Recently, the Top 10 Show Re-List had a list of Coming-of-Age movies as its topic.  I compiled my list, but one of the films that appeared on the list of the shows turned out to be The Perks of Being a Wallflower.  I had never seen this movie and Matt Knost specifically raved about it. He said that he did not expect to like it as much as he did and that it was a film that people should watch.

This was a film that I had never seen and had not had any interest in seeing.  I saw it on the streaming platforms around the web but just had not interest.  When Matt gave it such a glowing rave, I added it to my summer to watch list.  It was on Netflix and it was going to be easy to see.  Now I just had to find the mindset to watch it.

It wasn’t about time.  I have the time.  It just felt like a film that I had to get into the right head space to watch it.  I was still afraid that I would be bored and that I would not like the film.  I had always liked Emma Watson from the Harry Potter franchise and Logan Lerman had been a young actor I liked.  Even still, I was not sure if I wanted to watch it.

I am so glad that I did watch this today because I just found it to be so brilliantly done and totally compelling.  The film was filled with amazing young characters, brought to life by some talented young actors and it tugged on the heart strings.

It also was able to catch me off-guard in ways of story, which I did not expect.  I do not usually get shocked by movie scripts so when it happened here, it made me all the more impressed by what they had done.

Logan Lerman was amazing as Charlie, the freshman boy who is befriended by a group of seniors.  Charlie had his own troubles but I had not expected them to be more than what I expected.  Charlie did not fit in at high school and finding this group of people who also was outside the norm of the school was a blessing for him.

Each of them had major issues.  Ezra Miller’s Patrick is quirky and bold, but his own secret has emotional stakes for him and another.  Emma Watson’s Sam was a sweet girl with a bad reputation for making bad choices.  These two helped Charlie find his way through high school even though they did not have a real clue about the depth of the pain he was in.

The film had fantastic music and did a memorable job of interweaving the music into the plot.  Set in 1994, there are some great moments from the Come on Eileen dance scene to the David Bowie Heroes driving scene.  The music made every scene better.

This movie truly does show the gamut of emotions that young people go through during these uncertain times of their lives.  One only hopes that they can find people who are as important to themselves as these friends turned out to be.

It would have certainly made my own Coming-of-Age top 10 list had I seen it before.  It was a wonderful movie.

Ah, what could have been.

A film shrouded in tragedy, The Crow is one of the greatest revenge films ever made and one of the earliest films that was based on a comic book to be quality and well-done.

Eric Draven (Brandon Lee), a rock musician, and his fiance Sarah (Rochelle Davis) were murdered on the eve of their wedding by a band of dirtbag criminals. Eric thrown out of the sixth floor window and Sarah, raped and beaten, dies later at the hospital.

A year later, a black crow arrives on Eric’s grave, tapping on the tombstone.  This causes Eric to pull himself out of the grave.  Discovering that he had returned from the dead, Eric, with his face covered in white makeup, started his path of revenge.

Of course, The Crow was marred by the tragic death of its lead star Brandon Lee, son of the legendary Bruce Lee.  With eight days of shooting remaining, Brandon was accidentally injured by a malfunctioning round of blank ammunition.  He died later during surgery.  Producers rearranged certain scenes and used tricks to finish the scenes they still needed to make sure that the film was released.

The Crow was a great film.  Lee was spectacular here.  This could have easily been a massive breakthrough for the young actor.  His charisma, his presence, his aura stood out on each image.  The character was compelling and easy to root for.

Ernie Hudson played police officer Albrecht and worked very well as the supportive cop, the man who is the audience’s eyes, his wonder for what was happening was the same as what we felt.  Hudson brought a true gravitas to the role and his very appearance gave a credibility to the film.

The story is very simple, but the key to the film is the imagery in each scene.  There are beautiful shots in the film, a visual cornucopia of violence and style.  The images tell the story and help set the tone of this film better than most of the words.  It is like a comic come to life.  There were several moments where I was watching the film where I thought, “That looked like a splash page from a comic.” It was bathed in darkness as well, with color used sparingly.  It created something wonderfully dark.

Yes, the film is very violent, but I do not think that it is gratuitous.  It has cinematic element to it and it works so well.

The only issue I had while watching The Crow was that I kept thinking about professional wrestler Sting.  Sting took a “Crow-like” gimmick after the film came out and he looked quite a bit like Brandon Lee.  It was distracting for me, but that was not the film’s issue.  It was mine.

The Crow was a great film.

I have been a fan of Taika Waititi and his work over the last few years.  What We Do in the Shadows, Thor: Ragnarok, and Jojo Rabbit are three of the great films that I found remarkably entertaining and touching.  However, there was always one film missing from the movies I have watched.  Today, I filled that gap by watching Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople.

In New Zealand, troublesome foster kid Ricky (Julian Dennison), who had been pulled out of several foster home, is dropped off with Bella (Rima Te Wiata) and Hec (Sam Neill), an older couple who live just outside of the bush.  Ricky was withdrawn and protective of himself and did not want to get too close.  However, Bella won the boy over with her kindness.  Sadly, she dies suddenly.

When it sounded like the child service agent Paula (Rachel House), who was over the top, was coming back to take Ricky away, he ran away into the bush.  Hec went to find him but hurt his ankle.  The two of them stayed in the bush as Hec’s ankle imporved.

The social services arrive and start a nationwide search for the pair of them.

This movie is great.  It is funny, beautifully emotional, and poignant as can be.  You can see how Waititi will create a film like Jojo Rabbit.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople has so much ridiculousness going on around it, but the whole thing is anchored by the relationship between Ricky and Hec, and it is not a relationship that is typical.  It is shaky as both individuals have lived lives that prevented them from truly connection with others.  They were brought together by Bella, and, when she was gone, left them floundering.  The social services, led by Paula, the police, the hunters who kept being involved, were so unrealistic, but you buy it immediately because of the strength at the core of the pairing of Ricky and Hec.

You can see the beginning of Taika Waititi’s own little band of actors that he will be dipping into as his movies continue.  Rachel House appears in Thor: Ragnarok.  Taika himself is here, as he is in his other films.  Rhys Darby was Anton in What We Do In The Shadows.  Mike Minogue had a cameo in that film too.  It is starting to feel like Wes Anderson, who has a group of regular actors to appear in his roles in his films.

Julian Dennison would go from here to be Firefist in Deadpool 2.  He was a great find here as he and Sam Neill have amazing chemistry and make for the heart of this movie.

I am very happy that I took the time to watch this film.  It only makes me even more of a fan of Taika Waititi’s work.  Knowing he is working on the next Thor movie and a future Star Wars film really provides me with a lot of hope and excitement.

One of the online movie pundits I like made a comparison of The Social Network to Citizen Kane, format-wise.  I made that decision that I wanted to watch them together to see how I felt about that idea.

I had seen The Social Network before, but I had never seen Citizen Kane.  Touching on the idea of the comparison, I do see some connection between the way the story is told with the non-linear storytelling format (though honestly, the flashbacks feel more like the main story than flashbacks), the main protagonist having negative qualities, and Rooney Mara (who played Erica Albright in Social Network) is comparative to Rosebud in Citizen Kane.  There are other connections, but it would take me diving deeper into both movies to really do that analysis justice.

The Social Network is the story of Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and the founding of Facebook.  We meet Mark as he is breaking up with the aforementioned Erica (Rooney Mara).  Actually, it was Erica who did the breaking up and it sent Mark on this path toward Facebook.  He went back to his room and started blogging negative things about her, showing his true troll side.  This led to an idea to compare other female students at Harvard.

The comparison website had a huge response and that drew the attention of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (both played by Armie Hammer), rowers and legacy students at Harvard.  The brothers approached Zuckerberg with an idea about a social network and they wanted him to write code.  Zuckerberg agreed, taking the idea to another level.

With the monetary investment of his best friend Eduardo (Andrew Garfield), Marc went to town.

Directed by David Fincher, The Social Network just pops with the writing of Aaron Sorkin.  The combination of these talented individuals really provided an amazing product that gave these great actors some fantastic material.  Performances here were just astounding as well.  Jesse Eisenberg, Armie Hammer, Andrew Garfield were all great and it is most likely the best performance in the career of Justin Timberlake.

The film does a great job of showing the character of Mark Zuckerberg and how he was desperate for a connection, yet unable to connect.  The irony of having a person who has so much trouble with the relationships in his life being the driving force behind a platform that is meant to connect to other people is unbelievable.

I did not think originally that this would be a great movie.  I felt that this would be dull, but it is anything but.  I liked it the first time I saw it and this time was even more as I appreciated the technical aspects of the film this time more.  The Social Network is an exceptional film.

Universally recognized as one of the greatest movies ever made, Citizen Kane is, as movie pundit Scott Mantz might say, the Citizen Kane of movies.

Citizen Kane is one of those experience movies that anybody who considers themselves a cinephile must experience.  Starring the director Orson Welles, Citizen Kane is a movie that has an amazing relevance to today’s world, almost 80 years later.

Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) was a newspaper magnet and one of the country’s richest men.  Upon his death, he became even bigger news, and journalists searched for a hook for their audiences, in their attempt to discover something new about the millionaire.  A group of reporters focused in on a riddle… the last word spoken by Kane was “Rosebud” and no one knew why.  This mystery sent the reporters on a journey into the past of Charles Foster Kane searching for a clue to the true meaning of that allusion.

I had never watched Citizen Kane before, but I knew the answer to the riddle of :What was Rosebud.”  It is one of the most iconic movie images ever put to screen.  I knew about that allusion for decades.  Heck, the first place I ever heard of it was from the Dr. Demento Show and the song “The Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun” by Julie Brown.  It was a pop culture symbol that everyone knew.  That speaks to the successful nature of the film.

This movie was filmed in ways that would inspire directors and creators for years.  In fact, many of the styles used to film here may not seem special when viewed today, but were, in actuality, influential to the film industry when Orson Welles did it.  Techniques such as “deep focus” which is a technique that allows the filmmaker to keep objects in the foreground and in the distant background in focus at the same time.  Images in the film are utter masterpieces of composition and imagination. They literally teach classes on the imagery found in Citizen Kane.

The story telling of the film was ahead of its time as well.  The film starts off with the death of the main protagonist in Charles Foster Kane, setting up the film’s main mystery with the “Rosebud” utterance.  Then the film is told in flashbacks to the different stages of Kane’s life, and it was not even chronological at this point.  Yet the story is so well constructed that you are never confused about where in the story you are and what place in Kane’s life you are watching.  The use of the news reel right after Kane’s death provides us with exposition in a manner that is both effective and entertaining.

I also found a disturbing comparison between Charles Foster Kane and another of our major public figures in today’s world.  Another multi-millionaire narcissist with delusions of grandeur.

I avoided Citizen Kane for the longest time because I thought I might be bored by it.  Au contraire… I found it completely compelling and fascinating.  The tale of the life of this man and his hopes and his desires, along with a longing for what was and what could have been.  Devastating.  This is an amazing debut from Orson Welles and it had to be difficult for him to manage expectations after the first film you make is one of the most revered films in movie history.

A true masterpiece.

Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice

Beetle….

Wait.  I should be more careful.

One of the most original and fun movies of the 1980’s was the Michael Keaton starring vehicle, Beetlejuice.

A young couple Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara (Geena Davis) purchased a new house and moved in.  Unfortunately, soon after, they were killed in a car wreck only to discover that they were now stuck in the house as ghosts.  They could not leave and could not be seen.  Then, the house was sold to a pretentious couple Charles (Jeffrey Jones) and Delia (Catherine O’Hara), who, along with their depressed daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder), arrived in the house, ready to renovate everything.

Adam and Barbara decide that they would use their ghostly powers to scare them out of the house, but Adam and Barbara discovered quickly that they were not the scary types.  Desperate, they found help from a spirit who they could only summon by saying his name three times:  Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton).

This film is one of the greats form the 1980’s as it blends some exceptional humor with some dark monstrous images.  The entire “Day-O” sequence of the film is just one of the most memorable musical moments in movies.

Michael Keaton is just tremendous as the troublesome Beetlejuice, funny, witty and rotten to the core.  You could tell immediately that Beetlejuice was not going to be helpful in the long run.

There are some great cast members here.  Moving past the main actors, Catherine O’Hara and Jeffrey Jones are fantastic as the snooty new owners of the house.  We get Glenn Shadix as Otho, Robert Goulet, Dick Cavett, Susan Kellerman, and Annie McEnroe playing smaller, but entertaining characters.

The special effects are a little dated, but for 1988, they were not terrible.  This could be updated in this area.  There have been rumors of a Beetlejuice 2 which would feature Michael Keaton returning.  Keaton is masterful in this role and I would love to see what he had to add to the story.

Beetlejuice is a classic movie that is a load of fun.

What happens when the found footage genre meets the super hero origin story?

Well, if you are Josh Trank, you have Chronicle.

I should rephrase what I stated, because, truthfully, Chronicle is not a super HERO origin story as much as it is a super VILLAIN origin story.

Three high school kids (Alex Russell, Dane DeHaan, Michael B. Jordan) come across a weird hatch in the ground outside of the party they were at.  The “radiation” from the strangeness gave them telekinesis powers.  It started as a fun time, but soon their powers started to lead to deeper troubles.

Dane DeHaan’s character Andrew was abused and tormented and that brought an anger to him and, once he gained his powers, suddenly had the power that he lacked to defend himself.

Andrew’s cousin Matt (Alex Russell) tried to get Andrew past his loathing of others and focus on the positives, but Matt’s good intentions did not seem to Andrew to be sincere.

The film was extremely realistic.  What I mean by that is, if this was actually happening to these high school aged boys, this is how things would go.  They would use their new skills in ways that are meant to make them more popular or to have fun and, when they realized that these powers made them dangerous, they would make a decision.  Andrew and Matt are the proverbial both sides of the same coin story that we see in comics on a regular basis.

The found footage technique worked really well in this film.  Found footage had been starting to show its failings about this time, but Chronicle was able to show a different way to approach the genre.  It allowed the characters to go deep inside themselves and show the sides that they may not have shown in a regular film.

Despite Andrew’s constant anger and his poor reactions, you feel bad for him.  He is relatable with the troubles that he faced.  We can all relate to being teased in school, being awkward around others, facing parental issues.  These are the traits that make him human, while his powers are what makes him fantastical.

This was an excellent use of found footage and presented us with some dark images and sad moments in the lives of these boys. Chronicle was a really well done film.

This was one of my favorite movies from 2013.  In fact, looking back at the top 15 list from that year, Captain Phillips was number one.

Captain Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks), captain of the U.S. container ship Maersk Alabama, and, in 2009, his ship was hijacked by Somali pirates, led by a young man named Muse (Barkhad Abdi).  Phillips is then taken hostage on the ship’s lifeboat as the pirates try desperately to return to Somalia.

Tom Hanks is masterful in this performance, a performance sadly ignored by the Academy voters, and shows every range of the spectrum of emotion.  He goes from fear to anger to frustration.

Yet, the final 5 minutes of screen time for Tom Hanks, when Captain Phillips is safe and be examined on the navy ship, may be the greatest piece of acting I have ever seen.  Phillips is in shock and Hanks completely delivers that feel.  It is heartbreaking, completely raw and as powerful as you could imagine.

This is based on a true story and just watching the anguish and total uncertainty Captain Phillips is amazing at the resiliency of the human spirit.

However, the film does not just focus on Captain Phillip’s strength, but the emotions of Muse and his own fears and anxieties connected to what he was trying to accomplish.  He was desperate in his own way and reacted in a different way.  For much of the movie, there was almost like a chess game going on with Phillips and Muse.

The film is utterly tense and keeps your stomach churning, as if you were actually on the water.  I loved Captain Phillips when I saw it in 2013, and I loved it about as much this time through.

With this, the EYG 8 Days of Potter come to an end with the second part of the finale, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  Of course, we are not including the nearly miserable Fantastic Beasts films in our 8 Days of Potter.

Last year, one of the criticisms of Avengers: Endgame was that someone who had never seen another Avenger movie would have trouble jumping into the film. I always thought that was a silly criticism, but you could absolutely say that about Deathly Hallows Part 2 (even if you combined the finales).  Yet, I am not sure why you would start with the last film of the series if you were ready to watch a Harry Potter film.  There is no doubt that if you were unaware of the Harry Potter lore, you would not know what is going on or who most of these people were.

Having said that, this is a really epic conclusion to the Harry Potter franchise, providing the fans with a satisfactory end to the story.  The film wraps up the plot holes well and delivers answers to the lingering mysteries.  Splitting the conclusion into two parts yielded the filmmakers the opportunity to not spare the scenes.

Whereas Deathly Hallows Part 1 was more devoted to quieter character beats, Part 2 is loaded with action and battle.  Part 2 is a war movie.  Two sides gathering to fortify their sides and prepare to mount their offensives is quite powerful.  You knew there would be casualties and some of our favorites would not make it through this confrontation.  The feeling of inevitability washes over the audience and you find yourself holding your breath for much of the time.  When known characters appear on screen, you are holding tight that this would not be their final fate.

One of the problems of the film, which is also not a problem, is the fact that we lose so many of our favorites practically off-screen.  Fred Weasley (James Phelps), Remus Lupin (David Thewlis), and his wife.  I believe these characters, especially Fred, deserved a more noble death for as long as he was around.  Perhaps the idea is that this shows the senselessness of war and how death goes hand in hand.

The final confrontation with Harry and Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) was tense and brutal.  Since I had not read the books, I remember the first time I watching this movie not knowing what was going to happen.  It was a distinct possibility that any of these characters could have fallen.

The end of Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) was unbelievably satisfying.  After seven movies of not knowing his motivation or being sure which side he was on, we get a beautiful answer that checked off every box and made sense.  It did not feel forced.  Every question worked with the answer and nothing felt left out.  Alan Rickman was brilliant in his final spin as Severus Snape.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 certainly hits the landing for the end of a franchise finale.  I do have to say that the “deathly hallows” themselves kind of wind up being unimportant overall, kind of a side note in their own film, but that is a minor complaint.  The acting is top notch from the entire cast.  The audience is given several moments of joy and sorrow, emotionally potent and nostalgically relevant.  The tag on at the ending is sweet and leaves the fans with deep happiness and satisfaction.  Among a cast that we grew up with, Harry Potter concludes with a bang.

Robert Downey Jr. has remarkable charisma and it is on full display in his remake of the classic literature character, Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes gets himself involved in the capture of Lord Henry Blackwood (Mark Strong), a serial killer reputedly involved in the occult.  After the execution of Blackwood, the killer makes an apparent return from the grave to gain control of all of England.

Part of the charm of this film is the bromance between Robert Downey Jr’s Sherlock and Jude Law’s Dr. Watson.  They have tons of chemistry with each other and their banter and dialogue elevates everything that they do.

Of course, they have more than just their performances.  This story is smart and clever.  The way the film displays the notable ability of Holmes to make observations is original and creative.  The film takes us into Sherlock’s head as he plans through every move that he is going to make.

Guy Ritchie directed this film and there are a lot of Guy Ritchie touches here.  Those traits actually work very well in this film.

Rachel McAdams is here too as Sherlock’s dangerous flame Irene Adler.  McAdams is perfectly cast here and has a tremendous amount of chemistry with Downey Jr.  Of course, most people seem to have some kind of chemistry with Robert Downey Jr.

Sherlock Holmes is an iconic character and this film helped bring him into the new world of feature films.  Holmes and Watson truly brought the buddy adventure to Victorian England.

Who knew the story of the behind the scenes of a one-on-one interview would be as riveting as this?

Summer 1977, British talk show host David Frost (Michael Sheen) had a series of sit down interviews with former President Richard M. Nixon (Frank Langella) when Nixon spoke on the record for the first time since Watergate and his resignation of the Presidency of the United States.

Director Ron Howard gave us a film unlike any other Ron Howard films, and perhaps one of his finest.  The performances of the two lead stars, Frank Langella and Michael Sheen are powerful and utterly compelling.  Langella, in particular, is brilliant as Richard Nixon.  He received an Academy Award for his role.  He does not do an imitation of Nixon, one of the most imitatable person in history.  Instead, he embodied the former president and became more than just an imitation.

Langella portrayed Nixon with such a charm that you could forget that he was one of the most infamous figures in the U.S. political landscape ever.  You saw the complicated mindset of Nixon, from his desire to fight and battle to the guilt that existed behind his eyes.  He wanted to be loved, and that showed in the performance.

Much of the film was shot in a documentary style film, with key people from the story giving their opinions and their insight on the history that was unfolding before their eyes.

Both sides are represented here and that balance helps to prevent this from being nothing more than good vs. evil.  In fact, it is considerably more nuanced than that.  The battle that occurred within these interview sessions is something that would not likely happen again.

In these days of “FAKE NEWS” there is something refreshing about what we see here.  Frost/Nixon is a wonderful film dealing with two men talking.  I never expected to be as enthusiastic as I was about this movie.  It really is fanatsic.