Let's Write Some Movie Reviews

Again I am getting behind  on writing my reviews, argh! For a brief moment I thought I might write something over the holiday but ha ha ha yes let's all laugh at that one. There were far too many pillows and couches to be taken advantage of. Anyway, here are my thoughts on three movies I have seen lately.

Black Rock -- As far as mumblecore-ish horror movies go, this is a pretty decent one... but then I've only seen four movies I would classify as "mumblecore-ish horror movies" and this one's probably the least fitting to that title - I'm only calling it "mumblecore-ish" because it was written by a Duplass and stars that chick from The Puffy Chair (she also directed). For the record the other three "mumblecore-ish horror movies" are Baghead (loved it) and Ti West's Trigger Man and House of the Devil - I list those out not only because I opened that can of worms but because I kept thinking of Trigger Man while watching Black Rock. I never properly reviewed Trigger Man so let me say here - sometimes I'm pretty sure it's still the best thing Ti West has ever done. I found it seriously unsettling. Black Rock manages to borrow some of a similar doom-laden mood from it, where the air's heavy with menace, specifically of the bullet-shaped sort. It's basically trying to be a female Deliverance, while never going for the gory heights (to its own detriment) of The Descent, the already established female Deliverance. But it gets at you, now and again.

Mud - I kept wishing that Mud had nixed the entire Matthew McConaughey plot-line and just focused on the more practical and lovely story of the young boy character Ellis, played by an absolutely terrific Tye Sheridan. And for ocne it wasn't McConaughey's fault - in a post-Magic Mike world I am newly open to watching him on-screen. It's just everything having to do with MM's storyline felt like Screenwriting 101 to me - here's how we teach Ellis about the world with the most unsubtle strokes we can come up with. It's a real disappointment in that sense after Jeff Nichols made the remarkable Take Shelter, which kept up-ending the ways in which a story could be told in really fine and nuanced ways. And it doubly a shame since Sheridan's so great, and I would've been completely engrossed watching him deal with his parent's rocky times (Ray McKinnon is so terrific) and his messed-up meet-cute with that older girl. (PS - From now on I shall be known as "Neckbone.")

Starlet - Absolutely and totally captivating. Never ever the movie I expected it to be, while keeping itself entirely simple and straightforward at the same time. It's the sort of movie that really activates your imagination, instead of pummeling it into a brow-battered acquiescence like some big budget hoo-ha will - you watch a movie like Starlet and you realize there are tons of stories out there in the world just waiting to be told, about real people, if story-tellers were just more curious about real people. In a just world Dree Hemingway (who should really be showing up in everything soon, if you ask me) and Besedka Johnson would have been duking it out for something like the MTV Movie Awards "Best Couple" award or whatever - their chemistry is so strange and specific and unexpected, and blossoms into something lovely.

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