Wildlife

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Rey M Apr 25, 2019 Paul Dano is one of the most talented actors working today as displayed in the genius biopic Love and Mercy () in which he comes alive as a young Brian Wilson but here he has made the transition to directing feature films and rather successfully if I do say so myself. The film is an adaptation of a novel () and has the sort of youthful angst and dysfunctional family dynamic that I have come to expect from a coming-of-age story but here the themes are dealt with quite gracefully. The film also has a top-flight cast with A-listers Jake Gyllenhaal and Carey Mulligan playing the difficult parents and talented young Australian actor Ed Oxenbould embodying our young lead. They all play their parts as well as well as one would expect them to and Mulligan gets a few Oscar baity scenes in. This is a very pleasant watch but not a must-see, if you want to see great recent coming-of-age films watch The Edge of Seventeen (2016) or Eighth Grade (2018). The film concerns ,, a normal young boy whose father, Jake Gyllenhaal, is compelled to join a group of volunteer firefighters in combatting a nearby wildfire after he loses his job and is to proud to take it back when it is offered to him again. When he leaves â~s mother, Carey Mulligan, takes a job as a swimming teacher and faces the uphill battle of raising her son on her own without the financial support of a man. He takes on a job as a photographer, gets a girlfriend and worries about the state of his parent's marriage as his mother begins to stray but in the end he grows into a complex young man. The best parts of the film are definitely the performances with Oxenbould arriving as a charismatic young lead who is still believably â~normal' with his larger than usual nose. His fear and confusion as he witnesses his mother kissing a man who is not his father after a very strange dinner is saddening and he is sweet and naïve without seeming like a total dope. Gyllenhaal is not onscreen for most of the film but his presence is felt throughout as we understand who he is immediately in the uncomfortable opening scene in which he crosses boundaries with his employers and is fired. The interactions between father and son are some of the best in the film as we watch look up to a man that we are aware is not entirely capable of raising a family. Mulligan gets the most showy role as the depressed fading beauty Jeanette who wants more out of life than chasing her husband around but is unable to live independent of a man. She speaks in a theatrical Hepburn-like tone and brags to her son about how desirable she was to men when she was young, "Aren't you proud that your mother was a shoot beauty?" All of these touches belie the sadness lurking behind her fakery though and Mulligan always makes us aware of the coiled rage behind Jeanette's saccharine, pretentious façade. When she rails against Gyllenhaal she is chewing the scenery but Mulligan gets the essence of this character better than most actresses of her age do, cough cough Emma Stone. All of the acting is very good and the characterization of a dysfunctional family is helped by the screenplay written by Dano and Zoe Kazan but the film never reaches the heights of Summer of '42 () or The Year My Voice Broke (). Perhaps it's just because this is a slower moving film less interested in portraying the extreme angst and insecurity present in so many films like this one. Had there been a few scenes with more zeal and pronounced emotion to them I could have really loved this but as it is this is a very good film and I am excited to see what Dano has coming down the pipeline. This is a film that is probably best suited to teenage audiences but if they wanted to watch it with their parents and discuss the difficulties of being a teenager that would be a rewarding experience. If you are a fan of Gyllenhaal or Mulligan this is a film that provides a lot of moments for them to shine and there is a large audience out there for stories like this. See more

Han P Apr 2, 2019 This is a dumb movie that dumb people think is smart.

Abraham L Mar 31, 2019 "Wildlife" called to mind all the Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie stories (and all the Richard Ford stories and novels, of course) that had, at times, stopped me dead in my tracks. Gyllenhaal isn't the most believable father figure to me, but I (introspective, disillusioned most of the time) identified with him and his idealism heavily. In spite of all the sadness contained in this movie it's so beautiful I can hardly keep myself from wanting to live within it. The fact that it managed to tell a story truthfully and well while providing me that escape leads me to say that Wildlife is a very, very good movie. See more

Poe S Mar 15, 2019 Wildlife is a 2018 American drama film directed by Paul Dano. While the narrative did become more interesting and tense towards the end, I felt that there was something lacking here. See more

Theodore S Mar 8, 2019 As Paul Dano's directorial debut Wildlife is the story of a middle-class family as it falls apart due to a difficult job environment and family tension. Though the movie is a slow burn there is no denying that the writing and cinematography are able to coincide with the deliberate pacing very well. Though this is a movie I would not likely see again, it is exceptionally made. Solid B See more

Luke S Mar 3, 2019 Okay I loved the payoff. The very final scene was inspired - and everything that happened through the whole movie was necessary to make it work so well. BUT, watching everything leading up to it was not thrilling. This movie has low rewatchability for me. So what happens is, this poor kid has parents who suck. Not in super-interesting or original ways. They just suck. While the performances from Mulligan and Gyllenhaal are predictably good, their characters feel more like devices than organic beings much of the time. But that final scene was so good. As far as a rating then - 6.2 out of 10 See more

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Wildlife

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