Tag Archives: Maika Monroe

31 Days to Scare ~ Significant Other

by 31 Days to Scare, Movie Review • Tags: , , , , , , ,

The Facts:

Synopsis: A young couple takes a remote backpacking trip through the Pacific Northwest and faces sinister events leading them to realize that everything about the place is not as it seems.
Stars: Maika Monroe, Jake Lacy, Matthew Yang King, Dana Green
Directors: Dan Berk & Robert Olsen
Rated: R
Running Length: 84 minutes
TMMM Score: (7.5/10)
Review:  When I was single, it was easy to fire up any horror movie I wanted, regardless of its scare factor.  I could take the killer clowns, jumpy arachnids, dream monsters, haunting ghosts, and significant gore without losing too much sleep over it later.  I may have had to sleep with a light or four on, but I eventually made it to dreamland.  Once I had a partner’s tastes to consider with my scary movie schedule, things changed.  Now I had to save the most frightening ones for after his bedtime or rare times I had the house to myself.  And don’t even think about getting him to sit still for Arachnophobia or A Nightmare on Elm Street.  (I’m thankful I changed his mind on the Halloween and Friday the 13th franchises.)

In the spirit of the shared scary experience, I suggest holding on to Significant Other for a date night with your partner.  Singles, go for it whenever you want, but this new film on Paramount+ is extra fun if you are in a committed relationship.  Starting like a standard domestic thriller where you think you know the game, the writing/directing team of Dan Berk & Robert Olsen take a few swift swerves.  Creating a considerable unease allows the film to transform into something meaningful out of what was shaping up to be a by-the-numbers (but still admittedly enjoyable) mystery.

A streak of red fire descends from above (the cinematography from Matt Mitchell is spectacular throughout) and brings with it a creature of unknown origin that quickly finds a host to call home.  While the alien gets comfortable in their new skin, Harry (Jake Lacey, Being the Ricardos) and Ruth (Maika Monroe, Greta) are in the final stretch of driving into the woods of the Pacific Northwest for a camping weekend and hiking the serene trails.  More outdoors-y than his longtime girlfriend, Harry plans to use the trip to pop the question after six years of dating, even though the anxiety-prone Ruth has made it clear in the past why she fears marriage.

An underlying tension exists within the couple, or perhaps it’s just a lived-in familiarity that can set in with any long-term relationship that has plateau-d and needs to move to the next level or end.  Both realize this, but only Harry is proactive enough to do something about it.  The forest has other plans for them, though.  After their first night, Ruth senses a strange presence around their camp, which only intensifies the next day when the couple is briefly separated.  However, a relieved reunion is short-lived when a betrayal reveals a deadly secret.  And that’s when things in Significant Other get unpredictable and impossible to talk about without giving away major spoilers.

Nervy enough with infectious paranoia to make you steal a few side-eye glances at your partner during the last third when Significant Other becomes more of a psychological thriller, Berk and Olsen have fun twisting our expectations around on us.  Between bursts of gruesome violence (thankfully, not gory or bloody), there are a few jaw-dropping turns that are outdone moments later by something else.  At only 84 minutes, there are a lot of surprises to cram in, but the tricks don’t feel like overreaching, thanks to the performances from Lacey and Monroe holding steady.  Each lends the appropriate weight to their characters and overcomes the loftier esoteric ideas that start to invade near the end. 

More than anything, I found Significant Other to be energizing.  It’s not working with a massive budget or platform release, but it’s been crafted carefully and focused on the right elements that make it succeed.  Casting the two leads guaranteed the performances were on track and the beautiful scenery became almost a character in and of itself.  The special effects and make-up are used sparingly but with a consideration for their impact on what else is happening on screen.  It doesn’t have quite the button of an ending I think it could have (and for the love of Bowie, please retire ‘Space Oddity’ as a needle-drop queue to roll credits), but right up until those final seconds, it maintains just the mood October calls for.

Movie Review ~ Greta

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The Facts:

Synopsis: A young woman befriends a lonely widow who’s harboring a dark and deadly agenda towards her.

Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Chloë Grace Moretz, Maika Monroe, Colm Feore, Stephen Rea

Director: Neil Jordan

Rated: R

Running Length: 98 minutes

TMMM Score: (7/10)

Review:  In my mid-teens, I used to love the made-for-TV movies that aired on the USA Television Network.  Remember those?  The modest thrillers featured an array of crazies (mothers, nannies, children, stalkers, stepfathers, etc) preying upon naïve chumps that were easily tricked and overpowered.  They were soapy, syrupy, and an absolute delight to devour on their own or in a weekend marathon where they would all start to blend together by the time Sunday night rolled around.  Watching the entertaining new thriller Greta, I found myself riding a wave of nostalgia because you don’t have to squint too hard to see that for all its handsome production values and A-list leads it’s just a gussied up made for cable movie.

Still grieving the loss of her mother, recent NYC transplant Frances (Chloë Grace Moretz, Suspiria) hopes living in a new city with her college friend Erica (Maika Monroe, The 5th Wave) will help her move on.  Though she’s from Boston, Frances displays some downright Midwestern morals when she finds a purse left behind on the subway and returns it to Greta (Isabelle Huppert, Dead Man Down).  The lonely woman takes a liking to Frances and the two form a friendship that seemingly fills a void present in both of their lives.  Greta’s daughter doesn’t live close and Frances begins to enjoy spending time with the soft-spoken older woman.  That all changes when Frances discovers a secret about Greta that sets into motion a series of events revealing Greta’s true nature.

To say more about the second and third acts of Greta would be to give away some of the twists screenwriter Ray Wright and director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, In Dreams) have waiting for audiences, most of which are telegraphed well in advance.  The film is exactly what you think it’s going to be and doesn’t stray too far from the path.  Usually, I’d huff and puff about this lack of originality but the way Greta unfolds is so nicely handled by Jordan and his actors that I found myself quite enjoying just going along for the intriguing ride.

The performances are actually the most surprising thing the movie has to offer.  It’s a great benefit that Jordan has Huppert in the title role because she brings her inherent oddity to the forefront and makes it her weapon to keep us on our toes.  We know from moment one there’s something off about her (and it seems like Frances does too) but Huppert’s sad eyes and wan smile nicely hide the rage boiling underneath her porcelain surface.  When she feels rejected by Frances she lashes out in unexpected ways, which creates an air of uncomfortable unpredictability and that’s a space Huppert seems to revel working in.

I often struggle with Moretz as an actress but her turn here feels like one of the most fully formed characters she’s tackled.  Frances has some emotional trauma that hasn’t healed and she can’t totally forgive her father (Colm Feore, The Prodigy) who appears to have moved on with his life.  Moretz wades through some of the heaviness in Wright’s script and brings forth a lonely girl in a big city that feels familiar and relatable.  We understand why she might eschew a night out drinking at a club with her party girl trust fund roommate for a quiet dinner with the widowed Greta.  And we also see why Greta’s betrayal of trust hurts her so much.

The slow boil of the first 45 minutes gives way to an increasingly hard to swallow turn of events that don’t always jibe from scene to scene.  At one point Moretz is kicking down a door with her bare foot and in the next shot she’s unable to break a window.  A character is introduced late in the proceedings for no good reason other than to up the danger ante for Frances and satisfy some unspoken violence quota.  And for a movie set in the modern day it mystifies me that Greta’s place of residence is so hard to find one character goes on what is essentially a needle in a haystack search instead of firing up Google Maps.

Jordan is a curious filmmaker with a resume that covers many genres.  He hasn’t had an outright thriller in a while but he wades into the waters quite well with interesting camera set-ups and pacing that keeps things moving along without accumulating much drag.  There are several suspenseful sequences staged with people in peril from dangers just outside the frame and it creates the desired tension.  For those that like blunt edges, there’s a bit of gore that shocks with glee.

Now that the Oscars have been given out and everyone has patted themselves on the back, it’s time to get back to business.  We made it through a particular rough January (Serenity – yikes!) and a February that saw some modest, but not huge, hits (Alita: Battle Angel, What Men Want) and before you knew it, March is upon us.  With a host of anticipated movies set for release in March, Greta is being released in a narrow window before the blockbusters arrive.  It may be getting a release without much fanfare but it’s a better film than it’s modest roll-out would have you believe. With noted caveats aside, this one is worth catching in theaters.

Movie Review ~ The 5th Wave

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Four waves of increasingly deadly alien attacks have left most of Earth decimated. Cassie is on the run, desperately trying to save her younger brother.

Stars: Chloë Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Alex Roe, Maria Bello, Maika Monroe, Liev Schreiber, Ron Livingston, Maggie Siff

Director: J Blakeson

Rated: PG-13

Running Length: 112 minutes

TMMM Score: (5/10)

Review: As is tradition, January is proving to be a rough month at the movies…which is largely why The 5th Wave is only the second movie I’ve seen in the theaters so far in this new year.  While it’s not as pretentiously terrible as the other movie I saw earlier in the month (Anomalisa…oy), the latest big screen first installment of a Young Adult trilogy of novels struggles to set itself apart from the numerous other (and better) page to screen adaptations.

Coming off like a Muppet Babies retelling of Independence Day, The 5th Wave is the first novel in Rick Yancey’s trilogy following the after effects of an alien invasion that leaves the world in ruins. An electromagnetic pulse has destroyed anything with a current or engine, a super strain of the bird flu, and a series of catastrophic earthquakes that yield gigantic, yes, waves, has trimmed the population down by the millions.  The screenplay by Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich), Akiva Goldsman (Winter’s Tale), and Jeff Pinkner (The Amazing Spider-Man 2) often feels more mature than the characters speaking the lines, but that winds up helping the film overall.

At the center of the mayhem is 16-year-old Cassie and her younger brother Sam (spoiler alert if you miss the first 15 minutes of the movie: the parents don’t make it…), left to fend for themselves against an alien race known as the Others who are taking steps to rid the planet of its inhabitants.  When Cassie and Sam are separated by the kind of “just missed the bus” moments that can only exist in fantasy movies, the siblings find themselves split into two separate plot threads.  One thread follows Cassie’s rocky journey to reunite with her brother and the other tracks Sam as he is recruited into an army of children trained to exterminate the alien species by a grumpy looking Liev Schrieber (Spotlight) and a heavily made up Maria Bello (Prisoners, who, it must be said, gets the biggest laugh of the movie thanks to a sight gag involving her red lipstick).  There are a few twists that aren’t hard to predict, though to its credit the film doesn’t expressly telegraph each and every move.

It’s the end of the world as she knows and she feels…ok?  Though the first 1/3 of the movie is decently paced and mildly involving, its biggest problem is its bored-looking star.  Using flared nostrils and expressive lips as a substitute for deep emotion, Chloë Grace Moretz (Carrie, Dark Shadows) saunters through the majority of the movie killing time and collecting her paycheck. She gets a few good tough chick moments but they are weakened by the film feeling obligated to give her googly eyes for a hunky piece of could-be-alien man meat (Alex Roe, filling the man-meat qualifications nicely).

I actually found myself more interested in the parallel storyline of a squad of teens and pre-teens going through basic training, though overall it’s given unfortunately short shrift in favor of more Moretz moments.  Led by Zombie (Nick Robinson, Jurassic World) alongside interesting but underdeveloped characters (like Tony Revolori, The Grand Budapest Hotel and especially Maika Monroe, Labor Day), had the film focused solely on the squad, it may have found its footing easier when it rounds the corner into its final act.   A brief side note, I’m growing a bit weary seeing kids killing kids and being put into such deadly harm so parents, even though its based on a book your kids can pick up in their library, this easily earns it PG-13 thanks to several overly violent and disturbing passages.

As to the conclusion of the movie, it’s no secret that this is the first in a planned trilogy so there’s little resolution to offer by the end…making the previous two hours feel like a large set-up to sequels that may not happen should The 5th Wave get deep sixed at the box office.  My advice would be to wait until the second (or third, or fourth if they dare to split it into two movies) is released and catch The 5th Wave from the comfort of your own home.

The Silver Bullet ~ Independence Day: Resurgence

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Synopsis: Decades after original ID4 alien attack, Earth is threatened with a new extra-terrestrial threat, but will the planet’s installed space defenses be enough?

Release Date:  June 24, 2016

Thoughts: I don’t know about you, but I haven’t exactly spent the last 19 summers wishing for a sequel to 1996 megatron-huge blockbuster Independence Day.  If I’m being honest, I don’t think I’ve seen the movie all the way through since it was first released in theaters, officialy launching star Will Smith onto Hollywood’s A-List.  Smith’s not back for the sequel but a lot of familiar faces are, like Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park), Bill Pullman (American Ultra), and Vivica A. Fox.  Director Roland Emmerich (White House Down) has had his fair share of misses in the past two decades but if this energized first look at Independence Day: Resurgence is any indication; he could be walking toward another hit.

The Silver Bullet ~ It Follows

by Silver Bullet - Trailer Park • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

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Synopsis: After a strange sexual encounter, a teenager finds herself plagued by disturbing visions and the inescapable sense that something is following her.

Release Date:  March 27, 2015

Thoughts: If early buzz and trailer/poster quotes can be believed, It Follows could make a bloody little splash in the ever shrinking pond of indie horror films. Though at this point the splatter film has for the most part once again been put out to its cinematic pasture, there’s still room for the one-off winner to break through. 2014’s The Babadook was a nifty bit of slow-burn suspense and It Follows could ride that same word-of-mouth wave to some success. Playing off fears of STDs and the oft-used trope of teen angst, I’m following this film closely…you should too.

Movie Review ~ Labor Day

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Depressed single mom Adele and her son Henry offer a wounded, fearsome man a ride. As police search town for the escaped convict, the mother and son gradually learn his true story as their options become increasingly limited.

Stars: Kate Winslet, Josh Brolin, Gattlin Griffith, Tom Lipinski, Clark Gregg, Alexie Gilmore, Lucas Hedges, Brighid Fleming, James Van Der Beek, Maika Monroe, Brooke Smith, Micah Fowler, Tobey Maguire

Director: Jason Reitman

Rated: PG-13

Running Length:

Trailer Review: Here

TMMM Score: (7.5/10)

Review:  I have this nagging feeling that I’m going to be one of the very few people that likes Labor Day, Jason Reitman’s adaptation of Joyce Maynard’s 2009 novel.  I’ve had time to think about the film a lot over the last few weeks since I attended a screening with the author present.  While I enjoyed the film when I saw it, I was wondering if the author’s buoyant personality in the Q&A after colored some of my judgment.  I gotta say…after some deep soul searching my opinion stands.  I liked Labor Day… I liked it a lot.

Though the trailer suggests Labor Day fits on the same golden hued shelf as countless film adaptations of those saccharine Nicholas Sparks books, rest assured that it’s so much more than that.  Reitman has become one of my very favorite filmmakers and I don’t believe he’s made a movie yet that I don’t have a high level of respect for…even Juno, which I caught part of recently and for the record does not hold up as well as I remembered.

I hold steady that Up in the Air is his best film but there’s signs here of a maturing director that doesn’t feel the need to make the same film repeatedly just because he found favor there before.  I’m in the camp that feels Young Adult was one of the under appreciated gems of 2011, navigating its pitch black comedic moments with ease and leading up to a less than satisfying resolution for our anti-heroine that was incredibly satisfying for the viewer.

That same against the grain approach Reitman has employed in previous efforts is true here with the director taking responsibility for adapting Maynard’s work for the screen.  As has been the case with every Reitman film, his taste in casting is impeccable.  From the A list stars above the title down to the extras populating the background Reitman finds himself in a league with directors like Steven Soderbergh and David Fincher who have an eye for casting.

Reitman wanted Kate Winslet (Carnage) for this role so badly that he delayed production of the film to accommodate her schedule.  Back on screen after nearly two years, Winslet reminds us again why she’s so valuable an asset to any film set she joins.  In similar territory to her work in 2006’s Little Children, Winslet is a mother struggling with depression years after her husband (Clark Gregg, The To-Do List) left her to start a new life.  Living with her son (Gattlin Griffith) in the kind of New England home that’s too run down to be fancy but too well kept to be ramshackle, she rarely ventures outside, preferring to shut the world out and stay cocooned within.

Relative newcomer Griffith is remarkably assured and Winslet helps him avoid coming off with a misplaced hyper-sensitivity to the situation.  When an escaped convict (Josh Brolin, Oldboy) takes mother and son hostage during a once in a blue moon trip to the supermarket, a carefully played trio of agendas start to take shape over a hot and sticky Labor Day weekend in 1987.

Brolin’s character is wounded physically and emotionally, jailed for a crime of passion we see played out in brief flashbacks that reveal themselves cautiously rather than tease for show.  Coming off like a gentle giant rarely threatening, Brolin’s actions over the next several days are certainly unconventional as he helps around the house, fixes what was once broken, and, in a scene bound to be lampooned in the next Scary Movie entry, helps Winslet and Griffth make a peach pie.

Ah…the peach pie scene.  Y’know, I went into the movie with no knowledge of this but so many of the reviews are either deriding it as exceedingly syrupy or praising it as one of the sexier non sex scenes since Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze made a muddy mess at their Ghost pottery wheel.  Either way you’ll be licking your lips at how deliciously cinematographer Eric Steelberg (Draft Day) captures every flake of crust and piping hot filling.

Aside from the central trio, Gregg’s fatherly once a week outings with his son and new family have that forced happiness feel to them that we actually understand why Griffith can’t wait to get back to the man on the run playing house with his mom.  Brooke Adams has a nice little cameo as a mother to a disabled boy…and leaves a lasting impression with a genuinely startling surprise.  Even if she comes off like a character out of Diablo Cody’s imagination, Brighid Fleming’s turn as the new girl in town leaves you wanting more.  Heck, even James Van Der Beek gets a few good moments as a concerned sheriff.

In the stifling heat of a long Labor Day weekend (everyone maintains a glistening gleam of sweat for the majority of the film), three people form the kind of family environment they never knew they needed.   Sure, the final third of the film withers a bit and lingers a tad too long but it doesn’t die on the vine.  With a director now fully coming into his own leading a cast of esteem, Labor Day has even-keeled fireworks on display.

The Silver Bullet ~ Labor Day

by Silver Bullet - Trailer Park • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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Synopsis: Depressed single mom Adele and her son Henry offer a wounded, fearsome man a ride. As police search town for the escaped convict, the mother and son gradually learn his true story as their options become increasingly limited.

Release Date:  December 25, 2013 (limited)

Thoughts: By all accounts, Jason Reitman is on a roll.  Starting with the sly Thank You For Smoking before breaking into the major leagues with the unconventional hit Juno, he followed that with the rewarding Up in the Air and the very underappreciated Young Adult.  So for his fifth major motion picture, Reitman probably had it in the bag the moment he enlisted Kate Winslet (Titanic), an Oscar winner continuing her streak at the top of her cinematic game.  Winslet costars with Josh Brolin (Men in Black III) in a film adaptation of the Joyce Maynard novel that has shades of Winslet’s 2006 suburban drama Little Children but seems to maybe not cut quite as deep a wound.  That’s not a bad thing when you consider Reitman’s talent for taking off-kilter material and fashioning something wonderful from it.  Keep your eye on this one; it may be one of those sleeper films that slip in to award conversations at the last minute.  The pedigree is certainly there.