Review: Chernobyl Diaries

Directed by Bradley Parker
Written by Oren Peli (screenplay), Carey Van Dyke, Shane Van Dkye
Starring Jesse McCartney, Jonathan Sadowski, Olivia Dudley, Devin Kelley

Chernobyl Diaries is pretty much the bastard child of The Hill Have Eyes and Silent Hill, and its parents have been letting it hang out with Hostel fairly often. Rooted in the tragic nuclear reactor disaster that occurred in 1986, this movie aims to show us the eerie and lonely atmosphere that comes along with a place that’s not supposed to have a single living thing left in it. And I don’t know about you guys, but when I’m on vacation, I love to visit abandoned disaster sites that have been ravaged by radiation and history. Totally at the top of my list.

A Look Back: Revolutionary Road

Directed by Sam Mendes
Written by Justin Haythe (screenplay), Richard Yates (novel)
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon

I’m a big fan of grey areas. Forget the black and white; the grey area is where everything exciting, unnerving, jarring, and life-affirming happens. Revolutionary Road, adapted from the incredible novel by Richard Yates, is a film that absolutely swims in grey. More than being a picture of the zeitgeist of the American 50s or a cautionary tale of a relationship stalled by selfishness and fear, it’s a model of how we constantly create and destroy our own identities at the mercy of one another.

The April Express

It’s that time again. Time for me to round up all of the movies I managed to see for the first time in the past month and deliver some quality thoughts and opinions. And some immature snark, of course.

A few looks back on some of my older favorites are coming soon. Until then: enjoy!

Drive

Alternate Title: Why Stunt Drivers Should Stick to Their Day Jobs
Highlights: For me, it was the soundtrack. Scattered with a few mellow electronic tunes and comprised mostly of a score that glided and pulsed along with the steady momentum of the film. It reminded me of Mark Isham’s score for Crash (see “No Such Things As Monsters”), another film that prominently features the glow and glass of Los Angeles.
Best Performance: Ryan Gosling joins the ranks of countless Hollywood vets that have the Silent But Deadly leading man role down to a science. The Driver is an introspective character, but Gosling uses body language to great effect to make him readable and relatable.
Thoughts When the Credits Rolled: I dug this movie, but it revolved around a plot device that utterly frustrates me: characters who have good intentions but go against their better judgement to use sketchy, dangerous means to get what they want. My sympathy level for that situation is pretty low.

The Cabin in the Woods

Alternate Title: Apparently No One Has Learned By Now That When You Go Camping, You Die
Highlights: I’m gonna have to go with seeing a guy attempt to jump his motorbike across a small canyon and smash right into an invisible electrified barrier to fall to his crispy, crispy death. We had a glimpse of that thing earlier in the film, but I’d totally forgotten it was there, so I literally said, “Oh, shit!” as loudly as possible in the theater.
Best Performance: All of them suck. That’s the point.
Thoughts When the Credits Rolled: This thing was like a rampaging baby with three heads and a hyena-giggle. It was absolutely ridiculous and cringe-worthy, but I loved it anyway.

A Dangerous Method

Alternate Title: To Bang or Not to Bang
Highlights: Any scene between Michael Fassbender as Dr. Jung and Viggo Mortensen as Dr. Freud. When two great, busy, and troubled minds get together to chat, there’s nothing to do but sit back and watch the fireworks.
Best Performance: I’m actually torn between the three leads. But I’m tempted to say Keira Knightley, solely because of how she contorted her body and face in mental agony while reliving the traumatic beginnings of her sexual neurosis. She managed to make involuntary movements make sense.
Thoughts When the Credits Rolled: I don’t know that this movie told us anything we didn’t already know, but it definitely revisits the still-open question of what’s better for society: indulging your urges and dealing with the consequential messes, or being safely monogamous and missing out on other experiences.

Carnage

Alternate Title: Friends Don’t Let Friends Marry People Like This
Highlights: Kate Winslet playing drunk. Absolutely magical.
Best Performance: The cool thing about this film is that each of the four stars had a moment or two to show their acting chops. I’m gonna give this one to Jodie Foster, though. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen what a woman looks like when she’s fed up, but it’s not pretty. She managed to do it with a very realistically dark sense of humor.
Thoughts When the Credits Rolled: I’ve heard some people say that this film, despite obviously being a dark comedy, was melodramatic and exaggerated. Clearly, they have never observed upper-middle class people trying to kiss ass while suppressing the need to violently throw each other through the nearest wall. It’s real, kids.

Melancholia

Alternate Title: It’s the End of the World As Your Amateur Astrologer Husband Knew It
Highlights: The final shot. Dear God. It’s a no-nonsense, terrifyingly realistic look at what it would be like to stare up at the sky as a planet flies through space to collide with earth.
Best Performance: Kirsten Dunst here is fascinating. Initially appearing as an unrelatable presence amongst friends and family thanks to her depression, she later emerges as being completely at peace as civilization comes to an end. If you expect the worst, you can react accordingly. A dark thought, but true nonetheless — and second nature to those who are actually in that state of mind all the time.
Thoughts When the Credits Rolled: Why the hell did I watch this before going to bed? Be right back, rocking back and forth in the corner…

DVD Storage

And now: a highly practical post.

I’m still in the process of putting my new apartment together. I have a dining area that I know I won’t use – really, I just eat in my living room while watching Palladia and answering messages – so I’ve decided to display all of my media and fangirl-y memorabilia there. It’ll take at least another month to start looking cool, but the one thing I’ve already got stashed there is my DVD collection.

If you’re anything like me, you probably have a load of them that you love and cherish and want access to all the time. In a perfect world, I’d have a super-chic shelf to display them all on. Then again, in a perfect world, I’d get paid to write reviews for a living, and I think we all know I’m not quite there yet.  ;)

This is where my collection is at the moment:

Yes, it's a mini-wall of DVDs. Imagine what an entire wall would look like, lol...

They’re in eight portable storage containers from ABC Distributing. It saves room, definitely, but it’s a pain to unstack them to access anything on the bottom few…

The handles make it way easier, though, so that's a plus.

I’ve got four extra ones to cater to my ever-expanding collection, and I imagine I’ll keep using these containers until I move into my own house one day. I can’t see me splurging on any kind of massive shelf for them while I live in an apartment, no matter how impressive it would look.

Anyway, here’s my question: How do you guys store your DVDs? In one of those flip-through cases that holds four discs per page? On an entertainment center shelf? Do they have their own lovely display case? (Jealous.)  I’m curious!

Review: The Hunger Games

Directed by Gary Ross
Written by Gary Ross, Billy Ray, Suzanne Collins (novel/screenplay)
Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Stanley Tucci, Elizabeth Banks, Liam Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson

I’ll skip all the obligatory gushing and box office-related praise and tired, uninspired puns and ask you guys the blunt question: Have you read these books yet? I’m currently in the middle of the third one. It’s not often that a book can make me pace back and forth through my living room; it’s not just the suspense, but the sheer idea of this terrifying place that Suzanne Collins has created. Such a mammoth world with heavy themes (especially one that deals with young people and survival) deserves a pitch-perfect film adaptation, and I think Gary Ross came as close as possible to delivering that for us without losing too much oomph from the book.

A Bump in the Road

Time for a Come To Jesus meeting. With the whole of WordPress as Jesus.

The reason I haven’t been around (yet again, I know) is that I’ve just moved to Atlanta and gotten my first full-time job. (It’s an intense one, and it’s more like a fast-paced managerial training program than a plain old job.) I’ve spent a week adjusting, and I’d really hoped to start blogging here regularly this week. I’d even gotten a midnight showing ticket to The Hunger Games this Friday, and I’m dying to write about it and see what you guys have to say.

But it looks like my plans will have to wait. I’ve been offered the chance to work out of town on a road trip for my job for twelve days, which means I won’t be back until April 1st. It’s an opportunity that I was too terrified to say no to.

So this blog, along with my aspirations of spending time on and writing about the subjects I love, will have to be postponed until at least next month. It’s not something I’m particularly stoked about, but until things calm down, that’s how it’ll have to be.

(If I happen to get an off day during my Savannah trip, though, I’m finding the nearest theater, seeing The Hunger Games, and coming back to dish out that review. Believe it.)

Thank you guys for reading and being supportive. Although I won’t be writing for a bit, I’m determined to pop on when I can to read and comment and keep up with my followed blogs. I can’t not be involved here at all, that’s just depressing.  ;)

Have a lovely week, friends.

Review: Project X

Directed by Nima Nourizadeh
Written by Matt Drake and Michael Bacall
Starring Thomas Mann, Oliver Cooper, Jonathan Daniel Brown

I’ve been to a lot of parties. The epic, the lame, the straight-up debauched. But nothing tops this one. The tagline isn’t joking — this really is the party you’ve only dreamed about. I think a lot of people (myself included) saw the previews for Project X and worried that teenagers who saw this would go nuts and get ideas. They needn’t fret. By the end of this film, viewers will never want to throw another “plus one” party ever again.