Talking with Atticus Ross of LOVE & MERCY, GONE GIRL, SOCIAL NETWORK

June 11, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Interviews Tagged Atticus Ross, Composers, David Fincher, Interviews, Love & Mercy, SIFF 2015 Leave a comment

There are few composers who intrigue me enough to want to pursue an interview: John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Alexandre Desplat. Atticus Ross. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Ross lends his talent out sparsely – completing just a pair of film scores each year while his peers often churn out four to seven. He earned his name alongside Nine Inch Nails band leader Trent Reznor scoring David Fincher‘s The Social Network, a game-changing composition that went on to Academy Award acclaim. Since then, Ross has joined each of Fincher’s projects working alongside Reznor to provide dark, harrowing musical compositions to underscore Fincher’s devilish palette. Read More

10 Best Movies of 2015 So Far

June 11, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists Tagged Ex Machina, Inside Out, Lamb, Mad Max: Fury Road, The End of the Tour, The Look of Silence, The Overnight, The Witch, Trainwreck, Wild Tales Leave a comment

For the casual film-goer, 2015 has started off on relative slow footing. Dumping ground months January and February held few critical or commercial surprise hits – outside of one release featured on this rundown – with anything of worth reserved for festival-going audiences. Barring the outrageous international money-vacuum that is Furious 7, Summer 2015 has proved a touch disappointing with expected giants such as Avengers: Age of Ultron landing softer than anticipation (while still claiming the second biggest opening weekend ever) and big franchise resets like Terminator: Genisys and Jurassic World waiting in the wings with big question marks (and budgets) hanging over their heads. Read More

Out in Theaters: JURASSIC WORLD

June 10, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters 2 Comments

Jurassic Park has holds on my pubescent nostalgia that few other films can claim. And though I found myself enrapt with Lost World, eating burgers and chocolate shakes at a “dinner and a movie” joint with my dad (who was frankly all too shaken by the velociraptor attacks), let’s not kid ourselves into believing that the two ensuing follow-ups were in the least bit satisfactory. (Perfunctory seems the apt nomenclature there.) If the 1993 original is a perfect marriage of family friendly adventure and spotless behind-the-scenes work, 2015’s Jurassic World is a suitably bigger, louder, dumber, toothier offspring. So basically, it’s been 2015’ed.

Out in Theaters: ENTOURAGE

June 2, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Leave a comment

There is very little worth to Entourage – the hit HBO series turned film. In it, Doug Ellin, creator and showrunner, turns a television show whose narrative lifeblood was the male fantasy embodied into an improbably thin movie whose narrative lifeblood is the male fantasy embodied. Impossibly attractive denuded models. Prompt coital embraces sans “the strings”. Hits of designer drugs with no comedowns. Tequila shots that don’t leave you with blinding hangovers and bloody stool. You can basically hear producer Mark Wahlberg spitting in your face, “What, like this isn’t what you dream about bro?!” Read More

SIFF 2015 Capsule Reviews: UNEXPECTED, H., CUB, CIRCLE, BLIND

May 28, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Blind, Circle, Cub, H., SIFF 2015, Unexpected Leave a comment

As in year’s past, the time for the infamous SIFF capsule review has come. Though this year has been notable slower than last – in which I took in 40 films for SIFF’s 40th Anniversary – the slate of films has generally been stronger – likely due to my more selective palette this year. As is protocol, these brief reviews must only span 75 words. For those liking their review with a heavy dose of brevity, this is your goldmine. Be sure to check www.siff.net to find showings of those must-see movies and be sure to drop me a line on any of your favorites. For now though, let us review.

UNEXPECTED

U.S.A., d. Kris Swanberg

Unexpected, a title that applies to the central character’s pregnancy just as much as her friendship that develops with her young, underprivileged student, is a social think piece that couches racial issues in with ultrasounds and baby showers. Cobie Smulders whittles a human character – based largely on writer/director Kris Swanberg – that rings emotional bells even if the film somewhat fails to truly subvert the white savior platitudes its trying so hard to turn on its belly. (C)

H.

U.S.A., d. Rania Attieh, Daniel Garcia

A city descends into confusion and ultimately madness when a meteor strikes (or does it?) Two Helens of Troy (Troy, New York that is) each dealing with “motherhood”, succumb to the influence this meteor’s coming holds over their town. Those with a taste for Damon Lindelof‘s “The Leftovers” will find a similar platter of unsettling mystical design – with discomforting visual cues, invasive musical stylings, and a mysterious black horse – but H. also pays homage to the work of David Lynch and Lars von Trier, making it an easy recommendation for fans of surrealist cinema. (B)

CUB

Belgium, d. Jonas Govaerts

A troop of eager cub scouts embark to a haunted wood where they find bobby traps and a feral kid in an antler mask waiting to turn their wooded stay into a gory holiday. The requisite kills are satisfyingly outweighed by a brutal character metamorphosis that takes its sweet time to unfold. Housed in an all-encompassing fog of darkness, a fair measure of bleak masochism pairs with the film’s Biblical cynicism, making Cub a cross between Hostel and The Boy, a downtrodden shocker sure to whet the appetite of horror fan’s blackest tastes. (B-)

CIRCLE

U.S.A., d. Aaron Hann, Mario Miscione

Once you get past the rather obtuse sci-fi-cum-psycoliogical-thriller setup in which a round-robin of people vote for who’s to die next, Circle has some half-decent philosophical positioning to offer. It attempts to be a sci-fi offshoot of 12 Angry Men in breaking down prejudices in a one location environ made lively by votes, alliances and paranoia per a good “Survivor” season and matched with a suspect robotic Russian Roulette MacGuffin. The script can be decent enough but is undone by an abundance of telegraphed overacting, fool-hardy plot resolutions and an underwhelming head-scratcher of an ending. (C-)

BLIND

Norway, d. Eskil Vogt

A wonder of a film that could only exist outside the confines of American cinema, Blind is this year’s Borgman; a deliciously hypnagogic venture into twisted fantasies and sexual figments. Blind plays out the story of Ingrid, played beautifully by the near-albino Ellen Dorrit Petersen, a woman who’s imagination paves the way for an invented affair narrative that we’re never meant to take literally. Rather, Blind‘s esoteric playful fiddling with reality is what makes it so strangely awe-inspiring. A must see. (B+)

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Out in Theaters: ALOHA

May 28, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Alec Baldwin, Aloha, Bradley Cooper, Cameron Crowe, Danny McBride, Emma Stone, John Krasinski, Out in Theaters, Rachel McAdams, Reviews Leave a comment

Cameron Crowe‘s Aloha is one hot saccharine sweet mess; a jumbled collage of love connections, island spirituality and fluffy, flawed emotional beauty that gave me all the feels, despite its occasionally glaring issues. It’s one of those features where one could curmudgeonly sit around and pick apart at its thatch of problems like a hot-breathed seamstress but you’d ultimately be missing the point. Aloha isn’t guided by substantive reality so much as by a dramaturgical sense of magical realism. Mixed in with the hopeful lyricism of the greatest rom-com ballads and imbued with a dulled barb of cynicism, Aloha is a visceral, passionate triumph even in the bright light of its freewheeling, sometimes nonsensical spirit. Read More

Out in Theaters: POLTERGEIST

May 22, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Gil Kenan, Jane Adams, Jared Harris, Kennedi Clements, Out in Theaters, Poltergeist, Reviews, Rosemarie DeWitt, Sam Raimi, Sam Rockwell 2 Comments

When a film foregoes the press screening circuit, only to play for a slim number of us amidst a general public promo screening just two hours before it opens its doors to the rest of the movie-going community, you enter with an expectation of a product hauntingly bad. Take Hercules for example, which screened under similar circumstances last year before landing at number five on my worst movies of the year segment. Just one month later, As Above/So Below (which was also largely critically derided) proved this model wrong by delivering an edgy horror throwback that I simply adored. Again at the Thursday night 6 o’clock showing. So going into Poltergeist, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, and with low critical ratings – as of writing this, it stands at a 39% on Rotten Tomatoes and 48 on Metacritic – the writing was on the wall, thusly establishing the low expectations that allowed me to sit back and let this somewhat cruise-controlled remake take me on an enjoyable – if not great – horror thrill ride. Read More

Out in Theaters: GOOD KILL

May 22, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Andrew Niccol, Bruce Greenwood, Ethan Hawke, Good Kill, January Jones, Out in Theaters, Reviews Leave a comment

Andrew Niccol, director of good films like Gattaca and god-awful ones like The Host (2013), puts us in the shoes of the “enemy” throughout Good Kill. By hoisting his camera skywards to capture aerial views of a deserty Americana suburban sprawl, he draws aesthetic parallels to the dusty spread of Middle Eastern hovels his characters are occupied bombing and blasting. By directing our attention to these blatant visual comparisons between the slates of inconspicuous Vegas neighborhoods and the tactical POV of high-flying drones drifting above unsuspected, Niccol’s invades our sense of docility, in a somewhat subtle attempt to plant us in harm’s way and daring to jolt us into action and ultimately caring.

In this capacity, his film is a quiet triumph. So too is Ethan Hawke’s low-broiling performance as a war pilot grounded for reasons unknown and forced to instead pilot drones from an air-conditioned cubicle like a pimply teenager with a rumblepack joystick. His reticent desperation unfurls two-fold: at work with prodding pleas to his commanding officer (Bruce Greenwood) to be return to a real fighter jet and at home where his day job (worked during the graveyard shift) of “engaging hostiles” stands in sharp contract to swilling PBR and grilling porterhouses on a Kenmore 4 top.

The film capitalizes on this brand of muted shock-value; the cold, hard cavalier nature of these drone strikes prove as gut-churning as the unsettlingly high number of strikes each pilot is asked to carry out daily; but it sometimes leaves the blood wanting more stirring. Quite simply: strong visual cues, performances served with gusto and a solid moral foundation do not a perpetually enjoyable movie make.

Niccol’s charge to churn the position of drone pilot into a harrowing, supremely unenviable position is an uphill battle but one he engages full-throttle. On the one hand, these drone pilots are perceived as militant sissies, sitting out the real battles where honor is won and lives are risked. Though Hawke’s Major Thomas Egan finds his post undesirable, it’s not for lack of action. In fact, these drone pilots appear to engage the enemy continuously. How the kill count statistics for actual pilots versus drone pilots break down I don’t know but Good Kill would lead us to believe that the drone pilots trigger finger is nothing short of a biblical harbinger of death, ten thousand miles away. They collect belt notches by the dozen and then zip off to another strike point. All on one tank of gas.

This gets us into post-traumatic stress, which Egan is forced to content with throughout the picture. His PTSD is exacerbated when the CIA take charge of their command post to execute undocumented tactical strikes that put innocent women and children into the crosshairs and don’t hesitate to issue a kill order. In all senses, the disembodied talking heads painstakingly demand the loss of civilian life. Over and over again. Cue Die Antwoord; “Kill, kill, kill!” Niccol’s is unflinching in his portrait of government intelligence indifference, painting the faceless American commanders as nothing short of bloodthirsty war pigs. At times his irreverence to US command structure seems over-the-top but taken in the context of Rick Rowley’s Dirty Wars, his excess seems hardly exaggerated, rather it’s an illuminating necessary evil.

Taking us into these dark shadows, Niccol’s attempts to parse right from wrong with almost too much force, leaving very little grey in between. The sad truth of the matter is that the Middle East is a palette of greys and his ethical absolutism can come across a touch obtuse. Similarly, Egan’s home life rubs against a thing of caricature and though Hawke dedicates himself to his character’s crumbling, the alcoholism and self-destructive tendencies are cinematic redundancies of the cliched war-battered men returning home from battle. Had Hawke had a better counterpoint to bounce off of than January Jones – who always underwhelms – his frustration and eagerness to desert his family might have held a more palpable bite. As it stands, her nagging is just that and without the requisite depth to really spearhead our undivided investment in their familial struggles. When the end comes around the corner, our character makes a decision completely outside the realm of expectation and it falls short exactly because of our detachment from the nuclear unit that is Hawke & Jones.

Ultimately, Niccol’s has made a film that probes cinematic rocks previously left unturned and does so in fairly compelling manner. Most of the time. He unearths the occasional scene dripping with tension but also allows a sluggish breeze of non-movement to creep in now and again. If only he knew, the film thrives in the quietest of moments; when Egan questions why they still wear flight suits; when his drone block smokes cigarettes and hold dopey Ooh Rah philosophy seminars. Niccol’s effort is commendable – as is his longing to make a war drama that’s both timely and brimming with cause – but the bits and bops don’t always come together smoothly, a pang of shortcoming felt especially in the big dramatic family moments.

C+

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Out in Theaters: TOMORROWLAND

May 20, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Brad Bird, Britt Robertson, Damon Lindelof, George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Out in Theaters, Raffey Cassidy, Reviews, Tomorrowland 2 Comments

Damon Lindelof is a dreamer. He cut his teeth writing cheap cop shows and second-tier medical dramas before embarking on the project that would define his career: Lost, network television’s most ambitious serial to ever exist. Though many jumped ship as later seasons got ballsier and whackier, those willing to afford Lindelof and Co. credit found a breed of nerdy, emotionally-driven internal logic just able to justify a spare polar bear here and there. Its raw sentimental baggage overtook the logical bumps in the road. Pathos trumped logos. Converting that distinctly Lindelof style to feature film has proved problematic. This is Lindelof’s flaw and why Tomorrowland fails: we don’t care nearly enough about the characters present to overlook the glaring litany of internal logic issues growing throughout the film like its many glimmering wheat fields. In short, the movie is very, very dumb. Read More

Weekly Review 79: MAUDE, MOTHER, MONTAGE, PITCH, FED

May 18, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Weekly Review Tagged Fed Up, Harold and Maude, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, Mother, Pitch Perfect, Reviews, Weekly Review Leave a comment

Weekly Review is a place where I, your Silver Screen Riot editor in chief Matt Oakes, recap the week, providing a coverage overview of the past 7 days as well as shorter review segments on previously releases films or new releases I caught at home (usually by studio-distributed screeners).

It’s been a minute since our last visit, time well spent in New York City and the Seattle sunshine. Although summer is officially underway here, so too is the Seattle International Film Festival. And though I’ve ratcheted down my attendance from year’s past, I’ve still spent plenty a shiny afternoon in a dark theater or pinky-extended hotel room talking to directors, actors and even a (*gasp*) composer. SIFF being what it is, I’m sitting on reviews of Love & Mercy, Me, Earl and the Dying Girl, Unexpected, Mr. Holmes and the excellent demon horror The Hallow.

In wide release, I took down the supremely received Mad Max: Fury Road – I’ll direct you to Chris’ review for full thoughts on the matter – in addition to the surprisingly gleeful Pitch Perfect 2. At home, I’ve still made time to catch up with the original Mad Max trilogy – which I podcasted about over at InSession Film – swallow some Bong Joon-ho for Mother’s Day and feed my mind with a pair of documentaries. All this installment and more on Weekly Review.

HAROLD AND MAUDE (1971)

The birds and the bees dispatch from a thicket of old lady hair in this classic emo-rock, counter-culture cult classic. Harold – a depressive teen with an overbearing and yet frightfully distant maternal figure – dreams up inventive ways to feign suicide until he encounters a car-jackin’, booze-swillin’ inconspicuous grandma with no reservations and no speed limits. I’ve a fondness for Harold and Maude curated by years of frequent revisits and though delightful and insightful, it does pale in comparison to contemporary cumming-of-age tale The Graduate. Not that one ought to compare the two necessarily but for some reason I can just never help it. Cat Stevens soundtrack is unabashedly perfect though. (B+)

MOTHER (2009)

Bong Joon-ho’s fourth feature is predictably excellent, layered with energy and mystery and filled with a type of genre-defying narrative looseness that allows it to go just about anywhere at any time and exist as so many things at once. Mother tells the tale of a mom’s desperate search to redeem her slow-witted son who’s been framed for a murder she’s convinced he didn’t commit. Like Joon-ho’s earlier Memories of Murder, the film depicts the two sides of South Korean law as one and the same. The police force is dubious at best and, more likely than naught, riddled with corruption. Familiarity with his earlier work casts Mother in even more vivid, surrealistically satirical light, regardless of how humorless its core intentions remain. And this is Joon-ho’s greatest asset – he doesn’t force himself to choose one side or the other. He can have his great black comedy alongside cripplingly potent dramatic movements. From a distance, his filmography looks divided between crime sagas and genre films but for those actually looking, his chief concern remains human partaking in the inhumane and Mother is a damn fine example of that. And it has one of the best endings to a movie since Darren Aronofsky‘s Pi. (A-)

PITCH PERFECT (2012)

A cheery, pitchy retelling of that ever-recylced high school underdog story, Pitch Perfect imagines a world in which listening to acapella isn’t tantamount to torture. A punky Anna Kendrick plays a reclusive wanna-be DJ who joins up with the spunky Bellas, who’ve recently fallen from their high horse via a public puking incident. When the comedy works, it tends to be side-splitting – particularly when Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins are firing off their verbal guns – casting a growing, glowing cloud over the admittedly dumb trappings of what should be such a cliched slice of cinema. An impromptu sing-off battle just needs a spoonful of sardonic commentary to make the medicine go down smoothly and Pitch Perfect finds a good mix of the two in its formula. It’s not mixed by a perfect chemist, but Jason Moore does well enough. (B-)

KURT COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK (2015)

I’ll give credit to filmmaker Brett Morgen for defying expectation with Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck. Rather than dish the cold hards on Cobain’s dour rise to stardom, he points his camera into the man’s interworking by showcasing his unrestricted access to Cobain’s personal journal entries, pieces of artwork and stunningly animated accounts of Kurt’s young life. The result is about as unsettling and tragic as one would imagine – with xylophone covers of Nirvana tracks adding further laters to the haunting atmosphere – and features a trove of previously unreleased home video footage that will be sure to make the hardest of fans squeal. All evidence points to a man teetering on a dangerous edge for his whole life, primed for the white light with both barrels cocked. And though Morgen offers up the broad strokes of Kurt’s hellish plot through life, I’m not sure that doodles and scribblings really help me understand who the man inside the music actually is. And for that, I left feeling a little unfulfilled. Especially when the asking price is over two hours. (C+)

FED UP (2014)

As I posted on Twitter after viewing, Fed Up ought to be required viewing for all Americans who eat food. Find yourself included in that group? Then yes, this includes you. Almost more importantly, this is a documentary that should be force fed to politicians, in addition to school principals. Targeting the obesity epidemic in our country (and, to lesser degree, around the world) Fed Up (which can also be interpreted as F-ed Up) tells the story of how our food became, well, “food” and how our declining health has gone hand-in-hand with this government-approved transformation. Fed Up provides disturbing data points as well as heartbreaking testimonials from real live chubby kids, posing the question, “If a foreign party were targeting our children and profiteering off their declining health, wouldn’t we declare war on them?” And yet, we allow the food industry to wage war on children through distressingly ubiquitous ad campaigns paired with their addictive, misleading products. The doc is eye-opening and haunting but still provides feasible solutions that we as a nation should, and must, strive for. It’s available on Netflix and should be shared aggressively. (A)

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