Category: Reviews

Released: February 2020

Director: Jeff Fowler

Rated PG

Run Time: 99 Minutes

Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Genre: Action/Adventure/Family

Cast:
Ben Schwartz: Sonic The Hedgehog(Voice)
James Marsden: Tom Wachowski
Tika Sumpter: Maddie Wachowski
Jim Carrey: Dr. Ivo Robotnik
Lee Majdoub: Agent Stone

Ah, video game-based movies:  The laughing stock of film and gaming communities everywhere.  Back in the early 90’s, somebody somewhere decided that it would be a good idea to make a movie based on a popular video game franchise.  The idea had merit and if done properly, it could appeal to both film and video game fans alike.  That was the intention anyway.  Unfortunately, the first attempt at making a movie based on a video game ended in complete disaster: Super Mario Bros.  EVERYBODY hated this movie: Movie fans who weren’t familiar with the video game, the fans of the video game, and some of the people that worked on the movie.  That was the first and last film that was approved by Nintendo.  The following year, we got Street Fighter, based on the popular fighting game and…well…it wasn’t good.  It wasn’t a total waste, as it featured an amazing performance by Raul Julia in his last film role.  That one is a bit of a cult classic, in a “so bad, it’s good” kind of way.  1995 gave us the live action film of Mortal Kombat and….wow.  It was actually pretty decent.  While it didn’t feature the blood and gore of the games, it maintained the essence and story of the original game that featured some lively performances from Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa, Linden Ashby, and Christopher Lambert.  Combine that with some decent fight choreography, this little film actually surprised a lot of people back in the day.  Sadly, we wouldn’t see another decent video-game to movie adaptation until 2006 with Silent Hill.  So, yeah, movies based on video games have a troubled history to say the least.  There have been notable exceptions like the newer Tomb Raider, Warcraft, and Prince of Persia.  But most of them have been absolute failures.  That brings me to today’s review of Sonic The Hedgehog.

Sonic The Hedgehog follows Sonic as he’s brought to Earth from a distant world and spends the next 10 years living just out of sight.  He keeps following local Green Hills cop Tom Wachowski, who is looking to move somewhere where he feels like he can do more good.  After accidentally creating an energy blast that wipes out power in the state, the government sends in mad scientist Dr. Ivo Robotnik to investigate.  After discovering Sonic, Tom decides to help him get to San Franciso to help find his rings which he accidentally dropped through a portal.  The story is very simple for what it is, and you know?  It works.  The story was written in a way that kids could follow, and there is a surprising amount of heart to it, especially during the moments when Sonic feels that he’s truly alone in the world.  It’s quite touching, really, despite the film being totally predictable.  For what Sonic was trying to accomplish, I think it’s just fine.  It moves at a brisk pace and never overstays its welcome.  99 Minutes is the perfect length for this film.

Before I continue with the review, there’s something I need to say:  I don’t like it when audiences have influence over how a film-maker creates his movie.  Catering to fans is rarely a good thing, and only ends with the film not being as good as it could be.  When film-makers try to predict what fans want, they end up with too much that pushes the story out of the way or they completely under-deliver with a half-baked film.  In the case of Sonic The Hedgehog, however, the audience was absolutely right.   When the original trailer for Sonic came out, the backlash was swift and unforgiving.  To the credit of Jeff Fowler and the folks at Sega and Paramount, they listened and delayed the film until this month so they could fix the visual style of the character.  I mean, look at the picture above: The difference is night and day.  The Sonic on the right is far more expressive and true to his video-game counterpart than the atrocity on the left.  In most cases, I would usually feel that the audience is generally wrong.  But this time around, I was in full agreement, and it was the right call to make.

With that said, I want to take a look at the visuals in the film.  There’s nothing here that you really haven’t seen before, and sometimes the CGI isn’t that great.  However, it wasn’t trying to be revolutionary and kids under the age of 8 aren’t going to care.  The CGI does its job.  It’s flashy, it’s entertaining and it looks pretty faithful to the video game, which came out in the 90s.  This film is essentially a live-action cartoon and it was designed as such.  I absolutely appreciate the effort that the animators and designers did in re-designing Sonic, and I think that makes for a better experience.  I loved the opening sequence on Sonic’s home-world that looks like they pulled it right of the game.  The loops and overall feel of the opening sequence just feels right.  Also, I really like how Paramount changed the stars in their opening logo to Sonic’s rings.  That was a nice touch.

One of the strongest aspects of this film are the performances.  James Marsden, who played Cyclops in the original three X-Men films, plays Tom Wachowski, a local sheriff.  I’ve always thought that James was a good actor, and he also provides some of the laughs in this film.  He’s got some pretty good comedic timing.  Tika Sumpter plays Tom’s wife, Maddie.  I think she was pretty good and she gets her fair share of laughs.  Ben Schwartz provides the voice of Sonic and he’s absolutely fantastic.  He gives the character the energy of a kid with a heart of gold, and he just sells it.  Speaking of energy, let’s talk about Jim Carrey.  This is a guy who hasn’t been on the big screen in years, spending a lot of his time doing art and stuff like that, but I have to tell you:  He steals the show.  As someone once said on YouTube, this is vintage Jim Carrey.  I’m talking Ace Ventura/The Mask Jim Carrey.  For a guy that’s pushing 60, he’s got a crazy amount of energy and it’s on full display here.  He should be allowed to play mad scientists more often, as he’s so good at it.  If you’re a fan of Jim Carrey like I am, you’re probably going to like this movie more than most.  If you’re not a fan, you’re going to find his shtick intolerable.  Overall, the human characters are surprisingly not annoying and Sonic is fairly relatable.

There’s really a lot to like here.  The action is snappy and spectacular, the humor is mostly on point and really funny at times.  I caught myself laughing out loud more than I usually do, so that’s a plus.  While there are definitely issues with some of the CGI in the film, it’s quirky and silly enough that it mostly doesn’t matter.  This is a film that knows what it is and isn’t striving to be more than that.  Honestly, if you’ve got family with kids under the age of 10, it’s a perfectly safe film for them to see, with the occasional fart joke.  There’s nothing offensive here that could make parents cover their children’s eyes.  If you’re fan of the original Sonic games, this is a must-see.  It gets a lot right, and doesn’t treat the audience like they’re idiots.  For fans of old-school Jim Carrey, he hits it out of the park with this one.  He’s incredibly fun to watch, and while he gets the most laughs, he does get upstaged here and there, and his reaction is priceless.  The chemistry between the characters is incredible, and you’re buying it throughout the entire movie.  Even if you’re not a Sonic fan, there might be something here for you.  Sonic The Hedgehog is easily the most family-friendly film in years that I could recommend.  As a video-game based movie, Sonic is one of the best ones.  The effort and care that they took in crafting this film is nothing short of amazing.  Yeah, the film has problems, and if you’re not a fan of Jim Carrey, you’re probably not going to like it, but for the rest of us, it’s a pretty good time at the movies.  I definitely recommend it.

My Final Recommendation: “How are you not dead?” “I have no idea!” 8.5/10

You’ll have to forgive the click-bait title, but this is a topic that I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while.  It came to me before the film Joker was released last October.  All the previews and marketing of the film were about a broken man living in a broken society who would end up becoming one of the most notorious comic book villains of all time: The Joker.  Because the film wasn’t your typical comic book film and was rated R, some people became concerned that a film that centered around a mass-murdering psychopath would have a negative impact on society and specifically those who were “deemed to be vulnerable to certain ideas.”  Without actually seeing the film and understanding the context of Joker, people automatically assumed that it was a film that glorified violence and anarchy, which couldn’t be further from the truth.  The film was about a mentally ill man who was abused and neglected not just by his own mother but by a broken system and a broken society.  He was failed by a system that was supposed to help people like him.  The film was about compassion, or rather the lack thereof and what it can do to a person.  There was another film that was supposed to be released last year, The Hunt, but was shelved because of a certain number of mass shootings that happened near the film’s original release date.

The film is about a group of conservative people who were kidnapped by “liberal elites” to be hunted for sport.  Because of the mass shootings, the film was delayed.  People had complained about the level of violence in the film.  People up to and including the president condemned the film for its violence without actually ever seeing it.  From what I understand about the film and the latest trailer that was released, it is a violent movie, but it is also a biting satire against both conservatives AND liberals.  Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing it.  It’s going to be released on March 13 of this year, which is a Friday.  It looks funny and exciting.  People have been blaming movies, video games, and music for the ills of society for decades, and there isn’t a shred of proof that any of this has a direct correlation to the violence that’s being committed today.  That’s not to say that films don’t have power.  They most certainly do.  They have the power to inspire, to educate, and to entertain.  But I’m not seeing anything from the two films that I just mentioned that could be considered dangerous, at least not to people of sound mind, which I hope most of us are.  If you want films that could be considered dangerous, you need to go all the way back to 1915 with the release of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation.  The film was based on a book written by a notorious member of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group.  When the film came out, it was quickly snatched up by the KKK as propaganda to recruit new members, which it did.  THAT was a dangerous film, because it inspired acts of violence and hate by the KKK.  I doubt that was Griffith’s intent, but that’s what happened.

Let’s move forward a few decades to 1960.  This was the year that Alfred Hitchcock released his most notorious thriller, Psycho.  There was a lot of controversy surrounding this film.  The infamous shower scene in which Janet Leigh’s character was killed sent shock-waves through the entire industry.  Nobody had ever seen anything like that before, yet, nothing was actually shown.  You didn’t see the knife penetrate the skin, all you saw was a knife going up and down and blood going into a drain.  The film had also featured Leigh’s character in a bra with another man.  Again, it wasn’t something that had been seen or done before in cinema.  All the controversy in the world actually ended up working in the film’s favor because people were lining up in droves to see it.  Are you seeing what I’m getting at here?  When you accuse a film of being dangerous or controversial, all you are doing is drawing more attention to it.  People, being the curious creatures that we are, are drawn to controversy like moths to a flame.  If you yell fire loud enough and long enough, somebody’s going to come see what the fuss is.  That’s just how we are as a species.  But to assume that a film is dangerous because it may contain extreme levels of violence is incredibly short-sighted.  If you actually watch Joker, there isn’t a whole lot of physical violence.  It’s all emotional and psychological.  Avengers: Endgame had a hell of a lot more violence than Joker, but you don’t hear people complaining about that.

But that goes back to my original question: Can movies be dangerous?  For the average adult?  No.  For children?  Possibly.  I mean, you don’t really want to show a 6 year old a film like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or I Spit on Your Grave.  It’s hard to say if there would be lasting psychological issues for the child if they saw those films, but I’m not an expert.  There are some children’s films that have some pretty dark imagery, though.  Take an animated film like The Black Cauldron, and that could give kids nightmares.  I’m an 80s/90s kid, so I grew up with some pretty dark animated movies.  Here’s what I’m thinking:  I’m actually far less concerned about films being dangerous than the audience.  I’ve seen a lot of death threats issued against directors, writers, and actors because some people didn’t like the way a film was supposed to be made.  Guess what?  If you don’t like the direction a film is taking or what the film-makers are doing with it, you don’t have to see it.  If you feel that the film’s content is too extreme or controversial for you, you can skip it and move on to something else.  People who accuse films of being racist, controversial, extreme, or dangerous are not understanding the intent of the film-makers.  In fact, they are refusing to understand.  They’re just trying to cause a commotion where there doesn’t need to be.  If the film’s intent is to sow chaos, disorder and to incite violence, then yeah, that could be dangerous with the wrong group of people, but I would argue that 97 percent of movies that are out there today don’t do that.  That’s what I’m seeing.  Can movies be dangerous?  Not by themselves, no.

Released: February 2020

Director: Cathy Yan

Rated R

Run Time: 109 Minutes

Distributor: Warner Bros.

Genre: Action/Comedy

Cast:
Margot Robbie: Harley Quinn
Rosie Perez: Renee Montoya
Mary Elizabeth Winstead: Helena Bertinelli/Huntress
Jurnee Smollett-Bell: Dinah Lance/Black Canary
Ewan McGregor: Roman Sionis
Ella Jay Basco: Cassandra Cain
Chris Messina: Victor Zsasz

I’ve been a huge fan of comic book movies since I can remember.  Two of the first comic book movies that I ever saw were the big ones: Superman: The Movie and Tim Burton’s Batman.  Superman was and still is an incredibly wonderful film.  I have the same feelings towards Batman.  It was a dark and Gothic film that was just wild.  Now, not everything that’s come out of the comic book world has successfully made the transition to film.  Some of the Superman and Batman sequels ended up being god-awful movies in general.  In fact, Batman and Robin almost killed the genre entirely when it was released back in 1997.  Thankfully, Blade came out the following year and was a major hit, but it wasn’t really until Marvel’s X-Men film that the genre was given new life.  The genre has had its ups-and-downs over the years, but it’s stronger than ever.  Marvel took the lead and Warner Bros. and DC have struggled to keep up.  It wasn’t until 2017 that DC and Warner Bros started hitting their stride with films like Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Shazam!, and Joker.  These are absolutely fantastic films that prove that DC can still make good comic book movies.  So, what the hell happened with Suicide Squad and the new Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey film?  I’m calling the new film that because the original title was changed from this: Birds of Prey And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn.  That title was just one of the MANY problems this movie had.  Let’s dig into it.

The film follows Harley Quinn as she and The Joker have broken up.  As a result, everybody that she’s wronged is after including one Roman Sionis, a ruthless crime lord.  Roman is after a young pickpocket who stole a diamond that has information that Roman needs to get the resources to control all the crime in Gotham.  Teaming up with Dinah Lance, Huntress and cop Renee Montoya, they try to protect the young thief before Roman gets his hands on her.  Okay, I’ve got a bit of a mini-rant here:  When you’re marketing a film, especially with trailers, you eventually want to let the audience know what the movie is about.  Harley Quinn didn’t fucking do that.  The trailers didn’t tell me anything about the plot.  I didn’t figure it out until I actually saw the film, and the actual plot is…..lame.  The McGuffin of the film is a diamond.  A diamond.  I guess one could argue that the girl, Cassandra Cain is also a McGuffin.  From what I understand, the film was supposed to be about these women who team up to become the Birds of Prey, a group of female superheroes, I guess?  Here’s the problem:  These women don’t actually team up until the third act of the film, essentially making this a movie about Harley Quinn, which is what it should have been in the first place.  There is no real substance here.  This was supposed to be DC’s answer to Guardians of the Galaxy.  Here’s the problem:  It’s nowhere near as good.

Let’s talk about the stuff in the film that was actually good.  Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn is a revelation.  When she showed up in Suicide Squad, she nailed it.  She’s just as fantastic here.  She gives the character that manic insanity that defines Harley Quinn.  Jurnee Smollett-Bell as Black Canary was wonderful.  She was gorgeous and she kicked ass like there was no tomorrow.  Ewan McGregor has always been one of my favorite actors, and he steals the show whenever he’s on screen as Roman Sionis/Black Mask.  His chemistry with Chris Messina’s Victor Zsasz was absolutely magnetic.  Messina as Zsasz was really good.  That’s a character that is absolutely evil, but he still pales in comparison to McGregor’s character.  The action in the film earns the film its R-rating.  It hits hard and sometimes it’s pretty funny.  Watching Harley Quinn go to town on Sionis’ goons was pretty satisfying, and the final battle between the women and Sionis’ army was just….wow!  It was good.  When the women are on screen together, it’s one of the best on-screen team-ups I’ve seen in a while.  The chemistry between the characters is crazy awesome.  The film is also well-shot and is very colorful.

Okay, now let’s really get into why this film didn’t work for me.  Before anybody starts in with the whole “feminist” angle, let me be as forthcoming as I can be.  I have no problems with movies that have a feminist angle.  To me, it’s not as important as whether or not the film succeeds on its own merits.  Harley Quinn does not.  First of all, the character of Harley Quinn herself.  I love Margot Robbie as Quinn.  I think she’s absolutely wonderful.  The problem is that Quinn is what some critics call a side-character of a side-character.  She’s a side-character of the Joker, a force of nature unto himself, and Quinn is basically a knock-off of said force.  She’s a relatively new character in the grand scheme of DC Comics.  I think the character can be interesting, but she’s always been a one-note character and she can’t carry a major story by herself.  Another problem is the inclusion of Huntress.  It’s not that she shouldn’t have been included, but she really doesn’t figure into the film until the final act.  She gets no real character development outside of the fact that she is there to avenge her family.  That’s it.  The writing is also all over the place.  Yeah, the main characters and villains are very entertaining, but there’s nothing to this film beyond that.  The scripts seems to have been cobbled together by various people and the ideas just aren’t meshing.  It’s a puzzle where the pieces don’t fit.  The movie never should have been called Birds of Prey.  It’s not about them, it’s about Harley Quinn.  The fact that Warner Bros changed the name of the film after it’s opening weekend speaks volumes to the idea that this film was mishandled in the same fashion that Suicide Squad was.

Birds of Prey, at the end of the day, is a film that I feel never should have been green-lit in the first place.  It features characters that not a lot of people know a whole lot about, except for Harley Quinn and maybe Black Canary.  Outside of that, this film comes on the heels of a vastly superior film, Joker, which didn’t feel like a comic book movie, but was far more compelling.  Warner Bros. and DC Films have been on a role since 2017, so Birds of Prey not performing as well as Warner Bros. may have hoped isn’t going to be a deal breaker for the DCEU.  It really didn’t have a chance of being a huge movie anyway.  However, the writing and the direction of the film, combined with a horrific marketing campaign basically doomed this project from the start.  Sometimes a project that sounds good on paper should just stay that way.  There are definitely things that I like about this film, but they don’t come together in a coherent piece like they should.  Because of that, I just couldn’t connect with what was happening on the screen.  The women were fantastic as was Ewan McGregor, but even the most gung-ho of performances can’t save Birds of Prey/Harley Quinn from obscurity.  This is a film that’s going to be forgotten in a matter of weeks.  There are going to be people that enjoy it, and I think that’s great, but for me it just didn’t click.  I went in with pretty low expectations and I still came out disappointed.  Sorry, WB, try harder.

My Final Recommendation: Birds of Prey? More like Birds of Meh. 5/10.

As somebody who loves watching movies and blogs about it, I really enjoy the freedom to pick and choose the movies that I get to watch.  A lot of professional critics don’t get that freedom, so I’m kind of grateful that I do.  I watch all sorts of movies.  Like most people, I tend to gravitate towards genres and movie-types that align with my interests.  I love science fiction, action, horror, drama, musicals, and some comedies.  Every once in a while, I do branch out and check out different kinds of movies that are recommended by YouTubers and other critics.  Sometimes, I feel rewarded by my efforts and other times not.  I rarely regret watching certain kinds of movies.  It’s often a learning experience about how far I’m willing to push myself for my craft.  While I tend to watch a lot of films that can be approached by almost anybody, I have seen things that aren’t as accessible.  It’s not necessarily the actual availability of the film, but rather the content of the film that provides the barrier to entry.  For this particular list, I’m going to go over some films that I feel are absolutely fantastic, but not easily recommendable because the content can be rather grueling or controversial.  Let’s begin, shall we?

The Nightingale

I reviewed this one very recently, so it’s still fresh in my mind.  Wow.  This is definitely a brutal film, especially the first twenty minutes.  The level of violence and brutality on display here is enough to shake even the toughest film-goer.  The brutality is not just there for the sake of brutality, but to show a reality that convicts and the aboriginal people of 1825 Tasmania had to deal with from the British Empire.  It’s handled in a way that doesn’t feel exploitative like I Spit on Your Grave.  This is far more realistic and the historical context makes it have more of an impact.  If you can stomach the brutality, you have a film here that explores the natures of violence and revenge and how one constantly feeds the other.  The performances here are absolutely fantastic.  Aisling Franciosi, Sam Claflin, and Baykali Ganambarr all deliver performances that deserve recognition.  I think The Nightingale is a great film, but you have to sit through some pretty harsh material in order to see what the film is going for.

The Passion of the Christ

I honestly don’t consider myself a religious person or a believer, but I do appreciate some films that deal with certain religious themes and characters.  Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is one of those films.  This was a very controversial film when it was released because of the level of violence in the film and how it portrayed certain Jewish characters as villains.  The thing is, if you read the stories about Jesus, he was betrayed by his own people.  However, he knew it was going to happen, and he allowed it to happen.  This is an emotionally grueling film that has some pretty harsh violence, but the brutal honesty of what Mel Gibson was trying to convey here was lost in the controversy surrounding not only the film, but Gibson’s own personal demons.  This is a tough movie, but it’s a movie with a message about forgiveness that is sadly lacking in today’s society.  Jim Caviezel’s performance as Jesus is absolutely astounding, even though his personal career took a major hit.  I think this film is incredibly underrated.  Is it the best film about Jesus?  That can be debated forever, but it is certainly a very compelling one.

12 Years A Slave

If Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale was a look into one of the darkest moments in Australian history, then 12 Years A Slave is a look into one of America’s darkest moments.  Oddly enough, both films take place in almost the same time period, only separated by about 16 years.  Slavery was one of the worst atrocities that was committed on American soil, and Solomon Northup’s story was one of thousands.  It’s a tragic film about one man’s struggle to survive so he can escape back to his family.  Like the previous films on this list, 12 Years A Slave pulls no punches.  You see Northup being captured, sold and beaten over the 12 years that he spent in captivity.  Chiwetel Ejiofor’s performance is absolutely incredible and it’s definitely the one that keeps us watching.

I Saw The Devil

Never let it be said that Westerners have a monopoly on making brutal and hard-hitting films.  I Saw The Devil is an outstanding Korean revenge thriller that follows a detective hunting down a serial killer that brutally murdered his wife.  This movie is incredibly savage.  I saw this one years ago, and I haven’t seen it since.  It’s a haunting movie.  The violence is absolutely grisly and brutal, but it does serve a purpose.  The detective’s acts of revenge against his wife’s murder escalate to the point where he himself becomes a monster.  The film is pretty heavy-handed on the nature of revenge and how truly destructive it can be.  It’s a great movie with awesome performances, but it’s one that I am in no hurry to watch again.  I have to give it to South Korea, they really know how to craft a powerful and intense thriller.

The Hate U Give

The first, and most likely only PG-13 film on this list, The Hate U Give is based on a young adult novel of the same name.  It follows young Starr Carter as she struggles to deal with being caught in the middle of a police shooting that killed her friend.  While this film is the most accessible of the films I’ve already listed, don’t let the PG-13 rating fool you.  This is a film that deals with a very real problem in today’s world:  The systemic racism that’s a part of our so-called justice system.  Starr’s attempts to come to terms with a broken system leads her to find her voice against said system that failed her community.  While the film isn’t graphically violent or anything like that, it does offer a fairly honest look into a problem that’s affecting the African American community.  Like I said, the PG-13 allows more people to actually see this, but it’s not the easiest film to sit through, because of how emotionally powerful it is.  This is a film that will make you angry, and it should.  Films have power, and the fact that this one didn’t get as much attention as it deserved is criminal, in my opinion.

Joker

Joker is one of the more accessible films on this list, but that doesn’t mean it’s not uncomfortable to watch.  Everything from the cinematography, sets, and costumes to the performances and direction gives this “origin” story a more realistic vibe than you’re used to seeing from a character like this.  Joaquin Phoenix’s award-winning performance is one for the record books.  But the situation that Arthur Fleck is in combined with the fact that he’s been abused, not just by his mother, but also by a broken system and society that doesn’t care about him.  While Fleck suffers from some pretty severe forms of mental illness, it’s handled in such a way that makes him more sympathetic.  Yet, audiences are uncomfortable with the idea of humanizing a character that would become the future Clown Prince of Crime in Gotham City.  That’s the point, though.  This is a study of a character that’s been failed by everything and everyone around him and when he breaks, it’s all the more tragic.

Silence

Talk about a soul-crushing experience.  Martin Scorsese directs Silence, a film that follows two Jesuit priests who sail to Japan to find their lost mentor.  When they arrive, they are greeted by several Japanese converts, but they are also hunted down by the local government, aimed at stamping out Christianity.  As I said above, I’m not a believer, but seeing people of faith being crushed under the heels of an oppressive government is a hard thing to watch.  It’s definitely violent at times, although not overly graphic, but the way the Japanese soldiers treat the Christians is incredibly brutal.  You don’t have to be a believer to understand the suffering and brutality that’s being shown.  This is all based on actual events during the 17th century in Edo-era Japan.  It’s definitely worth watching at least once.  It’s an experience.

Those were my picks for some of the toughest movies to sit through.  Movies don’t always have to be entertaining to make an impact.  Sometimes, movies need to go to some really dark places to get their point across.  At the same time, sometimes an audience needs to get slapped in the face with some ugly truths about human nature.  The films that I brought up are absolutely incredible in nearly every way.  They’re not perfect by any means, but they are exceptionally well-crafted and performed.  Do I recommend these films?  Yes, but with a caveat:  Some of these movies feature some pretty brutal imagery and if you have an aversion to such imagery, I would advise you to look elsewhere.  For those that are brave enough to sail these waters, you’ll find films that can be rewarding in different ways.