Independent Movie Review: Yard Kings

Posted on October 2, 2022 by jjcwn • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged Yard Project • Leave a comment

I have been honored, now for the 6th time, to review another small independent movie called “Yard Kings”, directed by Vasco Alexandre. This is not only the shortest independent film that I have reviewed, but it is also by far the best.

It is no surprise that this heartbreaking film has won competitions worldwide, including two Royal Television Society Awards in the UK. This short film reminded me of ”The Florida Project”, reviewed on this blog on November 11, 2017. The Florida Project also showed the depressing existence of a young child who has to go along for a bad ride, only because when you are young, you have no choice. When you are a child, you are trapped in whatever existence you are born into. You are totally dependent on who your parents are. If this is a bad situation, as in the case of Yard Kings – with a young girl living in a trailer with her mother and an abusive boyfriend, your life options are severely limited and your bad childhood will haunt you for the rest of your life.

The star of this story is a young black girl, who is about 8 years old and is friends with a white boy her age and they both play in a local junkyard. The backdrop of the junkyard creates the most heartbreaking solution to this young girl’s life as she thinks of a solution to save her mother that only a young child could ever conceive of. It is this solution, from the mind of the child that invokes the same emotions I had 5 years ago when I saw the Florida Project.

The Yard Kings is one of the best short movies I have ever seen, with my rating of 95% and a very strong recommendation.

Movie Review: Smile

Posted on October 1, 2022 by jjcwn • Posted in Uncategorized • Leave a comment

Next year marks the incredible 50-year anniversary of the release of the movie “The Exorcist”. The Exorcist is arguably the most shocking and frightening movie ever made, and has never been surpassed.

Since the release of The Exorcist there have been countless lists of copy-cat-exorcist-like movies that have come out trying and failing to achieve the extreme levels of fright that the original achieved so long ago. Many of these movies use shocking horror movie trickery that includes a sudden horrific event. Dream sequences that make you believe that something is happening that is not really happening, easily the most annoying of all the horror movie tricks. This kind of movie magic was never necessary for the Exorcist because the quality of the horror was always there, requiring nothing additional to scare the audience.

The latest attempt at a shocking horror film is “Smile”, which is a film where a psychiatrist, Rose Cotter, played by Sosie Bacon (the daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick) is horrified when one of her patients commits suicide right in front of her, in a very disturbing way. The story after this horrible event is that there is some evil creature possessing other people to kill themselves while someone else witnesses the suicide – then causing a connecting chain of suicides that goes on for an unknown number of victims. The common thread throughout all of these suicides is that when the person is possessed, they get a huge evil smile on their face – the reason for the title of the film. Of course, this entire premise is rather ridiculous, but most horror movies are ridiculous for any number of reasons, this one being no different.

Overall, I thought this story was well told, despite the “too many shocking dream sequences or shocking sudden horror moments”. The smile idea did work and did add a certain amount of subtle horror that was mostly effective. The acting, even considering this is a horror movie, was well done. Despite the high 83% ratings for Smile on Rotten Tomatoes, my rating is 75% and a mild recommendation, mainly for the original smile idea and the good acting.

Movie Review: The Good House

Posted on September 30, 2022 by jjcwn • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, The Good House • Leave a comment

If any movie about alcoholism is ever going to have any chance of being a quality production, then the story should show the problem of heavy drinking in its full form, but then also show why the person is an alcoholic.

The new movie “The Good House” starring Sigourney Weaver , a local real estate agent, and Kevin Kline as Frank Getchel a local owner of a construction company, define both of these important aspects of alcoholism very well. This solidly constructed screenplay includes a very well-told story about a once very successful real estate agent, Hindy Good on the coast of Massachusetts, who is showing many common ravages of real life. Her business is failing, her husband divorced her because he discovered he is gay after 22 years of marriage, and she is running out of money in her 70s. Other pressures include what people in her small town are saying about her and think about her – that for many people is the most important thing in their lives – their reputation. All of this causes Hindy to drink constantly, to the point where her family and friends conduct an intervention to get her to go to rehab. For a time it appears that Hindy has defeated the problem, and then, like so many, she falls off the wagon and drinks again. She even drinks and drives risking her own life and the lives of others.

There are other very interesting side stories in this drama, including her former friend trying to steal her real estate clients from her. Her assistant is a disaster that she is too kind to fire and a close friend of hers is having an affair with another married man. Ultimately this leads to a satisfying story for the whole 2 hours and a very well constructed ending. This movie also has the highly unusual idea of having the main character narrate part of the movie while looking directly into the camera – that has both good and bad aspects.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this film are a solid 78%, with my rating about 85% and a strong recommendation for the story and the acting of both Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline.