NateWatchesCoolMovies
Joined Feb 2008
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"In the forest, even the smallest thing matters. Everything is connected, and you never know when one thing ends and another begins. A dead tree is as important as a living one." So speaks a character in Clint Bentley's sensational Train Dreams, helping us and its lead character understand a seemingly arbitrary series of tragedies and understand, even just a little, the big cosmic picture and esoteric stitch-work of the physical reality we inhabit, and the intangible spiritual one existing just behind its framework. Based on a novella by Denis Johnson, I don't know if any film has affected me quite like this one. Maybe Joe Carnahan's The Grey, if that. It just felt like life and unseen forces unfolding in front of me. It's sad without being too melodramatic, just an honest, simple, all encompassing story of what it means to be human and to weather the storm of hardships while still trying to make sense of it all, feel one's purpose and connection to the whole holy symphony and find a semblance of solace amidst the great and ever changing mystery of it all. Joel Egerton is Robert Grainier, a logger and railroad worker whose personal odyssey stretches from just after the turn of the century and spans many decades later as he and his wife (Felicity Jones) make an elegiac life for themselves on the always humbling, sometimes mystifying and occasionally ruthless frontier of the Pacific Northwest. Robert encounters many in his labour intensive sojourns into working as a logger, one sagely and anthropologically intuitive fellow being elderly worker Arn, played by William H. Macy in what has to be, staggering as it may seem given his overall body of work, a career best turn. Arn has seen many seasons pass by and understands that the true wealth of this realm lies in the human being's understanding and experiences in it, come what may during their lives, or wherever they return to and perhaps from again in the next incarnation, mirroring the cycles of nature, seasons and elemental energy. Robert struggles harder than most (for reasons you will see) to recognize the holy synchronicity found in life and feel his own purpose within all of it, even when things seem hopelessly lost. Not just the best film this year but one of the most important ones released in recent decades.
Edgar Wright's The Running Man tries to be an impressive spectacle of incendiary special effects, corrosive social satire, cartoonish character work from a good cast, R rated beatdowns and cynical Orwellian backdrop, but it's lacking a certain intangible entertainment and aesthetic factor that makes it have a lasting impression or be considered something memorable. It's hard to put into words but the closest I can approximate is that it struggles to maintain consistency in world building, an observation made by my girlfriend as we were leaving the theatre, in the sense that certain details of the expanse of space and societal mannerisms just don't add up from act to act of the film. Glen Powell is serviceable as the hard luck, blue collar man forced to join a barbarically inhumane game show to provide a good life for his daughter, an endeavour that spins wildly out of control as the network's mercenaries begin to chase him. Perhaps that is what also doesn't work here, the streamlined pursuit premise accented with a healthy dose of anti-establishment rebellion isn't the only thing that Wright goes for here, there is an ever shifting multitude of plot points that criss cross over each other like the moving staircases in Hogwarts castle and do more to clutter up the already long runtime than to add any coherent thematics that have us thinking deeply whatsoever. Whether that's Wright's fault alone or Stephen King's initially I don't know, I haven't read the story so I can't say. Josh Brolin frustratingly underplays a role that begs for ham and cheese, choosing to accentuate his beats with taciturn calm rather than the fire, brimstone and sleaze factor delivered by Richard Dawson playing the role in the much more enjoyable 1987 film. That leaves Colman Domingo the scenery chewing duties and try as he might, he just can't hold up the antagonist tent on his own. Same can be said for Lee Pace as the head merc, who spends three quarters of the film with a mask on and when he finally takes it off, just looks bewildered as to where his character fits in. It's a huge swing, and not necessarily a huge miss, but way more miss than hit.
Shelby Oaks is such a great title for a movie, man. Or title for anything really. It's like that part in Donnie Darko when they say that of all the phrases in the English language, "Cellar Door" is the most beautiful. There's just something in the phonics there that lands with a satisfying cosmic impact to the ears when spoken, but unfortunately in the case of Chris Stuckmann's Shelby Oaks, the film trying to back up that title just isn't great. It's not terrible, but it ain't great. To be for though, anyone attempting this kind of found footage faux documentary horror has the deck stacked against them by default because of over saturation, and has to work extra hard to rise above the sheer swells of mediocrity. This isn't a mediocre effort by any means and still manages to get a few good scares in and raise some hellish atmosphere/tension but it shoots itself in the leg by showing us an antagonist that should have remained hidden and making that villain look utterly derivative of too many others just like him. Camille Sutherland actually gives one of the best performances this year as a grieving woman looking for her missing little sister (Sarah Durn) who disappeared alongside her podcasting friends while researching something gnarly. The journey there is filled with effective moments and eerie character work from veterans like Keith David, Michael Beach, and Robin Bartlett, but the eventual third act demonology and supernatural hoo-hah provides nothing new or unpredictable and lowers whatever top shelf qualities the first act had into the realm of B-grade schlock and really run of the mill elements. Too bad.
