Movie Review: Split

This week's movie is Split, and just the trailer got me very interested. How the mind works and different possibilities has always been an interesting topic for me as long time readers might know. I enjoy checking out movies that give a focus to these ideas. For some added fun this one is a thriller, so hear are my thoughts on if it lived up to the hype.

The movie starts with what looks like the end of a birthday party and a girl, Casey Cooke (played by Anya Taylor-Joy), sitting at the table but looking alone. Next we see two other girls, the birthday girl Claire (played by Haley Lu Richardson) and her best friend Marcia (played by Jessica Sula), talking to Claire's father (played by Sebastain Arcelus) about how this happens when you give a pity invite. They are talking about Casey who is standing alone by a window on the phone. She walks over and explains that her ride broke down and will not be coming and she will just take the bus. Claire's dad says he will give her a ride home.

We follow them out to the car where they start loading up all of Claire's gifts into the trunk. Clair's dad keeps loading them while the girls get in the car. While the other two girls talk in the back, Casey watches in the mirror for Clair's dad. When she hears the trunk close, they all put on their seatbelts, but Casey stopped when she noticed some of the stuff spilled on the ground instead of being in the trunk. A man, who we find out later is named Kevin (played by James McAvoy), gets in the driver seat in place of Clair's dad. The girls in the back say he got in the wrong car, and he puts on a mask and sprays them with something, knocking them out. Casey, who hasn't been noticed yet, tries to slowly escape, but when the door opens it makes noise in the car, and she gets sprayed too.

The acting was extremely well done by James McAvoy. The way he had to play multiple characters in one body was crazy, and he played them all perfectly. The acting by Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula wasn't quite as good, but they were only having to portray one character. The characters of Claire and Marcia were almost stereotypical of rich privileged girls with little understanding of anything else. This is probably what they were suppose to be like to enhance everything James McAvoy had to do and the subtle acting of Anya, but it dragged the movie down a little as well. 

The story plot was slightly confusing at times, only because of a lot of back and forth scenes. I understand having some of them there helped with the building suspense, but a few flashback scenes just didn't tie into the story as well. It may have been to add to character development, but more seemed added in to make it be longer and took away from the build up. However, it had a great theory behind the whole thing and what makes it even more chilling is how possible it really is. I did a little reading on real Dissociative Identity Disorder's (DID) and it was interesting. You can check out these ten famous cases here.

Overall, the acting could have been better from some people, and the story plot could have had some things cut out as far as I could see. It was still a very well made movie, and really did make for a great thriller movie. For these reasons above I would rate this movie 8.6/10.

Movie Review: Passengers

I hope you had a happy holidays over the past few weeks. What a wonderful time of year for everyone. But what would you do if it was just you and one other person alone in space? How would you celebrate? This weeks movie touches on that subject and more. I have been waiting to see this movie since I saw the first trailer. I would have done this review last week, but I decided against working during the holidays. Here are my thoughts on if it is actually as good as it appeared to be.

The movie starts with a shot of space then the space ship flies through. We have an empty and nearly soundless tour around the ship, when we reach the main control center. A system error shows up on screen, and it fixes it right away. An asteroid field shows up on screen and the ship is shown diverting power to the shield. Its scanner shows a very big asteroid in the field, but the shield breaks it into small pieces flying away in all directions. One of them hits the ship, which then fixes all but one error; a hibernation pod.

This wakes up Jim Preston (played by Chris Pratt), one of the 5000 passengers aboard. He goes through some things to help wake him up, then sends him to his room for rest. After resting, he wanders around, noticing nobody else is awake. After finding no other person in any area, he finally finds someone behind the bar on the first floor. The bartender Arthur (played by Michael Sheen) notices Jim and offers a drink of whisky. Jim sits down and, now realising Arthur is an android, says that his pod malfunctioned and he's the only one awake.

The storyline was slow moving at first. Now I understand needing to show the length of time of loneliness but I am thinking it got to be a little too much before we had something mildly interesting happen. Almost like a drawn out adult version of the first alone part of Home Alone. When we introduced Jennifer Lawrence as Aurora Lane into the mix it gets a little more interesting but still takes a while before getting into the meat of the movie. When it does pick up though it is good and keeps you on your toes.

The acting was way more real than I was expecting. The way Chris Pratt displayed the loneliness in the ship was almost exactly how someone would react. And when Jennifer Lawrence came onto screen, she made it feel like we were really watching her struggle and more. So what I am saying is the acting is not the reason the movie felt so long and drawn out in the beginning. Without the great acting I think the movie would have been really hard to watch, instead they kept our interest when the story lagged in everything else. I do not think they were as good as Matt Damon in The Martian, but I still really enjoyed what they brought to this movie.

Overall, it started out pretty slow, but with the acting being so good, it almost doesn't matter. And with the amazing graphics all around, you would almost believe this were a real space trip. So for all the reasons stated above I would rate this movie 7.9/10.