The Visit Movie Review

No other director in Hollywood has had a career like M. Night Shyamalan. His career started off tremendously with movies like Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense, suspense films with meticulously detailed screenplays, beautiful metaphorical imagery and killer twists which made sense in accordance with the rest of the film. This also made his earlier projects effortlessly re-watchable. However, since the mid 2000s Shyamalan seemed to lose his marbles with movies like The Happening, The Last Airbender and After Earth creating a holy trinity of dogsh*t.

The Visit is the story of a brother and sister who go to stay with their grandparents who they have never met before. However, as the days pass and night time approaches, their grandmother and grandfather begin to exhibit some incredibly strange behaviour, leading the grandchildren towards discovering a dark secret. The Visit is exactly what M. Night Shyamalan needed; a low budget suspense film which also excellently satires his own work as a director. It's not the Sixth Sense, but it's still an enjoyable film and a solid return to form for a director who has fallen heavily from grace in recent years.

The Visit is a weird amalgamation of horror and comedy, also borrowing elements of suspense and real human drama. It is not a film which will keep you up at night, but it does accomplish some very intense and disturbing scenes. A lot of this is played for comedy, using the younger brother as a way to channel all of the film's comedic energy and satire. Sometimes I feel the comedic aspect of the film overrided and deflated the tension that had been built up via M. Night's direction. This tonal conflict alongside the occasional over-reliance on jump scares is probably my biggest personal complaint with The Visit. But for the most part, it is successful in being dramatic, thrilling and comedic all at the same time, which is truly impressive.

There's also sparks of the M. Night Shyamalan genius from The Sixth Sense days via the movie's screenplay, which he also wrote. The movie does exhibit a slow burning pace but as soon as it got to a point where it seemed the narrative wasn't progressing, the movie really sharpened up. It took its time but it eventually fleshed out the brother and sister characters as well as the relationship between them and their mother. The Visit became dramatically hefty towards the end which is credit to M. Night's writing as well as the performances given by the two children who play the brother and sister.

Their acting performances in the movie were very good and the two had an organic relationship and real synergy between them. They actually felt like real people with their own crazy interests and obsessions; the brother is an aspiring rapper/MC and the sister is an aspiring filmmaker/documentarian. Plus, they have effective banter between them, making them feel as if they really were brother and sister. But, their performances are completely over-shadowed by the actors who portray the creepy grandparents. They were fantastic at playing these crazy geriatrics, particularly the grandmother who has a lot of psychological issues.

But for me what worked the most with The Visit was the use of the found footage style of direction and cinematography. It didn't come across at all like a gimmick or a cash-grab, and at times the film would actually stop to satire it as a method of filmmaking, which I laughed at considerably. The found footage does border into cliché on a few occasions particularly in the film's third act yet it still seems to boost the quality of everything else in the film. Dialogue which would normally come across as bogged down and expository works and compliments the style of direction.

And I can't conclude a review without mentioning the twist at the end. It isn't the most mind-blowing thing you will experience in a theatre this year. But is it still effective? Yes. Does it make sense? Yes. Do I feel stupid for not getting it? Absolutely not.

Overall, The Visit is one of the most surprising films of 2015. At times there are tonal conflicts and a cheap over-reliance on jump scares as a thrill tactic, but it's still a movie I thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend for someone if they just want to sit down and watch a fun adventure. A lot of the comedy works, the acting performances are good across the board, the screenplay involves a good twist and relatable emotional sub-text (staples of Shyamalan's films) and a directorial style which seemed to boost everything else going on around it. I like The Visit, and I want Shyamalan to do more films like this:


Rating - B

Thanks for reading,
Matt

Legend Movie Review

Legend is directed by Brian Helgeland and stars Tom Hardy (one of my favourite actors working today) as both Ronnie and Reggie Kray, twins who ruled the criminal underworld of 1960s London. Legend tells the story of their rise to prominence whilst also examining the pernicious relationship between the twins which eventually led to their downfall and their life imprisonment. Legend is not just a crime drama with excellent performances by an incredibly talented lead actor, it's also a weird amalgamation of thrills, comedy and romance.

There's a lot going on in Legend. While I feel I took out a lot of positives from my experience watching this movie, Legend was still a let down for me. I can summarise it as simply as this; first half good, second half bad. The first half of Legend is fantastic to sit through. It's energetic and bursting with personality, accomplishing a fine balance of thrills and comedy, effortlessly blending them together. The second half of Legend loses a lot of the self-achieved momentum from the first half, and very nearly falls apart. At least it would have done if not for the acting brilliance of Tom Hardy.

Hardy takes to the challenge of playing two different characters like a duck to water. It's not often that I can say an actor gives not one but two incredible performances in one film, but Tom Hardy makes it look easy. He has multiple scenes in which he has nothing to act to but himself (or at least his own mental take on the other character) and because it is shot so well, edited so seamlessly and acted so brilliantly, the performances come across as perfectly natural. I think this is also in part due to the differences between the twins; Reggie is a more reserved and calculated mind with his club enterprise being the most important thing whereas Ronnie adopts a more psychopathic and bloodthirsty approach to proceedings. This ideological conflict that erupts between these two characters is for sure the most emotionally investing and intriguing thing Legend accomplishes.

It's also a gorgeous looking movie with a purposefully sleek and authentic look to it thanks to the detailed production design and the use of breathtaking tracking shots. The accompanying musical score is also very good, as is the editing and stunt-work put into the fight sequences. They don't pull any punches when it comes to violence. One fight scene which stood out to me happened around the halfway mark which saw both Ronnie and Reggie fighting in Reggie's club. It took me a while to remember that Hardy was actually fighting himself! Such is the convincing nature of Hardy's performances.

The romantic aspect of the narrative takes centre stage in the film's second half more so than in the first. As a result, the film's pacing drags towards the end simply because the character of Reggie's wife, played by Emily Browning, simply isn't that interesting or well fleshed out. There is an immediate let up of thrills and comedy (mainly because Ronnie seems to see less screen time in these exchanges) and the film seems to limp over the line.

I thought that the general balance of plotlines and subplots were handled very well in the film's first half. However, as the romance took centre stage and various other narrative changes took place, the ending of the film became very jumbled and messy in my opinion. A lot of the minor plotlines they set up do have resolution, it's just the movie's structure doesn't really allow for a necessary emotional pay-off that it needed.

If I'm being honest I have to admit that Legend was a let down due to the second half of the film which paled in comparison to the first. A decrease in effective drama, thrills and comedy dragged out the film's pacing, which led to an over-complication of plotlines and a lot of very boring scenes which don't pay off as well as they should do. However, Legend still offers a lot to like. If you're not impressed by the clever editing or mobile cinematography, you will be impressed by the efforts of Tom Hardy. Nailing all the various mannerisms, speech patterns, ideological stances etc. of both his characters, he probably delivers one of the best acting jobs of 2015. It's just a shame the screenplay didn't allow Legend to have a strong and memorable finish:


Rating - C+

A film of two halves, in more ways than one!


Thanks for reading,
Matt

Dope Movie Review

Dope is a coming-off-age tale directed by Rick Famuyiwa starring Shameik Moore as Malcolm, a young, straight-A student living in 2015 Los Angeles, despite talking, dressing and acting as if he was from the 90s. After Malcolm and his friends are invited to an underground party, a chain of events are set in motion whereby they are forced to enter the LA drug scene which culminates in a story that blends together drama, comedy and romance seamlessly.

If anything, Dope is an extremely original film bursting with personality, charm and charisma. If you were to read the premise of this film alone then you wouldn't be weird to assume that this film could be a cliché look at a young, black, geeky child who struggles to fit in, attempting to gain the audience's sympathy. That would have been an easy chance for the film to take. Fortunately, Dope does not play it safe. Instead of adopting a sympathetic tone, Dope actually embraces the reality of Malcolm's situation and rolls with it.

By doing this, the movie utilises dark humour a lot of the time whilst never becoming an out-and-out comedy, usually the best possible result when trying to integrate humour into a screenplay. If you're not a fan of bleak and in-your-face type humour, Dope may not be the film for you. Personally, I love dark humour and as a result really enjoyed my time watching Dope.

The lead performance by Shameik Moore is completely off the charts and is the glue which binds the film together. He is excellent at portraying his character, and its a combination of his well rounded acting and the smart screenwriting which makes you as an audience member naturally latch onto and like him almost immediately. There is a scene very early on in the film whereby Malcolm is meeting with his school teacher concerning his college application. The dialogue written for Malcolm in this scene is as close to perfection as humanely possible, and as soon as he said it I knew I was going to relate and route for him for the film's entirety, regardless of how morally ambiguous his decisions become.

Dope is also a film which is aesthetically energetic due to the fact it is ridiculously stylistic, which I thought was a good thing. The hip-hop soundtrack, the unique cinematography and the flashy editing techniques all added to the film's varying tone of both drama and dark comedy. The editing is a real standout, and really made the film more enjoyable for me. For example, there are times in the film whereby it pauses, rewinds back in time and shows us the coinciding events which led up to that particular moment. I'm sorry if that doesn't make any sense, but if you see the film you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

As I've said previously this film is tonally varying which at times means that there are a lot of very random scenes which occur. The "adventure" Malcolm and his friends undertake takes them all over the place. But my main issue with this film is on moral/thematic level. The concluding scenes of the film come across as very preachy to the point where all subtlety concerning it's thematic message flies out the window. I don't necessarily agree with one of the film's "messages".

Malcolm does something terrible but gains respect and prestige amongst people who previously bullied and berated him. He's being rewarded for doing a horrible thing. Admittedly I still like the character of Malcolm regardless of the terrible thing he does in the film's third act, I just simply don't agree with it on a moral level, which ultimately detracted my enjoyment of the film. 

But just because I can't fully connect with one of the films overarching themes doesn't mean I am going to hate the film as I have so many positive things to say about one of the best limited releases I've seen in quite a long time. Dope utilises dark humour brilliantly, is stylistic in all the right ways and is held together by a truly great lead performance. But above everything, Dope is utterly original and is worth seeing for sure:


Rating - B+

Thanks for reading,
Matt