Timothy Smith

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Oh, my GOD this film is sooooooo self-important! Just in case you don’t appreciate the Very Important Score, the VOLUME is cranked up ridiculously high. Anytime there MIGHT BE meaningful dialogue, it is drowned out by the score being cranked up. Yeesh! E V E R Y O N E is A C T I N G A N D T A K I N G H U G E P A U S E S I think they had enough material for an 18-minute short and they’re dragging it out. Cinematography is far superior to the screenplay. This film is DESPERATE to be Interstellar or The Arrival. I’ve lost interest. ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz.

I cannot say enough about what a phenomenal, jaw-dropping piece of filmmaking EEAAO is. It deserved every one of the 7 Oscars it won, and no doubt, more. This film is such a rush on so many intricate levels I am astonished that it took so many risks, with each one on the brink of upstaging the film. If you know anything at all about how films are made, it is a staggering achievement. And, front and center were brilliant performances in a precision cut, laser focused screenplay. This is stunningly rare, breathtaking, hive-mind cinema!

The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box

Quite disappointing. Great steam-punk production values and a cast of talented actors are not enough to salvage this weakly scripted, plot-hole ridden hodge-lodge. Lackluster, dreadfully paced direction immediately dissipates any tension that accidentally finds its way into the higgledy-piggledy predicaments - all of which are transplants from other popular film - the screenwriter inflicts on the two young protagonists. Poor Felix! He’s the only character that manages to generate sympathy, thanks entirely to Xavier Atkins’ performance. Felix’s limited time on screen may be to Atkins benefit - he is not saddled with utterly implausible dialogue & the unsurvivable escapes of his co-stars. But, that could all change in the remaining 16 minutes, which I have yet to watch. Finger crossed there are 10-minutes of credits! (I understand this is based on a book, or, perhaps a series of books. I notice other reviewers mention “good family entertainment”. PLOT SPOILERS: Heads up, moms & dads: the film involves kidnapping & reported death of parents; child kidnapping, disappearance, frightening scenes of child enslavement, including threats of death (by knife blade, strangulation, entombment & drowning) to a few children; an alcoholic father who, before his young teenage daughter’s eyes, sacrifices his life killing a villainess, thereby, saving his daughter; and, a dashing, daredevil adult, Captain Will Charity (Michael Sheen), who, very early in the film, inexplicably but, discreetly winks at the juvenile male hero, twice within a couple of minutes. Except for the questionable (entre nous) winking, which I found disturbing, because of the age of Mariah Mundi (Aneurin Barnard), the juvenile protagonist & Felix’s older brother, all these perils ring familiar from the Brothers Grimm, Charles Dickens, J.M. Barrie, Victor Hugo, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, up to and beyond, J. K. Rowling and Steven Spielberg. And, now, I need watch the last 15 minutes. (p.s. Sigh… Some characters are obliterated by a powerful device, and, by all appearances, poor Felix has drowned. But, wait, there’s MORE! During the tail credits, we see that mom & dad are NOT dead, after all! The real villain, is papa Mundi, who is truly evil, and insidiously abusive to the mother of our young heroes, his wife, who dad appears to have had mummified, alive and shipped to himself in a large, wooden crate! To be fair, nothing is especially graphic, but, young viewers may be quite frightened. The Advisory for this film merely states: “Foul language, smoking, violence”, curiously omitting, images of death and dead bodies.)

A strong, independent, intellectual aspiring writer, who, in asserting her very clear boundaries to a snobbish, aristocrat and her rival daughters, rebuffs that she is more Mary Shelly than Jane Austen; determines strategies to fight the gender bias and oppression in publishing, defines a Baronet as a parasite, but, then proceeds to demurely whisper whenever she speaks, dismiss the amorous attentions of an ophthalmologist who is supportive of her writing, includes her as an intellectual equal, to, quite rapidly, and, uncharacteristically, acquiesce to the obviously predatory, slimeball attentions of, you guessed it, the parasite. (I’d say SPOILER ALERT, but, you can see this plot point coming as soon as the character is introduced!), when the brutal, but, telegraphed, oh-that’s-how-he’s-going-to-die-murder of our heroine’s father is explained away with, “he was alone, the floor was wet, and he must have fallen” (fallen?! What?! REPEATEDLY? And, with, a running start EACH TIME?! This isn’t Home Alone 2 or the Marvel Universe (despite the presence of Loki) where we kind of expect superhuman strength. Yes, dad is a tough guy with very rough hands, but, he’s “unrecognizable” and, “it’s impossible”, no, it’s really “impossible to identify him” because of the multiple fatal blows that destroyed his face along with a porcelain sink when he ‘slipped on the wet floor while shaving’. Having been asked, not just to suspend our disbelief, but to completely abandon it, where can the film possibly go from here?! Who cares? As far as I’m concerned, the Crimson Peaked too soon! I couldn’t care less about learning why, in a mysterious prologue, our heroine is standing in, maybe snow? maybe a blood spattered wedding dress? maybe next to an overturned carriage or other conveyance? with a very, bloody, raised right hand and, you can bet a dead husband (a la the widowed Mary Shelly) out-of-frame. I am comfortable deciding that her dead mother made yet another cameo and, yes-it-runs-in-the-family, whispered, “No One Can Hear You!”, and, the effort required by our blonde author of gothic fiction, to make herself heard, caused her to cough blood all over her dainty hand. However Crimson Peak may actually play out, I’ll never know. This is no Pan’s Labyrinth, not by a long shot. Now, if, as a surreal twist, the ghost of mom actually turns out, just-go-with-it, to be the ghost of Mary Shelly, and, she appears at the denoument to shriek, HOW DARE YOU DRAG ME INTO THIS?!?!, now, THAT I’d fast-forward to see!

This film is total Bait & Switch! Promises a LOT, but, delivers ZILCH. Huge plot holes. Sets up potentially exquisite payback for Dianne Wiest character, but...NOPE! The film abandons Wiest COMPLETELY, and, in doing so, thoroughly ejects any semblance of the plot and tension that drives the film. Furthermore, locking Wiest away and tossing the keys, cleanly yanks the core right out of Peter Dinklage’s character, the most fascinating of the lot. Don’t bother. The only worthwhile fragments, are provided by Wiest and Dinklage, and, the actors who play the lawyer and Aleksey.