DVD Review: 10 Cloverfield Lane

Would you believe it?

Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has just left her fiance and while driving away from the city she's run off the road. She wakes up in an underground bunker with Howard (John Goodman) who tells her there was an attack on Earth and radiation poisoning is in the air. There's also Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.) in the bunker with them. He helped Howard build this before everything went down. Michelle becomes increasingly uneasy with Howard, even though she sees proof that he's not lying about what's happening outside. She and Emmett start plotting an escape. 

I never planned on seeing this, but when early reviews came in, they were good. They also mentioned to go in as unspoiled as you could, so that's what I did. I've maybe read two reviews in full about this film. I skimmed the rest and went straight to the ratings to help form my opinion, and I'm glad I did. This film was great not knowing a lot about it. It really doesn't have anything to do with first Cloverfield at all. I'm assuming they're happening simultaneously. 

Winstead is great, she always is. Michelle is a quick thinker and her bullshit meter rightfully goes off the charts. I love seeing Gallagher Jr in this type of role. I loved him in The Newsroom and he's fantastic here as well. Goodman is perfectly creepy. I feel like I've been watching him play the same character over and over recently, but the same cannot be said for this film.

It's nice to be surprised by something like this. I'm glad I watched it.

Recommended: Yes

Grade: B+

Memorable Quote: "Howard has a black belt in conspiracy theory." - Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.)

Mini Rambling Reviews

Here's a few movies I watched recently that I didn't post full reviews of for one reason or another. (Yes, I know I should've done a full one for Finding Dory as I loved it so much)


Everest

I had no intentions of seeing this in theaters, but it's on HBO now so my husband and I gave it a watch. It was decent. Nothing spectacular but it was suspenseful and I did find myself caring for the characters. I had read about the 1996 Everest tragedy prior, my husband hadn't, so he was surprised at the ones who perished where as I was ex pectin it.
Grade: C+

Summer Storm

I didn't finish this movie. I actually can't remember the last time I got a movie from Netflix and returned it without finishing. I just didn't buy this as a self discovery story. It's a German film about young men at a summer camp for rowing, and one of them realizes he has a crush on his best friend. Only the first few minutes of this story make it quite unbelievable as they act like a couple, including laying side by side and jerking off...for some reason. This one wasn't for me.
Grade: Quitter

Finding Dory

Did we need this sequel over 10 years after the original? Who the fuck cares, this was amazing. I loved this film. I'm not sure if it unseats Zootopia as my favorite animated film of the year yet, but it's close. The sea lions were my favorite part.
Grade: A-

The Brothers Grimsby

This film was very choppy. I felt like there was a lot they edited out of it. It had a few funny parts, but overall was a bit of a letdown. Though, I suppose if you're interested in seeing two men crawl into an Elephant's vagina, only for another elephant to initiate sex and ram it's massive dick into the two men inside AND finish all over them. This is for you. No seriously, that all happened.
Grade: D

Indie Gems: Wild Tales

When keeping it real goes wrong..

I'm sure I've used that title for my review before, but it applies so well to this series of vignettes about how people handle stressful situations.

Wild Tales gives us six unconnected stories; 

Pasternek - Passengers on a plane realize they all know Pasternek and question why they're all there.

The Rats - A waitress comes face to face with a man that ruined her family's life, and her cook suggests they put rat poison in his food.

Road to Hell - The most intense case of road rage I've ever seen. 

Bombita - A demolition engineer is really pissed off about getting a parking ticket. 

The Deal - A man in a rich family kills a pregnant woman in a hit and run, and his parents attempt to pay their gardener to admit to the crime.

Til Death Do Us Part - A bride finds out on her wedding day that her husband has been cheating on her.

Do you ever laugh at completely inappropriate things? That's the feeling I had during this film. Everything is so tragic but a few times you can't help but laugh at how absurd it is. It's probably one of the best dark comedies I've ever seen. Of course some of the shorts aren't as strong as the others. The Deal is at the bottom because it reminded me so much of that Affluenza douche that was in the news a few years back. Til Death Do Us Part, the most expansive of the shorts is my favorite because the bride (Erica Rivas) is a gem herself.

The film doesn't have many downsides, if anything some of the shorts, like The Rats end far too quickly, but it leaves us a lot to think about in a good way. 

Grade: A

Memorable Quote: "Sometimes I have to hurt a young man's self esteem to save the ears of millions." - Salgado (Darío Grandinetti)

Thursday Movie Picks: Movies Set in a Single Location

This week's theme from Wandering Through the Shelves is movies that are set in a single location. I'm kicking myself for using Moon already, that would've worked perfectly here. Movies like this always fascinate me when they work. Look at Phone Booth, that movie had no right to work, but somehow it did. Here are three of my favorite single location movies. 

1) Buried

The location: A Box, underground. It's terrifyingly claustrophobic and aside from Deadpool it's the best performance Ryan Reynolds has ever given.

2) 12 Angry Men

The location: A conference room. Watching this jury work out whether a men is guilty or not is one of my favorite things to happen in a classic film. I love this movie. 

3) Carnage

The location: a house. I almost hate admitting I like Roman Polanski movies, but I liked this one. I think it's largely forgotten too, despite having a wonderful cast and witty dialogue. 

Review: Maggie's Plan

Bossypants.

Maggie (Greta Gerwig) is a 30 something in New York who can't hold down a relationship, but decides she wants to have a child of her own as she's 100% capable of doing so. She finds a token interesting and good looking dude named Guy (Travis Fimmell) to be her sperm donor, but wants no relationship with him. By change she meets and older, married fellow teacher/wannabe author named John (Ethan Hawke) who she falls in love with after believing she can save him from his shrill wife, Georgette (Julianne Moore)

Look, it's hard not to like Greta Gerwig. She's like Zooey Deschanel was in the mid 2000's; the current indie darling. She's always likable and gives a good performance, but aside from that, nothing in this movie felt natural. Maggie and her friends all speak in platitudes, the dialogue was downright cringe worthy at times. It's also fairly predictable, and as we got closer towards the end, I realized that I didn't understand why Maggie would choose John at all. He had no redeeming qualities.

It tries hard to be a quirky indie drama but just ends up in stilted territory instead. While it has some plus sides, the script lets down the talented actors.

Recommended: No

Grade: C

Memorable Quote: "I want my own bubble." - Lily (Ida Rohatyn)

Review: Swiss Army Man

Maybe we're all pieces of shit.

Hank (Paul Dano) is stranded on an island somewhere in the north pacific. He's been there for a while, and just as he's about to hang himself, a farting corpse (Daniel Radcliffe) washes up on shore. Within minutes, Hank is riding this thing through the water like a jet ski in hopes that he will find civilization again.

This corpse eventually starts to speak to Hank, his name is Manny, and Hank finds himself explaining the meaning of life to him. Manny isn't just dead weight for Hank to carry around for company either. Aside from fart skiing, he turns into a water faucet for Hank to drink, his boner works as a compass, and he is eventually used to hunt small animals to. Manny is a Godsend, but the more he tries to remember about life, the harder it is for Hank to hit him with reality.

If you couldn't tell by my brief plot synopsis, this movie is fucking weird. The Lobster may have just been unseated in the bizarre movie of 2016 category. What it does do better is keep a coherent story. Swiss Army Man, under all those fart jokes is actually a very sweet commentary on finding love. 

Paul Dano as always is spectacular. He has great chemistry with Daniel Radcliffe. The characters are so different. Manny's child like view on life sets him up for most of the laughs, but it's Dano who has to carry the emotional weight. (And the sound track, most of it is mixes of him singing or humming tunes.) The set design is brilliant. Being lost in a forest should be very minimalistic, but they build some amazing props.

Recommended: Yes

Grade: B

Memorable quote: "If you don't know Jurassic Park, you don't know shit." - Hank (Paul Dano)

Indie Gems: When We Leave

Where's the honor in this?

Umay (Sibel Kekilli) lives in Turkey with her young son, Cem (Nizam Schiller) and her husband Kemal. (Ufuk Bayraktar) Kemal is abusive. He pushes Ulmay around, rapes her, and also hits their young son. Umay takes Cem back to her family in Germany for solace, but since she left her husband, she's "dishonoring" her family and they try to force her to go back. When she refuses, she creates even more tension. Especially when she wants nothing more to be surrounded by family.

Full disclosure, this movie is fucking devastating. I haven't felt this empty watching a film in a long time. It's good, it's very good. You can tell it didn't have a huge budget and was probably shot on a hand held camera, but the story is captivating. Umay really loves her family despite nearly every single one of them slapping her at one point in the film. I would've said "fuck it" and left about 15 minutes in, but Umay stays. She wants Cem to know her family.

Kekilli surprised me. I always thought she was the weakest link on Game of Thrones acting wise but she blew me away here. She's amazing. And Schiller is the most adorable little dude. You feel so bad for a child that small being caught up in all of this. 

It's hard to recommend a sad movie, but you're morbidly curious now, right? Maybe you just need a reason to cry something out?

Grade: B

Memorable Quote: "When we leave, it's important that you leave something behind." - Umay