Movie Review: The Hollars (2016)

A comedy-drama about a family brought together by a serious illness, The Hollars offers an agreeable mix of laughs and tears.

New York-based graphic novelist John Hollar (John Krasinski) is suffering from writer's block, and his moodiness is straining his relationship with pregnant girlfriend Rebecca (Anna Kendrick). Upon learning his mother Sally (Margo Martindale) has a brain tumour and needs surgery, John travels to his home town to support his father Don (Richard Jenkins) and brother Ron (Sharlto Copley). 

Sally's illness has turned Don into an emotional wreck, while his plumbing business is near bankruptcy. Ron is jobless and stalking his ex-wife Stacey (Ashley Dyke). Sally's flippant nurse Jason (Charlie Day) is married to John's high school sweetheart Gwen (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Despite being in bed at the hospital, Sally is doing her best to hold the family together. As the surgery date approaches, John is drawn back into his family's affairs, and Rebecca shows up to provide support.

An amiable romp through typical family dysfunctions, The Hollars benefits from a mean streak of humour, colourful characters, and a willing cast. While originality and sterling moments may be in short supply, Krasinksi directs Jim Strouse's script with an eye to small-town charm and cinematic efficiency, packaging up the film in 89 minutes.

Many laughs come from Ron's jumbled life, now reduced to living in his parents' basement after suffering the ignominy of being fired by his dad. Ron is also nowhere near over the break-up of his marriage and is desperate - too desperate - to participate in the lives of his young daughters. Comedy nuggets are found within Ron's tangles with his ex-wife's new boyfriend Reverend Dan (Josh Groban).

Meanwhile, at the hospital nurse Jason is on a singular mission to redefine health care standards with his own brand of judgemental cynicism. His insecurities are also justifiably close to the surface but he anyway invites John to dinner and a reunion with Gwen. Strouse and Krasinksi display a deft touch by unleashing an undercurrent of lust and animal attraction, then cleverly redirecting it.

As for the tears, Sally's tumour and Don's emotional brittleness provide opportunities for sombre moments and reflections about loss, hardship and kindness. John adds his insecurities to the mix, working through the highs and lows while learning plenty about Rebecca's mettle. In this comfortingly familiar family, everything is far from perfect, and that's just fine.



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Movie Review: District 9 (2009)

A huge spaceship cruises over Johannesburg and comes to a stop. Eventually a large number of aliens, who look like giant prawns on legs, are welcomed to earth. They mainly take up residence in District 9, a cordoned-off ramshackle camp within the city.

Tensions between the humans and aliens grow over time, resulting in an attempt to relocate the residents out of District 9. Things go wrong when human government agent Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is infected by a mysterious substance and starts to morph into an alien. Horrifying for him and his wife, but fascinating for the government, since he can now use the aliens' sophisticated weapon systems.

District 9 is a well-made, sharply-delivered science-fiction film, remarkably similar to Avatar in terms of plot elements, but on one-tenth the budget. It demands sympathy for a strange looking alien race, introduces a human-to-alien transformation as a central plot element, portrays humans as both heavy-handed and under-handed, and quickly trots out something equivalent to the military-industrial complex to be the real evil.

That the first half of District 9 may be a metaphor for the mistreatment of blacks by the ruling white class during South Africa's apartheid era just adds a layer of poignancy.

But District 9 does unravel a bit in its second half, descending almost into a routine and forgettable action movie, with Wikus teaming up with one of the aliens, complete with cute young alien kid, to plan an unlikely escape from District 9 back to the mothership still hovering mysteriously overhead.

Sharlto Copley is the best thing about the film, as the well-meaning and naive government bureaucratic who finds himself turning into an alien. Particularly early in the movie, with Wikus going door-to-door in District 9 requesting the aliens' "consent" to be relocated, he embodies all that is distasteful about blatant government hypocrisy.

This is director Neill Blomkamp's first feature length film, and he puts his documentary storytelling style to good use. The movie effectively takes its time to establish the context, and there is no padding in the running length of under 2 hours.

District 9 is proof that a science fiction movie can be entertaining, thoughtful, and polished without necessarily costing the equivalent of a small country's GDP to make.







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