Ammonite

Directed By Francis Lee

Starring – Kate Winslet, Saorise Ronan, Genna Jones

The Plot – In 1840s England, acclaimed but overlooked fossil hunter Mary Anning (Winslet) works alone on the rugged Southern coastline. With the days of her famed discoveries behind her, she now searches for common fossils to sell to tourists to support herself and her ailing mother. When a wealthy visitor entrusts Mary with the care of his wife Charlotte Murchison (Ronan), she cannot afford to turn his offer down. Proud and relentlessly passionate about her work, Mary initially clashes with her unwelcome guest, but despite the distance between their social class and personalities, an intense bond begins to develop, compelling the two women to determine the true nature of their relationship.

Rated R for graphic sexuality, some graphic nudity and brief adult language

Ammonite – Official Trailer – YouTube

Analysis – This was one of the more difficult watches for me in 2020. Not necessarily because it’s a bad film, but rather just a terribly boring one that never evolves beyond a series of tropes for the genre that have been done better in far superior films. Because of this, it makes much of what’s to come between Mary and Charlotte every bit predictable as it is ineffective in ratcheting up a single ounce of captivating drama to hook the audience in, giving us several dry spells throughout the nearly two hour presentation that suffocates the pacing. The performances of Winslet and Ronan are emotionally complex enough, outlining two loveless women whose physical and emotional isolation and loneliness serves as the magnetism for their blossoming romance, which helps round out what the other is missing. The intimate scenes between them are exploitative, both in visualization and duration, which come across as slightly invasive from an audience perspective, making it feel more of a product of lust than convincing love. The saving grace to it all, however, is Lee’s brilliance in presentation and sound design, which illustrates the environment as a product of influence to the emptiness that breeds claustrophobia. The cold, callous color scheme resonates a moody effectiveness accordingly, and the crashing waves that consistently overrides composers Volker Bertelmann and Dustin O’Halloran’s fiddle-heavy musical score in volume capacity is a nice touch towards the enveloping claustrophobia that surrounds and inspires the predicament of our two star-crossed lovers. If you’re someone who can appreciate the technical elements of a film, regardless of how dramatically flat it is, I’d say give it a shot. It’s got a lot of similarities to last year’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire”, but not half of the dramatic flare and urgency needed to invest in the plight of protagonists.

My Grade: 6/10 or C

Fatale

Directed By Deon Taylor

Starring – Hilary Swank, Michael Ealy, Mike Coulter

The Plot – After a one-night stand, a successful married man (Ealy) finds himself entangled in a cunning police detective’s (Swank) latest investigation.

Rated R for violence, sexual content and adult language.

Fatale (2020 Movie) Official Trailer – Hilary Swank, Michael Ealy – YouTube

Analysis – Around a couple times a year, you get a film that you know has an abundance of problems in concept, but you can’t help but indulge in, because of the batshit mentality of the characters and predicaments that constantly shift like gears on a clock. Enter “Fatale”, the newest film from Deon Taylor, who himself has crafted no shortage of “Fatal Attraction” knock-offs to pay homage to a subgenre that doubles with each passing year. What makes this one different? Well, There are no shortage of predictable twists in this film that surface through deceit, but it’s rather what the twists do to shape and contort reality within the film that are especially effective, making this a popcorn flick with friends that only gets better with the more people you watch it with. On a technical aspect, Taylor’s music video captivity is on full display throughout a barrage of neon-influenced lighting and crisp still frame camera work that if nothing else makes this a luxuriously intoxicating experience. Unfortunately, the positives end there, as the acting and overall lack of chemistry between Ealy and either of his two leading ladies weigh heavily on the predictable elements of the script that you see coming from a mile away. On top of this, the characterization gets leveled from all of the twists and turns, leaving no semblance of humanity that the audience can embrace in by the climatically convoluted third act. Finally, a ham-fisted final scene hammering home the narrative of cancel culture and why it’s wrong in our society feels completely unearned from anything that took shape in the film. It’s obvious what Taylor’s intentions are with comparing it to the main protagonist’s disposition, but when you have a character who is anything but innocent, it doesn’t exactly play into the chaos of assumptions, and how condemning they can be. It concludes the film on an air of seriousness that compromises the energetic lunacy that I was indulging in, and reminds us that as much that is great about this film, there’s just as much wrong with it.

My Grade: 5/10 or D+

Hillbilly Elegy

Directed By Ron Howard

Starring- Amy Adams, Glenn Close, Gabriel Basso

The Plot – Based on the bestselling memoir by J.D. Vance, the film is a modern exploration of the American Dream and three generations of an Appalachian family as told by its youngest member (Basso), a Yale Law student forced to return to his hometown.

Rated R for adult language throughout, drug content and some violence

Hillbilly Elegy a Ron Howard Film | Amy Adams & Glenn Close | Official Trailer | Netflix – YouTube

Analysis – In what will inevitably earn me distasteful criticism from my peers, I emphatically disliked “Hillbilly Elegy”. It’s a nearly two hour hodge-podge offering of sappy sentimental melodrama with as much nuance as a Sherman tank driving through a nitroglycerine plant, and one that unveils a series of problems that don’t translate particularly well to the film adaptation. I don’t blame Howard as the commander. He pulls the best from Adams and Close, the former of which outlines a complex family head who very much showed that she loved her children, but one riddled with the vices in her life that often define her for worse. However, it’s the abundance of problems with the script and general structure of the movie that ultimately defined it, and hindered my experience from feeling invested towards these characters and situations. For one, the dialogue is extremely on-the-nose, and full of intentional exposition drive that makes these moments of family instability seem evident from a mile away. In addition, the structure of flashbacks often overcomplicated the execution between scenes, abruptly halting the pacing of the story in current real time, and feeling like convenient exposition dumps when compared to a connective tissue taking shape in current day. Because it never takes time to slow down the impatient storytelling by incorporating the calm moments of life, we get a series of topical and monumental moments that do nothing to balance all of the bad with hearty moments of rhythm that breed the many spontaneities of life. There’s some praise to be given for the handheld scheme of the cinematography meant to immerse us as a spectator within the family, as well as impressive make-up work on Close and Adams that age them naturally throughout three respective timelines in the film. However, it’s not enough to override the glaring negatives of the storytelling that immediately hindered my experience and investment with the characters, and cemented what I feel is Howard’s worst film to date.

My Grade: 4/10 or D-