The Life of Chuck Review

        Talk about a year where Stephen King has multiple adaptations on both television and film. The films were both hit and miss while the HBO show focusing on Pennywise has drawn acclaim by adding more to the mythology of the clown. I think a typical day for King is him extending his arm and opening his hand to get the residual checks of his works. His work is adaptable, given to the right hands where it’s one of the best horror films and the best dramas. The latter is mostly overshadowed by the scarier stuff, but when it lands it lands on the dot. The Life of Chuck is one of the most underrated films of the year and I’ll even say it’s one of the best King adaptations. 

1. Who is Chuck?

        I will say that it’s very rare for me to pick up the book and read in preparation for the film release. The story which is part of a few unpublished novellas by King is part of a collection called “If It Bleeds”. This specific novella is roughly 100 pages long and it’s probably the easiest read that I’ve done for the author. To be clear, I’m not going to do a compare and contrast, just judging the film on its own merits. Also this is the first film that I’ve seen of Mike Flanagan, but we’ll talk about him in a bit. 

        Much like the book, the film is broken into three acts. Albeit told in reverse, as we see the world ending and getting to see who exactly Chuck was when he was alive. It’s kind of interesting to have the film start in the end since we’re following this one character as the whole world is slowly falling apart. Natural disasters and everything, but what’s peculiar is that he and others are seeing ads that are honoring Chuck. I just love how Chiwetel Ejiofor’s character Marty is perplexed by the ads but is trying to ignore all the disasters happening. 

        I feel that in some way the first, well third act is like a suspenseful disaster movie where all the characters are just dreading the end. Like, we see what’s going on and it’s impactful when the internet and general electricity just goes out. To me it makes sense to have this is be in a non-sequential order since it would be a downer to have everything just end. As the third act continues, we do get a glimpse of Chuck breathing his last breaths as his cancer kills him. 

        The other acts are just as good and are a bit more upbeat than being a total downer. We see Tom Hiddleston portray Chuck in his adult self. I think out of all the three acts I like the middle one due to seeing Chuck making a difference. Through dancing as he matches the beat of the local busker who sees him and tries to drum up her gig. Overall I didn’t think I would ever see Hiddleston dance to the beat. More so that he brings in a stranger to dance with him and it just makes the scene better. 

        I might as well talk about what’s going on with the movie before talking about the last, well first act. Given everything that we know, Chuck is just a regular guy. There’s no ability or shining gift, like he’s just a bifocal wearing dapper kind of guy where he takes the initiative to dance. With no second thought, he just does it as he invites a woman who’s never met him to dance to complete the busker’s gig. To me, it’s about living his life to the fullest since he does it for the good time and that he changed the attitude of the woman. 

        The final act is where we see Chuck in his youth as we see him living with his grandparents. As well as where he found his gift of dance. I love the chemistry between the kid and his old folks. Especially when Chuck is with Mark Hamill when he gives him sage advice on how to look at life through a different lens. One mystery aspect that is included is that Chuck is forbidden to enter a section of the house. To the point where Hamill gets upset at him but comforts him when he unintentionally scares him. 

        The whole dancing moment is great as we see young Chuck learning how to dance and when it all leads to the school dance where he owns the floor. It’s all great especially when he gets a peptalk from his dance teacher to take the initiative. To me, it just shows how Chuck is unique as he does the dancing in honor of his grandmother and when we get a glimpse of the ads where he honors his grandfather as an accountant. He doesn’t do those things for the honor of anything but as tribute of his life experiences. 

        One more thing before I move on, I really like how we get glimpses of the images that happens in the first act. Like Marty, we see him as a middle school teacher but he appears in the school dance as he congratulates Chuck. More so that everything that Chuck sees appears in the beginning of the film. To the point that as we see the world ending, everything where Chuck is situated in the ICU is normal. Chuck’s world is ending and it’s really a unique way to show death without it being too on the nose that the entire world in general is gone as one significant person is gone.  

2. Mike Flanagan

        As I mentioned before, this is the first time that I’ve seen anything by Mike Flanagan. Nowadays, you can think of him as the next Frank Darabont or the late Rob Reiner. In a sense where he has adapted multiple Stephen King stories to film. He has a certain style when it comes to horror. Especially as he has contributed to Netflix’s shows such as The Haunting of Hill House and The Fall of the House of Usher. Anyways, he doesn’t go for the typical scares but let’s the prelude play out before the horror stuff happens. 

        With this film, it’s interesting where the focus is on the character. It’s a character driven story where we learn a lot about the guy without seeing a typical day of him when he’s older. I think it was wise to show us his influences play in the end, to tie up the loose ends of why he danced with a stranger. I like that it’s a story where it feels passive since we see how it plays out backwards, but Chuck is active as he takes the initiative to be a better person. To the point where he gets a glimpse of his future, but decides to still live his life. 

3. Overall

        The Life of Chuck is a severely underrated film of this year, and it’s one of the best King films to come out. 

350th Review: Sinners

        350 films can do a lot for one guy. I distinctly remember just being cooped up in my apartment and deciding to just review my small movie collection. Anything to kill time for a seemingly forever pandemic that affected everybody. I just gotten my degree with a minor in film studies, so to me it made sense to use something where it can’t be applicable in the real world. As soon as I expanded my horizons and viewed more movies via streaming and joining my local film club, it cemented what I love doing. I’ll admit that my earlier stuff isn’t good but they're a part of my growth and why it’s such a sharp contrast with what I’m talking about in any film. With all that reminiscing, Sinners is my favorite film of the year. 

1. One Night By The Delta

        I remember back on Twitter when news broke that Ryan Coogler was going to shoot his next film. The initial idea was that it was going to be a gangster film with vampires peaked my interest with how he was going to execute it. He’s one of the few directors to have a hot streak and slowly becoming the next great auteur director. Just watching his films and seeing how far he’s come is really something to see. While I’ll talk about him later, this film is sort of like a culmination for him. 

        Just before I talk about the film, I find it odd that this year was the year of the twins. You may not notice it but take a dork like me to notice it and to see how everywhere this odd motif popped up just about in some movies. Like, Warner Bros. had their films like this one, Mickey 17, The Alto Knights and Superman have characters where there’s a copy of one character or one actor portraying multiple versions. To the point that Disney is guilty with films like Elio and Predator: Badlands. It was just a questionable studio mandate to have one actor/actress portray multiple characters. And have it be everywhere if you really pay attention.  

        I got that out of my chest so now we can talk about this film. As I mentioned earlier, the initial gist of the film was that it was a gangster film with vampires. When seeing the final product on the big screen, there’s so much where it’s a miracle that it’s like a well-oiled machine that everything just clicks. We start by seeing a young man covered in blood going to his father’s church. Interpsperse with brief seconds of flashbacks of what he’s seen and what we’ll slowly see in a matter of moments. Just seeing him cut and tattered got us hooked now to ask and inevitably find out what happened to him. 

        So the story is like this. We follow twins Smoke and Stack as they arrive in the Mississippi Delta to start their life anew. It’s established that they were in Chicago when they lived like mobsters. Michael B. Jordan plays both the brothers and it’s nearly flawless with how the footage and special effects make them share the screen. They concoct a plan to open a juke joint for the locals to dance and drink.

        Meanwhile, we see that Sammy is their cousin and going to be the performer for the joint. I like the first half of the film as we see the individual brothers split and get help to assemble their club. All of it has a point where we get introduced to the secondary characters like Delta Slim and Annie. The latter having history with one of the twins as they used to be lovers. Their introductions is good and all since they have that good chemistry with the twins and Sammy. 

        Might as well talk about Sammy. Even though Michael B. Jordan gets topped billing, the whole story centers on Sammy. Actor Miles Caton makes his film debut and he’s the best part in the film. It’s established that he has a penchant for singing the blues and playing it as he has his guitar that he treasures. He holds it in high regards since the twins gifted it to him by saying that it was a famous musician’s guitar. And you better believe that the music has to slap just as much with the amount of action that comes after. 

        It wouldn’t be a Ryan Coogler film without his regular composer Ludwig Göransson. The duo is sort of like Steven Spielberg and John Williams; each are like the peanut butter and jelly with the individual projects. Anyways, the music is the ultimate secret weapon that the film has. At first, I wasn’t expecting this film to have any musical bits. Albeit not a musical but have the music be the central focus and have it be diegetic where it enhances the story. The beginning of the film establishes that music can be transformative by bridging the past and future.  And of course bring in outside threats.

        I should at least talk about my favorite moment in the film, and possibly the best moment of the year in my opinion. We see the Juke Joint popping as the music and people dancing to the song. When it’s Sammy’s turn, that’s when the film immediately sells itself to me. We get echoes of Delta Slim and Smoke’s ex Annie talk about the blues and music. Sammy plays and then we see dancers from the future and past pop up and dance to the beat. It’s sort of weird but more dancers appear and the song keeps going and then the whole joint lights up in fire. Literally, Sammy is on fire as he’s singing and playing the guitar. 

        While all that is good, the villain of course wants to be a part of the camaraderie. We get an introduction to Remmick as he’s running away from the local Choctaw tribe. What makes it better is that when he arrives to a Klansmen’s shack, vultures are circling by. Remmick isn’t an evil person per say, but he’s the type that want’s to belong to a collective. When seeing the music pop in the joint, Remmick wants to be a part of it. Like, there’s a lot of backstory that we only hear and see tiny glimpses of what he was possibly like before he turned seemingly immortal. 

2. Ryan Coogler

        If you know me, Ryan Coogler is becoming my next favorite movie director. It was a decade ago that I saw his film Creed where I loved everything about it aside from being a Rocky sequel. Just his style and how he shoots his films gives him that edge of grounded ruggedness. I’ve already talked about his blockbuster Black Panther. And seen his other film that he produced Judas and the Black Messiah. I’ll admit that I still haven’t seen his debut Fruitvale Station, but I’m all for him to make more films that are pushing the envelope on race. 

        Anyways, how he handled this one is nearly flawless by making the whole film be a period piece of the 1930s. It’s very clear that he made the film to combat the Jim Crowe era that was pervasive during that time, by having the twins lift other civilians in the town up. To the point where I wasn’t even aware that there were Asians living by the Delta in Mississippi. Coogler went authentic with the setting, and made it work within the context of the story. 

        Now, part of the story feels like it’s been done before. That’s only because it was when back in the 90s, you had Robert Rodriguez direct From Dusk Til Dawn with George Clooney starring. Both films are somewhat identical, with having criminals dealing with vampires. Albeit the execution is the real sticking point of where the two films differ. Rodriguez had his film be an action flick that is paying tribute to the past grindhouse exploitation films of the past. Coogler’s is a tribute to the blaxploitation films of the past by having the authenticity of the real world give it that boost. Now, I’m not saying one is better than the other, objectively speaking this one is. I mean, how can you not love when one of the twins engages in a shootout against the Klan. 

        What I’m getting at is this is Coogler’s second R-Rating where he amps up the action and violence with blood squibs. When the action is about to go down, I love how the aspect ratio lifts and down to give us the violence in full screen. Part of it feels fun to imagine just how much the cast and crew go loco with the staged violence and how the special effects were used when the vampires met their end. Like, the final fight is great when we see the characters hold their own against the onslaught. 

3. Overall

        Even though I talked about what I liked about it, there’s so much that I didn’t want to repeat from others. Sinners is the best film of the year and one of Ryan Coogler’s best in his career.