My frustration with the cinema experience ever-growing and the week's offerings being less than impressive, this weekend I again threw myself on the mercy of streaming services.
First up was 2017's I'm Not Here, a dull tale of a sickly older man reflecting on his past.
I'm Not Here is blessed with a couple of extraordinary leads in J.K. Simmons and Sebastian Stan, playing older and younger versions of the sad-sack main character, and it doesn't really seem to know what to do with either of them. Simmons speaks not one word of dialogue and spends most of the film staring sadly at himself in the mirror and blankly at everything else, an artistic choice that serves only to make his scenes--the bulk of the movie--seem interminable. Playing the man in his younger days, Stan at least gets to work a few different acting muscles, but the character is so broadly-drawn that there isn't much he can do with it. Both actors deserve better.
To say this picture is slow would be the understatement of the decade. In more deft hands the story might be moving, the lead character sympathetic. Under director Michelle Schumacher, it's a bad film school project, its emotional heft seemingly outside her ability to wrangle and its every turn so obvious you'll see it coming a mile away. While the tale is unquestionably sad, the telling lacks any ability to make the viewer sympathize.
I'm Not Here clocks in at an impossibly long 81 minutes and is unrated. It contains adult themes, drinking, and brief nudity.
I'm Not Here is a pitiful waste of two exceptionally gifted actors.
Of a possible nine Weasleys, I'm Not Here gets three.
I'm Not Here is available for streaming and digital download via various platforms.
Fangirl points: Of *course* I only watched it because Sebastian Stan is in it!
Next up, Netflix' Ted Bundy biopic, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.
This most recent version of the oft-recounted tale of terror is based on a book by Bundy's longtime girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall. Its wordy name is lifted directly from court transcripts from the day Bundy's death sentence was handed down.
While lately Netflix is keeping pace (and sometimes outpacing) so-called "proper" cinema, this offering feels more like a Lifetime movie than anything you'd enjoy on a fifty-foot screen with a ten-dollar bucket of popcorn. Zac Efron, always better than I expect, is spot-on as Bundy, but the performance and the movie itself are somehow less chilling than they should be; there's just no grit. The supporting cast is filled with familiar faces, all of whom have proved more than competent, but--perhaps because the story and its outcome are so well known--it's difficult to invest in the proceedings. Well before the film's halfway point, my attention had wandered far from Ted Bundy, and the only reason I didn't turn it off was in hopes of more "Officer James Hetfield!"
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile runs 110 minutes and is rated R for "disturbing/violent content, some sexuality, nudity, and language."
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile is a lukewarm take on a story that's already been told too often.
Of a possible nine Weasleys, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile gets two.
Fangirl points:
M-hmm. Until next time...
