Like Crazy: Bound Together Despite the Ocean

Like Crazy

Directed By: Drake Doremus

Written By: Drake Doremus and Ben York Jones

Starring: Anton Yelchin, Felicity Jones, Jennifer Lawrence, Charlie Bewley, Alex Kingston, and Oliver Muirhead

Director of Photography: John Guleseria, Editor: Jonathan Alberts, Production Designer: Katie Byron, Original Music: Dustin O’Halloran

Rated: PG-13 for the foolish troubles that happen with first love.

            Allow me to get much too personal for a moment, though it all leads to a point. I dated an amazing girl for quite some time, and it was my first big relationship. There was a point, however, when it was coming to a place where I thought I’d be leaving New York for good, and she would be staying. I began to seriously consider whether our relationship, which had gone on for over a year and a half, was forever, and whether it would be worth it to begin to play the “long distance” game. I thought one of us would get hurt, or make a decision we would come to regret. As it turned out, I stayed in New York, but that conversation with myself never ended, and eventually broke up with her, knowing I was being both unfair to her and myself. Now I’m too young to ever consider myself an expert on love, but all I know is that four months later, the pain still stings. I find myself constantly looking back at the shadows, not because I want to be followed, but just because I want to make sure she still exists out there. First love is impossible to forget.

            So did I find Like Crazy to be a good film about the insanity of love to drives people both together and apart? Not particularly. However, that never stopped me from feeling the emotional sting of every twist and turn, even if they didn’t follow logically. Like Crazy, directed and co-written by Drake Doremus, follows two young, beautiful people as they struggle to stay together under difficult circumstances. The two lovers, played by Anton Yelchin (Star Trek) and Felicity Jones (The Tempest), are the bright eyed hopefuls that often inhabit the cinematic space, despite Mr. Doremus’s attempted realism. But damn if I didn’t feel their pain, no matter how silly it may be.

The Beaver: A Falling Star's Attempt to Rediscover Life, Both On and Off the Screen

The Beaver

Directed By: Jodie Foster

Written By: Kyle Killen

Starring: Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, Anton Yelchin, and Jennifer Lawrence.

Director of Photography: Hagen Bogdanski, Editor: Lynzee Klingman, Production Designer: Mark Friedberg, Original Music: Marcelo Zarvos

Rated: PG-13 for very serious themes meant to be important.

            In 2008, Kyle Killer’s script, The Beaver, landed in the #1 spot on the Black List, a list of the best unproduced scripts in Hollywood, as compiled by its top producers. No doubt there is a good story in The Beaver, one that could have made for a very funny movie with Steve Carrell at one time. But actress Jodie Foster, taking large leaps in her third time behind the camera, has cast the film in a very different light. Her tone is more serious; her attention to the troubling problems of mental illness that flourish the script’s narrative more prominent. Most of all though, is her choice of casting in Mel Gibson.

            Mr. Gibson has not been seen on screens since Edge of Darkness, a Boston revenge thriller that fits snuggly in the “Make-Mel-Made” genre that populated in career in the 1990s. Here, he’s playing Sad Mel. Very sad. His character, Walter, is a toy company CEO with a dying business and a family that hates him (Ms. Foster plays his wife, Anton Yelchin, his older son). After being kicked out of the house, Walter goes a motel where two unsuccessful suicide attempts plague him so much that a beaver hand puppet he finds takes on a personality of his own. Walter makes no attempts to hide the fact that it’s really his voice talking, but The Beaver charms with his happy-go-lucky mood and cockeyed accent. Could the beaver be the answer to all of Mel’s problems or is it simply hiding the dark surface?