The movies are now truly officially back for me thanks to the local Regal theater opening and allowing me to subscribe to the unlimited pass. So this allowed me to go to the movies three times this weekend. The three films I saw were: In the Earth, Nobody, and Together Together, a horror, an action, and a rom com. Of the three, Together Together was by far my favorite and the best. The crowds showing up are still small, but I am sure once the movies start to get better, and there are bigger name releases that the crowds will start to show up.
Together Together was the story of a single man searching for a surrogate to have his baby, so he could start his family, even though he did not have a spouse. The relationship between Anna and Matt initially was very awkward. It felt very structured and more like a process than a relationship, but as the process evolved, so did their relationship. They make a good team, and although Matt was incredibly overbearing, it was because he cared so much, but like in every rom com they hit a rough patch, that mainly seemed to stem from Anna not wanting to get too attached because she was not sure what role she would play in the baby’s life. They do of course end up rekindling their bond, but the movie ends with the baby being born, so her end relationship with Matt and the baby is unknown.
One of the interesting additions to this movie was that after they film, they had a prerecorded interview with the director, Ed Helms, and Patti Harrison. It was not the most informative post film interview, but it was still interesting to hear what they had to say. It was also odd because in the film Patti Harrison’s character was great and incredibly likeable, but she did not come off the same way in the interview. She did not seem too interested in the interview and when she answered the questions, she just did not come off as likable. More films should do this, hearing from the director and actors can be highly informative, and it can lead to a better understanding of the point of the film and the message it is trying to get across.
One of the main goals this movie had was to deconstruct typical gender roles. This largely came in the form of the surrogate dad being single. There were numerous occasions where this was shown to be clearly against the norm, form not being able to find any single parent dad books, to showing up in the different birth classes, even the surrogate ones, and being the only lone male with no partner. There was a large representation of same sex couples in the film as well, mainly at these birth classes sincee they would have to use a surrogate. Also the whole idea of not finding out the sex of the baby and giving it a gender neutral name and color to the room also deconstructed the gender norms. The whole story was incredibly unique. The relationship between the two characters in the form of a single dad has not been done, and not only was the story fresh and new, but it was incredibly well done. For the most part it was lighthearted and fun, but the moments where it took itself more seriously, it did a good job then as well.
In the Earth was a terrible horror film that felt more like a bad acid trip with a large amount of gore attached than anything. Two people go into the woods during a pandemic to find a scientist that had gone radio silent. The scientist, Olivia, had been trying to connect with the spirit of the forest and get it to communicate with her. While Martin and Alma were trying to find her, they end up getting attacked, drugged, and held captive by James, who we later find out is Olivia’s ex-husband, who is also trying to connect with the forest but in a more artistic way, which involved drugging his captives and taking pictures of them in weird poses, and eventually he sacrifices them. In this case Martin and Alma escape and find Olivia, who also seems very untrustworthy.
Once they find Olivia was when the film started to get really weird and terrible. She has these incredibly bright lights that would flash like at a big concert, and she would play these incredibly loud beats and frequencies that were deafening and headache inducing. To be fair they did have a seizure warning at the start of the film, but I was by no means expecting it to be like a Coachella concert from Hell. The trees were supposedly receiving the sound and then deciding what sound to play back to communicate with Olivia. Then they decided to up the attack on the audience’s senses even more by having multiple sequences of rapidly changing images and patterns in strange colors of what can only be described as something resembling an acid trip or intense hallucinations.
So pairing this incredibly weird visuals and sounds, the film also makes the viewer cringe quite a bit with their incredibly gross and gory visuals. There was a foot that was sliced open and stitched together very poorly, there was a gash in someone’s head, there were toes amputated, and an eyeball stabbed. All these combined would make it an incredibly hard watch for the faint of heart. It was on a gore level like that of Saw, but for some reason the gore in Saw seems slightly more bearable, I and other members in the audience were having audible responses to the grotesquery by groaning. So in a way the film accomplished its goal by creating these feelings of dread by the audience. It created the feeling of being trapped in a nightmare that seemed like it was impossible to escape. Also there was no real conclusion as to whether or not there was some spirit communicating or it was just coincidence. Obviously as a fictional film there could have been some spirit living in the woods, and if the idea was fleshed out more, or in a different way, it probably would have been a better movie.
Other movies that I saw this weekend: Nobody, Without Remorse, and Things Heard and Seen were largely not noteworthy. Nobody was like John Wick, but it did not take itself as seriously and parodied the genre at times. The story was not very compelling, but the action sequences were great and the music behind them made it more enjoyable as well. Without Remorse came out on Amazon and was a Tom Clancy story starring Michael B. Jordan. The story was a little confusing, and it was basically about people double crossing each other to get WWIII started. Like Nobody, the action sequences were good, but the rest of the film was not very memorable. Lastly, Things Heard and Seen was pretty good. It was about a family that moved so the husband could get a new job, and the wife was sacrificing her career, so that he could thrive, but as the story went on, his credentials and motives unspooled before the audience, and he was not who he said he was. It was the second-best film I saw this weekend behind Together Together, it is on Netflix, so it is easily watchable.
Recent additions to the rankings:
Another Round 88 (Best Foreign Film Winner)
Together Together 86
Things Heard and Seen 85
Nobody 79
Without Remorse 79
Stowaway 79
In the Earth 15
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