I'd Rather be in Real Detention

This past Friday night I had the opportunity to go with a friend of mine to see a movie called Detention. The movie had little to know publicity and the only reason I knew about it was because Josh Hutcherson was one of the actors in it. I happened to see a trailer of it on YouTube and it looked...interesting enough, so I  decided to give it a chance.

According to IMDB the plot of Detention is

As a killer named Cinderhella stalks the student body at the high school in Grizzly Lake, a group of co-eds band together to survive while they're all serving detention.

And if this were the case, I'd probably have enjoyed the film a bit more than I did. It starts off as a horror film, but then from there it just becomes completely random, so much that  I'm not sure the writer's knew where they were going with this movie. It's like they were attempting to make a parody of every teen film that's ever come out, while throwing in some random science fiction, time travel, and horror. Yes, all of that in one film. Because of this I'm not exactly sure what genre this movie falls under, perhaps I should just invent the WTF genre.

The deal with parodies are that they are supposed to make you laugh, even if it's just stupid comedy, such as Scary Movie/Not Another Teen Movie/etc...franchise, or even ones like the Scream movies that are actual slasher films, but still poke fun at the genre. With Detention though, the jokes never really landed, at least not with me. If anything it was like someone found a 14 year old's Tumblr or Facebook page and started going through their posts and comments. Every other line was about how 'awesome' the 90s was or some reference to the entertainment during the decade. This reminded me of seeing posts from the Tumblr of someone born between 1997 and 1999, claiming to be a 90s kid. (No, you were barely a live in the decade, you might have been born in the 90s, but you're not a 90s kid.) If this had only been here and there it would have been fine, but like I said it was just about every other line. There was also an obsession with Patrick Swayze by Josh Hutcherson's character, Clapton Davis.

Detention stars Josh Hutcherson and Dane Cook

Josh's character actually had one of the only jokes that made me laugh a little. It had to do with his looking to Swayze and Roadhouse for help in fighting another character. One of the things he writes down is a red shirt. Later on there's a scene at a party where the other guy is wanting to fight, and Clapton doesn't want to. However he looks down and low and behold he's wearing a red shirt, this moment gets a quiet "Damn red shirt" from Clapton, talking to himself.

Another came when they are put in detention, which for a movie called Detention only about 10 minutes are spent in detention. They are going around saying why the others couldn't have been the killer at the party, when they get to this one guy, who happens to be black. They tell him to just fess up because none of them really know him. He responds with "I'm not a killer, I'm just boring." The character was really only in this scene and barely had any lines, but he was my favorite in the entire movie.

Is the movie the greatest thing ever made? Obviously not. Is going to see it better than sitting home alone on a Friday night? Maybe

In all I'd give this movie a 2 out of 5 stars

Blue Like Jazz (not your 'come to Jesus' film)

Ever since seeing the film Blue Like Jazz this past Friday, I’ve been debating with myself whether or not to write a review for the film. After three separate viewings of it in the course of three days, I think it’s time that I do. 

Blue Like Jazz is a film based off the book, of the same title, by Donald Miller, and is about a young man, Don Miller, who after growing up a southern baptist in Texas, moves to Portland to attend Reed College, and while there begins to question the very faith and God that he grew up with. Before the movie’s release I kept seeing articles about whether this was going to be a religious or anti-religious film. What I’m going to tell you is that it is neither. It’s a journey into a young man’s life and the struggle that he has in not only finding God, but even more-so, himself. 

  

While everyone in the movie did a wonderful job, I want to focus on the main character/actor of the film. The film stars Marshall Allman, best known for his roles as LJ Burrows (Prison Break) and Tommy Mickens (True Blood) as Don.
Being one of my favorite actors, I was already excited, but after seeing the movie I don’t think I could even imagine anyone else in this role. His portrayal as Don is one of the most honest performances I’ve seen in a film in a rather long time. In the beginning of the film, Don is, for lack of a better word, awkward, though while still in Texas, and at his church, he doesn’t seem to be really out of place. It isn’t until he first arrives at Reed that this is more evident. With the way that he dresses, acts, and talks, Don is a fish out of water, but there is something awkwardly adorable about it. As the film progresses Don begins to become, in a nutshell, a sarcastic little anti-religious twat, who is always ready with some snarky remark. There were times in the film where Don frustrated me to no end, but despite how cynical he became, Marshall played him with such a boyish charm, that I couldn’t help but develop a love/hate relationship with him. If Marshall doesn’t get some sort of recognition for this role, I will be very surprised.

One of the things I loved most about Blue Like Jazz is just how relatable Don is. Like Don, I grew up going to church in Houston, Texas, and up until college it was all I really knew. I’d never questioned my beliefs, they just were. However, when I went away to college, that all changed. It wasn’t as drastic a change in scenery, geography-wise, but the majority of my friends didn’t have the same beliefs as I did, and I found myself starting to question God and even in a sense abandoning him, and like Don it all started out as an attempt to fit in with those around me. Even if you aren’t going through an existentialist crisis, it’s easy to put yourself in Don’s shoes because we’ve all done things in order to feel accepted by a group of people. Dyed our hair, changed our clothes, started to talk a different way, drank, done drugs, etc… At the end of the film, Don has discovered things about himself, but he is in no way perfect. He still has problems and questions that he’s working through, the same that we all do. 

Another thing that I enjoyed about the film is that while God and religion does take a large part in this film, it isn’t IN YOUR FACE about it. It’s also not cheesy or sappy, like some of the films that have been marketed as ‘Christian’ films seem to be. Nowhere in the film does it tell the audience ‘this is what you need to believe.’ Instead they show you the struggles that Don has with the church and the revelations that HE comes to. At the end of the movie there is a scene between Don and his friend, ‘the Pope’ (played by Justin Welborn), who is an atheist, that involves a rather beautiful speech that Don gives about how he felt about God, and he asks his friend to forgive him. Not once does Don ‘preach the gospel’ to him or give that sort of altar call feeling. However, he simply is vulnerable and honest to him, something that I feel made the scene that much more powerful. 

The honesty of this film has made it the best film that I’ve seen so far this year. It made me laugh, got me frustrated, and all three times I left the movie with a sense of hope and the inability to stop smiling. Blue Like Jazz is a movie that I would recommend for those that are upperclassmen in high school (juniors/seniors) and those that are in college or just out of it. Yes, those that are older than that should see it, but I feel that the ages stated could relate the most to the film. 

p.s. 

it is apparently a lot harder to damage a PT Cruiser than I thought.


5 out of 5 stars

Angels Crest (reviewed on my Tumblr back in November)

Sometime ago while looking over Thomas Dekker’s IMDB page I came across a movie titled Angels Crest. The plot seemed interesting and the fact that two of my favorite actors, Thomas Dekker and Jeremy Piven, were in it only made me want to see it even more. After what feels like forever, the film was finally released over I-Tunes and On Demand (it’s still waiting theatrical release) and a few hours ago I found myself clicking on the buy icon on my television and preparing myself to watch.

First off I want to say that I came into this movie with high expectations. The trailers I had seen online were beautiful and tugged at my emotions and let me tell you the movie only did this further. For those of you who don’t know much about Angels Crest, it’s about a young father, Ethan Denton (Thomas Dekker), who suffers the loss of his son after a moment of carelessness and how the action affects him, the boy’s mother and the small town that they live in.

The script was written by Catherine Trieschmann and directed by Gaby Dellal, both of which did great jobs. The script was beautifully written (especially the scenes with Ethan and his best friend, and the ones with Cindy) and some of the best and most powerful moments came when there was no dialogue at all. Two scenes that did this were when Ethan is walking down to the cell and sits there for a few seconds before one of the officers speaks, and later in the film when he walks out of the house, removing his clothes and lays down curled up in the snow. In an overall review of the movie there wasn’t much I didn’t like about it, though I was wondering from time to time why I was watching certain scenes with the people that lived in town, and what significance they actually had to the story. The movie is based on a novel by Leslie Schwartz though, so maybe reading it would help me understand more/clear up some things and why these side stories were there/important.

The supporting cast for the film includes Jeremy Piven, Kate Walsh, Mira Sorvino, Elizabeth McGovern, and Joseph Morgan, who all did amazing jobs bringing their characters to life. As someone who watched Entourage from season one and fell in love with Jeremy Piven’s Ari Gold it was nice to see him in a different kind of role, and even outside of Entourage it’s been rare that he has been in anything dramatic. After seeing this movie though I think that he needs to start doing more. In the film he plays the part of the D.A that’s prosecuting Ethan and had lost his own child prior to the events of the film, something I wish they would have gone further into. He plays that line between the father that understands what Ethan is going through and the D.A that needs to collect information/evidence that could put him away for negligence fairly well.

The contrast between the way that Nate’s mother, Cindy, and father, Ethan, handle his death is executed beautifully by the films two main actors, Lily Collins and Thomas Dekker.

Lily Collins plays Cindy, Nate’s mother who is an alcoholic and blames Ethan for Nate’s death. At the search party the sheriff tells her that if she’s going to be out there she at least needs a coat, but instead of going to get one she goes out and buys beer. Through out the film she slips further and further into her alcoholism, the only way she knows how to cope. Lily does a wonderful job portraying the cold, and at times bitchy attitude that Cindy has towards people, a result of her alcoholism no doubt, but her shining moment comes when she starts to break down in front of her mother. The first time you really see her have an emotion other than anger when it comes to losing Nate. It’s here I first saw her feeling that loss and focusing on that feeling rather than how much she blamed/hated Ethan. I haven’t seen many of her movies (other than Wolverine Origins) but I think I need to search Netflix for more.

Finally I come to Thomas Dekker who plays the part of Ethan Denton. While it was important for the film’s supporting characters and the part of Cindy to be cast well, it would have been for nothing had this part not been cast right, and I’m not sure anyone could have pulled it off any better than Thomas did. From the start I felt myself drawn into the life of his character and his son Nate (Ameko Eks Mass Carroll). The interaction between the two is, in lack of a better word, adorable as well as genuine, especially coming from Thomas who before now had never really worked with a young kid (at least not in anything else I’ve seen him in.) 
Every emotion that Ethan felt, whether it was the desperation to find his son, the anguish when he found him, the guilt he felt, or anything in between I felt like I was connecting with and was experiencing myself (despite never having been in a similar situation before.) I rarely cry in movies, but there were several times I found myself fighting back tears due to this young man’s performance and here he truly proves that he is one of the best young actors of our time. I have been watching Thomas since the Honey I Shrunk the Kids tv series came on, and while I love most of the projects he’s been a part of I have never been more proud to call myself a Thomas Dekker fan

4 out of 5 stars