Review: Colossal

It was only a matter of time until writer/director Nacho Vigalondo would try to top his sci-fi thriller, TIMECRIMES... and he may just have succeeded with COLOSSAL, a fun disaster film-turned superhero story.

Gloria (Anne Hathaway) is a wreck. She's broke and without a job, her partying has caused her to become practically nocturnal, and she is the very definition of alcoholic. When her boyfriend kicks her out of their apartment in New York, she returns to her hometown in the middle of nowhere to scrape by in her childhood home, which her parents have left completely empty after moving. Here, she meets childhood friend, Oscar (Jason Sudeikis), who whiles away the time as the sole employee of his departed dad's old bar, and jumps at the exciting opportunity of a flash from the past.

But something strange is afoot. After a drunken night that stretched into the morning hours, Gloria sees on the news that a giant creature has appeared in Seoul, Korea, killing those in its path as it traipsed across the city. The creature appeared once, 25 years earlier --and it seems to be back, appearing every morning at 8:05 exactly, then disappearing into thin air. And Gloria seems to have a strange connection with the mysterious beast...

Hathaway and Sudeikis give strong performances, though it is the characters themselves that shine above anything else: the irresponsible, escapist Gloria that we meet in the beginning of the film gets a hell of a reality check with this kismet experience, and Oscar stoops to desolate levels of manipulation. Putting aside the physical presence of a monster traipsing across cityscapes, this is really a closer look at interpersonal relationships gone awry: what we are really watching is the story of an unwilling and uncertain hero rising from the rubble of alcoholism -- and an antagonist from the pits of self-despair and envy.

Vigalondo offers a nice balance of character development and thrilling heroics in COLOSSAL. Now playing at Midtown Cinema, starting 5/19!

Review: The Dinner

When there's dinner, there's drama -- especially when it's amongst family. That is exactly what director Oren Moverman had in mind with his latest film, THE DINNER, adapted from Herman Koch's novel of the same name.

The Lohmans are not the type of family to get together for dinner -- there is too much tension between Paul (Steve Coogan), a history professor struggling with mental illness and with a strong propensity for racism, and his brother, Stan (Richard Gere), who is currently running for governor and can't seem to pull himself away from his work for two seconds. When Stan and his wife, Katelyn (Rebecca Hall), invite Paul and his wife, Claire (Laura Linney), to dine at a local fancy restaurant, Paul can see right through the thinly veiled request and knows that something is up.

He is right -- it seems there is a problem with the two families' sons: Paul and Claire's son, Michael (Charlie Plummer) and Stan's sons, Rick and Beau, have been up to their own mischief -- a deed done in the night without much thought, now coming back to haunt them. As the dinner goes on, and they attempt to devise a plan to deal with their offspring's situation, the tensions rise.

With Paul's off-kilter, sometimes jumbled narration adding a brooding filter to the story, THE DINNER will certainly leave you feeling uncomfortable. The film reveals snippets of likeable traits paired with despicable traits in each character, pulling your emotions every which way as you innately try to connect with one of them. And perhaps that is the thing that makes the Lohmans so despicable: their lives ring so true. If you can't relate with a specific character, bounds are you at least know someone like that.

THE DINNER is an unsettling ensemble character sketch -- one you should be sure to catch. Now at Midtown Cinema, starting on 5/5!

Review: Your Name

While there is certainly a core fanbase for Japanese anime, it is rare to see a film that falls into this category catching the eye of the masses. Such a rare occurrence has occurred with Makoto Shinkai's YOUR NAME, a complex film about a mysterious body swap between two high schoolers.

The story follows Taki Tachibana (Ryûnosuke Kamiki), a city boy in Tokyo, and Mitsuha Miyamazu (Mone Kamishiraishi), a girl living in the countryside. The stark contrast of their lives (not to mention their genders) makes for a compelling opening to a film: both thinking they are dreaming, they live a day in the life of each other without fully comprehending what has happened — and leaving their friends and family under the impression that they have gone crazy, forgetting who they are, where they live, etc. But when the day is done, these high schoolers return to their own bodies. This switch continues to happen intermittently, until the two work out a system, leaving reports for each other on their phones in order to keep track of their lives.

But suddenly, something happens that will change the nature of this bizarre relationship. Comet Tiamat, a comet that appears every thousand years or so, is scheduled to be visible to the naked eye -- a fact which holds much more weight than it appears. Without giving too much away, there is a lot happening in this story that breaks away from your typical body-switching plot-line, and the combination of the gravity of the journey that these two teens take and the deeply ingrained themes of time and spiritual connection makes the film a stark departure from your typical anime.

For those who are not big on anime, the film is still worth a watch, with just a different enough style and feel to the film to attract a wider audience. Though it does have somewhat hokey montage sequences early on in the film, the story, editing, and voice-acting are pretty top-quality. Don't miss this film! YOUR NAME is now playing at Midtown Cinema, starting 4/28.