Imagine threatening very small children with their lives. Imagine threatening your own children with their deaths, their painful deaths, by your own hands if necessary. Can you even imagine a situation so dire that you would tell your kids you would kill them IF?
If you’re a fan of Josh Malerman’s post-apocalyptic horror novel, Bird Box, the good news is, you can always reread it. Netflix has adapted this “unfilmable” book (how many books have we said that about now?), and turned it into something bibliophiles will scarcely recognize. But that doesn’t meant it’s bad.
Malorie (Sandra Bullock) is in the impossible situation. She’s pregnant at the end of the world. This particular nightmare is the inverse of The Quiet Place – they had to stay silent in order to not die, and in Bird Box, they have to not see. The sight of something is causing people to almost immediately become homicidal and ultimately, suicidal. It’s a plague killing millions, killing billions, killing everyone around the world. The only way to survive is to not see, to never see. But food and water and resources inside are finite. 
Malorie is living with a small group of people, strangers, really, who don’t always agree on the best way to exist together, or how to stay alive. Malorie’s not even the only pregnant one – Olympia (Danielle Macdonald) is expecting too, right around the same time. The house’s other inhabitants (Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich, Jacki Weaver among them) will have to make all kinds of hard choices to ensure the group’s survival. As you probably guessed, ultimately, Malorie will need to leave the relative safety of their shared home – and worse than that, she may have to sacrifice one child to save another. Doesn’t that sound like a fun little jam to be in?
Yeah, this is a horror movie, in case you’re not picking up on the obvious. The unknown, horrible, unseeable things remain unseen by us, but they’re a constant threat. Director Susanne Bier understands it’s way creepier to only suggest the worst, and let our own imaginations prey on our fears. A newborn baby is of course the most vulnerable creature in the world. What else could heighten a dangerous situation like a helpless baby? But what else would pose a greater danger? A baby, unable to look away, unable to understand, a baby who will only need need need, and take take take, and attract attention while putting everyone at risk. A baby, two babies, normally a blessing, but in this scenario, the worst possible thing.
Bier creates a tense atmosphere and Bullock keeps us riveted. Rather than jump scares, Bier gives us a character study, and Malorie’s humanity and the children’s inherent weaknesses gives some real meat to the film’s anxiety. But the film strays quite far from the book, and to no real advantage. Since this film streams for “free” on Netflix, it’s a no-brainer if you can take the heat (or rather the chill, the frisson). Squeeze your eyes half shut.
abilities are leaking out however they can, and now Mark is a photographer, and his subjects are quite unusual. Hogancamp has constructed a village in his backyard, a village called Marwen, which is inhabited by dolls. He sets the dolls up in war-time scenarios, and each one represents someone special to him in real life, namely the women who care for him. Living among Marwen’s women is Captain Hogie, the stand-in for Hogancamp, a tough soldier who lives his life fearlessly. And so he should, because as invariably as he is captured and beaten by the Nazis hiding on the outskirts of town, his lovely ladies come to his rescue, time and time again.
director Rob Marshall plunks down Emily Blunt as the iconic nanny, Mary Poppins. Ho-lee shit. I mean, every ounce of credit to Julie Andrews, but since she’s vacated the seat, Emily Blunt is absolutely the perfect choice to carry the carpet bag. Anyone else in the role is simply unimaginable. And Colin Firth and Meryl Streep are BONUSES? Ex-squeeze me? Pure casting heaven.
husband Sean (Henry Golding) is very revealing. Turns out, Emily was a pathological liar and her past was very closely guarded. Stephanie doesn’t know what to think about her friend, but her doubts don’t exactly stop her from getting cozy with Sean…and eventually moving right in. Which seems like a bitch move from a grieving best friend, but then, the recent widower isn’t exactly objecting. Why is Sean not objecting?
tell you with certainty she’s dipped into the negatives with this film, in which she over-relies on a screechy giggle she mistakes for endearing, even while narrating a letter she’s handwriting to her mother, which apparently was peppered with LOLs even though the movie takes place in 1983, and I doubt LOLs existed then. They just had to let mothers find something funny, or not, on their own back then. It was the dark ages.
manners are as impeccable as his dress. But when Tony boasts that he’s “blacker” than Shirley, who doesn’t know Aretha Franklin or fried chicken, he’s only showing what a narrow understanding of race he has, because when Shirley is repeatedly subjected to racist indignities and abuses, Tony is shocked while Shirley is not. The “Green Book” to which the title refers is an actual motorist’s handbook, which, for $1.25 teaches people how to navigate segregation and not get lynched while traveling down south. I feel that I might have sold a Red Book for $1.50 that simply said: don’t go. But Dr. Shirley’s going on purpose, knowing it will be hard, but feeling a responsibility to do his part in challenging the system. And white people play their part, paying to enjoy\appropriate his culture while refusing to dine with him in the same room.
when actually, you aren’t. And things are already a little slippery because Hope attended school like she never had to worry about graduating, and now suddenly, she does. And her boyfriend committed to her like it was a very short-term commitment and now that it’s open-ended, the passion has pretty much fizzled out.
mostly resents. One night, she hears a story on television about a little girl, Brook, who disappeared 30 years ago. An inkling is all it takes, and soon Nancy is contacting and visiting Leo (Steve Buscemi) and Ellen (J. Smith-Cameron), the little girl’s parents, believing or half-believing or half-willing herself to be the kidnapped child, now grown up.
difficult to measure. The irony is that though he’s a master of navigation, sailing-wise, it’s being away from his family that is disorienting to him. Out on his boat, alone for months, never seeing land, rarely hearing the voices of his children, Donald (Colin Firth) goes slightly mad, as one would. It’s a test of endurance, but also of mental fortitude. Though the sea and the elements thwart him at every turn, he himself is his biggest obstacle, and every day is a struggle not to quit.
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