Tag: Bill Camp

Quick, it’s midnight, what do you do? I tell you what I do. I sleep.

But for some people midnight is something special. And yes this poor intro was just a way to say the title Midnight Special, but it isn’t going to well.

Before the film, I knew nothing about it outside of the director, who has recently directed Take Shelter and Mud. I loved Mud! That means I might like this one too!

How old do you have to be for this potential Halloween costume to come off as creepy?

Alton Meyer (Jaeden Lieberher) has gone missing in Texas. An Amber Alert has been issued statewide, strangely with no picture, but a good description and a picture of the man who probably took him. Roy (Michael Shannon)! Sure, Roy happens to be his father, but that is besides the point. That boy needs to be found and they will put a lot of resources into it.

Hell, even the FBI is involved. That’s how serious this is. The boy was taken from a place called The Ranch, which is a bit of a religious cult. They hold sermons at night, led by Calvin (Sam Shepard). They think the boy is their messiah and that judgement day is coming soon. He has glowing eyes and gives people emotional visions that make them think everything will be alright. They send a few people to find him (Bill Camp, Scott Haze), where the FBI has an NSA member (Adam Driver) conducting the search.

Roy has a childhood friend helping him, Lucas (Joel Edgerton), and along the way also running into Sarah (Kirsten Dunst), Alton’s mom. They believe their boy is sick and the only way to help him is to get him to a specific location and time, based mostly on a whim. They have to travel only at night, with a whole mess of people with guns trying to stop them.

Also featuring smaller roles for Paul Sparks and David Jensen.

Yes I did say travel only at night. This movie isn’t called Noon Special.

I have a staggering weak knowledge level about sci-fi movies from the 70’s-90’s unless they were aimed at kids. This is a film that feels like it is full of allusions and I understood probably none of them.

The good news is that I didn’t have to catch any allusions (because, there also might be none, fuck if I know) to enjoy the pants off of this film. By the end, I felt such sorrow and joy simultaneously, and there aren’t many films that can pull it off. It is just a beautiful film, from the acting, cinematography, to the arguably simple story. Parts of the film do feel like a mystery, but the point of the film isn’t to answer all your questions but to take the viewer on the ride with the boy and be amazed and full of wonder. Jeff Nichols, the writer/director, feels like an older and wiser Damon Lindelof despite being five years younger. The mysteries and secrets are important for the story, not just shocking viewers.

And really, when it comes down to it, his is a film about a father afraid to let his boy off into the world and become his own person. Their journey is very emotional and every line delivered from Shannon you can feel/se the pain and sorrow in his voice and eyes.

Midnight Special is probably this years Ex Machina. A beautiful sci-fi film that doesn’t get enough attention, although this one is a lot more broader in its scale and reach. I know for certain I might never look at a sunrise the same way.

4 out of 4.

For the most part, I tend to avoid films that begin with the word Love. I did a theme week a few years ago watching a whole lot of films that began with Love, and for the most part I was disappointed. Here’s a snapshot of those films and review ratings as simple reminder. Basically, since I watched Love and Other Drugs, no other Love film got close. A few strange ones did a good job, but for the most part, they were all meh, bad, or shit.

But new movies keep coming out, and occasionally they start with love. I still don’t mean that in a story telling sense. As I review new movies, I will of course still watch them, but I won’t actively seek out a film with this strange specification. Regardless, I was slightly interested to see Love & Mercy.

That is because this bad boy is about the “greatest rock album” of the 20th century, Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys Brian Wilson!

Less surfing, more strange sounds and a journey through one’s mind.
So… mind surfing.

In the mid-1960’s, The Beach Boys were everywhere. In 4 years they had already released 10 albums, a lot of them about surfing. They were world famous, tours, money, all that fun stuff. But Brian Wilson (Paul Dano) wanted something more. None of them actually ever surfed, it all felt fake. He was a composer at heart and had a sound in his head that he needed to record and let the world hear!

So he didn’t tour with the group to focus on their next album. He pulled out all the strings, getting great orchaestra players to figure out the tunes and sounds without any words for most of the music yet. And he did what he always wanted to do, to make what would become the Pet Sounds album, despite all the naysayers.

Also, it is the mid-1980’s. Brian Wilson (John Cusack) is mostly alone, on a lot of drugs, and under the guidance of a caregiver Dr. Landy (Paul Giamatti). He cannot see his kids, he is under constant watch and other people make all of his main decisions in life.

His life sucks. His life might have always sucked. But there is some hope, in Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks), a cars saleswoman he meets one day. They start to date and she starts to see how bad his situation is. She wants to get him help because she is starting to like Wilson, who seems to only be a shell of a person at this time.

Oh and I guess some other Beach Boys are in this movie. Played by Kenny Wormald, Graham Rogers, Jake Abel and Brett Davern. They have various speaking parts in this movie and some of them butt heads with Brian when they hear his album concept. And of course, Bill Camp gets to play the dad of the Wilson kids and former manager and not former mean person.

Sometimes you just wake up in the morning and think, “Fuck, even my art is beach themed.”

What is this, the year of the musical biopic? A lot of them tend to be terrible VH1 Behind the Music level films that tell a story we have all heard before with some sweet tunes. But 2015 has given us Love & Mercy, which you know I will call amazing, and Straight Outta Compton, which was definitely amazing. I would like to thank Get On Up from August 2014 for this. It was a good musical biopic, not on the level of the above films, but better than average. It seems like the genre can do no wrong!

Why is this one fantastic? Thankfully it is for multiple reasons. First off, the acting from Dano and Cusack is incredible, yet very very different. Yes, they play the same man about twenty years apart, but they are very different times in his life where he has a very different psyche. In Dano, you can see the artistic genius at show but also see how he starts to crack and fall apart despite the currently good events in his life. For Cusack, he plays a more typical drugged up/mentally ill person trying to make his way in the world. While a good performance, from an acting stand point it didn’t seem to be breaking new ground like it did for Dano.

Again, Cusack was actually really good in this, but to me he was overshadowed by Dano who was really really good in this. And besides, it was a bit hard to imagine Cusack as anyone other than just a bit more out of touch Cusack.

But that is just the first reason! The other reason comes from the plot and accuracy. I, like a lot of people, would love it if the bio films were more all encompassing instead of focusing on a few events. But they picked great (read: sad) times in Wilson’s life to really tell the story of what he has overcome and what he has accomplished. But to tell a coherent parallel story always takes some gusto. This is the first major movie directed by Bill Pohlad, who has produced a lot of great films. It is a very impressive first outing, an incredible work for him and the writers who pieced together this movie.

God Only Knows what we would have done without the Pet Sounds album and eventually this film.

4 out of 4.

Let’s talk about psychological thrillers based on real life stuff. I only am bringing this up, because guess what, Compliance might mess with your head, and it is totally based on a real story.

Kind of like The Experiment. Except in The Experiment, it was a real psychological test and they fictionalized aspects of it in the movie, and it was still good. In Compliance, it is based off of THIS real life event, and it keeps true to what actually happened. Roughly. I think. Shit, I just read about it again and got all disgusted at it.

Not as disgusted as her face, which looks like someone farted. At a restaurant that is totally not McDonalds but something generically different, it is a busy Friday night. Why are Friday nights busy? Fuck you, that is a dumb question, learn the real world.

Well, they get a phone call from an Officer Daniels (Pat Healy). He says they have a situation at the store, a young blonde girl at the register apparently stole some money from a customer, right out of their purse, so the customer went to the police station to complain. He has the regional manager on the other line, and he needs the manager (Ann Dowd) to take Becky (Dreama Walker) back in the storage room and question her.

Officer Daniels is on the phone the whole time, including when the strip search happens. But it turns out, Officer Daniels isn’t a cop at all, and just some dude prank calling some fast food places to make them do fucked up shit to employees.

What a twisted dude! Bill Camp is also in here as the fiance to the store manager, who might have to take over for her cause it is such a busy Friday night.

This is not sexy. Sure, she is just wearing an apron, but the torture-esque part kind of ruins it. I think reading the story via text gave me a worse emotional reaction than the actual film showing the events. Somehow, I wasn’t able to really get affected by the story when it occurred in front of my eyes.

I am not saying the acting was bad (and it wasn’t great either) because that isn’t necessary. They are just trying to be real people. Because it was close to the actual events, as the film unfolded I found it harder to stay interested.

Basically, whenever they amped up what they had to do to Becky in the room, there was always uncertainty involved, and the phone people didn’t want to do it (yet always did) and it got annoying. They always repeated the instructions starting with “He said I have to…”, which just got ridiculously annoying. I mean, if half the dialogue is hearing the same stuff twice, that gets annoying.

I am pretty sure in real life, especially when the fiance got there, if he was watching her and making her do things for over two hours, eventually he wouldn’t phrase it like that anymore. But we never get to see the really shocking stuff that happens. Only two of them were implied. They spent so much time on the initial get naked and find someone else to watch, it was stalling for no reason.

Overall, it is an okay movie, but didn’t fuck with me psychologically enough for me to love it.

2 out of 4.