20TH CENTURY WOMEN Review

Time is fleeting. This is a phrase heard countless times throughout our youth and throughout our life as a reminder to cherish the days we're living in as they'll be gone before we realize it. What we never realize though, is just how fleeting such times are when we're actually in them. The young man at the center of 20th Century Women, Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann), was born in 1964 with the film opening in 1979. This makes Jamie a young fifteen as made even more apparent by his clear skin and boyish features that render him still a child in our minds rather than the adult he would have us believe he is becoming. My own father was born in 1964 and I can't say I've ever considered what the world looked like at the time of his most formative years. Hell, I don't know that I ever even realized it was the fall of 1980 when he turned sixteen-with only six years to go until he married my mother on the cusp of his twenty-second birthday. Sure, I've heard him tell stories of the things he did as a young boy with his older brother and neighborhood friends, but never did I take a minute to step back and look at the bigger picture; really consider the world they were living in at that time. With 20th Century Women writer/director Mike Mills (Beginners) explores these small, fleeting moments in time and reflects on what made what is presumed to be his mother, his mother. This isn't simply presented by the circumstances of her life, but by the circumstances of the time in which she was born. This is a fascinating way of perceiving things, but can also be rather dangerous considering the infinite possibilities one can imagine were they to consider who they or someone they know/love might have been were they born in a different time. This framing of lives through fleeting moments with the added perception of where each of the individuals chronicled came from and where they're going reveals a lot of truths, but mostly it works best by affirming what we don't always have enough time to acknowledge-that happiness comes most naturally when we're not actively trying to chase it.

GREEN ROOM Review

Much like with director Jeremy Saulnier's previous film, Blue Ruin, his latest positions itself as something of a straight genre film with bigger ambitions underneath the surface. With Ruin, Saulnier was keen to allow the audience to piece together the story of the protagonist as he pulled back the layers at his own pace, but the real trick was that he kept audiences transfixed the whole time despite the fact we lacked large chunks of context. In his new feature, Green Room, Saulnier once again works from a script solely of his own doing, but instead of teasing out the challenges our main characters face this time around our "heroes" are placed on the front lines against their very visible enemies-Saulnier standing between them ready to let his checkered flag fly at any moment. This choice to not rely so much on mystery seems to come from nothing more than a need to tell a different story in a different way, but the tendency to want to hold back seems natural to the writer/director as the backbone of Green Room's plot (but not all of its tension) relies on the audience knowing the immediate threats of the situation without knowing what originally put these events in motion. It's a keenly crafted screenplay that tends to get slightly redundant near the end despite its already slim running time. That said, the main objective for the multiple protagonists is never unclear and the conspiring reasons they find themselves in the situation along with several other factors that come to be of critical importance are introduced in a sharp fashion. It is not the storytelling that will fascinate here though, but rather the way in which Saulnier and his team are able to balance the downright horrific nature of what unfolds in front of us while keeping the tone that akin to something of an eighties era slasher. There is a heft, an integrity even to a number of characters and events, but there is also a very knowing tone, a sarcastic or rather a very punk attitude to the whole affair that elevates what is essentially a hostage thriller to that of a true rebel among its genre trappings.

First Red-Band Trailer for GREEN ROOM

If there was one film I was most upset about missing at last years Toronto International Film Festival it was Green Room. It premiered on the first night I arrived in Toronto, but I wasn't aware of it at the time and after receiving rave reviews from that initial screening I unfortunately couldn't fit any of the other screening times into my schedule. Given how some of the films I did see have panned out I wish I would have seen Green Room instead, but oh well-what can you do? The good news is that A24 (a serious studio to watch if you haven't already noticed) acquired the distribution rights for the film and will be releasing it this spring. Given they also acquired the much buzzed about horror film The Witch (which I did see at TIFF, but wasn't as crazy about as I'd hoped) and are giving it a wide release in two weeks its clear why the promotional campaign for Green Room is beginning to ramp up now. About a young punk rock band who find themselves trapped in a secluded venue after stumbling upon a horrific act of violence this first red-band trailer certainly gets across the tone of confusion and bloodshed that seem to make this horror film as hip as many have claimed it to be. What I look forward to most is seeing how the film upends many of the tropes of the horror genre while still committing to each of them. Written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier who burst onto the scene a few years ago with the transfixing Blue Ruin I'm anxious to see his follow-up and if it meets the hype that has surrounded it for months now. Green Room stars Patrick Stewart, Anton Yelchin, Alia Shawkat, Callum Turner, Joe Cole, and opens in New York and LA on April 15th before expanding on April 29th.

THE FINAL GIRLS Review

The Final Girls is one of those movies people who love movies could likely watch over and over again. I say this because I've watched it twice already and enjoyed it even more the second time around. Everything about the film is calculated to perfection when considering the genre it is both lampooning and writing a love letter to. Here, writers M.A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller use this self-aware technique not to make fun of the actions of their own movie, but more to examine the staples of nostalgia and how what eventually become these staples begin as innocent, unintentional marks of the decade from which a movie is born. We're unaware of the tropes being created by the countless super hero blockbusters of our current cinematic landscape, but in twenty years there is no doubt the twenty-somethings will find a strange comfort in movies that attempt to recreate the tone and energy of what we can't see in front of us right now. It's an interesting experiment and one that pays off in spades for a certain type of audience member. Lucky for me, I feel a part of the generation that will get the most out of this take on the slasher film that was born out of the 80's horror boom. There are two kinds of spoofs, ones where the characters and genre trappings are exaggerated for mere comical effect and then the ones that mean to point out the aspects that, while admittedly being horrible, also make the characters and genre so endearing. What The Final Girls clearly intends to do is show us why these 80's films about teens dying horribly gruesome deaths have become so endearing to the current generation. The answer is we find a kind of solace in the likes of Freddy Krueger, Jason Vorhees, Leatherface and Michael Myers that wasn't available in the elaborate mind of Jigsaw or the allusive Paranormal Activity villains. It's an atmosphere that feels foreign to the smart phone era and is a reminder of what the world was like when we were innocent while still appealing to our now adult nature with it's horror aspects. The Final Girls capitalizes on each of these components to play perfectly into everything a certain set of audience members need to feel fully enraptured not only in the events taking place in the film, but our own thought processes about such films.

THE TO DO LIST Review

Walking into something like The To Do List it is hard to decide whether or not you are going to get a film along the lines of Adventureland or something more akin to an Adam Sandler comedy, but the cast would certainly suggest the former. That was my optimistic hope going into the film and while I never expected this to be the comedy of the summer (the film was originally scheduled to come out this past February) or even a kind of cult hit I did expect to find a rather low key dirty comedy with enough good bits to sustain its brisk running time. What we actually get is a great cast littered throughout a flimsy film that knows what it wants to be and has a clear agenda, but doesn't necessarily have the intelligence or originality to achieve its own aspirations. As this fact became clear within the first fifteen minutes of the film I was at least relieved to see so many funny people and even rather credible actors popping up in roles of all shapes and sizes whether it was cameos, supporting players, or main cast. As films such as this usually go there isn't enough substance or depth to the characters to justify the emotional journey the makers would like us to go on, but as far as staging crude and vulgar sex acts in awkward places between awkward people this movie hits the nail on the head. The title of "sex comedy" is a term tossed around loosely these days and used to describe pretty much any R-rated comedy that includes at least one boob joke, but The To Do List earns this branding with its head held high. I don't know if it was the fact I wasn't sure what to expect from the film or that it was so unabashedly blunt about its sexual awareness but the film is ultimately a mixed bag ranging from amusing sight gags to jokes as old as the time period in which it's set (sadly, this means 1993 was twenty years ago). While Aubrey Plaza has become known for playing the witty and extremely deadpan chick in films like last years Safety Not Guaranteed and TV's Parks & Recreation the actress takes small steps here to separate herself from that persona which should count for something, but ends up meaning very little when the project surrounding you really isn't that good.