Movie - I Don't Feel At Home in This World Anymore from Macon Blair

While looking through Netflix movies this sassy title caught my attention. I Don't Feel At Home in This World Anymore won the US Dramatic Grand Prize at Sundance Film Festival in 2017. 

This dark comedy tells the story of Ruth, (Melanie Lynskey) a depressed assistant nurse, and the mysterious burglary that took place at her house. Confronted with the police's lack of effort to find the thieves, Ruth is determined to take justice into her own hands. Along with Tony (Elijah Wood), her lonely neighbor, and with the help of her mobile phone, they attempt to track down the criminals and find themselves in a lot of trouble.

The movie is entertaining, although it's quite short (runs for about 90 minutes). I thought of it as a satire to consumerism and lack of authenticity, which is visible in Ruth's frustration about other people and the world. I really liked her character - it's genuine and naive, but also very relatable. It was easy to empathize with her from the beginning by learning what she hates - spoilers, queues at the supermarket and having dog poop in her garden. 

The weirdness of Tony is hilarious and they complement each other really well. I would have liked to see their relationship better developed, but the movie would have to be longer in order for that to happen. I think some characters were dispensable as they added little to the story. 

Although this movie is silly and far-fetched, it's out of the ordinary and unpredictable and the ending part it's up to interpretation.  I think it would have been better if it was longer but over all it's worth watching. 

Rate: 3.5/5

Movie - Funny Games from Michael Haneke

                                                   

A few days ago I was in the mood for a 90's film, so I went to the Cannes Film Festival website to find something to watch. Funny Games was on my watchlist already, and as a thriller fan, I gave it a go. I saw the original movie, from 1997, but there's a 2007 American remake from the same director. 

Georg and Anna, an Austrian couple, go on vacation with their young son Georgie and their dog to a lakeside cottage. There, they meet their friends, Fred and Eva, who have two young adults as guests, Peter and Paul, dressed in white and wearing gloves. 

While her husband and son are outside preparing the boat and Anna is making dinner, Peter knocks on her door asking for four eggs for Eva. Anna pleasantly gives him the eggs, but Peter accidentally drops them on the floor and asks for more. Eventually Paul arrives at the house and because of their resistance to leave, Anna starts feeling nervous and tells the boys to go away. 

When Georg and their son arrive, Georg also insists that they should go and there's when the mind games began. Georg is hit with a golf club in his leg and the family is imprisoned in their own house. Peter and Paul play sadistic games with the victims, creating a true atmosphere of panic which is very well portrayed by the actors.

This is not an easy movie to watch. It's not fast-paced at all - most of the scenes are super slow and the whole interaction between the characters made me feel uncomfortable. But I guess the point of this story is a critique to modern-day violence. The long scenes are suspenseful and there's a cool unexpected twist at the end.
Rate: 4/5

TV Show - You from Netflix

I've finished watching this show on Netflix yesterday and I loved it! You premiered last year, and so far it has only one season with 10 episodes each from 40 to 50 minutes. It's the perfect binge watch thriller, my kind of shows. 
I didn't know it was adapted from Caroline Kepnes's book with the same name, otherwise I would've read it first!

In this boy meets girl story, Joe Goldberg is a bookstore manager in NYC and Guinevere Beck a cute aspiring writer. One day, she walks into Joe's shop and he's instantly obsessed with her. Beck tells him her name and with the help of social media, Joe finds everything about her - her interests, her shallow girl friends, where she lives and where she's at. The opposite from him, who's mysterious and holds secrets from his past, specially concerning his ex-girlfriend Candace and his childhood.

Although they're different, they found a common interest in literature and he's determined to do anything to secure his future with her - even if it means doing dangerous and risky things to supposedly protect and make her happier. In Joe's head, Beck needs to be saved.

Even though Joe's a complete stalker, he alternates between his sociopath persona and the typical nice guy so well it was hard to hate his character. He's runs the bookshop smoothly, gets along with his co-worker and helps his neighbor's son Paco when he's afraid of his drunken stepfather. Beck is naive, afraid of letting others down, and often oblivious of what's happening around her.

This show gives an interesting look on modern technology and the consequences of online exposure. It has some flaws - Beck didn't even have curtains on her window and Joe, from outside, could see all she was doing in her living room. It was exaggerated. And sometimes he was so close to her in the streets and still wasn't caught. The characters are stereotypical but well portrayed. The ending was not a surprise because I've accidentally read a spoiler a few days ago but I think it's quite easy to guess what will happen when reaching a certain point in the story.

The show has been renewed and season 2 is premiering this year, also based on the sequel book by the same author, Hidden Bodies.
I'm not sure if I'm going to read it or wait for the new season of the show instead. I'm really curious though, so I might give it a go. 
Rate: 4.5/5

Book - Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak

                                              

In the previous post, I mentioned that I was reading Seven Days of Us, which I've managed to finish this afternoon. The premise caught my attention because it's not about a couple, as I assumed from the title, but about an English family, the Birch, and is set in Christmas 2016. The family consists of Andrew, a journalist who writes about restaurants, Emma, a stay-at-home, and their two adult daughters, Olivia and Phoebe. The story is told by multiple POV.

The eldest daughter, Olivia, who is in her early 30's, is a doctor who volunteers in humanitarian missions abroad and was in Liberia treating an epidemic. She is finally home for Christmas after many years. The problem, though, is that the entire family is required to stay in their old country house for a quarantine of 7 days.

Olivia and Phoebe, who's 3 years younger, don't get along and barely talk to each other - they're way too different. Olivia wants to travel to places in need of her medical help and doesn't want to spend much time with the family, but Phoebe is very close to her parents, especially Andrew. She is engaged to George, her boyfriend of 6 years, and all she can think about is in planning her wedding.

On the other part of the world, in America, a man named Jesse discovers that Andrew is his biological father. He was conceived when Andrew was working as a war correspondent in Beirut, in 1980, and was put for adoption when he was a baby. Desperate to hear from his biological father, Jesse sends him several e-mails, but Andrew doesn't know what to do, specially because he was already in a relationship with Emma when he was in Beirut. But in this dysfunctional family Andrew is not the only one hiding secrets...

Moving on to my opinion, I couldn't connect with the characters, I found them annoying. Although they're grown women, the daughters are treated like teenagers, specially Phoebe, who acts like one during almost the entire book. Besides, her relationship with George looks like it was taken from a Young Adult novel... She is spoiled and selfish, but her parents tolerate this behavior because Olivia has always been distant. Her recent experience made her feel angry and misunderstood, but her lack of effort to interact with her family eventually gets annoying.

The story has some far-fetched coincidences, it feels just too over the top and most events are predictable. I wasn't really a fan of the teenage-y writing style either, or the translation, as I've read it in Portuguese. I won't say it's bad - It's very entertaining, and even though it's over 350 pages long, it kept me so hooked that I've read it in just a few days. Besides, it features some important aspects of our society. 

Rate: 3/5 

Book - The Woman in the Window by A.J Finn

                                               

                                               

So I've finished reading this book more than a week ago and my ideas aren't so fresh, but anyway, I'll give it a go.

This first-person psychological thriller is about Anna, a former child psychologist who had a traumatic experience in her recent past and now lives a reclusive life in a three-story house in New York City, spending her days drinking wine, watching old movies, and engaging herself in online activities such as chatting with strangers in a forum for agoraphobics, playing chess and learning French. Besides, she also spies and photographs her neighbors from her window. She developed an obsession with the Russell's, a couple with a son who moved to the house across her's.

She is alone almost all the time, except when she sees her tenant, David, who lives in her basement, and when her physiotherapist, Bina, visits every wednesday. However, Anna speaks everyday on the phone with her husband and daughter, who live elsewhere, and soon starts being visited by Ethan, the Russell's son.

One day, convinced she witnessed her neighbor's wife, who she has met before, getting stabbed in her own house, she becomes completely paranoid about it, but due to her chaotic existence and drunk behavior no one believes her, not even the police, and later then found out the woman is alive and well. 

So, is Anna mistaking reality for a scene of a movie she saw or it really did happen and the woman was someone else? 

In the beginning I found the book too slow, the description of Anna's daily life and how many bottles of wine she had been drinking was boring and nothing particularly interesting was happening, so I took longer than I usually do to finish it. Actually I was pretty close to giving up. However the story started to get really intense, and it managed to keep my interest. And when I thought it was all solved, an unexpected revelation came up and it was chilling to read the last parts. Basically, the ending part compensated the dull beginning. 
An upcoming movie based on this book is premiering this October. 

Rate: 4/5

I am reading in Portuguese for the first time in a while! Just started Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak. It seems promising so far :)