Review: Earth to Echo

127. Earth to Echo
About the nicest thing I can say about this film is that it wasn't boring...for the most part. It is an obvious homage to 1980s "kids go on adventure" films like "E.T." While I have nothing against those types of films, they've never been my favorites, failing to capture my imagination like they did with many others. This, perhaps, makes me not the ideal audience for "Earth to Echo". Films that seek to pay homage to other films often (though not always) pale by comparison. If I'm not a fan of those other films in the first place, odds are against me enjoying the homage.

The film's fatal flaw is that each of the main characters is more of a "type" than an actual character. While this may be fine for the intended audience of children whose tastes may be less discerning, I found it to be a major problem. While the child actors themselves weren't terrible, their roles were so underwritten that I found it difficult to find the characters likeable or care very much about what happened to them. This made all of the manufactured "emotional" moments in the film feel artificial and annoying.

There was nothing original about the film. The ending especially was drawn out too long (and was where things started to get boring). If there's any doubt about what will ultimately happen in a film, it is much easier to be invested in the events that precede it. When you basically know how everything is going to end, the scenes leading up to that ending (whether they be action scenes or dialogue driven) start to drag, and you just want them to get to the end already. I found myself thinking during this film that there was one way it could be salvaged: if, in the end, the cute little alien the kids had been spending the film trying to help turned out to be evil and completely destroyed their town and everyone in it. That would have been awesome. Of course, I knew this would never happen, and the film proceeded down its listless, predictable road to the end.

Review: America

126. America
I'm not going to spend a lot of time discussing this film, as I'm trying to stay as apolitical as I can.

The film is split into two very distinct parts. An attempt is made to transition between the two, but the transition is quite jarring. The first part is the better and more effective. It concerns itself with laying out several of the complaints that people today sometimes make about America's past and present, and then tries to refute or at least mitigate the charges. The arguments the filmmakers make are often well thought out and interesting.

The film's second part shifts into an attack on those it believes to be politically dangerous, at points singling out Hillary Clinton (clearly trying to warn against her election should she run for president in 2016). This part of the film falls into the "preaching to the choir" category. This is unfortunate since it will alienate most liberals and some moderates who might see the film, losing credibility in their eyes, and undermining the better arguments it made previously.

In all, this is a better film than its predecessor, the anti-Obama documentary "2016" from two years ago. That rise in quality is almost wholly attributable to its first part. It's refreshing to see something being argued "for" rather than "against". I just wish the filmmakers had kept that in mind when working on the second part.

"Review": Tammy

125. Tammy
An unpleasant, aggressively unfunny movie from beginning to end.

Review: Deliver Us From Evil

124. Deliver Us From Evil
Like most of the other horror films I've seen so far this year, this one had some genuinely creepy/scary moments, but did not pass the true test--those moments did not follow me home and keep me up at night (the best example of a film that did pass this test is the original "The Omen"--when I closed my eyes that night the only thing I could see was Billie Whitelaw's creepy, evil stare, and I ended up sleeping on the floor of my sister's room).

The film follows a strange structure, starting out disjointed, then gradually coming together before kind of falling apart again. Early on it is a series of seemingly unconnected police investigations by police officer Ralph Sarchie (Eric Bana) and his partner (Joel McHale). Bana plays a highly fictionalized version of the man who the film is "inspired by". The fictionalization is so great that the end of the credits bears the traditional "This film is a work of fiction.." disclaimer. Each of these investigations has moments of creepiness, some greater than others, but it takes a while for the "demonic" connection between the cases to take shape. This wasn't a problem for me, as I don't mind films that take a slow-burn approach, so long as they ultimately pay off. Here, in some ways, it does, as Bana's attempts to uncover the truth about what is going on is a genuinely compelling mystery. Edgar Ramirez, as an unconventional priest who at times joins Bana in his investigation is a welcome presence. This middle section is the best the film has to offer, though it does have its problems. The screenplay often doesn't know what to do with Bana's partner, leaving him off screen for long stretches of the film with little explanation. The film also saddles itself with a cliched "family drama" storyline about Bana's work interfering with his home life. It doesn't derail the film and is not horribly done, but it is unoriginal and takes momentum away from the primary narrative.

The film doesn't fully fall apart towards the end, but it could have been a lot better. The possessed man Bana is hunting doesn't seem to have any ultimate goal in mind beyond recruiting more people/demons to its cause. An exorcism scene, basically the film's climax, goes on for way too long, offering nothing we haven't seen done better before in "The Exorcist". The film also resolves the cliched family storyline by using the equally cliched "family gets kidnapped" storyline. For a film boasting about being inspired by real events, much of it feels written by a Hollywood focus group.

In the end, the film's slow start pays off, but only to a point. Until the final third it tells an interesting story from a sometimes fresh perspective, but when it comes time to wrap it up, there's nothing that hasn't been done before.

Belated July 4 Weekly Preview

A couple of the movies coming out this week ("Deliver Us From Evil" and "Tammy") I can't effectively preview, since I've seen them before writing this, making it difficult to predict what I'll think of them. Their reviews should be coming soon, though one of them will be my shortest review yet, as I don't plan to waste my time devoting more than a sentence to it. The other movies that came out this week are:

Begin Again- What I presume will be a "real life" musical, meaning that all of the songs are diegetic, actually taking place in the world of the film as opposed to stylized breaking into song common in traditional musicals. I think I'll probably like it. The cast seems to be made up of a mix of well established actors and well known musicians who don't have much acting experience. I hope that the latter are able to hold their own.

Earth to Echo- This film looks like its trying to recreate the style of some 1980s kids movies, though not entirely successfully based on a few reviews I've skimmed. Those movies it is paying homage to have never been my favorites to begin with, so I'm not optimistic.

America- A pro-conservative, anti-liberal documentary. Like most politically themed documentaries, it will probably preach to the choir more than it will change anyone's mind. I just hope it's better than "Fed Up", which should not be hard.

Review: Ida

123. Ida
I can't say much about this film in the way of criticism. It's less a case of it not being a well made film (I think it actually was made reasonably well), and more a case of it just not being my cup of tea stylistically.

The film has its moments of interest, but for the most part it maintains a distance from its characters and events that made it hard for me to connect. Being in black and white and subtitled didn't help, either, accenting the drab atmosphere that seems to come as a prerequisite to any Holocaust related film.

It follows a young girl who was raised at a convent and is about to take her vows as she discovers she was born Jewish and seeks (along with an Aunt she'd never before met) to find the bodies of her parents and lay them to rest. There's lots of emotional potential there, but it is rarely mined. By remaining so distant from its characters, I was unable to truly feel for them beyond a general sense of sympathy. I don't really mean this as biting criticism, though. It was clearly deliberate and is the way the filmmakers wished to tell their story. It may not have necessarily even been the wrong way--it's just not my cup of tea.

Review: Obvious Child

122. Obvious Child
My best guess is that in two weeks time my memories of this film will be pretty hazy. There was nothing in it that was particularly profound, nothing that made me sit up when the credits started to roll and say "Wow." Still, it was a fun, clever, diverting little film that, while it never made me outright laugh, frequently made me smile at its witty dialogue.

The film does have a plot, of course, but it's a meandering one which ultimately leads to more of  a low key conclusion. There is technically rising action and one or two places where the plotting seems a tad formulaic, but for the most part the film is just a series of scenes of its characters having funny, witty, awkward conversations. This makes the dialogue the most important aspect of the film and, fortunately, it is written and delivered well. Each line rings true, and much of the humor frequently comes from how relatable a lot of it is--moments where a character makes an observation and the viewer realized that they've thought something similar in the past but hadn't been able to put it into words. The dialogue here felt especially fresh with memories of the priggishness and pomposity of the so-called "witty" and "realistic" scenes from "The Fault in Our Stars" still stuck in my head.

I'm unsure of how much of a political point the filmmakers were trying to make with this film. It features the main character getting pregnant and then getting an abortion, but the moral philosophies of either side were never addressed. I'm glad that the film didn't come across as a propaganda piece, but the plot point also didn't make a huge impression on me and I don't know if it was even meant to. In all, the film was a fun comedy, just quirky enough to make it stand out. I'll know in a couple weeks if it's actually memorable.