The Shallows -- a review


There has to be a better way to get an Oscar than this!

When I studied writing in college, I was taught that there are three basic stories: man verses man, man verses himself, and man verses nature. The Shallows is definitely the latter version of classic story-telling: man verses nature. Although, in this case, it’s actually woman verses nature. Blake Lively plays Nancy, a med-school drop out who’s doing a surfing tour of Mexico after the death of her mother. Her mom’s death has shattered her to the point where she wonders aloud to her father about what’s the point to it all. Why go on, she muses, with such loss all around us?

But Nancy gets a hard lesson in the basics of survival when she goes surfing in a secluded cove on the Mexican coast. Unknowingly swimming right into the feeding ground of a Great White Shark, Nancy becomes stranded on a rock outcropping that’s just 200 feet from shore. Yet she doesn’t dare try to swim for it, because the monstrous shark is actively hunting her. And so it becomes a waiting game between her and the shark, but the major problem for her being the rock outcropping she’s stranded on will be underwater come high tide.


I saved the camera! I'll still be updating the vlog today! Woot!

The Shallows could have been really bad. God knows there are plenty of bad shark movies out there--some of which are enjoyable in a “so bad it’s good” kind of way, like Red Water. But thanks to a solid script and direction from Jaume Collet-Serra, as well as a great, sympathetic performance by Blake Lively, The Shallows is a gripping thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat for its entire running time. The reason it’s so gripping is that the filmmakers (as well as Lively) make you care deeply about what happens to Nancy because she’s presented here as a three-dimensional human being.

The shark, which looks to be mainly a creation of CGI is still menacing enough to be scary. The director wisely keeps it off screen for most of the movie, only bringing it into full view for the terrifying climax. But for the majority of the running time of the movie, the story sits on Lively’s slender shoulders, and she handles it very well. She has a great screen presence, and the movie wouldn’t have worked as well without her. If you’re looking for a good shark flick worthy of Jaws, then wade into The Shallows. --SF

Comments

Rebel Moon Part One -- a review

Director Zack Snyder has made enough of my favorite films ( Man of Steel , Zack Snyder’s Justice League , the Dawn of the Dead remake) that I genuinely look forward to his latest project. Of course, he’s also made some real stinkers ( Sucker Punch , Batman Vs Superman ), but everybody has a bad day at the office, right? And I was brightened up considerably when I saw that his latest film, the star-spanning space saga Rebel Moon: Part One: A Child of Fire , would be premiering on my birthday on Netflix. And then I saw the frigging movie. Seriously, WTF did I do to deserve this on my birthday? Rebel Moon first started out life as a pitch for an R-rated Star Wars film that Lucasfilm, the producers of SW, had turned down. Undaunted, Snyder then brought the project to Netflix, and traces of its Star Wars inspiration still remain: the space Nazis, a scene in a cantina, the laser swords that one of the characters uses. But even if a film is

Jack Reacher Never Go Back -- a Review

I was first introduced to Jack Reacher through the Tom Cruise movie of the same name that was released back in 2012. I liked the movie well enough, despite a few nitpicks here and there--but I really enjoyed reading the novels by Lee Child. Jack Reacher was a former US Army officer who retires and becomes a drifter, roaming from state to state in the country that he fought so hard to protect. And Reacher is still protecting us, taking on a variety of villains, from backwoods mobsters to big-city terrorists from book to book. The stories in the books are well-told, with great attention paid to the smallest of details. I think of them as 1980s action films, only without being insulting to your intelligence. What a perfect series to adapt to movies, right? Well, Tom Cruise looks nothing like how Jack Reacher is described in the books. And while I thought the first Jack Reacher film was good, the second, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back , is very badly flawed. Based on the JR novel of the sa

3 Body Problem

3 Body Problem , Netflix’s latest TV series, is loosely based on the first novel in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, by Chinese author Liu Cixin (who also wrote the book The Wandering Earth ). Simply put, it’s an alien invasion story, but one that’s a lot more sophisticated than your average ‘pew-pew-pew’ cliché-fest. For one thing, this series begins in the 1960s, in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, which was the nationwide purge instigated within China by then-Chairman Mao to keep himself in power. A young woman named Ye Wenjie arises from the chaos to become a central figure in the overall story. The 3 Body Problem of this series’ name refers to a far-flung solar system that has three suns. Any planet within this tri-sun system would have a hard time of it, taking turns orbiting one belligerent sun after another, and it just so happens that the aliens who set their eyes on invading Earth--known as the San-Ti--come from this embattled world.

The View From The Mountain

Search This Blog