The Shallows

[Note: After re-reading my previous review, I realized there is simply no fun in revealing all the spoilers by making you read the entire synopsis. I promise to keep all spoilers and endings for your viewing eyes only from now on. Enjoy this review, spoiler free!]

First let me say that I don't do horror movies. 

I can handle a little psychological thriller (think Hanna or Primal Fear or The Sixth Sense) and even enjoy these kinds of movies, but you can count me out of a horror movie night. 

So when I was determined to see The Shallows in theaters, I surprised even myself. 

Perhaps it was the lure of gorgeous Blake Lively. Perhaps the intriguing Cast Away type premise. Or perhaps I just felt I needed to witness the Jaws of my generation on the big screen. 

In any case, I found myself sitting in a middle row of my local $2.50 theater with a bag full of popcorn, ready and willing to be terrified by a shark. 

And terrified I most definitely was. 

The movie begins in the most terrifying of ways: A little boy finds a washed up camera that contains footage of several people getting eaten by a shark. 

The movie then goes back in time to reveal the events leading up to this discovery. Blake Lively stars as Nancy, a medical school dropout seeking a secret island her mother had once visited. Through a phone call that Nancy has with her father and brother, we learn of the tragic details that has lead Nancy to this discovery, and realize that her character is more complex than at first appeared. 

After gearing up for a day of surfing, Nancy takes to the waters, making some new (human) friends along the way. Even though she is warned by her newfound friends to leave the waters well before nightfall, Nancy makes the decision to go back to the waves just once more before she leaves for the night. It is then that she discovers a rather grotesque whale carcass floating in the water. Without thinking, Nancy swims right up to it, and by doing so, swims directly into a shark's feeding ground. While she tries to quickly swim back to shore, Nancy is bit by the shark in her leg, causing her to be unable to swim to shore. She instead takes refuge on a nearby rock as the shark circles around her. 

What follows is an intense 60-minute battle of survival as Nancy has to not only fight and outsmart the ever-nearby shark, but also use her medical knowledge of how best to care for her wounded leg. 

When first hearing the premise of The Shallows, I was mostly curious to know how the writers could possibly keep the viewer interested for 84 minutes, as the majority of the movie is just a girl on a rock trying to escape a shark. How could that possibly be entertaining for almost an hour and half? 

Not only was I interested and on the edge of my seat the entire movie, I left wanting even more. 

Writer Anthony Jaswinski did a fantastic job of providing just enough storyline and background to keep writers and English majors satisfied, but also left plenty of time for shark-butt-kicking action. Jaswinski was also smart in his character decisions, such as making Nancy an educated medical student so that it was believable when she doctored her own leg, or having us understand right off the bat that this was a girl who could hold her own so that again it was believable when she made quick, intelligent decisions while fighting the shark. However, Jaswinski also brought in emotional elements, allowing the viewer to see Nancy as a girl who was hurting because of her past and explaining her strong desire to live. 

That said, there were a few moments where I questioned Jaswinski's writing choices, as several moments seemed thrown in more for shock value than anything else. For instance, there was an especially disturbing scene where a man gets attacked by the shark, the shark literally cuts him in half, and the man not only lives for several seconds after being cut in half, but one half of him tries to crawl away. While the actual act of the man being attacked is thankfully not shown (the camera instead focuses on Nancy's face as she witnesses this act), we do see him try to crawl away, which is by far the most unsettling and unnecessary scene in the entire film. 

There are also a few disturbing scenes dealing with the after effects of Nancy's shark bite, including one scene where she gives herself stitches to try and stop the blood flow, and another scene where she rips her wet suite to make a tourniquet for her leg. Finally, the scene where Nancy finds the whale carcass is also disturbing, as she has to at one point crawl onto the carcass to avoid being eaten by the shark.

The scenes of several individuals dying horrible deaths in the jaws of the shark and the injury scenes with Nancy definitely pushed the PG-13 boundary for me. However, despite these few graphic scenes, the movie was extremely well-written and orchestrated, with numerous scenes filled with interesting camera angles and impressive cinematography, and an excellent score composed by Marco Beltrami. 

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, The Shallows gets a 7 out of 10 stars from this viewer. 

Café Society

With a 1930's swing in its step and colors that feel as vibrant as the characters are not, Café Society will at first peak your curiosity, only to leave you with the desire to slap nearly every character hard enough to knock the 'settling for a mediocre life' mentality out of them. 

Directed and written and narrated by Woody Allen, the film follows the life of Bobby Dorfman (played by Jesse Eisenberg), nephew of the great Phil Stern (played by Steve Carell), movie agent extraordinaire. Dorfman is a shy, awkward kid who dreams of a grand life in the big city of Hollywood. What befalls him instead is getting mixed up in an awkward, uncomfortable love triangle between his uncle, himself, and his uncle's secretary Vonnie (played by Kristen Stewart). While Vonnie is aware that she is seeing uncle and nephew, neither Stern nor Dorfman know that they are the other man in Vonnie's life. 

When they both accidentally discover that they are both lovers of Vonnie, Dorfman and Stern give Vonnie an ultimatum, forcing her to choose one. Inevitably, she chooses Stern, and a defeated Dorfman abandons his dreams of fame and fortune in Hollywood and instead returns home to New York to work with his brother Ben (played by Corey Stoll). By night, Ben runs a nightclub, but by day, he's an infamous gangster, unbeknownst to Dorfman or the rest of his family. 

With Dorfman's help, Ben's nightclub gains notoriety and excessive popularity, allowing Dorfman to mingle with the upper class, including beautiful Veronica Hayes (played by Blake Lively). Dorfman seems to instantaneously fall for Hayes' charm and looks, as the audience quickly catches the irony that her name is Veronica, just like Vonnie's full name. After a somewhat brief romance, Hayes reveals that she's pregnant, and she and Dorfman begin a marriage together to raise their child. 

While Dorfman's life seems full of bliss, Ben's life takes a toll for the worse when he decides to help his sister Evelyn (played by Sari Lennick) with her unruly neighbor Joe (played by Brendan Burke) by killing him instead of just talking to him, as Evelyn asks. While Ben has been able to keep his gangster dealings a secret up to this point, he is caught and sent to prison over Joe's death, and eventually electrocuted for the murder. 

In the meantime, Dorfman gets a surprise visit from his uncle Stern and Vonnie at his nightclub. While Stern and Vonnie seem happy and content in their new marriage, Vonnie still can't help but flirt with Dorfman, and Dorfman reciprocates, despite his happy marriage with Hayes. Dorfman and Vonnie agree to meet later and spend the next day together, which ends with them kissing on a New York bridge. However, that is as far as their relationship goes, and both return, somewhat reluctantly, to their spouses. Even though the day spent together was in secret, Hayes approaches Dorfman later to ask if he has cheated on her with Vonnie, as she had a dream that he did. Dorfman of course assures her that he did not, and Hayes seems appeased. 

The film ends with Dorfman and Hayes, and Vonnie and Stern at separate New Year's Eve parties, both Dorfman and Vonnie nostalgic over their old romance. 

While Woody Allen's film starts out with ample promise and excitement, both quickly drizzle into melancholy and lost dreams. The characters seem to accept their fate without a word, but still clearly long for something better, making the audience also long for something better. The redeeming quality of the movie is the time period Woody Allen was smart enough to set the story in; the 1930's setting provides terrific music, fashion, and an overall colorful feel to the story, but even the vibrancy of the time can't make up for the lack-luster and somewhat depressing tale. 

The Beginning

If you had asked me junior year of college where I would be in five years, I would have probably told you some cockamamie answer. I was naive and dumb junior year.

But somehow writing would have been involved in that cockamamie answer, and that's the one thing I wasn't dumb about junior year; I knew I loved to write.

I graduated college four years ago, and still have yet to actually do anything in my vocation that really involves writing.

Don't get me wrong, I've learned to accept and (most days) be relatively happy in my current vocation. And while the majority of my job is writing e-mails in a customer service-type setting, that's not the kind of writing I thought I'd be doing post-graduation.

I still cling to the hope that one day, I'll find myself in a job that allows me to really write like I want. But that's not today, so instead of moping about it, I choose to be proactive.

Thus this new blog was born.

When I was a kid, I thought I was real cool so I started a fake newspaper and sent it to all my friends and family. Basically, it was me doing things like writing movie reviews or sharing my weird dreams or bribing my friends into writing guest columns for me. My favorite part though was always the movie reviews.

I guess this is my sophisticated adult self following in my kid self's footsteps. But I think I'll just stick to film reviews this time.

If you know me at all, you know that I watch way too many movies.

Like. Way too many. So many that I have a budget every month just for going to the movies.

So here's me combining two things that I love in the hopes that it takes the edge off of my writing itch.

I'm not promising any regularity (for the three people who will follow this blog...) or type of movies that I'll review, but I can promise this: There will be reviews. At some point. Of like. Movies.

Yeah. So enjoy and stuff.