Tag: Brit Marling

Sometimes, titles tell the entire story.

Other times, they tell you jack shit. Seriously. The East? I am a fan of cardinal directions as much as the next guy, but the title should try to grab in viewers. It should be special.

I feel like I know nothing going into this film! Oh wait, that is completely true. Sexy. I love blank slates. I just hope I don’t get it confused with The West.

Shit, that joke was so weak, it brought one of our main characters to drinking.

Eco-terrorism often gets frowned upon…and rightfully so. Fuck terrorism in general, but I kind of super hate eco-terrorism. Eco-terrorism punishes humans for crimes against the environment or animals, which is never never okay. Seriously. Humans are far more important than both of those things, so I really hate it. Fuck PETA, fuck Whale Wars, fuck all of that stuff.

Hmm, I hope I am not biased.

The East is an secret Eco-Terrorist group that may be a complete fiction. The film starts with a few of their members throwing mass quantities of crude oil into a rich guys AC unit, probably ruining his house. He also was responsible for an oil spill and didn’t really try to get his company to clean it up. That is more acceptable I guess.

Sarah (Brit Marling) gets a job at the start of the film in a company lead by Sharon (Patricia Clarkson). Long story short, she is to find and infiltrate The East movement. They are a security company, and they want to prevent future attacks on their customers, while also proving that they have the best intelligence unit.

Guess what, she does it! Yay. Being smart is awesome. She is able to find their small mountain society, with a very free spirit loving culture. It is lead by no one, technically, but we all know it is lead by Benji (Alexander Skarsgard), because he is charismatic and has a beard. Other high members include Izzy (Ellen Page), Luca (Shiloh Fernandez) and Doc (Toby Kebbell), a doctor. Nice name, doctor.

As Sarah tries to work to destroy the society from within, she must first become one with their ways and ideals. Like every spy cult movie before it, she might have some difficulty keeping her own priorities straight and not getting lost in the message.

Kumbaya at 8, bottle spinning at 830, and sleep by 9! Hooray.

Yeah, I know I came in a bit biased, hating eco-terrorist groups, but really, I don’t think that affected my thoughts on this movie.

They don’t do too many acts in the actual film, because they don’t want the new girl knowing too much right away. Pretty smart, given the circumstances. The reason my biases shouldn’t matter is that the only two or so acts that they do in this film are all pretty reasonable. They are both related to punishing people for hurting other people, a noble endeavor. They both also prove a point in a way that makes sense. Again, I am fine with what the group did.

The acting itself is decent overall, but not anything I haven’t seen before.

I, however, hated the ending of this movie. It was a mess. I can say I didn’t see it coming, but eh, a shocking ending doesn’t mean it is any good. I say it was a mess, because there was so many ways it could have gone, that when it finally decided on a path, it then immediately ended and I was just left wondering why? Why is that the best actions to take? To me, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense, so I almost felt like I wasted two hours getting to that point.

Again, decent acting, I especially liked the Ellen Page “lake side” scene. That sounds pervy, but really it was for the good acting. Just it had a plot that I was unable to ever really get attached to, with a poor ending.

2 out of 4.

Robert Redford is starring in a movie!

That should be the first thing out of your mouth, seeing The Company You Keep. The other thing you will notice is it has quite a hefty list of famous actors thrown into the mix. Robert Redford doesn’t act much anymore, but when he does, he calls out all the stops.

See? This is him literally calling out all the stops.From watching movies, I have learned that the 1960’s were a terrible time. But hey, terrible times lead to great movies about how terrible it all was. War, protests, the whole shabang. Some protesters couldn’t stand being peaceful though, like the Weather Underground movement. These group of youngsters thought they saw their government committing terrible crimes, so they wanted to get their attention back at home by blowing stuff up, and maybe even murder.

They also were never caught in the act and prosticuted. Until now.

Sharon (Susan Sarandon) has just been picked up by the cops, wanted in the murder of a cop from the ’60s. They have everything on her and all of her phone logs. Thanks to some reporter with gusto, (Shia LaBeouf), an article was published linking lawyer Jim Grant (Robert Redford) to the crimes and a nationwide manhunt for his arrest. Hooray! Take that violent political activist from the ’60s!

But did he really do the crimes he is being accused of? If he is innocent, why would he run? After all, the FBI (Terrence Howard) and newspaper editors (Stanley Tucci) all seem to think he’s guilty. Yet for some reason, he is being erratic, and looking really hard for one Mimi Lurie (Julie Christie). Hmm, I wonder what she has to do with all of this mess.

There are far too many famous (and famous-ish) actors to just throw their name casually in the plot, so I will just list them all here: Richard Jenkins, Anna Kendrick, Brendan Gleeson, Brit Marling, Sam Elliott, Stephen Root, Nick Nolte and Chris Cooper.

Stephen Root is standing next to lettuce. Yep, nothing to see here.The first thing I noticed is that Robert Redford no longer looks identical to Brad Pitt. But hey, now we know what Brad Pitt will look like in about 20 years.

Looking at Redford’s work schedule, he hasn’t been in a movie since 2007, but he has at least two more on the pipeline. The more notable one is Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Even better, the reason he is in the Marvel Sequel is just because he hasn’t ever played a role like it and thought it would be fun. I love it when actors tell the truth.

As for The Company You Keep, it has an interesting story behind it, but in the end it is just okay. It takes a little bit to get going, and kind of fuddled up in the middle, but it all makes a lot of sense by the end. Not that I actually liked the ending, as I thought there were multiple cop outs from various characters in the film. Acting was fine, just like Lawless, I didn’t hate Shia by the end of it, but he wasn’t exceptional in it either. Seeing him with facial hair (well, the small amount he could pull off) was an interesting change at least!

In other news, watch it only if you are missing Robert Redford in your normal life and like slow moving political-ish thrillers.

2 out of 4.

Miraculously, Arbitrage is a movie that came to the theaters that I had the pleasure of never hearing about before.

Seriously. It was just a giant surprise. “What the fuck is Arbitrage?” I thought to myself, and probably what you are thinking as well. Needless to say, I was stoked. It has been a long time since I’ve seen a movie I didn’t hear about before or see a preview for. Like I used to. Damn movie theaters, always spoiling shit.

Thank you cheap theater. Thank you for giving me another one of these.

Can he play anything but a rich guy now? He looks like he has money falling out of his eyes.

Robert Miller (Richard Gere) is your standard big money man on wallstreet. He is old, white, and Republican. I assume the last part. Either way, he runs an investment company, because that just is money on money. But for some reason he wants to sell. His daughter, Brooke (Brit Marling) is a high up person as well, and she doesn’t know why he wants to sell. They are so successful!

Or are they? If they were lying about their profit margins, and actually losing money, selling would probably be a good idea. Get paid, run off, fuck the new guy. Why not?

Speaking of fucking, of course Robert is seeing someone on the side. I mean, his wife (Susan Sarandon) is old. She isn’t Julie (Laetitia Casta), a 20 something model artist.

Bow chicka. So much bow chicka, that they even go on a midnight ride in the country. Fuck responsibilities, time to live it up! Unless you get tired, and crash the car, and kill your girlfriend in the process.

Err, uhh. Well. Whoops. Time to call the only black person you know (Nate Parker), get a ride, and hide it all from the cops (Tim Roth). You know, who know you have hired her as an artist and probably having an affair.

Trying to sell your company under illegal pretenses while being investigated for a murder probably won’t lead to happy times.

Oh hey there Tim. Long time no see. Just been hanging out? Keeping to yourself mostly? Wait. You’re not still upset about Lie To Me, are you Tim? Oh come on, you know it went on too long and peaked with season 1. Damn it Tim, come back here. Act in more things! Tim! Tim stop walking away!

Murder! Money! Lies! Sex!

Sounds very HBO show like. This movie, obviously rated R (for language, mostly) gives you all that and more. Eventually. But at the start, it moves pretty darn slow.

Not only that, but it moves in the slow, obviously hiding stuff now hurry and get to the point, way.

Some of the acting was decent, and I liked the few twists that happened, but the final one seemed a bit ridiculous. Kind of ruined the ending for me.

Arbitrage (which I will now pronounce Arbit-RAGEEE) gave me a lot of things I might not have seen before, but overall, it was just another okay movie.

2 out of 4.

Another Earth takes a simple concept movie, about guilt and redemption, and adds a second “Holy Shit What???” Sci-Fi ish component, to help ease all of the tension. Or make more tension. One of the two.

This would seriously fuck up the tide.

The movie begins with some people driving. They get into a car crash. BOOM.

Four years alter, Brit Marling is getting out of jail. I think she was underage at the time, like 17, but put in prison for those four years thanks to accidentally killing a whole family in the other vehicle, except for the dad, who was put in a coma. Brit feels horrible. I assume her whole four years in prison she had one of those dark rainy cartoon clouds following her.

Not to mention, that during her time in jail, scientists discovered “another earth”.

Right now, I will say that scientifically this movie doesn’t work. They give you tidbits throughout the movie, in terms of news on tv, and other radical discoveries. But apparently there is a second earth on the other side of the sun, in the same orbit, that has human life. First they question if it is some space mirror phenomenon, but after sending probes it is not. Weird shit starts to happen when they finally are able to send messages over there with responses. Why weird shit? Because the Dr Lady who sent the messages in Earth 1 was talking to some Dr Lady of the same name. Who did the same grocery shopping that day. Who has the same birthday.

What?

We are supposed to assume that the same chances and things that occurred on our Earth, occurred over there as well. If everyone has someone else who has had all the exact same experiences happen to them, they would make the same decisions. Also known as determinism.

So over time, for some reason, the planets are getting closer, and you can see it in the sky. I don’t know why there.

Back to plot. The guy gets out of the coma, William Mapother (Ethan from Lost). He can’t function the same way, his brain hurts a lot. Used to be a music professor, now lives at home in the muck. Brit, with her guilt, eventually finds him, and lies, pretending to be a free trial of a house cleaning business, to try and get to know him and help his life out.

All relationships of course that begin with lies eventually come out.

True for everything but Breaking Bad (so far!).

Brit also enters a contest to win a seat to the first spaceship to go to Earth2.

That is about all I can say. The movie, again, is about second chances, and unfortunately, the ending leaves way too many questions. I was shocked at what happened, and really, my mind can go all the different possible ways with what it shows.

It is an indie movie, with an obvious small cast and lesser camera work, but if you make it through, and ignore the scientifically impossibilities (in terms of the Earth getting closer and not screwing things up / wondering if it also had a moon / dinosaur meteorite?) then it should make you think. In the good way. I think I might have to watch it again, just to see what I might have missed!

3 out of 4.