SKYSCRAPER Review

So, you know Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, right? Of course you do. Remember his movie from three months ago? Rampage? The one about The Rock stopping a giant gorilla from destroying Chicago? Maybe you do and maybe you don’t (that could be due either to the fact you didn’t see it or because it’s pretty forgettable, but I digress). Regardless one of the news stories that broke around the time of that movie’s release was the fact Johnson had the screenwriters re-write the climax of the film that had the genetically modified George die. The way this was re-written was that George instead faked his death so as to play a trick on Johnson’s character. Classic, huh? Johnson wanted this done so that the audience wouldn’t go home on a dour note as they came to the movies and to that type of movie especially to enjoy light-hearted entertainment and not to see a CGI gorilla die. Well, that same guy who mandated the monkey didn’t die in his last movie opens his new movie with a flashback scene that features a suicide bomber blowing himself up and murdering his own wife and kids along with him so, happy movie-going! If you consider this a spoiler, I apologize, but this plot point isn’t brought up to spoil, but rather to open up the conversation about how from the word go Skyscraper essentially misses the mark it should have been shooting for the whole time. Why did it need to begin in this fashion? How was that decision going to be justified? I kept asking myself these questions as the film continued to march on even though in the first few expository scenes following that opening it became very clear as to why Johnson’s character was witness to and injured in the murder/suicide spurred by a father that included the unnecessary deaths of his wife and two young children-one boy and one girl. The movie quickly jumps forward a decade and establishes that Johnson’s Will Sawyer has since married the surgeon that saved his life that fateful night, Sarah (Neve Campbell), and that they’ve had a set of twins together-one boy and one girl. It is clear Sawyer will once again come face to face with the same predicament he faced in the opening sequence and will have to once again choose his actions very carefully in a scenario that could just as easily swing in one direction as it could another. I get it and I think most movie-goers who see more than three movies a year or have at least seen an action movie in their lifetime will get it, but the foreshadowing isn’t the issue as in all actuality the script, from writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber (Dodgeball, We’re the Millers, Central Intelligence), is especially symmetrical and pays off each of its set-ups quite nicely. More, the issue with opening your supposed summer popcorn movie among summer popcorn movies with such a scene is the tone it implies and the precedent it sets for the rest of your movie. Due to this decision, Skyscraper never recovers from being this bleak and bloody actioner with an unnecessarily high body count when all it really had to be was Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson stopping a giant fire from destroying his family as well as the world’s newest and tallest building.

HELL OR HIGH WATER Review

Hell or High Water opens with a 360° shot of a small, West Texas town that is more or less deserted. Panning what looks to be one of the main roads through town the audience is meant to note the several for sale signs, the others offering loans, and most prominently a piece of graffiti that states, "3 tours in Iraq, but no bailout for people like us." Hell or High Water immediately tells us its stance on the story it will be relaying in that it concludes this opening, single take with two masked men entering the small town's bank and requesting only loose bills, no stacks or, in other words, the banks money and not the peoples. In this expertly crafted opening sequence director David Mackenzie (Starred Up) displays a knack for visually highlighting exactly what he wants us to focus on. Beyond the visual style Mackenzie adopts for this story that captures the flatlands of West Texas and its expansive plains in gorgeous hues is his adeptness at capturing the necessary atmosphere to complement the specific kind of tone which naturally influences the overall mood of his film. In short, everything falls into place perfectly with the pacing of the picture which is as close to a perfectly paced film as anything I've seen this year. We are thrown into the action of a bank robbery that is quickly undermined by the inherent humor that comes from human interactions while noting specifically the mentality of these Texans in which the movie will very much hang its trust and pride. The setting is established, the framing of this setting's attitude and character is made apparent, and only then we are introduced to the men behind the ski masks-brothers Tanner (Ben Foster) and Toby (Chris Pine). As with the setting we can see who these two brothers are from very early on. Foster's Tanner is the free-wheeling, living in the moment sort that will take whatever action makes him feel good whereas Pine's Toby lives more by a moral code with his eyes firmly planted on the end goal rather than what feels best in the moment. Toby doesn't like to deviate from the plan, but Tanner couldn't be more primed to be unreliably ecstatic as he's just been released from prison less than a year prior to the events we're seeing. It is in these two characters that Hell or High Water finds its most valuable assets; relaying its many ideas through the guise of two desperate men sticking it to the man.

WILD Review

The thought of Reese Witherspoon, the sweet and petite blonde from New Orleans made famous by broad comedies like Legally Blonde and Sweet Home Alabama, playing a down on her luck hitchhiker dealing with a past that includes drug problems and excessive fornication with the dealers of those drugs isn't one that immediately meshes well. Despite "Academy Award Winner" being inscribed above her name every time she takes on an Oscar-bait role such as this there still seems a very confined set of types we expect the actress to play. For some reason, I don't expect Witherspoon to be a very versatile performer and though her actual person is no doubt much more interesting due, if not for nothing else, to everything she's accomplished there is still such such a specific on-screen persona I expect from her. As many actors before her looking to fulfill something more in their careers by challenging themselves or just to simply add depth to their filmogrpahy, Witherspoon breaks away from what is expected of her and completely embraces this necessary journey her character goes on, warts and all. In many ways it is refreshing. Witherspoon has been stuck trying to figure out where to go with her career after winning her Oscar for Walk the Line, semi-afraid of doing romantic comedies again, but finding comfort in them while love stories never stray far from her grasp. Frozen and Maleficent have both been huge hits for Disney, but more importantly they have raised the idea over the past year that not all love stories have to be about the romantic relationship, but more the love of what else enriches our lives. While Wild is nothing like either of those films, it keeps this kind of love story in mind and is executed in such a way that we come to appreciate the journey of the character realizing this factoid. Wild is a character study, but it is not a film that rests solely on the performance of its lead. Witherspoon is more than capable and fully immerses herself in the ever changing state of mind Strayed must have experienced as we go on this journey with her, but more than that director Jean-Marc Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club) has crafted a fully realized film around her.

DALLAS BUYER'S CLUB Review

I never thought myself smart enough to be a doctor and never had any ambition as a child to reach for those stars, but as I got older it became more and more clear why the rewards of such a job might not justify the many negatives that come along with the business of saving lives. There always seem to be these rules in place to dictate how we live and how our society operates and we always seem to come across scenarios where those rules seem completely out of sync with the reality of what is going on in the world. While the latest film in Matthew McConaughey's career turn-around isn't fueled by these issues, but more so by the strength of the human condition, it takes them into a large account due to the fact that in this case our protagonist must deal with humanity as a business and push back against those attempting to somehow make the case that the aforementioned rules outweigh actual humanity. How it all boils down to being a business rather than abiding by the no doubt patient-centric ideals of their mission statement, the pharmaceutical companies and the FDA are the baddies here; one paying the other to push their product no matter the health of their "customers" or the opposing team McConaughey's Ron Woodroof brings to the game that might be better, but doesn't carry the backing which means little extra profit for anyone involved. Why someone chose to tell the story of Woodroof though is because he decided to take up arms against the corporation that began as a gratifying profession and has evolved in many aspects to a business much like any other that deals with products that bring comfort and luxury to our lives but are not providing the luxury of sustaining life as hospitals do (a point many of the doctors represented in the film seem to be missing). Woodroof wasn't the most ideal of people to head this kind of revolution up, he had more faults than he did kind qualities, but it sometimes takes that kind of attitude to say, "screw it, I'll do it my own way if the only option you're offering is to die comfortably." There is just the right amount of rebel cowboy and logical thinking in our main character for him to stand by those words and provide the incredibly gratifying character arc in which director Jean-Marc Vallée's film delivers while opening our eyes to the harsh realities of our systems flawed philosophies.