Sunday, July 20, 2014

Under the Skin quick movie review

Cast: Scarlet Johansson
Director: Jonathan Glazer
Running time: 1 hour and 48 minutes

  Movie critics love Under the Skin, the most recent movie of Jonathan Glazer, who has previously directed Birth and Sexy Beast over the period of something like 13 years. The movie, based on a novel by Michel Faber, follows the adventures of our protagonist, Scarlet Johansson, around Scotland.

  So I'll come right out and say it, I HATED THIS MOVIE!!!!!!! I was in agony, i wanted to shoot myself in the face and never ever see that van again in my life.

  But let me explain why i had such a strong reaction to this movie. To do that, i will make this review special and start with my thoughts on the negative aspects of Under the Skin. My main problems were two, the first one being how slow paced it was. I didn't expect anything super fast and adrenalin filled but the degree of the slow-moving pace was unbelievable. Minutes were passing by and nothing was happening. And i mean nothing. After a point it became exhausting, nerve-inducing and all in all a black energy-consuming hole that sucked the life out of my eyes (and yes i know how dramatic i am being). The movie runs 1 hour and 48 minutes long and i felt like it was 4 hours.

  But making things even worse, Under the Skin was incredibly repetitive. Scene after scene following the same path with slight differences. As mentioned before, if i ever see that van or that black lake/floor again i will hit my head on the wall. Subsequently, if i was to remove all the extremely similar scenes, Under the Skin would come down to a half an hour sort film (that i would probably love).

  However, there were some great attributes to Under the Skin that i can recognise and appreciate even though i couldn't stand the movie as i was watching it. The premise of the human-looking alien that comes to earth and experiences for the first time everything that we take for granted in our everyday lives is an interesting idea that i would have liked to see made into the short film i previously mentioned.

  Another idea i was interested in was that in the begging of the film the fact that Scarlet Johansson's character has never eaten chocolate cake or has never felt sadness and empathy or has never had sex and her reaction to all that is so wonderful and pure and by the end, when she is the most happy she has been in the whole movie, the same fact, that she has never experienced life as a human before, turns into the very thing that destroys her is very though-provoking and intriguing.

  In conclusion, this movie got Under my Skin (such a good pun, i know) in a really unique (and not good) way. If you have a low threshold for slow-going and overlong movies stay away, but if you don't mind a more relaxed and unhurried structure in a film you will probably end up loving Under the Skin.
Score: 20% (but if you had asked me my score right after watching the movie it would be more like Score:0%)
Tomatometer: 86% 

m.
Courtesy of A24 Films
StudioCanal
Mongrel Media

Friday, July 18, 2014

Getaway quick movie review

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Selena Gomez, Jon Voight
Director: Courtney Solomon
Running time: 1 hour and 34 minutes

  Recently, i decided to start writing quick reviews about movies that i would skip otherwise. My first quick review will be about Getaway.

  Getaway stars Ethan Hawke as a very skilled ex-race driver and Selena Gomez as a very skilled hacker kid. Hawke's character gets into a very bad situation when Jon Voight abducts his wife, threatens that he will kill her and makes him drive all over Bulgaria,  "take hostage", in a sense, Selena Gomez and rob Gomez's dad's bank.

  There is, almost, nothing good about this movie except from the fact that, especially in the begging, Brent Magna (Hawke) treats The kid (Gomez) (and yes that is how Selena Gomez is credited) as the annoying brat that she is. Half of the things he says to her are the words shut up. However, this is not, completely, a positive attribute for the movie. It is a fault of the film that the kid is so annoying and unlikable while still being one of the two main leads.If the audience doesn't like, find interesting or relate to the protagonists there is no reason for them to watch the movie.

 I won't name all of the flaws of the movie (there are too many) but here is the one that stood out to me the most. We, as the viewers, are supposed to believe that Selena Gomez is a brilliant hacker with an interest in cars and we don't, or at least i didn't. She looks like a little girl in over her head talking about hacker and car "stuff" like she is just reading a script that she doesn't understand. If a better actress, who could make us believe she was genius super kid, was cast the movie would be a lot more believable, tolerable and not overall one of the worst movies I've seen this year. And i have to note that i have a particular interest in movies with hackers (that's why i liked the fourth Die Hard film) and i, still, couldn't stand this movie.

   So my overall opinion is that this movie is idiotic and more idiotic than the movie is the Selena Gomez casting. It's pretty boring, it's repetitive as a result of the numerous chase scenes (action movies are not my thing so if you like car and chase movies disregard this point) and it's not worth anyone's time.
Score:15%
Tomatometer:2%

m.

Courtesy of Warner Bros.