Movie Review Preview

#1- The Many Open-Ended Windows of Unfriended

- Clickbait
- Written by Wesley Morris
- My Rate: 8
- High Points: The Laptop Window perspective was interesting and new
- Low Points: Characters are underdeveloped, only scary theoretically
- Writer's Opinion:

"Only theoretically is Unfriended scary. Hollywood has a long history of attacking rival entertainment platforms: TV, the VCR, the Internet, social media. (Just in time for the post–Golden Age television comes a summer remake of 1982’s Poltergeist.) On the surface, Unfriended appears to be part of the club. But technology doesn’t suck. People do. Software hosts vengeance. It doesn’t inspire it. Assuming otherwise would be like leaving Carrie convinced the culprit is pig’s blood. In any case, you notice the movie espouses a pungent awareness of the power of public shaming. You feel some mild critique of lives lived through web applications. What you don’t feel is sustained visceral fright. You need more than technology for that. This is Carrie, only now when the hand pops up through the grave, the first thing it does is feel for a trackpad."

#2- The Age of Adaline

- The New Yorker
- Written by Richard Brody
- My Rate: 5
- High Points: Elaborate Exposition,
- Low Points: melodramatic plot, no identified perspective
- Writer's Opinion:

"…The plot kicks in, it unleashes a brief rush of melodramatic energy....The conceit endows Lively’s regal air of distracted superiority with an intermittent pathos, but the director, Lee Toland Krieger, brings no identifiable perspective, and the screenwriters, J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz, hardly tap a century’s worth of material."