Flashback reviews

Flashback review

The Upside (2017)

Bryan Cranston, Kevin Hart, Nicole Kidman Directed by Neil Burger Rating: A

“The Upside” tells a heartwarming story of two unlikely friends and their friendship that turns their own lives around for the better.

Phillip and Dell, played by Cranston and Hart respectively, have both become hardened by life through the cards they have been dealt with. Phillip, a quadriplegic due to a paragliding accident, is in need of a caregiver, and Dell, a man with a criminal record, is in need of signature’s proving he’s hunting for jobs or else he could end back in prison.

Dell stumbles upon Phillip’s job interviewing by accident, demanding a quick signature on his employment sheet so he can pick up his son from school. Dell hardly notices Phillip’s condition, and his unobservant remarks about signatures lead to Phillip hiring Dell on the spot. For Phillip, Dell is a breath of fresh air from the people who tiptoe around his condition and therefore treat him like he’s invisible. Dell, impressed by the salary, learns the ropes of a caregiving role and strikes a friendship with his boss.

Inspired by the true story of Phillippe Pozzo di Borgo and Abdel Sellou, “The Upside” takes some liberties at the retelling of their story. Yet, despite this, it is a touching and funny story with a very human message: people who may not have the same everyday functions as you are just as susceptible to love, pain, and keeping up friendships. In fact, Phillippe and Abdel are alive and still friends today.

Phillippe’s story was first brought to audiences in the French telling “Intouchables” (2011). It has since been re-told for Indian audiences “Oopiri” (2016) and Argentinian audiences “Inseparables” (2016).

What I really enjoyed about this new version of Phillippe’s story is that the friendship between Phillip and Dell feels authentic, and I love the comedy between these two friends. Dell lifts Phillip up from a funk, and his treatment of Phillip as a human being –not just an invalid –shows how there are good people out there, even if they have a bad past.

Cranston and Hart are perfectly cast for these two characters, and for those who may have some reservations about seeing a remake, I strongly encourage you to give it a chance. At the end of a day, it’s another story about human kindness, and I think we can all use a little bit of that in our world.

Bridget Jones’s Baby

Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth, Patrick Dempsey Directed by Sharon Maguire Rating: A

Bridget Jones is BACK!

Another sequel that deals with more drama as Bridget juggles two men once again, and yet “Bridget Jones’s Baby” is a must-see for those who loved the previous two movies.

Bridget (Zellweger) finds herself single at age 43, but has kicked the cigarette habit and is down to her ideal weight. She is more confident in herself and has climbed up the corporate ladder to a successful career in the news. Yet her mum has to remind Bridget during a birthday phone call that life is passing her by and still no husband or baby. The clock is ticking, Bridget.

Then, on a whim of new resolutions, Bridget sweeps herself off to a music festival

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where she meets a handsome American (Dempsey) and just so ends up in his tent in the middle of the night. Without exchanging information and treasuring the memory of an unforgettable night, Bridget goes home without knowing his last name. Less than a week later, she finds herself in bed with her ex, Mark Darcy (Firth) after a few drinks and a lingering kiss…

What happens when you use decades old condoms? Well, Bridget finds herself missing a period and is pregnant. As she can’t work out who the father is, the two men must decide whether they want to be involved or if it’s too complicated to stick around.

triangles, and wistful romances.

Murder was dropped as the primary excuse for elusive answers by various suspicious characters, in favor of angst and moody train passengers.

The cinematography alike was slightly unexpected, as director Kenneth Branagh (who also starred in the film as Poirot) used a full palette of techniques to design what may best be called a "creatively" shot film.

Sometimes hearing the word sequel makes me shake my head and wonder why movie makers just can’t leave a good thing alone.

My expectations were low, so it was a delight to find that I was laughing quite frequently throughout “Bridget Jones’s Baby”. There’s the familiar feel of comedy from the first movie, a flashback to the good old Bridget and Darcy days that make you sigh, and an overall appreciation that the return of Bridget Jones was done right.

The movie’s resolution feels like just what the fans would have wanted for Bridget. If you need a good laugh, this is it. The return of “Bridget” to the big screen will not be disappointing.

The film felt like the director was emulating Wes Anderson, who is well known for his creative and beautiful cinematography, but fell somewhat short. There were plenty of standard shots, like close-ups and tracking shots, but to these were added unusual ones that seemed so abrupt that both my date and her mother who came with us

commented on the odd juxtaposition.

Overall, ‘The Murder on the Orient Express’ was a noteworthy film, and one that I’d recommend to see, especially on the silver screen. The scenery is beautiful, and many of the shots are provide an accurate sense of that beauty. For those looking for a classic mystery, however, look elsewhere.

society may understand the acceptable social limits, and thus perform more smoothly.

The reality of humanity in groups, on the other hand, can appear quite different than the ideal. Humans are by nature driven by a plethora of factors, most of them mysterious; vices, too, are a trait of Man: jealousy, spite, rage, love, hysteria and neurosis—ardor in nearly any form can quickly crumble any resemblance of social structure.

There exists, therefore, the dichotomy betwixt the twain: the littera legis et spiritus legis 4 .

So, ought a society to be judged by its actions, or its ideals? I propose that a society should be judged by its ideals rather than its actions: while action is the ultimate driver of history, the ideal of a community is what shapes that action; it has been said that ‘art is the product of time and place’; so, too, would I argue that action is a product of time and place. For instance, a person’s religion can be assumed with significant accuracy if given their time and place of birth; a person born in Norway, 740 CE would have little opportunity to come in contact with Hinduism, and would instead be surrounded by the Norse pantheon. His actions would be likewise shaped by that surrounding culture: his folklore would be filled with stories of vengeance, storytelling, fearlessness, and kinship, and completely lacking in the Christian concepts of ‘Good’ or ‘Evil’, instead being measured by whether or not they were appropriate for the situation 5 .

In the same way, our modern, rapidly globalizing society is a product of our ‘folklore’—folklore which has been replaced by mass media. Through the lens of mass media, we are subjected to the whims of directors, newscasters, and political pundits, all whom shape our lives. More significantly, film and video games have the power to shape our social views by their utter replacement of native folklore; no longer are our ideals shaped by our local communities, but now are developed on a mass scale by the storytelling efforts of a relatively tiny group of writers, and those that approve their work.

Our actions are the result of this group of people’s collective concepts of what is ‘right’, what is ‘wrong’, and what is ‘just’ in our globalizing society. Looking back to the rise and fall of societies before us, we must be careful to beware and be cognizant of the media we consume, and the actions that they develop.

1 The ‘letter of the law and the spirit of the law’. 2 This is wonderfully related in the Old Norse idiomatic phrase, ‘sem slíkum málum sé vel fellt at sevara’ : ‘That it is well appropriate to answer such matters.’

with no purpose, and it ends in much the same fashion.

To say that Pretty Thing is a slow film is to be shockingly laconic— Pretty Thing utterly crawls though the entirety of the 87-minute runtime, and the audience is given ample room to feel every second dragging by. The film feels like a presenter at an Emmy award shot up with tranquilizers. The filming

is slow. The pacing is slow. The speech is slow. The actors physically move at the speed of smell—my viewing partner offered to watch the film on 2.5x speed, and I’m still not convinced that’d be fast enough to make a decent pace. There are those critics, of course, that are elated to see a film like this, calling it ‘dramatic,’ or ‘brazen,’ and half a dozen critics use the term ‘atmospheric,’ the latter of which is correct—Pretty Thing is loaded with atmosphere; but without a payoff to that build-up, the audience is left not only wanting, but absolutely strung-out. The film is an art-house dream: it’s long, pointless, pretentious, and punctuated with flowery language—but among everything that this film is, or might have been, there is one thing that is

Bad movies I watched so you don’t have to:

MeOUCH

Predictable

I now pronounce you... Wasted your time