Four friends take a cottage vacation in the dead of winter, seeking refuge from their busy urban lives, if only for one weekend. However, the few residents who remain in the secluded cottage town of Rideau Ferry don’t seem to take kindly to strangers… From the moment they reach their destination, the visitors, a group of twenty-something artist types, are confronted by the ominous gaze of neighbouring cottagers, all of whom have no choice but to tough out the cold winter in this small, rural town. Over the course of their stay, the friends begin to uncover dark details about the inhabitants of the houses around them. After one of the friends is found mutilated on the front porch of a nearby cottage, the friends quickly discover that nothing is what it seems.
Taika Waititi writes, directs and co-stars in 'Boy', set in 1984 New Zealand. The film does just what Waititi dreamed of — it gave a great coming-of-age story to Māori people without making a story of the Māori people as an exotic other.
Remakes. Reboots. Reinventions. Redundancy. It's the common practice in Hollywood of late, sometimes offering us victorious reimagining of what can be considered cinematic classics while also, more often, falling flat on their UN-imaginative faces in utter defeat and lackluster results. Admittedly, with this in mind, I went into the newest incarnation of "The War of the Roses" with typical trepidation and cautious optimism.
The “gay best friend”, an age-old trope, has been done in countless films and television series. Ranging from one-note (Sex and the City's Stanford and Mario) to nuanced (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt's Tituss), the gay best friend exists to support and advise the main protagonist, with their conflicts swept to the side.
It’s easy to dismiss Joel and Ethan Coen for writing from the world they build from outside the box of overarching Hollywood stereotypes, but their inability to compromise their collective vision is precisely what makes the simplistic nature of their world-building and characters so brilliant. It’s also what led Fargo to collect seven Oscar nominations and two wins for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actress for Frances McDormand’s brilliant portrayal of the sincere, motherly detective whose wholesome demeanor seizes the day over the selfishness, corruption and evil of the men who don’t comprehend that there’s more to life than a little money.
As noted in the headline, I didn’t like this movie. Not to say it’s the worst thing ever, but it’s just…meh. Nothing much to it. Very generic. No surprises. At the very least, the cast is diverse so I’ll give it that.
We can criticize depictions from old media, but they weren’t simply “good for their time”. They were fighting and struggling in a world we can’t imagine.
