Tag: George MacKay

I heard a lot about Wolf before going into it. No, nothing about the plot, unfortunately. Or barely anything about the plot.

I mostly just heard negative reviews from my friends who already saw it. One of the worst films of the year? I knew I had to watch it to be sure.

Unfortunately, the IMDB description for this one is really terrible.  “A high-concept arthouse drama about a boy who believes he is a wolf.” That is it? That is the plot summary? The plot summary is literally the last 7 words, “boy who believes he is a wolf” and no other details. What the hell. The first half is completely unnecessary in a plot-description. A “high-concept arthouse drama?” Okay. It is a drama, fine. But the other words? That is a way to shoot it and a reason to shoot it, not at all what the film is about. I will see if I can do better.

What’s new?

Jacob (George MacKay): Is he a man, or is he a wolf? Well, clearly, he looks like a man. But on the inside, he feels as if he is a wolf trapped in a man’s body. He wants to run through the forest on all fours. He wants to do it at nighttime. He wants to howl at the moon. He wants to shed his clothes, he wants to hunt.

He has species dysphoria, or thinks he is an Otherkin, whichever language deems to be the most appropriate in the next decade. Jacob is actually taken to a clinic that specializes in clients who have species dysphoria, after his parents bring him in, so that he can be taught to shed that feeling and go back to being a productive member of society.

Things feel okay, at first. He has to keep a journal. They awkwardly have areas where they allow the patients to do what they want, including act like animals, with no problem. But for those who are further along, or who don’t find the light therapy useful, they have to deal with The Zookeeper (Paddy Considine), who uses more and more extreme methods to make those people realize they aren’t animals, they are human. You know, by treating them inhumanely.

Jacob also meets (Lily-Rose Depp), who maybe works there, maybe thinks she is a cat, and they begin a strange relationship, meeting at night when the moon is out, and exploring each other’s past and pondering their futures.

Also starring Darragh Shannon, Eileen Walsh, Elsa Fionir, Fionn O’Shea, Karise Yansen, Lola Petticrew, and Senan Jennings.

Rawr means “I love you.”

Wolf is going to be a very easy film to hate. and it is going to be a very easy film to make fun of and laugh at the awkwardness of it all. I know in my own screening, despite going in knowing it was a serious drama, it had some people laughing in the beginning, because they thought it was going for a silly absurd thing. And I can really see that happening in plenty of theaters, and then laughing through out, but it is an awkward laugh because they would be mocking those characters, not laughing at intentional humor.

You see, because this is a “high-concept arthouse drama” it knows it is showing things that could be labeled as ridiculous and amusing, but it is taking the whole thing seriously. No one is acting to be a joke. No character is breaking the fourth wall and winking at the audience. We are to treat this as serious as the film does. And I think that is the only way this works, a little bit.

Because the acting is quite good. MacKay must have been working on his wolf prowl for awhile, because he was putting his whole body into that. The way he moved his shoulders and glared. He likely had to lose weight just to make it more visually uncomfortable. Same with all of the actors. Special shoutout to Considine, who got more and more frightening as the Zookeeper. Doing more and more rough, maybe effective but probably not, methods to make his clients accept their reality. The ending he was downright frightening as he put down a “riot” in the clinic. I have never seem him so scary or great.

Now, in terms of what this movie is all about? I don’t know. It could be considered a metaphor for gay or trans conversion therapy camps. Places where we know abuse and torture occur to the poor kids who are forced to attend, until they are “cured” where the cures don’t really last, they are just delayed and hidden. This has parallels to that, but I honestly don’t think the filmmaker wants this story to be a metaphor. We definitely see The Zookeeper as a villain in this story, and this clinic as a bad place, but it is left morally gray as to whether the clients actions really matter. Should they just live their life how they want? YOLO is what I say.

However, if someone can get through it all and just be impressed by the seriousness of the whole thing, they will probably still be upset at the abrupt and unfulfilling ending. It can happen to anyone. Go if you want to see some interesting/unique acting. Ideally don’t go if you are going to mock people. And wonder with me if it still could have been a lot better.

When I got the invite first for 1917, I really just assumed I would ignore it. I try not to watch trailers, I try to avoid spoilers and go out of my way to research movies before I watch them. All I knew was that this was a war movie?

A war movie? In my 2019?! We just had Midway which was WWII (and I have not seen). I skipped one, why not skip this one as well? How can you wow me war movies?

And then a friend knocked some sense into me. He told me that this movie was done in real time. With the illusion of one continuous shout.

Hold my green apple Smirnoff ice, I’ve GOT to see this on the big screen.

Words cannot describe the fear the audience will experience.

Lance Corporal Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) is awoken one afternoon with urgent orders that General Erinmore (Colin Firth) needs him and one other for an urgent mission, time is of the essence. He chooses his buddy Lance Corporal Schofield (George MacKay), and they hope it is just a supply run mission to head back and bring more food for the troops. They are quite hungry.

Unfortunately, it is a lot more urgent than that. There is another British division in the woods outside of a nearby French village. They are planning on attacking the German troops nearby at dawn, who are supposedly retreating, but the intel has changed. It is a trap. And Blake has an older brother in charge over there, another incentive to get there in time.

Now these two men have to travel through trenches, across no man’s land, hope that the German’s in their area did retreat, then travel several miles over land and hopefully get to the troops before it is too late and 1,600 men get killed.

Also starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, Andrew Scott, and Richard Madden.

Two men, one note, no cups.

Roger Deakins is god and we are just living in his well defined cinematographic world.

Breath taking. Wonderful. Immersive. It is hard to explain. If any film had to talk about the dangers and realities of World War I, this is probably the film we need. Our delivery boys are not bad ass guys who take their revolvers and head shot Nazis left and right running down a field. Every potential threat is just that, a threat, and potentially the end of their journey.

I never can tell if they will make it out of their current predicament, and if so, will they be fully in tact along the way.

The smaller roles given to big names help give some gravitas to their situation. Also, so do the explosions, and the hundreds of extras, and the miles and miles of real sets built, and the natural lighting.

An ending scene where a runner is going across the battlefield, while bombs are going off and explosions is one of my favorite and tense scenes of 2019. Along with a nighttime scene, running through the village with fire, flares, and German soldiers. It is hard to pick which scene feels more intense, honestly, and that is a good problem to have.

I loved 1917, and it is something that should be discussed for years to come on how to just do every little thing right with a movie.

That’s right, there are two Captain movies this year. But Captain Fantastic isn’t a superhero in the normal definition of the word, but if you think about it, he is still a hero to the intellectual community out there.

Which you shouldn’t be thinking about yet, because this is the introduction.

I will note that this film has Viggo Mortensen penis in it, so for those Lord of the Rings super fans, this should really get you on board.

And their outfits are even fantastic!

Ben Cash (Viggo Mortensen) and his wife, Leslie (Trin Miller) have decided to say fuck modern society and to live in the woods. In fact, they made this decision a long long time ago. And at this point, they have six kids. Bodevan (George MacKay), Kielyr (Samantha Isler), Vespyr (Annalise Basso), Rellian (Nicholas Hamilton), Zaja (Shree Crooks), and Nai (Charlie Shotwell). Unique names of course, so they can be unique people in the world.

Speaking of being unique, when I say living in the woods, I mean totally outside of society in Washington state. They hunt and grow their own food. They teach their kids to learn about the world, to be socialists, humanitarians, free thinkers. They train them to survive, to hunt, to build their endurance, to think through dangerous situations. They are teaching them many different languages and how to play many instruments. It is an intellectual smorgasbord.

And then Leslie dies. By her own hands, suffering from a form of PTSD after their last child died. And now they are in a strange situation. Because of how they live, her body is sent to her parents (Frank Langella, Ann Dowd), a rich couple who never approved of her life style choices and of course her husband. They are all the way in New Mexico and the father has threatened to take his children if he shows up, child endangerment laws and all, blah.

Fuck that. They are trying to give his wife a normal, casket, Christian burial. But she is Buddhist and had explicit instructions in her will, and they are not honoring that. So he has to load up their bus and take his family down to New Mexico, through civilization, where the hardest training is yet to come, for all of them.

Also starring Kathryn Hahn and Steve Zahn.

Learning how to break and enter into a house can be the difference between life and death, technically.

It is hard to classify Captain Fantastic into a few genres, it turns out. I called it a Black Comedy, but it really doesn’t even fit that bill, and Black Comedy is usually the “weird films that are uneasy and funny catch up” category. A serious drama, comedy, absurd movie maybe. Not Rubber absurd, but it just comes out with such completely counter culture points of right off the back it can take you by surprise.

None of the philosophies or ideas expressed in the film are new of course, they are just taking an idea to the extreme and seeing how it plays out. It leads to a unique film and one where the viewer is happy to take the journey.

The cast of characters is wonderful, with at least 4 of the children having pretty distinct personalities. It is harder for the youngest two of course. Mortensen plays a dad trying to do what he thinks is the best for his children, and it shows. The acting is phenomenal all around, with plenty of smaller amusing scenes and intellectual arguments to show the good and bad of their situation.

The ending is a bit weird, but he movie is entirely weird, so that shouldn’t be too surprising.

If you want an intellectual, weird, and slightly morbid film, Captain Fantastic is for you. If you don’t want any of that, then you might not like good films.

Ah, I do love a good controversy to start a review off.

This movie is called Pride. For most of you, you can take a good guess at part of the subject matter of the movie. For others, it might come to a shock to you that this film deals with gays and lesbians.

In fact, it is about a true story in the 1980’s in Britain! But the US distributors of this film don’t want you to know that. Which is why they have seemingly gone out of your way to mention the gay/lesbian presence in the pictures and description of the film, despite being the main point.

Welcome to 2015, bitches.

And shout it from a megaphone!

1984, and Great Britain was under attack against the scary Iron Lady. Or at least that’s how I picture it.

Movies tell me nothing but bad things about Thatcher, and this one is another one of them. 1984 had a Great Britain Great Miners’ Strike. Thatcher was super anti-Union and so the miners went on strike to make more money. Well, this thing lasted a long time, with whole communities having no income. Kind of harsh, but they had to fight for what they believed in.

Which is what the gays and the lesbians were doing too. Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer) decides that they should support the miners openly. They even want to start an organization LGSM, Lesbians and Gays Support The Miners. Sure, the Miners stereotypically would be people who used to beat them up for being “perverts” but Mark knows that a group who people hate should partner with other groups that people hate in order to make bigger noises towards bigger and better changes.

So it is that simple. They will start collecting money for them so that they can afford food and pay the bills, as long as they will accept their money first.

Starring as the perverts, George MacKay, Faye Marsay, Freddie Fox, Andrew Scott and Dominic West. Starring as the pits, Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Paddy Considine, and Jessica Gunning.

The stereotypes are entirely true. The gays dance better than the miners, every day.

A feel good story about overcoming differences between two groups of people to kick ass together! That is what Pride is about. Not just one side or the other, but both.

I’m sure you could tell all of that from reading the description, no matter what country release you had. And hey, sure, it felt a bit standard at times. There were moments that felt like a made for TV film, and then other moments that made sure you knew it was rated R. I wasn’t sure what I would give it rating wise until the very end, when sure enough, they messed with my emotions enough to give me a little bit of a tear or two. Dicks.

And we had a few stand out performances, namely Dominic West/Andrew Scott, and Bill Nighy/Imelda Staunton. Both play couples and both amazing in different ways. Namely also that Dominic West looks like some strange version of Richard Branson in this movie. (I say that about anyone with an accent and long man hair).

Of course, more importantly, I learned a lot about one year in Britain. I have more reasons for movies to tell me why I should dislike Thatcher. And I got to talk about a controversial movie but not in the way it should have been controversial. Diary, today was a good day.