The Keeper of Lost Causes - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"My wife's gone, my partner's dead, and my best friend has been fully paralyzed. I don't have a lot of reason to smile anymore." 

Danish movies tend to be either a huge hit or a big miss for me. I discussed how Danish film tradition is very different from American and British cinema culture in my review of Pusher (review here), but the first thing I noticed about The Keeper of Lost Causes, or "Kvinden i buret" as it's called in danish, is that it actually has a lot in common with the big Hollywood crime thrillers of our generation. The Keeper of Lost Causes is a very atmospheric and moody piece of work, and it manages to maintain a chilling and somewhat depressing sense of detective work and smelly ash trays throughout its runtime; an element that very much reminded me of films such as Clint Eastwood's Mystic River and David Fincher's Se7en. In terms of actual storytelling however, screenwriter Nikolaj Arcel and director Mikkel Nørgaard don't do the great movies that I just compared The Keeper of Lost Causes to any justice whatsoever.

Our movie takes place in a damp, cold and rainy version of Copenhagen, where Carl Mørck, a gloomy, cheerless and somber police detective has an accident that puts him out of work for a couple of months. Upon his return to the force, Mørck is put in charge of "Department Q", which is a department that focuses on cold cases, as a sort of punishment for being too rash and too arrogant with his superiors. Carl is a very skilled and dedicated detective, and even though he doesn't like his new workplace, he dutifully starts sorting, filing, and eventually closing one old case after the other. However, as it so often is the case with these sorts of movies, one particular unsolved case about a supposed suicide sparks his interest. A bit of research reveals that this particular case isn't nearly as simple and onesided as the file makes it seem, and as Carl and his partner Assad start digging more and more into the past in an attempt to solve the case, a whole new picture of very unoriginal and stale proportions is laid out in front of the two detectives.

I know that I'm going to make a lot of 40-year-old Scandinavian females very angry by saying this, but in my opinion, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish crime authors are some of the most uncreative writers in the entire world. Moms from this part of the world, my own mother included, pretty much don't read anything but detective novels about chain smoking police detectives with wife issues or young and resourceful journalists who just happen to stumble across a murder mystery, and as a result, Scandinavia has more mediocre crime authors than any other place in the world. Well, I don't really know this for sure, but it sure as hell feels like it. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that every single one of these books virtually feels exactly the same, and seeing as The Keeper of Lost Causes is an adaption of one of the "best" danish crime author's most popular books, I didn't have a lot of high hopes going into it. As predicted, the story turned out to be exactly as predictable and unoriginal as all the other "grumpy cop has to solve an old murder case"-stories that have come out of Scandinavia in the last three decades. 

Admittedly, the technical and atmospheric aspects of this movie are very impressive. Nicolai Lie Kaas is very convincing and sympathetic in his performance as Carl Mørch as well, and the entire supporting cast does a more than average job of bringing their characters to life. No amount of stunning cinematography, chilling sound design and great acting performances can make of for the blatantly obvious lack of originality and 'oomph' that The Keeper of Lost Causes suffers from though, and I find it utterly frustrating and baffling that so many danish film critiques and movie goers seem to love it as much as they do. It's hard to talk about the events of this movie without spoiling most of the predictictable and worn out story and its underwhelming climax, and I can't even give you the outline of the story without sounding like a broken record. Every single plot device, piece of scenery, twist, turn, character and motif from this film has been done better a million times before, and this lack of any originality whatsoever is the allconsuming downfall of the movie. 

No matter how hard I tried to convince myself that the one scene that was gonna make The Keeper os Lost Causes stand out from the rest of the flock and turn it into something original and groundbreaking was just around the corner, nothing surprising, shocking or even remotely unpredictable took place during the movie. The only ting that it really succeeded in, was reminding me of a wide variety of better thrillers with much more engaging plots and better characters that I'd rather be watching. I'm happy to say that I didn't feel flat out bored at any time during film, but there wasn't any scenes that had me sitting on the edge of seat in disbelief either. Some of the scenes that take place inside a vacuum cylinder are actually beautifully created in terms of sound design and camerawork, and the Department Q offices look very authentic with their black and white photographs hanging on the walls and papers and phones lying on the tables. I could practically smell the heavy cigarette smoke that was hanging under the rafters and feel the rough edges of the coffee stained  case files during these scenes, but in the end, beautiful and atmospheric set pieces like these don't mean very much at all, when the story they're being used to tell has zero weight behind it whatsoever. 

The Keeper of Lost Causes bears a lot of resemblance to Danny Boyle's Trance (review here), in the sense that both movies are beautiful to look at, but contain nothing of real substance whatsoever. I realize that most people who don't watch too many movies are gonna love this crime thriller simply because of how atmospheric and easily digestible it is, but I personally just can't get over the fact that everything that takes place in it is 100% cut-and-dried predictable and uninspired. The characters are boring, stale and stereotypical, the plot is bland, sterile and corny, and the shockers and mysteries are everything but mysterious and shocking. The production designers, the actors and the sound designers pretty much hit the nail on the head however, and that's the only reason why Mikkel Nørgaard's and Nikolaj Arcel's adaption of Jussi Adler Olsen's The Keeper of Lost Causes "only" is a facepalmer. I'm sorry mom.<3 (2/6)

The Keeper of Lost Causes IMDb link here

The Keeper of Lost Cause trailer here

Trance - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"Do you want to remember, or do you want to forget?"

This one frustrated the hell out of me. Sure, Danny Boyle is an incredible director with a more than impressive back catalogue, but there's just too many missteps in this latest directorial outing of his; a fact that kept me from enjoying it very much at all. It came out in the spring of 2013 to a mixed bag of reviews, and it stars James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassel in the leading roles. Where as some critiques hailed it as one of the most clever and suspenseful thrillers to have come out in years, a lot of regular moviegoers felt that Trance was way too convoluted and incoherent, which undeniably is the main reason why it underperformed as severely as it did at the box office. The movie ultimately fell under the radar as a result of bad word of mouth and mixed critical acclaim, but I still think there's plenty of reasons for me to review it here on my blog. 

In Trance, Simon (McAvoy), a member of the security staff at an art auction house in London, is hit in the head when he takes it upon himself to try and stop a set of thieves from getting away with a very valuable painting. As it turns out though, this bash to the skull has made Simon insomniac, a fact that gets him into a whole bunch of problems with different kinds of people. He eventually seeks the help of a hypnotherapist in an attempt to regain his memory, and as the two of them start to grow closer, a whole lot of weird and intermingled stuff starts happening.

The main reason why I really wanted to write about this movie, is that I've never had as many mixed feelings about a piece of cinema as I have about Trance. The good things about it are truly impressive and admirable, but on the contrary, the bad stuff is equally frustrating, stupid and poorly executed. It's a weird mix to deal with really, and watching Trance is one of the more polarizing experiences I've had a quite some time. I guess "Style over substance" is the bast way to sum it up shortly, because even though it's one of the most beautiful movies I've seen in 2013 in terms of cinematography, editing and sound design, Trance is also one of worst written and most disappointing ones I've laid my eyes upon all year. 

Okay, let's get the bad stuff out of the way first. Even though its opening heist-scene was as close to being perfectly executed as can be, the plot of this movie turned out to be crazily stupid, overly complicated, way too convenient, ridiculously unbelievable, massively disappointing and facepalm inducingly bad. Too many of the vital events are too far fetched and unfathomable, all of the many twist and turns are way too misplaced and underwhelming, and hypnosis, which is the main plot device of the entire movie, is handled in an infuriatingly empty, bland and unconvincing manner. On top of that, almost all of the minor plot devices feel either misplaced, misused or overly staged. Whether it be gun cartridges, zip-ties, books, iPads, car keys, Romanian war veterans or women's pubic hair (yep), none of the clues and hints in this movie work the way they were intended to, and the shockers, revelations and surprises that they were meant to be a part of, sadly never amount to more than a semi-raised eyebrow or a slight scratching of the forehead. 

As if all those things weren't enough, there's even more ground for me to cover in the negatives-section of this review, such as the female lead. Rosaria Dawson did alright in the role of Elizabeth, the weird, indecisive and bipolar hypnotherapist who tries to help Simon regain his memory, but her character is just so poorly written, forgetable, misused and weak that I couldn't help but disliking her every time she popped up on the screen (which is very often). She's supposed to be this deep, wounded and mysterious type of person, but every time something "shocking" about her character was done or revealed and she was supposed to look all mysterious and stubborn, the character just didn't fit the bill at all. It felt as if someone was showing me around in a tall, expensive and impressive looking building, whilst they were trying to convince me that it was build by a very determined and strong 8-year-old girl. No matter how hard that little girl tries to convince me that she build the enormous construction without any help, there's just no way I'm going to believe her, and the same goes for the hypnotherapist and her actions in Trance. 

That's it folks, we're through with the negative stuff this time around. Even though there are a lot of negative things to be said about Mr. Boyle's latest movie, almost all of the positive elements that it does contain completely blew me off my feet. Let's take the sound design for an example. Everyone knows what music is capable of doing to the human mind on it's own, but surprisingly few people realize just how important it can be in movies as well, and Trance is a picture perfect example of that. Describing sound with written words is no easy task, so you'll just have to trust me when I tell you that they got it just right in this film. Scenes that wouldn't have amounted to anything on their own were saved by a crisp and engaging score, otherwise dull and edgeless revelations were held up by off kilter and nerve wracking sound effects, and conversations that were heading straight towards pitch black and bottomless pits were kept alive by engaging and gripping electronic music. That's what music can do.

Music and sound effect aside, Anthony Dod Mantle, who's Danny Boyle's go to cinematographer, just might be the biggest star of this entire movie. His camerawork in movies such as 127 Hours, The Celebration and especially Rush impressed me quite a lot, but I've never seen him be on top of his game the same way that he is in Trance. Every single frame of the movie is hypnotisingly beautiful to look at, and the fact that the idea of turning off the movie didn't occur to me even once during its runtime, despite of all the bad things I had to say about it, should give you an impression of just how impressed I was by the visual effort that went into creating Trance. On top of all this, the movie is meticulously edited as well, and especially some of the mind bending dream sequences that James McAvoy's character finds himself in proves that. As far as I'm concerned, Trance is an early frontrunner for Academy awards such as the ones for best editing, best cinematography, best sound design and best musical score. 

Now that everything is said and done, I hope you're capable of understanding just how mixed my feelings about this movie truly are. Recommending it to anyone is hard for me to do, because of how truly awful the story and some of the characters are. There are a lot of equally beautiful and impressive things in this movie as well though; things that are truly worthy of my highest amount of praise and adoration. Style over substance is the key word when describing this bastard child of a film, so if you're a fan of technical finesse and beautiful visuals, I guess giving Trance a go would be worth your time. Otherwise, just stay away entirely. I personally don't know whether I'd rather remember or forget having seen Danny Boyle's Trance, and as for a rating, I don't know what to give it either. Settling right between the eye gouging narrative and the magical visuals seems like the only way to go however, and as such, I'd say that Trance was worth the watch. (3/6)

Trance IMDb page here

Trance trailer link here

Rush - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"Darling, men love women, there's no doubt about that. But, if there's one thing we love even more than women, it's cars!"

Wroooum. Wruuum, wrum wrum wrooooum wrummm. Oh, what a lovely sound. When I first found out that Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon, A Beautiful Mind) had stated turning these fiery mechanical roars into a movie, I instantly felt a deeply manifested need to watch it. I have a lot of fond childhood memories of me and my dad watching Formula 1 racing on Sunday mornings in our old living room; a fact that pretty much makes me the target audience for a film like this, which mean that I have to apologize in advance if this review turns out biased or one-sided because of it. However, I'm of the stern belief that Rush is more than just a simple action movie about cars that go really freaking fast, and I'm gonna try to explain why in this this review. 

Rush is based on real events that took place during the 1976 Formula 1 season, which was a time in which about 10 % of the 25 men who entered the tournaments ended up suffering horrific deaths sometime during the season, as a direct result of the abysmal security requirements they had back then. In this particular point in time, James Hunt from England and Niki Lauda from Austria were the titans of the racing track, and their legendary personal rivalry during the 1976 season is the frame of this entire movie. 

For all intents and purposes, James Hunt and Niki Lauda were as different as two men can be. Hunt was a partying, smoking, womanizing and spontaneous playboy, and Lauda was a calculating, strict, sober, lonesome and emotionally cold professional. The only thing that kept them in the same boat was their neverending love of fast cars, and the rush they experienced from walking the thin line between life and death on a weekly basis. These wast differences and their famous dislike for each other had to be captured truthfully and effectively for this filmadaption to be a success, and Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon, The Last King of Scotland), the man who wrote the script, does exactly that. The back and forth dialogue between the two characters is extremely well written and on point, and I've heard rumours about a possible third oscar nomination for Morgan circulating around the internet. 

Even though the personal rivalry is the main plot device of the movie, at its core, Rush is a bonafide action spectacle. This means that if you do decide to watch it after having read this review, you absolutely have to go see it in a real theater. The racing sequences arguable are the main selling point of this movie, and I have to admit that it's been a very long time since I've seen cinematography and sound design come together as successfully as they do in Rush. In these visceral, ferocious and relentless moments, roaring engines, fiery pistons, whipping rain, burning rubber, intense stares, gears knobs, helmets, electrified crowds and explosive exhaustion gasses turn into the purest form of testosteronious poetry a man could have ever wished for, and the raw awesomeness of these scenes is worth the ticket price alone in my opinion. 

Enough of the sweat and the petroleum; let's get to the more meaty part of this review. In my opinion, the only thing that matters more than a tight script when you're making a historical biopic, is that the people who you're depicting are reenacted in a truthful and convincing manner. As it just so happens, this is where Rush shines the brightest, but also where it falls a bit on its tail. The part of James Hunt is played by Chris "Thor" Hemsworth, and even though his job description probably consisted of nothing but a long list of actresses and models whom he'd be making out with during principal photography, I got the impression that he really did his very best to do the real life James Hunt as much justice as he possibly could. It didn't take long before his character became a little too cartoonish and repetitive though, which isn't so much Hemsworth's fault as it is James Morgan's.

I'm not necessarily gonna pin the entire blame on the writer though, because I have a theory that dimming down some of the characters and making them appear as broad and somewhat superficial strokes of their real life counterparts, might have been a studio decision more than a personal one on Morgan's part. After all, Formula 1 is a somewhat unknown sport in America, which is where most the movie's sales are gonna come from. It's possible that the simplification of James Hunt's character was done to bring things down to a more understandable level for those audience members who didn't spend several hours watching Formula 1 every other Sunday during their childhood, and the same thing can be said about the over explanatory commentary that keeps blurring along in the background during the racing sequences. For 95 % people, these simplifications won't matter, but for me, they did. 

Okay, so Chris Hemsworth's James Hunt might have fallen a bit flat. In case of this movie's second main character though; Daniel Brühls Niki Lauda, we're talking about something else entirely. Brühl, who's best known for his role as Fredrick Zoller in Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, is sure to garner a huge amount of international praise for him efforts in Rush, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him among the best actor contenders come Oscar Season. The way in which he encapsulates the intense and dead set mind of Niki Lauda is eyebrow-raisingly impressive; everything from the way he walks, talks and looks is accurate to that of the real life Lauda (at least in comparison to what I've seen in interviews), and I honestly believe that Brühl reaches a level of De Niro or Day-Lewis worthy proportions in terms of poor method acting in this film. Bravo Brühl, bravo.

When it comes down to it, the title of this movie refers to the feeling that these two vastly different individuals got from doing what they did. Formula 1 racing was an extremely dangerous business back in the day, and the movie does a very good job of putting you in the shoes of these drivers who put everything on the line as often as they did. Contrary to popular belief, Rush doesn't leave you wanting to double the speed limit on your way home from the theater, but makes you scared of going more than 30 mp/h instead; that's how real the danger that Hunt and Lauda went through feels. Despite its somewhat superficial and generalized characters, Rush is intense, thrilling and above all hazeblazingly entertaining. A Coen Brothers or David Lynch film it definitely isn't, but its sense of drama and realism and its ability to make you feel as if you're there in the actual car with Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Brühl, is just a few of the reasons why Rush is miles ahead of all the other action flicks that have come out this year. 

Ron Howard's Formula 1 biopic is the best movie I've seen in 2013 in terms of pure entertainment value, but in the end, the few issues that I do have with some of the characters does drag it down a bit. On top of that comes the slight sense of banality that follows the story throughout, which ultimately leaves me torn about what rating to give the movie as a whole. With these things in mind, I've decided to start giving half star ratings from this point on, and Rush will be the first movie to receive such a rating in the history of Andrew Lawrence's movie blog. On one hand, Rush is everything I wanted it to be and even more, but on the other hand, it contains too many minor flaws for me to wanna pay full price to rewatch it on BluRay, and that's why it ends up being a hybrid of "worth buying on BluRay" and "worthy of my seal of approval". (4,5/6)

Rush IMDb page here

Rush trailer here

Oldboy - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"Even though I'm no more than a monster - don't I, too, have the right to live?"

Okay, so I'm a huge sucker for revenge-flicks. The whole idea of all-consuming lust for vengeance is very fascinating to me, and I find it strangely poetic that a basic human emotion, like the desire for revenge, has the ability completely ingulf someone and turn them into another person entirely. Kill Bill Vol. 2 and Gladiator are two of my personal favourite revenge-flicks, and even though I'd heard from numerous sources that the Korean movie Oldboy was supposed to to outclass them both, it took me over a year to actually sit down and give it a go. 

Oldboy is the second part of Chan-wook Park's revenge trilogy, and it came out in 2003 to huge critical acclaim. The story of of the movie is about Dae-su Oh, a drunken lowlife from the streets of Seul, who for reasons completely unknown to him and his family, is taken prisoner for fifteen years. During his time in confinement, Dae-su realises how many sins he has committed in his life, and he promises himself that he'll straighten out and become a good person, as soon as he finds a way to escape. He has an indescribable thirst for revenge as well though, and whilst trying to come up with an escape plan, Dae-su stars training his body in his prison cell. When he's finally released after fifteen years of beating up walls and furniture, he's become an incredibly apt kung-fu fighter, and he decides to use his new strength to track down and kill the people responsible for keeping him in confinement, before beginning a new life as a normal citizen. Things don't turn out exactly the way Dae-su planned though, and as he stumbles through the moonlit streets of Seul, a long forgotten secret of enormous proportions begins to unravel in front of him.

First of all, I want to make one thing completely clear: This movie is nuts. Absolutely, undeniably, 100 % positively crazy. It's not a typical movie by any standards whatsoever, and I'm convinced that 99 % of all Europeans and Americans will find it indescribably foreign in its narrative style. A lot of this lies in the technical details of how Oldboy is shot, composed and edited; things I'll go more in depth with later, but the narrative and the plot is the biggest and most important difference between this film and the ones I'm used to watching. Oldboy is Based on a manga; a fact that's very easily recognisable when you take a look at the story of the movie, and especially the dialogue and the inner narration of the main characters seem like something that could have been taking directly out of an Asian comic book. I didn't hate this manga-element as much as I can imagine a lot of western people would upon their first viewing,  but then again, I didn't love it either. The rather corny inner monologues about destiny, honor and humiliation felt a little unconvincing and perplexing at times, but on the other hand, there were times at which they worked perfectly and added a lot of suspense and a few laughs to the narrative as well. Oldboy is not the most severe case of weird Asian film making I've ever seen, but keep in mind that it definitely isn't your usual Hollywood revenge flick either. 

Performance wise, Oldboy is one of the best foreign movies I've seen to date. Min-sik Choi delivers an incredibly real and vulnerable performance as Dae-su, and especially the way he's able to manipulate his facial expressions from scene to scene had me raising my eyebrows in disbelief. You truly believe that this guy spend fifteen years behind bars, because of the way his eyes go from being lively and desperate to cold and hateful as time goes by, and even though Min-sik obviously didn't spend that many years in confinement, his remarkable ability to transform his physical appearance makes you question whether or not he actually did. The villain of this movie, Woo-jin Lee, played by Ji-tae Yu, is another truly remarkable character, who is as deeply wounded and as troubled as our main character is. The back and forth dialogue between the two of them is incredible to say the least, and I was completely taken aback by the impact that both of them added to the film. You don't come across a movie in which the antagonist is just as deeply fleshed out and just as important to the over all story as the protagonist is, but when you do, the result tends to be rather breathtaking. One very specific plot device comes to mind when I think about the chemistry between the two main characters, and had their connection not been as convincing and as powerful as it is, the plot device to which I'm referring would not have been nearly as impactful or as jaw dropping as it is. The whole revenge-angle literally multiplies in proportion during this event, and trust me when I say that it's one of the most beautiful strokes of screen writing you'll ever witness. 

As someone who's eternally fascinated by screenwriting and storytelling in general, the experience of watching Oldboy was absolutely thrilling. The plot is the absolute star of this movie, at least in my opinion, and there were so many times during this story where I found myself thinking something along the lines of "man, if only I had the imagination that these filmmakers have", or "I'd give almost anything to be able to write a script like that", one of them being during the scene I talked about a minute ago. The plot takes a countless amount of other unpredictable twists and turns throughout the course of the movie as well, and even though the story is being told in a very snappy and very up-beat kind of way, keeping track of the things that are going on isn't hard at all. The fact that the last 45 minutes of Oldboy is some of the most intense, shocking, outrageous and poetic storytelling I've ever seen pretty much solidifies its status as one of the most well written movies I've laid my eyes upon in quite some time too. 

Seeing as this is a revenge-based movie, a little bit of violence is bound to take place somewhere down the line. Actually, let me rephrase that; a busload of bloody, gory, ultra violent mayhem is bound to take place. And it does. I won't go into too much detail about the specific acts of violent behaviour that takes place during this film, mainly because of how determining and important they are to the actual plot and the character progression. I've rarely seen a thing like this happen before, but in the case of Oldboy, torture, killing, destruction and dismembering is an absolutely vital element of the story, and the movie simply wouldn't be the same without it. I mean for Christ's sake, it's a movie about death, revenge, sin, captivity and regret, so please don't get too offended when people suddenly start pulling each other's teeth out with hammers. Oh, and by the way, if you do decide to watch this movie, be prepared to witness the best fight scene in movie history about half way through the film.

On a technical level, Oldboy is in a class of its own as well. The musical score is haunting and unforgettable, the camera work is beautiful and weirdly artistic, and even the choreography of the many fist fights is near flawless. On top of that, Min-sik managed to go through his endless amounts of physically exhausting scenes almost without the use of a stunt-man or a double, further solidifying his work in this film as something extraordinary. It's hard for me to not to give this exiting, well written, beautifully acted, poetic, gorgeously looking, haunting, enthralling and thought provoking piece of top notch entertainment the rating of movie magic, but as I mentioned in the beginning of the review, a few of the plot points and conversations did feel a little too bloated and cheesy for my taste. Oldboy is still an extremely god movie though, and it's final revelation definitely is the single most disturbing shocker I've experienced in cinema. I'll most definitely be buying it on BluRay, and I strongly recommend anyone who doesn't mind violent content and foreign languages to do the same. (5/6)

Oldboy IMDb link here

Oldboy trailer here

The Kings of Summer - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

"Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail."

Okay, so that quote isn't actually from the movie. The quotes section for The Kings of Summer on IMDb was empty, so I had to find a cool, alternative and hipster-worthy one that would fit the tone of the film somewhere else, and I ultimately found the one you just read on one of my Facebook "friend's" cover picture. That being said, the movie isn't all that corny and pretentious, but I would be down right lying if I said that it doesn't have its fair share of leaves that are rustling in the winds, people who are picking flowers in a field whilst the sun sets in the background, and alternative music being sung by a 21-year-old pothead whose hair is a little too long, that sounds like it was recorded with a lava lamp that is hooked up to a toaster with a few inches of dental floss.

Phew! I'm sorry about that little rant on hipsterism and pretentiousness, but I had it get it out of the way before we begin this review properly. The Kings of Summer is a movie that I knew virtually nothing about, until I heard my favorite radio hosts discuss it on the BBC 5 Live movie podcast. I decided to watch it because of how well it was being reviewed on the show, and having just seen it, I'm glad to say that I enjoyed it very much indeed. It's a lighthearted and easily digestible movie, so writing a quick review of it before I pass out from exhaustion (a week of visiting pubs and learning about Irish history in Dublin will do that to you), seems like a good way of getting back into the habit of blogging again.

The Kings of Summer is directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts and written by Chris Galletta, who are two people whom I know absolutely nothing about. It stars Nick Robinson, Gabriel Basso and Moises Arias in the three leading roles, and the movie is about these three 15-year-old boys, their friendship, and their individual family problems. The film takes place over the cause of one summer, where the guys decide to run away from home and build a house in the forest, and live there like "real men". It's a good old coming of age movie in every sense of the word; a genre of which I've never been a great fan. This is mainly due to the fact that I always feel very aware of the fact that the people who create these movies are grown up human beings with obligations, budgets and beards, which ultimately makes the children or young people in the movies feel hollow, unreal and stupid. The Kings of Summer wasn't like that at all though, and for once, I was able to relate to and understand the mindset of these young guys. If you're able to live with the slow motion, the branches, the leaves, the violin playing and a few of the other somewhat pretentious and hisperish elements, I'm sure you'll be able to relate to this movie so as well.

As weird as it may sound, the cinematography in this movie is one of the main reasons why I enjoyed The Kings of Summer's coming of age element as much as I did. The movie feels very independent and low budgety, which is greatly reflected in the way it's shot and edited, and it honestly felt as if it was done by a bunch of very young, ambitious and talented film students because of it. This is a very positive thing in my opinion, and it gave the movie a whole lot of charm, warmth and honesty that it wouldn't have had, had it been made by more established and experienced filmmakers. Its genuine and poetic story about youth in revolt makes The Kings of Summer one of the most relatable movies I've seen in a while as well, and even though it wasn't revolutionizing or innovative by any stretch of the imagination, its story arch and plot points did exactly what they were meant to do, nothing more, nothing less. The creators knew that kind of story they were dealing with, and they didn't try to turn it into something it wasn't. 

Half of the characters and the actors who played them did a great job in this movie in my opinion, but sadly, there also were a few who didn't do very well at all. Nick Robinson who plays the main character, Joe, probably delivers the best pure acting performance in the movie, and I enjoyed the way he carried himself on screen and added a lot of fitting facial expressions to strengthen his dialogue. His father however, who's played by Nick Offerman, was incredibly unreal and monotone to look at from beginning to finish. He talked in a bland and irritating manner that kept pulling me out of the illusion that the scene I was watching actually took place, and the fact that his character is meant to be the whole reason behind why Joe is doing what he does, kind of took away from the trust I had in both characters. Other than that there's a dorky police officer who never would have made it into the force in the real world, an even dorkier boyfriend of Joe's sister's and an infathomably cliched high school bully who annoyed me as well, but these characters luckily aren't nearly as dominant as Joe's father is. 

On the contrary though, Moises Arias, who's best known for his role as the incredibly obnoxious little kid from my Sister's favorite TV-series Hannah Montana, is the funniest thing about the whole movie, and I was laughing out loud at just about every single line he delivered. There's something about the dry and ironic humor that surrounds his character that completely hit home with me, and when combined with some of the other stuff from the movie, The Kings of Summer has a surprisingly high amount of genuinely hilarious moments in it. The best thing about these comedic moments is that they aren't cheap dick jokes like Seth Rogen's or plot ruining shoehorners like Adam Sandler's, but quirky and well written little lines of dialogue that you genuinely don't see coming, unless of cause you've also met a dog that has taught you how to die.    

*Awkward silence*

In the end, The Kings of Summer is a sweet little gem of a movie that I'd definitely recommend just about anyone who likes good movies to go ahead and see. It's a lightweight coming of age story that has a lot in common with movies like Son of Rambow and Into the Wild, but it particularly shares a lot of ideas, themes and plot points with movies such as Stand by Me and Mud. There are a few minor characters who could have been acted a whole lot better though, but it isn't that big a problem when compared to the great performances delivered by the three main actors. The Kings of Summer is sweet, genuine, funny, relatable, quirky and very self aware, and thus worthy of my seal of approval. (4/6)

The Kings of Summer IMDb page here

The Kings of Summer trailer link here