Fish and Cherries Productions

Into the Woods was… okay. I think my biggest issue was that the pacing felt so rushed and there wasn’t really enough time to get to know these characters. I wouldn’t have minded so much if the performers blew me away with their acting and their singing, and while they weren’t bad, they weren’t spectacular either. Similarly lackluster was the cinematography and the set design. On stage, it’s different because the sets in the woods can go for a lot of artistic license. But in the film, it’s just a bunch of gnarled trees that look all the same and it simply get exhausting to look at. I know the woods are an odd thing to complain about in Into the Woods, but I’m sorry, by the end of it, I was so sick of those fucking woods.

The frustrating thing is that none of it’s bad, it’s just not spectacular. for an adaptation of a Stephen Sondheim work, that’s a huge step down. And what really hurts it is the stuff from the play that doesn’t translate to screen, like the several strips of nonstop songs (which is puzzling considering that quite a few were cut). There’s some nice original stuff like Cinderella’s song where time stops for her and Little Red Riding Hood’s journey into the wolf’s stomach, but they’re few and far between. Moreover, it feels grim where it should be colorful, colorful where it should be grim, and a lot of the bite and the serious bits were left by the wayside (including my favorite part which concerned the narrator… you all know the one). Overall, I feel like this worked way better on the stage than it does on the screen. I can’t say I regretted seeing it, but I’m not exactly sure I took that much away from it either. If you need to see it, do so as a way to tide yourself over before the play comes to your town.

August: Osage County is a film about an extremely dysfunctional family that is not afraid to go to some very uncomfortable places. Every person in the family has some secrets or vices and in lesser hands, it might feel like a soap opera. Some instances do feel like a soap opera, but a very watchable one. I actually think that this is a movie designed to make the viewer feel uncomfortable, right down to the laughs and the implication by the end that Julia Roberts’ character may have become as bad as her mother played by Meryl Street. The big weak point that I see, as loathe I am to admit it because I like him, is Benedict Cumberbatch; I found his character a little too melodramatic, he disappears for almost the entire third act, and it’s hard to tell if his southern accent is convincing or not. I’m hesitant to recommend this movie because I feel like it’s an acquired taste and you won’t walk away from it feeling joyful, but at the very least, I enjoyed it, so take that for what it’s worth.