Logging

Film:  The East

There was a decent idea in here - a corporate spy enters an anarchist environmentalist organization to take them apart from within.  I liked the idea of exploring fringe counter-cultural America in a Point Break - style story.  But the craft just wasn't there.  The writing was below average.  Acting was tolerable, but not good.  It reminded me very much of Margin Call and Arbitrage -- movies that used to be done at a mid-level studio level than are now reduced to an indy space.  And you can tell.  Michael Clayton might be the last really good example of a studio film made this way well.  In this film - and I felt the same way about Margin Call and Arbitrage - the filmmakers need to figure out a way to fill up the frame.  It is so clear the movie has no money to spend because the frame feels empty all the time - lots of wilderness shots, or shots foregrounded, or close ups.  These filmmakers might benefit from watching Michael Bay's Pain and Gain and paying attention to what can go on within the frame..  Beasts of the Southern Wild didn't suffer from this and I suppose that film had just as little to work with.  There were other issues as well - a very hackneyed outlook towards hippy-anarchist world POV and non-functioning love stories - basically it was a bit amateur.  Another $28 down the drain for a movie worthy of Netflix Streaming.