Last week up in the Thumb this week before I head back to Detroit, and my options for movies this week is very limited. The movies playing here are Migration at one theater, Migration and Aquaman at another, and Wonka, Migration, and Aquaman at the third one. Got to love variety here. Still, streaming is there to be my friend, and Netflix released a film on Thursday I’ve been patiently waiting for.

#1 Society of the Snow

My journey with J.A. Bayona films is interesting. The Impossible was a pretty good one, A Monster Calls was a great one, and Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom is better left unspoken about (and I’m one who think Jurassic Park is the G.O.A.T.). So when I read his next film was about the 1972 Andes flight disaster, I was immediately on board. This one did not disappoint. 

After some very brief intros leading up to the doomed flight, we are then thrown into the main plot rather quickly. The crash scene starts around the 12 minute mark and the time the rescue begins (not a spoiler, read a book) is around the 2 hour mark. That is just under an hour and 50 minutes of being with the survivors of the crash while watching the mountain slowly claim more and more people due to its harsh conditions. Those that are still living have to make some awful decisions (when there is no food, but there are dead bodies…) and you don’t blame them for making that choice. The film just sits you right in the middle of those talks about morality and survival. It may linger a little too long, but it doesn’t stop being interesting. 

On the technical side of the film, the cinematography is breathtaking. The Andes mountains really provide a spectacular backdrop to the film. Another great technical aspect is the special effects makeup used. Everyone’s degrading look as their time on the mountain grows longer and longer is tough to watch at times, but that is the point. The only part where the film lost something for me was my own fault. I knew how many survivors there were when this happened in 72. So, once we hit that number, any peril anyone faced was kind of toothless since I knew they were all save. Another part of this film that keeps it from a perfect score is most of those long sequences of discussions could have been shortened a bit. Not too much, but they go on for awhile, and after the third or fourth of these moments, you start to feel the length. That is nit picking though. This was an excellent film, and even though we have had film about that disaster before, this may become the definitive version to tell the story that isn’t a straight up documentary. 4.5 out of 5 Radio Batteries

#2 Night Swim

What to know where the .5 missing above was? Where to begin with this one. January horror movies are usually terrible. Last year though, we got M3gan, which was a pleasant surprise. This year, it’s back to normal. A movie about a haunted pool already had its work cut out for itself. This one was just a dumb, boring movie that over relied on jump scares. Once you learn what makes the pool so bad, the movie kind of falls apart. Also, the whole theater I watched that was quiet at the home movie, which is not a good thing for a horror movie. I just can’t find anything I liked about this movie. It was just awful. So what is the 0.5 for here? Well, baseball plays a part in the movie. There you go. 0.5 out of 5 Pool Noodles

First two movies of the year, and they will probably be part of the Top 10/Bottom 10 a year from now. Now that I’m back at my house in the city, I’m back to my normal movie watching. At least 3 films next week, and I’m hoping for surprise tomorrow night at Screen Unseen.