Last week on Plot and Theme we had an entire week devoted to the feature films of Denis Villeneuve, and now we get a nice cherry on top: Sicario. Villeneuve’s seventh feature film stars Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, and Benicio del Toro, and tells the story of a FBI SWAT agent Kate Macer (Blunt) who is whisked away on a special task force dedicated to hunting down the head of a Mexican drug cartel. The film is comfortable exploring gray areas and dwelling in the nooks and crannies of the legal justice system, but ultimately cannot find any effective answers.
“The Martian” Champions the Mind and Compassion
It is remiss to classify The Martian as “Ridley Scott’s” or “Matt Damon’s” or with any other possessive; it is a true ensemble film. Though the story begins in serious medias res with the crew of the Ares III mission escaping a Martian dust storm and leaving Matt Damon’s Mark Watney behind on the red planet, this is not Cast Away where we dwell on our lone character for the majority of the runtime. The success of the narrative and the impact of the theme require that seemingly infinite characters aid in Watney’s survival, but also that Watney himself is capable of titanic intellectual feats. What results is a film dictating that the strength of humanity is found in the reasoning mind – from an isolated individual struggling to survive to large teams working towards effecting a rescue.
Denis Villeneuve Week – Day 5: “Prisoners” (USA, 2013)
Denis Villeneuve week nears its end with his only true American film, and the largest budget he’s had to work with to date: the kidnapping mystery/thriller Prisoners. Of all of Villeneuve’s films, this may be the most uneasy, the most challenging to watch, and the one film that is truly unafraid of exploring the depths that humanity can reach at the intersection of desperation and good intention. Its subject matter is particularly challenging for parents, as it primarily deals with the disappearance of a pair of young girls.
Denis Villeneuve Week – Day 4: “Enemy” (Canada / Spain, 2013)
Denis Villeneuve Week – Day 4: “Enemy” (Canada / Spain 2013)
Another day, another crazy Denis Villeneuve film to review. This time it is his first true English-language film, Enemy (as previously mentioned, Polytechnique was filmed in both French and English). Enemy feels most similar to Villeneuve’s early feature Maelström in that it has some amazing peculiarities but overall deals with a very human problem. In this case, it is the duality of man and his struggle to choose between two very different alternatives – both in his life, and his mind.
State of the Blog – October 2015
I’ve got to say, September was a bit of rough month over here at Plot and Theme. After very strong success in August, I fell back below my site views for July and published fewer posts than I have in a full month. You may have also noticed that my Classic Review Friday posts fell by the wayside a little bit there as I was traveling and then occupied with work, which is disheartening. Still, I saw some great movies and made some very good posts this month, so I would like to focus on the successes with this State of the Blog post. Let’s get to it.
Denis Villeneuve Week – Day 3: “Incendies” (Canada, 2010)
Denis Villeneuve Week continues here on Plot and Theme with Incendies, the final foreign language film from the director, and his only film to receive an Oscar nod (Best Foreign Language film in 2010). The film tells the story of twins who receive a cryptic message in their mother’s will: their father and brother are still alive, and the twins must seek them out and deliver letters to them. A circuitous journey through an unnamed Middle Eastern country commences, and as the twins untangle myth from fact amid civil and religious war, the truth of their mother’s life is beyond their wildest dreams – and nightmares.
Denis Villeneuve Week – Day 2: “Polytechnique” (Canada, 2009)
Denis Villeneuve Week continues with the director’s first feature-length English-language film, Polytechnique (though the film was actually produced in both English and French, I will be reviewing the English film; Blu Ray editions contain both versions, if you’re sufficiently interested). The film is a realistic, formalist reproduction of the events of December 6, 1989, which would come to be known as the École Polytechnique Massacre (aka the Montreal Massacre). Villeneuve treats the subject with the utmost respect, and delivers a stark and beautiful rejection of all doctrines of hate. The trailer below offers a powerful sample of this great film:
Denis Villeneuve Week – Day 1: “Maelstrom” (Canada, 2000)
Welcome to Denis Villeneuve Week here on Plot and Theme! I have been fascinated by Denis Villeneuve (pronounced, Deh-NEE Vill-NEV) for about the last six months, when Jake Gyllenhaal’s recent resurgence led me to Enemy. Since then, I have devoured everything Villeneuve, and truly believe he is one of the best directors working today – especially if you’re into something a little darker. In celebration of Sicario, which enters wide release on October 2nd and has hooked me since I saw this trailer, I have chosen to review all of Villeneuve’s previous features. We start with a truly weird one: Maelström.
The Intimidating, Slow Burn of “Black Mass”
The threat of physical violence is omnipresent in Scott Cooper’s muted crime drama, Black Mass. The narrative focuses on the Faustian bargain between FBI agent John Connolly and his childhood friend and mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger. As both men climb the ranks of their respective worlds, Connolly’s craft is subterfuge and deception; Bulger’s is intimidation and brute force. Though the card house tumbles eventually, neither the fall nor the resolution are the crux of this story. We may have come for the crime drama, but Cooper’s film strength is in the contemplation of Connolly’s misplaced loyalty towards Bulger, which the gangster wantonly exploits.
Classic Review Friday –George Clooney’s “Good Night, and Good Luck.” (2005)
Precisely every 23 minutes, the standard length of a half-hour of broadcast network television, Good Night, and Good Luck. is interrupted by a jazz song. This instills George Clooney’s Red Scare historical drama with a distinctly episodic feel, mirroring the drama that unfolds on screen. The story follows newscaster Edward R. Murrow as he and others at CBS confront Senator Joseph McCarthy at the height of his anti-communist witch hunts. Shot in color but corrected to black-and-white, the film returns us to another time where paranoia ruled the nation, and where men capable of capitalizing on it rose to national prominence by fanning the fear. It also offers a biting condemnation of media outlets in general, and especially the corporate nature of television broadcasts.