Monthly Archives: December 2017

Sometimes films move entirely too fast. They click through scenes in quick flashes, covering the pertinent details. Other times, films can be too slow. Interminably focused on minutiae and letting a shot of a melting candle drip on screen for hours. Neither of these is the case with The Florida Project but either would almost have been preferable to the pointless stacking of scenes that had no point. It’s not a bad movie, overall, but it’s a bleak movie. And it’s a torturous movie, miring the audience in the destitute motel in the shadow of the Magic Kingdom of DisneyWorld that is the movie’s setting.

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The trailers for Wonder suggested a movie that is not my wheelhouse: a treacly Lifetime movie family drama with a perfect martyr child at the center that is exploited for tears and yucks while heavy-handedly educating the masses on his disease du jour. And while an argument can be made that it is a bit of that, it’s also a well-done version, mostly by giving depth and agency to the wealth of supporting characters.

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Weirdness for the sake of being weird or off-putting doesn’t do much for me. I kept thinking back to Mother! while watching this film, another movie that I’m sure my film fanatic friends will love but that I, like the slightly-above-average movie-goer, did not. The Killing of a Sacred Deer is also thick with metaphor, and has trouble with actual reality, but it coasts along with tremendous help from some compelling actors. Colin Farrell is Dr. Stephen Murphy, a heart surgeon with an uncomfortable relationship with a teenage boy, Martin (Dunkirk standout Barry Keoghan). Their relationship is left unexplained at first, all we know is they are not related, the Dr. bestows gifts on his young friend, and he’s lying to his friends about who this kid is.

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There can be something refreshing about a movie you have no knowledge of or expectations for. I only knew of Better Watch Out because of a Thai-language trailer and a brief glimpse of Patrick Warburton (which is what led me to the movie’s title). He’s only in the movie about thirteen seconds longer than that, which is fine because it’s not like I’m some sort of Warburton fan. Not against him either, but really this is a huge digression. The movie concerns Luke (Levi Miller), the son of Warburton’s character (and, also briefly, Virginia Madsen). For some reason (plot!), Luke needs a babysitter – enter the fetching Ashley (Olivia DeJonge), the prototypical high-school babysitter, complete with wavy blonde hair and boy troubles.

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