Christopher Schroeder

Tag: movie review

  • Not Quite Ready If You Ask Me

    Not Quite Ready If You Ask Me

    I am surprised by how much credible critics like Primetime, the new movie directed by Lance Oppenheim that I saw this week.

    This movie, which is a 2007 Esquire article adaptation by Ajon Singh, is the story of a reality TV series about potential child sex predator stings. At its center are its host Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) and its producer Andie Bender (Merritt Weaver) and their collaboration with a vigilante justice group and the most recent decoy actor (Skylar Gisando).

    Hansen and Bender want to compete with other primetime programs — Hansen is also hiding an affair from his estranged wife and confused kids — and the decoy wants a credit for his acting card. In their pursuit of these ends, they destroy the people around them and themselves.

    Their choices and experiences are explored by Oppenheim, who brings his trademark blend of nonfiction, storytelling, and cinematic conventions to his first narrative feature film. This movie recreates a reality television experience, and also focuses on the wall between the screen and the audience, as it blurs lines between experience and narrative.

    Critics cite his direction as well as powerful performances and even the cinematic experience as noteworthy elements of this movie, which I can understand. I however couldn’t get past the tensions between form and content, which masks underdeveloped characters and plot.

    As a result, I couldn’t care about this story or these people no matter how interested in the larger questions I am.

    I am intrigued by the way that narrative, and drama, shape experience and generate significance and meaning, and often asked first-year college students and English majors to consider these. I can easily imagine ways that these issues could be considered in this movie, and also ways it could ask more conventional content questions , such as one about ambition and ethics or culture and commodification.

    It instead seems content with friction or flashes from crossing conventional craft and content boundaries that illuminate little if anything about this situation, its setting, these characters, or the world where we all live.

  • Neither Silly Nor Smart

    Neither Silly Nor Smart

    I expected to enjoy The End of Oak Street, as credible critics suggested I would, more than I did.

    This movie, which is written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, tells the story of a suburban housewife, and aspiring novelist, named Denise (Anne Hathaway) and her disintegrating marriage to Greg (Ewan McGregor) as their neighborhood is teleported to prehistoric times. Denise must save her children Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery) and their acquaintance Jeannette (Jordan Alexa Davis) by jumping into a shimmering, and blinking, wormhole blob that returns them to their present where she warns, and saves, her husband and neighbors.

    I like others was intrigued by the Amblin allusions, such as the suburban adventure and physical effects that appeal to kids and grownups. These were supplemented with thriller conventions more associated with Mitchell, and make me wonder whether the movie was more dystopian than I initially believed.

    The effort is an inconsistent tone that for me highlighted awkward performances and stilted scenes. As a result, it wasn’t the “refreshingly, doesn’t care,” and fun, movie that some, such as NPR Pop Cultural Happy Hour host Linda Holmes and her guests, claim it is.

    Holmes, who in her accompanying newsletter surveys Mitchell’s previous efforts, argues that he and his cinematographer Mike Gioulakis use experimental techniques without compromising control. As a result, she believes believes that this hybrid action-adventure horror movie, which relies upon a simple structure, a satisfying theme, and a short running time, is intentionally “raucous and silly” with “over-the-top” moments as an entertaining experience that viewers deserve.

    I’m unsure how to reconcile this analysis, which seems plausible and persuasive, with the mindless summer entertainment, and more fun in a group, conclusion. Does fun need the neutralization of perception and reflection? What makes this movie any different from other mindless entertainment with which we’re amusing ourselves to death?

    The problem isn’t a lack of potential. For example, Denise recounts her experience in a replacement manuscript — her previous one is lost in a basement flood — that is published as a book, and is presumably why her family seems wealthier at the end than they were in the beginning, which raises questions about 1980s intersectionality that are unacknowledged.

    The ending in contrast does acknowledge a different problem, and potential. The military has secured Denise’s neighborhood, scientists are investigating wormholes, and Denise’s family hosts a barbecue with Jeannette’s parents and two versions of her.

    The second Jeannette, which is presumably a cloned version, is required, or resolved, by the plot. Denise after leaping into the wormhole and returning to their present orders a pizza that Greg delivers — he had been delivering pizzas to Denise’s dismay after he was fired from Chrysler, and her kids and she witnessed his death by dinosaurs in the prehistoric world — and apparently also warns Jeannette’s parents, who seemingly escape with her.

    Any residual escapist entertainment evaporated for me the moment two Jeannettes appeared at the barbecue. They however and the others quickly disappear with the end of the movie, which concludes with even more unasked questions.

    I suppose that Jeanette’s parents couldn’t be convinced, especially in such a short span of time, to leave her behind. I also suppose that Greg didn’t even consider whether to get the rest of his family because he was delivering pizzas without them, and wasn’t told he was escaping an imminent tragedy.

    I enjoy entertainment, and even escapism, as much as anyone. I just resent any time such experiences encourage me to ignore questions, and require me to sacrifice skepticism and relinquish reason, especially while aspiring to be something more substantial.

  • Nowhere to Go

    Nowhere to Go

    Motor City is an unnecessary movie with little entertainment value.

    This crime drama, which was written by Chad St. John, offers a familiar story. A small-time drug dealer (Alan Ritchson) who falls in love with a more powerful dealer’s (Ben Foster) girlfriend (Shailene Woodley) is falsely imprisoned, escapes with help from his friends, and spends the lives of this girl and his friends, and the rest of his life, obtaining revenge.

    This movie, which is set in 1970s Detroit has next to no dialogue, which obviously foregrounds the acting, designing, and directing (Potsy Pocirocoli). These elements strain and crumble under the pressure.

    The most convincing performance is Woodley’s, who plays a supporting character. The leads are often comical.

    The settings sometimes evoke 1970s Detroit even though the movie was filmed in New Jersey. The problem is that this setting has little if any significance to the story unless it vaguely suggests something mechanical about the main characters.

    The costumes were conventionally cliched. The sound design, and the classic 1970s rock sound at its center, is often loud, and seemingly supposed to support the narrative although again in unclear ways.

    These limitations and others suggest questionable directing decisions. These are limited however by the predictable plot and cliched script.

    I initially wondered whether the story was just starting slowly, and soon suspected that the dialogue restriction was an intentional challenge. If so, it was more than this movie could meet, which makes it both unappealing and unnecessary.