Reservoir Dogs (1992)

I just saw Tarantino’s first film the other day. It was a lot of fun. Immersing almost from beginning to end. This is a heist movie where you don’t actually see the heist. So let’s talk about it.

Tarantino shows his great writing abilities in this movie. He starts by showing us the group’s relationship, witty, close, almost like a friendship. Then he cuts to where the movie really starts: Mr. Orange bleeding out while Mr. White drives him to the rendezvous. Now, I really like this about Tarantino. He throws us into a messy, confuse situation where we have no idea what’s going on. This forces us to (and makes us want to) give him our whole attention. Then, he gradually releases bits and bits of information to us until the end of the film.

The key in this movie, what it is about, is the question ‘who set the group up?’. In retrospect, the guilty one always had to be one of the first three we meet in the beginning: either Orange, White or Pink. This makes the revelation more emotional and powerful, because it’s a character we’ve know the whole movie. But we don’t know that yet.

On our way to the revelation, conflicts between the group arise. The conflict in the story flows very naturally. We can all understand the feeling of not knowing what’s going on or who we can trust. The climax is great: a four-way Mexican standoff that builds up until the moment where the four characters pull the trigger. We can feel the pain when White sacrifices himself defending Mr. Orange, only to find out he was, in fact, a cop all this time. So then, he shoots him and they all die, save for Mr. Pink, the most professional of them all. The coldest, most insensitive one. The perfect man for the job.

The movie intertwines the post-heist with backstory scenes, explaining us how it all started, a little background for the characters. Now, I’m no one to criticize Tarantino. He’s one of the most successful writers and directors in history. However, there’s one thing I didn’t like about this movie. Eight minutes, to be more precise. Mr. Blonde’s backstory felt, for me, dull. The point of it is making us aware that Mr. Blonde has a close relationship with Joe and Nice Guy Eddie, that he just got released from prison and that he can be trusted. But the film takes full eight minutes of pure exposition and no conflict at all, to give us that small piece of information. And, even worse, does this in the middle of a very exciting moment, when, in the post-heist, we had seen that the criminals had a hostage cop to question him. So, for me, this particular scene is added in an unfavorable moment, and is bad for five reasons: slows down the pace, cuts the action of the post-heist, lacks conflict, is pure exposition and is way too long.

Overall, watching the film was a great experience. Save for the eight minutes mentioned before, there’s non-stop action, rising conflict and a compelling set of characters and situation that you just can’t stop watching.

Thanks for reading,
The Screenplayer.

Love Actually (2003)

My favorite movie of all time is About Time (2013). If you haven’t, you should watch it. And if you have, you should rewatch it. Seriously. It will change your life. Anyway, that film was written and directed by Richard Curtis, the same man behind Love Actually, so my hopes were high on this one.

The film is an ensemble. I love this kind of movies, because a character that would be a support character in another film, gets his own main plot in these films. I also like them because they show how the world is a small place, and how everyone, one way or another, is related with each other. I think those are the two basic elements an ensemble has to fulfill. Love Actually does. It has a ton lot of plots. And here’s where I think it fails. Writing an ensemble film is no easy task. You have to give each character roughly the same importance, each of the plots must be equally strong, and you have limited screentime to do it. Having so many characters, forced Curtis to cut short some of the plots, omit important beats or end them too early/fast, which makes it feel incompletely. For example, the plot about the Portuguese lady and Colin Firth (Kingsman: The Secret Service), feels forced. The characters can’t understand each other and, even then, they fall in love. Other example, the ginger guy who travels to America to meet girls. He succeeds with no trouble whatsoever, which makes this plot feel like a waste of time, since it adds nothing to the plot or characters. A special case is the plot of Sarah. She sacrifices love for her brother. This plot ends on a low note, which is not bad. However, it ends way too early in the film (At 1h 36m of runtime, where there are still 38 minutes to go). And this brings me to a subpoint of the last statement: The script ends some of the plots in a harsh, hurried way. Alan Rickman’s subplot, where he kind of cheats on his wife, ends with a simple, bland recognition that he’s been stupid and a reunion at the airport. I also had a lot of trouble processing the end of the film, the scene in the airport, where I couldn’t understand how some characters know each other. This might be only me, but I felt it wasn’t showed properly and screenwriter Richard Curtis just wanted to save that explosion of reveals ’til the end.

Of course, the movie is by no means bad. The good things exceed the bad ones. The comedy is good, specially in the porn/relationship plot with Martin Freeman. The conflict is good, specially when revelations are added to it. For example, when Colin Firth finds out his girlfriend is cheating on him with his brother, the scene doesn’t upfront tells us that’s his brother. Instead, it gradually shows us that there might be some cheating going on, and then it presents us with subtext that implies they’re brothers. Other example is when the guy in love with his best friend’s wife tries to hide this fact. We know he’s hiding a secret on his video recordings, but when Keira Knightly’s character finds out, it is a compelling and tense moment. The plots of Hugh Grant and Liam Neeson’s characters are both emotionally satisfying. Also, Rowan Atkinson’s couple cameos steal the scenes. He’s brilliant as ever.

Overall, the film fulfills the basic expectations one would have of an ensemble. It’s a good film that entertains and has some powerful plots (The Liam Neeson/his stepson one was the most satisfactory for me). However, I think it needed more time or fewer plots to be able to go the extra mile. It just feels too crowded and that affects most of the plots’ quality. I think a film that better expresses this feeling is Crazy Stupid Love.

As always, thanks for reading.
The Screenplayer.

Confessions of a shopaholic (2009)

I’m studying finances in college. I was looking for a light film that wouldn’t demand much effort from me, to pass a couple hours. Combining theses two things is how I ended up watching Confessions of a shopaholic, with very low expectations. The truth is, the film knows what it is, and succeeds significantly on it.

The story goes like this: A young journalist in New York buys stuff she doesn’t need with money she doesn’t have. She loses her job in a gardening magazine and she’s forced to find a new one. She sees this moment as an opportunity to finally go to that fashion magazine she’s always wanted to work for, but ends up working for a personal finances one, and she has no idea about finances.

As I mentioned above, the writing of the film succeeds in most of what it attempts. The characters are well defined, specially Rebecca, the main character, who has a very satisfying character arc. Funny enough, it was with this film that I finally learned the importance of considering having more than one antagonist in a script. Confessions of a Shopaholic benefits from having three, each of which attacks a different front of our hero. This helps the movie have constant conflict and giving the feeling that there’s always something happening. There’s a scene where Rebecca is standing next to one of the antagonists in an elevator, but neither knows each other physically, which gives us a nice moment of tension and conflict building up.

Talking about moments, another scene I think reflects great writing in the movie is when Rebecca is forced to choose between two dresses. One of them, given to her by her best friend, and the other one by her boss. The stakes are high, since the dress she doesn’t choose will affect that area of her life (either friendship or work). Instead of having Rebecca articulate the words of her choice, the screenwriters Tim Firth (Kinky Boots) and Tracey Jackson (The Other End of the Line) make us wait until she appears on TV, to see her decision. It might not be very clear with my explanation, but if you watch the film, you’ll see what I’m talking about. This scene also uses the dilemma, a device that I’ve mentioned before I really like, since it forces the character to make a decision and, therefore, show character, and makes her face the consequences of the decision.

Naturally, the script isn’t perfect. I felt it could’ve spend more time fleshing out the romantic-interest character, Luke, since he’s also got an arc in his own subplot. His desire was somewhat ambiguous, so if the script had stated it more solidly, it would’ve had a more satisfying effect when he finally achieved it. I also felt the first act and the start of the second act of the film were slow, to the point where I considered changing the movie. This was mainly because of the lack of conflict, something the screenplay corrected correctly for the rest of the script.

Overall, the film had a slow start, but it got better after that, with things escalating quickly, stakes raising, conflict building up, and a very satisfactory ending in the third act. It’s not a perfect film, but it isn’t awful either.

Thanks for reading,
The Screenplayer.

Mortal Engines (2018)

This is an interesting one. I saw the premise being harshly criticized, but I found it interesting. In a post-apocalyptic future, cities are not static anymore. Instead, they’re huge machines that roam the world, eating smaller cities. Interesting.

The first act of the movie is probably the most compelling one, as screenwriters Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens show us how life in this ‘cities’ work. It’s interesting as we get to see a society in miniature. After Plot Point 1, when we enter into the upside down world of the second act, I think it turns into a very different movie.

I consider one of the biggest mistakes of this screenplay, to be the protagonist/main hero. The screenplay tries to tell us in the first act that Tom is our hero. They make a good job filling the first act with moments to empathize with him. And then, in Plot Point 1, they introduce the real hero, or heroine in this case. It’s Hester who has the most compelling motive, not Tom. Tom’s just a guy who got caught in a cross fire. It’s Hester, and not the character who we followed during the whole first act, who takes the main role during the climax and defeats the main villain. Tom gets a few, flat scenes on a plane shooting at a thing in a Star Wars kind of scene.

Another thing that bugged me about the story was the whole Shrike subplot. As the movie explains, Shrike is a sort of cyborg, who took Hester when she was left alone. He saw her suffering, so he tried to convince her to become a cyborg like he did. She decides not to and runs away, and that’s the whole reason why now he wants to kill her. Up to this point, the subplot is strange, but could still be acceptable. The point of no return is the wrap-up of the subplot, where Shrike finds out Hester is in love with Tom, so he just suddenly decides not to chase her anymore and then dies.

As for the ‘plot twist’ or reveal in the climax, where the evil Thaddeus Valentine confesses Hester he’s her father, this felt wrong for two and a half reasons. Number one, this had already been implied with flashbacks before. Number two, it really has no effect on the plot or the audience, since we don’t feel a connection strong enough with the characters to actually be impressed. And the last, half reason is Star Wars. This was already used in Empire Strikes Back. The difference is it worked back then. That’s because the characters were interesting enough for us to care, and it hadn’t really been implied before in the movie. Besides having an effect on the audience, it also had an effect on the plot. In Mortal Engines, this was an unnecessary reveal, and felt, at most, awkward and cringy.

The third act felt too long. They present us a whole new world of static cities hiding behind a wall, a preparation for the war, they come up with a plan, they fight in the climax and then the denouement. It felt too long and it wasn’t being that interesting anyway.

Overall, I didn’t hate the film. It just felt like they (either the author of the book, since I haven’t read it, or the screenwriters, or both) tried to make the story over-complicated and stuff it with more characters, more worlds and more subplots to make it last longer. The film, 2h 8m, could’ve lasted probably 1h 30m, and have been a lot better that way. ‘More is less’, they say. Specially in screenwriting. The main plot is interesting, the visuals are stunning, but all the condiments on top harm the film more than what they add.

Thanks for reading,
The Screenplayer.

Crazy Stupid Love (2011)

The film I’ll write about today is one of the best romantic comedies out there. If you haven’t watched it, you definitely must. It completely twisted the genre and, as Blake Snyder would say, ‘gave the audience the same, only different’.

First of all, this is not a story of ‘boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back’. Instead, the first scene of the movie is ‘girl’ asking ‘boy’ for a divorce. Here starts the adventure of Cal, our hero, to try to move on.

What makes this movie different is the way it works with subplots and intertwines them perfectly. There are at least four subplots, that occur at the same time and each and every one of them has an impact on the main plot. This gives us a greatly paced story that never feels boring.

With the subplots, come the revelations, mostly in how the subplots actually relate with the main story. For example, by the midpoint, we learn (or at least I did, since I wasn’t aware of this) that the son’s teacher is actually the woman our hero decided not to call again, which causes a great scene of conflict that explodes in the face of Cal.

Working with four subplots is not easy. Intertwining it successfully, even less. The screenwriter Dan Fogelman (Tangled, Cars), demonstrates his amazing ability, delivering a story that is always moving forward, with amazing characters that suffer from believable flaws, and nicely executed arcs for each of them. The scene where all of the subplots intertwine together in the third act was my favorite. It makes the audience laugh, feel frustrated and surprises us with a revelation. It shows just how great of a writer Fogelman is.

Thanks for reading
The Screenplayer.