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Mark Schweickart
Given the recently announced passings in Jack's and Larry's families , it seems we are being forced to face, especially as we continue to press on into our later years, what life unfortunately all too often forces upon us. My condolences go out to both families.
Thinking about this (and this may seem to be a bit of a stretched segue) reminded me of something I meant to post on the site a while ago, but I got distracted when I put on my self-promoter hat the other day pitching my book. What I previously was thinking about saying was that if you happen to subscribe to Amazon Prime's streaming service, you might want to check out a little known film I stumbled upon there called Life Itself.
It was written and directed by Dan Fogelman. He’s an exceptionally prolific guy, writing things like the animated films Tangled, Bolt, Cars, etc., wacky episodic TV like one of my favorites, Galavant, super-melodramatic stuff like This Is Us (which is something I haven’t seen, but I get the sense that this is its style). Life Itself is closer to the latter. Although it has some comic moments, but this is hardly the over-riding tone. I guess all I really want to say is that I was quite blown away by the creativity exhibited in the writing and scene construction. However, if you look on Rotten Tomatoes, you will see that the critics absolutely hated this, giving it a 13%, whereas the general audience reviewers really liked it, giving it an 83%. So it seems to be a love-it or hate-it sort of experience. I loved it.
I can't go into the details of the story or specific scenes that I liked, because that might ruin the enjoyment for those who haven't seen it yet. I will say however, if you do check it out, please pay close attention to the clever dialogue and the extremely imaginative way individual scenes are staged. There are lots of amazingly bold choices made that I think are just unusual enough to raise one’s viewing pleasure, but not so extreme as to pull you out of the plot or emotion of the moment, (and there is lots of emotion in the moments). I would love to say more, but as I said, that would not be appreciated before one has seen it.
Ebert out.
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