The Wonder

The Wonder (2022)

Directed by Sebastián Lelio

Screenplay by Alice Birch, Emma Donoghue and Sebastián Lelio

Based on the book by Emma Donoghue

Stars: Florence Pugh, Kíla Lord Cassidy, Tom Burke, Niamh Algar, David Wilmot, Ruth Bradley, Toby Jones, Dermot Crowley, Ciarán Hinds, and Brían F. O'Byrne

There were some rumbling that people were talking about a possible Best Actress nomination for Florence Pugh in this movie. She is solid in the film, but the movie overall is not the greatest.

1862, Ireland. An English nurse, Elizabeth Wright (Pugh) is brought to a small town in Ireland to look after a young girl, Anna (Cassidy) who has not eaten food for four months. The local cousel of the town wants her and a nun to look after Anna and report their findings. During the visits, Elizabeth notices that something is not adding up.

The beginning of the film started on the wrong foot with a backstage shot of the set. The actual set. The same thing happened with the ending panning to the narrator. This action immediately took me out of the experience.

I was reading that the movie was a psychological thriller. Where? I did not see that. It was an intense drama where some fucked up things happened. The narrative felt strange. What was that stuff that Elizabeth was spoon feeding herself? There is this romance subplot that comes out of nowhere between Elizabeth and a journalist, William (Burke).

What is with these drawn out costume dramas? It was a slog.

Rating: 6/10

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

Directed by Tomas Alfredson

Screenplay by Bridget O'Connor & Peter Straughan

Based on the novel by John le Carré

Stars: Gary Oldman, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Colin Firth, David Dencik, Ciarán Hinds, Benedict Cumberbatch, Simon McBurney, Tom Hardy, Konstantin Khabenskiy and Mark Strong

I was eagerly anticipating seeing Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy because of the director,  Tomas Alfredson. He made the fantastic Let the Right One In  and I wanted to see his first English language film. Another incentive to see Gary Oldman finally get some notice for his acting when he received a Best Actor nomination. The film also received nominations for Best Original Score and Best Adapted Screenplay. I thought I would rave about the film, but I do not.

During the time of the Cold War, MI-6 is rocked when one of their agents, Jim Prideaux (Strong) is killed on a mission in Budapest. Control (Hurt) gets the top brass of the agency together to see who is the mole selling secrets to the Russians. Control assigns the task to sniff out the traitor to George Smiley (Oldman), who is retired.

The story seems simple enough that it doesn't need the over the top plot twist that could be seen a mile away. It didn't know that the movie was a whodunit. It made the reveal anti-climatic. I did not see the original Tinker Tailor Solider Spy miniseries. You don't need to see the British series or read the book to see who the mold was. I knew the mole halfway through the movie.

I wanted to love this film, but I felt completely bored. I was confused with the flashbacks to a Christmas party, a subplot of a missing woman that went nowhere, etc. Hearing a bunch of British accents can be difficult for Americans to decipher. I expected more out of the film when it got a 85 Metacritic score. A lot more.

My Rating

There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood (2007)

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson

Based on the novel, "Oil!" by Upton Sinclair

Currently #176 of the Top 250 Films of All Time on IMDb (as of this posting)

Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Dillon Freasier, Ciarán Hinds, Sydney McCallister, David Willis, Kevin J. O'Connor, David Warshofsky, Hans Howes and Russell Harvard

One of the greatest omissions of all time is that I have never seen P.T. Anderson's epic, There Will Be Blood. Okay, backpedaling. I saw maybe the first ten minutes of the movie and stopped, because the silence. After seeing and loving 127 Hours, it had long silences. I thought it was high time that I see this movie again. It was nominated for eight Oscars and won two for Best Cinematography and Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis. I enjoyed the movie, but it's not flawless.

During the height of the Gold Rush and Oil Boom in the turn of 20th century, Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) hit the big time by striking oil. He turns into a oil mogul that is buying up land to build oil derricks to pump out the oil. One day, Daniel is approached by a boy, Paul Sunday (Dano) about a possible place where oil is found near the family ranch. Daniel goes to where the oil source might be and tries to buy the land from the father, Abel (Willis) with a stipend to donate a large sum of money to church where son, Eli (Dano) is a minister at.

Sometime when I movie comes around, I would think that it is clear Oscar bait. I have that perception about a lot of movies. This movie feels like that to me. You have Day-Lewis who gives a grandiose performance. Has he ever given a bad performance? If you name one, I will eat crow. I understood why Plainview did some of the things that he did. He did some monstrous things, because I understood the motivations behind them. It was not like that in Match Point where similar actions happened. Daniel did deserve his Oscar.

The movie feels very epic in scope, but I felt that the movie was too long. One strike against the movie would be the pacing. There are some superfluous scenes that needed to be cut out.

The another strike against the film is Paul Dano. I have to say that I didn't understand why P.T. Anderson decided to make Dano play Paul and Eli where you see that Daniel was not surprised to see Eli looked like Paul. Paul was never mentioned again until the end of the movie. Dano was not in the same league as Lewis. It was a David vs Goliath situation and Goliath bitch slapped David. Dano was wooden in the movie. I didn't understand he let the person that was going to be Eli, Kel O'Neill go. I thought it was a big mistake.

My Rating