Reel Entropy

The Witch trades in thrills to deliver unbelievable chills

Posted on February 21, 2016 by reelentropy

Photos courtesy A24.

No, it’s not the scariest movie ever made. It may, however, be the scariest movie ever made entirely about boobs.

Set in the 1600s a few decades before the Salem Witch Trials, The Witch follows a Puritan family banished from their plantation over William’s (Ralph Ineson) religious disagreements with the local government. William and his family — pregnant wife Katherine (Kate Dickie), daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) and twins Mercy (Ellie Grainger) and Jonas (Lucas Dawson) — move a day’s ride toward the forest and set up a farm. Several months later, Katherine has given birth and farm construction is underway. Tensions are high already as the family’s harvest is succumbing to rot, but things really start to go wrong when the newborn, Samuel, is abducted by the witch who lives in the woods.

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Posted in Entropy | Tagged #anya taylor-joy, #black phillip, #david robert mitchell, #deadpool, #harvey scrimshaw, #it follows, #kate dickie, #ralph ineson, #robert eggers, #Satan, #shameless plug, #stanley kubrick, #the shining, #the witch | Leave a comment

I’m only doing this because of the Oscar noms: The Danish Girl

Posted on February 16, 2016 by reelentropy

Despite being awful, Redmayne is getting and was always going to get a ton of praise for this movie. This inevitable praise comes because playing gay or trans is still seen as a courageous thing for a cisgender actor to do, and that viewpoint exists because, deep down, this is still seen as self-debasement. There’s a lot of different ways this gets dressed up, but the fact is Hollywood hates LGBTs just as much as it hates women and minorities and in just the same ways, and this movie and others like it are born exclusively from this hatred. Photos courtesy Focus Features.

It’s the most cynical thing in the world. Former Oscar winners? Check. Based on a true story set in the early 1900s? Check. Gay* person that dies? Check.

The Danish Girl was set up to be one of the most insufferably pretentious movies ever made, but it is surprisingly tolerable, almost entirely because of Alicia Vikander.

The film tells the story of Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne), who became the first known person to undergo gender correction surgery in 1931 to become Lili Elbe**. Wegener and his wife, Gerda (Vikander), come up with Elbe as a joke when he dresses up as a woman for one of her portraits. From there, Wegener’s latent desire to become a woman takes hold, and the majority of the movie is spent focusing on his suffering through gender dysphoria, a condition that wouldn’t even be recognized until 1980, let alone studied, and the dissolution of his and Gerda’s marriage. Elbe — Lili Ilse Elvenes, her name was in real life — eventually underwent one of the first recorded gender transition surgeries, but died of organ rejection after the final surgery to implant a uterus.

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Posted in Entropy | Tagged #Alicia Vikander, #birdman, #brokeback mountain, #carol, #dallas buyers club, #eddie redmayne, #ex machina, #gay people that die, #homophobia, #jared leto, #jupiter ascending, #lana wachowski, #michael keaton, #milk, #oscar noms, #oscars, #pronouns, #robbed, #sexism, #the academy, #the danish girl, #the wachowskis, #tom hooper, #trans people that die, #would you fuck me, Theory of Everything | 1 Comment

Deadpool is everything you ever wanted

Posted on February 13, 2016 by reelentropy

Photos courtesy 20th Century Fox.

There were so many ways Deadpool could have gone wrong, but it doesn’t. It hits the spot and hits it hard. If you know what I mean.

The plot, easily the film’s worst feature but also its least important, starts when Wade Wilson (God’s perfect asshole, Ryan Reynolds, who also produces), already a mercenary, meets and falls in love with Vanessa Carlysle (Morena Baccarin). Immediately after proposing, Wilson collapses, and a hospital visit reveals, despite his thorough self-checking regimen, he’s filled with cancer and will die soon. Wilson is offered a chance to last longer by a recruiter from the Weapon X program (Jed Reeds), which he takes. He is relentlessly tortured by Francis Freeman (Ed Skrein) and Angel Dust (Gina Carano) until his latent mutation triggers, granting him an intense healing factor that cures his cancer and makes him effectively immortal, but giving his entire body the texture of a cantaloupe. Convinced Carlysle wouldn’t take him back looking like he does, Wilson hunts down Freeman, who claims he could cure the side effects if he wanted to.

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Posted in Entropy | Tagged #20th Century Fox, #cancer, #cantaloupe, #david goyer, #deadpool, #ed skrein, #fifty shades of grey, #gina carano, #glory hole, #green lantern, #hi max!, #jed reeds, #leak, #morena baccarin, #paul wernick, #poop, #rhett reece, #ryan reynolds, #self-check, #test footage, #the dark knight, #the hangover, #tim miller, #wolverine, #X-Men, #x-men origins, The Avengers | 1 Comment

Coen brothers find Christ, communism in new period piece

Posted on February 8, 2016 by reelentropy

The most consistent thing the movie does to make fun of the era is in its special effects. Hail, Caesar! mixes modern cameras with ’50s era visual effects, with extensive use of rear-screen projection and Roman armor that looks clearly plastic with 21st century color correction. Like the movie itself, the look is unique, but not necessarily pleasant. Photos courtesy Universal Pictures.

Every great filmmaker eventually makes a movie about moviemaking, and that movie is always kind of weird. The Coen brothers are kind of weird anyway, so it follows that Hail, Caesar! would be a doubly weird movie.

It’s not a doubly weird movie. It’s weirder than that. The affect was multiplicative, not additive. It’s really, really weird is what I’m saying.

The movie follows a few days in the life of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) — the movie is entirely fiction, but Mannix was a real person — a fixer, a Hollywood handyman who solves industry problems before they make it to the gossip columns. He gets quite a big one when Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), a Kirk Douglas/Carlton Heston parody and star of the eponymous Hail, Caesar! A Tale of the Christ, is kidnapped from the set by an organization calling itself The Future. Mannix also arranges the rise of singing cowboy actor Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich), graduating from light-hearted Westerns to a drama by esteemed director Laurence Lorentz (Ralph Fiennes) and the marriage of DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson), an Esther Williams parody whose out-of-wedlock pregnancy jeopardizes her public image.

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Posted in Entropy | Tagged #ben hurr, #burn after reading, #busby berkely, #channing tatum, #coen brothers, #francis mcdormand, #george clooney, #hail caesar, #jonah Hill, #josh brolin, #nostalgia, #ralph fiennes, #scarlett johansson, #spartacus | Leave a comment

I’m only doing this because of the Oscar noms: Carol

Posted on February 4, 2016 by reelentropy

There’s a lot of confusion as to which of these actresses should get credit for the lead role. The Academy has gone with Blanchett. Photos courtesy the Weinstein Company.

Any time a movie’s trailer reminds me of that satire Swedish arthouse film from (500) Days of Summer, it’s a bad sign, but Carol rises above the scandalous Oscar-bate nonsense it advertises itself as and becomes the most enjoyable romance of 2015.

Based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt, the film centers around retail temp Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) and her relationship with the eponymous Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett). Aird buys a fake train from Belivet while going through a tough divorce, and they’re immediately attracted to each other. Belivet is similarly frustrated by her overaggressive boyfriend and stunted professional life, and at one point the two simply run off together to get away from it all.

Carol strikes that apparently delicate balance between artistic integrity and unintelligible arthouse-ism with directorial flair and compelling characters placed in a compelling story. It’s always teetering on the edge of becoming the overwrought bate film it was sold as, but only falls over in select spots.

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Posted in Entropy | Tagged #(500) days of summer, #carol, #cate blanchett, #ex machina, #lesbians, #lgbt, #oscarbate, #oscars, #oscarssoheteronormative, #oscarssowhite, #rooney mara, #sicario | 1 Comment

Reel Entropy

The Witch trades in thrills to deliver unbelievable chills

I’m only doing this because of the Oscar noms: The Danish Girl

Deadpool is everything you ever wanted

Coen brothers find Christ, communism in new period piece

I’m only doing this because of the Oscar noms: Carol

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