Reviews

The Past: More in the Present, but Amazing None-the-Less

/ The Ranger News / Leave a comment

Last weekend the Parkside foreign film series screened The Past, a 2013 French film directed by Asghar Farhadi (who the year previously had the film, A Separation, nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars). The Past stars Berenice Bejo, Tahar Rahim, and Ali Mosaffa in a “divorced couple and new man sexual-tension” triangle filled with drama.

The way that the film begins leaves the audience to wonder what the relationship between Marie and Ahmad is, as they seem to fit so naturally together. Usually when a couple comes together to get divorced, there is a bit of hostility towards one another. The way that these two characters relate to each other, in an almost loving manner, sets the grounds for everything that will come to play in the entirety of the film. The director uses many doors and windows throughout the film to separate the actors from the audience, almost as a way to give them privacy so that the viewer cannot hear or see what they are talking about. Although this may be frustrating to some people, I found that this made the film even more intimate than it already was.

The storyline also does a great job of showing family as they truly are in today’s day and age. The traditional nuclear family of the 1950s doesn’t exist anymore, that is simply a fact. With divorce rates skyrocketing and people being remarried after having children with past lovers, the world is constantly being mixed up with families not being related by blood but being forced to live with each other as brothers and sisters or stepmothers and stepfathers. Even with the children that seem to be very close to Ahmad in the case of this film, he is not their father. In reality, Marie has been married three times in the lifespan of her eldest daughter, which leads the viewer to believe that her youngest and oldest daughters are not from the same father. With the way that this unconventional family functions, with rough times and make ups, this film shows a great deal of respect to the dysfunctional yet happy families of today.

This film is refreshingly real. The way that it was shot was amazing in the sense that the director was able to make the people real, and the screenwriter was able to make a family that I believe all people, no matter what their own family looks like, can relate to. With superb acting and a story that keeps the audience’s attention for the entire duration never fully knowing what will happen, even after the ending, my only criticism is that I want more.

Article by Krista Skweres

You Should Be Watching: American Horror Story

/ The Ranger News / Leave a comment

With all the new seasons of beloved television series starting back up, everyone is probably looking for something to watch, right? Well Halloween, the world’s best holiday, is right around the corner and with it the best show to get you into the spooky-spirit is restarting for its fourth season. This is none other than American Horror Story. Other than being creepy, crawly, and just downright borderline inappropriate for cable that isn’t HBO or Showtime, this show is perfect for the time of year.

“But I haven’t watched the first three seasons” you say? No problem! One of the many perks to AHS is that each season stands independently as an almost Stephen King-ish (except creepier) miniseries with its own stand-alone storyline. Many of the cast members stay around from season to season, portraying a different character entirely as the plot changes year to year. With such big-name actors and actresses as Evan Peters of Kick-Ass, Jessica Lange of Tootsie and Cape Fear, Sarah Paulson of 12 Years a Slave and Serenity, Emma Roberts of We’re the Millers, and Zachary Quinto who plays Spock in the new reboot of the Star Trek franchise, staring in past and present seasons and people such as Wes Bentley of American Beauty and The Hunger Games joining this season, this show offers a wide array of acting talents and character development.

With the first season set in a classic haunted house that’ll make you check around doorways before entering a room, the second showing the dangers and evils of an insane asylum that makes you terrified of any doctor’s office, and the third telling the brutal and quite violent tale of a witch coven in modern day New Orleans that dares you to peek through your fingers, this series seems to prove itself like a fine wine that only gets better with time. Each season pushes the boundaries more than the previous did. With each getting more and more sexy, scary, and disturbing all at the same time, the fourth installment promises to make viewers cringe while trying to sink into their couch cushions. Taking place in a “freak show” of carnies, which let’s face it, fascinate with the uneasy feeling they induce in the souls of their spectators, teaser trailers have been making fans quiver with antici…..pation (another Halloween classic!). But never fear! Oct. 8 marked opening day at this horrific circus of terror. What better way to begin fall than with a blanket and your remote, but beware! You might have to sleep with the lights on.

Article by Krista Skweres

A Breakdown of “The Broken Circle Breakdown”

/ The Ranger News / Leave a comment

This week’s foreign film series movie was a film from Belgium by director Felix van Groeningen entitled The Broken Circle Breakdown. It is a movie adaptation of the play written by Mieke Dobbels and Johan Heldenbergh and stars Veerle Baetens and Johan Heldenbergh himself as leading lady and man in a tragic romance story. Beginning with a love-at-first-sight tale, I must say that I was relieved when it quickly took a drastic turn from romance to depression. There are an abundance of happy, romantic, and overly predictable movies that begin in the same way. When the turn was taken, it meant that the whole film could not be neatly wrapped up in a neat little bow in the end.

With a strong emphasis on music, particularly American Bluegrass, the story brings a unique mixture of upbeat to go along directly, and at the same time, as the sad, leaving the viewer in a whirlwind of emotions all at once that keeps the audience’s attention. This being said, it does take a little bit away from the emotion that I believe the plot and the director call for during certain scenes in a distracting way. The soundtrack in a stand-alone way is unique for the type of genre this movie is, which proves to be interesting. The storyline unfolds is in a non-linear way, jumping from past to the present, and even sometimes into the future of where the movie seems to be taking place. This can at times become confusing, but at the same time it adds to the movie’s depth, keeping even the slowest moments of the film at least slightly intriguing, which can begin to drag on. It all becomes worth the wait in the end, when in a psychedelic segment of scene compilations the cinematic value behind the film is finally revealed, pulling the audience into the film more so than even the main tear-jerker scenes that are essentially the meat and potatoes of the movie. All in all, having a strong plot that makes more sense the more you watch and a cast that works beautifully together makes this movie definitely worth the watch.

Article by Krista Skweres

Divergent: Shockingly Good

/ The Ranger News / Leave a comment

I will admit, I tried to hate this movie. I tried hard. I turned my nose up at it when it hit theaters back in March; I gave it a ‘wait for DVD’ status on my to-see list, even then I was weary about it. Watching previews for it I was reminded of so many science fiction novels of the past with the idea of the post-apocalyptic caste system. But I had to see what all the hype was about. Starring “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” star Shailene Woodley alongside previous co-star from The Spectacular Now Miles Teller and co-star from The Fault in Our Stars Ansel Elgort, and including Theo James, Ashley Judd, and Kate Winslet, the cast was likeable. Woodley has the ability to play a naively innocent teenager perfectly, as she has done many times in the past, which is exactly what this film called for.

The story line is genuinely entertaining. The whole movie takes place in an apocalyptic Chicago. The people of the city are broken into five groups; a lot of the castes seem to focus on simplistic ideas, which make it seem like there is directed hostility towards capitalism, with the leaders of the intellectual group being the main antagonists and also essentially the head of the other groups. The other “factions” as they are called focus on things like selflessness (the original group that Woodley’s character was born into), peacekeeping, honesty, bravery, and protecting the people of the city. Even with the notion that each of the groups were not allowed to communicate at all with each other, which is a very over done concept, the story line held its own. I guess there’s a comfort in watching the same thing that has been done before.

Without wanting to give anything away, despite the rest of the movie being entertaining enough, the ending of the movie was very disappointing and extremely predictable. With 3 more films to be released with 2 other books in the series, the end of this first installment was extremely final. It would have been a fine enough film independently, which is how I would have thought it was if I didn’t already know that there was more to come. The ending leaves nothing to what could possibly come, or even that there is more to come; with so many deaths in the first of the series, not saying whose, it just seemed to end. But I guess we’ll just have to wait until next March to see where this is going.

Article by Krista Skweres

Submarine: Quirky and Cute

/ The Ranger News / Leave a comment

The University’s well-known Foreign Film series started the season with a coming-of-age story written and directed by Richard Ayoade, primarily known to American audiences from his part in the 2012 film The Watch. The film stars Craig Roberts, Sally Hawkins and Paddy Considine. The story tells a traditional coming-of-age story behind the life of 15 year-old Oliver Tate who is reaching the age where sex has become the most important thing in life. He sets out on a journey to lose his virginity, and along the way finds out that there is more to life. Young Oliver faces challenges throughout the film that make him re-evaluate those around him and even how he views himself, as most coming-of-age films do.

The main difference to this particular film in comparison to other teenage stories stands in that the movie almost seems self-aware. The film starts out with a message to the viewer, greeting American viewers specifically by introducing itself as a biopic film from Wales, and even describing how the audience would know Wales by naming world famous actors from there. He says that the events that happened in the film are important and to watch with care. It is signed by the protagonist, Oliver Tate. The film also shows itself as being self-aware by having moments where the leading actor talks directly to the audience about what is going on or what is about to take place on screen. These moments are usually followed by a quirky montage which gives the movie a certain charm that is usually lacking in most of this genre.

Another difference is that the movie seems to have a very unusual pace. Things that the viewer would typically think would take the entire movie to happen, took mere minutes. The film was broken into 3 parts, as well as an epilogue much like a novel would have. Each of the parts of the film had their own issues, their own main conflicts, as well as their own antagonists. With the different parts each having their own issues that needed to be resolved in equal parts of an hour and a half, the confrontations leading up to the main solution often happened in a shorter time frame than most movies. This both added to the film and took away. Certain things that usually would need more explanation seemed rushed, whereas other bits of plot which seemed unimportant, though entertaining, would have made the movie seem longer than it really was if it were dragged out more. Although the differences in the film did stand out, the similarities of the formulated genre were equally evident. Despite the hard attempt to make the movie have a hipster-esque sort of oddness, there was a lacking in surprise. Everything that usually happens in a story of a teenager finding themselves happened. Happy endings for all!

All in all, Adyoade’s 2010 film was enjoyable. With a cast that was very good at the type of “quirk” I believe Adyoade desired, and a unique take on how the film was introduced without the generic “based on a true story” hand-camera style, he was able to bring to the screen a film with the warm heartedness that viewers were looking for.

 

Article by Krista Skweres