Film Review: Only The Brave (2017)

Director:

 Joseph Kosinski

Writers:

 Sean Flynn (based on the GQ article "No Exit" by), Ken Nolan | 1 more credit »

Stars:

 Josh Brolin, Miles Teller, Jeff Bridges

It is a tall task to adapt a film from a true story.  There is so much to consider, so much source material to attach to it and at the end of the day, it is essential to not just please the audience, but to honor the real people and their families being depicted on screen.  It is with this sort of mindset that I went into Joseph Kosinski's Only The Brave, the real life story of the Granite Mountain Hotshot wildfire firefighters who lost their lives in the Yarnell Hill Fire of 2013, the deadliest wildfire in America since 1933.

The story follows a similar formula that has grown more common over the last few years.  Mainly with the films of Peter Berg, such as Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon and Patriots Day, the focus of the true story is on the characters.  It is the heart and soul of this film, the Hotshot firefighters of Granite Mountain who train hard and risk their lives to fight wildfires all over America.  Led by Josh Brolin as the determined and hardworking, Eric Marsh, leader and founder of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, Kosinski uses his keen eye for cgi in the scenes with fire and dreams of fire to create a supernatural entity in the flames that Eric Marsh and company extinguish.  Brolin is so on point, it's obvious how much he cares about telling this tale as honorable and real as can be.  Finally, there is a vehicle for the talents of Kosinski, who has the vision of a great director, but never the script.  Kosinski, who shot onto the scene with Tron:Legacy and Oblivion, has often been viewed as a visually gifted director with his use of cgi and scope but of plotless films.  In Only The Brave, he options to allow the cast of real lived people to tell the story and rely on the actors to push the story forward.  His job then becomes depicting the wild of a forest fire and in that regard, this is some of the best footage filmed of a burning world.

The rest of the cast handles like a military unit of close comrades.  The Hotshots are brave and daring and skilled, more skilled than any other Hotshot unit in America according to some dialogue, but the dangers of what they do for a living is trying on their families.  Kosinski uses this to show humans being humans, but becoming heroes at the same time.  They are just men fighting fires, but somewhere along the line, we learn their work ethic and the hazards they endure and earn respect for their labor.  Where so many real life tragedies are focused on an hour and a half of devastation and drama, Kosinski focuses on the men and their lives first, only getting to the tragedy in the final act.  This makes it a rare film about people with a tragic ending as tribute.  With great acting from Miles Teller as the rookie fighting his shady past and trying to make a good mark for his newborn daughter, the heart of this film is the men on the line.  The fires they face bring them closer together and we see that develop.

When the film comes to it's finale, we see the purpose of their journey.  I couldn't help but feel bonded to these characters and forced to lose a piece of that bond as their tragic story plays out.  It becomes emotionally deep as it rolls to a conclusion and eventually breaks as we witness the anguish of the families the Hotshots left behind.  All of this, like a letter lit up to ash against a candle, leaves a lasting echo in us after it ends.  The beautiful tribute given to each man as the credits being closes out the film with complete respect.  Where so many of these films tries to omit or redirect facts for a more extravagant meal, Only The Brave shines for it's approach and handle of the material, making it an easy digestible true life story with a devastating conclusion.  A fitting tribute to fallen American heroes.

8 of 10

Tyler Baker

 

Film Review: The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

Director:

 Yorgos Lanthimos

Writers:

 Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthymis Filippou

Stars: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Barry Keoghan

Yorgos Lanthimos is a bizarre sort.  A Greek import in the directing department, Lanthimos has impressed the indie world of filmmaking with strange fed movies like Dogtooth and Alps, but came to Hollywood in 2015 with one of the sweetest and strangest films ever in The Lobster.  Lanthimos' odd writing and directing (always with the writing partner of Efthymis Filippou) bleeds through the screen and his sharp vision on life and the awkwardness of humanity has become a masterclass.  With The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Lanthimos continues this habit of standing on the outside, but never looking in, and gives us one of the silliest, but disturbingly watchable films of the year.

I went into Sacred Deer with an immense love for The Lobster and excited to see Colin Farrell work with Lanthimos again.  This film was different.  It had the same sort of displaced direction that Lanthimos does best, forcing deadpan performances from everyone as if the people of the world had been drained of human emotion but still continued to feel them.  All the actor's cadences were mimicking one another, everything said was spit out strait and it shows Lanthimos' ability to direct everyone to his will and purpose.  The story itself is crazy and I suggest knowing as little as possible about the film (I won't spoil it here) and then watching it with complete confusion as you find out more and more as time goes on.  The music and tone of the film, all blended together in foreboding mischief of dark corners, was perfect to confuse the audience what the film really was until it is revealed half way through.

The real benefit of this film is seeing Barry Keoghan, who had a less than bit part in Dunkirk last year, show his ability to act with such talents as Farrell and Kidman.  He works perfectly in Lanthimos' twisted tale.  The acting only goes so far, however, letting the absurdity of the story soak in as it constantly misdirects towards any logical avenue.  The result is a dark but zany drama that could be a comedy or a horror film or a thriller or an allegory for humanity or something else entirely.  It is that kind of foggy misunderstanding that makes The Killing of a Sacred Deer something to really sit down and watch.  Pay attention to, absorb...if you can make it past the first minute of open heart surgery.

8 of 10

Tyler Baker

Film Review: Netflix's The Polka King (2018)

Directors:

 Maya Forbes, Wallace Wolodarsky

Writers:

 Maya Forbes, Wallace Wolodarsky

Stars:

 Jack Black, Jenny Slate, Jason Schwartzman

Netflix is coming into 2018 after a successful year of Stranger Things and other stuff.  Sure, they completely whiffed with shows like Gypsy and Disjointed, were forced to end their award winning drama House of Cards without Kevin Spacey, had a hard time winning over critics with films like Bright and almost every Adam Sandler "movie" they produced, but all in all, they hit big with The Crown, fans flocked to Ozark, stand up dominated their viewership and Peaky Blinders took out the last week of 2017 like a powder keg with a lit fuse.  This leads us into 2018, the year of Netflix's true assimilation into the film industry and it began on January 12th with the release of the Jack Black led true story comedy, The Polka King.

Netflix has pushed plenty of money into their film division.  They spent over $100 million on Will Smith's Bright (and what seemed like nothing on the script), produced movies with Adam Sandler and Brad Pitt, but never found a strong footing in 2017.  Most of their films were misfires because of what seems to be an overwhelming freedom they let their filmmakers work with.  With Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky, they found the perfect team to write and direct the insanely true story of Jan Lewan, famed Pennsylvania polka singer and ponzi scheme mastermind.  At it's core, the film revolves around who Jan Lewan was as a person, played by Jack Black, and how things spiraled from needing to make more money to pay his polka band to stealing millions of dollars from elderly people.  Black bends his ability to play silly with an instilled form of deception and manipulation that makes you sort of root for "Jan the Man" while shaking your head at his nonsense.  It is this area that Black has shined in before, playing a lovable murderer in Bernie or the big talking fame seeking director in King Kong.  Black shines with the strong writing that has perfect pockets for comedy and utilizes the kind of over the top character Lewan was.  With fine surrounding acting from Jenny Slate and specifically Jackie Weaver, Black has plenty of moments to act and not just chew scenes for a gag-reel.

What propels this film to interesting levels is the actual content.  What happened with Jan Lewan and his "investments" is as strong of a true tale as something like The Informant, but just off the mark of The Big Short.  With great joint effort from Forbes and Wolodarsky, who are obviously both comfortable with one another to avoid pointless scenes or poor directing choices, the film benefits from having two sets of eyes and two writer's pens in charge of it.  This is a rare film that hits all it's marks and comes to a satisfying end...all in under one hour and forty minutes.  So many films have pacing problems or dead spots or don't build enough on the characters, especially with comedies, but here is a smart and meaty balance of all things filmic.  The result is a fun, laughable but real plot and strong bodies all around it boosting the entirety of the project beyond just another comedy to watch and forget.  

Where Netflix has been just fine letting Adam Sandler hang with all his friends that can't get work outside of him, The Polka King works as a sign of good things to come on the film side of Netflix in 2018.  As bizarre as it is true, The Polka King is precisely what Netflix needs to build a bigger streaming giant.  Definitely worth the watch and with little to no fat around it's edges.  This is a solid streaming steak.

7 of 10

Tyler Baker

Film Review: Dunkirk (2017)

Written and Directed By: Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Inception, Memento)

Starring: Fionn Whitehead , Tom Hardy , Kenneth Branagh

Since the release of The Dark Knight in 2008, Christopher Nolan has had his way with Hollywood.  Sure, he was far established by then with incredible directing efforts with Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins and The Prestige, but 2008 marked the beginning of Christopher Nolan's domination of the big screen.  His advanced understanding of time structure, storytelling and character development was only overshadowed by his keen eye for beauty and grandeur.  As a result, we were awarded such amazing follow ups as Inception, Interstellar and The Dark Knight Rises.  What we really were getting was an auteur mastermind of filmmaking who had refined his craft to the teeth.  His efforts as a filmmaker could only be quenched by his need to tell amazing, original stories.  From all of this, after the superhero franchise trilogy and the space odyssey and the magic show, Nolan was finally ready to make his passion picture, Dunkirk.  While he takes many risks with this war film based on the true story of British and French soldiers during World War II evacuation, there isn't an inch of this film that isn't addressed with complete adore and attention worth watching.  This is Nolan reminding us that he isn't just another director, he's a filmic genius and we need to stop forgetting.

First, let me just say I loved Dunkirk for what it was, a story without telling a direct story, built on actions and scenes of motion rather than a cast of characters explaining everything to the audience as if they weren't smart enough to grasp it.  Nolan never insults his audience that way, however some people find his work in Inception to be insulting for the complexity of the story as "arrogant".  Nolan has a specific vision within his mind and attempts at the most finite level of everything to get his shots the way he sees them inside his mind.  Does this alienate the audience?  I always looked at it this way, would you rather have a person trying to cash a check by making the same crap you've seen twenty times or a person who would go through personal trials to take the risk of doing something original or amazing with the utmost respect for the source?  No brainer, right?  That is why 90% of Michael Bay movies have over-dramatic explosions and trash-bin reused one liner jokes and Christopher Nolan won Oscars with a Batman movie.

Dunkirk is built on the concept of telling the story in three phases, land, air and sea.  We get to jump through the beaches of Dunkirk, where the soldiers are nothing but sitting ducks for the constant swarm of enemy fighter planes bombing them, to the air where Tom Hardy seems to battle the entire enemy sky fleet on his own, then focus on the rising water of a sinking ship as the young men soldiers pile out into open waters to survive.  Without a focused narrative, Nolan is able to build this  "snowball effect" he attempted to create purposely where everything builds up throughout the entire movie on it's own.  Without force.  That is a kind of skill almost no filmmaker has besides Nolan.  In fact, he is perhaps the greatest director of all time when it comes to juggling scenes within different time frames, while still holding the integrity of the drama.  What he does great in Dunkirk is find a young cast, led by Fionn Whitehead in an almost silent role, to display the desperation of the British soldiers in limbo.  We follow them, wanting to know what will happen next, but the split between the sky and the sea make for a nice pace of action and story.

If nothing else, the air battle scenes with Tom Hardy are a calculated adventure to behold.  Everything about his character, from the beginning of the film to the end is powerfully placed as a reminder of the slow spots on land or sea, where people are trying to survive, that there is still a war above them.  With great performances all around, Nolan's care of casting is safely managed by his actors.  He then places them in danger and lets them slip in and out of it like waves on a constant tide.

Visually, the film is a wonder, but that was a given considering how much Nolan loves IMAX cameras and widescreen format.  He continues to be the closest grand scale director to Ridley Scott, who's The Martian mirrored Interstellar visually in a lot of ways.  Nolan has taken his visual talent to many different levels however and seems in complete control of everything in Dunkirk.  His care of the fictional characters telling a real life story have purpose and meaning, which is missing in so many movies these days.  If nothing else, Dunkirk is further evidence that Christopher Nolan should be given $200 million and let loose upon the Earth whenever he has an idea.  Dunkirk was born in the 90's, when he traveled the route of the English Channel that rescue boats from England took to save soldiers.  He refused to make it until he had enough experience with action films.  That kind of care, waiting twenty years to make a movie right, is a dying art in cinema and one that we are ALL rewarded with by the masterpiece that is Dunkirk.

8 out of 10

Tyler Baker

Film Review: Netflix's Bright

Director: David Ayer
Writer: Max Landis
Starring: Will Smith, Joel Edgerton

Back when the script for Bright was circling studios to produce and distribute the film, Netflix outbid everyone and quickly attached Will Smith to headline the flick.  It was obvious by the $90 million price tag on the film, it was meant to be a stepping stone for Netflix's film division, the only part about the streaming giant that hasn't taken off.  They've produced a few mainstream movies, from Beasts of No Nation to this year's War Machine with Brad Pitt, but nothing with a budget as big as Bright.  When they elected to bring in David Ayer as director (and script re-writer) it signalled that Bright would more than likely be a dreadful affair.  Sure enough, the one trick pony who couldn't execute the stolen episode of Arrow he used for a shooting script in Suicide Squad once again takes a could be original film and turns it into a slipped disc of fractured filmmaking.  The end result is a very underwhelming, utterly predictable and overall boring film with an eventual boring sequel already green-lit.

When I first heard of Bright, it was somewhere after I had watched Suicide Squad, entirely against my better judgement and hearing the news that Will Smith was coming to Netflix enthralled me.  Then I got the grave news that the film would be manned by David Ayer and that he would rewrite Max Landis' script.  Well, Neither Ayer or Landis are on a hot streak lately.  Landis most recent film credit was writing Victor Frankenstein, one of the worst films of last year.  Ayer, who I believe peaked with his writing credit for Training Day, has failed to make three other films that aren't just some rehashed, scene jumbled play on that same Training Day script.   Ayer showed his complete inability to manage a big budget or create an original script in Suicide Squad.  Putting them together with Will Smith, who hasn't exactly been going hard at the acting game lately, just seemed too problematic for Bright to work.  Still, I watched it opening day like everyone else.

What I found was a lazy use of fantasy elements, which was the focus of the trailer all along.  It was obvious that Ayer had rewritten the script, since every scene from Training Day was in the film, with the exception of the scene where Ethan Hawke smokes crack.  Over and over, I kept cursing at the screen for having to see the same five scenes in every David Ayer corrupt cop drama, but this time it didn't even make sense.  When he used the fantasy elements, he only used them in little pop up mentions to service the lazy, gutted story that went nowhere.  Hell, there was a dragon in one scene so brief and unexplained, most people probably missed it.  It was this lack of depth in the conceptual stage of the film that suffers the most.  Besides the fact that Ayer is a mess behind the camera, lacks true cinematic vision and can't assemble an action shot with any rhythm, the real problem is his constant need to insert the same tropes in all his movies.  Everyone is racist and cops are corrupt is his main draws.  You saw this in Training Day, Deep Blue, Street Kings, and End of Watch.  This reason alone should be enough to keep Ayer's name off cop drama directors lists; but apparently Netflix had to learn the hard way.

Don't expect any character development or the story to be rightfully explained.  There is no real story, just the quick references of everything magical that is never fully displayed and otherwise serves somewhat the same as a skinny guy flexing at the gym; this movie has no muscle.  It is driven from A to B to C without common reasoning and leads to scenes where Will Smith says, "We need to change clothes, their looking for two cops" only to give up his police issued bulletproof vest for a hoodie, walk outside and then INSTANTLY be found by everyone who is chasing him anyway.  It is that lack of knowledge of their own script and scenes prior that insult people who waited months for a Will Smith Netflix movie.  With a handful of secondary characters who we never even know by name or real purpose and called in acting from the great Will Smith, I couldn't help but feel bad for poor Joel Edgerton, who spent hours and hours a day in makeup to be the ONLY person who showed up to act.

Where they go with the second film, we don't know, all we do know is Will Smith is on board and I personally hope David Ayer will get blackballed from filmmaking sometime next year.  Until then, plan on seeing bad versions of Training Day over and over again.  I wouldn't even value the cgi, which was only utilized in one scene really, a scene Ayer loved so much he spent more time going back to it then developing the main characters.  This is the kind of film that is too lazy to name it's Orc main character anything other than "Nick".  This is the kind of film that shouldn't be called a film, it should be called an overpriced piece of shit, because that's what David Ayer created.

3 out of 10

Tyler Baker

Film Review: Wind River (2017)

Directed by	Taylor Sheridan

Written by	Taylor Sheridan
Starring	Jeremy Renner Elizabeth Olsen

Wind River is the gripping story of the vast cold lands of Wyoming and the mysterious dark deeds that go unresolved in this land.  The third film written by Taylor Sheridan, the scribe behind Sicario and last years Hell or High Water, Wind River marks Sheridan's first crack as a director.  It is Sheridan's keen sense of his own script, what he wants to show the audience, what the message is, that drives this quiet, sprawling crime story.  

Led by Jeremy Renner (Avengers, Arrival) in one of his most passionately painful performances, the film broods and barks like the winter winds of Wyoming as the characters move throughout, trying to solve the murder of a teenage native american girl.  As an FBI agent dead set on finding the caulprit, Elizabeth Olsen (Avengers Age of Ultron, Ingrid Goes West) uses her now refined acting skills to move the story along with gravity but also with a sense of gathering information.  She doesn't know the land, doesn't know the people and Sheridan uses this character to bond with the audience, so that we learn as she does.

The story itself is ice cold and at it's most raw.  What I mean by this is that it makes no apologies for what you are watching, but instead continually reminds you of the animistic urges within man himself.  Sheridan's sharp dialogue and unique scenes make every shot memorable.  Every inch of the film is carefully vetted by Sheridan to instill the sort of awareness he is after (which is bringing awareness to native american female victims of assault).  His passion bleeds through the camera.

I can't express how amazing Renner was in this.  The guy dominates the background in the Avengers, but year by year he ends up in one of the top 10 films of the year.  This year is Wind River, which allows him to utilize his dramatic chops, but portray him also as a skilled hunter and tracker, which Renner seems born for.  His own inner torture wears on his face throughout, adding layers to his character without even adding a word.  When he does almost every line he utters is something to behold, especially as the movie spirals down it's third act.  By the end, his words are like ghosts that will stay with you long after the credits roll.

There is a sinister sort of shadow following this film as it plays out.  All the way to the bone it chills, helmed by a man willing to tell a real story without filling the film with fodder to appease action junkies or sex for the lustful ones.  This is a story worth telling, worth watching and then worth carrying with you into the world.  If nothing else, to help solve the world in the slightest, Wind River is arguably the strongest drama of 2017 and perhaps the best of Sheridan's work yet.

9 out of 10

Tyler Baker