Palo Alto

Director: Gia Coppola

With: Emma Roberts, Jack Kilmer, Nat Wolff, James Franco, Zoe Levin

I haven't heard of Gia Coppola before but since she's part of the Coppola film dynasty, it's safe to assume that she's got some skills from his grandfather, aunt, uncle, you name it. Filmmaking is basically in their blood. After watching Palo Alto, the film itself affirmed where her last name came from. Gia Coppola's first feature film adds to the roster of stylistic films of the Coppolas. It depicts an honest portrait of adolescence, exploring the insecurities and faults of modern teenagers.

The three main characters are -- April played by Emma Roberts, a young student who shows interest in her football coach played by James Franco, Teddy played by Jack Kilmer, a shy artist, and his buddy Fred played by Nat Wolff, who's probably the resident douchebag of their batch. These characters are tangled into a series of chaotic encounters with their fellow students and themselves, while April gets tied up in a secret affair with her football coach. It's bonkers.

Coppola knows how to put her audience in the shoes of these characters that you can't help but get affected by their continuous wrongdoings and confused emotions. It's also matched with the bleak cinematography of Autumn Durald that gives an eerie atmosphere to the surroundings of the cast. Plus, the gloomy slash indie inspired musical score of Devonté Hynes and Robert Schwartzman adds to the youthful and stylish texture of the film, that I can't help but associate Gia Coppola's choices of songs to her aunt's keenness in music.

It's also a film very reminiscent of Harmony Korine's Gummo and to an extent Spring Breakers, wherein both are dark and astonishing. It doesn't hurt that this film also stars James Franco whom despite being normal and looking sane, his portrayal of April's football coach is nothing short of creepy. I'm having flashbacks of Franco's Alien in his character here, not because they're similar. In fact, they're very different but there's something about Franco these days that's alarmingly weird and it shows a lot in Palo Alto. The three young leads, Roberts, Kilmer and Wolff each provided a semblance of distinctiveness depicting different attitudes of teenagers nowadays. Nat Wolff is a standout for how annoyed I was with his character. It's crazy how he turned from being funny and likable in The Fault in Our Stars to being extremely aggravating in Palo Alto. Talk about effective acting. He's giving Ezra Miller's Kevin a run for his money.

For its darkness, I think it affected my opinion on the film. The three main characters never gave the audience reasons to like them which is understandable. The theme boasts of relevance, the visuals and sounds are brilliant. As for the plot and the main characters, they are well written, but I'm afraid it didn't leave any space for the audience to care about any of them. Thus, it ended up having so much promise but also sort of unfavorable.

The Fault in Our Stars

Director: Josh Boone
With: Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Nat Wolff, Laura Dern, Sam Trammell, Willem Dafoe

I am one of the lucky ones who didn't read the book so I was spared from the ~feelings~ the readers-turned-fans or whatever have experienced from it.

But even without reading it, it's a given that someone's going to die and it's going to be a major tearjerker so I consider myself prepared for that and I also sort of want to test myself if it's going to break me.

Well, it didn't.

But sweet mother of dramas, it's undeniably and highly emotional. It's a simple movie but it's the simplicity that got me caught up in it. Simple, intimate and poignant. The movie experience is very comparable to the same metaphor Hazel gave to herself, a grenade. That I tried my hardest to detach myself from the characters in hopes of evading the sadness I knew it would provide but it's sort of impossible because the evil duo John Green and Josh Boone ensured that it would make you vulnerable to the point where it's difficult for anyone not to detonate.

The characters Hazel Grace Lancaster and Augustus 'Gus' Waters are so well-written they would suck you up to feel what they feel for each other. But they're never going to work tremendously if not for Shailene Woodley's aesthetic and Ansel Elgort's (jacket) charisma whose screen presence reminds me of a young Ryan Phillippe. Their eye-to-eye contacts, exchanges of smiles, okays and okays and other sweet nothings, add up the gratifying number of awesome soundtracks, are like traps that make you invest your feelings into them gripping your hearts until they melt. And you lose yet you feel like a winner because you got the essence of their relationship and more importantly the movie. Point is, I really like the characters and how they were portrayed that I refuse to talk about the technicalities of the film thoroughly.

It's also hard not to mention the story of my audience but everyone ate it up from beginning to end. It's kind of hilarious and quite a refreshing movie experience. The squeals when the movie started were so eye roll worthy until I found myself slowly syncing with them eating every cheese and romance of the movie. Halfway through the film, things went differently when I could hear giggles turning into sniffs. I assume these are the readers who already knew what's gonna happen reliving the pages that made them love the story.

But even without those wimps :3, my friend beside me was already bawling her eyes out that it felt like she already shed all the tears my eyes could possibly shed for the film. There's no more left for me because she brought the tears into a whole different level. Poor thing because I told her to buy a pack of tissues but decided not to because she might get disappointed in case the film failed. But it didn't, so she settled for the tissue she got from T.G.I.Fridays. It's priceless and sort of ironic because this is the same person who I went with to watch The Conjuring and didn't show any ounce of fearful emotions while I was busy being scared shitless.

It's pretty obvious that this film pleased most of its fans because of the reaction it got. I must say that the nonreaders were also quite pleased because for one, it didn't reach the point of annoyingness even if the characters are teenagers and it talks about romance. I was moved even if I was quite skeptic about it.

Although it's certainly not for everyone. It's unremarkable especially if you don't open yourself with its romance and grievance. I personally like the first half than the second because it got too dark and sad and awww :(. It's  also not as unpredictable as others claim it to be. But at the end of it all, we can all agree that it's a pretty nice film reminiscent of the classic A Walk to Remember. That a few years from now, I foresee that this would be considered as one of the classic tearjerkers of this generation.