BEAST - MOVIE REVIEW.
Beast stars Idris Elba and Charlton copely and comes to is from the director of such films as two guns and Everest amongst many others so father and his two teenage daughters find themselves hunted by a massive rogue lion intent on proving that the savannah has, But one apex predator.
REVIEW.
Let's keep talking about beast there's a special place in my heart for a good old-fashioned monster movie and even though a lion is a real animal that exists on earth in every way.
Beast is a creature feature if this movie was released in he 90s as is it would have been rated I wouldn't have been able to see it as a kid and I would have waited for a few years for it to come on network television edited for content.
And I would have ran to my VCR to program the out of that thing to make sure that I wouldn't miss it, this is exactly that kind of movie and if you inhabit a space in which you really enjoy watching a movie in which people face off against something much stronger than them a primal force of some kind.
And cell phones and radios and all forms of contact have to be removed from the equation then beast is right up your alley it's Idris Elba versus a lion in the African wilderness that's it.
Don't go in expecting anything other than that and you'll have a good time at the movies I'm probably going to pronounce this name wrong but the director Balthasar carmaker took a unique approach to this movie and that a lot of it is filmed in very long continuous takes some of them are stitched together with CGI to hide the edits.
But there's a lot of really long takes early on in the movie setting up characters setting up location what this has aded to the movie is a very unique feel that I haven't seen from what could normally be described as Avery conventional movie.
This technique made the environment come to life I really felt like I was there you see so much around the characters behind the, and in the distance it really does feel sometimes like the horizon stretches on forever.
And there was one sequence introducing a pride of lions where you meet very integral characters and you go from wides to mediums to close-ups and I just kept picturing the first ac standing behind the camera like sweating bullets trying to make sure the focus stays perfect.
It was actually really impressive even the ways he introduces the lion felt unconventional it's usually in a wide from the camera being very close to the characters not quite a pov.
But you feel as if you see what they see I've only seen it once but I can't even recall a time where the lion's pov is a shot you're almost always with the characters and if the lion shows up its because it's head rose over the brush or because it's running towards them.
And I thought that was a great way of making us feel like we're in the characters shoes during this horrific situation with movies like this you front load the character you know everything about the characters thir past the pertinent emotional information within the first 10 Orr 12 minuets of the movie you have to know all of that because once goes down.
There's no time to talk about that stuff you have to just be on the run and so Idris Elba does a great job of maintaining a level of not just emotion and caring about his daughters but there's this fierce consistent adrenaline that he has to maintain and he's just fantastic in the movie.
So is chalet copely I loved seeing him in a film he doesn't show up that much if I were to nitpick about this movie I would start talking about logic I would start talking about character choices I would talk about the cell phone signal and the radio signal and how certain things are set up and you're like yeah that's probably going to pay off.
And it's not ;ike you watch this movie hoping to psychoanalyse it I mean maybe you do but I don't I don't go to see amok where the poster is Idris Elba versus a lion ready to put my thinking cap on.
And break down every emotional beat of beast it's movie where Idris Elba fights a lion in the African wilderness.
And that's exactly what I got and I was super excited about it all, that being said the eldest daughter in the film seems to have been written as the character that will make the stupid choices that sometimes get them in the middle of harm's way.
There's a few times the movie where she does things that I think the water's goal was to portray her being brave but it just made her look kind of silly and there were other choices she made like randomly honking the horn in the car to get someone's attention things like that.
That just seemed like a very stupid thing to do that I even heard audience members begin to like talk to the screen and be like why are you doing that there were moments like that that did take me out of it for a few beast.
When it comes to movies like this it's so important that characters make it's so important that characters make choices that make sense when you have a film that's essentially one contained period of time.
Where it's a group of characters against some kind of primal force where the entire goal is survive and protect the people you love.
It's really all-out choices how do you get out os a situation and how does the antagonist in tis cases lion keep the character in that situation so the movie doesn't end and you have to make sure the character choices always work.
In this case I mostly followed along with it but there were a few times where I was like come on don't do that, but honestly I left the theater energised this is the kind of movie I want to see more of I don't always need to go to a theater and have some incredible cathartic experience that challenges my emotions Sometimes I just want to see Idris Elba much a lion the face.
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