Movie Review: Big Hero Six

Robots. Robots. Roooooobooooooooooots. Pictured above: Best Robot.

Big Hero Six is about a young genius named Hiro who lives in the American/Japanese hybrid city of San Fransokyo with his aunt and his brother Tadashi. When Tadashi is killed in a fire, Hiro, with the help of Tadashi’s robot prototype Baymax, has to deal with his loss by tracking down the man responsible.

I hate to start a positive review with a negative, but like a lot of Marvel superhero movies lately, the plot of Big Hero Six is not particularly important to the movie we ended up watching. Luckily, the story that is there does actually tie in enough to the emotional center of the movie that we actually care about enough not to feel like a distraction, but I am getting frustrated with this direction.

The core of the movie is Hiro’s attempt to deal with the loss of his brother, and his relationship with Baymax, a healing robot that his brother was working on building at the time he died. The story of a boy dealing with loss is well executed, and a strong foundation for the most important thing in the movie: that Baymax is so freaking cute.

Baymax is so cute. Baymax is cuter than Wall-E. Baymax is cuter than most earthly puppies. Baymax is the best thing ever, and the movie gives the audience the right amount of him: a LOT of him. I honestly can’t say how much I liked this character, and the best part about it is that the cute animated character who will be on t-shirts for years to come is not only a relevant, but an important part of the themes and emotional arc of the movie. Good job, everyone involved in the creation of this character. My heart hurts now.

The emotional plot of the movie and the Baymax-existence of the movie are almost too well done for the superhero origin story that’s also in the plot. The superhero origin story isn’t poorly executed, but is enough less interesting than the other elements that I almost wish the film hadn’t tried to force it in there at all. When it does serve to further the story of Hiro and Baymax, it works very well, but other times it just distracted from the other, more interesting movie happening in the background.

As someone who was rather on the fence about Wreck It Ralph and really didn’t get anything from Frozen, I still wouldn’t call Big Hero Six a grand return to quality Disney animation. The visuals are really interesting, and what I liked I loved, but the plot is too hollow to make this a really fantastic film. It will, however, make you smile a lot, and looking at that robot, aren’t you smiling already?

Movie Review: Gone Girl

Gone Girl Review. Oh, Gone Girl Review. I have seen Gone Girl, and now I am going to review it. I will stand up (and sit at my computer), stop groaning, and review a movie I watched and that movie is Gone Girl.

What is it that has left me so uninspired to review Gone Girl? I liked the damn movie. It was a good movie. Is it that the movie has been in wide release for over a month now, leaving me with very few new things to say about it that have not been said before? Is it that no one will want to read a Gone Girl review, since at this point most people have probably seen it? Is it that, since I finished the novel Gone Girl six days before I saw the movie, I now just want a few days of a peaceful, Gone Girl-less existence? Anyway URGHHHHHHHere we go:

Gone Girl is about a writer named Nick Dunne who was laid off during the recession, and two years ago moved back to his hometown in Missouri to take care of his dying mother with his wife, Amy. On the morning of Nick and Amy’s fifth anniversary, Nick comes home to find his front door open, his living room torn apart, and his wife missing. I will say no more, since that will bring me into spoiler territory, but needless to say: shit. goes. crazy.

Gone Girl, in both book and movie form, has a lot of things to say about stuff. Stuff like what marriage means in a modern context, the current ideals and expectations in heterosexual relationships, the meaning of money post-recession, gender stuff, the way the media affects how we view crimes, the way human relationships have been affected by post-modernism, and how the people we aspire to be in a social context conflict with the people we actually are. That is a lot of stuff, and I didn’t list it all just to get the wordcount up. Gone Girl is a big story with a lot of ideas in it, and the movie mainly preserves the biggest draw of it: the fact that it is filled with ABSOLUTELY INSANE PLOT TWISTS THAT I WILL NOT SPOIL FOR YOU BUT OH MY GOD THEY’RE SUCH A JOY TO READ. 

Some of the themes of the book are addressed, but the film doesn’t really have the time to go into the amount of depth that some of the concepts deserve. The film’s tone and its view on the modern world are mainly shown visually instead, through a stylistic choice I would call, “everything is really blue and also the music is kind of insane in a way it takes you a while to realize.” You see, as a person who writes film reviews, I can make deep analysis like this. The being really blue and the weird empty-musicness of the filmmaking choices serve the story in most respects, but there were a few places, mainly in the early establishment of Amy’s character, where I thought it could have been used to better establish things that would come into play later than it did.

The acting by the two leads, Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike, can not go by without praise. Nick and Amy are a bit… complicated, to say the least, and in the hands of other actors could have gone off track by failing to balance their likability and unlikability. What I thought was interesting about Nick Dunne in the book is that even when you don’t like him, you like him, in a way. The experience of the story of Gone Girl is a weird juggling act in trying to figure out how to feel about these characters, and the acting in the movie allows that act to carry through to the screen. It’s a huge accomplishment, and the casting was perfect.

Gone Girl is a really damn good movie, based on a really damn good book. If I was going to compare them, which I will, even though I don’t want to, the book is a more layered version of the story, but either medium you experience it in it’s still a really engaging and crazy ride, one I’d definitely recommend you buy tickets to. Go watch Gone Girl, or read it. I mean, whatever. I don’t get to tell you what to do, you’re your own person.

Movie Review: Rosewater

In 2009, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart sent a correspondent, Jason Jones, to Iran to cover the lead-up to the presidential election. You can watch the segment on The Daily Show‘s website here. In his normal style, Jason Jones interviewed Maziar Bahari, an Iranian-born Newsweek journalist. In the segment, bullheaded reporter Jones’s agenda was to prove that Iranians hate Americans, while Maziar was the levelheaded straight-man who argued against him. After the election, this segment, along with his affiliation with the American-owned Newsweek, caused Maziar to be imprisoned and brutally interrogated for 118 days by the Iranian government. After he was freed and returned to England, he published a book about his experience entitled Then They Came For Me. Jon Stewart has now written and directed his first film, Rosewater, an adaptation of this memoir.

Rosewater is, on the most basic level, a film by a first time director, with all of the strengths and weaknesses that entails. Some scenes that are meant to be powerful, specifically those that try to put Maziar’s story in a broader global context, fall a bit flat. Some characters are seen too briefly, but others aren’t seen nearly enough. These few issues pale in comparison, however, to the innovation a first film can bring. This story, which is an incredible one on its own, is told in such a unique tone, with such an interesting theme, and oddly enough, some of the strangest and yet funniest humor, that it can only be called a success.

As I mentioned, the movie does have some pitfalls, but only in what the rest of the film shows it had the potential to achieve. The point of view on what people an oppressive regime is made of, and of the nature of truth and integrity, is so well explored and interesting during the bulk of the movie, where Maziar is imprisoned, that the scenes that surround it conspicuously lack that nuance. Unfortunately, the scenes are vital to the narrative, but it does make me wonder if they could have been handled in a way that tied in more with the tone and messages of the really impressive second and third acts of the film.

The strongest parts of the film are in some of the standout scenes that illustrate the two worlds of Maziar and his interrogator, Rosewater. Some of these, especially the discussion they have about New Jersey, which is a major turning point in Maziar’s journey, are going to be talked about a lot whenever this film is discussed, and had most of my theater laughing in disbelief. In general, all of the dialogue between Mazair, Rosewater, and his father, who he imagines in his cell with him, is amazingly well written, and left me with a dozen things to think about walking out of the theater.

Rosewater has its weaknesses as a film, but that would only be a mark against it if they came anywhere close to outweighing its strengths. It’s a story and a message that are worth hearing, in a film that you will not leave disappointed from. As much as I want Jon Stewart to keep hosting The Daily Show forever, if he wants to start directing films, he’s got a hell of a first entry to his filmography.

Movie Review: Birdman

For total clarity, the actual title of this movie is Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), which might be the most delightfully nonsensical and tonally appropriate title I’ve ever seen. 

Birdman, as I’m going to call it to avoid carpal tunnel, is the story of Riggan Thompson (Micheal Keaton), a washed up actor who is famous for playing Birdman in a series of comic book movies twenty years ago. He is now funding a Broadway play he wrote, directed, and is staring in, but through the previews is haunted by his own movie star ego, and faces the complications caused when he replaces one of his actors at the last minute with Broadway star, Mike Shiner (Edward Norton). He also may or may not actually be Birdman.

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of this movie, by its parts, is “DAMN.” The acting and the construction of the characters is incredible, especially by Micheal Keaton and Edward Norton as the two actors butting heads. Edward Norton’s character might be straight up crazy (and a delightful maniac to watch), but up against Keaton’s subtle, growing insanity, the combination is fantastic. Keaton’s character struggles between trying to break into the “true art” of the theater and the desire to return to Hollywood, and hears the voice of his character, Birdman, taunt him over his struggles. The combination of Keaton’s acting, along with the ambiguous idea that he might actually have Birdman’s powers, makes the struggle both incredibly dramatically engaging and really entertaining to watch.

Beyond the acting, the most noticeable thing about the film, and what it’s most likely to be remembered for, is the fact that the story takes place almost entirely in one (implied) shot. The lack of cuts is actually somewhat stressful, which is great at putting the audience into the characters’ tense headspace. I’m incredibly curious to see how they pulled it off technically, but they definitely pull it off, and use it to its fullest effect, to tell its story.

The movie’s plot is original, as are its characters and certainly its cinematography, but I did feel that something was missing in the film. It doesn’t take away from the fantastic quality of the elements of the film, but once the pieces are put into a larger picture, a few gaps and lags begin to show. While watching it, there were one or two places where I felt the story lagged or got away from itself, but it never left me behind long enough that I couldn’t be drawn back in by the next fantastically ridiculous scene.

It may not be a perfect masterpiece, but Birdman is certainly an important film to see for anyone who loves movies, and is likely to be talked about for years to come. It’s dramatic, satirical, a bit funny, and at the very least, it is undeniably completely and utterly unique.

Movie Review: In Order of Disappearance

It’s hard to believe that any film who’s summary begins with, “A man’s son is murdered by gangsters” could possibly be categorized as a comedy, but somehow In Order of Disappearance manages it beautifully. You know a movie has hit a chord with you when you spend half the running time doubled over in laughter, and the other half  in horrified disgust with yourself for doing so.

In Order of Disappearance  is a Norwegian comedy/thriller about a Swedish immigrant snow-plow driver named Nils Dickman, who heads into the criminal underworld to get his revenge when his son is murdered by the Norwegian mob. When the mob starts seeing its members disappearing one by one, they retaliate against the suspected culprits, the Serbian mob, and the spiral of revenge and murder starts to spin out of control.

It’s hard to tell from a description of the film that it is, in fact, a laugh out loud comedy, but what makes the tone of In Order of Disappearance so uniquely delightful is that it creates amazingly colorful, funny characters, and places them into insanely dramatic situations. For the first fifteen minutes, it’s unclear what genre you’re watching- the death of the son is tragic, the violence is brutal, and you start wondering if you did really start watching a straightforward thriller after all. Once you start to be introduced to the characters, the humor becomes inherent to the cast, and damn is it funny.

The biggest target of Nils’s revenge is the head of the Norwegian crime family who goes by the title “The Count.” He’s a menacing, well groomed, cupcake shop owning vegan, who spends most of the movie violently drinking carrot juice and screaming at his ex-wife. The Count is an absolute joy to watch every second he’s onscreen, and by the end even a quick shot of the character was enough to start me giggling. The rest of the cast doesn’t disappoint either, especially with the oddly cute family relationship between the Serbian mobsters, and two inept country policemen who are too lazy to even get out of their car when issuing parking tickets.

The humor is pitch black, since the movie is intensely violent. The best single line description I can come up with is, “Fargo meets Taken”, but even that doesn’t start to sum up what it is that makes the combo of gritty, horrible violence and The Count menacing his underlings over forgetting his son’s organic produce so laugh-out-loud hysterical. When I saw that the movie was coming to an end, for the first time I can remember in a film, I wished it was longer because I wanted to stay with these characters for more time. That is the highest praise I can offer- that while I was watching it, I didn’t want it to end. If your sense of humor can accommodate about 30 onscreen deaths, kidnappings, a lot of swearing, and a film that opens with the tragic death of an innocent young man, it would be hard to imagine a film more well suited to you.

Movie Review: Pride

It’s National Coming Out Day! It’s also Atlanta Pride weekend, which I am sadly missing by virtue of no longer living in Atlanta. Luckily, just at the right time, I got the chance to see the movie Pride, and then went out for some really cheap martinis in Boystown, so I’m not all that torn up about it. So, without further ado, and in celebration of this gayest of days, let’s review a really gay movie!

Pride is a little British dramadey based on the true story of how, in 1984, a group of gay activists formed Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners to support the year long mining strike in the UK. After the union refuses to take their calls, the group joins up directly with a little mining community in Wales, and the two unlikely groups band together as friends.

Pride, despite being mostly a drama, is an intensely feel-good movie. The first third of the film just follows the group of Gays and Lesbians as they struggle to start their cause, but once they’re invited to the Welsh mining town they’ve been supporting, the combination of the two groups is just intensely joyful. The town mostly embraces them, and stands up for them against their few detractors, and there are tons of happy scenes of the old miner’s wives in the town happily falling in love with the gay group. At one point the group holds a benefit concert for the miners, and invites a group of cackling, elated miners and wives to London gay bars, and it’s probably one of the happiest sequences I’ve ever seen in a movie.

Now, as a gay movie set in the 1980’s, Pride does also manage to hit every single gay movie cliche you can think of. Every. Single. One. Yep, even that one. Yep, ESPECIALLY that one. I do wish LGBT films were at a point where, for example, we didn’t have to have a character who was Secretly Gay The Whole Time, or the Guy Who Reunites With His Estranged Mother, or the One Token Lesbian In The Whole Film, or the Spoilers But If You’ve Seen a Single Gay Movie You Know What I’m Talking About, but as a history, and as a very overtly political story, I can be a bit more forgiving towards this one. Still, if you are familiar with LGBT film in general, this may stand out to you and feel a bit predictable.

Pride isn’t going to break any of the tropes of gay cinema, but for what it is, it’s hella fun and enjoyable to watch. It’s a drama primarily, but an uplifting one. If it was a bit more humorous or had a few less of the well known gay movie tropes, it would have stood out to me more, but as it is it’s a solid entry into the gay movie canon, and there’s not a whole lot to dislike. If you like British dramadey or LGBT film and don’t mind a few repeats of elements you’ve seen before, I strongly recommend it.

Happy Coming Out Day, Everyone!

Movie Review: Miss Julie

This week I got the amazing opportunity to go to the opening night of the Chicago International Film Festival, and see the opening film, Miss Julie. The film’s director was in attendance, as was one of the stars, Colin Ferrell, who a few of my classmates got the chance to meet in person at the afterparty. I figured, since I had such a great opportunity to see this film, I’d better get off my ass and review it.

Miss Julie is an English language screen adaptation of the Swedish play of the same name from 1888. It deals with a Midsummer’s Night in Ireland when the daughter of a Baron, Miss Julie (Jessica Chastain) tries to seduce her father’s valet Jean (Colin Ferrell), and follows the two characters until dawn as their relationship takes several dark turns, with their difference class always in the forefront of their minds.

It’s important to mention that the story is an adaptation of a play, because it is very evident and in the forefront of your mind when you’re watching it. There are only four actors in the entire film, one of whom plays Miss Julie in a flashback, and all but one or two scenes takes place in the kitchen and servant’s quarters of the house. Almost the entire film is Miss Julie and Jean sitting in the kitchen speaking to each other, with the third character, Jean’s fiancee, in her bedroom.

That is by no means to say the story isn’t compelling; Miss Julie and Jean talking in a kitchen is a full drama in itself, and fully worthy and deserving of the two hours of running time, and any attempt to change the story from its basic elements would undermine a lot of the drama. In a few ways, the movie does do things a play couldn’t. The performances are amazing, and benefit a lot by film’s ability to show the actors faces in close ups, and the design and filming of the space is absolutely gorgeous, but it isn’t enough to distract from the feeling that you’re watching a filmed stageplay. The main problem is in turning the story into a film at all, as in a lot of ways the story is meant to be a play, and feels like a play when you’re watching it.

As for the actual story, it’s fantastically psychological and compelling, as the characters slowly reveal to each other their true feeling about their own and each other’s places in society. Jean, the valet, is torn between his deep hatred for his place in society, and his inability to rebel against it. Miss Julie holds nothing but power, but is, in the end, more powerless than Jean. Jean’s fiancee was the most interesting character to me, as each time you see her you learn a new piece of her worldview, which ends up being perhaps the darkest of the three character’s. The whole film is made up of small shifts in the characters emotions towards the class structure and each other, each of which opens up a new set of questions both about the characters and about the morality of the structure they live in. For any of the problems that come from adapting it to the screen, it’s still a hell of story to be told.

Miss Julie is a story I’d highly recommend to anyone, and which really took me on an emotional journey, but it does lack something as a film. The flaws that come with the adaptation would have been impossible to solve, but they are still noticeable and detracting in the experience of watching the movie. The story was thought provoking enough that I’d love to experience it again: but this time, maybe I’ll just see it onstage.

Movie Review: The Guest

Hey look! A movie that hasn’t come out yet!

The Guest is about a family who is visited by a man who claims to have been a wartime friend of their deceased son. As the man has nowhere to stay, the family invites him to stay with them, but the family’s teenage daughter soon begins to suspect that this guest’s intentions may be less noble than they appear.

The first thing that comes to mind when describing The Guest is, strangely enough, the font in which the opening credits are done. The font is purple, and looks exactly like a very common font used in over the top, cheesy 1980’s horror movies. The Guest is like the font- so over the top and so genre-based, that it’s difficult to tell if its meant to be taken seriously.

The music is over the top and ridiculous, and cues dramatically a way that does less foreshadowing than it does fore-beating. The acting is slightly unnatural, in a way that’s hard to believe isn’t unintentional. The dialogue is hilariously off, and is delivered in an overly matter-of-fact tone. The violence is bountiful and frequent. The strangest thing of all is: it’s still actually pretty enjoyable to watch.

If the filmmaker was not trying to make a tongue in cheek tribute to 1980’s horror movies, then I have no idea what he was trying to do. If that is what he was trying to do, then he pretty much accomplished it. The Guest is not a good movie, but it’s a really enjoyable one. The action and the music are unbelievably goofy, but if you’re just in the mood to scream at a movie screen and laugh, this will provide that for you. Really, the only problem with viewing the movie this way is that it stops just about one step before being a truly enjoyable over-the-top genre piece. The story takes itself seriously, as many good satires do, but is too silly in some places to be a straightforward film, and too serious in others to be a complete parody. By the end, at least, you’ll know what mood to be in to watch a teenage girl dressed as a waitress be chased by an immortal villain through a Halloween maze (which is on fire) to a goth soundtrack, but the movie would have been helped by setting that mood sooner.

I won’t tell you to run out and see The Guest opening weekend, or even in theaters. Really, I won’t even tell you to rush out and rent it. But maybe, if you’re sitting around with friends with nothing else to do, or you need a movie to scream at while drinking a few beers, it will be a pretty damn entertaining two hours of your time.

I had a hell of a time watching it, what else can I say?

Ticket Stub Archaeology Part 3

Since my last post, I’ve had a birthday, moved across the country to Chicago, started grad school, and gotten horrendously sunburnt. Now that everything has calmed down for the moment, (well, except for the sunburn, it’s still pretty angry) it’s just about time for me to finish up reviewing the last of the ticket stubs I unearthed in my wallet.

Ticket 6: The Edge of Tomorrow

Somehow, a movie about Tom Cruise stuck in a Groundhog’s Day style time loop, wearing a mechanical battle suit and fighting squid aliens alongside Emily Blunt, manages to be exactly what I just described, and a hell of a lot better than that description would let on. The Edge of Tomorrow is a well chosen re-titled adaptation of a Japanese book, All You Need is Kill. Tom Cruise plays a former ad-executive who ends up forced onto the front lines humanity’s battle against the alien Mimics. One of the things I enjoyed most was actually how terrible Tom Cruise’s character is at first- he’s not a supersoldier, and he’s actually not even a soldier, but because of his powers he’s able to train to get the job done. I thought it was a fun starting place for an action movie protagonist.

Edge of Tomorrow doesn’t really take many big risks or introduce any revolutionary ideas, but it aims to be an enjoyable, solid, sci-fi action movie, and accomplishes it really well. I enjoyed Emily Blunt’s character and performance, and thought the way her backstory and her relationship to Tom Cruise’s character was handled was pretty clever. The plot is relatively straightforward, but the characters are well developed and the premise is interesting enough that it didn’t need to be more than what it was. Personally, as someone who particularly enjoys sci-fi action movies, I loved the hell out of it, and will probably be forcing many people to watch it with me with pizza and beer once it comes out on Bluray.

Ticket 7: Snowpiercer

Snowpiercer takes place in the near future after the effects of global warming have thrown the world into a new ice age. The earth now uninhabitable, the last remnants of humanity live on a train that circles around the globe. The lower classes of the back of the train, after seventeen years of oppression by those at the front of the train, organize a revolt and attempt to reach the front of the train to seize control. And then… stuff happens.

The phrase that comes to mind when I think of Snowpiercer is “delighted bemusement.” Simply put, this is one of the least predictable stories I’ve seen. At almost no point in the movie did I feel like the next scene was what I expected it to be, and every time I thought the story was going to stop throwing twists at me, the tone and direction of the scene would change in an instant. Genrewise it cycles through drama, dark satire, innovative action, dark comedy, straightforward comedy, and melodrama, and not in really the order you’d expect. As you can imagine, this makes the narrative somewhat inconsistent, but the way it’s done is so wonderfully unpredictable that it’s hard to have a problem with it.

The only part of the movie I actually disliked was the ending, or more specifically, one of the reveals that occurs at the front of the train. It was a reveal I guessed was coming from scene one, and I was disappointed that, after all of the turns the story had taken since then, I was still right about where it was leading.  Self contained within the movie, this particular twist would have been just as shocking as the ones that came before it, but within the context of the science fiction action movie genre, it’s an all too familiar trope. Nothing was ruined for me, but the ending could have been much stronger if the trope was subverted in some way.

I want to watch the movie again to catch anything I missed, and so I can re-evaluate how I feel about the ending. I’d recommend watching it, not only because it’s not quite like anything you’ve ever seen before, but because, with few exceptions, it manages to make it’s crazy structure work.

Ticket Stub Archaeology Part 2

After sorting through all of the tickets from this winter (it’s been a while since I cleaned out my wallet), and deciding not to review The Art Institute of Chicago (it’s great! It has art! So many Renoirs!), let’s head straight back into some quick reviews!

Ticket 4: 22 Jump Street

I’m really ashamed to admit that I have seen every episode of the 1980’s TV show 21 Jump Street, but I’m not at all ashamed to gush about how much I love the 2012 movie adaptation/sequel/parody. I laughed so hard at 21 Jump Street the first time I saw it that I pulled a muscle, and I was incredibly excited to see the fantastically named sequel. Unbelievably, the sequel didn’t let me down, though it didn’t have as many laugh out loud moments as the first one.

22 Jump Street is a pastiche of sequels, with tons of meta-humor. Early in the movie, the police chief tells the main characters that, rather than do anything new (as they sit there and brainstorm ideas for what they can do next), they’re just going to do the same story, the same way, but slightly different. The Jump Street program has moved into the church across the street, which is a lot shinier and expensive, “because they can.” They’re investigating basically the same case, only this time in college. Halfway through, they run out of money, and have to try to make all of their chase scenes a lot cheaper… within the actual story itself. The parody of sequels is absolutely hysterical, and a lot cleverer than you’d expect.

The other major element of the story focuses on the two lead’s highly homoerotic bromance, which makes for a lot of good jokes, but might take up a bit more time than it needs to. Ice Cube ends up involved in the plot more this time around, and steals a few scenes. Overall, I didn’t laugh quite as much as I did at the first one, but it’s a very, very worthy followup.

Oh, and the end credits are the best part. Just saying. I had tears streaming down my face.

Ticket 5: Belle

 

Belle is a limited-release movie about a half-black daughter of a nobleman who was raised by her uncle, existing in an odd gap in the strict social strata eighteenth century England. After her father’s death, she inherits a large sum of money, and a lot of the story focuses on her attempts to find her place in this social structure as her wealth and her complicated standing make her a desirable marriage candidate. At the same time, her uncle, the Lord Chief Justice, is deciding on an important case that will determine the future of slavery in England.

Belle is a work of historical fiction to answer the questions presented by the real life existence of Dido Elizabeth Belle, who really existed and really was the niece of the judge who made one of the most important court rulings in the history of slavery in England. It’s an interesting thing to consider- How did this woman view the world? How did she navigate this society?- but the answers the movie offers aren’t really that memorable. The acting is all great, and I look forward to seeing the lead actress in more things, but the story was somewhat predictable, and didn’t do much out of the ordinary as far as films about women in this time period. It’s all well done and well put together, but is missing something extra to make it truly memorable.