The Woman In The Window (2021) - Movie Review

There’s something… refreshing about this movie, and I mean that in the worst way possible. Where other films usually take time for the flaws within to really present themselves, The Woman In The Window almost seems eager to get it all out in the open within the first five minutes. As Bruno Delbonnel’s camera work glides across the house of Amy Adams’ Anna, a child psychologist with agoraphobia, it lingers on a TV set playing a stuttering slideshow of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. With how much older cinema gets shown throughout, including a few more Hitchcock efforts, it gives this inexorable feeling that I’m watching the result of someone who’s been stuck inside for months with nothing but black-and-white flicks for company, and decided to write a screenplay because they need something, anything, to alleviate the cabin fever.

Of course, the actual genesis of this story is far more complicated than that, to the point where it could take up the bulk of this review all on its own (here’s a beat-by-beat breakdown of the author done by the New Yorker a couple years ago), but that impression still lingers regardless. Not that this is the first modern film to crib heavily from Rear Window, but this is a weirdly straight-forward example of such, as if it’s trying to pre-empt critics and general audiences pointing out such things. Then again, that ranks fairly low on my list of priorities with this particular flick. I am far less sceptical of a story being retold than I am of it being retold well. And to be brutally honest, this isn’t Rear Window. Or Disturbia. Or even Bart Of Darkness. This film wishes it could reach that level of genuine quality.

Possessor (2020) - Movie Review

It’s been quite a while since a psycho-horror flick got under my skin as effectively as this has. Honestly, it felt like I had lost my taste for the stuff, since I haven’t been as ga-ga over this genre for a while now in my reviews. But then this little number comes along, the sophomore effort from writer/director Brandon ‘Son of David’ Cronenberg, which is about as literal as it gets for a psychological horror film. Namely, that most of the truly horrifying stuff happens exclusively in the main character’s mind. Or, rather, minds.

Annihilation (2018) - Movie Review

 

Watching Alex Garland’s evolution as a creative mind over the last two decades has proven quite fascinating, to the point where ‘evolution’ is the most apt way of describing his trajectory. Starting as a novelist, providing source material for one of Danny Boyle’s most underrated films with The Beach, he went on to collaborate with Boyle more directly, writing the scripts for some of his more widely-celebrated ventures like 28 Days Later. Then he set out to bring his own scripts to life with Ex Machina, one of the strongest sci-fi offerings of the last handful of years.

But this film, Annihilation, is the final test. He’s proven that he can write for multiple media forms, from novels to screenplays to video games, and he’s proven that he’s capable of visual storytelling on top of that. Now, it’s time to see if he can turn the work of someone else, in this case being Jeff VanderMeer’s novel of the same name, into a story that still carries his fingerprint.

Morgan (2016) - Movie Review

Among the many things that can affect the initial impressions we have when watching a film, from the marketing to word-of-mouth to just our mentality concerning what makes a good story, one of the bigger contributors ends up being other films. Once the realisation sets in that pretty much everything is a remix of everything else, and brand spanking new ideas aren’t as prevalent (or as important) as some of us may assume, the fact that we will end up seeing a lot of similar shit on screen is a little easier to swallow. Of course, when it comes to discussing what gets used and re-used, especially if it’s from more popular works, we end up drawing comparisons to the same works over and over again. Now, even though this runs the risk of limiting the overall conversation, just because it’s an easy point to make doesn’t mean it’s any less true. Tl;dr this is basically me covering my own arse because this film makes it impossible not to bring up comparisons to last year’s phenomenal sci-fi effort Ex Machina… even though pretty much every other critic already has. Ugh. Let’s just get this over and done with.

Anomalisa (2016) - Movie Review

While I have talked at length before about the nebulous concept of 'Oscar bait', and how this time of year just before the Oscars is usually the big dumping ground for its ilk around here, I fear I may have misrepresented it just a touch. I have usually attributed that term to what most people consider to be prestige pictures: Period pieces usually dealing with the important social issue of the day; bonus points if it’s set during World War II and/or involves Nazis.

Well, only recently by my own admission, I have realised that there is another type of Oscar bait out there: The over-conceptualised, over-cooked 'thought experiments' that are meant to be challenging but, more times than not, usually end up getting slapped with the 'pretentious' label whether it’s warranted or not. It’s the kind of space that arthouse hacks like Malick occupy. Yeah, I more than acknowledge that I may be in the minority on this, but I will not submit when it comes to how much the Academy unconditionally loves that guy and work that feels even remotely like his. Not to say that the hyper-intellectual type of Oscar bait is inherently bad; after all, Academy favourite Charlie Kaufman well and truly fills that gap and he is easily one of the most fascinating, if not always coherent, cinematic minds still working today. Yeah, time to actually put on that film snob hat for once; would be a shame if I didn’t wear it even once.