Wild Movie Review

There are journeys where it’s the destination that matters. Then there are others where it’s the journey itself that defines the story and the character taking it. The latter kind is what makes for better films, in my opinion. In the new film Wild, a young woman hikes the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave desert in southern California to the Oregon-Washington border – a 1,100-mile walk. Along the way she recalls moments from her past that brought her to the decision to make this trek.

The Fault in Our Stars Movie Review

From the writers of (500) Days of Summer I expected much better in a romance film involving two teenage cancer patients. The Fault in Our Stars, directed by Josh Boone, is not cloying or mawkish, but it is oh so precious – relentlessly so. It is constantly aware of how perfect a movie it’s so desperately trying to be. I can even sort of tell from this movie that the source novel is likely similarly insistent on its sense of perfection in its characters and plotting.

The story is narrated by Hazel (Shailene Woodley), a seventeen-year old with stage four cancer that has left her with a lung ailment that demands twenty-four hour attention from an oxygen tank. Woodley is a talented actress whom I have greatly admired and here she really holds the movie together. Without her performance, exuding youth along with naturalism and a realistic outlook on her situation that you wouldn’t expect from a girl her age, the movie doesn’t work. But Marc Webb’s and Scott Neustadter’s screenplay pushes too hard on those buttons that make Hazel seem too intelligent, too over it, too cynical to go in for the platitudes and clichés associated with her disease.

The Master Movie Review

I’ll say this much for Paul Thomas Anderson: he’s one of the few filmmakers working within the Hollywood system who can consistently make gutsy and challenging films. He doesn’t pander to any audience; his endings don’t come wrapped in tight packages; there is no paint-by-numbers to tell you exactly how to feel and when. He creates emotionally and spiritually complex works that often leave us scratching our heads and that maybe, just maybe, leave us a little better off as human beings than when we walked into his world.

With that said, I’m becoming increasingly frustrated by his films. I don’t object to their complexity or challenges, but I have misgivings about the general lack of joy to be found at any moments in The Master. Boogie Nights and Magnolia are films I can watch over and over, finding joy amid the tremendous sorrow every time. There was real vibrancy and panache in Anderson’s directing style. He combined the dexterity of Altman maintaining multiple characters and threads with the energy of Scorsese. Then he started to go quiet.