Before I Wake

Before I Wake (2017)

Starring Kate Bosworth, Thomas Jane, Jacob Tremblay, and Annabeth Gish

Directed by Mike Flanagan

Written by Mike Flanagan and Jeff Howard

***This film is currently streaming via Netflix***

Summary (in 500 words or less):  A couple (Kate Bosworth, Thomas Jane) coping with the death of their young son decide to become foster parents to a young boy (Jacob Tremblay) who has moved from family to family after some traumatic events have occurred in their homes.  They soon discover that the boy's dreams have a magical way of becoming reality...but his nightmares do as well...

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: C+

Movie Review - Still Alice

Still Alice (2014)

Starring Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, Kate Bosworth, and Kristen Stewart

Directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland

While I wouldn't necessarily call Julianne Moore's performance in Still Alice a tour de force, I must admit that due to her acting choices and the way she reads certain lines, she nearly made me tear up in certain scenes in this film about a fifty-something year-old woman who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's Disease.  While the film itself is "just fine," Moore does elevate things which is likely a reason she walked away with the Oscar for Best Actress this past year.  (It also certainly helped that the roles for women in films in 2014 were decidedly weak.)

While I could list a summary for you, quite frankly I've already written all you need to know about Still Alice in the opening paragraph.  Thanks to a relatively quick running time, the directing and screenwriting team of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland place the focus squarely on Alice (Moore), a linguistics professor who can't help but find irony in the fact that her education in language and communication is failing her personally now thanks to the incurable disease that is slowly deteriorating her mind.  With her three adult children and husband (Alec Baldwin) by her side, Alice must come to terms with the fact that her life will unfortunately never be the same.

While Moore is in every scene in the film, the moments that ring the most true for me were the ones in which she is discussing her disease with her family.  Baldwin as her husband and Kristen Stewart and Kate Bosworth as her daughters help to humanize things even more by reacting in a variety of believable ways to their wife/mother's diagnosis.  Without them to play off of, Moore wouldn't have shined nearly as bright as she does.

Still Alice certainly works as a movie and it doesn't particularly do anything wrong in any aspect, but don't go into this one expecting to be blown away because that won't happen.  This is a good film that I admittedly don't think can be any better than it is -- but it's simply good, not great.

The RyMickey Rating:  B

Movie Review - Homefront

Homefront (2013)

Starring Jason Statham, James Franco, Winona Ryder, Kate Bosworth, Rachelle Lefevre, and Izabella Vidovic

Directed by Gary Fleder

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

I have no idea why I wanted to see Homefront upon its release last Thanksgiving, but for some reason of another, the trailer looked like it was for a film that may have recognized its cheesiness and played it up to provide a laughably humorous over-the-top revenge flick.  That wasn't the case at all.

I should've known to stop as soon as "Written by Sylvester Stallone" came up on the screen, but I trudged on despite my better judgment.  Jason Statham plays one of his interchangeable tough guys here -- this time he's Phil Broker, a former undercover cop who moves to a new town after his cover is blown following a successful drug bust in Shreveport, Louisiana.  During that drug bust, the son of the ringleader of the gang Phil was infiltrating is killed, setting the story up for REVENGE.  Jump to a few years later and Phil's daughter Maddy (Izabella Vidovic) gets into a fight on the school playground with a classmate.  Because only uncivilized hicks live in down south, this classmate's mother is a drug-addicted basket case named Cassie (Kate Bosworth) who wants Phil to pay for Maddy's indiscretions.  Phil and Maddy end up apologizing and assuaging the situation, but not before Cassie tells her brother Morgan (James Franco) to teach Phil a lesson.  Morgan (AKA "Gator" -- because...of course his nickname is Gator) sneaks into Phil's house and discovers that he was a former undercover cop.  It just so happens that Gator's girlfriend Sheryl (Winona Ryder) was good friends with the leader of that aforementioned drug deal gone bad.  Gator and Sheryl see this as an opportunity to help their burgeoning crystal meth business -- they'll reveal Phil's location to the drug clan leader in exchange for having full distribution rights for their crystal meth for their locale.

Of course, Phil being played by Jason Statham lets you know right away that Gator and his clan aren't going to win out, but, with this being a commercial film I wouldn't really expect anything less.  However, I did expect James Franco's Gator to at least be a bit more maniacal and enjoyable to watch.  Instead, we get a rather straightforward performance from a role that simply screams for overacting.  Sure, Winona Ryder and Kate Bosworth pick up the slack in that department -- and I say that without any criticism at all seeing how their roles called for it -- but Franco could've done so much more.  Jason Statham is like he is in every movie -- perfectly reliable and capable, but he's not given anything above and beyond what we've seen from him before.  Perhaps the biggest surprise in the acting department comes from young Izabella Vidovic (who is listed in the film's credits as this being her first big screen role, but she'd already had a feature credit to her name so...).  Much like everyone else in the film, Vidovic isn't given much to do, but she definitely held her own amidst the more seasoned actors with whom she shares the screen.

Ultimately, the fault of the film comes down to the script and the direction.  Stallone's dialogue, story, and character development are pretty awful -- Maddy's teacher (Rachelle Lefevre) is introduced as a potential love interest for Phil in the film's first half and then never makes another appearance.  Why throw that into the mix if you're not going to do anything with it?  Of course, Stallone may very well have written something and director Gary Fleder may have left it on the cutting room floor.  I'd have almost let that slide if Fleder had upped the "corny" factor several notches.  This film was screaming out for a director who realized the absurd humor in the story and Fleder does not bring that aspect to the table.  Instead, Homefront is played straightforward which lets its flaws shine right through.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+

Movie Review - Black Rock

Black Rock (2013)

Starring Katie Aselton, Lake Bell, Kate Bosworth, Will Bouvier, Jay Paulson, and Anslem Richardson

Directed by Katie Aselton

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

Black Rock certainly doesn't reinvent the wheel when it comes to Deliverance-esque thrillers, but it definitely is head and shoulders above modern-day horror films.  Here, three childhood friends -- Abby, Lou, and Sarah (Katie Aselton, Lake Bell, and Kate Bosworth) -- reunite for a camping trip on a remote island off the coast of Maine.  While bonding (and fighting) on the island, three men (Will Bouvier, Jay Paulson, and Anslem Richardson) come upon the women's campsite.  After a nice, though slightly uncomfortable evening together, an unfortunate accident puts the three gals in danger, running for their lives and fighting for survival.

With an incredibly quick running time (under 80 minutes), I was quite surprised how much character development manages to be compressed into the flick by director Katie Aselton (who, as mentioned above, also stars in the film) and her screenwriter-husband Mark Duplass (who also has acted in things like Humpday and Safety Not Guaranteed).  Granted, some of these obligatory scenes of exposition prove to be a bit eye-rolling, but they also set up Abby, Lou, and Sarah as smarter-than-your-average damsels in distress.  Perhaps most interesting about Black Rock is that there's never really a moment where you say to yourself, "Why are these people doing that?  That's so stupid.  Only people in horror movies would do something like that."  We all know that feeling when we watch thrillers.  That "Don't Go Up the Stairs" kind of moment.  Black Rock has very few, if any, of those and for that it gets loads of credit in my book.

All three leads -- Ms. Bosworth, Ms. Bell, and Ms. Aselton -- more than hold their own and all are impressive in what I assume are their first "thriller" leads.  Being a lead actress in a thriller/horror movie isn't an easy thing.  You're forced to run a lot and have reaction shots with your eyes wide open while you're gasping for breath.  However, these three elevate these stereotypically stock roles into something a little more intelligent and a little more lively.

Is Black Rock going to necessarily give you anything you haven't seen before?  Not exactly.  However, if you're in the mood for a flick like this, it's one of the better ones of this genre I've seen in a long time.

The RyMickey Rating:  B

Movie Review - Straw Dogs

Straw Dogs (2011)

Starring James Marsden, Kate Bosworth, Alexander Skarsgård, and James Woods

Directed by Rod Lurie

When screenwriter David Sumner (James Marsden) and his actress wife Amy (Kate Bosworth) move back to her childhood hometown in Mississippi, they're hoping for some peace and quiet away from the Hollywood spotlight so David can work on his new screenplay.  The couple hire a group of hicks (and, yes, I'm using that word derogatively because like in every Hollywood movie, the Southerners here are all hicks that spit a lot and carry shotguns around with them) to fix up the roof of a rotting barn at their secluded house.  The workers, headed by Amy's former boyfriend Charlie (Alexander Skarsgård), look like trouble from the get-go -- so much so that the thought that a smart guy like David would hire these guys is completely irrational and ruins the movie's plausibility right in the opening act -- and the group proves to be a handful.  Needless to say, Straw Dogs (and the original 1971 movie upon which this remake is based) is touted for both its violence and its message that even a civilized man can resort to heinous acts to save the ones he loves, but that isn't nearly enough to recommend this flick.

The problem is that beyond that overly violent final act, Straw Dogs has nothing going for it.  It's built upon a premise that's simply unbelievable -- David is a smart guy (he plays chess so we know that's the case) and yet he hires this grungy looking group to fix his house.  The movie tries to play it up that he was just trying to be nice to some hometown guys, but as soon as he hires this construction crew, all realism went out the window for me.  And, if I'm being completely honest (and this may make me sound awful), I wanted the violence to come into play a whole lot sooner than it actually did.  There's a particularly heinous act that happens about halfway through the movie that should have precipitated the ending to come a lot sooner, but the film just lingers around for nearly an hour more.

James Marsden and Kate Bosworth are fine, but I found their relationship to be rather odd and off-putting and I don't think that was supposed to be the point.  Alexander Skarsgård is kinda creepy, but he's certainly not bringing anything new to the table.  And the less said about the overacting James Woods whose character precipitates the third act's violence the better.

But at least this flick gave me a better appreciation for using bear traps as a means of enacting revenge on your worst enemy.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+