I was supposed to see Soul Power, a James Brown concert film, this morning at 10am but when my alarm went off at 8am, I was completely dead to the world. I figured I could get up, go to the movie, and end up falling asleep in the theatre, or I could just stay in bed and sleep there. So I did. I feel much more rejuvenated now, so it was worth it.
- The synopsis should explain quite vividly why I picked this as one of my films. The TIFF synopsis made it an even more obvious choice: "Following The Departed and Gone Baby Gone, the streets of South Boston continue to reveal powerful stories in What Doesn’t Kill You." Um, hi, you had me at The Departed.
- This movie is not The Departed and this should teach me not to be sucked in by bad movies attempting to capitalize on the success of similar but phenomenally better films that came before them.
- The title of the movie bugged me from the start because clearly every person who reads it will automatically tack "only makes you stronger" on to the end of it. This is overwhelmingly obvious even by Hollywood’s standards and so I was hoping that at some point in the movie they would reveal an alternate way of finishing off "What doesn’t kill you" that would rescue the movie from being trapped inside a really trite thematic title. Wrong-o.
- I can’t remember what movie I said this about previously, but as far as true stories go I would never have picked this one to make a movie from. Oh, I think it was The French Connection.
- Completely egregious font use in the opening titles and credits: COOPER BLACK. No, I am not kidding. COOPER BLACK. Paired with some random serif. Like, “DIRECTED BY” would be in Cooper Black and “Brian Goodman” would be in the serif font. I have no idea who designed these titles, but it’s the most heinous thing I’ve seen, typographically-speaking, in a long time. This list does include the completely wasted opportunity for font fantasticness at the end of The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, which was quite possibly the worst font treatment in 2007. I’m upset.
- When the opening credits scrolled by and announced to everyone that Donnie Wahlberg had taken part in writing the film, I thought to myself (paraphrasing movie!Draco Malfoy) “I didn’t know he could write.” Then I saw the movie and knew my assumptions were correct.
- The film starts out with an armoured car robbery before going back like twenty years earlier so we can see how we got to that point. When we get to that point in the narrative again, the film aesthetic changes to something more grainy, with weirdly processed colours and the like. You know, the kind of thing that signifies a flashback or, worse yet, a dream sequence. YES, THE ROBBERY WAS ALL IN MARK RUFFALO’S HEAD. He is literally taking a long hard look at his life on the eve of the robbery, plays over the potential outcome in his mind as depicted at the start of the film and then again at that point, and decides he’s staying clean and sober and isn’t going to help his friend with the robbery. Fail.
- All this aside, I’m kind of starting to really like Mark Ruffalo, even though he was far superior in The Brothers Bloom.
- This movie had a good, solid, consistent winter with lots of snow. I appreciate this.