Post by Dracula on Jan 11, 2022 0:47:58 GMT -5
Stillwater(12/24/2021)
When this somewhat belated follow-up to Tom McCarthy’s Oscar winning Spotlight came out late last summer it was greeted with general apathy. It’s box office was bad, but nothing too embarrassing as adult fare released post-pandemic goes and the reviews were kind of indifferent. It’s pretty much just remembered in terms of a controversy that was generated by the distaste that possible inspiration Amanda Knox had for the way the film ripped her story from the headlines. In terms of that I generally don’t side with Knox, I get why she’s angry and felt she had the right to make it known that the film didn’t represent her, but I also think she doth protest too much as the film was pretty effectively fictionalized beyond its core inspiration and was unlikely to be viewed as any kind of factual account of her story. The advertising almost made this look like a Taken-esque thriller about a father tromping through Europe trying to solve the case of why his daughter was wrongfully imprisoned in Marseille, which the film sort of is in its first act. Then the movie takes something of a twist and goes in a quieter and frankly more interesting direction in its middle act, which I liked a lot more… then in the third act some of the original inciting conflict comes back in a way I didn’t care for. So there’s about one third of a really good movie here and two thirds of a not so great movie and if it had kept going in the direction suggested by that middle act I would have probably liked it a lot more. There are of course other factors to be considered here beyond the screenplay; I didn’t much care for Matt Damon’s work here, who I think went way too far in trying to turn his character into something of a fish out of water redneck, but I quite liked most of the other performances here including Abigail Breslin as the imprisoned daughter. Also Marseille is pretty much always a cool location for filming and this movie is no exception. All in all this is a movie that mostly earned its muted-but-positive reception but I doubt it’s one I’ll be remembering to vividly in a few weeks.
*** out of Five
When this somewhat belated follow-up to Tom McCarthy’s Oscar winning Spotlight came out late last summer it was greeted with general apathy. It’s box office was bad, but nothing too embarrassing as adult fare released post-pandemic goes and the reviews were kind of indifferent. It’s pretty much just remembered in terms of a controversy that was generated by the distaste that possible inspiration Amanda Knox had for the way the film ripped her story from the headlines. In terms of that I generally don’t side with Knox, I get why she’s angry and felt she had the right to make it known that the film didn’t represent her, but I also think she doth protest too much as the film was pretty effectively fictionalized beyond its core inspiration and was unlikely to be viewed as any kind of factual account of her story. The advertising almost made this look like a Taken-esque thriller about a father tromping through Europe trying to solve the case of why his daughter was wrongfully imprisoned in Marseille, which the film sort of is in its first act. Then the movie takes something of a twist and goes in a quieter and frankly more interesting direction in its middle act, which I liked a lot more… then in the third act some of the original inciting conflict comes back in a way I didn’t care for. So there’s about one third of a really good movie here and two thirds of a not so great movie and if it had kept going in the direction suggested by that middle act I would have probably liked it a lot more. There are of course other factors to be considered here beyond the screenplay; I didn’t much care for Matt Damon’s work here, who I think went way too far in trying to turn his character into something of a fish out of water redneck, but I quite liked most of the other performances here including Abigail Breslin as the imprisoned daughter. Also Marseille is pretty much always a cool location for filming and this movie is no exception. All in all this is a movie that mostly earned its muted-but-positive reception but I doubt it’s one I’ll be remembering to vividly in a few weeks.
*** out of Five
