Kodachrome

Kodachrome (2018)

Starring Ed Harris, Jason Sudeikis, Elizabeth Olsen, Bruce Greenwood, Wendy Crewson, and Dennis Haysbert

Directed by Mark Raso

Written by Jonathan Tropper

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: B

Movie Review - Captain America: Civil War

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

Starring Chris Evans, Robert Downey, Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Renner, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Rudd, Emily VanCamp, Tom Holland, Daniel Brühl, William Hurt, Martin Freeman, John Slattery, Alfre Woodard, and Marisa Tomei

Directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo

The casts of these Marvel movies just keep growing -- I can't tag nearly all of those famous people in the labels attached to this review -- but the films following the Avengers team saga keep getting better so I approve of the multiplying ensemble.  Captain America: Civil War certainly has its epic action sequences, but it's the Marvel movie that feels the most grounded in reality -- of course, it's a reality filled with flying, shrinking, web-slinging, and energy manipulating superheroes, but it's the most realistic Marvel depiction of these folks yet.  Without aliens desiring to wreak havoc or supervillains intent on literally raising cities off of the Earth, Captain America: Civil War pits Iron Man Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Captain America Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) against one another as they try to determine the Avengers' place in the world.

Building off the events of The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Civil War asks the question as to whether the Avengers do more harm than good.  Following the devastating damage the Avengers helped to cause when taking down Ultron who was intent on destroying Sokovia, worldwide agencies want to make the Avengers answer to a governing body in an attempt to keep them from simply running rampant across the world.  Sure they do good, but the Avengers are also reckless at times.  Tony Stark is amenable to this treatise, but Steve Rogers feels that it will severely inhibit the Avengers' ability to fight evil.  Our superheroes -- Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Falcon (Anthony Mackie), War Machine (Don Cheadle), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), and the newest member Spider-Man (Tom Holland) -- take sides, all while Captain America tries to figure out if his former buddy Bucky Barnes AKA the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) is responsible for an attack on the United Nations-esque body that is responsible for instituting the Sokovia Accords.

For me -- someone who isn't a huge comic book movie fan, despite having seen all of the new era of Marvel films -- the biggest reason for the success of Captain America: Civil War (which isn't really a Captain America movie so much as another Avengers picture) is that the villains here aren't foreign entities like superhuman computers or outer space creatures, but based in reality.  Add to that, the tension that arises within the Avengers group themselves is surprisingly palpable and dramatically effective.  Plus, in typical Marvel fashion, the film knows when to lighten things up, creating nice pops of humor when the heavier story desperately needs it.  The Russo Brothers who did a great job with Captain America: Winter Soldier do an even better job here and I look forward to what they can bring to the oftentimes over-bloated Avengers films.

The character of Captain America is one that didn't start out successful for me in the slightest.  In fact, the original Captain America film is one of my least favorites in the Marvel canon.  However, as the character of Steve Rogers has grown and developed, he's become compelling and captivating.  Placing him front and center here in a battle against some of his former allies creates what I think is the best Marvel film to date.

The RyMickey Rating:  B+

Movie Review - Avengers: Age of Ultron

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Starring Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Cobie Smulders, Anthony Mackie, Don Cheadle, Samuel L. Jackson, and James Spader

Directed by Joss Whedon

Back in 2012, everyone fell head over heels for The Avengers -- everyone except for me, that is.  I didn't dislike the film as my C+ review attests, but I found it overblown and a bit underwhelming with the action sequences working, but many of the dialog and character-driven moments disappointing.  Oddly enough, Avengers: Age of Ultron has just the opposite problem with its character-based scenes working surprisingly well and its action aspects sorely lacking.  Considering both films were written and directed by Joss Whedon, the contrasting differences are a bit startling and, as the rating below will attest, end up being about equal in terms of how I felt overall about the flick.

Once again, our Avenger crew bands together to fight something gigantically evil.  Rather than aliens, though, this time it's a form of advanced artificial intelligence that Iron Man Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr) created in secret in order to try and assist should the world face another huge attack as occurred during the first film.  After a bit of a tête-á-tête about the necessity of AI to help, Tony, Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) head out to find Ultron (James Spader), the AI that has created a robot body for himself and set out to destroy humanity with the help of two Russian twins Pietro and Wanda Maximoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen) who want to bring down the Avengers due to an incident from their childhood caused by one of our fearless fighting crew that changed their lives forever.

Story-wise, I think the film is actually more successful than its predecessor.  I enjoyed the camaraderie between the heroic crew which I felt was sorely lacking in the first film as well as the deviousness of Ultron and the twins.  Knowing nothing about the comics upon which the films are based, Ultron was deliciously snide and humorously villainous.  Perhaps that isn't his demeanor in the comics, but on film, Spader voiced the character with such over-the-top charisma that I couldn't help but long for the character to appear again to liven things up.  Plus, I think it helped things that Ultron's villainous intentions stemmed from the chaos inflicted in the first film.

Unfortunately, the film's action set pieces just didn't work for me.  During the opening scene which includes slow motion AND seemingly sped up moments, I found myself vehemently annoyed, feeling as if I were watching a poorly conceived video game as opposed to a movie.  Fortunately, things got a little better after that, but I still went through the whole movie thinking that the action sequences felt less integral to the plot than nearly any other Marvel flick and were put into place simply because "we need an action scene now."  Whereas Whedon seemingly had control of these moments in the first Avengers, he disappointed here.

Overall, though, Avengers: Age of Ultron works.  The flick is briskly paced and despite disliking the more "intense" moments, I never found them overblown or overlong.  The interplay between the core group of Avengers is growing more natural and I'm oddly looking forward to what the Marvel Universe has in store for these characters.

The RyMickey Rating:  C+

Movie Review - In Secret

In Secret (2014)

Starring Elizabeth Olsen, Oscar Isaac, Tom Felton, and Jessica Lange

Directed by Charlie Stratton

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

We have a tendency to think that just because something was written centuries ago, there's an inherent heft and gravity to it.  Émile Zola's 1867 novel Thérèse Raquin is the basis for first-time director Charlie Stratton's In Secret and if the film is any indication, the book Thérèse Raquin could very well be the basis for modern-day soap operas seeing as how cinematically this is melodramatic to the nth degree.

Elizabeth Olsen is Thérèse who as a young girl was sent to live with her aunt Madame Raquin (Jessica Lange) and her sickly son Camille (Tom Felton as an adult).  As Thérèse and Camille age, it soon becomes a given in the Raquin household that the two cousins will marry and start a life together in Paris.  They do just that despite hesitation from Thérèse who feels no semblance of love emanating for or from Camille.  Failing to be sexually appeased by her husband, Thérèse finds herself being drawn to artist Laurent (Oscar Isaac) who frequents the Raquin household for weekly card games.  Their lustiness-at-first-sight for each other fuels a passionate forbidden love affair between Thérèse and Laurent and leads them down a path strewn with tragic consequences.

Skipping over the fact that the story itself is extravagantly hammy and histrionic, director Stratton (who also wrote the screenplay) fails to create complex characters with any modicum of depth.  Considering the chaotic feelings Thérèse and Laurent are experiencing, one would have expected some passion and driving force behind their actions, but their love (or lust?) happens too quickly to create the needed character study for their roles.  These two lovers (and the actors who portray them) are simply going through the emotional motions needed to get themselves to the next plot point.  There's no slow build or momentum and it frankly ruins the piece considering the deplorable depths to which Thérèse and Laurent stoop to continue their relationship.

It certainly doesn't help matters that in the film's second half the character of Laurent makes a complete 180-degree turn from where we in the audience have seen him heretofore.  His actions become inconsistent with his prior demeanor and his motivations become incoherent.  Oscar Isaac attempts to clue the audience in to his character's changes of heart, but we're oblivious to why things are moving in particular directions.  Similarly, Elizabeth Olsen has nothing to latch onto with Thérèse except for the character trait of horny housewife and that's simply not enough to carry a film that is trying to be more art-house than frat-boy comedy.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+

Movie Review - Oldboy

Oldboy (2013)

Starring Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Olsen, Sharlto Copley, Michael Imperioli, and Samuel L. Jackson

A Spike Lee Joint

***This film is currently steaming on Netflix**

Maybe it's just because I haven't seen the original, but I don't quite understand what all the uproar was about when Spike Lee's remake of the Japanese film Oldboy came out last year.  To me, Lee has produced a slick, exciting, well shot (though somewhat ludicrous plot-wise) revenge film that moves along at a rather rapid pace.  I found the piece quite effective in mood and tone with a strong leading performance by Josh Brolin.

It's 1993 and Joe Doucett (Brolin) is a sleazy alcoholic advertising executive who fails to give his wife and daughter child support on a recurring basis.  One evening, after a failed meeting with a client, Joe gets himself drunk to a point of unconsciousness while walking along the city streets.  When he awakens, he finds himself in a hotel room from which he cannot escape.  While imprisoned, he sees on tv that his wife has been murdered and that he is the prime suspect.  Despite his pleas, his captors never reveal their faces and keep him locked in the room for twenty years at which point he is inexplicably released back into the world.  His ordeal, however, is not over.  Once out, Joe receives a phone call from a mysterious man who tells him that he has three days to figure out why he was imprisoned or else his (now twenty-something) daughter will be killed.

Ultimately, Oldboy is saved by both Spike Lee's unique and refreshing swift direction and Brolin's compelling performance as a man who, despite his slimeball personality before, never deserved to be put into the horrifying predicament he was placed.  Beyond those two things, the plot of Oldboy revels in lunacy.  I won't even get into Sharlto Copley's over-the-top B-movie level villain and the absolutely insane reason behind imprisoning Joe for twenty years.  It's laughably bad -- and surprisingly uncomfortable to watch play out.  However, despite this pretty major plot point issue (and a few other rather disturbing storylines that I won't delve into for fear of ruining the film for you), I still found Oldboy to be a unique piece of American cinema that pleasantly surprised me.

The RyMickey Rating:  B-

Movie Review - Godzilla

Godzilla (2014)

Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olson, Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, and Juliette Binoche

Directed by Gareth Edwards

Perhaps being my most eagerly anticipated film of the summer (which looks incredibly weak overall movie-wise) did Godzilla in, but I found this reinvention of the classic Japanese monster movie a pretty big disappointment.  Part of me respects the fact that director Gareth Edwards and screenwriter Max Borenstein were ballsy enough to keep the title figure off the screen for all but (seemingly) ten minutes of the film, but the other part of me can't help but think they squandered away their money shots with the creature.

However, let's just say that I'm fine with Godzilla not being the film's focal point.  That notion would be totally true if the film's centerpiece -- the humans who are facing an epic battle between Godzilla and to Mothra-esque creatures -- had any modicum of interesting storyline to latch onto.  There's actually been much talk about Aaron Taylor-Johnson (whose US solider character is the lead) and his inability to emote properly, but I found that the script didn't give him a damn thing to do.  For a film that follows this guy around and tries to make us connect with him by giving him a plotline about returning home to his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) after visiting his crazy father (Bryan Cranston) in Japan, Taylor-Johnson is in this movie solely to react to the CGI-ness of the monsters rampaging around him.  Without being the impetus of a single plot point, I found myself detached too much from his character and the story.

In the film's opening act, we are given a bit of background which admittedly does a decent job about setting up how Godzilla and these two gigantic winged creatures he fights manifested themselves thanks to radiation in the 1950s.  This is essentially where the rest of the film's cast -- Cranston, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, and Juliette Binoche -- come into play.  Watanabe and Hawkins are here simply to elucidate the scientific goings-on, Binoche is essentially a walk-on cameo, and Cranston -- well, I'm warning you that I'm about to say something that Breaking Bad fans (myself being one of them) may find utterly sacrilegious -- overacts to a point of oddness.  Cranston's character is the first major player we meet in the film and at first, I actually thought Cranston was paying homage to the 1960s Godzilla films of yore.  However, as the film progressed, I realized that no one else was playing up the "corny factor" and that Cranston was just doing some schticky overly dramatic thing on his own accord.

If the fact that I've not talked about Godzilla much in this review seems a little odd that's because, as I already mentioned, Godzilla isn't in the flick all that much.  Once again, for me, this would've been a perfectly acceptable conceit had the humans in this story been given any type of emotional arc I could've looked to for some meatiness in terms of plot.  With that not being given to me, Godzilla ends up falling flat.

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - Martha Marcy May Marlene

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

Starring Elizabeth Olsen, John Hawkes, Sarah Paulson, and Hugh Dancy 

Directed by Sean Durkin

I was disappointed I missed this flick in theaters last year and the anticipation level had been building as the months passed, so I was happy to discover that Martha Marcy May Marlene did not let me down.  A great performance from Elizabeth Olsen in her first feature film role and a deft directorial hand from Sean Durkin lensing his own script (in his first time directing and screenwriting a feature film) come together to craft an eerie psychological drama that gives an intense look at the warped mind of a cult member.

Effortlessly jumping back and forth through time, Martha Marcy May Marlene is essentially two timelines in one -- the first allowing us to glimpse young twentysomething Martha's (Elizabeth Olsen) life in a farming commune/cult led by the mild-mannered though devastatingly twisted Patrick (John Hawkes).  Through the seemingly simplest of ways -- for example, changing Martha's name to Marcy May to give her a new identity away from her previous life -- Patrick is a frightening presence whose calm demeanor masks a sinister bastardization of religion.

In the opening scene of the film, we see Martha running away from the cult, and after she escapes she calls her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) who takes Martha back to her lakefront home she shares with her husband Ted (Hugh Dancy).  Making up timeline number two, we watch as Martha attempts to come to terms with the true hell she went through while with the cult all the while masking what really happened from her sister, the one person who truly loves her.  Unable to reveal the truth to where she has been for two years, Martha herself is unable to escape the indoctrination Patrick forced onto her and finds herself being constantly reminded of her past.

Looking back on the film, I'm impressed with the fact that this is a real deep psychological study of the victims of cults and Elizabeth Olsen does such a fantastic job as Martha that it's nearly impossible to think that this was her debut performance.  The last shot of the film (which in and of itself ends things on a killer note) showcases Olsen's talents -- a vulnerability that can effortlessly shift from hopefulness to dread with such believability.  Needless to say, I was really impressed by her turn here and look forward to seeing what she brings in the future.

Also rather amazingly is that this is Sean Durkin's first time both behind the camera and penning a feature-length screenplay.  His vision of jumping back and forth through time was perfect for the tale he wanted to tell and he did so in such a manner that never proved to be gimmicky or confusing.  Sure, there are times of disorientation, but that is ultimately one of the points Durkin is trying to get across -- Martha's life isn't going to be easy and clear-headed from here on out simply because she has escaped the horrors of the cult.  If anything, shifting back to a "normal" life may prove to be more difficult than she could have imagined.

There's definitely something special in Martha Marcy May Marlene...and the ending has me still thinking about it many hours later.  [I'd be more than happy to elaborate and/or discuss in the comments should anyone desire.]

The RyMickey Rating:  A-

Movie Review - Silent House

Silent House (2012)

Starring Elizabeth Olsen, Adam Trese, and Eric Sheffer Stevens

Directed by Chris Kentis and Laura Lau

Let's be honest -- if you've heard of Silent House, you're well aware of its reason for existence.  It's an 85-minute film shot in one single take...sort of.  More specifically, it's a film that appears to be shot in one take, but is in fact ten shots ranging from five to ten minutes each masterfully edited together to give the illusion of one continuous shot without any cutting.  In terms of technical achievement, directors Chris Kentis and Laura Lau have crafted a nifty looking film.  While not without its directional flaws -- certain "scares" at the start of the film are poorly realized and almost difficult to visually comprehend because they happen so quickly and oftentimes fall out of the single take's frame of vision -- Silent House is still a fun film school experience much like Hitchcock's Rope which utilized the same technique over half a century ago.  Unfortunately, the story takes a foolishly silly twist that fails the movie in the end.

Elizabeth Olsen is Sarah, a young woman who is helping to renovate her father's lakehouse. As the day wears on, Sarah finds herself hearing noises in the boarded up house only to discover that those sounds are courtesy of a home invader who seems intent on harming Sarah, her father (Adam Trese), and her uncle (Eric Sheffer Stevens).

Considering the technique used to create the film, a simple story fits the bill and Silent House definitely begins with a simplistic premise.  However, this remake of a early 2000 Uruguayan film piles on a rather unnecessary twist ending that ultimately disappointed me.  Admittedly, even before that, the film felt long at certain points -- I found myself checking the clock several times which is never a good thing, particularly in a film as short as this one.

But despite its problems, the film culls a nice performance from relative newcomer Elizabeth Olsen who is onscreen for close to the film's entirety.  Her character is a bit of an oddball at the film's onset, but Olsen won me over by managing to remain a presence I wanted to watch for 85 minutes.  She proves to be most effective in the moments the film allows her to be silent (a shot of which is provided in the poster above), generating a real sense of fear and tension in simple facial tics and eye-widening -- not an easy task and made even more difficult by the film's usage of long takes.

Still, while I'm an admirer of the technical achievements of the film (which, to also give it credit, I found it very impressive that I kind of forgot I was watching a one-take film about two-thirds of the way), the story just lacked "a reason for being."  Had it gotten rid of the twist ending, I can't help but think it would have been a more effective movie.  Not all horror films need to have a "Gotcha!" moment at the end and Silent House should have abided by that dictum.

The RyMickey Rating:  C