Tag: Sebastian Arcelus

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.

As promised mere days ago in my review of The Longest Ride, I present to you, my review of The Best Of Me.

It was released a couple of months ago, but I really had no reason to watch it. But I figured I should get it over with before my screening of The Longest Ride. So, despite watching this one first, the review came later, because who cares about this one at this point right? Old romances are stupid. Unless it is The Notebook, then instead, we must all love it forever.

Speaking of The Notebook, James Marsden got rightfully screwed in that movie. Poor guy. Women leave him all the time in movies. So I am glad to see he finally gets to star in a romance movie of his own!

Marsden: Losing the girl yearly since 2003.

In this romance, Dawson (Marsden) and Amanda (Michelle Monaghan) are our fate entwined lovers. You see, they actually used to date. Oh, 20 or more years ago. Yeah. True story. When they were in high school.

Young Dawson (Luke Bracey) was a bit of a problem child thanks to his rough family, but he was smart. Young Amanda (Liana Liberato). Young Dawson had to get away from his daddy (Sean Bridgers) and their crime ways, so he tried to set out on his own. Luckily, he met a neighbor named Tuck (Gerald McRaney), a loner. He trusted Young Dawson for some reason, so he let him stay if he helped out around the house. He was mostly lonely his wife had died of course.

Either way, the young couple were romantic, these older versions are not. They haven’t seen each other for a long time. Only reason they are together now is because they were given all of Tuck’s possessions when he past away and put in charge of it all. Now they have to deal with the fact that they had some falling out. That Amanda has a husband (Sebastian Arcelus) and kids. And you know. Other past demons.

But don’t worry. It isn’t entirely angst. Because about half of the movie is dang old flashback anyways, so sometimes you even forget that they became old and jaded!

The whole movie requires a suspension of belief. You have to assume that kid can grow up to look like Marsden.

The Best Of Me is not the best recent Sparks movie. I would say it is definitely worse than The Longest Ride, Safe Haven, and The Lucky One. That is not saying a lot about this film though, given the quality of those films already.

First main issue. So much fucking flashback. Like the first flashback felt like it lasted 15-20 minutes. Can he tell a good story without so much flashback? I don’t know, he has been using it a lot lately. The story was bad in the flashback. Typical teenage angst and a lack of plot where plot would have been important. We have this huge struggle with his dad and their crimes, but don’t actually give a lot of concrete details on either outside of them being bad.

Young Dawson looks nothing like old Dawson. What the hell casting department. Get that shit fixed. The girls were okay in terms of similar looks.

The flashback romance didn’t even feel that great, which explains why maybe the modern day part also feels forced. We had our token rain kissing scene, and it was terrible. They didn’t even try to conceal the fact that the rain wasn’t even really falling on our characters. The flashbacks in general just felt fake and unreal, compared to the rest of the movie. That could be on purpose, but I doubt it.

And then the ending. Such a shit fest. Let’s just say, I still feel sorry for James Marsden.