Tag: Haley Lu Richardson

Columbus makes me think of a few things off the bat, and none of them end up being true about this film. Not even Ohio, thankfully.

The only reason it is on my radar is it got nominated for a good number of Spirit awards and yes, that list is already out so get ready for a wave of these reviews. It had nominations for Best First Feature, Best First Screenplay, and Cinematography. It is going up against some big competition in Cinematography, but there is always a chance for the “first” awards. Those categories are very nice, because it puts all newbies against each other, not against some big shot indie director who has been here already for 10 years in a row.

But in further looking at the film, I enjoy the actors generally, so that is a plus. And if it is nominated for cinematography, you know there is a good chance it is pretty to look at it. That is another plus.

Wow, Columbus, we are starting off with two plusses before I really even get to know you.

This first picture looks like an advertisement for the local cult.

Columbus is a story about two people at very different stages of their lives, meeting and learning from one another. And it takes place in Columbus, Indiana! Not Ohio!

Jin (John Cho) is a Korean American who is in Columbus because his father is in the hospital. He hasn’t had the best relationship with his dad and had moved away a long time ago. His dad is a pretty famous architect and Jin, well, doesn’t care about architect for that reason. He has a job translating Korean texts into English, he lives alone, and right now, he lives alone in an apartment, hanging out occasionally with an old friend Eleanor (Parker Posey).

Casey (Haley Lu Richardson) is recently out of high school. And by recently, I mean a whole year earlier, but here she is, still hanging out in her town and not going to college. Casey is a smart girl by anyone’s standards, and everyone tells her this. She just has other things on her mind. Namely her mother, who happens to be a recovering addict, who is very close to relapsing time and time again. Her mom works as an overnight custodian, which keeps Casey up at weird hours, worried about her mom. But she did recently get a basic job a book store with a new friend, Gabriel (Rory Culkin). And she loves architecture, of course, because she grew up in Columbus, Indiana, which strangely has a lot of cool buildings in it or near it.

One day, Jin and Casey meet on a chance encounter. And they will begin to talk, and talk a lot, about everything, nothing, and of course, architecture.

Also starring Erin Allegretti.

“Shit is this whole movie just two people looking at buildings?” Well…

Columbus is only about 100 minutes long, but it certainly feels a lot longer than that. It drags on because nothing “showy” or ground shattering ever occurs. There are no big plot twists/reveals, no sudden changes in heart. Everything is organic, slow, and I guess developmentally sound. We have two stories, both with their own pretty much set in stone conclusions. We just have to get there for those two characters, and see how they decide their paths.

And how do we do that? Through dialogue. Having conversations about buildings and then about life. There is some awkward moments where you wonder if these two are going to develop an actual relationship or not, because of course. That seems to be the natural process of human beings, or at least those that appear in TV and film.

The dialogue is great in this movie. Cho and Richardson are also really good in their roles. It is definitely wonderful to look at, in sometimes quite subtle ways. It is just a film that is really hard to get into. It feels like it drags on, it is boring, and not something I would just ever recommend to anyone.

I bet Josh Radnor loves this movie though.

Guess what? I liked The Visit. It creeped me out a bit, had some humor, but overall was a good balance and a decent story. It had a twist, but didn’t really make or break the movie on the twist, so it didn’t get hated for it either.

And that is what M. Night needed to do. He needed to take the twists focus away from his film, because they lived and died by how good the twist became. He can still do twists, but he had to make sure he had a great film regardless of twist.

I was looking forward to see Split. I didn’t see any trailer, any synopsis, just a director and the main actor in a poster. I was excited because I wanted to believe.

I was excited to see M. Night finally kick some ass again.

I was basically as giddy as a school girl, like this little boy here!

Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Joy) is your regular, average, teenage girl. Well, except she has black hair, so that makes her moody. She goes to detention a lot, has unreliable parenting, has run away before and is a person who likes to keep to herself. But she was invited to a classmate’s party, because it would be weird to invite everyone BUT her. After everyone else had left, Casey’s ride isn’t there, so she gets a ride home with the birthday girl, (Haley Lu Richardson), her other friend (Jessica Sula), and the dad.

But the dad doesn’t get in the driver’s seat. Next thing the girls know, they wake up in a locked room underground, and this creepy guy, Dennis (James McAvoy) is talking strangely and threatening them. There is talk about…a beast?

Long story short, turns out that Dennis is more than Dennis. He is Patricia. He is Hedwig. He has 23 different personalities. He has been mostly non threatening, sees a shrink (Betty Buckley) and everything, but it looks like some of his personalities have taken over and have other plans. The girls are going to have to work with their kidnapper if they hope to escape their kidnapper.

Also featuring some flashbacks with young Casey (Izzie Coffey) and her dad (Sebastian Arcelus) and uncle (Brad William Henke) out hunting.

Dennis is super cereal all the time, and also enjoys young girls dancing for him. Your average joe.

I ended up really enjoying Split. Like, like liking Split. It just shocked the hell out of me.

First of all, it is a very strange movie. I am not going to say that it is accurate scientifically or anything, but based on the universe M. Night created, it totally fits and is plausible. But it is still very weird, while keeping the aura of mystery and thrills, all wrapped up in a psychotic bow.

A lot of cool things happen along the way thanks to the story, but in all honesty it is just McAvoy and Taylor-Joy carrying it. The other two girls are forgettable characters because they are to the side. The psychiatrist is interesting, but not the best. The flashbacks serve a purpose, but don’t end too shockingly. But McAvoy playing the many different roles pulls it off flawlessly. He saw what Tom Hardy did in Legend and thought he would try and 22 up it.

I have now seen Taylor-Joy in only two films, The Witch being the other one, and it amazes me how well she plays a struggling but capable female victim lead. Her roles have not been screaming girl who somehow survives, they have depth to them, fears, and presence.

Split delivered something I hope to see in every movie I watch. It gave me something unique. It gave me a film full of its own mythos. It gave me performances I want to see again and again. And it gave me hope. Not hope for mankind or anything. But just hope in films, because when the credits rolled, I found myself even giddier than when I originally walked to my seat.

Coming of age films are a dime a dozen, and I don’t really understand if that means they are common or just cheap.

But they are easy to cater to large audiences. Most adults used to be children, so at some point, they must have come of age. Put in some embarrassment, some universal feels, and hey, people will relate, like it, laugh, and enjoy.

I will be honest that I never really was able to connect to a female coming of age film really before, given my lack of ovaries, and some of the growing up experiences become a bit different. Despite that, I was still excited about The Edge of Seventeen, because I ended up seeing the trailer at some point and hey, it looked funny, crude, and real.

As a bonus, everyone looks awkward.

When Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld) was just 13 years old, her father (Eric Keenleyside) passed away. Which besides sucking for the obvious reasons, was extra bad because he was the only person who seemed to understand her. He was the reason Nadine and her mother (Kyra Sedgwick) could live under the same house, as they got on each others nerves.

Also Nadine is sort of miserable. She is sarcastic, she jokes around, she is vulgar. She is the star of every teenage coming of age film about a loner, except this time she is a girl not a boy. But somehow she still has a friend. Krista (Haley Lu Richardson) is only a little bit weird, but she puts up with Nadine’s shit because she is a good person. But apparently Krista was just waiting 15 or so years to secretly ruin her life. After a night with their mom out of the house, drinking, fun, Nadine wakes up to find Krista in bed with her older, perfect, brother Darian (Blake Jenner).

Yep. Now Nadine’s life is ruined. The only way to end it has to be suicide. There is no way her life can get worse. Sure, there is a boy in History class (Hayden Szeto) who seems into her, but he is only cute in a pity way. Her one confidant left is her teacher (Woody Harrelson), who has resolved to fighting her sarcasm with his own. And she is madly lusting after a boy in her school that she barely knows (Alexander Calvert) because he is mysterious.

Nadine is a bit mysterious too, because she does not have blonde hair.

As I already alluded to in the review, I loved that our main character felt like one of the many guy leads that normally have this movie. Women leads like this are rarely so crude and unlikeable, so it was a fresh change of pace. And like our lead, most of us have still done stupid things like her before, so yes, she was easy to relate to and cringe along with.

Steinfeld hasn’t been this good of a lead since True Grit (which I am still annoyed the movie put her under Supporting Actress). Most of the rest of the cast isn’t given a lot to work with in comparison, but Harrelson always brings a laugh whenever he is featured in his scenes. Jenner has had a really good year, with this and Everybody Wants Some!!. And I haven’t seen Szeto in anything else before, but I couldn’t help but sort of melt into his awkwardness.

I don’t think it is hard to see why people love this movie. It is quirky, it feels real, and it brings up that nostalgia that we all love to remember.

I am not saying it will go out and win a lot of awards, but in terms of over all feeling good (While also dealing with a LOT of dramatic elements), it keeps a nice balance and really takes the viewer on a teenage ride. A fantastic film, and one is keeping the coming of age story fresh and relevant.

Aw yeah, the most patriotic time of the year, where we all get our flags out and scream our dominance at flexibility and water sports and ignore the many sports where we never win. That’s right. Olympics time.

Now, The Bronze came out much earlier in the year, but I knew I had to wait until it was appropriate to review it. Right in the smack damn middle-ish of the Olympics, when we have maybe finished getting out gold medals in gymnastics.

And even more exciting is that The Bronze stars Bernadette from The Big Bang Theory, which of course you would only recognize her from. Outside of some cartoon voice work, I have never seen her in anything else. Oh wait, she was Woman Jogger Yelling at Sydney in I Love You, Man, of course!

This means that The Bronze is her second most famous role now! Too bad it wasn’t third! –

Hope Annabelle Greggory (Melissa Rauch) gave America a lot of Hope and a lot of Greggory. You see, she went to compete in the Olympics as a teenager, their star gymnast, from Amherst, Ohio. And then she got injured during a routine. But you know what she did? She did her next set anyways on the uneven bars, with a hurt ankle and received enough points to still place third. She was everywhere and everyone loved her.

But that was her only time in the big leagues. Now, twenty years later or so, she is still living with her dad (Gary Cole), still wearing her athletic gear and medal, and doing jack shit with her life. She has rode her fame into free food at a local Sbarro and a special parking spot down town, but other than that, no one cares anymore. And then her old coach (Dale Raoul) commits suicide.

Well, according to a letter she sent Hope before ending it all, the coach had been training the young Maggie Townsend (Haley Lu Richardson), completely free, because her mom (Cecily Strong) is single and working alone, struggling to survive. Maggie has a lot of talent and could win it all, and yes, she is from their same small town! Hope doesn’t want Maggie to succeed, because if Maggie does better, the town will forget all about Hope and her gravy train will end. In the letter, it is said that Hope will receive $500,000 if she continues to coach Maggie and get her as far as she can.

Cha-fucking-ching.

Also starring Thomas Middleditch as the local gym owner, shy and shit, and Sebastian Stan as a male gymnast from the same games who actually placed first in his categories.

And let’s be honest, gold comes with a fat cash prize as well.

This is technically the best acting I have seen from Rauch. Of course, her only other character as nerdy occasionally angry hot girl on TBBT doesn’t have a lot of acting involved. Her character was consistent, angry, foul and angry at the world. She was angry for messing up her moment and never getting another moment later (growing boobs messed up her balance and she couldn’t re-qualify). Her character made sense as did most of her actions.

I also enjoyed Middleditch and Richardson in this movie. Middleditch was still playing his nervous self, but he had a much nicer character than normal. Richardson had that teenage girl idol hype going well for her, emotions all over the place, and she looked the part.

Finally, I also feel like I should highlight the scene that gave it the Graphic Nudity part of its rating. It was longer than I expected and all sorts of hilarious (it involved two gymnasts after all!), and yes, body doubles were used.

But throughout the movie I couldn’t help but feel it was lacking. The characters, although consistent, got a little bit dull. We had what seemed like a training montage that lasted forever. It just seems like something that should have had a lot more Olympics and a lot less moping to make a more exciting film overall. But it dragged in areas, and the constant back and forth of the lead definitely got on the nerves.

Good news is, it is definitely entertaining for at least one watch, and the ending doesn’t suck. I said, the ending. Doesn’t. Suck.