130 minute running time but I only watched 20 minutes before fast forwarding to the end. Some funny bits but I wasn't in the mood for surrealist / absurdist / fever dream / capital A.R.T. art stuff, so I couldn't stick with it. Similar to Blancanieves in the sense that if you caught me in just the right mood, I might be able to sit through it. Not exactly a ringing endorsement. Red rating, avoid.
Margot surrounded by Red Wolves
113 minute run time but I only watched 20 minutes before fast forwarding to the end. You can't figure out at first why this girl with pretty good bones and a little boy with long hair are staying in this tiny room with only a skylight.
Later you realize, to your horror, that they are imprisoned there ... they're being held captive and the mother is being used as a sex slave by their captor. Then you realize the man must have fathered the child. Then you wonder, was the kid born in the room? Who assisted with the birth? Why have they not tried to escape? Surely they could get through that skylight if they put their minds to it? Why hasn't she slashed the man's throat in the ultimate version of coitus interruptus?
So it's a horror movie. SPOILERS: The little boy does finally escape (the mother fakes his death and the dumb captor didn't check before attempting to dispose of the body), as does the mother, but the whole movie is just idiotic on its face. Anyone being held captive like that would go nuts within seven weeks or seven months, let alone seven *years,* which was the story. The child would have been totally mad if held in captivity like that, not cutesy-filled-with wonder. I couldn't figure out who on earth could approach a nightmare scenario in this simple-minded a way, but then I realized the movie was made by Canadians. Red rating, avoid.
I have an expensive vase that looks exactly like that lampshade
129 minutes but nine minutes of credits so a two hour run time means a half an hour too long. Dramatic reenactment of how the Boston Globe put together and finally ran their stories exposing the systemic cover-up by the Catholic Church of pedophile priests in the Boston archdiocese (and by extension, everywhere). Lots of heavy piano music throughout. A reminiscence of when newspapers had power (because people read them).
Ray Donovan grows a beard and puts on wire-rimmed glasses to play a grumbling newspaper editor-in-chief. The pretty girl detective from that wretched season two of True Detective is also in it, but her main role here is saying hmmm and mmmm. Tom Buffalo Ruffalo plays a manic, squinting reporter with cocked head and pursed mouth. Michael Keaton looks good as an ageing bald man -- helps that he's fit.
There have been several documentaries made on the issue of pedophile priests and the systematic cover-up / payoffs carried out by the Catholic Church -- I haven't seen any of them because they're too depressing. "It takes a village to abuse a child," as Stanley Tucci Garabedian said.
The movie is well made, though overly long. I'm not sure how to rate it yet. Tentatively a yellow but I may upgrade it if I can't come up with ten good movies from 2015. (Rex loved it.)
Let me know how I can help, Marty! Loads of leather upholstery and wood paneling convey ... gravitas.
115 minute running time so at least 15 minutes too long, and probably closer to 25 minutes too long. I watched 40 minutes then quit. It's a mish mash of things: comedy, crime drama, romance, but none of it works. Maybe it's too black or too young for me to get, but it didn't work for me. Similar to Dear White People in that way. There are some funny bits, but then combining them with the real horror and violence of living in the 'hood just doesn't fly. Red rating, avoid.
Asking Zoë Kravitz to the prom.
