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THE UNFORGIVABLE MOVIE REVIEW
Movies about people getting out of prison usually paint a couple of pictures. One, that life on the inside can turn even the nicest person into a hardened con who will kick the crap out of anyone who crosses them. And Two, once a person gets out of prison after decades behind bars, it’s abundantly clear that they would have been better off staying locked up, because the world outside is not a world they belong to anymore. America sure doesn’t go out of their way to make freedom all that great. Almost like the prison industrial complex benefits more from people staying incarcerated than rehabilitating them. Hm, strange. And this is the world that Sandra Bullock’s Ruth Slater is returning too after twenty years behind bars for murdering a sheriff who came to evict her and her five year old sister Katie, whom Ruth was raising in their childhood home. Upon her release, Ruth gets two thankless jobs, all while searching for her estranged younger sister. Katie was sent into the foster system after Ruth’s incarceration and barely remembers anything of her life before, though she does experience memories of trauma. These memories cause Katie to be involved in a car accident, and she is forced to return to her foster parents’ home while she recovers. Katie’s foster parents worry that her memories of Ruth, as well as the fact that she may be somehow aware of her release, is what caused the accident. Meanwhile, the sons of the sheriff Ruth killed find out about Ruth’s release and begin stalking her, learning where she lives and where she works, and planning revenge. Frank, Bradley, Melina, and T.C. sit down to discuss the good and bad of this potentially great character piece that is bogged down by too many subplots and unnecessary twists and turns.
DIRECTED BY: Nora Fingscheidt
STARRING: Sandra Bullock, Vincent D’Onofrio, Jon Bernthal, Richard Thomas, Linda Emond, Aisling Franciosi, Rob Morgan, Viola Davis, Emma Nelson, Will Pullen, Tom Guiry, W. Earl Brown, Jessica McLeod
YOUR REVIEWERS
T.C. De Witt (Screener Squad)
T.C. De Witt is a multi-awarded writer/director originally from Wisconsin and now based in Los Angeles. His life has been devoted to the arts since he was a child. He’s been a stage performer, playwright, stand-up comic, film and television actor, radio DJ, podcaster published author, recorded musician, and comic writer/illustrator. He is now a professional screenwriter and has been thriving for the past decade, regularly offering his talents to production studios in LA, Chicago, Milwaukee, and internationally in Sydney and Poland. He’s provided content for Amazon Prime, Netflix, and several YouTube partners. His films have screened internationally, and his stageplays have been performed across the country. In the last ten years, he has directed 57 films, 23 episodes of his series The One Minute Rewatch, 300+ episodes of podcasts, and his multi-award-winning short film Screen: Righter screened at the Festival de Cannes in 2016. He has released two feature films, The Princess Knight and A Christmas Sunset. He thrives on collaboration and the thrill of sharing stories in all forms.
Frank Calvillo (Highly Suspect Reviews, Screener Squad)
Born and raised in South Texas, Frank currently lives in Austin and has been in love with movies ever since his father showed him some Three Stooges shorts when he was five years old. Today he loves all kinds of film, regardless of era, country, budget or genre. He believes every film has an audience and is at least one person’s favorite movie. After writing for Sight & Sound and Slackerwood, he now writes for Cinapse where his increasingly random taste in all flavors of cinema (from Rashomon to Mars Attacks!) continues to thrive. His ultimate goal is to write a script for his boyhood crush, Michelle Pfeiffer.
Bradly Martin (Screener Squad, Eye on the Prize, Breakfast Pub)
Bradly Martin was born in the united states and grew up on a healthy diet of sports, films, and books. A rather shy lad who kept to himself, Bradly soon discovered the best way to know a person was to know what people liked. Throughout the years Bradly became a fan of many things and a fanatic of none. From Doctor Dre, to Doctor Strange and the who’s who of Whos. From Playstation to the Dreamcast and Marvel to DC. From LeBron James to James Bond and Lord of the Rings to Lord Palmerston (or Pitt the Elder if you agree with Wade Boggs) and is a huge fan of dad jokes and randomly obscure Simpsons references. Armed with a vast knowledge of comics, films, and pop culture. Bradly traveled the world making friends and sharing takes. As a young man Bradly married the love of his life young and grew older every year with each new child brought into the brood. If trends continue, Scientists predict that .2% of Canada (where Bradly and family reside) will be populated by Bradly’s children by the year 2029. You can hear him leading and listening to his favorite critics on the Screener Squad and Eye on the prize and maybe even provide some comments of his own.
Melina Eames (Screener Squad)
Melina first discovered that she carried the nerd gene at the tender age of four following her exposure to a little film called A New Hope. In the twenty-some years that followed, Melina continued to grow into her geek identity through the discovery of Batman, Mst3k, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings and The Mandalorian. But perhaps her most significant discovery came at the age of fourteen when a night of YouTube mining led her to the review site of Spill.com. Melina became a devoted follower whose fandom did not end with the site’s demise. By then, it had worked its dark magic and left her with a love and appreciation for film criticism that she has yet to shrug.
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