Tag: Film Review

Austin Film Festival: A Patient Man Review

Independent film reflects on the condition of the human mind in drama thriller.

To read ACCENT’s interview with the filmmakers, click here.

Review by: Nalani Nuylan 

How do we know the people we choose to befriend? By proxy, how well does the audience know the character(s) they are following?  

“A Patient Man” is the film debut of writer/director Kevin Ward. Screened at the 2019 Austin Film Festival, this hidden gem introduces Tom (Jonathan Mangum), a man who is trying to piece his life back together after a great tragedy. On his road to recovery, he befriends a man named Aaron (Tate Ellington) who rides the same train with him. All the while answering these pivotal questions in the process.  

Told in a nonlinear plot structure, the film takes the audience on a trip to solve the mystery of what happened to our protagonist while revealing truths on how grief, guilt and revenge affect the human psyche.

The best way I can describe this trip is in the metaphor of a massive puzzle with a box that has no big picture finish. You will notice some key puzzle pieces and involuntary want to join the game. After seeing how some of the pieces of the film fit together, you will eventually begin to assume how the story will unfold in the end. Yet, as the audience puts that last piece of the film together the big picture may actually surprise you. 

That’s how this film was for me. I was already picking it apart for the sake of reviewing it. But once I saw a clue, I wanted to find more. Sure, I saw what was coming. But at the same time, I also didn’t see it in when it came to the grand view.

Ward does an amazing job of hiding the clues to the mystery while showing a very real depiction of how a person can descend into revenge because of their grief. As the old joke goes, the descent into madness is not a rapid downward spiral, but a slow progression of moments. 

Mangum, who is mostly known for his work in comedy, shines playing Tom as we see his fake smiles at his work progress into the subtle flickers of dark intentions. I have to give credibility to Mangum’s performs as an actor. 

The praises continue to Producer and Cinematographer Harrison Reynolds, who used the close-up shots and the Los Angeles sunlight to completely flip the thriller tropes on its head. Rather than installing the suspicion, the clever use of Reynold’s surroundings in combination with his camera work when characters are in a conversation to instill this sense of security to only make the ending more enjoyable.    

For his film debut, Ward did a wonderful job of cinematic storytelling. Nicely paced and ever so juicy, one can’t help but marvel at the film being made on a minuscule budget and mostly shot on a moving train. 

This film will leave you with questions and an odd sense of satisfaction. It was an enjoyable ride, and I urge you to join along. 

Update on February 24:
“A Patient Man” is available to rent or buy on  Google Play Store, iTunes, and Amazon Prime Video. If you are curious about this film in any way, I urge you to watch it for yourselves on these platforms.

SXSW Film Review: Ready Player One

Written by Tracy Fuller

Spielberg Captures The Heart of Life in Ready Player One

Ready Player One, the novel by Ernest Cline, on screen is a brilliant merger of the mind of Steven Spielberg and the adoption of the screenplay. Here is a film that any pop culture fanboy will cherish. With it premiering at this past year’s SXSW Film Festival, the anticipation was quite high.

“I didn’t make this movie just for gamers, I made this for everybody,” says Steven Spielberg.

The film is set in a dystopian trailer park, year 20145, in the city of Columbus. Within the trailer park stacks, characters like Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), a real-life nobody, resides. In the virtual reality world, the Oasis, Watts finds himself to be more than a nobody.

The Oasis is the primary way of life in the future, providing entertainment, fantasies, ambitions, and ways to achieve a certain financial status. The Oasis is a world where gaming is life. Watts bares some remarkable friendships with some of the gaming elite in the alternative VR world. He spends most of his time living strapped into his VR headset, immersed in the Oasis.

In the Oasis, Watts is surrounded by pop culture references that have become a way of life. These references stem from game creator, the late James Halliday (Mark Rylance). Following his passing, it is announced that Halliday built one final game in the Oasis known as Anorak’s Quest. The mission calls for players to find three keys through a set of smaller objectives. Upon finding all three of Halliday’s keys, they will be granted the celebrated Easter Egg. This egg will give them full power and ownership of the Oasis and its assets in both worlds.

Watts becomes the first person to receive one of the coveted keys. In doing so, he draws the attention of legendary gamer, Art3mis (Olivia Cooke). He also becomes a mark for the Innovative Online Industries CEO Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn).

The combination of Steven Spielberg, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, and the team at Industrial Light & Magic, knock this one out of the park. Capturing the VR setting and its potential to the big screen is not an easy task. The Oasis is phenomenal; every landscape that you encounter in this film is full of pop culture references.

One of the things I enjoyed most about this film, is not the incredible visual appeal and abundant references, but also the heart that Spielberg captures in this film. The message ultimately conveys that no matter how hard you try to design an artificial life, you should not lose sight of what the real world has to offer.

Spielberg does capture Halliday’s character showing the struggle of following your heart and chasing your ambitions. Not to mention the fellowship and bonds you acquire in life. There is so much emotional overtone mixed into the story that you end up leaving the theater feeling better about life.

Film Review: Love, Simon

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Written by Ruben Hernandez

When it comes to film, many approaches on what high school looks like have been made; some more accurate than others. Love, Simon takes a classic approach to high school with aspects as parties, friends in groups of four, and even half-eating breakfast while walking out the door are all present in this film. Simon has a loving family, great friends, and is about to graduate high school. He has a fairly normal life except for a secret he’s keeping: being gay.

Simon exchanges emails with Blue, the love interest in this story who comes out anonymously through the school gossip website. Simon writes to Blue under the name “Jacques,” and though their identities are unknown to each other, they form a close bond. This bond will not only be put to the test but will also put Simon and his friends through hardships.

The journey and the emotions behind the process of coming out is one that can really put someone’s spirit and soul to the test. Love, Simon did an amazing job conveying those emotions and displaying that journey. The emotion that Nick Robinson, who plays Simon, displays and how he fulfills his character was definitely something to watch.

This nice thing about the film is that it is one of the few major LGBT films we’ve seen within the past few years, including films such as Moonlight. With the normality of being gay or likewise in today’s culture, it’s no wonder why I found this movie so relatable. It left me with a sense of simplicity, as Simon’s experience is similar to many “coming out” stories. But the complexity at the same time comes from the raw feelings and emotions that involve being gay and being comfortable expressing that to others. This movie brought the audience I was watching this with, including myself, to tears. This movie was a step in the right direction in LGBT representation and the understanding of what it means to “come out.”

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Film Review: Game Night

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Written by Tracy Fuller

Game Night is a film about competitive game-loving partiers who end up taking their game night to the extreme. It is unquestionably a piercingly hilarious film that takes things to the edge. Directed by John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein, and written by Mark Perez.

The main characters, Max and Annie (Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams), regularly host a traditional game night at their suburban home. A wittily-edited opening montage shows that games like Pictionary, Scrabble, and charades are the framework of their relationship and drove to their marriage. The other gamers in this movie includes Ryan (Billy Magnussen), a dimwitted friend of Annie’s; Sarah (Sharon Horgan), Ryan’s much brighter date; the husband-wife duo of Kevin and Michelle (Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury); and Max’s estranged brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler), who’s a excels in ways that Max can only fantasize about.

Not only does Brooks project an image of success, but he is always one to out-do his brother, Max. So naturally, he takes over game night by inviting the gang to his mansion for an extreme version of game night. A version modeled by what is becoming more common these days, a murder mystery themed party. Things begin to take things for a roller coaster, taking the audience on consequential flips and turns, leading into straight chaos.

Brooks gets kidnapped in a home attack that everybody else thinks is just part of the game and threatened with murder if the rest do not surrender a cherished Faberge egg to a scary-voiced mastermind who’s giving them commands from afar. The rest of the crew splits up into teams and tries to unravel the mystery in their way, their paths occasionally re-crossing, only to deviate again.

The screenwriter and directors tie the storyline to the psychology of the characters and structure the film as a quest for personal as well as sequential discovery. The brothers’ mutual resentment and rivalry are relevant here, as it develops the plot. Max and Annie’s failure to superfetate a child comes into play, as do the psychologies and pasts of other game night members. A subplot about Kevin’s infatuation with solving whether Michelle was ever unfaithful to him has an immense payoff.

Game Night is a nearly perfect entertainment for adults over a certain age. There’s a daring car chase, a brutal incident that leads to improvised surgery, and a house party with echoes of the masked scene in “Eyes Wide Shut,” but it is all entwined with annotation about aging, failure, doomed romanticism and sibling rivalry. The characters put it all over with flair—especially Bateman and McAdams, who complement each other’s ideas so deftly that they do seem as if they have been married forever, and Plemons, who steals every scene he is in through deft underplaying. Also, while there are a few touching times, the film never tries to set an overly emotional tone.

Even though the movie was a bit predictable at times, it was very entertaining. This movie is the perfect film for a date night or also if you are just looking to laugh. I will probably see it again when it opens up to the public.

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Film Review: Mudbound

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Written by Tracy Fuller

The McAllan family is a working-family raising their children on a Mississippi farm. The Jacksons are a sharecropping family on a Mississippi farm. Both families have a son returning from the World War II to work the land. Jamie McAllan (Garrett Hedlund) and Ronsel Jackson (Jason Mitchell) suffer from PTSD post-war.

Ronsel is a sergeant, wrestling with the terror of being a free man in Europe, but one with no rights when being back in America – the nation he defended in battle.

Jamie is an airborne captain, struggling with the horrific memories witnessed in the sky.

Both Ronsel and Jamie, come together with the bond of PTSD. Their friendship is an opposite perfect connection to status, mental health and racial division of that era.

Dee Rees and Virgil Williams did a excellent job turning Hillary Jordan’s novel into a cinematic ride. Mudbound invokes various emotions from the viewer to feel both families’ level of poverty, struggles to get ahead and what life was like for that period. This sure to be award-winning film hits Netflix on November 17th.

Pick this review up in the Spring 2018 Life4U magazine on campus.

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