Starred Up (2013) Movie Review

This movie, “Starred Up” is a British film starring Jack O’Connell and Ben Mendelson as a pair of criminals locked up in prison.

To begin this review, I must say that this is not your typical prison movie, there are themes throughout this movie such as what it means to be a father, forgiving those who have wronged you, letting go of your anger, as well as showing you the grittiness that is prison life.

In that aspect of prison life, this movie doesn’t hold back, and I loved it for that. It showed the ugly truth, that there are politics within prison according to race, with the interpersonal relationships between the the inmates and the guards.

Starred Up–tells the story of Eric Love, a teenager that gets moved up to adult prison because he is so violent. It is when he moves to the adult prison that he is reunited with his absent father, Neville Love. The two have a struggle to reconcile a bad relationship from the past as well as Neville trying to mentor the young Eric. He has many confrontations with other inmates as well as entering a therapy group where he meets Ol’ who is a counselor that believes that he can change the inmates. It is this group that the softer, more vulnerable side of Eric. Other confrontations transpire but, in the end…Neville and Eric have a reconciliation of sorts.

Overall this movie is filed with great performances, especially by O’Connell and Mendelson, filled with a bottled up setting in the prison that acts like a pressure-cooker and the violence is on parr with Bronson. This is a violent, gritty, realistic take on a prison movie with the father-son story at the heart of it.

“While We’re Young” Film Review

I just watched the movie “While We’re Young”, the movie is fun, entertaining and Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts have great chemistry. Amanda and Adam have okay chemistry but, I couldn’t shake the over-emphasis of their characters being the ultimate hipster couple and it bothered me. Three-quarters of the movie was great, engaging and kept me interested in these people’s stories and with that you get a lot of laughs throughout the first half, especially. The movie focuses on playing on the age difference between the protagonists, Stiller and Watts and the odd couple of Driver and Seyfried, and how the older couple wants to recapture their youth and get out of the rut they were stuck in.

All of their friends that are the same age are having kids and starting families while, Stiller and Watts lives are staying the same, and this is the main problem they are facing. To go against what everyone else is doing or accept the fact that they are aging. This problem is cleverly presented but, there is a subplot that didn’t work for me and I feel took away from the film as a whole and feel as though it was all set up for Stiller’s character to deliver a speech during the last 20 minutes of the movie that sums up the movie perfectly.

Overall the movie is enjoyable, funny and the performances aren’t great but, they are entertaining and that’s what a movie like this should be as well as making you think about the question, “What is this current generation all about and why is it so different to the previous generations?” This movie certainly makes you question that and more and that’s why I recommend you seek out this independent film.

“It Follows” Movie Review

It Follows–A modern horror classic starring Maika Monroe

It Follows, is a movie about a curse or supernatural force that follows its victims after they engage in sexual intercourse with a carrier of the curse. This curse could be seen as a metaphor for an STD it the way it makes its victims behave, the stigma they feel, and the feeling of being dirty. This film takes that notion to the extreme and in doing so, have created a retro-horror classic for a new generation.

As far as the narrative of the film, the only flaw was that there was not enough explanation as to how the affliction works, the rules of it. Other than that, the story was simple but effective in an atmospheric horror movie, one where the sense of dread is always looming over the characters and in turn has an effect on its audience. The stand out performance was given by Maika Monroe; she really sells the movie, makes us believe she is fearful and terrified of this affliction, that there is no escaping it, and that she is tormented by her decision; but I cannot say the same about the other cast members–they were flat, one note characters.

Overall, the film is brilliant, inventive, inspired, an ode to 80’s classic horror films such as: Halloween and Nightmare on Elm St., and the direction, cinematography, and Maika Monroe were all perfection in regards to “It Follows”.

I highly recommend this movie and implore you to go seek it out and support independent films.