Sharp Corner

It's probably a bit of a stretch to even rate this at 5 stars, just as it's a stretch to label this a thriller. More a drama about a man who seems to become obsessed with life, death and playing God, it's extremely well acted by Ben Foster and Cobie Smulders but good luck finding a character to feel sympathy for when both leads are written as fairly unlikeable. While I had some sympathy for Ben's character at the beginning eventually it eroded. Cobie, as his wife, is written as being a bit too hard and harsh to feel any empathy for. So you end up sitting and watching a movie in which you just kind of dislike the people on screen. I found the ending disappointing and am not sure what the writers were trying to say. It's definitely an interesting watch but nothing to watch a second time. Ben Foster is such a great actor, it's a shame no one seems to be writing great films anymore.

I first heard about Sharp Corner in one of those "upcoming trailers" things you see on YouTube and it stood out as something unique, so I kept a note to watch it. The trailer was somewhat misleading, as there's not a whole lot of action to the movie, but it is an extremely tense psychological "thriller", a word people will debate. I was actually impressed! Ben Foster has gotten very good at playing weirdos.

There are a lot of moments of just someone standing around, looking around, sitting and thinking, but it never actually felt boring to me. There was always a building tension, the feeling that something might happen at any moment, because that's what the family was feeling. I was impressed with how well they did with a very minimal movie. I have a few complaints. The major standout was the CGI, which was only for a five second scene but it just didn't hold up to modern film standards. I also felt like the couple just...never felt like a couple. I also get annoyed by kids in movies, they rarely ever feel authentic, but that's a personal gripe.

Maybe I'm being a little generous, but I'm giving the movie an 8. It's much better than I was expecting.

Dramatic thriller "Sharp Corner" charts the descent of average family guy Ben Foster (fine actor) from hating his job, thru leaning on booze, to sheer insanity via the titular accident blackspot outside the new home he's bought with wife Cobie Smulders and their young son. As cars repeatedly crash, and folk die, on his front yard, Foster becomes obsessed with the victims and on prepping to 'help' future ones, rather than preventing them and/or addressing his family's trauma. Writer / director Jason Buxton's second film is original, clever, well performed - tho also slow & implausible at times, with an ending that'll irk some. That said, generally, it's a good film.

This was waaayyyy too long. It would've been better as a short film, not the 110 min runtime that felt like four hours. It just dragged on and on with the same exact premise and predictable outcomes. When you're a salesman but was born a first responder. Ya, we get it.

And as a fan of Ben Foster, not sure why all the critics are praising his performance (or the film for that matter)... it was flaccid and any actor - even inexperienced, could've pulled off his character and stale demeanor.

It's a generous 5/10, mostly all going to the smoking hot Cobie Smulders for her excellent and convincing performance.

The mild-mannered "Josh" (Ben Foster), his wife "Rachel" (Cobie Smulders) and their son "Max" (William Kosovic) have a brand new home and are looking forward to settling in when there is a car accident outside and a tyre comes a-bouncing through their window at a seriously inopportune moment! Needless to say they are a bit flustered and she thinks maybe they ought to move. Well when it happens again, you'd think that'd be a bit of a no-brainer but he is somehow captivated. Not by the accidents, but by the time it takes the emergency services to arrive, and so he decides to do some training to be able to help out. Of course, his wife and young son are perplexed by his increasingly odd behaviour, as is his boss, and so there's soon a lot on the line for the man. I enjoyed the start of this, and I thought this might be Foster's best performance, but after about half an hour it became a rather joyless exhibition of obsessiveness and selfishness topped off by a truly far-fetched, though sometimes darkly comedic, desire to do good. Smulders does fine, but only features sparingly - which is just as well for given her character is supposed to be a couples therapist, "Rachel" shows a complete lack of appreciation of her husband's trauma and of their son's needs that is ultimately annoyingly breathtaking. Sadly, the initially good idea just turns into a series of overly contrived bad decisions stitched together with an implausible series of incidents that rushed through some universally unlikeable and undercooked characterisations and left me wanting more - or less. Sorry.