Jacob’s March 16-17th selection – The Lord of the Rings – The Return of the King (2003)

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The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167260/

Director: Peter Jackson

Staring: Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Sean Bean, Cate Blanchett, Orlando Bloom, Billy Boyd, Bernard Hill, Ian Holm, Ian McKellen, Dominic Monaghan, Viggo Mortensen, John Nobel, Miranda Otto, John Rhys-Davies, Andy Serkis, Liv Tyler, Karl Urban, Hugo Weaving, David Wenham, Christopher Lee, and Brad Dourif

Jacob’s March 14-15th selection – The Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers (2002)

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The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167261/

Director: Peter Jackson

Staring: Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, Orlando Bloom, Billy Boyd, Brad Dourif, Bernard Hill, Christopher Lee, Ian McKellen, Dominic Monaghan, Viggo Mortensen, Miranda Otto, John Rhys-Davies, Andy Serkis, Liv Tyler, Karl Ubran, Hugo Weaving, David Wenham, and Sean Bean

Jacob’s March 12-13th selection – The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

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The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120737/

Director: Peter Jackson

Staring: Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Bean, Cat Blanchett, Orlando Bloom, Billy Boyd, Ian Holm, Christopher Lee, Andy Serkis, Ian McKellen, Dominic Monaghan, John Rhys-Davies, Liv Tyler, and Hugo Weaving

Jacob’s March 9th selection – Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

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Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1441326/

Director: Sean Durkin

Staring: Elizabeth Olsen, Sarah Paulson, Hugh Dancy, John Hawkes, Brady Corbet, and Louisa Krause

 

So, after doing the Iron Man 2 review, I realized that some movies have a shit load of things going on in them. Meaning, there are a lot of plot points, an intricate story, full of details that you can talk about in describing the movie. Every film can be told in a few sentences at its core, but giving a detailed….detail of what the movie is about, usually takes several paragraphs at least.

And then we have films like Take Shelter, and Martha Marcy May Marlene, which I will say now, while a great title in reference to the film, I HATE SAYING THE DAMN TITLE! It’s hard to say, it’s hard to remember, it’s annoying to say and makes trying to tell people what I watched this week really daunting. But it’s actually a pretty great title when you watch the movie; it makes a lot of sense. Anyway, on we go!

Martha is a young woman that questions things, like we all do at some point in our lives; who deals with abandonment and betrayal and lost, like we all do at some point as well. She falls in with a particular guy. Usually this guy is just a jerk that only wants to get laid, you know, the story we see a lot of the time. But not this time. Martha falls in with a “guy” that happens to be a cult. Like most cults, they are looking for lost people that haven’t found any answers in the typical places and are desperate and/or stupid enough look toward things like cults. And as we all know, cults are bad, mmmkay?

At the beginning of the film, we see the cult doing fairly normal things, the men eating at separate times than the women. The following morning, Martha takes off, runs into the nearby forest and hides. Contacts her sister, whom she hasn’t spoken with in 2 years, to come and pick her up. What follows is a story about Martha trying to fit back into the normal world after being brainwashed by a wacky and pretty violent cult.

MMMM, as it will forever be called in my hopes and dreams, is a character study of someone that has been drugged and indoctrinated into believing things that don’t really work in the real world, and trying to fit into the real world where a lot of things you have come to believe as truth are challenged. Throughout the film we see flashbacks of Martha’s time with the cult and what eventually drove her to want to leave.

Elizabeth Olsen (Yes, the sister of the Olsen skeletons, I mean twins) plays Martha, and surprises the world with her ability to act. She is actually rather phenomenal. Her back and forth from normal and happy to psychotic and scared shitless is very well executed and disturbingly haunting. Sarah Paulson plays her sister Lucy, and the two of them reflect off of one another very well. Lucy just wants to understand what is going on with Martha, and what she has been through, while Martha is just trying to exist in a world she no longer understands, reluctantly clinging to a world that scares her more than anything. The cast is rounded out with Huge Dancy playing Ted, Lucy’s husband, adding further tension to the situation; Brady Corbet, a terrifyingly charismatic sociopath and the second in command of the cult under John Hawkes, an even more terrifyingly charismatic sociopath.

The story of Martha joining the cult and being indoctrinated is interspliced with the story of her trying to fit back into the real world, so as you go through the story, you understand more and more what Martha is running from and why it affects her so.

The first feature written and directed by Sean Durkin is a great study on the minds why it deals with things. How it runs away, how it hides, how it copes, how it falls apart in the face of fear. The cinematography is subtle at times which makes the lifestyles that are shown in the film a little softer and more normal, which helps the contrast of the terror show through a lot when it comes. I’ll be honest that I really don’t remember much of the music; it really didn’t stand out to me much, though it could be just that more time has passed that usual when I write the reviews.

MMMM is a really powerful film that is very brutal and doesn’t pull any of its punches. It should be gone into with an open mind and a bit prepared for how brutal it can be.

 

Final rating: 8.1/10

Jacob’s March 8th selection – Take Shelter (2011)

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Take Shelter (2011)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1675192/

Director: Jeff Nichols

Staring: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Tova Stewart, Shea Whigham, Katy Mixon, Natasha Randall, Ron Kennard, Scott Knisley, and Robert Longstreet

 

Curtis (Shannon) is standing outside his house, staring off into the distance at a cyclone of clouds bigger than any of us have ever seen outside of the movies. As the rain starts, Curtis’s looks become confused and he looks down to see the rain is a thick yellow liquid, almost like motor oil.

We cut to Curtis home life, married to a beautiful woman, Samantha (Chastain), with a cute daughter, Hannah (Stewart), who is deaf. Good job with great benefits, works along side his best friend Dewart (Whigham)

Curtis sees the same storm again and again in his dreams, each time accompanied by a violent act. In his day to day life, while he is awake, he starts to see strange things that no one else seems to see. Over and over again these visions come to him with no real explanation or cause or answer. Curtis seeks help for these visions and dreams, which he attributes more as a feeling than dreams or visions. To prepare for this storm, that only seems to exist in his mind, he starts to rebuild an old storm shelter on his property. On the one hand, either he is going crazy, or his visions are real and a storm of epic proportions is coming.

Whoah, this one is a doozy. I had heard really great things about this film, but it seem to take forever to come out, and when it finally did, nothing. It didn’t play anywhere, no one talked about it, the critics were few and far between to even mention it. Sadly it just went under the radar. And it is truly a shame. Take Shelter plays with the big boys, and really deserved to be recognized a lot more than it was. I know I have dished out a lot on some of the Academy’s picks for best picture in 2011, and a lot of people agree with me. One of the bigger shames is that there were a handful of films that should have been nominated for best picture that were overlooked completely, and Take Shelter is one of them.

Also nowhere to be found was any recognition for the GENIUS performance by Michael Shannon, an actor I’ve always known, as he is very distinct looking and pretty tall, but never really gave any credit because I had never seen him in a role with any meat on it. That all changed with Take Shelter and the world now has proof that Michael Shannon is a forced to be reckoned with, and hopefully we’ll see more of him in bigger roles now. Along side Shannon is relative new-comer Jessica Chastain, who was nominated, albeit not for her role in Take Shelter, for best supporting actress for The Help. Chastain’s first two films were release in 2008 and 2009 and both were critically panned and not successful in the box office. In 2011, out of nowhere it seemed, Chastain was found in everything. 7 films release in 2011, 2 of which were nominated for best picture at the Oscars, two others had consideration for nomination, and 1 was The Debt, which I will be reviewing later in the year, and was awesome, and while I may not have given her a nomination for her performance in Take Shelter, her incredible action talent and presence makes the film that much stronger. The supporting cast doesn’t particularly shine bright, but they are very solid and get the job done well. Tova Stewart is another extremely bright star in the cast. At 7 years old, Tova plays the daughter of Curtis and Samantha. Both her character Hannah and Tova in real life are deaf, a fact that adds a lot of realism to the role and the world Take Shelter paints for us. Even though she has never acted before, you would think she’d been doing it all her life, as she is amazing. I could go into detail but I don’t want to ruin anything. I will say that her performance in the film stood out greatly to me and really helped make the film the powerhouse that it is.

On to the technical review. I have said this a few times this year, but I am going to say it again, the score to Take Shelter may indeed be my favorite. Up to this point I felt that Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was my favorite score, and it still may be, but Take Shelter has my vote for best music in a scene. David Wingo has never been nominated for a major award, but has done a lot of really great films and I hope will break into main stream film making world, if that is his choice. He has a very great ear and knows how to bring the emotion of the scene out ten fold. His indie presence is matched by cinematographer Adam Stone, who also has yet to break into the main stream film making world (if he is trying to) but has a great talent as well. Wingo, Stone, and Nichols (the writer and director) all have only been in the film making world since 2007 (Wingo has a few credits to his name before that, but really hit his stride starting in 2007) but have already achieved much in the way of success and amazing projects to show. They will continue to be on my list of filmmakers to look out for.

Take Shelter is a simple story with complex implications and a final act that floored me completely. There were several times I was moved to tears, and by the end there was nothing I could do to hold them back. Take Shelter should be on everyone’s list of films to watch that they have never heard of. I’ll be compiling my list of top films for 2011, and Take Shelter will be on it. See it as soon as you can.

 

Final rating: 9.6/10

Jacob’s March 7th selection – Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)

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Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1302011/

Director: Jennifer Yuh

Staring: Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogan, Lucy Liu, David Cross, Dustin Hoffman, Gary Oldman, James Hong, Michelle Yeoh, Danny McBride, with David Haysbert, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Victor Garber

Po (Black) and company are back! He and the Furious Five (Jolie, Chan, Liu, Rogan, Cross) are doing their job well keep in the peace in the Valley of….. errr, Valley of Peace…. Ironic, I know. When they hear of the psychotic Lord Shen (Oldman) is threatening all the lands with a weapon that he’s claiming will be the end of Kung Fu. Master Shifu begins to teach Po an advanced technique which he calls “inner peace” when Po and the Furious Five are called back into action. In an engagement with Shen’s cronies, Po has a vision of his past which knocks him flat, metaphorically, which then almost gets him killed, literally. As Po and Co. partake in a journey toward Gongman City to stop Lord Shen, Po will face his past and reevaluate his present to find out who he is and what he wants for his future, and the future of Kung Fu.

Like most sequels, there is a lot going on, but it’s more of a spoiler to tell you about them, which is something I am working on trying not to do. Kung Fu Panda was a great film that had a great moral message about not limiting yourself and striving to be what you want to be and that true worth comes from within. It was great for kids and a lot of fun for us grown up kids. Kung Fu Panda 2 is NOT great for kids, it grew up a little with its audience, and because of that has a lot more big kid/adult themes in it. Emma couldn’t handle it, she cried a lot, and Heather eventually sent her out of the room to play with her toys to feel better (Granted, yes, Emma REALLY gets into movies, but still). I wasn’t around when this happened (Stupid job) but when I got around to watching it I completely understood why. The movie is actually pretty dark. I mean, the villain is voiced by Gary Oldman, and the character of Lord Shen was animated in a way that he kind of WAS Oldman, it was truly creepy. In a good way, as Oldman plays an AMAZING villain.

In fact, the Kung Fu Panda movies have voice acting work on par with Pixar in being both amazing and completely unexpected and pretty random. On one hand, you have Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu, and Angelina Jolie as Kung Fu Masters, but on the other hand you have Jack Black, Seth Rogan, and David Cross as Kung Fu Masters. All of them are great voice actors, it is just odd to think of the actors that play them fighting in Kung Fu. Added to this film (besides Oldman) are the amazing talents of Michelle Yeoh and Danny McBride, adding a layer to both sides of the believability of the voice actors being able to do anything related to Kung Fu. Dustin Hoffman is back, but in much limited screen time.

Everyone on the crew for the first one came back for the KFP2, which is always very important, in my opinion, for a successful sequel. You have the same feel in the direction of the film, the same writers that know the characters intimately, being they are the ones that created them and wrote their life stories in the first film, giving them the chance to expand upon ideas that they may have had for the characters, or ones they thought up that would complement the first film. Visually everything looks and feel the same, as the same people are the ones creating existing as well as new locations.

Animation, acting, both new and old, direction, writing, all of it is as solid and amazing as the first one was. I wouldn’t say it is better than the first, as few films can ever be, but it is a worthy successor and a really good film in its own right with another great moral message. You may want to save it for your kids that a bit older though, seriously, it is pretty dark.

Final rating: 8.7/10