THE DROP Review

When one approaches a film with a certain set of expectations based on the individual components and what it could potentially add up to as a whole it gives way to a certain direction we think the film will go. From the outside looking in The Drop starring Tom Hardy and James Gandolfini in his final screen role sold itself as a Brooklyn-based crime drama that centers around a robbery gone wrong and the investigation around the robbery that brings a certain drop-point system to its knees. While all of this is still very much a part of the film, it isn't the centerpiece, as an audience we aren't drawn into the plot as in the series of events that make up the story, but instead become more interested in how these specific characters will decide the course of the story rather than the tropes typically employed in this genre. To be fair, it is a deliberately slow-paced affair that sets the tone of not only the critical environment in which the movie takes place, but the attitude of our main character and how it lines up with the aforementioned plot elements that combine to bring home more than we bargained for in the third act. As the film goes on and we wonder why the tension never reaches breaking points with the police involvement or why more things, shocking things aren't happening we are getting a portrait painted for us and we don't even realize it until director Michaël R. Roskam wants us to. There are core questions people have to ask themselves when put in a predicament such as Bob Saginowski (Hardy) is here. What is his overall goal in life? What is standing in his way? What might he lose if he doesn't achieve his goal? They are questions that Dennis Lehane no doubt asked himself as well when he penned both the screenplay and his short story the film is based on. These questions though, ones that typically provide a kind of structure for where a story needs to go, while still in place, are allowed to become side-tracked and thus result in a film where it doesn't feel we are dipping in on a very specific moment in time in the life of the characters, but that this is simply another set of struggles, another set of detractors and minor set-backs in a neighborhood where everyone is fighting to make a living and maybe one day, achieve their ideal goals.

ADORE Review

Adore is one of those films that looks a little icky when you see the trailer. I don't use the word "icky" very often and it is probably against my better judgment to do so here, but given that the definition is simply adding two letters to the word its defining to make it sticky with the added value of being unpleasant it seems extremely appropriate as that is the exact type of situation our two protagonists get themselves into in this twisted, disturbing, and surprisingly affecting film. Is it controversial? Sure. Does it push boundaries? I guess so, slightly. Does it make for an entertaining film? Not exactly. What the film, previously titled Two Mothers, does make for is a pretty intense soap opera with top caliber acting and beautiful cinematography. There are plenty of dynamics you could draw on here, but nothing so obvious as the Oedipal complexities of a mother and son relationship. In fact, there is no need for that type of development because in what is essentially the opening scene of the film one of our two mothers boys is attending his fathers funeral. Though this does leave what we assume is a lasting effect it isn't the one the world would so easily assume. Instead, Ian (Xavier Samuel) develops and very intense, very genuine, if not at first sight naive love for his mothers best friend Roz (Robin Wright). Another thing you think upon first seeing the trailers is that you know exactly where this film will be heading even if you're not quite sure where it could possibly end up. What I found surprising and what may have lent to me becoming more intrigued with the film is the fact it doesn't follow the dramatic beats I expected it to. In fact, it goes to some rather unexpected places and explores avenues and dilemmas I had yet to come up with in my own head about what might cause trouble in the scenario these four work up. It is a slightly distressing film in that you wonder how two successful, mature women would ever allow themselves to succumb to such temptation and clearly wrong action, but both Wright and Naomi Watts sell it even if, in the end, we still feel they know better.