Fruitvale Station (2013) - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

Director: Ryan Coogler
Screenwriter: Ryan Coogler
Stars: Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Octavia Spencer 
Trailer link
IMDb page

The beginning of the end:

Fruitvale Station, this year's biggest independent hit, is a brilliant film that showcases the real life events of December 31th 2008, where 22-year-old Oscar Grant met his end at the hands of a young police officer, even though he was completely defenceless and unarmed. In a rare move, Ryan Coogler (the director) opens the movie by showing real life cellphone footage taken by people who were on the scene when Oscar was shot, effectively "spoiling" the end of the movie within 2 minutes. Because of this, the experience of watching Fruitvale Station is shrouded in an atmosphere of tragedy and unfairness almost instantly, making it one of the most heartbreaking and emotionally affecting films of 2013.

A star rises from the ashes: 

After the real life footage has played, the movie opens on the morning of December 31th. Oscar Grant has just woken up, completely unaware that he will be dead in less than 24 hours, and when he is done sending his daughter off to school, we get to see how he interacts with friends, family and colleagues on the last day of his life. Grant is portrayed by Michael B. Jordan, who is best known for his role in 2012's "Chronicle", and his performance in this film is nothing short of starmaking. We are shown through flashbacks that his character has been to jail, cheated on his girlfriend and sold drugs in the past, and that these events now trouble him very deeply. He loves his daughter, his mother and his girlfriend very much, and Jordan portrays his desire to become a better person for their sake so convincingly that you become emotionally attached to him within no more than a couple of scenes. The way I see it, everyone might as well get used to the fact that there is a new Michael Jordan in town as quickly as possible, because this talented young man is here to stay.

What about dramatisation and glorification?:

As with every other movie, book, song or article that is based on true events, it is absolutely vital that you, as a member of the audience, approach Fruitvale Station with a certain amount of scepticism. In this case, the media painted Oscar Grant as a helpless victim of a ruthless act of police brutality, and no matter how convincing the cellphone recordings might look, we all know that the media has a tendency to "slightly" bend the facts of reality in cases like these. Fortunately for the film, Ryan Coogler does a very good job of remaining as neutral as possible when recreating Oscar Grant's final hours. As an example, we are shown very early on how Oscar has been selling drugs for several years in order to stay above water, and that he has a tendency to become angry and hostile when things get a little out of hand. He is not portrayed as an innocent angel who happened to be in the line of fire of a heartless killer, as has previously been the case. 

Also, as with every other biographical movie, a few liberties had to be taken in order to turn real life events into a theatrical experience worth paying to see. Thankfully, this does not mean that the actual recreation of the shooting is portrayed as one sided as it previously has been by the press, or as unrealistically as it might have been. In the climax of the movie, it is clearly visible that the crowd and Oscars friends' verbal and physical reactions to his arrest had a huge impact on the cop that ended up shooting him a few minutes later, and instead of painting the officer as a cold hearted bastard, Coogler portrays him as an insecure rookie, who acted on instinct rather than hatred. No one except the cop himself knows what went through his head at that point in time, and Ryan Coogler's ability to portray the ambiguous nature of the shooting, no matter how unfair and brutal the event might seem to the outside world, is the most impressive and admirable aspect of the entire movie. 

The power of knowledge:

Rather than taking the excitement out of the film, the fact that we all know how it is going to end is one of the Fruitvale Station's strongest assets. It really is kind of hard to explain, but as the film moves closer and closer to that inevitable point in time, you start to grow more and more anxious and more and more fearful of what you know is just about to happen. Instead of fearing the unknown, the things that we do know become what we fear the most, which in turn takes the tension and level of emotional investment in the characters to entirely new, gut wrenching heights. Except for Only God Forgives, I personally have not felt as consumed by a movie all year as I was by this one, and watching it felt more like being on an emotional rollercoaster than in a movie theater. 

In conclusion:

No matter how few specifics we know about the things that took place on January 1th 2008, the death of Oscar Grant was eternally tragic and completely unnecessary. This apparent case of police brutality spawned a huge amount of controversy and debate all over America, and Coogler probably decided to adapt the events into a movie in an attempt to raise even more awareness about the subject. The cop that did the shooting was released from jail after serving just 11 months in prison (source), which should seem like a very short amount of time to just about anyone, no matter what you think happened that night. First time director Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan did an incredible job at adapting the tragic event into a haunting, memorable and thought provoking movie, and Fruitvale Station is definitely my pick for best independent movie of the year so far. 

Upstream Color (2013) - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

Director: Shane Carruth

Screenwriter: Shane Carruth

Stars: Amy Seimetz, Shane Carruth, Andrew Sensenig, Thaigo Martins

Trailer link

IMDb page

A weird exposition: 

If David Cronenberg, Terence Mallick and David Lynch had a lovechild, his name would be Shane Carruth. "Upstream Color" is the followup to "Primer", his debut film from 2004, and it is the trippiest, creepiest, weirdest and most strangely captivating movie I have seen all year. Not only does it deal with themes such as identity theft, existential chaos, parasitic infections and the organics of life, but it also juggles with more normal themes like revenge, love, and the joy of pig farming. In other words; this film is as indie as anything is likely to get, but if you are into that kind of stuff, I can almost certainly promise you that it will be right up your alley. 

A mind-bender in disguise:

Despite being weird in a wide variety of ways, the narrative structure of this film is actually quite simple. We have thirty minutes of buildup where we get to know the main characters and where the main plot devices are introduced, followed by thirty minutes of escalation where things start to pick up and become more exiting, and then finally thirty minutes of confrontation where all the things that took place in the first hour of the film come together to form an ending. This setup might seem very simple, but describing what actually takes place during these three half hour parts without making it sound as if Shane Carruth is absolutely insane, is next to impossible. The story is so unique, so odd and so multi layered that you almost have to see the film for yourself in order to decide what it actually is about, but because this is a film review, I am going to try to summarise it shortly in as understandable a format as possible:

Kris is drugged with some sort of parasite that makes her loose control of her body. She basically becomes a zombie that follows any and all orders given to her without question, and whilst she is in this hypnotized state, she is manipulated into handing everything that she owns over to the guy who drugged her. When she finally snaps out of her coma a few days later with no memory of what has happened, her life slowly starts to fall apart. She has no money, no job, no house and almost no possessions, and consequently falls into a deep depression as a result of having her identity stolen. Kris eventually meets another person who seems to be suffering from some of the same mental problems as  herself, and when the two of them fall for each other and start digging into their seemingly identical pasts, a string of very odd yet strangely enchanting events take place.

95 % style and 5 % substance:

As much as people who have seen it tend to talk about some of the more trippy story elements of the plot, I personally believe that the most interesting thing about Upstream Color is its moods and its atmosphere. There is a subplot in the movie about a guy who basically does nothing but walking around in a forest recording the sounds of the world, and even though I have a very hard time figuring out what it meant to the story, this was the single most artistically satisfying segments I have seen in a movie all year. If you are into these dreamy themes and very loosely explained plots, Upstream Color is just the movie that you have been looking for, but if you prefer carefully composed storylines that make perfect sense and leave you feeling as if you understood every perfectly, you are going to hate it with every fiber of your being. I know that I am not doing a very good job of explaining anything specific about this film at all, but trying to do so would be a waste of effort anyway. It simply is way too floaty. 

The bottom line:

Given the flimsy nature of Upstream Color's content, this blog post is not as much a review of the movie as it is a recommendation for you to go see it. The movie benefits from some of the most beautiful camerawork and sound design I have seen/heard in 2013, and its floaty and almost dreamlike chain of events makes for one of the most engrossing film experiences of the year as well. It is a very artsy film with a very niche target audience however, and it is not very hard to tell that Shane Carruth does not give a damn about normal Hollywood rules and stipulations. I would be lying if I said Upstream Color was an easy movie to watch and keep up with, but no matter how you twist and turn it, it is undeniably one of the most fascinating and unique films of the year, and I have a feeling that we will be talking about for many years to come.  

Capote (2005) - A Movie Review by Andrew Lawrence

Director: Bennett Miller

Screenwriter: Dan Futterman

Stars: Phillip Seymour Hoffmann, Clifton Collins Jr., Catherine Keener, Chris Cooper

Trailer link

IMDb page

Two great american artists: 
Truman Capote was one of his times most important writers, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is one of the most gifted actors of our time. Seeing as these two incredible individuals have a lot of visual similarities, it is only fitting that Hoffman got to portray the famous American writer in Bennet Miller's "Capote" from 2005; a portrayal for which he won an Oscar, a golden globe, a Screen Actor's Guild Award, a BAFTA, and pretty much everything else there is to win. 

A new perspective on murder:
Whereas most biopics tend to focus on a large portion of an individual's life, often times even several decades, "Capote" only spans over the couple of years during which Truman Capote did his research for his most famous Novel, "In Cold Blood". The book is based on the brutal murders of an Arkansas family that took place during the late 1940's, but instead of focusing on the actual killings, this film tells the story of how Capote developed a close relationship with one of the murderers during his writing process. This is a very bold approach in my opinion, because as we all know, the easiest thing would have been to tell a story about the brutality of the murderers and the following police investigation that led up to their capture. In this film however, we do not even witness the murderers flee or being captured, but instead get to witness how Capote went about depicting the events in his book. That ladies and gentlemen, is cool.

The main dude: 
One of the many impressive things about this movie is Phillip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of Truman Capote, especially considering just how gay the famous writer was. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but he had a very distinctive, high pitch way of talking, as well as a very feminine and flamboyant way of carrying himself. I have not seen footage of the real life Capote, so whether or not Hoffmann got the impression right is not for me decide, but he certainly got the gay mannerisms down to a tee. 

Being the main character from whose perspective all the events in the film are seen from, the experiences and personal journey of Truman Capote is the main storyline in this movie. The actual events that take place are not as important as the ways in which Capote reacts to and deals with them, and as such, it is very unfortunate that the film tended to slip a little during these important scenes. Sure, the "Oh, he's an asshole!"-moments and the "Dude, he's really suffering right now..."-incidents are really convincing and individually strong, but it feels as if the things he goes through do not carry over to the following scenes. Things just kind of happen, Hoffman reacts in a striking way, but then in the next scene, he seems to have either forgotten about the event or disregarded it completely. It is entirely possible that this was done entirely on purpose in order to show how indecisive, bipolar, manipulative and egoistical Capote was, but to me, it just seemed a bit inconsistent and random at times.

The supporting dudes and dude'esses:
Even though they come second in line, Hoffman's conversations with the different supporting characters are all very well done and executed almost perfectly as well. Catherine Keener plays Nelle Harper Lee, another famous writer, who wrote How to Kill a Mockingbird at the same time as Capote did his research for In Cold Blood, and being a big fan of her novel and especially the following movie adaption, I  found it very rewarding to watch all the small intertextual references to ”Mockingbird” during this movie. Bruce Greenwood, Mark Pellegrino and Chris Cooper were all very good as well, but the biggest surprise to me was how good Clifton Collins was at portraying the killer that Hoffman’s character develops the strongest emotional connection with. Their conversations were very heartfelt and emotionally convincing, and I found myself making this face during many of their shared scenes, simply because of how riveting both these actors' performances were. 

In conclusion:
All in all, Capote is a very good film with a lot of truly impressive character moments and emotional weight. It is a talking movie in every sense of the word however, so if you decide to watch it in hopes of getting to see the actual Clutter family murders and the ins and outs of the following police investigation, you are going to be in for one hell of a disappointment. The thematical elements are very well handled however, the acting is incredible across the board, the stand out being Philip Seymour Hoffman, and if you go into Capote with curiosity and an open mind, I am almost certain that you are going to enjoy it just as much as I did. 

Update #6 - The Start of Something New, or Just the Continuation of Something Rather Old?

Hi!

As my two regular readers will have noticed, I have not been blogging very regularly in the past few months, and there are several reasons as to why that is. Since I really enjoy writing about movies and want to keep on doing it, I have decided to implement a few changes in order to get back into the swing of things again.

1) From now on, my reviews will be shorter, more precise and therefore also more accessable. I have literally been writing novels instead of movie reviews as of late, and even though this has allowed me to go really in-depth with the movies I really enjoy writing about, it also means that writing about those movies that are not that interesting get very tedious very quickly. Also, no matter how hardcore you are, Reading a 2000-word review is not a pleasant thing to do, so this shorter format should allow me to catch the attention of a larger audience and make me able to write more often as well. #DemPageviews.

2) I will not be rating movies any longer. This is the big one. I have honestly come to hate the process of comparing movies to each other in order to find out how many stars X movie "deserves", because as most people who has tried doing this for a long period of time will know, the process ends up completely ruining the fun of watching movies. It has gotten to the point where I start considering what rating I want to give to a film while I am in the process of watching it instead of just enjoying the experience, which in turn makes this whole blogging thing feel more like a job than a hobby. Ratings are a thing of the past now, and that is just how it is going to be. It is for the best. 

3) There will be no more review-subcategories. No more "Classic Movie Reviews" or "Foreign Movie Reviews". A movie is a movie, and a review is a review. 

4) By adding the "Uncut" category, I am going to be expanding my territory a bit. I have often found myself wanting to write about movie related stuff that did not fit into the my two main categories ("Update" or "Film Review"), such as a specific genre, an actor, a director, awards, and so on and so forth. With the "Uncut" segment, I will be free to rant, rave, speculate and ramble as much as want to. Yay. 

Well, I guess that pretty much sums it up this time around. I thank you for taking the time to read this update, and if you liked it and feel a deep desire to stay on top of new reviews, updates and rants about everything else film-related, please feel free to add this site to your RSS feed. 

Cheers 

/Andrew