One Week (2008)

One Week (2008)

Interesting film. Once again I have to apologize to any American readers out there as this film is distinctly and proudly Canadian. It chronicles the "road-trip" journey our protagonist Ben Tyler (Joshua Jackson) takes across the country ala Jack Kerouac but with different motivating factors. Ben is disillusioned late-twenties aged teacher who is about to get married. But then Ben gets the news, quite literally, of his lifetime and finds out he is dying from a Stage 4 cancer that is in his blood and liver. The story is not so much about him dying as him exploring what it is to live and find contentment with life. Something he took for granted up until the news.

Joshua Jackson, who I will freely admit I am a fan of, is excellent here. He has the patience to not wear every emotion on his sleeve and can handle nuance quite well. It is essentially for the most part, a solo film, so that's a lot of weight on his shoulders as it can make or break the film. Now I've enjoyed most everything he's done from Mighty Ducks to the supremely excellent Fringe sci-fi series that I would encourage everyone to watch. Heck, at work I even saw him in person not too long ago as he was filming scenes for Fringe downtown. I never watched Dawson's Creek so I can't comment on that, but as he only a couple of years older than me, I can admit I envy his career and wish him all the best as a Canadian actor who isn't a comedian.

In One Week, he creates a very believable character, who runs the gamut of emotion as he tries to find that proverbial epiphany about life and death that should be obvious to him. Everything in his life is questioned from love, work, pastimes, to even something as simple as singing. At times it is wonderful, tragic or even both at the same time, as we become his invisible companion on this heart wrenching journey.

The good: There are lots of things to enjoy about this film. It's use of narration which can be frustrating in films sometimes, has a similar effect to the wonderful series Pushing Daisies but in delicate doses so as not to be annoying. Everything Canadian in the film is also enjoyable. We Canadians are a proud bunch, we don't often show it quite so overtly as our neighbours to the south, but seeing films like this it is no wonder that we are the biggest little village on the planet. Joshua Jackson also shows off some decent acting chops in this film, with a complex character that is both empathetic and yet frustrating just like real people are. I never feel the Hollywood effect (as we are entering into Oscar bait season with most cinematic releases). The music was fantastic as well. The ending of the film was perfect.

The bad: The film's pacing can be a little dragging at points but thankfully even if you are drifting with the story the scenery is always pretty to look at. I also have issues with how quickly he did one act in the film that I don't condone. I get why it happened, and it is even arguably foreshadowed from Saskatchewan onward, but that doesn't entirely excuse it in my books.

Final Thoughts: To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 


Add to the vault? I am definitely mulling it over. It's not repeat viewing in the sense of a movie you can grab and it will never fail to entertain. But I can see this being a comfort movie when life or whatnot gets to you and you need a little reminder on what's important. 


So come on folks, buy a motorbike and join the ride. Here's the trailer for One Week:

deadend.com (2003)

No picture available!!!

deadend.com (2003)

So in wake of Wristcutters: A Love Story, I bring to you a Canadian independent film I doubt ANY of you have ever heard of, let alone seen. You can download the movie at the link above, and I welcome any of your thoughts or opinions about it.

Here is a film that tries desperately to address the issue of teen suicide without being heavy handed in preachy detail. You have three teens that for a variety of reasons never fully explained or understood, set out on a road trip across Canada so that they can end their lives on the beautiful coasts of British Columbia.

Now I won't get into my views on suicide again (see the Wristcutter's review for that) but I definitely support any and all attempts to reach out to troubled kids who may entertain suicide as an option, and give them the help they need. And that is what I believe is at the core of this film. A tale that resonates with most troubled youth in a variety of ways. Does it entirely succeed? I don't know. There's a lot going on here. It seems like it wants to be a road trip movie, but it doesn't have a destination in mind (figuratively speaking). The trio of teens stop at a variety of places, and experience a variety of situations (both good and bad) and it gets progressively more bleak as it reaches BC. We are expected to believe that the progression of the tale takes 11 days, in which we see an escalation towards hardcore drug use, violence, crime and worse. I suppose it's all in an effort to go out with a bang, but are we really convinced these kids have it in them to do it when the time comes?

At the heart though, the film is good at convincing us that these kids are inherently good kids, that have simply gone awry. They aren't beyond hope and yet their self-destructive ways literally take them as far away from the potential for help as they could be, and the self-reliance of the teens is all that we are left with when we get to the proverbial zero hour.

The film gets points from not shying away from dark material, being very blunt and graphic in some depictions of the shadier side of life, however the situations at times are borderline ridiculous. The style of film is documentary-like with handheld footage like a camera crew follows the trio around, but without addressing it, it becomes a jarring device that removes the viewer from the seriousness of the material. Why is there an invisible film crew following this trio around who are never addressed, and why do the characters seemingly act like the camera is there, while other times we are to believe it is meant to not be there? Even in the beginning one of the characters explains a handheld camera that he stole from school, but then we simultaneously see the scene from another handheld camera perspective like someone else is taping the teen with the tape.

So when really critical moments occur, it removes us from the seriousness of the situation which is ultimately a detriment because it feels staged when we need it to feel live and dangerous.

That being said, the film doesn't glorify suicide and though the story is muddled, it gets a message across. It is an ambitious effort with obviously a lot of heart behind it.

The good: The initiative to try and tell a story about something no one really wants to address.

The bad: The indie film aspect doesn't always work for the story. As well the story gets muddled, not always certain of what it wants to do.

Final Thoughts: An ambitious movie, perhaps too ambitious but decent enough to not be written off as some pretentious independent film.

Add to the vault? Not mine. It is a specific audience for the film and I am not the target audience obviously. But if the film or the efforts behind the film can aid youth in trouble then by all means.

As an added thing, because it is pertinent in the media today, I want to add the following video.

Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006)

Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006)

At the request of the masses who read this site, I have been tasked with reviewing this film. I watched it originally back in 2008 I think, and re-watching it I find the same issues and positives as the first time around.

The premise of the film is as such, obviously playing with the religious angle, in that if one takes their own life they end up in limbo rather than some satisfactory afterlife. As such, we follow Zia a recent inductee into Limbo, who cut his wrists (hence the title). Now Limbo isn't that much different from regular life, aside from some washed out colours, a perpetual inability to smile by it's inhabitants and some off-kilter reality bending oddities just to keep it different.

Now Zia and his pal Eugene (the obvious comic relief in the film) are enjoying their non-lives as best they can, when Zia finds out his old girlfriend might also be a resident of Limbo. Cue roadtrip and enter "cute" hitchhiker Mikal (Shannon Sossamon) who shakes up Limbo. She's convinced she is wrongly a resident of Limbo due to a technicality. So without going further into details, the plot quickly becomes a "roadtrip" movie and aside from the oddities and Limbo and the whole "dead" thing, it is quite frankly a paint by numbers road trip movie.

Now I am sure I will ostracize one of the two readers of this blog by saying this, but this movie isn't THAT great. I will give it props for taking a whole warped twist on the roadtrip movie, but I can not help but feel that it doesn't really do anything with the premise. It's a tough gamble, it was already guaranteed to not be a commercial success because no distributer would let a suicide-centric movie hit the theatres, and the religious masses would no doubt be a tough sell as well. That being said however, if you are going to run with a premise, I feel like it should have gone farther. I get that Limbo is supposed to be just like life but even more mundane, but there are cool aspects that are hinted at. Things like the "miracles" or the beach scene, are interesting and could have been explored further, but instead we get a secondary plot involving a "suicide cult" (ho ho funny!) with Will Arnett and then whole angle that life and death is really just more paperwork and bureaucracy.

Or maybe I didn't get it. Maybe the whole purpose of having a movie set in a boring existence was meant to be boring? A couple of things I have to be honest about though, and this may render my opinions null and void. First of all, I don't like Shannon Sossamon. I find her a weak and wooden actress that was touted as the next "It" girl when she first hit the theatrical stage, but thankfully it would seem that Hollywood realized her ineptitude and she's been reduced to non-roles and indie films instead (something I still wait they would do with Megan Fox). So her role here, which is essentially a self-involved "love" interest, broke the movie for me at the core as I couldn't invest in her as a viable love-interest for Zia. She's in the same category as Zooey Deschanel for me and it's probably a disservice to me as an aspiring reviewer that I can't get past such issues.

Secondly, the suicide angle on a whole, while interesting and a neat twist, doesn't really work for me. I have zero sympathy for suicide in general. It's a selfish act and I can't empathize with it. I didn't really think the whole uplifting angle was warranted without making the world of Limbo something to really abhor. The fact that Limbo was just like reality for the most part, and that there may be a "get out of jail free" card, kinda makes the whole ordeal amount to little more than "meh". It comes across that it's really not THAT big of deal if you commit suicide, because in the end, if you want something enough, you can get it.

I don't know. I figure for that kind of payoff, I better see Divine Comedy level of ambiance and personal growth.


The good: Patrick Fugit as Zia and Shea Whigham as Eugene are enjoyable leads. I wish instead of Michael Cera, Patrick Fugit could get more roles as I can relate to his confident off-beat sardonic inherent nature more than Cera's "Oh look at me I'm awkward and witty in EVERY FRIGGIN FILM". Did I mention that Cera made me not like Scott Pilgrim as much as I wanted to? Anyhow, what else was good? Oh yes, some imagery thrown in like the beach scene. It made you feel dirty and itchy. That kind of imagery was something they could have really run with. I felt like the director watched a Terry Gilliam movie and tried to emulate the wierdness without really getting the weirdness. I see that the film had a $1,000,000 budget, which isn't much by Hollywood standards, but for an indie film it's quite a bit. If you ditched the suicide cult storyline you could have had some more dough to play with imagery. It would be remiss of me to not include Tom Waits, who I also thoroughly enjoy in most everything in. That guy could read the phonebook and it would be interesting. He also appeared recently as the "devil figure" in Terry Gilliam's Doctor Parnassus interestingly enough.

The bad: Shannon Sossamon. Wooden. Not like how everyone jokes Keanu Reeves is wooden but he can still make a decent movie, I mean wooden like why is she in film at all? The premise was interesting as well, but I didn't like how it almost too lightly handled the issue of suicide. It was either too light or not light enough, and without committing to it either way, it feels like a premise they wanted to explore but really were too scared to tackle head on.

Final Thoughts: Overall not bad, but I can't help but feel it could have been a REALLY interesting tale. Hell, ditch the comedic angle entirely (since a lot of the forced jokes didn't pan out anyway) and run with the whole romance and fantasy bits, and you may have a really decent movie.

Add to the vault? Not mine, I get why some people would enjoy it. It's definitely a dark twist on an otherwise conventional story. Does the subject matter automatically make it gold? No. Definitely not. So while I can appreciate other people's interest in it, it is only mediocre for me. E for effort though!

500 Days of Summer

And now for something completely different...

I know I promised I was going to try and just do horror movies for October, but I caved and watched a different genre.

(500) Days of Summer - 2009


This movie was one I have had on my radar for awhile, I am a definite Joseph Gordon-Levitt fan and I am glad to see he has survived the trappings of child stardom and become a very decent actor in his own right.

I am however not a fan of Zooey Deschanel. I keep hearing how fanboys love her but I don't see it. She just seems so wooden and ... I don't know.... difficult. Like she'd be one of the most annoying people to just be around just by her mere presence.

It isn't like I haven't tried to like her. I have watched a lot of movies with her in them, but she's exactly the same in each of them. Oh well, onto the movie.

So this movie is the ANTI-romantic comedy. It sort of plays like it could be a romantic comedy but instead you have what is quite possibly one of the most real depictions of a real life romance and breakup. This isn't spoiling anything. They tell you that in the first 5 minutes of the film.

Despite my misgivings about about Zooey, Joseph carries this film entirely. He takes us on his emotional roller coaster of each stage of a relationship, and the gradual, painful realization that love is not always like it is in the movies, or sung about on the radio. His character Tom, is a character after my own heart, he is a hapless romantic who has sometimes unrealistic expectations of love and relationships. His inability to fathom that he has given himself over so completely to someone and it may not be completely mutual. It's a real, raw and honest film that tricks you into thinking it's a paint by numbers rom-com.

Some people will find this a pretentious hipster movie, and it definitely can feel that way, but it shouldn't be avoided because of it. I never considered myself a hipster, I don't wear tight jeans with white belts, but I did find it amusing that nearly all of the songs in the movie are on my own personal playlists for one reason or another.

As an aside, the movie is rife with other bit character actors including That Nerdy Guy from Criminal Minds (who does basically the same character but stupid in this film), and That Guy Who Looks Weird But is Married To Christina Hendricks (look him up, you'll recognize him from something), including other bit parts from people from Bones (which has Zooey's much more talented sister Emily) and Community (WAYYYY better than Modern Family.)

The good: The story, every character but Summer, and the self-awareness of the film that keeps it real despite the movie elements.

The bad: Don't act like you didn't expect me to say it. Zooey Deschanel. Upside to this, is you aren't terribly upset if he doesn't wind up with her. Ha ha.

Final Verdict: A definite must watch for any fan of the rom-com (how stupid a term is that anyway?) provided that you are strong enough to appreciate the reality of the situations depicted.


Add to the Vault? Mayhaps. I will have to mull it over some more before I decide for certain. Still a great show.