Tag: Jodelle Ferland

The Tall Man movie looks like your standard horror creepy film. We got a clear bad guy, the movie is named after him, and he is intimidating looking.

Right? After all, here is the IMDB description.

When her child goes missing, a mother looks to unravel the legend of the Tall Man, an entity who allegedly abducts children.

Alright, yeah, some Tall Man thing steals kids. Creepy.

But it turns out this movie is misleading as fuck. So my plot summary is going to have “spoilers” in it. Know that in advance.

Hey, don’t go running away. Spoilers aren’t the end of the world.

Basically we have a small town that used to be big, but the mine closed, and everything died. People be poor, yo. Also, kids go missing a lot, and never found. Rumors of some Tall Man that takes them away in the night.

Julia (Jessica Biel) is a nurse who lost her husband, the towns doctor, a few years prior. So she lives in a big house with her nurse and her little boy. WHOM GETS TAKEN BY A TALL MAN AND TIES UP THE NURSE.

Thankfully Julia chases him down, she ain’t no weak woman yo, crashes the truck, and tries to save her boy, but still fails.

Here is where the spoilers really begin.

The Tall Man is a woman in disguise, who is stealing her son back, because she claims that son is hers, and he was stolen years earlier. What? Biel is the Tall Man? Only kind of. Maybe there is an organization of people who steal kids from poor homes. Because kids from poor homes grow up to be poor themselves most of the time, and live shitty lives. Just a positive feedback cycle of being poor and lame. So they take the kids and bring them to rich homes for people to raise them better and help the world.

Yes, that is what the movie is really about. Like a third of the way into it you find out that the kid isn’t actually hers. Also there is a girl named Jenny (Jodelle Ferland) in it too. She is kind of important.

Well, at least someone is finally thinking of the children.

Long story short, The Tall Man is a social commentary with a bit of Mystery/Thriller, yet advertised as a horror. None of those genres which are normally known for their big stances on certain social issues.

Poor people stay poor, and rich people can succeed. I guess that is true. It is like a question on a dating site that I used. “Should people with low IQs be allowed to breed?” A lot of people feel pompous and say no, and fuck that. I think they should be able to do whatever the hell they want, especially if it is one of the most basic urges out there.

This movie doesn’t say that poor people shouldn’t be able to keep kids if they can’t get out of their poor situation. No, it lives it up in the air for the viewer to discuss afterwards, or something. But since that is what the movie is about? Even with the final words questioning if it is all worth it, I really think it is implying they are doing the right thing.

That is all sorts of fucked up.

For other aspects, the movie uses surprisingly good cameras to film it all, so it looks pretty good on Blu-Ray. In other news, I really hate the movie calls what happens in it a twist. It is only a twist because of how it was advertised, aka incorrectly. That is just misleading, and that pisses me off. It is like they are ashamed of their own movie.

Case 39 is a movie I easily walked by hundreds of times before giving it a chance. Why did I give it a chance now?

Boredom, mostly. The cover is boring. The stars aren’t my favorite. I just never cared about ever seeing it.

That is until I found out that Bradley Cooper was in it. Okay, fine, let’s do this.

Neither of these two people are Bradley Cooper.

Emily Jenkins (Renee Zellweger) is a…social worker! Ah yes, social worker, of course. She is pretty full on her schedule too. She works on child neglect things around the city. In fact, she already has 38 open cases! But her boss makes her add one more. Let’s call it Case 39. Great. Fine.

Well, she goes to the house and finds out it is very strange. Lilith (Jodelle Ferland) is starting to do bad at school and her parents are strange. She is a little bit worried about her safety, so checks in her at night a little bit later and finds her parents trying to burn her alive in an oven. Oh shit! They be crazy! They get locked up and she needs a home. Lillith wants to be adopted by Emily, but that is ridiculous.

Too bad it happens anyways. Weird things start to happen. A few weeks later, another of her cases ended up killing his parents. Whoa. Serious business. But the detectives also find out that before it happened, the kid received a phone call from Emily’s home. We all assume it was Lilith, so she gets some of that psychiatrist talk from Doug (Bradley Cooper!!) to figure out whats up. Then Doug kills himself later. Whoa.

Does Lilith have some power over people to cause them to kill themself? Is she just mentally fucked up and brings dismay to others? Or is she secretly an evil demon in a kid body brought to bring torture to everyone around? It could go either way. Straight demon horror film, or psychological thriller. Also there is a detective to help figure out whats up with Ian McShane.

Put that kid in an oven. Kids love oven.

Spoilers? It is totally a demon. They give some hints that it might not be something supernatural, just a disturbed child. Too bad, we get a demon kid movie. She also goes full demon by the end. It is very confusing at what her actual purpose is in this film. It is very irrational, and I have no idea why she even pretends to be a kid instead of just going on a demon rage.

Unfortunately, this film was pretty boring. The psychological route would have made it better overall, with a lot of people slowly going crazy, and that poor kid being in the middle of it. Misery does breed misery. That would require better writing, but it probably would still only be a 2 at that point. The beginning of the film was interesting, but as soon as the social worker decided to foster a child, that clearly interfered with the job, I lost all hope that the movie would be interesting. Sucks to suck, Case 39.

As I have pointed out before, Matthew Broderick has been in a bunch of movies the last few years, just none of them big. All smaller releases or indie pictures. Usually drama-comedies. For whatever reason, he just can’t make the big screen anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s out of apathy, and more focus being put on his broadway career.

Either way, I saw a preview for Wonderful World on some random movie, and it made me really want to see it. I looked hard for it, for like, ten minutes too! Then forgot about it. BUT HAH, I GOT IT NOW FUCKERS.

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?

Broderick works as an editor for some publishing company. He has been working there for eight years. Most people see it as a temporary job before they do what they really want. Like his good friend Cyril (Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who you all know). “Good friend” is a stretch, more accepting of his cynicism friend is a better choice of words.

Cynicism? Yeah, Broderick isn’t a nice person in this movie. He assumes the world to be bleak, miserable place, where everyone is out to get everyone. He is divorced (shocker) and his only decent moments seem to be the times he gets to hang out with his daughter (Jodelle Ferland). He is oblivious to the fact that her life is also miserable, no friends, no skills, and gets more depressed the more she hangs out with her dad.

Speaking of stuff being shitty. His roommate Ibu (Michael Kenneth Williams, motherfucking Omar) is a diabetic, and during an attack when he tries to get Ibu to the hospital, he finds his car getting towed for an illegal park. Unable to convince the tow truck driver of the real emergency at hand, Ibu collapses in the streets and is sent to the hospital to stay. Well fuck. His sister from Africa (Sanaa Lathan) visits due to his sickness, and stays in their apartment.

Can her presence in his life change it at all, even as the world gets darker? Why is he talking to Philip Baker Hall, who is a made up guy in his head? Does the fact that he used to be a children song writer have anything to do with any of this? Will his case against the city due to towing in an emergency go unheard?

In case you guys didn’t believe me earlier that he was in this movie, here is a picture, that is somehow supposed to be proof!

I feel like I’ve talked about this movie too much already. I liked the set up and liked probably half of what happened in it. But not everything that happened. More importantly, it felt way too slow.

It also didn’t even feel real, which I think is an aspect they were going for. Broderick’s zombie like nature is present about 80% of the film, with snippets of happier times throughout and the end. It isn’t pleasant or interesting to watch. Just want to tell him to be a jerkface. It did get annoying though that almost every character complained to him about his disposition. Repeating records repeat.

I just expected better of the music man.