"I Want You Back" Review: This Ones A Keeper!
I Want You Back is a great choice for a good laugh on Amazon Prime! It’s a good spirited, romantic comedy that’s just in time for Valentine’s Day weekend. While it is a little long for the conventional film of its kind, the plot development is hysterical enough to keep you engaged from scene to scene. It hits all the right notes of a modern rom-com and dare I say could be a classic!
The film gets straight into the action with a break up between two couples: Emma (Jenny Slate) and Noah (Scott Eastwood), and Anne (Gina Rodriguez) and Peter (Charlie Day). Feeling emotional from their breakup, Emma and Peter retreat to the office building’s stairwell one day to have a good cry and meet each other in their grief. This chance meeting turns into a friendship in which the two lament about their exes and eventually hatch a plan to get them back. Peter will befriend Noah and remind him of the one who got away. Emma will try to seduce Logan (Manny Jacinto), Anne’s new boyfriend, and cause Anne to run back to Peter. At least, that’s the plan!
Slate and Day are laugh-out-loud funny with spitball comedy chemistry! Emma and Peter are fully realized characters on screen. You can almost write in their histories yourself based on the way they move through life, the decisions they make, and their dialogue. Emma suffers from a bit of arrested development (her roommates are young college students because she can’t afford the rent on her own) and she’s a hopeless romantic. Peter has a heart for the elderly but lacks confidence in chasing his dreams. The banter between the two is a game of tennis that is exciting to watch.
Director Jason Orley pays particular attention to the frame within this film. Leading lines point to his characters in the stairwell, sitting at a cafe, standing in a crowd or changing in a changing room. The mise-en-scene (stage design and arrangement of actors) in the film is noteworthy for a comedy in this genre, which isn’t something I would usually say. No, this isn’t high art, but there is care and intention in the frame. So what does it do for the film? It helps with the character and scene development. For instance, in a scene where Emma and Peter hash out their plan, they are sitting in a courtyard in front of a giant building. The building dwarfs them in scope while emphasizing the big plan they’re putting together. In another scene, Anne and Logan face each other in the foreground while Emma stands in between them in the background. The framing of shots mean something in many scenes which is refreshing to see.
Editing doesn’t get enough love in well executed rom-coms. Editor Jonathan Schwartz has as much to do with the comedic timing as Day and Slate. The film gives us what we need to know about a particular moment and cuts to the next event. It’s the choice of cuts- whether jumps, crosscuts, fades or smash cuts- that work to further the film’s laughs. A cut from an emotionally sweet moment during a children’s musical to men spraying champagne in a club is a part of the beautiful, unexpected mashup of thought this film is at times.
In short, I Want You Back fires on all cylinders from top to bottom. At its core, writers Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger have shaped a story that understands tropes of the past and looks to circumvent them. When it does fall into cliché it earns the moment. The film has a long-running time just under two hours, but the sketches of comedy built-in getting there is worth the ride. This film is a keeper!
Rating: A-
"Annihilation" Review: Subverting The Norm For The Win!
It’s been a while since I’ve watched a sci-fi thriller that used silence in such a way that I could hear the leather of my neighbor’s seat when they moved. Annihilation is one of those film’s that reminds us of what a big budget Hollywood machine can do if given the opportunity. It takes us to perhaps one of the scariest places, our own imagination, and asks us to probe the unknown along with its protagonists.
Lena (Natalie Portman) is a biologist and Army veteran whose husband just returned home after twelve months of radio silence. Army sergeant Kane (Oscar Isaac) was thought to be dead, but his presence brings up more questions than a joyful reunion. Lena finds out that he went on a mission inside what’s called the shimmer. It’s a growing bubble that looks and glistens just like the stuff we used to play with as kids but is far from something to be toyed with. All we know is that things go in, but don’t make it out.
With Kane deathly sick, Lena decides to join the next ragtag group of people going into the mysterious shimmer that only her husband has come back out of. She joins psychologist leading the team, Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), Anya (Gina Rodriguez), a paramedic from Chicago, Sheppard (Tuva Novotny), an anthropologist, and Josie (Tessa Thompson), a physicist. The film unfolds over various points in time. It’s told in present day with Lena being investigated by a man in a hazmat suit, so we know one part of how the story ends, but through flashback, we’re able to fill in the gaps.
Director Alex Garland (Ex Machina) is in full control of his film as he cleverly parses out information at just the right pace. He allows us the film to push forward by constantly dangling a question before us. Whether it is what’s the shimmer? How has time passed within it? How has a shark and crocodile crossbred? Or something as simple as what’s that noise? We constantly question what’s happening on screen right along with the group of women who are trying to get the same answers.
As the group slowly begins to unravel and questions themselves and each other, we too are pushed to stretch our minds as to what’s possible within the shimmer. The casting in this film is exquisite as each woman is playing a character that goes against type for what we’ve come to see them in. Sheppard says at one point in the film “we all are damaged”. The way that Portman, Leigh, Rodriguez, Novotny, and Thompson display that on the screen through nuanced performances is a joy to watch. Tessa Thompson certainly stands out as the shy physicist with her physicality and ability to make her character seem so small in compared to the larger than life personas we’ve seen her take on in past works.
Garland’s imagery of this world is beautiful. Yet, he drops clues to what the world is through mise-en-scene (things specifically placed before the camera) by shooting through a glass of water, or plants in the shape of humans. What Garland keeps off screen is equally important as what is on at times and shows his understanding of the power of suspense and mystery in a film like this. In a film like this, the third act is the difference between a downer or a memorable film. Annihilation certainly delivers on a trippy but suspenseful third act that will leave you questioning the future of its world.
While Annihilation may not be on par with Ex Machina, it is a solid addition to the sci-fi/fantasy genre. It’s reminiscent of The Thing in how it constantly makes us and its cast question what we know. The fact that its all women in the lead makes it that much more exciting as they handle the material in a beautiful way that’s subversive of the norms we expect!
Rating: B+