Tag: John Krasinski

IF (2024) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: A young girl discovers she can see everybody’s imaginary friends.

John Krasinski has had a weird film career, especially as a director. Brief Interviews With Hideous Men was a comedy-drama based on a series of short stories by David Foster Wallace. The Hollars was standard film student drama fare. Then came A Quiet Place. If you thought that was a weird transition, nothing will prepare you for this.

It kind of makes sense though. There are many similarities in visual/narrative storytelling between horror and kids’ fantasy. Both of them depend heavily on effective world-building, creating something unbelievable but making it believable, and both depend on a “WOW!” shot, where the audience is made aware of the scale of what’s happening. He does a good job though; there are not that many moments where the visuals feel cheap or distracting in a way that takes you out of what you’re watching. On the other hand, there are not that many visuals that will stick with you. There’s nothing that makes you think “f*ck damn that is cinema”. I can’t imagine a child watching this and having a scene stick with them that they’ll remember forever.

The story will though. It’s incredibly sweet. Yes, people who have seen a lot of films and are familiar with story structure etc will guess the ending relatively early on, mainly because it’s the only way that plot holes aren’t created. But if you’re one of those fortunate people who can just sit and watch something without overanalyzing everything, you’re in for a treat. It has a sense of genuine heart and warmth to it. It does look like it’s heading in one direction, and I’m pleased it went in another way. The new way ended up being able to display much more heart. Spoilers, I watched this the same day as I saw Inside Out 2: Inside Harder. I didn’t expect THIS to be the film that slightly broke me. The moments where we see some of the characters “reunite” with their childhood IFs are genuinely delightful and emotionally powerful. They’re helped by the performances, Reynolds does exactly what you expect (For better and worse), the vocal performances are all good but most are too brief to matter that much (the fact that Brad Pitt is credited as an invisible and silent character is hilarious though), Cailey Fleming is incredible considering her young age, especially considering she’s playing a character at that awkward age where they want to be seen as an adult, but they are still kids. Alan Kim is fun whenever he’s on-screen, and Fiona Shaw provides a touch of “theatre, darling” prestige.

The biggest criticism is that it feels kind of dated. There is a distinct lack of technology and mobile phones present. If this was firmly set in the 90s, that criticism would disappear so it is kind of weird that they didn’t just do that. It also takes FAR too long to get to the point. I know it has quite a bit to set up, but it spends forever getting to the main premise that you’ve paid to see.

Those are minor criticisms though. Overall I enjoyed it. It’s not going to change your worldview forever, but there is a chance it might remind you about the joys of innocence and inner strength. It handles topics such as bereavement (and fear of it in regards to others) and childhood anxiety with sensitivity and class. It very rarely puts a step wrong, but it also rarely puts one forward in amazement. It’s a difficult film to really LOVE, but it’s an incredibly easy film to like.

A Quiet Place (2018)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Words alone do not do justice to this film. A true game-changer in terms of horror. The typical approach to directing horror films is “quiet, intense music, quiet, LOUD, OH SO LOUD”, replacing genuine terror with jump scares. Which are fine, they scare you during the film, but they don’t completely mess you up and fill you with dread. This film shows the importance of sound in horror, actually, screw that, it’s the importance of sound in cinema in general. It’s a great showcase of the power of cinema, not in a “this film will emotionally devastate you for days” way, but in that it changes the way you watch films. The disadvantages of going to the cinema to watch films normally involve other people: they make too much noise talking or eating or (when I went to see Hunger Games) getting drunk, falling asleep and snoring, then getting annoyed at the cinema staff that they didn’t pause or rewind the film for you (if you think that’s a reasonable request to make: go fuck yourself). This film is different, from my experience (and from what everyone who has seen) everyone in the cinema partakes in an unspoken (hah) pact; if you speak we will hurt you. I haven’t seen a film influence the audience this much since….well, ever. Nobody made a noise, and it was a busy screen. It was actually pretty great, as when there was a loud scene, you could just hear everyone finally open their food/cough etc. When I say “nobody” made a noise, there was a few coughs here or there but that can’t be helped, and if anything, that enhanced the experience. In 1952 John Cage composed the piece 4’33”. It’s basically: everyone in the orchestra puts their instruments down and do nothing for four minutes, thirty-three seconds. The intention is that it makes people listen to the background noise, to make them aware of the atmospheric sounds around this. This film does that, Because the audience noise was so sporadic, when it did happen it wasn’t annoying, it was scary. That’s what makes this film unique, every time you see it will be different because you’ll have to listen to the background noises around you. They’ll be people uncomfortable who’ll be adjusting their position, which creates noise that scares you, that exact scare will never happen again for any other screening, it’s unique to that one experience. It’s a horror movie with audience participation.

It’s not just the sound, the way the film looks is superb too. John Krasinski has done a GREAT job with this. Even more so considering it’s only his third film, and his first horror. Horror is a genre where you need a good director for it to work. Comedy you can kind of get away with it looking bland if the script is good, horror doesn’t allow that, you NEED someone who is a master behind the camera, and the fact he’s this accomplished is a great sign. With him and Jordan Peele doing work like this, this early in their careers, other directors will need to step up their game for their films to be considered great. Films will no longer be allowed to be as cartooney and silly looking as Saw 3D (holy hell that film looks cheap), which is great, as it means more greatness.

His performance was good too. Him and Emily Blunt share an obvious chemistry (can’t imagine why) which really sells their characters plight. He’s been in a lot of other films, but I think THIS is the one where he finally sheds his “Jim from The Office” status. The true star of the film though, is Millicent Simmonds. Not just because it’s good to have an actual deaf person playing a deaf character as opposed to someone with perfect hearing, but because she brings really subtle nuances to the character that just break your heart, and in doing so brings a non-verbal performance that’s up there with Sally Hawkins in The Shape Of Water. Also she made a few script alterations that improved it a lot. Adding “I’ve always loved you” to a father saying “I love you” to his daughter, which added SOOOOO much.

This is the best time to mention the sign language in this film. Due to both a character being deaf, and the fact the characters can’t make noise, sign language plays an important part in this film. And this is where the film does something which turns it from good to great; the characters all sign in their own unique way. Some characters sign very poetically and flow, showing the importance of beautiful language, whereas some sign very short and curt, like they’re in the military.

So yeah that’s it. Watch this film, then watch it again, and again. It has an absolutely heartbreaking moment in it, features an elderly character committing suicide over the death of his wife, and it kills a child before the opening credits, this is a film that truly gives absolutely zero shits about your comfort, and is all the better for it.