses in any Orlando subdivision and insists he owns the moral high-ground, because he did not create the problem.   For Garfield, this is his first film role since he lost his Spidey-suit in “The Amazing Spider-Man” series, but he clearly has a bright future ahead.   He is highly-effective in delivering nearly two-hours of Dennis’s self-doubt, anguish and pain, and it leads with the film’s first 10-15 minutes when the camera is transfixed on his face.  His character feels completely powerless inside his own home and then standing outside of it, and we feel it too.

Bahrani makes other smart decisions by featuring timely close-ups of Dennis’s mom, son and Rick, as the actors and director work in concert to present the lambs experiencing the slaughter at the hands of the Big Bad Wolf.    “99 Homes” is a nerve-racking story which kept this critic’s palms sweating for almost two hours, and the end result works as an emotional, although also unpleasant, movie experience.

With Dennis making three key mistakes down this inexplicable road, Bahrani spins a yarn that seems destined for doom.   “99 Homes” reminds me of 1998’s “A Simple Plan” where the leads make one terrible decision, and it snowballs into an avalanche of tension with an apparent date with ugly destiny.   With a great script, elevated performances and Dennis’s simple – but wrong-headed – plan, the film creates havoc on our sensibilities about a time – in the not too distant past – that made very little sense.  (3/4 stars)

He Named Me Malala - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

“He Named Me Malala” features an extraordinary woman in a less-than-perfect documentary  

Director:  Davis Guggenheim

Starring:  Malala Yousafzai, Ziauddin Yousafzai

To say that Malala Yousafzai is an extraordinary person is an understatement.    For speaking out in support of Pakistani girls’ rights to an adequate education, the Taliban shot her in the head when she was only 15 years-old.   She survived the murderous attempt, continued to speak out for girls and won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize at the tender age of 17.   When asked if she was angry at the man who fired a bullet into her head, she responded, “Not one atom (in her entire body).”

This individual truly is one in a billion, and in the documentary “He Named Me Malala”, director Davis Guggenheim tells her amazing story by exploring the origins of her resiliency while also capturing frank discussions with her family.   Some of the film’s best moments are when Guggenheim focuses his camera on Malala’s home life in the Yousafzai family’s new household in England.  The audience sees Malala playing card games and laughing with her younger brothers around the house.   She also begrudgingly talks about boys in the same way that the average American teenage girl might refer to boy bands on the front pages of “Tiger Beat”, and all of these scenes truly enforce the fact that Malala is still just a kid.

At the same time, she speaks as a woman way beyond her 18 years.  She opens our eyes as she explains that a significant percentage of Pakistani women grow up illiterate, and her father – Ziauddin – mentions that their 300 year-old family tree did not contain one female name.  Not one.  That is until he proudly added Malala to it.  Guggenheim shows her father’s eye-opening influence as a driving force behind Malala’s progressive beliefs.

The film, however, does not stay put too long, and unfortunately, this is a significant problem.   The movie’s flow feels very choppy and disorganized, as it constantly jumps between shots of Malala’s home life, video footage of her in Kenya or Syria providing support for women, meeting with various world renowned leaders (including President Obama and Hillary Clinton), cute photographs of her as a child, and reenactments via animation.   A documentary does not need to follow a completely linear flow – like the recent docs “Amy” (2015) and “Senna” (2010) - but “He Named Me Malala” follows no such pattern.     The result is not exactly a confusing film, but a frustrating one.

The aforesaid animation is another distraction.   When a documentarian wants to explain past events without possessing the basic visual footage, he or she can film interviews in which the interviewees converse about them.  The filmmaker can also shoot reenactments, show still photos or offer animation.   Animation can be an effective tool, but Guggenheim takes too much liberty.    At first, the animation engages.   For example, one animated sequence explains the origins of Malala’s name, and it takes a spirited and celebratory tone.   In another scene, the film creates good feelings, as it plays out the happiness of Malala’s birth.   A little animation can go a long way, but the film repeatedly dives – throughout the entire 1 hour 27 minute runtime - into one “cartoonish” moment after another, and very quickly the technique becomes tiresome.

The picture also misses an opportunity to interview various political leaders about Malala’s impact on the world community.   We see the aforementioned footage with government heads of state or important organizations standing with Malala, but I do not recall one sit-down on-camera interview with one.    The consolation (and, admittedly, it is a very good one) is we do get to hear Malala’s feelings, believes and also her struggles with her injuries straight from the woman herself.   Malala has heaps of thoughtful discourse for a world stage, and this film provides a terrific platform.   Sitting through “He Named Me Malala”, I cherished those moments.  I only wish the movie’s structure and technical choices lived up to the woman featured in the title.  (2/4 stars)

The Final Girls - Movie Review by Monte Yazzie

The Final Girls  

Director: Todd Strauss-Schulson

Starring: Taissa Farmiga, Malin Akerman, Alexander Ludwig, Nina Dobrev, Alia Shawkat, Thomas Middleditch, and Adam DeVine

So you want to spoof a horror film? Well, there are already a few examples, some successful and some not so much, on how to do this already available. “Scary Movie” took the horror genre into overboard goofy and slapstick spaces. “Shaun of the Dead” played it straightforward with a near pitch perfect mix of comedy and horror that appeased horror fans and crossed over with appreciation from non-horror fans as well. “Scream” played the genre against itself, establishing horror film rules and mixing it with great subgenre slasher elements, making the Wes Craven film a horror classic. Of course there are others that could be discussed, early Abbott and Costello and the Universal Monsters or the 1981 spoof “Student Bodies”, but director Todd Strauss-Schulson’s film “The Final Girls” is an impressive edition to consider. With a PG-13 rating, don’t turn away just yet hardcore horror fans, Mr. Strauss-Schulson hits nearly every mark with a mix of clever comedy and horror tropes that all audiences will appreciate. It’s safe horror for the masses and that’s not a bad thing.

Max (Taissa Farmiga) is a teenager who reluctantly attends a tribute screening of a 1980’s movie called “Camp Bloodbath”, a film that features her deceased mother in the starring role. During the screening of the film a fire erupts in the audience, leading Max and her friends to escape by cutting their way through the movie screen. In a twist, the group of friends are transported into the movie. In order to escape the group of friends must survive the blood-thirsty killer and make it to the end of the movie.

These kinds of films are difficult to make. Film audiences are smart, especially horror fans, and when making a film that spoofs their beloved genre it doesn’t take much to turn them away. So it’s relieving that “The Final Girls” remains completely satisfying from start to finish. A major component of what keeps things together is the clever narrative. The comedic tone is playful throughout, largely because of Adam DeVine, who steals many of the scenes as a stereotypical chauvinistic jock, but also because the genre characteristics are utilized ingeniously. For instance in one scene the lead camp counselor explains the legend of the killer, as the film transitions into a flashback Max and her friends experience the changeover from color to black and white. All of it is done with a grin and smile, which is where one of the minor problems will exist for some dedicated horror fans. The bloody payoff, meaning the result of the stalking killer’s primary motive, isn’t very satisfying. There is very little gore in the film and much of the violence happens so quickly it’s hard to distinguish anything, for some viewers this comment will sound odd but for horror fan this is a primary reason to go to these films, to see the exploitive visceral elements.

“The Final Girls” would be a great film to take someone on a date to or to introduce someone who may not like the genre, the film is very much humor before horror. While more attention to the bloodier, gorier aspects would have more than likely lost the PG-13 rating, cutting out the large audience the film is focused towards, “The Final Girls” is still an entertaining film that every taste of horror can appreciate in some way, big or small.

Monte’s Rating

4.00 out of 5.00

An interview with the director and cast of Big Stone Gap by Jeff Mitchell

Interview – Adriana Trigiani, Jenna Elfman and Paul Wilson of “Big Stone Gap”   

In writer/director Adriana Trigiani’s “Big Stone Gap”, she weaves a warm, small-town story of Ave Maria Mulligan’s (Ashley Judd) quest for answers and a new life after she discovers a family secret.    Since Trigiani grew up in Big Stone Gap, VA, making a movie about her hometown truly was a labor of love for her.   After watching the film, I felt the cast - including Judd, Jenna Elfman, Patrick Wilson, Paul Wilson, Whoopi Goldberg, Jane Krakowski, Anthony LaPaglia, and Jasmine Guy - seemed to have an equally strong labor of love for Big Stone Gap as well.   Adriana, Jenna and Paul stopped by Scottsdale to promote a “Big Stone Gap” screening, and the Phoenix Film Festival sat down with the three and enjoyed an engaging chat about their movie.     Kyle Wilson of NerdRepository.com also sat in the discussion and contributed to this interview.    “Big Stone Gap” opens on Oct. 9.

PFF:  Food seems to be a major character in “Big Stone Gap”.  Mentions of apple butter, red pepper sandwiches, pineapple upside-down cake, hot dogs at the Hob Knob, and many other staples were included in the film.   Why is food such a big part of this movie?

Adriana:  “It’s the gift of the South.  It’s southern.  It’s sustenance.  It’s the table.  It’s sharing.  It’s one of the ways that people come together in a community and share, so it’s really important.  

Jenna:  “They (The townspeople) were offering home-cooked meals to me via Facebook.   When someone cooks or bakes something in their home and offers it to you, to me, it’s symbolic of them giving you their heart.  

Paul:  “It’s a symbol of love and kindness.”

PFF:  The cinematography of the film is gorgeous, and the city itself is almost a character as well.  

Would you have made this film the same way if you weren’t able to shoot on location? 

Adriana:  The reason it took so long to get this film made is because I insisted it be made there, because I believe that films are living art forms.  I know when I watch an American movie made in Canada, I know it is Canada.  I know the people are Canadian.  You cannot fool me. 

Jenna:  What are you talking “abooot”?  (Everyone laughs.)

Adriana:  I know that they are Canadian, and that’s fine.  I love Canadians, but don’t try to sell me that it’s Big Stone Gap.  I felt very strongly about that.   I wanted (this movie) to be shot in my hometown for many reasons, but first and foremost, for artistic reasons.   We got an A-list cinematographer (Reynaldo Villalobos) and an A-list cast, so you are going to get the best possible version of Big Stone Gap.

Paul:  It (Big Stone Gap) had a starring role.  We couldn’t have recreated Wood Avenue.   The town itself plays such a key starring role, as it’s holding everybody together but also breathing life into all the eccentricities, realities and relationships.    There is an organic authenticity that could have never been recreated. 

Jenna:  There’s real texture in this movie.  I felt it (while) filming it.  You felt like you were living in a painting.   Many times on the weekend – and I had my kids with me – we’d go driving and exploring, and my breath would be taken away.   I couldn’t believe I was looking, with my own eyeballs, at something so glorious and not through some cool lens that made it look that way.  

PFF:   Adriana, “Big Stone Gap” is obviously a very personal film for you, but for you too, Paul.  (The Wilson family has real-life roots in Big Stone Gap, VA).    Prior to filming this movie, when was the last time you visited Big Stone Gap?  Also, during the filming, what memories did it stir up?

Paul:  The last time we were in Big Stone Gap was burying my grandmother who died 9 months before we began filming.   Prior to that, the first time the entire family – at the same time – was in Big Stone Gap was for her 90^th birthday in 2012.   She lived in (her) house since she was 18 years-old and married my grandfather.   She lived past 90 and was Adriana’s biggest fan!   We couldn’t even drop our luggage in the house – when we would go see her – and she would say, “We got to tell you about Adriana!  Sit down.”   My grandmother loved her and loved the story, and I think there was an authentic connection with Adri, because she – like those people – loved that town.   Not everyone can relate to a small town, but everyone can relate to their hometown.    

To stay on Wilson Road - in the house that my father was raised - was our kind of Disneyland as kids.  We learned to fish there.  Big Stone Gap was that emotional maypole we always could come back to. 

PFF:  Well this film is obviously such a labor of love, but there are other books in the series.   Do you feel like this movie should stand alone, or do you feel like doing some screenplays for the next couple of films?

Adriana:  I think that the people will tell us.  I always let the audience decide everything.  If I write sequels, it’s because there’s a clamor for it.  Whatever they want, they get from me.  I really feel that my job as a novelist – and truly as a director – is a service job.  I’m here to serve these actors.   That’s really why I’m there.  If I serve them, then I’m telling a great story. 

PFF:  I read that Adriana said that Jenna “transformed herself into the sexiest bookmobile librarian in America” for this movie.  Iva (Jenna’s character) is well-read (pardon the pun), gives good advice and is a solid friend.   All of sudden, Iva fell for Lyle (Paul’s character).  What was the attraction to Lyle?  Was it because he was from out of town?  Was he mysterious?

Jenna:  There is this little moment where I (Iva) first sees him and goes, “Huh,” (breath taken away).   I think it

was just his Jade East cologne. (Paul and Jenna laugh.) There’s a charisma about Lyle, and she thinks he is a character.  I think Iva sees a fellow character, a fellow person who celebrates living the way she does, and I think she saw a kindred spirit with him. 

PFF:   There is a scene where Jack (Patrick Wilson) and Ave (Judd) notice the moon on their date.   Was that scene an ode to “It’s a Wonderful Life” when George wanted to lasso the moon for Mary, and if not, was that movie an inspiration for you?

Adriana:  Everything that Frank Capra did was an inspiration.   That was an inspiration to me.  Absolutely!   One of the most important things about Frank Capra was his use of real people in cinema.   When I (zoom) in on the people in Big Stone Gap, it’s to remind (the audience) that we are telling a real story about real people.   Don’t forget that.  Of course, he’s Italian, so I share that with him too.  

Mississippi Grind - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

“Mendelsohn and Reynolds are a pair of aces in ‘Mississippi Grind’”  

Writers/directors:  Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck

Starring:  Ben Mendelsohn, Ryan Reynolds

Gambling is as American as hot dogs, muscle cars, blue jeans, and football on crisp autumn weekends.    Beautiful multi-million and billion-dollar casinos dot the nation’s landscape in every direction, and, of course, there is a good reason why these gaming houses resemble prosperous palaces:  The house always wins.

Despite this known and obvious fact, this does not deter millions of Americans from partaking in the recreation of gambling.   For Gerry (Ben Mendelsohn) - a struggling real estate agent - gambling is not a leisurely recreation, it is his life’s obsession.    Texas hold ‘em poker is Gerry’s game of choice, but he is more than happy to fill his time by placing some cash on an Hawaii vs. Gonzaga college basketball game, playing the ponies or betting $50 that the next guy walking out of the bathroom will be wearing glasses.    Gerry is a skilled poker player and very careful to mask his tells, but every molecule of his 44-year-old being screams (to everyone) a message of:  Life has stomped me into the ground for decades, and I’m here to beg for another helping of the world’s size-14 boot.  

Gerry is a beaten man, but believes his luck will change when he befriends Curtis (Ryan Reynolds) at a random Dubuque, Iowa poker table, and suddenly, an extremely well-acted and completely intriguing buddy picture is born.  Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck wrote and directed a terrific gambling road movie, however, it does not dabble in glitzy high-stakes with posh surroundings, limousines, baccarat, and martinis shaken not stirred.  On the contrary, Boden and Fleck do not mind delving into – and, in fact, enjoy bathing in – the messy and sobering world of the degenerate gambler.  They take Gerry and Curtis on a blue-collar trip down the Mississippi River, and they hit home games, casinos, horse and dog tracks, and grind their way towards a final destination of New Orleans.   Driving 1,000 miles in a 2003 Subaru does not appear like the easiest path to success, but when one starts with just $2,000 of seed money, plodding a route to The Big Easy seems like the only course of action.

We root for Gerry and Curtis, but they are not heroes.   Curtis – a good-looking 35-year-old with a spring in his step, several funny gambling stories, an eye for the ladies, and a good supply of cash in-hand – seemingly has his act together, but playing poker at a random Iowa casino on a weeknight certainly raises suspicions.   It is obvious why Gerry would glom onto Curtis as a friend, but why does Curtis want to make friends (and take a trip) with Gerry?

Gerry owes a lot of money to “Everyone” in town, and with excuses like “I just need a couple of weeks” and a looming visit from an unseen ruffian named Tim, one wonders if he might double-cross Curtis at some point.   These men have a sickness and a case of arrested development, but the script and performances can win your affection.  Mendelsohn is simply astonishing as Gerry.   With a crop of disheveled hair from a style last seen 20 years ago, a constant and heartbroken look in his tired eyes and a mopey frown pulled down by years of disappointment, Gerry is a man who needs a rainbow containing good fortune.  The lingering wonder, however, is:  any success he might enjoy seems doomed in a future decision of “let’s go double or nothing.”

Using this dynamic, Mendelsohn pulls us into the center of Gerry’s lost soul and generates massive hope that Lady Luck and good decision-making will finally reach him.    Philip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal of a Toronto banker turned compulsive gambler in 2007’s nerve-racking “Owning Mahowny” was my favorite gambling performance of all-time, but I believe Mendelsohn topped it.  Mendelsohn delivers an Oscar-worthy performance, as he reaches into the core of a desperate man whose only way out of a gigantic financial hole is to recklessly look for ways to scrape enough cash and continue his destructive gambling patterns.  At the same time, we see small glimpses of Gerry’s best side in unexpected ways and periods of joy with his new friend close-by, and these moments help us feel good as his cheering section.

Reynolds adds plenty of depth and mystery to Curtis’s character.  As a partner-in-vice – with a mostly sunny and somewhat level-headed disposition - we hope Curtis is the lucky charm Gerry insists that he is.  Unfortunately, we know Gerry’s track record in judgment, so the ultimate destiny for these two is in serious doubt and is the perfect concoction for a tension-filled and captivating road picture.

Unlike 2013’s “Nebraska” in which the countryside between Montana and Nebraska becomes a living and breathing character in the film, the actual topography of this journey seems rather ordinary.  “Mississippi Grind” gives us some glimpses of St. Louis, Memphis and other places along the way, but does not take enough advantage of the natural settings in the heartland.  I suppose when a majority of the action (pardon the pun) takes place inside casinos or smoky bars, plenty of beautiful countryside shots might take a back seat.

No, the strength of this involving character study is with the lead performances.  With Boden and Fleck also adding several small, but memorable, exchanges with bit characters who embrace a casino-lifestyle, dispense advice like, “a man alone is half a man” and drink bourbon in smoky lounges, the film’s obvious downtrodden and desperate tone is set.   It is not a glamorous trip - and quite frankly, it’s a sooty one at times - but Boden, Fleck, Reynolds, and Mendelsohn offer a rich, entertaining and sometimes painful story down America’s most famous river.   Whether or not Gerry and Curtis win, I’ll bet on “Mississippi Grind” as the best gambling film I’ve seen in years.  (3.5/4 stars) 

The Walk - Movie Review by Monte Yazzie

The Walk  

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ben Kingsley, Charlotte Le Bon, Clément Sibony, César Domboy, Ben Schwartz, and James Badge Dale

123 Minutes

Sony Pictures

Everyone has a dream, an ambition that drives a person to pursue a goal regardless of the obstacles. Dreams come in many shapes and sizes, for some it may be traveling to a foreign land while others it may be an occupation. Some may stand behind you with support throughout the journey while others may stand in front and discourage you every step of the way, but regardless the dream belongs to you and you are the one who must take the steps to make that dream a reality. For Philippe Petit, a French high-wire artist, his dream was to place his beloved walking wire between the Twin Towers of World Trade Center and make beautiful art. “The Walk” is a film that portrays the process of making this dream become reality for the young artist, however illegal or dangerous the risk. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, the mind behind such memorable films as “Forrest Gump” and “Back to the Future”, “The Walk” brings the audience onto the wire with Petit for every nerve-wracking, nail-biting step.

As a young man Philippe Petit performed on the streets, juggling, riding a unicycle, and performing as a mime. Petit was also an aspiring wirewalker, starting in his backyard between two trees and moving higher and higher off the ground. Guided by a Czech circus master named Papa Rudy (Ben Kingsley), Petit became more ambitious. It wasn't until he unexpectedly opened a magazine that he found his dream. An article about the building of the World Trade Center in New York called to him, for between the Towers was where his greatest performance would take place, across the void of two of the biggest buildings in the world.

Looking at the progression of work done by Robert Zemeckis will display an artist who wholeheartedly embraces new advances and approaches to filmmaking but still understands the importance of character. “Forrest Gump” comes to mind as an example of character and filmmaking techniques coming to cooperation. Zemeckis attempts the same with “The Walk”, meticulously rendering a grand stage for Petit to perform his greatest act. The rendering of the Towers is beautiful and the imminent walk that the film builds towards is jaw dropping and incredibly composed. Philippe Petit is a strong character to begin with, motivated and determined beyond any reasoning to accomplish the goal he is pursuing. However, the film doesn’t try to hide the arrogant, stubborn, and uncomplimentary attitude of Petit; it’s almost infuriating how demanding he can be at times. The film recreates the walk between the towers in stunning fashion; it really is the whole reason to go the film. Unfortunately for much of the introduction, and well past it, the film wobbles and teeters around like a wirewalker on the verge of falling. There are too many forced ploys at work, both visually and narratively. The meeting of Petit’s muse Annie (Charlotte Le Bon) is a heavy handed romantic angle and the transition between Petit’s narrations, which takes place on the torch of the Statue of Liberty, becomes distracting. The wheels finally start turning once the team reaches New York City and “the coup”, a term Petit uses for the performance, begins to operate like a crime caper.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is good as Petit, accent and all, and the rest of the cast, specifically the underutilized Charlotte Le Bon, do a great job of playing their role for Petit’s performance. If you can tolerate the lackluster start of the film there are some great character aspects about Petit that take hold, you can begin to appreciate the ambition that motivates Petit to utilize his skill to make art. There is also a poignant story about New York City and the Twin Towers that Zemeckis weaves into the story. This is one of the few films that I recommend seeing in IMAX 3-D. The finale is completely accommodated by the technology; it’s hard not to become a little apprehensive when Petit makes his first step onto the wire. “The Walk” is Robert Zemeckis continuing his exploration of the potentials of filmmaking.

Monte’s Rating

3.25 out of 5.00

The Martian - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

The Martian  

Starring:  Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Kate Mara, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Matt Damon, Sebastian Stan, Sean Bean, Donald Glover, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Mackenzie Davis, Michael Pena, Chiwetel Ejiofor

Director: Ridley Scott

Release Date:  10/2/15

By Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

Ask a man to run a 5K. Snap a picture of the reaction on his face. When he’s done with that, ask him to run a 10K. Snap a picture. Half marathon. Snap. Marathon. Snap. Triathlon. Snap. Ultra marathon. Snap. Now you have a series of pictures, a flipbook version of Ridley Scott’s grueling new sci-fi juggernaut The Martian, a movie about one man’s epic endurance battle with science, space and the limitations of duct tape.

Matt Damon is the Martian, and he’s stranded on the Red Planet after a violent dust storm has swept him away from his NASA team as they are aborting their 30-day mission early. They rocket away thinking he’s dead, but the next day he claws from the soil very much alive and very much screwed. “I’m going to have to science the shit out of this,” he says in an instantly iconic line that will be on every Matt Damon clip reel from here on out.

What a fascinating time to be making science fiction films. Gravity and Interstellar were terrific warm-ups to this, and the three films make an amazing trilogy about discovery and survival in the endless vastness that is our universe. Scott’s an old pro at this, having already made Alien, Blade Runner and Prometheus, each with their own distinct visions of the future. Here, though, he sticks closer to the “science” versus the “fiction” and the story thrives because of it.

The film presents Damon’s astronaut Mark Watney — and by extension us — with a never-ending string of problems. The Mars base was designed for 31 sols, or Martian days, and now must last upwards of 800 to sustain its solitary inhabitant. Food is in short supply. Plants have never been grown in Martian soil. Water is running low. The communication system is broken. The rover has limited range and abilities. On and on the list goes, each new item more challenging than the one before it. Each one has its own gratifying solution that seems either based on actual science or at the very least plausible.

The Martian finds its footing almost instantly by starting on Mars a dozen or so days into the mission. It doesn’t waste time introducing an endless stream of supporting characters, because Watney’s ordeal allows that to happen naturally. It drops all the setup and goes right to the meat: Mark is struggling to stay alive, the crew is grappling with their decision to leave what they presume is a dead astronaut back on the Mars, and NASA engineers back on earth begin assessing what went wrong. It feels very procedural, and that’s part of the charm because it allows the snappy editing and concise presentation to build the film from the ground up.

The film has also found the right cast, especially with Damon as the resourceful botanist. He’s likeable and genuine, and he does things that we can relate to, like when he mouths a great big “WTF” in the initial days after he’s marooned. Damon also works because he’s believable as an inventive science geek. It wasn’t a stretch when he was a genius mathematician in Good Will Hunting, and it’s not a stretch here to see him as a NASA wiz-kid. You’ll cheer him on when he creates an ASCII-to-hexadecimal code board, or he tears through poop pouches to get fertilizer, or he rigs up an explosive hydrogen tent to create water. There is so much to see, and so much for Damon to do, that there is never a dull moment, even when the film is in its most reflective, existential state.

Now, to be sure, this is a terrifying ordeal. And The Martian spends a lot of it kicking its hero when he’s down. Your heart just aches for him with every setback, and there are many. Drew Goddard’s script, from an Andy Weir novel, has this devilish ability to prepare you for the worst over and over again. So many awful events happen to Mark Watney that you start planning for them. At one point when he was driving the rover through the rocky landscape, he starts rubbing his eyes and yawning. The movie had conditioned me for disaster, and I was ready for it, whether it was coming or not.

Led by a strong team of actors — including Damon, Jessica Chastain as the mission commander, Jeff Daniels as the NASA director, Sean Bean as a flight specialist with a classic Lord of the Rings zinger, and Chiwetel Ejiofor as mission lead — The Martian takes a captivating tale of survival and gives it an immediate presence with strong writing and expert execution. It’s photographed gorgeously, with a fun mixture of documentary-like POV shots and epic Martian panoramas, and edited so precisely that you would be hard pressed to find a single frame that’s been wasted. I simply can’t say a bad thing about it because it’s one of the most entertaining movies of the year.

Sicario - Movie Review by Monte Yazzie

Sicario  

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Starring: Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro, Jon Bernthal, Maximiliano Hernández, and Jeffrey Donovan

120 Minutes

Lionsgate

The analogy of a pack of wolves is utilized in Denis Villeneuve’s drug cartel film “Sicario”. It’s a good analogy for the characters in the film that are a mix of operatives working against and with one another for some sense of control amidst chaos and violence. Villeneuve makes films about violence and the people that are administering and receiving the abuse. The film focuses on the American drug problem and the cartels that operate along the border of Mexico. “Sicario” is a tense and foreboding film, one that drops the viewer in the middle of everything that is happening and moves them along for the journey. Villeneuve is an exceptional director and “Sicario” is a wonderfully constructed film that composes an atmosphere of consistent dread with characters forced into a struggle of morals.

Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is an idealistic FBI agent vigilantly working a deadly case against the war on drugs. After raiding a house filled with corpses an explosion kills members of her team. She is enlisted by an elite government task force fronted by a secretive official (Josh Brolin) and partnered with a mysterious liaison named Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro). Kate volunteers for the task force and is immediately taken to the El Paso/Juárez border for a secret mission.

“Sicario” is structured with a heavy dose of suspense and an atmosphere that lingers with fear. It’s quite an effective composition that is accomplished by impressive design elements and a narrative that places the viewer at the center of a scenario that is already in motion. Written by Taylor Sheridan, the script operates from mainly one perspective, following Kate into the fog of this secretive operation with ambiguous operatives. In one scene Kate is swiftly taken into a tactical meeting, told to blindly follow orders from a mysterious man who doesn’t fit the mold of the group, hastily transported into Mexico to extract an informant she never gets to look at, and forced into a gunfight at the border. It’s paced almost frantically, switching views from inside the crammed caravan of vehicles to high above the crowded city. Behind the camera is Roger Deakins, a master of photography who composes “Sicario” as a visual descent into darkness, a reflection of the characters in the film whose only obsessive focus is the mission and nothing else. The finale takes a turn towards pure vengeance, an exploitive measure that offers a moment of forceful justification played solely for sensation, which somewhat upends the meticulous pacing and procedure established at the beginning of the film.

Emily Blunt does a great job portraying the morally torn agent, split between doing what is right by the law and what is right for the law. Josh Brolin plays vague with arrogant glee. Wearing sandals in the office and sleeping soundly on plane trips only to turn around in tactical gear and night vision goggles, Brolin pulls it all off with ease. Benicio Del Toro plays a more complicated role, a man with a tragic past doing terrible acts for whoever calls for him. Del Toro has played this version to greater and lesser degrees in films before; still he adds something unique and intriguing to the role.

The treatment of the war on drugs in this film is one of disenchantment, a no-win situation with a faceless monster. It’s one of the main reasons why “Sicario” feels so bleak. Even when action leads to resolution it’s never satisfying but instead is portrayed by ongoing gunfire blasts seen in the dark or heard in the distance, a war with no victors but rather a continuous carousel of chaos. To this point “Sicario” has completely succeeded.

Monte’s Rating

4.25 out of 5.00

The Intern - Movie Review by Monte Yazzie

The Intern  

Director: Nancy Meyer

Starring: Robert De Niro, Anne Hathaway, Rene Russo, Adam DeVine, Anders Holm, Zack Pearlman, Linda Lavin, and Andrew Rannells

121 Minutes

Warner Bros. Pictures

Twenty-five years ago this week “Goodfellas” was released in theaters, it marked another career defining role for Robert De Niro to add to his already impressive list of characters. This week Robert De Niro is in another role, one that probably won’t crack the top ten in his career but is notable because it is far less threatening and intimidating than most of the roles he is known for. De Niro plays a retired senior citizen looking for a meaningful opportunity that will keep him away from the tiresome retirement routine of daily coffee shop visits and far too often funerals. Director and writer Nancy Meyer, “Something’s Gotta Give” and “It’s Complicated”, has built a career off heartwarming and sentimental storytelling. With “The Intern” it’s more of the same repeated material, with dramatic and comedic setups that sometimes work and other times don’t, the result is simplistic and unchallenging storytelling, a quality some will undoubtedly enjoy.

Jules Ostin (Anne Hathaway) is an overnight success in the e-retail fashion market, building a company filled with young employees and guided by Jules’s “take no prisoners” approach. Ben Whittaker (Robert De Niro) is a 70 year-old widowed retiree who has traveled the world, visits his son and grandchildren, and maintains a strict schedule of daily activities to fill time. Still, Ben is eager for a change and submits a video application to Jules’s company for a senior internship. Ben gets the job and is assigned to Jules.

Ms. Meyer operates the script with a clear emphasis on two different kinds of characters, the independent, hard-working entrepreneur mom and the gentleman standard of yesteryear. Jules is a combination of different issues, playing the role of self-confidence and independence in the professional world and the guiding hand of nurture and love as mother and wife, all while trying to balance the daily trials of being a woman in the 21^st century, judged and maligned around every corner by blatant and unexpected foes. Ben is a man from a different mold, a hardworking, wake-up early, dress-for-success era of men who lived by a basic set of family and work values. In “The Intern” Ben is surrounded by the current trend of men who don’t tuck their shirts in, welcome unkempt facial hair, and dance around issues with women rather than taking a forward attempt at chivalry. Ms. Meyer takes hold of these issues and fashions them with varying forms of success, while Jules mostly comes off admirably with influential and self-assured qualities, she is also undermined with questionable choices that would make one utter “how has she made it this far”. Ben’s honest ideals and charming virtues are justly arranged some moments, while in other moments they seem lost in the changing tides of societal and economic structures. Many of these insights will be overlooked because “The Intern” is superficially appealing with humorous setups and a great choice by Ms. Meyer to cast Robert De Niro.

Mr. De Niro is in complete control, guiding the performance with grinning, better to call it smirking, optimism without turning into a begrudging old man who yells at the kids on his lawn. Anne Hathaway plays off Mr. De Niro throughout the film. Jules’s slow appreciation of Ben comes about with a mix of paternal admiration and then unlikely friendship, it’s unfortunate that most of her character is merely a shell of self-defeating ideas. Still, without these two actors the film wouldn’t be as successfully executed.

“The Intern” seems like it wants to say much more about age, work culture, gender differences, and feminism but instead, and perhaps rightly so, takes the easier route by diligently composing a film that forces viewers to leave the theater with warm feelings and a smile.

Monte’s Rating

3.25 out of 5.00

The Intern - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

“The Intern” offers sugary-sweet smiles but crashes in the third act  

Writer/director:  Nancy Meyers

Starring:  Anne Hathaway, Robert De Niro, Rene Russo

Release Date: September 25,  2015

Sugar and spice and everything nice, that’s what About the Fit is made of.   Well, that is not exactly true, but the tone of the Anne Hathaway and Robert De Niro comedy, “The Intern”, certainly feels that way.   What is About the Fit, you ask?   It is Jules’s (Hathaway) internet clothing business which has exploded from just a laptop on her kitchen table to a bustling 220-employee company located in a picturesque, remodeled warehouse in Brooklyn.

About the Fit is company where 20-somethings smile, laugh, type, and swipe on their PCs, tablets and phones while helping market the perfect outfits to an ever-growing, national customer base.   Jules dresses for success, is always working and bikes (yes, bikes) in between a constant flow of five-minute meetings within the office.   With sunshine beaming through the massive windows into a space of mortar, brick and bright white walls – which contain a flow of happy job-lovers - I certainly wanted to connect my LinkedIn account with everyone in that office!   Okay, I am being a bit sarcastic, but after about 15 minutes of this rainbows and lollipops atmosphere, I stopped rolling my eyes and bought into the fun.   Written and directed by Nancy Meyers (“Something’s Gotta Give”, “It’s Complicated”), she found the right level of movie magic to turn smiles on even the grumpiest of cynics.   Just about everything in this film is cute and sweet from Jules’s six-year-old daughter to video-game driven millennial men who ask dumb questions about love.

With “love” spread in every direction, the film’s tension comes in the form of 70-year-old Ben (De Niro).   About the Fit “accidentally” creates a senior intern program but not seniors in high school or college.   They hire three seniors in life, as three senior citizens become six-week interns.    They might not have   LinkedIn or Facebook accounts, but they own real-life experience, and Ben was a seasoned and disciplined executive.   While retired, he kept looking for a reason to put on his dress shirt, tie and suit to continue to make a difference in this world.   He may be a former exec, but not the cutthroat type.   Ben is a nice guy, and he wants to put his best seven-decade foot forward.

Meyers, of course, includes plenty of age-gap gags between Ben and his new co-workers, but the differences melt away as this senior and the “kids” bridge their differences and learn from one another.    In fact, Ben and his three new sweatshirt-wearing compadres pull a hilarious heist in a major comedic high-point of the movie.   Jules and Ben’s friendship and working relationship has the potential to grow too, but hey, we tend to expect that with a predictable, but entertaining story arc.

Speaking of story arcs, for me, the film falls down a quite a bit in the third act.   After buying into the movie’s light tone and enjoying the ride, the script takes a completely unnecessary left turn and introduces a sudden and unpleasant plot point.    I shook my head in massive disapproval when this unattractive nugget of conflict presented itself on the big screen.  I did not object because it was a “too difficult to swallow” moment, but because it shook the entire upbeat tone of the picture into unwanted areas of forced struggle.   The film also ties up some other loose ends within the last 10 minutes, and with a running time of 2 hours and 1 minute, one wonders why the “cut and throw away” button was so amiss in the editing room.

Still, “The Intern” is mostly a pleasant time at the movies, and Hathaway and De Niro have their charm dials set to 11.   I enjoyed this film but also left disappointed.    In this particular case, the script should have allowed sugar and spice to sweeten the picture from the opening credits to its fade to black.  (2.5/4 stars)

A Brilliant Young Mind - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

A Brilliant Young Mind  

Starring: Asa Butterfield, Eddie Marsan, Rafe Spall, Sally Hawkins, Martin McCann, Christina Low, Alexa Davies

Director: Morgan Matthews

Release Date: 09/25/15

By Michael Clawson  of Terminal Volume

It’s entirely possible that the world’s most brilliant mind is in the body of a child. And also imprisoned behind a veil of paralyzing awkwardness.

In A Brilliant Young Mind we’re introduced to a number of worthy candidates, all of whom are trying to out-awkward each other with cold facts, debilitating shyness and enough social tics they could be charted into “trigonometric identities,” or whatever that is.

Nathan (Asa Butterfield) is one of these young people. The British lad sees the world in geometry, algebra and calculus. He’s by all estimates a genius, yet he can barely function in the real world. When his mother orders take-out if the fish sticks and chips aren’t positioned symmetrically and in prime numbers then he flips out.

He’s guided by teacher Martin Humphreys (Rafe Spall, son of Timothy), who suggests he participate in a mathematics olympiad for the most brilliant young pupils. Nathan takes the test, passes and soon finds himself in Taiwan studying with other mathletes his age. He gets a crude wake-up when his fried prawns are delivered in an eight-count container … so close to a prime number, but yet not.

The film dips into darker territory as the characters open up and reveal their even more fragile cores. One boy, Luke, is likely autistic, which leads to bullying even in these nerdy circles. A Chinese student that Nathan is paired with is harassed because her uncle is the director of the team. Nathan’s issue is just communicating on a basic level. He mumbles, recoils at the lightest touch and his eyes reveal sparkles of brilliant pain. This wounded kid is thrown into a new culture and he remarkably thrives, which breaks the heart of his mother (Sally Hawkins), who can’t seem to understand why he’ll open up to everyone but her.

Of course, the film all boils down to the math olympiad, but then it’s not that simple. It’s written with care and truth, and no “big game” sports climax will ever solve all the issues swirling around in this layered and pristinely textured script by James Graham. There is some cliche, including a “surprise car crash” still in the clamshell packaging and a race to the train station to get the girl, but even those conventions are given new spins, fresh perspectives.

The math is dense and confusing, and is barely explained outside of one sequence in which Nathan turns a card trick into a binary matrix. In other scenes the equations are just glossed over in broad strokes. I knew it was complex stuff, though, because the math problems had more letters than numbers, and brackets within brackets within brackets. “If truth is beauty and beauty is truth, then surely mathematics is the most beautiful thing in the world,” says an olympiad leader played by the great Eddie Marsan. I’ll take your word for it.

Although the surface of this coming-of-age story is rather blandly paced and acted, there are deeper currents of emotional agony that are running through this film. Scratch but a tiny bit down and it opens some terrifying places related to love, family, success and acceptance. But in the end, like math, it has an inherent beauty to all of it.

Interview with Oren Moverman, director of Time Out of Mind by Jeff Mitchell

Interview – Oren Moverman, director “Time Out of Mind” By Jeff Mitchell

In director Oren Moverman’s latest film, “Time Out of Mind”, the camera follows the painful life of a homeless man named George (played by Richard Gere).   Moverman  - who also wrote and directed “The Messenger” (2009) and “Rampart” (2011) - provides the audience a front row seat to George’s difficult daily existence on the streets and in the shelters of New York City, and his film offers an eye-opening, big screen experience on the plight of the homeless.    The Phoenix Film Festival spoke to Mr. Moverman about “Time Out of Mind”, and we had a thoughtful conversation about George’s state of mind, some key learnings about homelessness and how the general public actually ignored Richard Gere during the filming because he played a homeless person.  “Time Out of Mind” opens on Sept. 25.

PFF: Even though George (Gere) is surrounded by life in every direction in New York City, he is an isolated individual.  Isolation is probably a common occurrence for the homeless in any city, but does NYC bring a different dynamic?

OM: I think it does.  Generally, isolation is at the root of a lot of problems in life and definitely for homeless people.  New York is quite an overwhelming city in terms of the mass volume of humanity in your face all the time.  The more people there are, the more alone you can be.  When you have so many people (in one place), then they (simply) do not see each other.  So, I think the state of homelessness - that kind of isolation - leads to deprivation of very basic needs.  The lack of eye contact or human contact just makes the problem worse for sure. 

PFF: Wherever George went – whether he was in a shelter or on the street – he hardly ever had silence.   Was silence as important to him as finding something to eat or a place to sleep?

OM:  Yes. When you think of silence, the first thing that comes to mind is peacefulness.  There’s no rest for him in this movie.  He is constantly bombarded by the sounds of the city that just keep going.  All of these stories (conversations of thousands of people) are happening around him – and (the impact of the noise) is very much a reflection of his mental state.  He cannot get to a place of privacy, silence and a quiet mind.  It’s actually quite turbulent.    

PFF:  Why do you suppose George kept refusing medical care even though he clearly needed it?  Is it because he was singularly focused on the basics first? 

OM:  Yea, there’s something “off” about him.  We don’t call it by name, but there is definitely something off about him.   He struggles with even the idea of existence.   He doesn’t allow himself to be called homeless until very late in the movie.  He doesn’t want to acknowledge his state in life.   In his mind, he’s living the life he was living before, but now he’s gotten off track a little bit.  He doesn’t have a lot of self-knowledge and understanding of what can make his life better, so he is just wrestling with that.  I think all that’s on his mind are very basic needs like food, shelter, warmth, a place to be, a place to rest, and everything else just falls by the wayside. 

PFF:  I was shocked to discover Kyra Sedgwick and Ben Vereen played George’s “friends”, because they were unrecognizable to me, especially Sedgwick.    On the other hand, Gere was easily identifiable.  When Gere was on the street and in character, did people recognize him during the filming?  

OM:  That was our biggest worry:  Are we going to get away with putting Richard Gere in this environment.  We tested it.  What we discovered – when we hid the camera, because we didn’t want the camera in people’s faces to give away the fact that we’re shooting a movie - is they didn’t recognize him at all because they didn’t look at him.   It was a very deliberate, very understandable, very human, and a very New York approach.  Urban dwellers would just walk past this homeless guy, and maybe someone would pay attention and maybe someone would give something, but ultimately no one looked him in the eye.   It wasn’t as if he was unrecognizable as Richard Gere.  He was unrecognizable as a movie star, for sure.   He was unrecognizable in his clothes because that’s not how you would expect to see Richard Gere.  The fact that no one looked him in the eye, it was a lesson for us when someone in that position becomes quite invisible to the people around him.   He did get recognized twice in Grand Central Terminal when two people walked by him and said, “Hello”.  It wasn’t sort of “Oh my God, it’s a movie star.  Let me take a picture.”  It was more like, “Hey, he looks like Richard Gere. It looks like he is having a hard time.” 

PFF: Did you interview homeless people - either prior to shooting or during the filming – and what did you learn about the plight of the homeless?

OM: A lot, actually.  The whole movie is based on conversations with homeless people and the people who work in the shelters.  For me, it was a huge education on a personal level where I’ve learned about all of these stories, and I saw things that were next to me for many years, but I never really noticed.  It changed my perspective, and it changed my outlook and my engagement with homeless people.   I do think that the acknowledgement and the engagement (of the homeless) is a short step in dealing with this problem.  I’ve learned how to engage with people who are in this situation and listen to what they need.

PFF:  I really liked how you filmed George behind glass or behind a guarded gate(s).  He seemingly was on the outside looking in, and when he was inside a shelter, at times, it felt like a prison.    Coming away from this experience, are there any solutions to grant these individuals their dignity back?

OM:  Absolutely.  The truth of the matter is we know that homelessness could be ended.  We know the key to the solution is to support housing.   We know we have to come together and provide people with housing.  Not only housing, but support services that deal with the problems of homelessness which are mental illness, domestic abuse and HIV.  All of these things are key issues that contribute to homelessness on top of housing.   We have programs around the country, and the best example of this is what’s happening with veterans.   We are on the road to dealing with the homelessness problem in the veterans’ community.  That was one issue that Republicans and Democrats could agree upon and provide what’s known as “housing first” programs where people get vouchers.  (Once) they have their own space, their own mailbox and their own dignity, then they can start dealing with other problems to get them reintegrated back into society.  To have a place that is your own is the key to that, and it just takes political will, which really is the difficult part. 

(Photos courtesy of IFC Films)

Black Mass - Movie Review by Monte Yazzie

Black Mass  

Director: Scott Cooper

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Johnny Depp, Dakota Johnson, Juno Temple, Joel Edgerton, Kevin Bacon, Sienna Miller, Adam Scott, Corey Stoll, Jesse Plemons and Rory Cochrane

Release Date: 09/18/15

by Monte Yazzie

In the 1970’s and 1980’s James “Whitey” Bulger was one of the most notorious criminals in Boston, running an organization known as the Winter Hill Gang. Bulger operated in all manners of criminal activity but the most unusual of his dealings was with the Federal Bureau of Investigation as an informant. Over the course of his infamous tenure Bulger brought drugs into his beloved South Boston neighborhood and murdered many who defied him. Director Scott Cooper brings this gangster story to life in “Black Mass”, a gritty and hard-edged crime film that mostly succeeds because of the exceptional performance of Johnny Depp who is mesmerizing and intimidating in the lead role.

James Bulger (Johnny Depp) is a loyal son of the South Boston neighborhood he grew up in, a man who amongst his unsavory actions takes time to look after an elderly woman, compassionately care for his sick child, and boast about the importance of friendship and family. William Bulger (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a Massachusetts politician and brother to James; in one instance William talks about cleaning up the streets of Boston only to turn a blind eye to his brothers negative behavior. The Bulger’s childhood friend John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) has set himself up nicely with the FBI, trading freedom for James in exchange for information about the local mob operating in Boston.

The film is framed with a narrative that begins in an interrogation room, with James’ former accomplices spilling information about their boss. From this point the film jumps around with different characters, moving the story from point to point based on questions asked of them during the interrogation. Cooper directs the film, which is based off the book of the same title, with style and characteristics similar to other crime films that have come before it, think “Goodfellas” or “The Departed” as examples. Using these films as a reference for style immediately places the viewer in a familiar position, in a sense working to quickly establish the environment and understand that danger and a double-cross aren’t far away. While the storytelling design works initially, once the film breaks away from James’ composition and begins to focus on the alliance with the FBI or a pointless journey to Florida that serves as a side note to the extending reach of Winter Hill Gang, the narrative begins to fall apart.

The character of James "Whitey" Bulger is treated initial as a sort of local hero, a sharp-as-nails tough guy with a blue-eyed stare and ambiguous smirk who spouts tough guy talk as good as the best of these kind of characters. Johnny Depp is simply impressive, one of the strongest performances from him in recent years. There is no underlying comedy, no humorous gesture to break the tension, just pure, unadulterated intimidation. Depp for most of the film speaks in a soft whisper, allowing his eyes to do the most meaningful communication.

Everest - Movie Review by Monte Yazzie

Everest  

Director: Baltasar Kormákur

Starring: Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Emily Watson, Sam Worthington, Keira Knightley, Robin Wright, and Jake Gyllenhaal

There are many things in nature that display the inadequacy of humans, still the daunting Mt. Everest seems to be on a completely different level altogether. Just thinking about the massive size of a mountain that sits five and half miles above sea level is amazing. So why would anyone want to climb this mountain that consistently takes the lives of the people that try to conquer it? In director Baltasar Kormákur’s action/adventure film “Everest” the answer is simply “because it’s there”. With impressive technical flair and a cast of fantastic actors, “Everest” is in a great position to meet the expectations of finally making a superior film about the immense mountain. Unfortunately, a disconnection in the narrative with the characters makes the film lack some of the emotion substance associated with the real events that the story is based on.

Rob Hall (Jason Clarke) is a guide for an adventure company that takes paying climbers to the summit of Everest.  In the spring of 1996 Hall brought a group of experienced climbers to Everest. Along for the journey was a mailman named Doug Hansen (John Hawkes) who unsuccessfully attempted the ascent once before, a well-to-do first timer from Texas named Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin), a woman named Yasuko Namba (Naoko Mori) who had climbed six of the seven highest summits in the world, and another veteran climber guiding his own group named Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal). Challenged by inclement weather conditions and overpopulation along the paths on the mountain, the doomed expedition took the lives of eight people.

“Everest” is visually striking, it’s breathtaking at times how good much of the computer generated effects look. The camera hovers, glides, and swoops all around the climbers throughout many of the treacherous scaling montages in the film. The composition of many different scenes does a great job of displaying the vast scale of Everest by showing miniscule dots of people moving gradually up the side of the mountain. It’s a perspective that works to establish the risks of the challenge, making the scenes feel far more dangerous than they otherwise might look. It’s all technically well achieved, but special effects are just one of the elements that help make this film come to life, unfortunately there is something missing.

The narrative builds this expedition up Everest the same way a sports movie would show how the team comes together to win the championship. While all the climbers may not get along, the journey requires them to work together as a team, to support one another in order to stay alive. Initially the group dynamics work to display a camaraderie that reaches beyond the obvious gender and racial divides that many films like this fall into portraying, instead “Everest” composes these ambitious people as a unique breed of thrill seekers who understand each other completely without actually having to explain the complicated reasons. The line, “because it’s there”, means something wholly unique to them, something only they can understand. Unfortunately this quality is only barely examined and once the trudge up the mountain begins it completely disappears amidst the wind and snow making the tragic events have far less of a emotional component as it should have. This is unfortunate because the exceptionally talented cast could have easily made a better narrative, displaying the complicated mindset of these kinds of athletes and the relationship they have to the challenge that could kill them, resonate with more emotion.

“Everest” is a beautiful film to watch, one that portrays the intimidating and daunting nature of one of the world’s most amazing natural wonders. Unfortunately the complicated character elements that motivate humans to conquer this feat are missing, making “Everest” a success in style but a disappointment in substance.

Monte’s Rating

3.25 out of 5.00

Everest - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Everest  

Director: Baltasar Kormakur

Starring: Jason Clarke, Jake Gyllenhaal, Keira Knightley, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

Nothing in the world feels as helpless as watching people suffer within an arm’s reach of safety. You can see them, you can hear them, you can almost reach out and touch them, but they might as well be on the moon. Help will not come. Only death.

Everest does not sugar-coat this cold — bone-rattlingly cold — reality, but it does dress it up a bit with adrenaline-fueled adventure that comes with climbing to the highest point in the world. Mount Everest, at 29,029 feet high, is the gold standard for pushing the human body to its most extreme potential. The summit is so high it shares an altitude with a cruising 747 jet. The air is so thin that the human body slowly fails as it gasps for oxygen. The edges are steep enough that one false step and a climber will never be seen again, their bodies are consumed by the mountain and its icy pores.

Why go then? That’s what reporter and author Jon Krakauer asks a group of climbers who’ve paid five figures to joust with nature on Everest’s slopes. “Because it’s there,” they all laugh, stealing George Mallory’s famous line about the deadly peak, a peak that killed many climbers, including George Mallory. Baltasar Kormákur’s Everest features Krakauer, author of the book Into Thin Air, but largely focuses on Rob Hall (Jason Clarke), a dedicated and skilled climber who guides “climbing tourists” up Everest during the month or so of good weather that creates a window of opportunity over a collapsing glacier field, over a rocky plain, across a knife’s edge, up a vertical step of rock and onto the summit of the world’s highest mountain.

It’s no easy feat. The cold is relentless, the air is dangerously thin, the physical stamina required is second to none, and the weather is violent and unpredictable. All totaled up, everything is deadly, but nothing more than a climber’s own body, which slowly betrays its own muscles and nerves with every step. Humans weren’t made for these conditions, so it’s Rob Hall’s job to guide everyone up and down the mountain before their bodies fail them. And they pay him $65,000 for the privilege.

Hall, here played with a gentle warmth and crucial demeanor by Jason Clarke, is the star of this ensemble mountaineering adventure and he’s joined by his clients Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin) and Doug Hansen (John Hawkes), his base camp leader Helen Wilton (Emily Watson), Krakauer (Michael Kelly) and a colleague with another company Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllehaal), as well as many other characters all portraying actual climbers and sherpas.

The film does not skimp on details, and routinely shows climbing in an authentic light, from the slow acclimatization process that is required for climbers to maximize the thin air on Everest to the tediously slow pace the climbers take as they lumber up the mountain. This is not Cliffhanger, or even that mixed cheese plate Vertical Limit. Everest, using much of Krakauer’s fact-checked text, and his personal observations, treats the events of the 1996 climbing season with delicate reverence.

As Hall and his company, Adventure Consultants, creep up the mountain, everything seems to be going well. The Everest newbies are struggling, but not dangerously so. As they prepare for a big ascent day, everything seems almost perfect until a rapidly moving storm sweeps up and over the mountain essentially stopping the expedition in its tracks after a successful summit attempt. The serenity of the snow and the mountains is suddenly gone, and the climbers are left stranded in deadly conditions. Hall and Hansen are highest up, and have a long way to go with little oxygen left. Below them Fischer, Weathers and others claw through the white-out conditions.

If you’re like me you’ll start getting very anxious in your seat during the second half of this film. These men are in mortal danger, and yet they shamble along with their coats open, their hands ungloved and their feet stumbling over rocks and patches of ice. Some men can’t even stand, and they slump down in their tracks to fall into a numbing sleep. You want to scream at them, “Hurry! Your life depends on it.” The thin air plays tricks on their bodies. Their muscles can only move so fast, and their brains flicker on and off from a severe lack of oxygen. Everest is killing them slowly, and there is nothing they can do except descend, if only they could stand and walk. Some men fall off the mountain, which a non-climber can understand and fear, but this slow death is worse — sinister and cruel.

What’s even worse is the small army of rested climbers who are held at bay by the storm, unable to ascend further than they already have because they lack oxygen, strength or the willpower to sacrifice themselves. In some cases, climbers are left on the mountain to die because they can easily slow down healthy climbers or pull them off the mountain. And even when climbers do die, their bodies are left right on the trails, because hauling them down is a risk all by itself. At one point, no one can get to two climbers, and all the base camp can do is put one climber’s wife on the radio to say goodbye as he drifts into eternity.

The facts of the 1996 climbing disaster on Everest are widely known, and have been documented in a number of ways, including the IMAX movie led by David Breshears, who returns as consultant, second unit director and Everest cinematographer for this film. This is an old story, but it’s given fresh new examination here with Kormákur’s brilliant filmed movie. It’s well acted, marvelously paced, as accurate as any historical movie can hope to be, and the cinematography is simply gorgeous. Some of the shots look like IMAX stills, with sherpas hauling goods over tiny bridges stretched across valleys, oxen cresting ridges against the backdrop of the Himalayas, and of Everest reaching into the starry heavens.

This is an incredible movie, one about heroism and its devastating limits in a place like Everest. The rules on that rock are absolutely absurd. And failure to comply to them usually results in fatalities. Yet every year people line up to risk everything and make the trek upward. Everest makes the joke that they do it “because it’s there,” but the film also makes a point to address another answer as to why people climb it — “because it’s magnificent.”

Everest - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

“’Everest’ aims high and reaches impressive cinematic heights”  

Director: Baltasar Kormakur

Starring: Jason Clarke, Jake Gyllenhaal, Keira Knightley, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes

I do not enjoy hiking.   There, I said it.   As someone who has lived in the beautiful topography of the Sonoran desert for over 18 years, I probably just made a sacrilegious statement.   Certainly, I do recognize Arizona’s surrounding natural beauty.  When taking the occasional hike, I appreciate my time in the great outdoors, but I am partial to the comfortable confines of the great indoors.    A thermostat marking 71 degrees in the winter and 78 in the summer, the smell of hot coffee, a strong Wi-Fi signal, and a comfortable couch are my strong preferences, and therefore – for me - watching a group of 30 and 40-somethings attempting to ascend to the very top of Mount Everest – 29,000 feet high – seems like trying to build a ladder to Mars.  In other words, it is an incomprehensible task.

In director Baltasar Kormakur’s “Everest”, he leads an all-star cast on this monumental journey and gives the audience a look at this unique test of will and endurance.     Climbing Everest is nothing new, as Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first ascended to the top in 1953, but the film is set in 1996 where Rob Hall (Jason Clarke) attempts to lead a group of eager climbers to the top as well.   Rob has reached Everest’s peak before.  In fact, it is in his job description as the lead expert of Adventure Consultants.   Rob is perfect for this gig.  He is experienced, keenly aware of the brutal elements, possesses a “can-do” attitude, cares about his clients’ well-being, and calls it quits when a goal is out of reach.    He is also a devoted husband with an expected wife (Keira Knightley) waiting for his safe return.   Jan (Knightley) has a right to be concerned, because climbing Everest is obviously dangerous, and Kormakur provides stunning sequences after more stunning sequences when presenting the imposing mountain in all its glory.

Using helicopters or drones – or both – the camera swoops, rises, dives, and pans across thousands of feet of rock and snow.   One particular shot floats over and looks down upon a group of climbers on a narrow walking bridge (with bright, smiling faces looking up), as the sunshine-filled base - with a rich forest of lush green trees - stirs wonder and positive feelings.

Contrast this with later sequences of beastly grayish/blackish granite and metamorphic rock, and snow ripping sideways in the form of ice chips or grave projectiles.   We also see avalanches suddenly tumble without a hint of a reason, but we cannot see the invisible mountain air.  The air is most deadly element.    At a height in which 727s routinely travel, the mountain is surrounded by air exempt of adequate oxygen levels, and the climbers suffer due to the lack of O2 and the inhuman cold.

Now, these climbers are battle-tested and literally weathered prior to this bold ascent, but – quite frankly – it is difficult to keep track of them all.   The film rightly focuses on a select few:  Beck (Josh Brolin), Doug (John Hawkes) and Scott (Jake Gyllenhaal).    Beck and Doug paid thousands of dollars for this experience and are trying to conquer Everest for the first time.   On the other hand, Scott is a free-spirited guide – with a drink and an “it’s not the altitude, it’s the attitude” persona in tow.   The film feels somewhat like “Twister” (1996) in the beginning, as many adrenaline junkies bond with one another prior to facing one of nature’s most daunting spectacles.

“Everest” could have taken a sophomoric turn – like “Twister” - and only relied on special effects and the landscape to flex its cinematic muscle.   This movie’s special effects do bring several jaw-dropping moments, but the film is anything but CGI-driven.  At its very core, “Everest” - based on a true story - is a moving, human drama.   Credit the setting for providing a backdrop of major concern, but credit the actors like Clarke, Hawkes, Brolin, Gyllenhaal, Knightley, Sam Worthington, and Emily Watson for delivering convincing performances which leave our hearts in our throats.   After experiencing 2 hours and 1 minute of “Everest” in an IMAX theatre, the bravado of these climbers left me utterly amazed, exhausted and bit overwhelmed.  Maybe, I’ll venture out to hike Camelback Mountain again in 2016, or perhaps 2017.   (3.5/4 stars)

Sleeping with Other People - Movie Review by Michael Clawson

Sleeping with Other People  

Director: Leslye Headland

Cast: Alison Brie, Amanda Peet, Natasha Lyonne, Adam Scott, Jason Sudeikis, Marc Blucas, Andrea Savage, Jason Mantzoukas, Katherine Waterson, Adam Brody

Release Date: 09/18/15

by Michael Clawson of Terminal Volume

Sleeping With Other People is a soul-crushing void of raunch, flimsy paper-thin comedy and dialogue written by a sixth grader who likes to snicker at the entries for “penis” and “vagina” in Webster’s Dictionary. It’s about people who are having lots of sex, although I left wondering if anyone involved with the movie had actually participated in the act or if they had just learned of the practice from cheap porno and a dial-up connection.

I will gladly sit through edgy, or vulgar, or filth as long as there is something that anchors everything into place. This is just random word association with sex flashcards, and delivered with dialogue so mundane that two mechanics discussing radiator repair would be downright erotic in comparison. It’s the kind of movie where the two stars are introduced by her complimenting his porn, and him complimenting her panties. Classy.

She is Lainey (Alison Brie) and he is Jake (Jason Sudeikis). They meet in college and lose their virginity to each other. Fast forward 12 years and they meet at a sex addiction support group, which is really where all the nymphomaniacs go to get ideas (Billy Eichner’s here doing a routine that would funny in any movie but this one). Lainey’s boyfriend has just broken up with her, and her side-guy, a dorky gynecologist, refuses to leave his wife. Jake drifts from one sexual encounter to another, a boat bobbing in the current. “Hey,” they figure, “let’s be benefit-free friends to keep each other company during our miserable descents into nowhere.” They even have a safe word, “mousetrap,” to signal when the sexual tension is overwhelming.

Yeesh, this movie just doesn’t stop blabbing. So much dialogue, it feels like it never stops. Not just dialogue either, but then narration, pop-up text messages, phone calls, all of it made up of grown adults internalizing their sexual failures until they eventually glitch out and have to reboot in safe mode. And all of it explicit in one way or another. At one point they talk about their favorite sex positions in front of a TV salesman, who smiles and nods like it’s the most normal thing in the universe. The film really lost me in an early scene, when Jake’s business partner turns to Lainey as asks, “Are you the one who made my friend a slut, or was it his father who molested him?” Yikes, it’s so bad it stings.

The wheels really come off when Sudeikis, who’s unable to hide complete and utter embarrassment at this point, takes an empty tea jar, jams his fingers inside and instructs his female costar where all the landmarks are in her most intimate place. And the detail he goes into is enough to make Larry Flynt gag. Poor Brie, she’s watching this poor jar and wishing a truck would crash through the set and drag her off the studio lot. She was on Mad Men, damn it, and this is so far beneath her it’s subterranean.

The logical path here is telegraphed in the opening scenes: of course these two wayward souls must fall in love, “mousetrap” or not. Getting to that point is so agonizing that even people who fetishize agony are searching, clawing, scraping for their safewords.

The Visit - Movie Review by Monte Yazzie

The Visit                    

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Starring: Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie, and Kathryn Hahn

94 Minutes

Universal Pictures

“The Visit” is a modern day spin of a grim fairy tale; you might call it “Hansel and Gretel” the documentary. Director M. Night Shyamalan returns with another frightening tale where children are placed in the center of complicated, sometimes perilous, situations; a theme utilized most prominently in his films “The Sixth Sense” and “Signs”. It’s a common story in horror films, a topic that can heighten the moments of tension and terror if used properly. Shyamalan, a director whose films have been a mix of accomplishment and disappointment, crafts an effective horror film with “The Visit”, a scaled down success of simple and strategic storytelling heavy on the “creepy” factor.

Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) are siblings who are preparing to meet their estranged grandparents for the first time. Becca is an inquisitive and budding filmmaker, hoping to make this first-time meeting into a documentary. Tyler does what younger brothers do best…annoy their older sisters, though Tyler will occasionally break out into a rapping freestyle to add insult to injury. Becca and Tyler’s Mom (Kathryn Hahn) is a single parent who left her family as a teenager under secretive circumstances. The kids arrive in a cozy small town, greeted by Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) at the train station. The two eager grandparents are loving and caring, if a little absent minded. However, once the sun goes down everything changes.

Shyamalan has always been good at building his characters; with “The Visit” he takes a natural approach to establishing the relationship between the siblings and the connection with their lone parent. The journey for these children to meet their grandparents is partly a way for them to understand their mother, who comes off a bit disheartened by her life thus far, and to come to terms with the emotional distress caused by the abandonment of their father, a decision that has left damaging emotional impressions on the children. Shyamalan touches on these aspects with very minimal direct referencing, an attribute to the tightly composed narrative and the abilities of the young actors playing these roles. This early development creates an essential investment with the characters, one that Shyamalan manipulates as soon as the strange and unusual begins to happen at Nana and Pop Pop’s house. While not necessarily scary, though the annoyingly forced jump scares try to evoke this feeling, it’s the unusual behavior of the grandparents that becomes unnerving. Nana chasing the kids in a creepy crawling position while whispering “I’m gonna get ya” is one memorable instance.

The film builds to a great climax before the inevitable reveal of the mystery arrives, a defining quality that has followed Shyamalan throughout his career. It’s neither disappointing nor satisfying here, which is a good thing because the ending simply works to accommodate the structure of the story that has been told.

“The Visit” plays like a campfire tale while finding inspiration from a bunch of different horror films. Ploys like an old, dark house, wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing monsters, and the hand-held horror techniques are some of the genre characteristics that are utilized by Shyamalan. While some of time this works other times it falls into familiar trappings, still “The Visit” is effectively strange enough to keep one watching until the end.

Monte’s Rating

3.25 out of 5.00

The Visit - Movie Review by Jeff Mitchell

“Call ‘The Visit’ a bona fide comeback for M. Night”  

Writer/Director:  M. Night Shyamalan

Starring: Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie, Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould, Kathryn Hahn

“Don’t call it a comeback.  I’ve been here for years.”

Twenty-five years ago, LL Cool J bellowed these lyrics in the rap classic, “Mama Said Knock You Out”, and for writer/director M. Night Shyamalan, he has “been here for years” (since 1999’s “The Sixth Sense”) as well, but is in desperate need of a comeback film.   He has not captured cinematic or box office magic since 2002’s “Signs”, and although he admirably takes risks with his pictures, Shyamalan has recently stumbled with “The Happening” (2008), “The Last Airbender” (2010) and the truly unfortunate “After Earth” (2013).    Quite frankly, any reasonable individual would recognize his next good film as his comeback.   I am happy to report “The Visit” is very good and, indeed, that film.

Like most of his movies, this one takes place in Pennsylvania.  In the tiny community of Masonville, PA, Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) and Nana (Deanna Dunagan) live in a large farmhouse amongst gray skies, large leafless trees and smallish drifts of harden snow.   Their surroundings are typical of any rural northeastern community in the beginning or ending of winter, and with an occasional, shrilling wind, Masonville feels like the Headless Horseman should be chasing Ichabod Crane at any given moment.

Now, the residents of this “Sleeping Hollow Ranch” are named Pop Pop and Nana, because their grandkids affectionately address them by those titles.  Teenagers Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) are visiting their grandparents – who they never met - for a week, while their mom (Kathyrn Hahn) takes a much needed cruise with her boyfriend.   Their mom has not spoken to her parents since she left home at 19, so her children have been estranged from Pop Pop and Nana by proxy.

With two video cameras in tow – and a surprising knowledge of filmmaking and various terms like “narrative character” and “visual tension” – Becca and Tyler decide to film their family reunion week as a documentary with all the excitement and wide-eyed innocence which only kids can muster.   Unfortunately, the bloom falls off this bloodline rose when the teens discover Pop Pop and Nana demonstrate very disturbing and dangerous behaviors.   I’ll refrain from giving way lots of examples, but I’ll just mention one:

After pulling out an empty tray from the oven, Nana asks Becca, “Would you mind getting inside the oven to clean it?”

This eerie moment is only the tip of the utterly creepy iceberg as Shyamalan’s new movie is not a thriller, but a pure horror film.  With his expert use of visual storytelling – by using techniques like the aforementioned visual tension - he delivers a highly effective, hair-raising tale.  This is literally the case, as the hair on my arms stood up on end about a half-dozen times.

The film delivers plenty of scares, because Shyamalan develops a clear sense of place. It is a helpless and near-hopeless one.  This isolated farm with no cellular service houses two unfamiliar and unstable individuals, and Becca and Tyler attempt to bond with their grandparents while they simultaneously are very troubled by them.  Even though they could “escape” by running through miles of open fields, Shyamalan does a masterful job of presenting a setting for emotional entrapment and directly transmitting it to the audience.   The kids do not simply leave, because their highly weird grandparents are still family, and as viewers, we completely feel the pull from these invisible chains.

To gain some reprieve from this demonstrative pull, the film volleys between high suspense and a surprising amount of comedy.   Although the lighter moments offer many loud belly laughs, the screenplay’s – seemingly – dozens of jokey flashes do feel a bit much.  More than a few times, I wanted less playfulness and more subdued spookiness.  Tyler also prides himself as a 13 year-old rap artist, but his rhymes bring a high cheesiness-factor, and worse yet, they feel dated.   Perhaps Tyler showing off bad poetry slam skills would have been a better comedic choice, but either way, I would have preferred less hijinks.

I also question two other creative choices:  the misplaced musical number towards the end of the film and the inclusion of multiple ending scenes.   Both decisions certainly took away from an otherwise captivating closing act.

These are narrative hiccups, but when looking at the entire picture, “The Visit” offers a very entertaining, smart and deep dive into horror.   I have a feeling – after seeing this movie - millions of parents might pause for a moment before leaving the kids with the grandparents.   After feeling pulled by invisible chains for 94 minutes, it would be difficult to blame them.  Just remember, it is only a movie, a bona fide comeback movie which knocked me out. (3/4 stars)