Stacy's Blog Has Got It Going On

 "Everybody has secrets." -Claire After the suicide of her husband, Beth (Rebecca Hall) struggles to move on and come to terms with what has happened.  To make matters worse, strange things begin to happen around her house and the lines between dreams and reality become blurred.  Her husband had a secret and Beth is determined to figure out what it was. What Works: The strongest aspect of this film is the cinematography.  There are some truly beautiful shots with some great framing.  Some of the early shots do a great job of making you feel like there is supposed to be a second person in the house, but they are gone now.  Later on, the shots become much more frightening thanks to some amazing camerawork and lighting. The sound design is awesome and actually scared me at times.  I don't get scared by movies very often, but the jarring and overwhelming use of sound made me want to leave the theater as fast as I could, but in a good way.  What makes ...

 "Hold up!  You don't get to die alone." -James "Sawyer" Ford The first part of the season 4 finale starts in a flash-forward with the Oceanic 6 landing in Hawaii after being rescued.  Jack (Matthew Fox), Hurley (Jorge Garcia) and Sun (Yunjin Kim) are all reunited with their families, while Sayid (Naveen Andrews) is finally reunited with Nadia (Andrea Gabriel).  At a press conference, they tell a very different story than what actually occurred.  They say they crashed in the water  with three other survivors, Boone, Libby, and Charlie, who all died on the Island and Kate (Evangeline Lilly) gave birth to Aaron on the Island. Months later, Sun manages to take over her father's company and tells him that she hold him responsible for Jin's (Daniel Dae Kim) death. At Hurley's birthday party, his father, David (Cheech Marin), gives him the fully restores Camaro they used to work on together.  Hurley sees the speedometer is set to the Numbers and runs away....

 "Don't have a good day, have a great day!" -Guy Guy (Ryan Reynolds) is an average guy who works at a bank in an extremely violent city, which never really fazes him.  One day he learns that his is an NPC in an online video game.  With his game facing deletion, Guy decides to save his city by being the best guy he can be. What Works: Free Guy is a movie that wouldn't work with most actors in the lead role.  Ryan Reynolds is one of the few who could pull this one off.  Guy is so likable and optimistic and that makes him incredibly easy to root for.  He's a shockingly wholesome character and gives the movie a lot of whimsy.  Reynolds' charm is infectious and he makes the movie a blast to watch. Taika Waititi plays the film's villain, Antwan.  Antwan is a pretty one-dimensional character and most actors wouldn't be able to elevate him to much more.  Waititi is perfect in the role thanks to his odd mannerism and general douchey behavior.  Ju...

 "Life is brutal." -Allison Baker After his daughter is convicted of murder, Bill Baker (Matt Damon) travels from Oklahoma to Marseille, France to help in anyway he can.  Running out of legal options, Bill charges headlong into trying to prove his daughter's innocence on his own.  What Works: The strongest part of the movie is the relationship between Bill and a mother and daughter he meets in Marseille.  Camille Cottin and Lilou Siauvaud both do an excellent job and they have great chemistry with Damon.  I actually would rather have watched a movie about just the three of them instead of Damon getting his daughter out of prison.  Their scenes are far more interesting. The second half of the movie has a few twists and turns that I wasn't expecting.  There is a time jump, which has Bill getting more settled into Marseille.  That's when the movie gets decently interesting.  I liked seeing Bill integrated into life in France.   What Sucks: ...

 "He wants us to move the Island." -John Locke "Cabin Fever" kicks off with a flashback to the night of Locke's (Terry O'Quinn) birth, where he barely survives being born three months early.  Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell) interacts with John over the course of the flashbacks.  He visits baby John, at the hospital before visiting him again as a young boy.  He shows Locke a series of objects and asks him to pick the one that belongs to him already.  Locke selects a knife, which is the wrong answer, and Richard leaves.  Finally, Richard tries to recruit a teenage Locke to a summer camp, Locke rejects it. In the final flashback, while in the hospital recovering from being pushed out the window, Locke is met by Matthew Abandon (Lance Reddick) who encourages him to go on a walkabout. On the island, Locke, Ben (Michael Emerson) and Hurley (Jorge Garcia) struggle to find the cabin.  Locke is visited in a dream by Horace Goodspeed (Doug Hutchinson), who tel...

"Was it not just a game?" -Gawain On Christmas, King Arthur's (Sean Harris) round table is approached by the Green Knight (Ralph Ineson) who challenges any one of them to land a blow on him, but in one year, they will have the meet the Green Knight on their knees and receive an equal blow.  Arthur's nephew, Gawain (Dev Patel), accepts the challenge and decapitates the Green Knight.  A year later, Gawain embarks on a dangerous quest for honor as he goes to meet the Green Knight. What Works: Technically, this is a beautiful film.  The cinematography is impeccable with lots of slow, long takes and some great atmospheric shots.  It gives the film an epic scope, even with it being such a small-scale tale.  The use of lighting is also amazing.  There is lots of unnatural green and red lighting, which always goes a long way with me. The performances are fantastic across the board.  Patel, Joel Edgerton, Alicia Vikander, and Ineson all give fantastic performan...

 "I cherish peace with all my heart.  I don't care how many men, women, and children I need to kill to get it." -Peacemaker After a coup overthrows the government of a small, South American island, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) sends in her Suicide Squad to destroy a laboratory on the island, which threatens the safety of the United States.  These wackjobs, both old and new, must learn how to work together if they want to survive the mission. What Works: This is what happens when a studio sits back and lets a talented filmmaker actually make a movie.  James Gunn was given pretty much free rein to make this his movie and he managed to rescue this franchise from the trash.  Gunn makes this movie his own and its one of the more unique superhero movies out there.  It's not perfect, but boy is it refreshing. There aren't many R-rated superhero movies and I'm so glad that Gunn demanded to make this one R-rated.  This thing is gory with gnarlier kills than most...

 "Wouldn't you rather be dreaming about something nice back home?" -Bernard Nadler "Something Nice Back Home" picks up at the beach with Jack (Matthew Fox) attempting to give a speech to calm everyone down about the lies of Daniel (Jeremy Davies) and Charlotte (Rebecca Mader), but he passes out in the middle of it.  Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) realizes Jack has appendicitis and that he needs to have his appendix removed.  She sends Daniel, Charlotte, Sun (Yunjin Kim) and Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) to the Staff Station to get supplies.  During the trip, Jin figures out Charlotte knows Korean and threatens to hurt Daniel unless she helps him get Sun off the Island. Jack requests to be awake for the surgery so he can talk Juliet through it, even though she has performed the surgery before.  He has Kate (Evangeline Lilly) hold a mirror so he can see what Juliet is doing, but when the pain becomes too much, Juliet has Bernard (Sam Anderson) put Jack to sleep.  The sur...

 "I'm not playing your game!" -Zoey Davis After surviving the events of the first movie, Zoey (Taylor Russell) and Ben (Logan Miller) travel to New York City to gather evidence against the Minos Corporation.  They quickly find themselves trapped in a new series of escape rooms with a group of other former players.  These veterans quickly discover that the games are more challenging than anything they have seen before. What Works: Just like in the first movie, the escape rooms themselves are awesome.  They all have fantastic designs and interesting methods to solve them.  The production design went all out and while none of them beat the upside-down bar room from the first movie, they give us some really fun sequences. The pacing for the first half of the movie is really fantastic.  Once the games start, the movie throws you into the deep end alongside the characters.  It's frantic rush of a film that barely gives you a moment to catch your breath, whic...

 "You're a poser." -Yelena Belova After the events of Captain America: Civil War , Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) is forced to go into hiding.  However, she gets pulled back into her past when old friends and foes rear their heads. What Works: The first half of the movie really fells like a spy movie.  It had some serious James Bond, Jason Bourne, and Mission: Impossible vibes, which I was a fan of.  I love spy movies and seeing Marvel be less superhero focused and delve into espionage is fun.  There's even a scene with Natasha watching Moonraker .  It's a solid first half and I wish it had stayed more grounded in the second half.  I suppose that's why they had her watching Moonraker instead of From Russia with Love . The opening action sequence is easily the best in the film.  It's extremely small scale and mostly just involves driving a plane down a runway, while David Harbour sits on the wing shooting a gun.  It's a very stripped do...