Brian Rowe

YA Author & Film Fanatic.

[brianroweauthor]

Watching Like a Writer: 2016

Watching Like a Writer is a movie review series that looks at films from the perspective of a fiction writer, complete with one writing takeaway, and an exercise that will help better your fiction! Each Wednesday I will look at the five best movies of a director, actor, genre, series, year in film, etc.

With the Academy Awards airing this coming Sunday, it's finally time for me to reveal my top films of 2016! I saw 78 films released in 2016, and currently have a list of about 40 more I'd like to see. Obviously a few of those 40 could pop up on a future version of this list, but for today, these were my favorite times at the movies last year!

#11-20 (in alphabetical order)

The Accountant

Arrival

Bad Moms

Finding Dory

Florence Foster Jenkins

Hacksaw Ridge

Hidden Figures

Nocturnal Animals

Passengers

Sully

And now for #6-10...

10. Don't Breathe

9. La La Land

8. 10 Cloverfield Lane

7. Loving

6. Hell or High Water

And now... the final countdown...

5. The Conjuring 2

The most terrifying experience I've had in a movie theater in years was watching The Conjuring 2. Director James Wan has really come into his own as a horror director since the original Saw (which also made my top ten list in 2004), and after making the smash hit action blockbuster Furious 7, he returned to his roots with this chilling sequel that fixed everything I didn't like about the original and delivered on endless scares, spooky demons, and a terrific eerie atmosphere from beginning to end.

4. Everybody Wants Some!!

Richard Linklater is an American treasure, one of my favorite directors by far. I'm not sure if any have made my top ten lists with three movies in a row, but Linklater's done it, with Before Midnight in 2013, Boyhood in 2014, and now his spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused, the ridiculously entertaining Everybody Wants Some!! Featuring a stellar young cast and the kind of compelling naturalism that Linklater is known for, this film is a pure delight from beginning to end.

3. Jackie

Some great films stick with you, and some great ones don't. I loved a lot of the movies on my #11-20 list, but a lot of them in the weeks following faded from my mind, not having left a major impact. Such was not the case with Jackie. This movie shook me on the day that I saw it, and months later I still can't stop thinking about it. Portman gives her best performance since Black Swan, and the unique cinematography and inventive editing and haunting musical score work together to create a piece of art that is unlike anything I've seen before.

2. De Palma

Director Brian De Palma sits in a chair and talks about his career for two hours. That's basically all this documentary is. So why the hell does it get the #2 slot? This movie's amazing because it does something I rarely see in documentaries about film: it tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth. De Palma talks about all his films, both the good (like Carrie and Blow Out) and the bad (like The Bonfire of the Vanities and Mission to Mars), and he tells personal, revealing, sometimes painful stories about his fifty years in the film industry. This is not a love-fest on De Palma, not the kind of obvious documentary that features thirty talking heads boasting about how great or important he is. This is just De Palma taking us through the highs and lows of his long career, and I was engaged in every second of it.

1. Moonlight

This was an easy choice. I haven't had to think too hard about my top pick of the year since 2012, and this year was no different, Barry Jenkins' hypnotic Moonlight proving in so many ways just what the film medium is capable of. This movie is a punch to the gut in the way it handles space and time, and it's also one of the most tender love stories I've seen in any film in years. I can't imagine anyone not being affected by this film in some way. With a terrific cast, absolutely gorgeous cinematography, powerful editing, and a well-structured narrative that builds to a romantic, ultra-satisfying finale, Moonlight is the best movie of 2016.

Watching Like a Writer: So what's my one big takeaway as a writer for the films I most loved in 2016? Of course my top five movies are all doing different things, innovative things, but if there's one takeaway that I can find in my favorites, it's the search for truth. When it comes to my writing, I've written novels that are escapist entertainment, but the few that I've written that have been the most worthwhile for me are the ones that dig deeper, that reveal something personal, that take the reader on a journey someplace new. These are the kinds of stories that I want to focus on in the future, and they're the ones I'm always searching for at the movies.

Exercise! What is a story personal to you that you haven't written yet but might want to try investigating in a work of fiction in the future? Leave your comments below, or in the Watching Like a Writer group on Facebook!

[brianroweauthor]

Watching Like a Writer: From Russia With Love (1963)

Watching Like a Writer is a movie review series that looks at films from the perspective of a fiction writer, complete with one writing takeaway, and an exercise that will help better your fiction! Each Friday I will look at a classic film.

Summary: "Enticing James Bond into a trap involving a beautiful girl and a top secret encoder, SPECTRE plans to heat up the Cold War." (via Amazon)

Review: When a movie that costs a mere one million dollars grosses nearly sixty million dollars worldwide, a sequel is pretty much guaranteed—this definitely still rings true today. But when the low-budget Dr. No became a box office smash, producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman weren’t just looking to make a sequel—they wanted to make a long-running franchise.

One of the most popular and critically acclaimed James Bond novels Ian Fleming wrote was From Russia With Love, written in 1956, and picked in 1961 by President John Kennedy as one of his ten favorite books. There were plenty of novels for the producers to choose from for the second installment, but they picked From Russia With Love mostly because they knew they couldn’t lose with an entry in the book series so beloved. Just a few short months after the release of Dr. No, From Russia With Love went into production on April 1, 1963. Broccoli and Saltzman, naturally, wanted to make one Bond movie a year for as long as possible (they would succeed in this regard for the first four installments).

From Russia With Love featured a budget twice the size of the first installment, and the money can be seen on the screen. This is a bigger spectacle of an action movie than the first one, especially in the second half, where there are three memorable action sequences back to back. Sean Connery is even more comfortable and relaxed as Bond, firmly established in the role of his career. While the first half of the film has its slow stretches, it properly sets up a second half where the suspense is literally non-stop. The acting is uniformly excellent, and Terence Young, who returned to direct this second installment, ups his game in every way. The famous train fistfight, which works so well because it’s actually the actors in almost every shot, marks one of the great scenes of the series.

No matter how important the first installment Dr. No is deemed to be, it only features a few iconic moments. From Russia With Love suffers from similar slow pacing problems for the first hour or so, despite an ominous opening teaser, and the occasional juicy moment with Rosa Klebb. When the characters make their way on the train, however, the power of that set-up brings forth a genuinely awesome final fifty minutes that marks some of the most viscerally exciting moments in Bond films, so the wait is worth it.

MGM has supplied Bond fans with terrific DVD releases of the Bond films over the years, with terrific special editions released in the early 2000s, and ultimate editions released around the release of 2008’s Quantum of Solace. The special edition of From Russia With Love features a ton of bonus features, including a thirty-four minute making-of that details every aspect to the film’s history, production, and release. One of the most notable missing From Russia With Love supplements is the 1991 commentary track recorded for the Criterion Collection laserdisc. Displeased with some controversial statements on the track, the studio demanded a recall of all the laserdiscs. The commentary tracks on all the Bond special editions DVDs are pretty dry, with edited together interviews and little screen-specific content, and it would be welcome to have better content in that regard. If you can find the banned commentary, it’s definitely worth a listen. There is a lot of informative, frank tales told about the film.

From Russia With Love is a definite improvement on the slower, less intense Dr. No, and paves the way for what is almost universally regarded as the greatest Bond film of all, Goldfinger. While the first half takes a while to get moving, the last fifty minutes, particularly all the material in the train, are pure Bond magic. It’s the third best Connery Bond, and the first real must-see film of the series.

Watching Like a Writer: My favorite scene in From Russia With Love is the extended fight on the train, and I'd love to attempt a suspense action scene in a piece of my fiction that takes place for many pages at a time all in one closed, claustrophobic setting. It wouldn't necessarily have to be on a train; it could be an attic, someone's bedroom, a janitorial closet. The possibilities are endless!

Exercise! Think of a tight space that could serve an exciting action sequence well. What would it be? Share your thoughts below, or in the Facebook group, Watching Like a Writer!

[brianroweauthor]

Watching Like a Writer: Matt Damon

Watching Like a Writer is a movie review series that looks at films from the perspective of a fiction writer, complete with one writing takeaway, and an exercise that will help better your fiction! Each Wednesday I will look at the five best movies of a director, actor, genre, series, year in film, etc.

Matt Damon is one of our finest actors. Year after year he continues to churn out interesting, nuanced, emotionally complex performances, no matter what genre the movie may be. He’s an exciting actor, one that always makes a project better with his presence, even if the film itself isn't anything special.

With The Great Wall opening this week, it’s time to take a look back at the five best movies Matt Damon has appeared in...

5. The Departed (2006)

Matt Damon has worked with truly the best directors in the business. Greengrass, Eastwood, Gus Van Sant, Steven Spielberg, Anthony Minghella, Steven Soderbergh, and lots more. In 2006 he finally teamed up with Martin Scorsese in the hugely successful The Departed, which finally earned Scorsese his Oscar. While the movie isn’t in the same league as Scorsese’s Goodfellas or Raging Bull, the movie has plenty of surprises and fine moments, and a great lead role for Damon.

4. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

Featuring one of Damon’s most courageous and dark performances, The Talented Mr. Ripley is a fine piece of filmmaking, one that features exotic locations, big twists and turns, and an incredible cast that includes Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Cate Blanchett, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

3. The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

All three are great (the 2016 film not so much), but the one that works the best in subsequent viewings is the second installment. While the first one was still trying to find its voice, and the third one starts to feel a tad redundant by the second half, the second installment is pure excitement from beginning to end, with a devastating opening, a handful of great fights, and an awesome supporting performance by Joan Allen.

2. Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Steven Spielberg’s enduring masterpiece still ranks as one of his finest efforts, and Damon’s title role performance is one of his best, coming in at the end of the movie. Those mind-boggling opening twenty minutes to this day still feature some of the most raw, chilling images ever committed to celluloid.

1. Good Will Hunting (1997)

It’s the movie that gave Damon a career, and it still is his best. Written by Damon and his pal Ben Affleck, Good Will Hunting is one of those seminal '90s movies that has aged extremely well, featuring touching performances by Damon, Minnie Driver, and an Oscar-winning Robin Williams. Here’s hoping Damon writes another screenplay some day. He’s clearly as good a writer as he is an actor.

Watching Like a Writer: One takeaway from the greatness that is Good Will Hunting is how strongly defined and three-dimensional the major characters are, not just Damon's lead role of Will but also his friend Chuckie (Ben Affleck), his girlfriend Skylar (Driver), and especially his psychiatrist Sean (Williams). The girlfriend and psychiatrist characters especially could have been throwaway trope characters with nothing witty or important to say, but Damon and Affleck's screenplay makes sure to keep them fascinating throughout.

Exercise! Look at your current work-in-progress and think about the characters that surround your protagonist. Are they fully dimensional, or could they be developed more? How so? Leave your comments below, or in the Facebook group, Watching Like a Writer!

[brianroweauthor]

Watching Like a Writer: Lion (2016)

Watching Like a Writer is a movie review series that looks at films from the perspective of a fiction writer, complete with one writing takeaway, and an exercise that will help better your fiction! Each Monday I will look at a film currently in theatrical release.

Summary: "A 5 yr old boy gets lost on the streets of Calcutta, thousands of kilometers from home. Surviving many challenges before being adopted by a couple in Australia, he sets out to find his family." via Amazon

Review: There are some stories that, as long as the writer and director don't massively screw up somewhere along the way, are almost impervious to failure, that are so inherently compelling from beginning to end and leave the audience in excruciating suspense as to the outcome. The new film Lion, directed by Garth Edwards and based on a true story, is one of those films, the kind that show families torn apart in the beginning, only for them to be reunited at the end.

Sometimes it's brothers and sisters. Or sisters and sisters. Or parents and children. The one that always comes to mind is Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple, which may not necessarily be the go-to title for Spielberg fans in his massive impressive canon, but it remains one of my absolute favorites mostly for that heart-wrenching story of two sisters pulled apart who finally come together in the last scene, one of the great uplifting movie endings. This conflict marks the foundation of The Impossible, and Kill Bill, and countless other fantastic films.

Director Edwards has made another terrific film on this topic, one that's handled differently from other films of the like, both for the good and for the bad. First the good. I was fascinated by how Edwards opens the film, not telling this story from the older Saroo (who's played in his adult years by Dev Patel) looking back at how he came to be the man he is today, but instead giving the first thirty-plus minutes completely over to the young Saroo (a natural and charismatic young actor, Sunny Pawar) as he navigates a scary world after being separated from his brother and family and finds himself waking up on a Train hundreds of miles away from home.

Many filmmakers would have chosen to show the older Saroo reflecting on his young life, but Davis made a smart choice in letting these events play out in a more straightforward narrative fashion, letting it sink in for the audience just what Saroo has lost as he tries to come to terms with his new adoptive parents John (David Wenham) and Sue (an unrecognizable Nicole Kidman). The film allows us to sympathize with his plight without allowing typical story structure rear its ugly head and pull us away from the emotion of the story.

The chunk of the film that doesn't work as well as this beginning is some of the material involving the older Saroo (Patel) as he sets out to find his family and yet still keep a close connection to his adoptive parents, as well as find time for a romance with a girl named Lucy (Rooney Mara, doing her best with a pretty thankless role). I greatly enjoyed what this film had to say about adoption, a topic I don't see explored in too many films (The Blind Side comes to mind, but few others). There's a great scene where Kidman cries in front of her grown adoptive son where she expresses her feelings she shares for him, that he is and forever will be her boy no matter what. Unfortunately the scenes with Mara pull the film down, especially since the story doesn't seem to know what to really do with her character, although Mara is solid as always, and Patel delivers probably his best performance since his breakthrough in Slumdog Millionaire.

But despite the film's occasional flaws, director Davis sticks the landing with an emotionally searing finale that—spoiler, I guess—delivers just what you're looking for. Sure it's expected, but the film, based on Saroo's book A Long Way Home, wouldn't stay true to its source by giving the audience any other ending. It's a narrative structure that simply works, and works well, and will always work well as long as stories continue to be told. Featuring great performances, a fantastic ending, and an especially harrowing first act with the young Saroo, Lion is an impressive feel-good debut feature.

Watching Like a Writer: Watching Lion made me want to think of a novel idea about a family torn apart who get reunited at the end, but do it in a way that's original and different, some kind of a spin put on the familiar narrative we've all seen before. I don't know exactly what I'd do with that, but it's fun to think about what kind of unique take I could come up with.

Exercise! Think of a log-line for a story about a family who are separated and are then brought back together at the narrative's conclusion. What would be your take on this familiar story? Share your thoughts below, or in the Facebook group, Watching Like a Writer!

[brianroweauthor]

Watching Like a Writer: Before Midnight (2013)

Watching Like a Writer is a movie review series that looks at films from the perspective of a fiction writer, complete with one writing takeaway, and an exercise that will help better your fiction! Each Friday I will look at a classic film.

Summary: "Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and C...line (Julie Delpy) first met in their twenties in BEFORE SUNRISE, reunited in their thirties in BEFORE SUNSET, and now, in BEFORE MIDNIGHT, they face the past, present and future; family, romance and love." (via Amazon)

Review: One of my five favorite films of the last fifteen years is Before Sunset, the glorious romantic sequel to Before Sunrise. It’s a film that shouldn’t even exist, given the low box office returns of Richard Linklater’s 1995 story of two people in their early twenties who meet on a train and end up spending the next twenty-four hours together walking around Vienna. Hollywood doesn’t make sequels to films that don’t make loads of money, so Before Sunset is that enigma—a sequel made purely out of love for its characters rather than financial gain. At the end of Before Sunrise, we’re left wondering if Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) will reunite in six months and continue their whirlwind romance. In Before Sunset, we learn that they didn’t end up crossing each other paths that December, and haven’t seen each other in nine years. Jesse has written a novel about the time they spent together, prompting Celine to attend his book signing in Paris. They meet outside, and the following seventy-five minutes follows the couple in real time as they just talk, and walk around Paris. And it’s seventy-five of the most enchanting, honest minutes I’ve ever seen in the movie.

I’ve watched Before Sunset as much as any other movie I’ve seen in my lifetime. There’s not a moment that drags, not a scene that feels false. It’s one of those rare movies that doesn’t feel like a movie at all, but instead a glimpse into real life. Even though it’s just two people talking for seventy-five minutes, the film builds and builds, almost like a suspense thriller, with Jesse having a flight he needs to catch, and demons of both their pasts slowly creeping out, leading toward a scene in the back of a car that is so startling in its immediacy and intimacy that it’s impossible not to have a gut reaction. Jesse drops Celine at her home, and follows her upstairs to listen to one of her songs. After she plays him Waltz for a Night, a beautiful song even if it were listened to out of the context of the film, she tells him, “You are gonna miss that plane.” Jesse smiles and says, “I know.” Fade to black. One of the most perfect endings ever.

The third film of a series, especially a sequel to a second film I love so much, is not supposed to live up to expectations. It’s not supposed to be made with the same texture and intelligence and care that the first two movies were made with. Before Midnight is a complete enigma, because one, it’s a film that doesn’t necessarily need to exist, and two, it’s a beautiful work of art that uses its unique history tied to two previous stories to create something extraordinary. I knew walking in that this wasn’t going to be a story of two people walking around Greece whispering romantic nothings into each other’s ears. In the early minutes of Before Midnight, we learn that Jesse did indeed miss the plane, and ended up moving to Paris to live with Celine, where they had twin girls, and have been together for the last nine years. This set-up creates a different dynamic to the film, because they’re not reuniting after a long period of time, but finishing up a Greece vacation with two kids in tow, and lots of tension brewing under the surface. It would have been false not to send Celine and Jesse to some kind of dark place sometime during the film, but nothing prepared me for the third act of Before Midnight.

The first two acts are beautifully done, with the kind of dialogue-heavy scenes we’re accustomed to in this series, as well as some scenes with an ensemble of actors that we’re not used to. One of my questions going into the movie concerned Jesse’s son, who we learned about in the second movie. I was worried that the focus would be on the new twin girls, and his son from his previous marriage would be tossed aside. I was thrilled to discover not only do we get to meet Jesse’s boy in the film’s first scene, but his character hangs over the entire movie like some kind of ticking time bomb about to explode. We don’t even see Celine for about ten minutes, and instead spend time with Jesse and his boy at the airport while he waits for him to board his flight back to the United States. It’s the perfect entryway into this third installment, making Celine’s reveal all the more powerful. A stunning fifteen-minute unbroken shot of Celine and Jesse talking in the car follows, and then we’re treated to a few scenes with an ensemble of actors where we finally, after three movies, get to see the two interact for a long period of time with other people. Even though we don’t know these other characters well, the intimacy remains, and the dinner scene give us a welcome glimpse into the couple’s social life. The section of Before Midnight that most resembles the first two movies takes place when Celine and Jesse take a long walk to a local hotel, where they’ve been treated to a night alone with a bottle of wine and a five star room, just the two of them. Their natural chemistry comes through in this long walking scene, maybe more than any other in this third installment. Then they arrive at the hotel. And go up to their room. And start kissing. And then the phone rings.

I’ve seen plenty of movies where two characters argue on screen. But I don’t know if I’ve ever had such a visceral reaction to the kind of biting, mind-blowingly honest argument Celine and Jesse have in that claustrophobic hotel room in Before Midnight’s third act. I care as much about these two characters as I do any characters in film history, so to see them battle with words, the same way heroes and villains battle in summer action epics, affected me deeply. “I am giving you my whole life,” Jesse says at one point. “I’ve got nothing larger to give.” The scene is unpleasant, brutal, cathartic, engrossing. So precise in its acting, writing, and directing, the way the scene builds and builds and builds all the way to a line of dialogue you hoped would never come. Just like everything we’ve come to expect in this series, the scene unfolds slowly, naturally, never with a sting on the soundtrack to tell us someone’s about to get mad. It’s a scene so perfect in its construction that it has to be seen to be believed.

There’s one last scene at a table outside, where the film ends leaving us unsure about Celine and Jesse’s future. While we hoped at the end of both Before Sunrise and Before Sunset that they’d end up together, at the end of Before Midnight we’re concerned if they’re going to stay together. The third installment could have just done what had been done before. But Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke are smarter than that, and they’ve given us a third film in this gorgeous series that questions everything that has come before, and asks us to identify with the age-old wisdom, that love is hard. Jesse and Celine are perfect for each other, there’s no doubt about that, but even a love as true as this will hit some stumbling blocks along the way. And one of those big stumbling blocks is on display at the end of Before Midnight. This is an extraordinary film, an important film, one I look forward to watching again and again.

Watching Like a Writer: One of the many remarkable elements of the Before trilogy is the way dialogue between two people for long stretches of time is never boring but instead is always fascinating, even suspenseful at times. I'm okay at writing dialogue that sounds realistic, but I've often struggled with making long scenes of dialogue in my fiction remain compelling from beginning to end.

Exercise! Imagine you had to write a ten-page scene of dialogue between two people in a work of fiction. Who would the characters be, and what would they talk about? Leave your comments below, or in the Facebook group, Watching Like a Writer!

[brianroweauthor]

Watching Like a Writer: Alternative Valentine’s Day Movies

Watching Like a Writer is a movie review series that looks at films from the perspective of a fiction writer, complete with one writing takeaway, and an exercise that will help better your fiction! Each Wednesday I will look at the five best movies of a director, actor, genre, series, year in film, etc.

You've seen the scenario before: he wants to pretend like it’s any other day and throw an action flick into the DVD player, and she wants to play a double feature of the most romantic movies ever following a candlelit dinner at Café de le Paix. What’s a way to leave both members satisfied in this scenario? On Valentine’s Day, the best kind of movie to watch together is one of the more rare of genres: the action romance!

With Fifty Shades Darker opening this week, here are five alternative Valentine's Day movies worth watching...

5. Breakdown (1997)

Jonathan Mostow’s under-rated action gem is at the heart a love story, with everyman Kurt Russell on the hunt for his missing wife, played by Kathleen Quinlan. The film is pure suspense throughout.

4. Spider-Man 2 (2004)

The best of Sam Raimi’s trilogy has some of the most exciting action scenes of the previous decade, but what really makes the second installment memorable is that dizzyingly romantic finale.

3. True Romance (1993)

Someone once asked Quentin Tarantino if he’d ever make a love story, and he responded by saying he’d already made one—Tony Scott’s True Romance. The title is appropriate, with the thrilling, unpredictable action working as background to the center relationship between Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette.

2. True Lies (1994)

James Cameron has said that every movie that he has made is at the heart a love story, and that’s very true of this modern comedy action classic he wrote and directed three years before Titanic. Jamie Lee Curtis is as sexy as she is hilarious in the role of Helen, wife to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s spy protagonist.

1. North By Northwest (1959)

Alfred Hitchcock’s most accessible film, and certainly the most visually exciting of all his thrillers, North By Northwest, starring the charismatic Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint, is winning from beginning to end for both action movie buffs and romantics at heart.

Watching Like a Writer: Something Alfred Hitchcock loved to do was think of an exciting scenario that could take place in a well-known setting (think the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur and beneath the Golden Gate in Vertigo) and then figure out the circumstances surrounding it. It's absurd that North by Northwest's climax finds the two leads running across the faces of Mount Rushmore—and yet it works! This strategy of Hitchcock's, one of many of his that fascinate me, is something I'd love to try in one of my short stories or novels.

Exercise! Think of a famous setting that you'd love to use in an action sequence in your fiction. What would it be? Share your comments below, or in the Facebook group, Watching Like a Writer!

[brianroweauthor]

Watching Like a Writer: Hidden Figures (2016)

Watching Like a Writer is a movie review series that looks at films from the perspective of a fiction writer, complete with one writing takeaway, and an exercise that will help better your fiction! Each Monday I will look at a film currently in theatrical release.

Summary: "An incredible and inspiring untold true story about three women at NASA who were instrumental in one of history’s greatest operations – the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit." via Amazon

Review: One of my favorite movies I saw as a kid was Apollo 13. It was such an entertaining, inspiring movie, the kind that the whole family can watch and admire, the kind that Hollywood doesn't make a whole lot of anymore. Therefore, I was delighted by the new film Hidden Figures, which in every way feels like a throwback to the kind of movies Hollywood put out more often when I was younger. There's nothing technically ambitious about this movie, nothing incredible or noteworthy about the actual film-making. But in this case all that's needed for a great movie is this inspirational story and the fantastic ensemble of actors, everyone from Kevin Costner and Kirsten Dunst to Janelle Monae and Octavia Spencer, who received an Oscar nomination for her performance. But it's Taraji P. Henson who steals the movie, no doubt about it.

I heard Henson in an interview recently talking about how until this story came to light that she, like most others I'm assuming, had no idea that many women worked behind-the-scenes at NASA in the 1960s, let alone women of color. Maybe it's films like Apollo 13 that put certain images in my head, but I too assumed it was all white men who helped put astronauts into space. This film was a great eye-opener for me, one that actually upset me when I thought about all the years I spent taking history from elementary school to high school never with the mention of such important women as Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson. Better late than never as they say, this new film from director Theodore Melfi (St. Vincent) and based on the book by Margot Lee Shetterly.

The film tells of a group of African-American women in the early 1960s who helped provide NASA with important tasks needed to launch the various space missions, but the main focus is on three women in particular: Mary (Monae), Dorothy (Spencer), and Katherine (Henson). The women are friends, driving together to and from work, spending time with one another at birthday parties and summer gatherings, and they know how important it is collectively to bring change at their jobs, never buckling under pressure or leaving the other women of color behind. Dorothy and Mary hold important roles, but it's Katherine, a genius mathematician, who makes the biggest strides. Her intelligence regarding numbers gets her into a room with white men who feel uncomfortable around her, a room so far from the nearest bathroom for women of color that she has to run for miles just to relieve herself. But she stays the course and eventually works her way up to being one of the defining members of the NASA team that helped launch the late great John Glenn into space and safely brought him home.

I love films about strong women, about bright and funny women, and Hidden Figures is a gem of a movie in that regard. Director Melfi never lets his film slip into melodrama or get too caught up with these women thinking only about the men in their lives. There's a little romance with Katherine and a colonel named Jim (Mahershala Ali), but Katherine wisely puts him in his place when he initially balks at the idea that women work at NASA. She tells him off in a way only Katherine can, and it's the perfect way to get Jim to recognize how strong and self-sufficient she can be. It's what attracts him to her even more, and makes him in many ways become more attractive to Katherine later in the film.

Mostly Hidden Figures is interested in how smart these women are and how effectively they use their intelligence to bring about positive change to the world. Without the work of these three women, the history of space travel as we know it could have been a lot different, and I loved all the ways, big and small, the three protagonists take charge and offer new ideas and solutions to all the various problems the better-paid white men can't quite figure out. I love the way Dorothy stands up for herself when she's talked down to by her superior Vivian (Kirsten Dunst) and later when she demands that all the other women of color in her department be brought along with her to her next NASA position. I've heard reports of audience members applauding at screenings of this film, and it's easy to see why.

I enjoyed so much about Hidden Figures, but the element I loved most was the Taraji P. Henson performance. Spencer has been getting all the love at the awards ceremonies, and she brings her expected wit and humor to her role of Dorothy, but Henson is the real star of the film and she's the one that brings the film from being merely good to being great. I love all her tics, all her frustrations, her zest for life and for her work, her refusal to back down when the goings get tough. It's a brilliant and original performance that kept me smiling all the way through the film, and certainly the best work Henson has done to date. There's really nothing I didn't like about Hidden Figures. It's one of the great entertainments of the current Oscar season and it gets my highest recommendation.

Watching Like a Writer: Obviously my main takeaway from this film is the thinking that there must be many more true-life stories that surround events we know well that still have yet to be told. When it comes to the writing of fiction, I would be interested to examine a time in our history and shed light on a certain kind of person or people that maybe would not be automatically discussed in the same breath with the specific event or time period. I feel that there are endless possibilities for this kind of a story.

Exercise! Come up with a protagonist that would not necessarily seem to fit in a specific event or time in our history. Who would he or she be, and what would he or she be trying to achieve? Leave your comments below, or in the Facebook group, Watching Like a Writer!

[brianroweauthor]

Watching Like a Writer: Blackmail (1929)

Watching Like a Writer is a movie review series that looks at films from the perspective of a fiction writer, complete with one writing takeaway, and an exercise that will help better your fiction! Each Friday I will look at a classic film.

Summary: "Alice White, detective Frank Webber's girlfriend, is invited by an artist to visit his studio. The man tries to rape Alice and she kills him with a knife to defend herself. A criminal sees the murder and he keeps the lady's glove from the crime scene in order to blackmail her. Frank is assigned to the murder case." via Amazon

Review: Alfred Hitchcock is my all-time favorite director. Whenever I need some inspiration, all I have to do is re-visit some of his classics, and my imagination and excitement for storytelling gets brimming. My favorites for the master aren’t unusual by any means–I love Psycho, Rear Window, The Birds, Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest. I also have strong affection for his gothic melodramatic Rebecca, and an absolute gem of his, The Lady Vanishes.

Hitchcock’s first film was The Pleasure Garden, considered a strong debut on most parts, but it's unavailable on DVD. His second film, The Mountain Eagle, is the only Hitchcock feature to be 100% lost, without a single copy anywhere to be found (Hitchcock later told Francois Truffaut that he was happy about the film’s disappearance). I took a look at Hitchcock’s third feature, The Lodger, often considered his first Hitchcockian movie, but it didn’t leave me with much to get excited about. I found it rather slow and hard to watch, especially considering the crappy DVD transfer I watched of it.

In the next three years , Hitchcock would make seven, count them, seven features, the remaining of his silent films. Many of these are unavailable, but Easy Virtue I took a look at, and The Ring I enjoyed a lot. In 1929, Hitchcock would set out to make another silent, but, well into production, the producers decided that this new feature would be one of Britain’s first talkies, and Hitchcock had to rethink the production of the film. 1929 was essentially the awkward transition year from silent to sound films, and this would be Hitchcock’s first chance to tell a story through dialogue.

After looking at some of Hitchcock’s films of the 1920s, I have to say that Blackmail is the first of his films that I truly enjoyed, and the first one that shows off some notable Hitchcock flair. The best part of the movie is the first third, in which a woman named Alice ditches her detective husband to spend time with an interesting artist, who in return brings her back to his flat. They enjoy a lot of small talk back and forth, he plays the piano for her, and then he takes her to a back room… to have his way with her. She ends up killing him to defend herself, and later, her detective husband is assigned to the case to the solve the murder.

After the murder, the movie plays out like a fairly conventional thriller that could’ve been made by many other directors of the time. It’s the first thirty minutes that stand out the most and show Hitchcock at his very best. The pacing and structure leading up the murder is super effective and still works nearly ninety years later as a suspenseful scene. If somebody was flipping through the channels and came to this part of the film, he or she might think this could be a happy-go-lucky classic Warner Bros musical; the scene may be the first example of Hitchcock really playing the audience like a piano, making them think everything is fine with these two characters, and then leading them into some truly menacing horror. And brilliantly, the attempted rape is done off-screen behind some curtains. The end of the scene is so twisted because Alice, who up until now has been a cute and perky and seemingly innocent, walks out from behind a curtain, knife in hand, with a look of absolute madness on her face. Fantastic!

I enjoy many more of the early Hitchcock movies, but Blackmail is certainly one of the best. As someone who looks up to this man in every way, I’m pleased to see how soon Hitchcock was able to find his voice in cinema and then spend decade after decade perfecting it. Although it's not on the same level of the films he made in America, Blackmail is certainly worth checking out for Hitchcock buffs.

Watching Like a Writer: I've learned so much from Alfred Hitchcock over the years, both in the short films I've directed and in the fiction I've written. My first and foremost takeaway from Blackmail and most of the films he made is that the terror of a scene is not in the gunshot itself but in the anticipation of it, not the explosion that kills a group of characters but in the dread of having to wait for that explosion to go off. I've learned from Hitchcock that suspense is in the waiting.

Exercise! Write a scene of suspense that leads up to a shocking moment, one in which the reader knows what's to come but the main character or characters don't. Leave your thoughts below, or in the Facebook group, Watching Like a Writer!

[brianroweauthor]

Watching Like a Writer: Zombies

Watching Like a Writer is a movie review series that looks at films from the perspective of a fiction writer, complete with one writing takeaway, and an exercise that will help better your fiction! Each Wednesday I will look at the five best movies of a director, actor, genre, series, year in film, etc.

Zombie films have been scaring audiences for decades, starting with a low-budget black-and-white film by a young hungry filmmaker who changed the face of the genre forever. Cut to today, when year after year there is plenty of entertaining zombie entertainment. With Resident Evil: The Last Chapter now in theaters, let's take a look at the five best zombie movies ever made...

5. 28 Days Later (2003)

Danny Boyle does it all—unlike a lot of directors who get pigeonholed in genres and make the same movie over and over, Boyle has directed one unique film after another. His sole pure horror effort to date was the icky-to-look-at but mind-blowingly awesome modern zombie classic 28 Days Later, which features Cillian Murphy, Brendon Gleason, and—gasp!—running zombies.

4. Shaun of the Dead (2004)

This is one of the few movies that works both as a horror comedy and as a genuinely thrill-packed horror film, with lots of laughs in the first half, then a good amount of scares and gory kills in the second. Directed by the great Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), this tremendously entertaining film blends plenty of terror with a romantically charged story-line. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have never been better.

3. Zombieland (2009)

While it might be cheating to put a second horror comedy on the list and not a zombie horror film in the classic sense, it just doesn’t seem right to leave this awesome, energetic, perfectly cast movie off the list. Woody Harrelson is absolutely hilarious, Jesse Eisenberg is appropriately geeky and phobic, Emma Stone is as sarcastic as she is beautiful, and Bill Murray gives one of the best movie cameos ever!

2. Night of the Living Dead (1968)

The one. The only. This movie scared the hell out of audiences in 1968 just like Psycho did in 1960 and like The Exorcist would a few years later in 1973. While the whole movie is great scary fun, it’s the opening scene that always gets me the most, planting two friends in a cemetery who just so happen to come across a flesh-eating zombie. And the ending is perfection.

1. Dawn of the Dead (1978)

No zombie movie before or since has come close to this film’s ingenious blend of action, comedy, gore, satire on American consumerism, and overall epicness. It’s long, but it never drags, with one surprising scene after another. The zombies are awesome, the main characters are wonderfully varied and drawn, and the last thirty minutes pack a wallop. Dawn of the Dead will forever be George Romero’s masterpiece.

Watching Like a Writer: The biggest takeaway from Dawn of the Dead is how successful it is at blending gory horror entertainment with a satirical look at growing consumerism. When I write my horror fiction I'm of course free to write stories for purely entertainment value, but the horror that sticks with readers and film viewers is the kind that offers subtext, the kind that goes a step further and gives the writer a take-away beyond just having been through a roller-coaster-like thrill ride.

Exercise! Think of a horror story similar to Dawn of the Dead that could work as both entertainment and social commentary. Leave your comments below, or in the Facebook group, Watching Like a Writer!

[brianroweauthor]

Watching Like a Writer: Manchester By the Sea (2016)

Watching Like a Writer is a movie review series that looks at films from the perspective of a fiction writer, complete with one writing takeaway, and an exercise that will help better your fiction! Each Monday I will look at a film currently in theatrical release.

Summary: "Lee Chandler is a brooding, irritable loner who works as a handyman for a Boston apartment block. One damp winter day he gets a call summoning him to his hometown, north of the city. His brother's heart has given out suddenly, and he's been named guardian to his 16-year-old nephew." (via Amazon)

Review: This happens every year. There will be a film that's been lauded by critics and audiences for months, from one film festival to the next, from news and blogs and TV advertisements, to a showering of awards and award nominations all the way to the Oscars, only for me to finally check it out and be... disappointed. It happened last year with Room, the year before that with The Theory of Everything. They are movies I don't hate by any means, don't think are bad films, but they don't connect with me emotionally the way that the other critical darling heavyweights do. This year, that film is Manchester By the Sea, a film I admire, a film that I am glad I saw, but ultimately the slow nature to the storytelling and particularly the at-times clunky use of flashback prevented me from ever fully embracing what writer-director Kenneth Lonergan has to offer.

I loved both of Lonergan's previous films, even the much-delayed Margaret which went through years of hard times and editing struggles. Granted, I screened Margaret back in 2011 thinking it was going to be a narrative mess, while I looked at Manchester By the Sea and expected, after everything I've read going all the way back to the Sundance Film Festival in January 2016, something special, but still. It's kind of frustrating, isn't it? To not be able to watch every movie from a completely fresh and neutral perspective. Sometimes I wonder with all the movies I watch how much outside influence plays a role in my reaction to it. If I had seen Manchester By the Sea back at Sundance with no expectations, no knowledge of what it was or who was in it, would my reaction to it be different, even a little? It's hard to say.

Looking at Manchester By the Sea directly following the Academy Award nominations, in which it received a total of six, there's a tendency to watch Casey Affleck's performance a little too closely, question what it is about Lucas Hedges' performance that makes him a player this year, ask where the hell is Michelle Williams for long stretches of the film when I know she's being recognized, too. I'm usually able to come into every movie I watch with a blank slate, but Manchester By the Sea I struggled right from the first scene on to quiet that voice in my head telling me, "This is a great movie. An important movie. This is a great movie. Yes, a very important movie." And so on and so forth. The film doesn't have Oscar desperation written over it the way that something like The Theory of Everything does—this is a quiet, viciously sad study of grief and responsibility, one clearly made of the finest intentions—but in the end, I struggled to care about the characters in the film as much as I wanted to.

What I admired most about the film was its depiction of grief. It's something that takes many forms and often it can be sentimentalized or heightened in a film to a point that it stops feeling realistic. Casey Affleck's character of Lee is clearly going through the motions at the beginning of the movie, working as a janitor and spending long nights in bars where he can't even be a social with a pretty girl who shows interest in him. Even though we don't know his backstory yet, it's clear there's something in Lee's past that is haunting him, and Lonergan does a nice job of keeping the secrets hidden for a long time. And Affleck, who's the front-runner to win Best Actor this year at the Academy Awards, is incredibly effective throughout in never shedding that outer layer to show those close around him the demons he carries.

All the performances are solid in the film. Newcomer Lucas Hedges gives a completely natural and immediate performance as Lee's nephew, and Michelle Williams leaves a major impression, even though I wish she could have been in the movie more. Her much-discussed scene toward the end is appropriately hard to watch as she tells Lee how sorry she is for the way she acted, how sorry she is for what happened in their tragic past. The film has a terrific ensemble cast overall, including Matthew Broderick, Gretchen Mol, Heather Burns, and particularly Kyle Chandler, whose character appears in flashbacks. One of the most effective moments in the film is the scene in the hospital when his character Joe is told that he's suffering from a heart condition that will kill him in the next five to ten years, if not sooner.

Many of the scenes in Manchester of the Sea work, and I enjoyed the performances throughout, and I also really liked the way the town of Manchester becomes its own character by the end of the film. But I feel a movie like this lives or dies by how well it connects to the viewer emotionally, and as much as I wanted to get wrapped up in this story and feel for these characters, I always felt slightly distant from what was playing out on-screen, never as wholly engaged as I wanted to be. Many will like (and have liked) the film more than I did, and I certainly, as I've said, admire the hell out of it. I may give it another watch in a few years time, far away from the awards season bubble, but for now this film ultimately marks one of the few year-end disappointments.

Watching Like a Writer: Manchester by the Sea is all about grief, the way it manifests, the way it keeps people from growing and moving on, and it got me thinking about how grief plays a role in my fiction. Grief does not necessarily have to mean my main characters spend days weeping on end; it can come in many other forms, including having a character ignore his feelings entirely, or lash out at others in violent ways, or stay hidden from the rest of the world. There are so many ways to capture grief in a story.

Exercise! Write down three cliches of how a protagonist in a story would deal with the death of a close family member, and then write one original way that character could deal with his grief. Leave your comments below, or in the Facebook group, Watching Like a Writer!

[brianroweauthor]

Watching Like a Writer: 49 Up (2006)

Watching Like a Writer is a movie review series that looks at films from the perspective of a fiction writer, complete with one writing takeaway, and an exercise that will help better your fiction! Each Friday I will look at a classic film.

Summary: "Starting in 1964 with Seven Up, director Michael Apted has interviewed 14 children from diverse backgrounds from England, asking them about their lives and dreams. Every seven years, he has been back, examining the progression of their lives." (via Amazon)

Review: One of the most audacious experiments in cinema history, Michael Apted’s Up series has proven to be endlessly fascinating. Every seven years since 1964, Apted has interviewed willing participants from an original group of fourteen British children, and the viewer has been given the rare opportunity to watch their lives unfold. This series is about the closest thing to The Truman Show that has ever been made.

49 Up is a curious installment in the series, in that many of the members have finally found a sense of peace in their lives. With many having been through difficult marriages and divorces, and work-related hardships in earlier years of their lives, most have by now at 49 years of age settled down. While this makes for little in the way of surprises and good drama, their stories are still as compelling as ever. Take, for example, the stories of Lynn and Tony. Their stories are fairly simple, with little in the way of surprises. A genial young girl who loved reading and writing, she became a librarian by the time she was 21, and by the time she was 28, she had a husband and two daughters. At 49, she still works at a library. Tony wanted to become a horse jockey as a young child. Instead, he went on to become a cab driver, get married, and raise a family. At 49, he is still happily married and has a fulfilling life.

Neither of these stories seems that interesting on the surface, and if each individual were being interviewed for the very first time at 49 years old, little progress could be made in terms of really understanding these people. Having the footage of Lynn and Tony and others from age 7 onward allows for the viewer the rare perspective of seeing each individual’s journey and growing maturity that allows for even the most monotonous of lives to become interesting.

The series has not been without its truly mesmerizing subjects, with Neil proving to be the most unpredictable of the group. A cheerful and bright-eyed boy at 7, he went on to become lost and pessimistic at 21, homeless at 28, and a man filled with lost hope at 35. In 42 Up, he finally looked to be turning his life around, and in this newest installment, he seems to finally be at peace in a rewarding life that involves volunteer work and a seat on the local council board as a liberal democrat. His remarkable journey proves to be far more interesting than any fiction writer could’ve thought up.

Explored more in this installment than in any before is the very nature of what the film stands for and what it does to the participants’ private lives. One of the reluctant participants Jackie literally yells at director Apted for asking too many questions about her personal life, having been angered at the way her story has been twisted around through editing in previous installments. Another participant John, who has skipped out on both 28 Up and 42 Up, relates the series to any blasé reality show like Big Brother, bringing up the issue of whether or not the series has any value.

Relating the Up series to Big Brother is like putting Star Wars on the same level with Battlefield Earth. While Big Brother is only interested in the present, with effort being made to find drama in any circumstance and make people hate each other, the Up series only wants to capture the lives of ordinary people, for better or for worse. It wants to get to the heart of what people are all about, with the power to turn back time in any given moment a genuinely useful tool. Director Apted has said he will continue with the series as long as the stories never get boring and enough of the group continues to participate, but unfortunately, he's older than the participants and he's not going to live forever. No matter the future, the Up series has proven to be a real treasure in the history of documentary filmmaking and one that is worth seeing for anyone who has an interest in the human condition.

Watching Like a Writer: The Up series, which released the 56 installment in 2013, with feasibly a 63 installment coming in 2020, is one of my favorite uses of film, one that was never used especially well in fictional film until Richard Linklater's masterful 2014 feature Boyhood. I'm fascinated by how time changes lives, as I wrote a novel all about kids growing up over many years and falling in and out of love. It doesn't always make for great drama, to show people growing not through one major conflict in the present but through more minor conflicts over many years, but it's a fascinating narrative structure nonetheless.

Exercise! Think of a story about two characters that would take place over the course of fifty years. Who would the characters be? At the beginning of the story? At the end? Share your thoughts below, or in the Facebook group, Watching Like a Writer!

[brianroweauthor]

Watching Like a Writer: Video Games

Watching Like a Writer is a movie review series that looks at films from the perspective of a fiction writer, complete with one writing takeaway, and an exercise that will help better your fiction! Each Wednesday I will look at the five best movies of a director, actor, genre, series, year in film, etc.

With this coming weekend’s release of Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, it’s time to take a look at the best of the video game movies. This has to be one of the most difficult tasks in the history of movie lists. Looking at the sad line-up of movies based on video games in the last twenty years, there are only a handful that are barely tolerable, let alone any good. Shall it be called the Video Game Movie curse? There has been only one decent video game movie, and still it's not a very good one. But here are the best I could muster...

5. Super Mario Bros (1993)

The first film based on a video game, this one does everything wrong. From the banal plot, to the awkward pacing, to the bizarre creature effects, to the godawful special effects, this film fits in that so-bad-it’s-kind-of-enjoyable category. Probably the best thing about this film is the casting, but not even Dennis Hopper as the villain can save this mess. Still, though, there’s more accidental entertainment value to be had here than in films like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Alone in the Dark, Doom, Max Payne, Prince of Persia, and countless other video game adaptations!

4. Resident Evil (2002)

This long-running series definitely has its highs and lows, but the original  has the most genuine tension and suspense, as well as creepy atmosphere. While the second film, Apocalypse, deserves points for including more elements from the games, this first entry is the most successful as an overall movie. The rest that I've seen become all about the action, all about the drop-kicks and the gunfights. At least there's more going on in the 2002 original.

3. Street Fighter (1994)

This, like Super Mario Bros, is pretty rough stuff, but this piece of over-the-top craziness has something no other video game movie has—Raul Julia. He makes an otherwise confused, mediocre action film worth watching. Making his final film appearance (!), Julia plays the big bad named General Bison, and he upstages everyone else in the movie, including Jean-Claude Van Damme and pop singer Kylie Minogue, in one of her few (and mostly forgotten) film roles.

2. Mortal Kombat (1995)

Paul W.S. Anderson (the director of Resident Evil and many of its sequels), appears again here, in what is arguably, still, the best video game movie ever made. While it has nothing in terms of substance, the film moves at a brisk pace, featuring one awesome fight scene after another, and it captures the spirit of the game exceedingly well. Cameron Diaz was meant to follow up her role in The Mask with this film as Sonya Blade but had the pull out due to a broken wrist—now that could’ve been interesting.

1. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007)

Is this cheating? It might be, but a great film based in the world of video games should appear somewhere on this list, and this documentary is nothing short of excellent. Directed by Seth Gordon, who went on to direct Four Christmases and Horrible Bosses, the film takes the viewer into the lives of diehard video game players competing to set the world record score on Donkey Kong. This is one of the most thrilling, entertaining, and uplifting documentaries of the last decade. See it!

Watching Like a Writer: This list overall makes me think about how I'd adapt a video game I love into a piece of fiction. My favorite game growing up was Donkey Kong Country, and I'm not sure what the hell I could ever do with that. But what about my second favorite, the Mega Man series? As absurd it would be, I'd love to take a crack at a short story about that small heroic figure.

Exercise! Pitch an adaptation of your favorite video game in one or two sentences. What would be the storyline? What would be the conflict? Share your thoughts below, or in the Facebook group, Watching Like a Writer!

[brianroweauthor]

Watching Like a Writer: Fences (2016)

Watching Like a Writer is a movie review series that looks at films from the perspective of a fiction writer, complete with one writing takeaway, and an exercise that will help better your fiction! Each Monday I will look at a film currently in theatrical release.

Summary: "Fences is directed by Denzel Washington from a screenplay by August Wilson, adapted from Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play." (via Amazon)

Review: I went and looked at Mike Nichols' debut film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? last year for its fiftieth anniversary, not having seen it since I was in high school, and I was floored by how immediate, how tense, how alive the whole enterprise feels from beginning to end... especially for a film released in the mid-1960s, and particularly since it's based on a play. Stage plays can have terrific adaptations for the screen, and I've liked or loved most of them I've seen. Glengarry Glen Ross, Closer, Frost / Nixon, Rabbit Hole. I would say my favorites are the ones that don't necessarily feel like plays, that feel like a handful of characters barking lines at each other in one space for ninety minutes, but as a cinematic experience that just so happens to feature lots of dialogue in a few specific spaces. I watch Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and don't think stage play, I think great movie. August: Osage County I still have my problems with, but at least director John Wells opens up the space to allow his actors to roam and not be shoved down against any one table or room.

As much as I enjoyed the newest film based on a stage play, Fences, directed by Denzel Washington, and starring Washington and Davis in the lead role, I found myself in this one especially aware that I was watching a movie that originated as a play. Washington wisely opens on a scene that opens up the world of his character's neighborhood, showing him as a sanitary worker going about his daily routine, trying to find happiness in a staid existence. But then we arrive at his home and enter his backyard, his wife greets him with a kiss, we have a long scene of dialogue out back as the sun starts going down, and I start thinking, play. This isn't a major criticism of the film, as there's lots to love and certainly moments of power in its (overlong) two-hour-and-fifteen-minute running time. But I do feel director Washington could have opened this movie up more, showed us more of the town, gone out of his way occasionally to give us a more cinematic experience.

The film takes place in Pittsburgh in the 1950s, where Troy (Washington) is trying to make the best life he can for his wife Rose (Davis) and his teenage son Cory (a terrific Jovan Adepo). He believes in hard work and not allowing Cory or his adult son Lyons (Russell Hornsby) to skate by on laziness or on something as improbable as a football scholarship. When Cory begs his father to let him play football, Troy demands that he keep his job or he'll personally go to the school and drop him from the team. We find out that Troy himself had a shot at a sports career but it didn't pan out for him and so he's likely taking his anger out on his son. More anger arises when Lyons wants to borrow money from his father, wants him to believe in his career as a musician. Troy can't believe he has boys who don't want a trade job, something that can put food on the table and support a family, and he doesn't think Rose helps when she coddles the boys and never stops believing in them. Rose loves her husband and has always loved him, but that love is put to the test when Troy reveals something that even she may not be able to forgive.

Fences is most powerful when tensions arise and strong actors go up each against other like lions in a cage. The earlier moments of Troy going on and on about his wisdom and life lessons can feel too preachy, but when the big gasp-worthy twist is revealed about an hour into the movie, the pacing quickens and the film finally finds a good rhythm. Washington has been a consistently great actor going back thirty years, but only occasionally lately does he take a challenging role on film, and his performance in Fences marks probably his best work of the last ten years. He allows himself to be an ass, a jerk, someone with mental demons that have in no way diminished over the years. His character talks a bit too much at times, to the point where, again, I was noticing the stage play aspects of this material, but he has astonishing moments of sadness and regret toward the end that I won't soon forget.

The star of this film though, no matter what anyone may say, is Viola Davis. I have been in awe of her ever since that one earth-shattering scene she shared with Meryl Streep in Doubt, and I and most of the world I think have been big fans of hers ever since. I loved her in The Help, and I watch How To Get Away With Murder religiously despite how silly it gets every season, because Davis is one of those rare actors who is always fascinating to watch. Even if she's not talking. Even if all she does in a scene is give another character a telling glance. And even when she's in the background in Fences, Troy mouthing off another story to his buddy as she looks on, she's the one I'm interested in most. Here's a character that's been married for eighteen years to a borderline abusive personality and she's taken it, lived with it, never questioned it, tried to find peace inside herself with that decision she made all that time ago. When she learns of something her husband did and finally breaks down, unable to hold in her emotion any longer, Davis delivers one of the most fiery and honest powerhouse acting moments I've seen in a film all year. I struggle with her designation as Supporting Actress in the awards talk this year—she is the Lead Actress in this in every shape and form—but if Supporting Actress finally gives Davis her overdue gold statue, color me one happy man.

Fences is a terrific film well-worth seeing. Despite my misgivings with the staginess of some of the scenes—that backyard set not only gets tiresome after two hours, but it actually looks like a set at times, especially when Washington refuses to do much with the camera but simply point it at the actors—the talent level of the actors and the terrific dialogue and the not one but two big twists in the movie make this a great watch. It's not one of the year-end movies I'd necessarily want to revisit anytime soon like Moonlight and La La Land, but I will never forget Davis's performance in this. Even when she's not crying, even when she's not even talking, she is a marvel to behold.

Watching Like a Writer: Fences made me think about how to write a short story or novel that features many, many scenes of dialogue in the same setting. At least half of the scenes in Fences take place in the tiny backyard of Troy's house, where he muses about life, gets in fights with his son, goes off on his wife when she doesn't support him. If I were to write a series of scenes in one setting, how would I keep it fresh and interesting? How would I make sure the reader doesn't ever get claustrophobic?

Exercise! Think of a short story idea that takes place entirely in the main character's backyard. Who would the protagonist be? What would happen in this specific setting? Share your thoughts below, or in the Facebook group, Watching Like a Writer!

[brianroweauthor]

Watching Like a Writer: Jackie (2016)

Watching Like a Writer is a movie review series that looks at films from the perspective of a fiction writer, complete with one writing takeaway, and an exercise that will help better your fiction! Each Monday I will look at a film currently in theatrical release.

Summary: "Natalie Portman stars in this powerfully stirring drama as First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, whose faith and strength see her through the death of President John F. Kennedy." (via Amazon)

Review: Pablo Larrain's Jackie is a work of hypnotizing, unsentimental brilliance, a film so raw in its power that at times it's a truly difficult watch. We all know what happened that day in November 1963, and we've seen the Zapruder film, and we've seen Oliver Stone's JFK, and we've seen all the other feature films and documentaries made about one of the nation's worst tragedies. It's a moment in time that's so overly familiar, even to someone like me who was born long after it happened. And yet director Lorrain and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim manage to take us back to that moment and the fraught-filled days afterward in a completely new and thought-provoking way. By giving us the story from Jackie Kennedy's point of view, we see these horrific events in a whole new light.

The film does not have a typical narrative structure that opens with the assassination and leads us into the aftermath, or a structure that adds unnecessary tension by taking us through the many events of Jackie's day before we get the assassination scene. There's a little of that, Jackie putting on the classic pink outfit, her walking off the plane and waving to the people of Dallas, but the beauty of Jackie is ultimately its lack of and complete aversion to a typical structure. The film is an editing marvel, one that delicately and masterfully switches to different points in time, sometimes Jackie's famous on-camera tour of the white house, sometimes the horrific minutes directly following the assassination, sometimes the brutally honest sit-down she had with a journalist a week after the tragedy. The movie constantly bounces around in time and in tones, and instead of it disorienting the viewer, it keeps bringing out more and more complexity to the Jackie character.

This is a film that lives or dies by its lead performance, there's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. With the wrong actress, with a lackluster actress, this material fails even before it gets going. Natalie Portman has been one of my favorites for a long time, and it's always a thrill when she gets a great part on film. She won the Best Actress Oscar for her chilling and brave performance in the fantastic Black Swan, one of my three favorite films of 2010, but in the last six years I've noticed the lack of both quality and content in the films she's appeared in. She was fine in the Thor movies, and I was happy to hear she wrote and directed a film (A Tale of Love and Darkness, which I still need to see), but for the most part it's been a dry spell for Portman since her magnificent performance in Black Swan.

Well, the six-year dry spell is over. Her performance as Jackie is a wonder to behold. She's in nearly every frame of the film and she brings grace and energy and unfiltered emotion to her truly striking performance. At first it was hard to forget I was looking at Natalie Portman playing Jackie Kennedy. It does take a good ten or fifteen minutes for the full illusion to take shape. But when it does, and her voice and her gestures and her aura become Jackie's, the movie takes off and stays compelling to the final scene. Portman makes Jackie Kennedy a three-dimensional human being, someone deeply devastated by the loss of her husband, which is expected, but she's also at times difficult and unlikable, which was unexpected. A moment when she yells at Bobby Kennedy for keeping secrets from her is startling because it doesn't show her in an angelic light, but these kind of vitriolic moments are necessary to paint her as a real person, one with ideas and disagreements for how her husband's funeral service should be handled.

Beyond Portman's incredible performance, I was also taken by the wondrous cinematography and haunting musical score, as well as the aforementioned skillful editing. The look of the film is absolutely gorgeous, the camera often tracking poor Jackie from room to room of the White House, John's blood still on her clothes. From the darkness and smoke in the interview sections, to the brightness and lushness in happier times, to the way the film mixes real stock footage with the fictionalized dramatization, the cinematography by Stephane Fontaine is marvelous. I also loved the subtle but memorable score by Mica Levi, which never tells the viewer what to think and infuses the film with a sense of tension and sadness. And the editing by Sebastian Sepulveda is something special. This film could have played out with the exact same footage in a rudimentary way, the kind we'd come to expect, but the film is put together in such a manner that the narrative structure itself keeps me thinking about the finished film long since having watched it.

Jackie has strong supporting performances all around, from Peter Sarsgaard (in a Garden State reunion!) as Bobby Kennedy, an unrecognizable Greta Gerwig as Nancy Tuckerman, Billy Crudup as the Journalist, John Hurt as the Priest, and Caspar Phillipson, who looks almost identical to the real John F. Kennedy. Larrain has taken great care in all elements of this film, from his cast, to the cinematography, to the editing, to the music, and lots more, but the best choice he made was Natalie Portman. She is the reason the film works, and she is the reason that you should drop whatever you're doing and go see this fine film. It's easily one of the year's ten best.

Watching Like a Writer: When I think about Jackie in relation to my fiction, I think about how I would tackle writing about a real-life event that's familiar, that everyone knows about, in a way that was different and looked at the event from a different side, a different point-of-view. Jackie works beautifully, but it also could have gone wrong in so many ways, sentimentalizing the event, or giving us the familiar, and especially in fiction, one needs to be careful when dealing with a tragedy everyone knows well and has strong feelings about.

Exercise! Think about the JFK assassination specifically. What kind of story would you like to tell or would like to see told about that day that hasn't yet been written? Share your thoughts below, or in the Facebook group, Watching Like a Writer!

[brianroweauthor]

Watching Like a Writer: Grand Illusion (1938)

Watching Like a Writer is a movie review series that looks at films from the perspective of a fiction writer, complete with one writing takeaway, and an exercise that will help better your fiction! Each Friday I will look at a classic film.

Summary: "During the First World War, two French soldiers are captured and imprisoned in a German POW camp. Several escape attempts follow until they are sent to a seemingly impenetrable fortress which seems impossible to escape from." (via Amazon)

Review: The Criterion Collection is a gold mine for movie lovers. It’s not just great movies on DVD and Blu Ray; this is serious business, with extraordinary films featuring stunning high-definition transfers and endless supplements that shine all sorts of new light on the filmmakers, actors, and the movie’s overall impact on cinema and pop culture. Criterion started releasing DVDs in 1998 and has currently over 800 titles in print.

In 1984 the Voyager Company and Janus Films established the Criterion Collection concentrating upon the North American home video market to sell important classic and contemporary films to cinemaphiles. The movies were published to the laserdisc format until 1998, when the DVD craze took over laserdiscs. The first two Criterion Collection laserdiscs were Citizen Kane and King Kong, the latter of which featured the first audio commentary ever recorded.

Grand Illusion, the talky but genius anti-war masterpiece directed by Jean Renoir (The Rules of the Game) that Woody Allen has called the greatest movie ever made, has the distinction of being the first Criterion Collection DVD. Released in 1998 in a one-disc edition, it has since gone out of print and has not been re-issued. While it was the first Criterion DVD, it was the twenty-fifth to be released on laserdisc. Released in 1987, the laserdisc featured an audio commentary by Peter Crowie and sold for an astounding list price of $89.95. Today it sells for even more than that for a brand new DVD, but cheaper in some places for used.

The acclaimed film, starring Jean Gabin and Pierre Fresnay as French soliders held in a World War I German prison camp, and Erich von Stroheim (Sunset Boulevard) as Captain von Rauffenstein. This prison escape film doesn’t play out like later similar genre films like The Great Escape and The Shawshank Redemption. It’s a mesmerizing and honest film that examines the relationships between different social classes in Europe, as well as the notion that war doesn’t accomplish anything. It has tremendous scenes of power, particularly in its third act in which the two leads seek shelter after their successful escape.

Grand Illusion was released in 1938 to great acclaim, becoming the first foreign language film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. It also won the awards for Best Foreign Film at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards and the National Board of Review. However, the Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels declared the movie Cinematic Public Enemy No. 1 (!) and ordered all prints to be confiscated and destroyed. For many years, the original nitrate negative was thought to have been lost, but it was rediscovered in the early 1990’s at the French Film Archives at Bois d’Arcy and was finally restored and released on the now out-of-print inaugural DVD of the Criterion Collection.

The film can be purchased in a cheaper (and also out-of-print) Essential Art House edition, but the extra money for the original DVD release is worth it for all the bonus features. The informative audio commentary by film historian Peter Cowie has been transferred from the original laserdisc release, but new to the DVD include the previously mentioned brand new digital transfer, a rare theatrical trailer featuring director Renoir, an archival radio presentation featuring Renoir and von Stroheim, press book excerpts, and a restoration demonstration.

Watching Like a Writer: Grand Illusion makes me think about how to write about war in my fiction. I've seen my fair share of war films over the years, but I have only read a handful of great war novels—All Quiet on the Western Front and The Red Badge of Courage come to mind—and I remember the most horrifying moments are the quiet ones, where the author manages to say a lot with so little. Restraint comes to mind as a great way to write fiction about war, if I ever get around to writing a short story or a novel on this subject.

Exercise! Write a few hundred words of fiction about war. Then go back a day later and look over the scene. What works well and what doesn't? Leave your comments below, or in the Facebook group, Watching Like a Writer!

[brianroweauthor]

Watching Like a Writer: Werewolves

Watching Like a Writer is a movie review series that looks at films from the perspective of a fiction writer, complete with one writing takeaway, and an exercise that will help better your fiction! Each Wednesday I will look at the five best movies of a director, actor, genre, series, year in film, etc.

While werewolves are as widely known, beloved, and discussed in popular culture as vampires and zombies, there aren’t nearly as many successful films about the howling creature. Vampires have Dracula and Buffy, and zombies have the Night of the Living Dead series, but werewolves have little more than a Lon Chaney classic and an '80s comedy horror masterpiece. And no, Jacob Black doesn’t count! With Underworld: Blood Wars currently in theaters, it's time to take a look at the five best werewolf movies...

5. Silver Bullet (1985)

It’s not one of the better known Stephen King adaptations; this one might rank with the B-grade The Mangler and Graveyard Shift as movies people are aware of. One of his few adaptations that King wrote the screenplay for himself, this (unintentionally?) funny film, about a handicapped boy who assumes a mad killer on the loose isn’t a person at all but a werewolf, stars Gary Busey, Lost’s Terry O’Quinn, and a young Corey Haim.

4. The Howling (1981)

Director pals Joe Dante and John Landis, who would both team up to direct segments of the Twilight Zone movie, made werewolf movies around the same time, and Dante’s came first, this supremely entertaining film starring Dee Wallace. The movie, which inspired an endless series of direct-to-video sequels, and was written by accomplished writer/director John Sayles, has impressive scares, performances, and special effects make-up.

3. Ginger Snaps (2000)

This is one of those movies that come out of nowhere to scare the living bejeezus out of its viewers. Released straight-to-video in the US in 2001, this film has developed a cult following over the last decade. Shot on a tight budget, and featuring mostly unknown actors, this gothic rollercoaster ride that presents werewolf transformations as a metaphor for puberty starts slow and careens toward a bloody, shocking ending.

2. The Wolf Man (1941)

She-Wolf of London and Werewolf of London are two entertaining werewolf classics, but no older film comes close to the joys and timelessness of Universal Pictures’ The Wolf Man, starring the great Lon Chaney, Jr. When people think of werewolf movies, this is probably the one that most often comes to mind, as it’s one of the most famous and certainly the most iconic. It’s also a ton of fun.

1. An American Werewolf in London (1981)

While it might be difficult to pick a favorite in other best-of movie lists, the top choice here is far and away the best werewolf movie out there. This is the one that gets everything right, with a near-perfect mix of comedy, horror, romance, and surprises. The acting is top-notch, the song choices are unique and memorable, and Rick Baker’s Oscar-winning make-up is a wonder to behold. This is a must-see horror gem.

Watching Like a Writer: John Landis' fantastic An American Werewolf in London makes me think about how to blend comedy with horror in my fiction. My Grisly High trilogy, which I wrote in 2011 and 2012, blended moments of silliness and hilarity with moments of sheer terror, and I feel like I pulled off this difficult mix maybe fifty percent of the time. If horror fiction becomes too silly, it's impossible to then later make that same story scary, and so there needs to be a delicate balance between comedy and terror in a work of horror fiction.

Exercise! Think of your favorite horror novel or short story that had moments of comedy to help alleviate the tension. How was the comedy added effectively? Leave your comments below, or in the Facebook group, Watching Like a Writer!

[brianroweauthor]

Watching Like a Writer: La La Land (2016)

Watching Like a Writer is a movie review series that looks at films from the perspective of a fiction writer, complete with one writing takeaway, and an exercise that will help better your fiction! Each Monday I will look at a film currently in theatrical release.

Summary: "Mia (Emma Stone), an aspiring actress, and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), a jazz musician, are struggling to make ends meet in a city known for crushing hopes and breaking hearts." (via Amazon)

Review: La La Land is unlike any movie that's come out this year, or last year; not since director Damien Chazelle's own Whiplash in 2014 have I seen a film that so beautifully depicts both the wonder of great music and the desire to go after a dream no matter how improbable or illogical it may be. My favorite film of 2014 indeed was Whiplash, Chazelle's absorbing and ridiculously entertaining debut feature. I loved it so much and couldn't wait to see what he'd do next. When I heard his follow-up was going to be a musical starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, not to mention a film that he had been trying to get off the ground before he even made Whiplash, told me this was going to be a passion project that he'd put every last bit of his great talent into. Although I didn't love La La Land as much as I adore Whiplash—the film has a few pacing problems, with a short lull in the middle—it's for the most part a winning and grand time at the movies.

You know you're in good hand with a filmmaker who makes the bold choice to open his musical with people dancing on the hoods of their cars in busy L.A. traffic. The opening number of La La Land marks one of the best scenes of the movie, perfectly setting up the tone and the surrealistic nature of the film that is to come. Although much of La La Land is set in reality, Chazelle gleefully goes into the occasional flights of fancy and extended dance numbers that give the film a fabulous dream-like quality that always keeps you guessing as to what's going to happen next. One of the best of the musical numbers is actually the most simple, just Ryan Gosling's character of Sebastian and Emma Stone's character of Mia having a long walk up an L.A. canyon that results in the two breaking out into a delightful little dance number, all done in one single shot (the way dance numbers used to be captured in the musicals of old—think Singin' in the Rain).

La La Land is a lot more than a bubbly musical, however. Telling the story of two aspiring artists—Mia, a wannabe actress; and Sebastian, a budding musician—the film goes into both the light and the dark of trying to make a career in the toughest of businesses. Chazelle always treats the ups and downs of these lofty pursuits with the utmost sense of reality, never making their lucky breaks feel too easy and unearned. Mia goes through endless rejection to get where she is at the end of the movie, always one step away from something great until she's told the inevitable no and better luck next time. At one point she chooses to finally give up and move back home with her parents, maybe go back to school and look for something else, and this part of the movie hit me so hard I struggled to separate Mia from myself. Chazelle taps into the sad epidemic that happens to so many—those who choose to go after a big dream and then, after many years and no luck or opportunities, finally say good-bye to that dream and pursue something else—and he captures it better here than I've ever seen in any other movie on a similar subject.

The film ultimately balances the seriousness of its characters' dreams and failures and successes with the giddiness of the movie musical near perfectly. He never lets the fantastic musical numbers detract from the main compelling story of following these two people on their journeys. Chazelle obviously has a passion for jazz, since it's featured in both this film and in Whiplash, and he does a great job showing how far Sebastian will go to find his own happiness. Even better is Mia's storyline as she goes on audition after audition to find that big break. A lot of the comedy in the film comes from these pathetic auditions, where Mia practices her lines for hours only to be told to stop after five seconds in the audition room (I worked in casting for two years in L.A., and let me tell you, we always let each actor do the entire scene, we were professionals!). She hits one roadblock after another, even putting her own money into and performing her one-woman show, only to have about a dozen people show up and give her a big thumbs-down. All these scenes of their struggles, both in their careers and in their romantic relationship, smack of realism even when the musical numbers provide a relief from reality.

Chazelle cast the two perfect actors for his leads, particularly Stone. Gosling is great in everything he does, able to exude menace in something like Drive and also able to be charming and lovable in something like this. He's not only one of the most handsome actors in Hollywood; he's able to adapt to nearly any genre imaginable, and he's terrific in this. Stone is the real breakthrough here though. In what is easily my favorite performance of hers to date, she gives Mia the right amount of aw-shucks cuteness and unflinching passion to succeed. She's beautiful and funny, all that we've come to expect from Stone, but she presses deeper here that she has before, as her character tries to come to terms with failure both in her career and in her once-promising relationship with Sebastian. Her last-ditch effort to make a name for herself, an audition where the casting director asks her to tell her a story, is my favorite scene of the movie, one in which Stone breaks into song in such a glorious, truthful way that I was eventually brought to tears. This scene offers the film's greatest magic.

And then there's that perfect ending, one that took me by surprise. I kept hearing that La La Land's opening and closing sequences are its best, and while I wouldn't agree with that completely, I agree that the ending sequence is about as perfect as it can be, those subtle looks Mia and Sebastian give each other at the jazz club, that wonderful final musical number that showcases all that could have been. I do feel that La La Land, at more than two hours, is maybe twenty minutes too long. Whiplash just flies by, never a wasted scene or moment, but I did notice the occasional lull in La La Land, a scene here or there that would slow the proceedings down. I think there's a perfect 105-minute version of this movie somewhere. But for the most part, I fell in love with this movie. It's funny and true, sad at times but also optimistic, in a time when we need the most optimism we can get. With La La Land, Damien Chazelle proves he's a real-deal filmmaker, and although I still prefer his powerhouse Whiplash, La La Land is a worthy, dazzling follow-up.

Watching Like a Writer: La La Land made me think about how well the city of Los Angeles is captured on-screen. Having lived there for eight years, I remember its lows but also its many highs, the places I loved to visit and that I still miss to this day. So often the city looks awful in movies and ridiculed in many ways by filmmakers. This love letter to the city by Chazelle made me think about how I could showcase Los Angeles in a future story or novel and not turn it into the nasty caricature it so often is in the movies.

Exercise! Think of a story idea that would take place in Los Angeles. Who would the protagonist be? And how would you capture the city in your narrative? Share your thoughts below, or in the Facebook group, Watching Like a Writer!