Movie Reviews: 'The Son' Is Vulnerable, But The Script Mutes Its Emotional Power
BOYS: 2 STARS
Zen McGrath, Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern appear in this image from The Son (Vintage Sony image).
Son, the sequel to Florian Zeller's Oscar-winning Father, tells the story of a broken family and a son struggling with mental illness.
This drama, adapted from a play by Christopher Hampton Zeller, tells the story of Peter (Hugh Jackman), a New York lawyer with political ambitions. He is the father of 17-year-old ex-husband Nicholas (Zen McGrath) and Kate (Laura Dern), but has started a new life and married a younger woman, Beth (Vanessa Kirby), who is the mother of his child. . , A. Peter has a new life with little room for his newborn and eldest son.
As Nicholas begins teaching, playing and self-harming to channel his pain, Kate asks if Peter can come and give the boy some advice and a place to stay. “He needs you, Peter,” she said. “You can't leave him.
Life weighed heavily on Nicholas. “I can't handle all this,” he said. "I want to change something, but I don't know what."
While Nicholas is in the guest room, Peter tries to "fix" his son by finding explanations for his behavior and trying to be a better father to the teenager than his own father, played by Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins, a very bad father, growled, “Your father treated neither you nor your mother badly. Who cares? Forget it."
"The Child" is about the trauma of multiple generations, the sins of a father (spoken by Hopkins in a passionate cameo) visiting his son and grandson, and a child's cries for help.
Compassion abounds in The Son, and Jackman excels in his work, which is riddled with vulnerability, tragedy, and guilt, but the script offers few surprises. Zeller telegraphed the film's most important moment as if he wasn't sure if the audience would see it. Despite the beautiful and loving execution, this early revelation detracts from the story's emotional power.
There are interesting moments in "The Boy". The meeting between Peter and Nicholas is an emotional blow, and Jackman's attempts to understand his son's acute depression are balanced in equal parts by empathy and frustration.
Jackman has done an excellent and authentic job of portraying a troubled father in a well-intentioned film that is generally manipulative by comparison.
RATING: 3 ½ STARS
This image published by Sony Pictures shows Storm Reed (left) and Megan Sur in a scene from the movie Missing. (Temma Hankin/Sony Pictures via Screen Gems-AP)
In the new high-tech missing persons thriller Lost, the protagonist turns to his computer server when the police are unable to protect and service them.
Lost, a similar sequel to the 2018 high-tech film Wanted, starring John Cho, tells its story through a series of browser windows, screens or computers, security cameras or security cameras.
Storm Reid is a typical LA teenager, June Allen, tied to his phone, screen, and social media. June takes the lead as her mother Grace (Nia Long) and her new boyfriend (Ken Leung) travel to Colombia alone for a while. But just because Grace will be basking in the sun nearly 3,000 miles away doesn't mean she won't be watching her daughter digitally. "Don't sit in your seat while I'm gone," he ordered the teenager.
After the plane takes off, June searches the internet for articles such as "How to quit rage... on a budget" like other teenagers do, but June gets worried when Grace can't communicate. A phone call to her mother's hotel brought no relief.
He said, "I'm calling about your guest." "Does anyone speak English?"
"Sorry," came the reply.
Uninformed, he contacted the FBI, who informed him that they were not allowed to conduct investigations in Colombia. "The best thing you can do is wait by the phone," Agent Park (Daniel Henney) says.
But why is Jun standing in line with his latest tech arsenal? He dives deeper, looking for clues in a kind of digital Dick Tracy and discovering more about his mother's past than he thought.
Losing is almost as scary as the three dots that appear while you're waiting for someone to text you.
Since this is a technical thriller, the usual tricks of the visual genre do not apply here. There are no brightly lit corridors, dark corners or smoky utility rooms.
Instead, the screen is filled with dialog boxes, zoomed-in YouTube videos, FaceTime pop-ups, and the Google search bar. From the information-gathering side, Philip Marlowe might seem confused, but the procedure is the same as in any other classic private eye movie. One piece of information leads to another, and June solves the mystery with the ruthlessness of a seasoned detective.
There are one or two glaring plot holes that defy logic, but for the most part, the techno presentation communicates the backstory and procedural aspects of the plot effectively and figuratively.
Reed, a resourceful protagonist who takes matters into his own hands like June, values human connections. Best known as Ryu's younger sister on the HBO drama series Euphoria.
It's not yet clear if the Lost style of shots will qualify as "found footage," but here and now it's an interesting format that's both familiar and new.
DIRECT: 4 STARS
This image released by Sony Pictures Classics shows Bill Nighy in a scene from the movie Life. (Sony Pictures Classics via Jamie D. Ramsay/AP)
A reimagining of 1952 Ikiru, which Roger Ebert called Akira Kurosawa's greatest film, To Live moves the action from Tokyo to London while retaining the wistful emotion of the award-winning original.
Bill Nighy plays Mr. Williams, a post-World War II veteran county public works bureaucrat who has lived a life of quiet desperation. Widowed and living with his son and daughter-in-law Michael (Barney Fishwick) and Fiona (Patsy Ferran), he has a "Groundhog Day" regularity in his life.
From grueling train and paper trips to late-night work with a selfless son and his wife, he hammers the rhythm of rinsing and repeating. One of his employees, Miss Margaret Harris (Aimee Lou Wood), even calls him Mr. These are called zombies.
“We need to live a little,” he said. "I don't know how," he answered.
But when he is diagnosed with an incurable disease and has only a few months to live, he is freed from the shackles of his past life to cling to every day.
Despite her reserved and reserved demeanor, Nighy takes center stage. Mr. Williams' buttons pressed and pressed, but when he let the inner light shine, a long-lost warmth appeared. Whether he sings sentimental songs in bars or teaches Miss Harris how to play arcade games, Nighy succeeds. She never lets sadness into the picture, but instead looks inward and looks back at a life that is not yet over.
"It's a little miracle," he said, "I didn't know what would come of it."
It's a heartbreaking show, but Mr. Williams is dead.
"To Live" is a low-key film, sort of an anthem, about a man who is visited by two ghosts, in this case a very real writer (Tom Burke) and Miss. Harris teaches him to count the remaining time. on the ground. In beautiful medieval detail, director Oliver Hermanus tells a story of simple regret, heartbreak, and a last-ditch effort to do something worthwhile.
