Posts Tagged ‘abuse’

  • 29 Sep

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    VIFF Review: Sheltered Life

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    Abuse is always a difficult topic to discuss but I can’t recall a film that approaches the subject quite as well as Sheltered Life.

    Sheltered Life Movie StillCarl Laudan’s film shares the story of a mother and daughter dealing with the most recent round of abuse. Having seen enough, Josephine, the young girl, calls the police and the pair is taken to a women’s shelter where, over the course of what appears to be a few days, the two bond and make a life change. Worry not, this isn’t some sugar coated story instead, Katherine Schlemmer’s script keeps things moving along briskly and realistically and mixed into Josephine and her mother’s story are observations on society, friendship, the hardships facing women breaking the cycle of abuse (beyond simply walking away to begin with) and the issues of funding which plague social support groups.

    It seems like a lot of material to cover in the 80 minute running time but the film moves along at a brisk pace. The focus never shifts from Josephine and her mother Candice and the issues that surface do so through circumstances of the story and a the resulting film feels loaded with importance while never stretching too far to make some poignant point. Both the writer and director are to be commended for not being sidetracked away from the story at hand; it’s refreshing to see a film that trusts the in the audience’s ability to pick-up on the messages without making them blatantly obvious at the cost of the narrative.

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  • 15 Sep

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    Streep, Adams and Seymour Hoffman in Doubt Trailer

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    Doubt One SheetThere haven’t been too many Oscar hopefuls so far this year. All indications coming out of TIFF is that there are a few contenders coming later this year (as we’ve come to expect) but outside of the recent The Soloist trailer, the epic that will be Baz Luhrmann’s Australia and the likely to be devastating The Road until now, little else has come along that screams Oscar quite as loudly as John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt.

    The film stars Meryl Streep and Amy Adams as nuns, one young and optimistic and one old and cruel, who work at a school. When a young boy is called into the rectory by the priest, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, the two women assume the worst. The film is based on Shanley’s play and features, as is prominent in the trailer, “quick-fire dialogue tackles themes of religion, morality and authority.”

    I love seeing Streep is this type of pure drama and can’t wait to see her square off against Seymour Hoffman. This is an actor’s movie and if it’s anywhere near as good as the trailer suggests, we’re in for a treat!

    Doubt opens December 12th in limited release.

    Trailer is tucked under the seat!

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  • 18 Aug

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    Review: The Free Will

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    The Free Will One Sheet

    Director: Matthias Glasner (Fandango, Sexy Sadie)
    Writers: Judith Angerbauer, Matthias Glasner, Jürgen Vogel
    Producers: Frank Döhmann, Matthias Glasner, Christian Granderath, Jürgen Vogel
    Starring: Jürgen Vogel, Sabine Timoteo, André Hennicke, Manfred Zapatka
    MPAA Rating: NR
    Running time: 163 min

    It’s one thing to walk away from a horror film feeling a bit shaken and, if effective, a little scared but there’s something all together different and that much more profound when some of the same uneasy emotions are brought forth by a film about real people in realistic situations, suffering through genuine emotions and heartbreaking situations.

    The Free Will Movie StillMatthias Glasner’s The Free Will is one such film. While many of us complain that Hollywood is predictable and “safe”, Glasner avoids safety nets and instead drags the audience through some of the most emotionally damaging scenes I’ve seen captured on film. It begins with Theo, our anti-hero, throwing a tray of glasses at a group of school children. He’s obviously emotionally unstable as he storms away towards his car uttering a stream of profanities. Visibly angry, he comes up on a woman on a bicycle and the scenes that follow are painful even to recount. For the next ten minutes, Theo rapes and beats the stranger and all the while, we watch or rather the camera watched while I squirmed and peeked through my fingers.

    I was trying to zero in on why I continued to watch the film after such a traumatizing scene. It may have something to do with Glasner’s choice to shoot the scene, and the film, in a minimalist, neo-realist style but much more likely, the reason I didn’t turn it off is because there’s no emotional manipulation in the way the scene is shot; there’s a sense of documentation, not judgment. The audience is left to form their own emotional response and opinion though the brutality of the scene leaves little choice as to what that emotional response will be.

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  • 05 Aug

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    Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married Trailer

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    Rachel Getting Married Movie StillShe’s been a princess, a secret agent, a first class assistant, an overbearing wife and a teenager in trouble but for all her good looks and talent Anne Hathaway has starred in a long line of mediocre films. She makes everything a little easier to watch (the girl has presence) but she has yet to take a roll that makes use of her acting chops but it looks like she may finally have struck gold.

    Directed by Oscar winer Jonathan Demme, Rachel Getting Married features Hathaway as Kym, a troubled woman who has been in and out of rehab for 10 years, who returns home for her sister’s wedding.

    The one thing that struck me almost immediately is the look of the trailer which seems unlike anything else I’ve seen Demme do in the past. I’m not an expert but it looks to me like this may be digitally shot – it certainly has that sort of urgent, hand-held feel. The other striking thing is that Hathaway is looking a little ragged which obviously suits her character. Though I’m definitely interested in seeing what Demme, Hathaway and Debra Winger (who I haven’t seen on film in years) bring to the table, I’m also concerned that this looks like it is borrowing a fair bit from a number of other dysfunctional family type films (namely Pieces of April, The Royal Tenenbaums and even Running with Scissors). I doubt it will bring anything new to the table but it could be an interesting watch if only for Hathaway.

    Rachel Getting Married opens in limited release on October 3.

    Trailer is tucked under the seat!

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  • 25 Jul

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    Trailer for Dakota Fanning’s “Rape Movie” Hounddog

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    Hounddog Movie StillComing out of 2007′s Sundance film festival, there were a few films with a whole load of buzz. Once, Manda Bala, No End in Sight, Grace is Gone, Teeth and Joshua among others, all managed to get some attention regardless of whether they were good or bad but one film crossed from attention to infamy: Hounddog.

    Sadly, until seeing the trailer, the only thing I knew about the film was that it was dubbed “the Dakota Fanning rape movie” because of one scene where Fanning, who was 12 at the time, was raped. Though the majority of critics panned the movie, general consensus was that Fanning’s performance is solid in an otherwise bland film and when it didn’t release in 2007 or until this point in 2008, I figured we were never going to see it outside of a direct to DVD release but it looks like Empire is going to try to squeeze whatever money it can out of the production.

    The film itself is a period piece set in the American South at the time of the rise of Elvis Presley. It tells the story of Lewellen (Fanning), a young girl who finds shelter from her troubled life in the music of the time. Unsurprisingly, the one thing that really stands out in the trailer is Fanning’s performance and notably her singing. If that’s really Fanning singing, and from what I can find that is her voice, the girl should be doing musicals. Aside from that, the trailer looks, as previously criticized, bland.

    Hounddog is scheduled to open in limited release on September 5th.

    Trailer, care of Film Junk, is tucked under the seat.

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  • 05 Jul

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    Review: On the Doll

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    On the Doll One Sheet

    Director: Thomas Mignone
    Writer: Thomas Mignone
    Producer: Jeff Most
    Starring: Brittany Snow, Josh Janowicz, Shanna Collins, Paul Ben-Victor, Eddie Jemison, Candice Accola, Chloe Domont
    MPAA Rating: NR
    Running time: 102 min

    My first thought at seeing the trailer for On the Doll was that it seemed to be borrowing a page from David Slade’s brilliant Hard Candy and to an extent, Thomas Mignone does follow the same broad theme of sexual abuse and sexual predators. The films share something else as well: a unique visual style though wile Slade’s is clean and bright, Mignone’s is dark and dirty.

    On the Doll Movie StillThe film tells the unrelated stories of a number of individuals, all of whom appear to be little more than teens, somehow involved in the sex trade. Chantal is an escort, working to make money to support her boyfriend’s dream of recording an album. Melody and Courtney are high school students lured by a teacher into an on-line porn site while Balery, a call girl and dancer, employs Jaron to help her exact revenge on a cheap customer. Individually, the ideas for these stories are all interesting but they suffer from a number of problems ranging from poor acting to painful dialog.

    One of the film’s major drawbacks is the script. Written by Mignone himself, the film tries hard to tell important stories but it only manages to touch the surface, providing interesting ideas that are never fully developed. The dialog itself is juvenile and awkward and though this can be seen as somewhat realistic and an argument can be made that that is how kids in those situations might really talk, I didn’t buy into it. To make matters worse, a number of the back stories and situations feel forced, as if they were written to make a point rather than tell a story, and as a result, the characters are flat.

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