BEFORE: Well, of course, as soon as I listed my links for November, I jinxed it. I was then going through the cast list for "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story", and I realized that I CAN work it in this week, by pure coincidence it fits rather neatly between two films that I already had on the schedule, two films with Da'Vine Joy Randolph, but each film ALSO features one star from "Weird". That seems a bit like divine providence to me, the linking gods set up a spot for a film I really want to see, without giving me much advance notice.
The problem is, I'm already one film over the legal limit for the year, assuming I stick to that schedule - so in order to add ONE, that means I have to drop TWO. I'd been going back and forth about which one to drop, and now that decision is off the table, because they've both got to go. Well, I guess that makes the choice easier, right? Don't feel bad for the dropped films, because I sure won't, and they both link to several other films on the list, so there's a great chance that I'll get to them next year, while they're still readily available.
Viola Davis carries over from "Disturbia".
THE PLOT: A woman is released from prison after serving a sentence for a violent crime and re-enters a society that refuses to forgive her past.
AFTER: Well, we've had some pretty dark days here at the Movie Year - I'm speaking in terms of the tones of the movies, a lot of real downers lately, with not an uplifting film in sight. Sure, part of that was due to the themes of the horror chain, and obviously many horror films focus on death and torture and demonic possession and other dark-side matters. Fun films are on the way, I assure you, I just re-jiggered things to make sure of it. But we had a whole week of complicated edgy relationship stuff ON TOP of the horror, and that stuff will drag you down. "Colossal", "The Invisible Man", "Us", "Candyman" and then "DIsturbia" and a "Matrix" film? Jesus, does anybody remember laughter? That movies are supposed to be, you know, FUN? The one bright spot was "Love and Monsters", which really stood out because it didn't take itself too seriously, and it proved that even a post-apocalypse film can be entertaining.
But to get to more fun stuff, I've got to make it through this downer of a film, which details a woman trying to put her life back together, or build a new life, after serving 20 years in prison for, what, murder? Manslaughter? It's a long time in this film before we get to see exactly what happened years ago via flashback, when Ruth Slater's father killed himself, and cops came to their rural Washington house to evict her and her five-year-old sister, Katie, who Ruth essentially raised herself until their father's death.
We go through all the steps with Ruth, meeting with her parole officer, living in a halfway house, trying to get a carpentry job, falling back on a job in a fish-processing plant, and then eventually meeting with an attorney to try and track down her sister, who's now 25 and has only vague memories of her life before the incident. Katie's adoptive parents don't want to allow her any contact with Ruth, so this becomes a very thorny issue, as an ex-con, what rights exactly does Ruth have to get back in touch with her family, it turns out very few as long as Katie is regarded as a "victim" of the incident. Ruth had written Katie thousands of letters over the years, and presumably the letters have gone unread, possibly even destroyed.
At the same time, a certain contingent of people have set out to make Ruth's rehabilitation very difficult, even impossible, by calling her up and yelling "Cop Killer!" at all hours of the day, plus the two sons of the sheriff who died in the eviction stand-off follow her around in shifts, trying to determine how they're going to get some payback. Just as Ruth is starting to make progress by getting a carpentry job building a facility to help the homeless, all of the other situations start to come to a boil, and then Katie's adoptive sister manages to make contact with Ruth at the worst possible time.
Sandra Bullock is listed as a producer here, and I can't help but think this was made with some hope of getting her an Oscar nomination, that's one main reason why stars have production companies and qualify as producers, because they're trying to nurture projects that will increase their chances with the Academy, but this film kind of went nowhere, either because it got a limited release due to the pandemic, or it wasn't entertaining enough, or hey, maybe it was just a very crowded year for Best Actress nominations. It's all a marketing guessing game, after all, nobody really knows which films are going to connect with the Academy voters. Nominations went instead to Jessica Chastain, Olivia Colman, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman and Kristen Stewart, and since I haven't seen all of those performances, I'm not really in a position to comment. BUT, probably at least one of those nominations maybe should not have happened (I'm thinking Kristen Stewart as Princess Di) and just maybe, Bullock should have been in there with a nomination for "The Unforgivable". But also just maybe, this attempt to get a nomination was just a little too blatant.
I will say it's nice to see Vincent D'Onofrio in a non-villain role, Lord knows that after playing Goren on "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" for so long he went deep into a bad-guy thing, with evil roles in "Jurassic World", "Fire With Fire", and as Kingpin in "Daredevil" and "Hawkeye". Here he plays a lawyer who helps Ruth out, and it's a nice change of pace. He plays villains very well, though, but it's good to see him switch things up. And hey, the actor who played "The Punisher" in the Marvel Netflix series is here, too - though I don't think the Punisher actor and the Kingpin actor have any scenes together here. The most useless bits of trivia on the IMDB page these days tend to be "three of this films actor's have been in Marvel movies..." Dude, every single actor in Hollywood has now been in one Marvel project or another, get over it.
NITPICK POINT: Part of the terms of an ex-convict's parole are to not interact with other ex-cons. I think this is fairly standard - but if Ruth's parole officer keeps sending his clients to work in the same seafood factory, isn't it inevitable that at some point, a couple of those ex-cons are going to, you know, interact? It seems like if this is a parole violation, there should be some kind of check in the system to prevent this, like, I don't know, maybe the P.O. should stop sending his parolees to the same workplace? By the same token, whether or not Ruth has any rights to contact her sister should have been made more clear, I think - either she has the right to do this or she doesn't, it shouldn't have been such a gray moral area, maybe?
NITPICK POINT #2: Ruth gets punched out by a co-worker at the seafood processing plant. Was this someone she knew from prison, or did someone get a job at the plant JUST to get close to her and try to beat her up? Neither one really makes sense, because if that's a fellow parolee, that person just earned herself a trip back to prison, and if it's just a regular person, why do they go right back on the line to a job that was just a cover story? And everyone just goes back to work, as if one employee didn't just try to beat up another - hello, where's the manager, and why are there no repercussions for a worker starting a fight in the middle of the work day. Also, why attack her at a job where she's very likely to be holding a very sharp knife in her hand? From every angle, this incident is not very well thought out.
I'm not sure that there needed to be a twist at the end, and I'm not sure that twist managed to serve the purpose that it was intended for. That's about all I can say about it without giving it all away. But there's sort of an underlying reason why the twist doesn't really make sense.
Also starring Sandra Bullock (last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Vincent D'Onofrio (last seen in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"), Jon Bernthal (last seen in "King Richard"), Richard Thomas (last seen in "Taking Woodstock"), Linda Emond (last seen in "The Professor"), Aisling Franciosi, Emma Nelson (last seen in "Where'd You Go Bernadette"), Will Pullen, Thomas Guiry (last seen in "Wonder Wheel"), Jessica McLeod, Rob Morgan (last seen in "Mudbound"), Andrew Francis, W. Earl Brown (last seen in "Scream"), Neli Kastrinos, Orlando Lucas, Jude Wilson, Patti Kim, William Belleau (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse"), Viv Leacock (last seen in "This Means War"), Toby Hargrave (last seen in "Overboard" (2018)), Bobbi Charlton, Cynthia Loewen, Sarah Kelley, Aaron Pearl, Janet Walmsley.
RATING: 5 out of 10 fish heads
No comments:
Post a Comment