Movie Review - Bird People

Bird People (2014)

Starring Josh Charles, Anaïs Demoustier, and Radha Mitchell

Directed by Pascale Ferran

***This films currently streaming on Netflix***

I'm not sure there has been a film that has aggravated me more in 2014 than Bird People.  I was willing to overlook the snail's pace, but when the film takes a wacky, unintelligible, and left-field twist seventy minutes in, I found myself feeling oddly taken advantage of with the equivalent of horrible prank being pulled on me.  Mind you, it's a prank that I'm sure is steeped in some wonky symbolism, but it's symbolism I didn't even come close to understanding and didn't even come close to caring about in the slightest.

To give you an idea of what kind of movie you're getting into, the first five minutes of the film is simply looking at people waiting to get on or on a subway, listening to ten second snippets of their conversations or going into their mind and "hearing" their thoughts.  The film then shifts to Gary (Josh Charles), a computer programmer who has flown to Paris on business.  After a business meeting, he returns to his hotel and attempts to go to sleep, but wakes up continuously throughout the evening suffering panic attacks.  This sets into motion of series of thoughts for Gary ending with the idea to quit his job, leave his wife and kids, and start a new fresh life in Paris seeing how his old life is causing him to be miserable and likely starting to literally kill him.

We're with Gary for about an hour and ten minutes and the slow pace is admittedly a bit torturous, but I was willing to give the film the benefit of the doubt, thinking that Gary's mid-life crisis may actually lead somewhere.  Unfortunately, I couldn't have been more wrong.  The film then abruptly switches to Audrey (Anaïs Demoustier), a maid at the same airport hotel Gary has been staying at for several days.  On Audrey's final room of her already long day, she goes up to a rooftop deck for a little fresh air when -- HUGE SPOILER ALERT (AND REASON FOR MY HATRED) --

she turns into a bird.  Yep.  No explanation given.  It just happens.  And she's a bird for the next fifty minutes as she flutters around, stopping in people's rooms at the hotel (but never Gary's!), following her co-workers home, and listening to conversations of strangers.  I don't understand the point.  I'm sure it has something to do with the mundaneness of everyday life, but I certainly didn't give a damn.

END OF SPOILERS

While there were other problems with the film beyond the twist (Josh Charles doesn't quite have the acting chops to really reel me in to his character, Anaïs Demoustier feels a bit too childlike in her role), it annoyed and irritated me enough that director and co-screenwriter Pascale Ferran went down this ridiculous road that I can't recommend Bird People in the slightest.  It felt like some awful trick after the viewers have become connected to Gary to suddenly have the second half of the film leave him behind completely.  While Bird People doesn't quite hold the same "heinousness" as other films I've rated an "F," it pissed me off enough that it's garnered that same grade for a different set of reasons.

The RyMickey Rating:  F

Movie Review - Olympus Has Fallen

Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

Starring Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Rick Yune, Dylan McDermott, Finley Jacobsen, Melissa Leo, Radha Mitchell, Robert Forster, and Ashley Judd

Directed by Antoine Fuqua

There's a feeling of "blah" that permeates throughout Olympus Has Fallen.  To me, "blah" doesn't necessarily mean bad, but it certainly doesn't connote anything good either.  There's a blandness here across the whole board from the acting to the story to the direction.  The screenwriters choose a topical enemy here as North Korean terrorists come into Washington, D.C., and wreak huge amounts of havoc on the city itself before honing in on the White House and taking the President (played by Aaron Eckhart), Vice President, and a few other important uppity-ups hostage.  With the terrorists having killed every Secret Service agent in the White House, the Commander in Chief's one chance at survival is Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), the President's former head Secret Service who quit his job after a horrible car accident eighteen months prior left the President's wife (Ashley Judd) dead.  Banning went to work at a different government position to distance himself from the shame he felt after being unable to save the First Lady, but when D.C. comes under attack, he springs into action, kills a bunch of the invading North Koreans and makes his way into the White House where he does his best to get the President and his close confidantes to safety.

Olympus Has Fallen only works when it keeps its focus on Gerard Butler.  Butler isn't given a whole lot to do, but when he's kicking ass and taking names, it's fun to watch.  It's not that Butler's Banning does anything particularly fresh, but he's got a charisma that at least makes things entertaining.  The rest of the film is unfortunately, as previously mentioned, generically bland.  Famous actors -- Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Robert Forster, Ashley Judd -- appear for minutes and then fade into the background making us wonder how in the heck director Antoine Fuqua and the film's producers managed to snag them to appear in the film.

After watching this one, I'm kind of dreading the notion of watching this year's similarly themed White House Down...but now I kind of feel like I have to simply for comparisons sake.

The RyMickey Rating: C-

Movie Review - The Crazies (2010)

The Crazies (2010)

Starring Timothy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell

Directed by Breck Eisner

I'm not really going to dwell on this review except to say that the best way to describe this horror film about a virus that causes a town to go crazy was "conventional."  It's not that The Crazies is a bad film -- it's just that there's not a single thing new brought to the screen.  It's well made, well shot, moderately well acted (Timothy Olyphant seems to ham it up a bit every now and then), and contains a few moments of genuine edge-of-your-seat tension, but in the end, it walks a much-too-familiar line.

You could fare much worse in terms of a horror flick, but don't go into this one expecting to see anything other than the ordinary.

The RyMickey Rating:  C+