Category Archives: Film Review

Featured

Hateship Loveship (2013)

Leave a comment

Generally speaking, when one goes into a movie, they have a certain set of expectations. If it’s a horror movie, they expect to be scared; if it’s a thriller, they expect to be on the edge of their seat; if it’s a love story, they expect to be moved, and so on and so forth. If you see Hateship Loveship, here’s my best piece of advice: don’t have any expectations.

Hateship Loveship is advertised as a rom-com, but it is far from it. In fact, it might as well be genre-less. This doesn’t mean it’s bad – in fact, it’s pretty good once you can accept that it’s not a comedy at all – but it does mean that if you go in to it expecting it to be your traditional quirky, funny love story, you’re going to end up disappointed.

Continue reading Hateship Loveship (2013) →

Featured

Suffragette (2015)

Leave a comment

Oh Carey Mulligan. How my heart yearns for you and your perfect period-piece face.

In Suffragette, a movie about the women’s rights movement in Britain in the early 20th century, Mulligan is joined by Helena Bonham Carter and Meryl Streep as part of a hugely accomplished female cast who act out their roles with some seriously personal vested interest.

The film opens with Mulligan, who plays Maud, working in a shirt and laundry factory, a setting that immediately invokes memories of the early scenes of Les Mis and has you wondering if Anne Hathaway might make a guest appearance. In fact, the whole tone of the movie is very Mis-esque: bleak, but empowering; infuriating, but undeniably true. However, to compare the two very separate events in European history is relatively moot, so I will draw no further parallels except to say the setting may seem eerily similar, and the fight, similarly astonishing.

Continue reading Suffragette (2015) →

Featured

Dope (2015)

Leave a comment

As the Academy Awards have shown us, there are a lot of important elements that go into a great movie: costumes, acting, production, story, etc. In the case of Dope, the most standout category is certainly the soundtrack, featuring killer mixes from the best in the ’90s hip-hop game to current hip-hop and R&B rockstars. Busta Rhymes, Santigold, A Tribe Called Quest, and Public Enemy are just a few of the radio masters that come to mind, but trust me — if you see this movie for nothing else, see it (or I guess hear it) for the soundtrack.

Beyond the soundtrack, Dope delivers on being a fun movie with some important messages about what it’s like growing up as an outsider, and defying the expectations of your neighborhood and culture. The film starts off by introducing us to Malcolm, a straight-A student in Inglewood, California working towards the end of his junior year to get into his top college selection. Malcolm, joined by his best friends Jib and Diggy, struggle to get by as the “nerds” of the school, often falling victim to bullying, petty robbery, and of course, verbal abuse.

Continue reading Dope (2015) →

Face Off

Face Off: Hercules (1997) and Superman I/II (1978/80)

1 Comment

Motion State Face Offs pit two films, franchises, or television series against each another for no reason other than because we can.

As the leading voice in movie reviews, we at Motion State Review judge films based on a wide variety of factors — dialogue, acting, cinematography, whether or not Nic Cage is in it, etc. But perhaps the most important quality a movie can have, in this contributor’s humble opinion, is originality. Sometimes, we do not recognize a movie’s level of originality unless it is noticeably unoriginal (Avatar rehashing Pocahontas, to name one; seriously they are the same movie). Other times, you can see a movie a dozen times before realizing that maybe you have seen the same exact thing somewhere else. Such was the case as when I traveled to Athens and watched the Disney movie Hercules for the first time in several years, because a true movie critic travels thousands of miles just to watch an animated movie that takes place there. I expected to get a heavy dose of nostalgia while watching; instead I got a heavy dose of…Superman?

In the same way that Avatar and Pocahontas are similar enough that any high school teacher would claim plagiarism, so, too, I found, were Hercules and the first two Christopher Reeve Superman movies. Heck, they’re about one Superman solo song away from being the same movie (which would be awesome in the next Man of Steel flick, as long as Henry Cavill’s singing voice is as fantastic as his acting). But, let’s make one thing clear about who’s stealing from whom: the myth of Hercules came just slightly (a few thousand years) before the character of Superman was invented.

Continue reading Face Off: Hercules (1997) and Superman I/II (1978/80) →

Featured

Emelie (2016)

1 Comment

With the release of The Witch in 2016, it seemed that the title of “best scary movie of the year” was already settled. However, the recently released Emelie could give any frontrunner a run for its money as far as I’m concerned. Clocking in at just under 90 minutes, this limited release film is equal parts familiar and unsettling, leaving a lasting discomfort within viewers long after the credits roll.

Emelie is the story of the Thompson children and their unfortunate night in with a new babysitter, Anna, as their parents go out for an anniversary dinner, unaware of the horrors that await their precious threesome. Anna, as it turns out, is twisted and disturbed, forcing the children to participate in antics that become increasingly more perverse as the night goes on.

Continue reading Emelie (2016) →

Featured

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (2015)

Leave a comment

The final installment of the Hunger Games series, Mockingjay – Part 2, received relatively little fanfare compared to the releases of the previous films. Though it is probably fair to say that the interest dwindled after Catching Fire due to many audiences feeling the series had become “too dark,” it wasn’t really until after Mockingjay – Part 1 that the general fan base seemed to disappear entirely.

For me, the issue with the Hunger Games film series is relatively simple: it is neither brutal enough nor committed enough to what the essence of the Hunger Games story is.

I read all of the books in the Hunger Games series, and remember that I felt a similar disinterest about the final book as I did with the final film. It just seemed that the idea had run its course by the end of Catching Fire, and that anything that followed the second book’s publication was just a feeble attempt to bring in more money and to wrap up a story that didn’t particularly need more wrapping.

Continue reading The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (2015) →

Featured

The World According to Garp (1982)

Leave a comment

The name “George Roy Hill” might not be a household name here in 2016, but if the man himself doesn’t ring a bell you probably still know his films. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting are his best, riding high on the indomitable pairing of Robert Redford and Paul Newman. That pair would be separated for Hill’s ensuing films The Great Waldo Pepper and Slap Shot, both of which are well-crafted if not ultimately as powerful as those other two. The one that might throw you for a loop is The World According to Garp, a film from late in Hill’s career starring Robin Williams in his first dramatic role.

…that phrase doesn’t mean what it did back then, though, because “Williams in a dramatic role” isn’t as much of a novelty nor is it even something that seems worthy of being highlighted today. Dead Poets, One Hour Photo, Good Will Hunting, Awakenings and Fisher King let Williams be Williams — not merely Comedic Williams or Dramatic Williams — and despite the films themselves being best suited to the “Drama” category at your local rental store you probably don’t think twice about the star being a guy who most consider to be one of the funniest ever to walk the planet.

Continue reading The World According to Garp (1982) →

Featured

Jenny’s Wedding (2015)

1 Comment

Released on Netflix earlier this year, Jenny’s Wedding is somewhat of an enigma. The film, which was originally independently produced, and then featured as part of an Indigogo campaign for post-production costs, stars Katherine Heigl, Tom Wilkinson, Linda Emond, Grace Gummer, and Alexis Bledel as a group of family and friends learning to cope with a daughter coming out as gay and announcing her impending marriage. While the cast is well-known and more than competent in their art, the movie itself is puzzling in its attempt to tell a story of growth, resistance, and eventual acceptance, while never seeming to actually embrace the people around which the story revolves.

I should start by saying that I am always skeptical of “coming out” pieces – whether it’s a play, a TV episode plot, a movie, etc. The arc itself is inherently tricky because of the sensitivity of the coming out trope, and it is easy for writers to fall into the trap of making that coming out process overly dramatic. That isn’t to say that coming out isn’t rightfully dramatic for those who do go through that process, but is merely to suggest that is doesn’t always need to be a thing of tragedy.

Continue reading Jenny’s Wedding (2015) →

Featured

Gods of Egypt (2016)

3 Comments

For a long time now the internet has been a halcyon refuge for those steadfast in the belief that opinions can be equated with facts. Prior to the actual release of Gods of Egypt the film was subjected to the fervor whipped up by the fact that the cast was almost entirely white, and before you could say CGI sphinx most had written off GoE as a waste of time. In what may have been a heartfelt apology or one driven entirely by a marketing scramble to save face, director Alex Proyas publicly stated that they dropped the ball on the whole diversity thing. #EgyptSoWhite persevered as if Proyas had stayed silent because, hey, it’s the internet. No well-meaning statement is going to stopper a good ol’ fashioned media frenzy.

After GoE came out, though, the film was subjected to another kind of criticism, this time whipped up by the notion that the movie was actually really bad. Ah, the internet. Proyas responded, as Proyas seems wont to do. Here is his post from his Facebook in near-entirety, edited only slightly for length:

Continue reading Gods of Egypt (2016) →

Academy Awards, Featured

The Danish Girl (2015)

Leave a comment

There’s something about Eddie Redmayne that just crushes your soul. I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing — he’s a beautiful soul-crusher — but man, I feel like every time I sit down to a Redmayne movie, I’m going to leave feeling any one of, or a combination of, three things: 1) uncomfortably mortal, 2) disastrously under-accomplished, or 3) questioning my sexual identity.

The Danish Girl is no exception to this inevitability, though in this case, it is perhaps a bit more of a forced conclusion than in some of Redmayne’s other roles. In fact, all three of these reactions are obviously sought by the end of the film, with the lead dying – “Shit, I’m so mortal!” – the two leads both being successful, talented artists – “Shit, I’m so bad at doing stuff good!” – and of course, the main character transitioning in order to become his true self – “Shit, what even is a ‘true self’?”

However, the real issue I take with this film, aside from the generally predictable feel of the method-acting made-for-Redmayne award-seeking plot, is that it isn’t actually accurate at all to the life of the person it is supposedly based off of, Lili Elbe (Elvenes), and her relationship with Gerda Wegener, played by the stunning and Oscar award-winning Alicia Vikander — but we’ll get to her later.

Continue reading The Danish Girl (2015) →