Christopher Schroeder

Tag: movie review

  • More Than That Please

    More Than That Please

    I saw Send Help, which is more aptly titled than I realized.

    Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams), who is a useful and reliable if also awkward employee, has been promised a VP promotion by the CEO who has recently deceased. This promise, which was known to other senior employees, is broken by the CEO’s son Bradly Preston (Dylan O’Brien), who assumes his father’s position.

    The company needs help however with a merger, so Linda is asked to accompany these senior employees and the new CEO on a trip to Bangkok. She can according to Bradley teach his former frat bro Donovan (Xavier Samuel) what she knows and then be reassigned from their corporate headquarters to a satellite location.

    Linda is drafting a merger memo on the flight while Donovan plays her survivalist reality show video application for the rest of the group. She eventually realizes why they’re laughing and then deletes her draft just before the plane in an unexpectedly graphic scene begins to disintegrate after an explosion and crashes, and sinks, into the ocean.

    The only other survivor besides Linda is an injured Bradley, whom Linda rescues and helps recover. Her survivalist hobby obviously becomes relevant, and affords her an advantage, as does later her former marriage to an abusive husband whose death she stopped preventing.

    Linda, who cannot save Bradley from a two-dimensional caricature, ostensibly develops her heretofore type character with this account of her part in her late husband’s demise, which could influence the last third of the movie but remains underdeveloped at best. As a result, it seems like an add-on, or an empty gesture in this survivalist horror thriller, which is how it is described.

    Linda’s motivation remains a mess even at its end. Why would she sabotage their rescue even if she was relying on the resort home she had discovered? And could the conclusion reinforce an impression that she has parlayed her time stranded on this island into the self-serving career that she despised, and we presumably are to despise, in Bradley and his bros?

    Critical consensus nonetheless is quite positive. More than 260 offer sufficiently positive reviews for example to earn it a Rotten Tomatoes certified fresh film status. Those who recommend it consistently cite the director Sam Raimi, the entertainment value of this movie, and its professional validation for those with bad bosses in their generally positive reviews.

    Surely these reviewers, and the industry, think more of audiences. Or maybe that explains why the movie menu is so often filled with so little appealing.

    We need more than that.

  • Unto Ourselves?

    Unto Ourselves?

    The movie Islands, which was written by Jan-Ole Gerster, Blaž Kutin, and Lawrie Doran, is an engaging exploration of appearance, reality, and aloneness that never quite coalesces into clear conclusions.

    Tom (Sam Riley), a former tennis pro and current resort coach, has an apparently ideal life at least to Canary Islands tourists. The sun is constant, his obligations are limited, and even these can be avoided when he wants. Nevertheless, he suspects that something is missing, especially when a local family, with whom he has become friends, announces their imminent retirement, and return to their former homeland.

    Tom soon befriends a family on holiday, who also have their own needs. They’re struggling with infertility, and perhaps infidelity, and as a result questioning their choices, including their marriage. A second child seems to be Ann’s (Stacy Martin) answer, but her husband Dave (Jack Farthing) is less certain of what they’re doing and who they are.

    Tom agrees to escort Dave to a nearby club where he disappears. Any uncertainty Tom might have been feeling evaporates as he assists with the search for the missing husband, who had disclosed his suicidal intention to Ann. Tom later supplies a false, and unsolicited, alibi for, and subsequently has sex with, her.

    Dave, dehydrated and exhausted, is eventually found while swimming toward a volcano where he intended to throw himself over its crater. Tom and Ann have a moment in the hospital just before she returns to Dave’s side. Tom then returns to his previous life, and recreates a former moment of glory on the courts for the latest group of mouthy, boisterous tourists.

    There he passes out, and is found by Dave, who has brought the payment for his son Anton’s tennis lessons and some additional money for Tom’s efforts, including Dave tells him caring for his family. Tom in other words is still hired help whereas Dave, Ann, and their son are returning to their own lives.

    Audiences are to be attracted to Tom’s experience, which has the outward appearance of Eden or heaven. The sun is constantly shining. His responsibilities are minimal, especially when he can eat and stay at the resort when he wants. He has a constant churn of female companionship and court-mates.

    This movie succeeds as a psychological thriller, and also explores an almost palpable loneliness in all of their lives. Moreover, it suggests that Tom’s desperation isn’t as much malicious as perhaps opportunistic, which makes it all the more poignant.

    The ambiguity almost seems borderline excessive, but the only obviously false moment is the conclusion. Tom back in his own apartment is eating the cereal he purchased for Anton when he swipes his wallet and keys and then races to the airport. Once there, he asks if he can still purchase a ticket, which he can, and then is asked to where.

    Perhaps he intends to follow this family although that seems less likely than the possibility that he could be fleeing from his unsatisfying life. The details however are wrong. He seems not to have a passport for example perhaps because he in his haste left it at home.

    The bigger problem is the emotional resources he will need to leave. Are audiences to think that he is ultimately incapable of escaping as his camel-farm friends did? Or that Tom has acted rashly again?

    Even his front desk friend has had enough of his shenanigans. Has he learned anything from escaping his self-manufactured legal jeopardy?

    Is his motivation even the point? Perhaps not, the title seems to suggest. Maybe all of us in contrast to the line from the John Donne poem are islands unto ourselves, and perhaps forever are so.

    That could be the conclusion of this movie. All the ambiguity while not ruining the experience unfortunately makes that unclear.

  • Plagued By Its Own Success

    Plagued By Its Own Success

    The Plague, which was officially released on 24 December and nationally available soon thereafter, was good but could have been even better.

    This psychological thriller, which is set in a summer water polo camp, immerses audiences within teenage social dynamics. Ringleader Jake (Kayo Martin) and the other campers act as if Eli’s (Kenny Rasmussen) acne and rash are symptoms of a highly contagious disease that is transmitted through contact. Newcomer Ben (Everett Blunck) wants admission into this group yet increasingly objects to its exclusionary tactics, which has dangerous consequences.

    Author and director Charlie Polinger demonstrates the wisdom of writing what one knows. He reportedly found his old sports camp journals when his mother asked him to sort through the contents of his childhood bedroom where he had been quarantining from COVID ( < > ).

    Both inform his script and direction, which along with the lead performances, cinematography (Steven Breckon) and the score (Johan Lenox) establish an engaging experience for audiences as illustrated by an eleven-minute Cannes standing ovation. In the dark theater, I was transported almost immediately to those days, and remained simultaneously mired in this movie and that muck for most of the time.

    One such recollection included a brother whom I contacted later that night. I omitted this motivation in my message, but wouldn’t have thought of it, or reached out to him, if I hadn’t seen this movie although he never inquired about any of that.

    Nonetheless, I was occasionally distracted by the relative absence of adults except for the coach (Joel Edgerton), who was an unreliable role model. Other adults appeared in loudspeaker announcements in the school for example or the absent part of a phone conversation or were occasionally seen walking through the pool area or eating in the school cafeteria, and were cited in conversations but were otherwise mostly absent.

    The effect is an overpowering account of group dynamics that only relents near the end. Until that point, the movie has been a deep dive into the horrors of teenage group psychology, which is where many remain immersed. Nonetheless, the story seems to succumb to its own pressure almost as if the need to end it surprised its author.

    Perhaps the body-horror violence could be forgiven. Such violence had been foreshadowed, and at least seems potentially plausible. Neither could be said for Ben’s development.

    Ben ostensibly found a way despite challenging circumstances to jump into the deep end and as the coach (Daddy Wags?) advises just be himself. He returns to the coed dance and mimics Eli’s moves, and thus assumes his role. Ben is mostly ignored by the others, which shifts the focus from group dynamics to an individualized, and inconsistent, account.

    The significance is too ambiguous. What would, or could, motivate such a transformation? Or had Ben, who also has a rash, become Eli, and if so, is this rash, and the others’ reactions, symbolize a physical and emotional contagion?

    These unanswered question rather than deepening this experience only made it murkier, which was a disappointing way to end, and leave, this otherwise engaging, and ultimately worthwhile, experience.