Macon Blair – The Movie Gourmet

Stream of the Week: I DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE – schlub goes postal

November 6, 2018 by movie gourmet

Elijah Wood and Melanie Lynskey in I DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE

In the wonderfully dark comedy I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore, Ruth (Melanie Lynskey) is wallowing in a lonely, depressing, humdrum existence, when she has one of those days where everything goes wrong. When she staggers home in abject failure, she finds that her home has been burglarized. It’s the last straw, and Ruth becomes energized in an obsessive quest to track down the thieves. She picks up her geeky neighbor (Elijah Wood) an a confederate. Soon the lovable loser and her oddball sidekick follow the clues to a very dangerous gang, and they find themselves in a lethal thriller.

I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore is the directorial debut of actor Macon Blair, an actor who has elevated a slew of indies, especially the refreshingly original thriller Blue Ruin. Blair has a tiny but very funny role as spoiler-dropping bar patron.

Melanie Lynskey is a comic treasure, and her deadpan earnestness carries I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore. What’s so funny here is that her Ruth, a workaday schlub, only needs to become SLIGHTLY deranged before she falls into a life-and-death adventure.

After a Blink-And-You’ve-Missed-It theatrical run, I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore is available to stream on Netflix Instant.

DVD/Stream of the Week: BLUE RUIN – fresh take on the revenge thriller

March 13, 2018 by movie gourmet

Here’s an entirely fresh take on the revenge thriller. Blue Ruin, an audience favorite on the festival circuit in 2013, didn’t get a theatrical release, and I would have missed it entirely but for a suggestion from my friend Jose.

As the film opens, we are following a homeless man and observing his survival tactics; once we’re hooked, we learn that a traumatic incident led to his homelessness. Then we watch him methodically prepare for an entirely different mission. There is very little dialogue in the first 30 minutes. And then we have 60 minutes of lethal cat-and-mouse, with intense suspense about which of the characters will survive and how. As a thriller, this is first class.

What makes Blue Ruin so fresh is the lead character, who has been shattered by a tragedy in his life – and who isn’t at all confident about his ability to redress it. This ain’t a Charles Bronson or Liam Neeson type hunter-of-bad-guys. Instead, our hero is as scared and fragile as most of us would be if we were being hunted for our lives – and so we relate to him.

Macon Blair is superb as the protagonist. He’s entirely believable both as a damaged down-and-outer and as a man-on-a-mission. Man, I hope Blair gets cast in more movies – he’s just great here.

Devin Ratray, one of the execrable, buffoonish cousins in Nebraska, is very good in an entirely different role here – a slacker scarred by his war experiences who nevertheless remains very skilled.

Blue Ruin was written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier. He is responsible for the wholly original lead character and the intense pace of the film, along with the meticulously economical storytelling; the exposition never relies on even one extra word of dialogue.

Blue Ruin is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play, YouTube and Xbox Video.

GREEN ROOM: blood and suspense

December 4, 2016May 11, 2016 by movie gourmet

The bloody thriller Green Room is a fresh and satisfying, well, bloody thriller. A vagabond rock band (Anton Yelchin, Alia Shawkat and a couple of others) finds themselves playing a gig at a remote white nationalist compound in the woodsy Northwest. Inadvertently, they witness a murder and the chief skinhead (Patrick Stewart!) needs to eliminate all the witnesses. The band members and a local girl (Imogen Poots) are trapped in a room with just one way out, as the skinheads send in waves of machete- and shotgun-wielding thugs and vicious pit bulls. Who will survive and how?

Director Jeremy Saulnier proves again that he’s the rising master of the genre movie. Saulnier’s writing and directorial debut was 2014’s Blue Ruin, an entirely fresh take on the revenge thriller. An audience favorite on the festival circuit in 2013, Blue Ruin didn’t get a theatrical release, and I would have missed it entirely but for a suggestion from my friend Jose. In Blue Ruin, Saulnier was responsible for the wholly original lead character and the intense pace of the film, along with the meticulously economical storytelling; the exposition never relies on even one extra word of dialogue. Blue Ruin is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play, YouTube and Xbox Video.

In his superb leading performance in Blue Ruin, Macon Blair was believable both as a damaged down-and-outer and as a man-on-a-mission. In Green Room, Blair plays Gabe, the put-upon middle manager of Patrick Stewart’s compound. Blair is just so interesting an actor. Here, he brings an unusual humanity to his role as a henchman.

The actor who drives the story, however, is Imogen Poots. Her character is very practical – realistic enough to see that the situation is hopeless. At first, she is numbed by the murder of her friend. But when she finally decides that she is going to survive – watch out! Since 2012, Poots has becoming a preferred indie leading lady with Greetings from Tim Buckley, A Late Quartet , The Look of Love, A Country Called Home, Green Room and her most complex role so far in the upcoming Frank & Lola. Here in Green Room, she’s a force of nature.

Once again, Saulnier delivers a very fresh and original genre movie. The total effect is very intense and very violent. If you’re okay with some gory violence, then Green Room is a thrill ride worth taking.