Category: REVIEWS

A socially awkward woman named Sarah (Alison Brie) with a fondness for arts and crafts, horses, and supernatural crime shows finds her increasingly lucid dreams trickling into her waking life.

Movies are extremely hard to make. There are so many things you have to do to ensure that you’re making something great. Even movies that are widely considered to be bad have a lot of hard work and dedication put into them, which is why I always respect the filmmaker’s despite the overall result of the film.

But perhaps one of the hardest elements that goes into making a film is the story. Coming up with an original and fresh concept, especially these days, is immensely challenging. There are hundreds of thousands of movies in the world and as a result, there are a lot of concepts out there. A lot of story ideas have already been taken, and if you want to create a wholly original film, you have to ensure that your story is indeed unique and your own.

Jeff Baena’s latest feature Horse Girl truly does have a great concept. It isn’t wholly original, although it did sound incredibly promising. The idea of this woman whose lucid dreams begin to take over her real life is amazing. There is so much potential with that concept, and thus I was quite curious to see what Baena had crafted with this film that was met with a fair amount of praise when it recently had its premiere at the Sundance International Film Festival.

For the most part, this is a movie that succeeds in its story department. A large portion of the story unfolds in a way that is both beautiful and creepy all at the same time. Brie’s character Sarah is one that is easy to follow and we know what she is going through. We get to know her as a person, and she is somebody that you root for. Although the plot was interesting, it took a while for it to get there.

The running time of Horse Girl is just a little over an hour and forty minutes, which is an extremely common running time. That being said, it does feel considerably longer, which is due to its pacing. The first forty five minutes or so set up the last hour. Nothing incredibly exciting or interesting happens until after that forty five minute mark, and so everything leading up to that moment does unfortunately feel rather tame and uneventful. This will also hurt repeat viewings, as the movie does ask for that, but I just cannot help but feel like people won’t want to rewatch it because it just drags for a while.

Gratefully though, the final hour is an amazing and beautifully bizarre thrill-ride that was boosted with great cinematography by Sean McElwee and an eerie score by Josiah Steinbrick, Jeremy Zuckerman, and Tolga Kahraman.

All of the performances are good for the most part as well. The true standout here is Brie, who feels extremely vulnerable in this role. While it does feel like she sort of overacts at times, especially in the first act, after a while her acting improved greatly and she disappeared into her role. Also good here is Molly Shannon as Joan and Debby Ryan as Nikki. However, it would have been nice if their characters were given some more development, as they do largely feel like characters that were pushed to the side for the most part.

But at the end of the day, Horse Girl is most certainly an impressively crafted film that also has something to say. It has to do with mental illness and once you figure out the grand picture of what everything is about and what the story means, it all becomes much more thought-provoking. I just wish that the first forty five minutes were as entertaining and interesting as the final hour was.

Horse Girl takes a while for its story to get going, but once it gets into gear, it excels in its beautifully bizarre and thought-provoking themes.

The Peanut Butter Falcon: The BRWC Review. Zak (Zack Gottsagen) has been living in a retirement home ever since his parents died. He’s made friends there, but only being in his early twenties he knows that it’s not where he is meant to be.

Zak watches wrestling regularly on TV with one of the residents, Carl (Bruce Dern) and has struck up a friendship with one of the care workers, Eleanor (Dakota Johnson). Then one day Zak sees an advert for a wrestling school and decides to escape to achieve his dreams of becoming a professional wrestler.

The trouble is that after his parents died, the state didn’t know what to do with somebody with Down Syndrome like Zak, so despite his previous attempts to escape he was always brought back – but this time it’s different. With a little help from Carl, a gap in the bars over the windows and a lot of soap, Zak escapes and goes on the run to meet his hero, The Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Hayden Church).

Whilst on the run, Zak stows away in a boat. However, unbeknownst to Zak, the boat’s owner, Tyler (Shia LaBeouf) is also on the run and Duncan (John Hawkes) is determined to chase him down to get the money he owes him, or something very bad could happen to Tyler. Meanwhile, Eleanor has been tasked with chasing down Zak to bring him back to the retirement home, but when all three of them find each other they learn to embrace life and see where it takes them.

The Peanut Butter Falcon is a great film, not only naturally giving its audience a better understanding of Down Syndrome, but leaving its audience feeling good while never makes the characters or story too sickly sweet. The cast are superb from the always reliable Bruce Dern, Shia LaBeouf’s charming and straight forward small-time crook, Dakota Johnson’s caring and sincere health worker and of course the breakout performance from Zak Gottsagen, who gives the film a likeable and fleshed out protagonist whose time on screen is a joy to witness.

Considering writer/directors Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz found Zak Gottsagen and believed in his aspirations in becoming an actor enough to craft a film and script around him, maybe this will be a turning point in the way disability is portrayed in cinema.

Gottsagen’s performance shows that a disabled actor can still have the range that an able-bodied actor can have and still have the presence to drive a film all by themselves. Hopefully other film makers will take notice and follow suit.

A controversial Dutch-Belgian drama, originally titled Wji, We is the adaptation of Elvis Peeters novel depicting the story of eight teenagers over a summer that will change their lives forever. According to the movie, this is a story based on real events, which makes it all the more troubling; split into four narratives, it is punctuated by streetlights depicting one of four characters name telling their side of the story over a judicial tape recorder as they recall the events of that fateful summer. 

It is an unusually hot summer and a group of middle class, privileged teenagers are desperately bored and looking for something to do; they are unable to ‘feel anything’ as everything feels ‘fake’. They snigger at their parents’ generation, they refute conformity and view everything as meaningless and restrictive. 

They are essentially thrill seekers stopping at nothing in their quest to push boundaries and experience for ‘real’. Soon their depraved games escalate in pure, brutal violence, throwing in the mix prostitution, assault and extortion along the way. Their remorseless attitude makes the story even harder to stomach.

Rene Eller’s movie has been on the festival circuit since its completion in 2018, as it enjoyed screenings in Rome, Rotterdam and the Raindance Festival, collecting various nominations and awards along the way. And, notably, it won Best Director at the 2018 Raindance Film Festival, possibly because of its ability to translate such a shocking read into an even more disturbing visual experience. 

We is also beautifully shot and superbly edited, earning Wouter van Luijn, the film editor, an award and understandably so, as a monumental scene depicting a turning point when one of the teenagers finally, and tragically, feels ‘alive’ is superbly put together. The youngsters’ skilful ability to portray their characters, together with a haunting soundtrack, makes it a compelling watch.

Eller’s not only directed the movie, his first, but co-produced it too and I would be interested to understand how he went about to manage to capture so brilliantly the essence of the perception of Generation Z and its boredom; above all, that’s what captured me, his ability to translate beyond dialogue a generation with so much at its disposal and yet so painfully bored and lost in itself.

Let’s be clear, though, as a (nearly) middle aged woman, I found We truly painful to watch – striking and obscenely graphic violent scenes had me covering my eyes, feeling queasy and hoping for it to come to an end as quickly as possible. I spent hours in a daze after watching it and it disturbed my sleep that night. Maybe I’m not as desensitised as I would like to be, or maybe I am becoming too vulnerable to violence as we live in a society where violence against other human beings has become the new normal and watching gratuitous ferocity is simply too much for me.

Nevertheless, it is an outstanding picture in its ability to shock, challenge and frustrate its audience, and praise is certainly due.

Artspoitation Films announced its release on DVD and Blu-ray February 18^th.

Tired of living a solitary life in the Pacific Northwest, Mr Link (voice of Zach Galifianakis), who is 8 feet tall and covered in fur, recruits fearless explorer Sir Lionel Frost (voice of Hugh Jackman) to guide him on a journey to find his long-lost relatives in the fabled valley of Shangri-La. Along with adventurer Adelina Fortnight (voice of Zoe Saldana), the trio encounters their fair share of peril as they travel to the far reaches of the world. Through it all, they learn that sometimes one can find a family in the places one least expects.

Ever since I saw LAIKA’s phenomenal 2009 debut feature Coraline, I have been in awe of what this studio has been able to craft throughout the years. Much like the films from Pixar and Disney, I genuinely feel as if all of LAIKA’s films are unique and incredibly well told with fresh stories every single time. My favorite animated feature of all time is LAIKA’s Kubo and the Two Strings, directed by Travis Knight who went on to direct the exceptional hit Bumblebee back in December.

Kubo was a film that had a plethora of mature themes it explored and did so in a way that had never been done before in the animation department. All of their movies have a sense of childlike wonder to them and while watching any one of their films, it will more than likely make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

But to be honest with you, when the first trailer was released online for Missing Link, I was not all that impressed with what I saw. Something about it did not feel right and the way the trailer was edited together felt jarring. Overall, I was trying to be optimistic about it all and have faith in the studio since that had delivered some incredible gems throughout the years.

Now that the film has been released and I have seen it, I can gratefully inform you that Missing Link is yet another win for LAIKA, and while it never quite reaches the heights of Coraline or Kubo, it still manages to tell an exciting, adventurous tale with skill. One of the many reasons why this film impresses is due to its remarkable voice cast with Galifianakis, Jackman, and Saldana being the lead voice actors here. Those names are just scratching the surface of the talent behind this film, and all of the performances here are truly great.

Throughout the picture, we spend quite a bit of time with the characters of Mr. Link and Sir Lionel Frost, and their chemistry and the way they work off of one another is amazing and always creates for truly hilarious moments. Sir Lionel Frost is a man who is quite egotistical and can be a bit snappy at people at times, whereas Mr. Link is an extremely charming and open creature who is a bit lost in the world. The stark contrast between the two creates for some memorable moments and also some heartfelt ones.

A big surprise with Missing Link was the amount of action sequences it had scattered throughout. While LAIKA’s previous works did certainly have fun and exciting moments, there were never too many and instead focused on other elements. It was honestly great to see a stop-motion animation feature with so many exciting sequences, with one scene in a saloon being a true standout.

Unfortunately, the film does falter when it comes to the romance between Adelina Fortnight and Sir Lionel Frost. The first time we see these two flirting with one another on screen, it felt like it was just there for a one time joke and that was it. But then as the plot was moving forward, the romance between the two was still being used for laughs and it sadly just came across forced and cringe-worthy.

It also does not feel as feel as grand or wonderous as the studios’ previous efforts. While this is definitely a good movie, it does at times feel like a simple movie that you can watch and get enjoyment out of, but it never feels like a true spectacle.

Missing Link manages to impress with its gorgeous animation style, terrific voice performances, and exciting action sequences.