REVIEW: Pawn Sacrifice

21 09 2015

Pawn SacrificeThe tortured, abrasive genius has gotten a lot of play recently – the 2014 Toronto Film Festival alone saw the premiere of “The Imitation Game,” “The Theory of Everything,” and “Pawn Sacrifice,” all of which played with these tropes to some degree.  The final of the three is the last to see release because it is the most conventional of the bunch and thus the most boring.

Picture “A Beautiful Mind” sans any beauty and you’ll arrive at Edward Zwick’s biopic on Bobby Fischer.  So, in other words, just “A Mind.”  Tobey Maguire stars as Fischer, a chess whiz who also happens to harbor serious mental health issues that convince him the Jewish people are conspiring to bring him down.  (Never mind that Fischer himself was Jewish.)

After some obligatory introductory scenes that set up Fischer as a prodigy from his youth, the majority of the film concerns his 1972 match against Soviet heavyweight Boris Spassky (Liev Schrieber).  Zwick and screenwriter Steven Knight want you to believe that this is the thinking man’s version of the 1980 Miracle on Ice – “World War III on a chessboard,” as one observer calls it.  Yet for something supposedly so important, “Pawn Sacrifice” feels like it has remarkably low stakes and tension.

Part of that comes from investing so much energy in Fischer’s supposed mental deterioration, which Maguire plays like a histrionic marionette.  We can see the strings, so nothing can really surprise us about the turns Fischer takes.  Any more exposition would have made the film intolerable, but it might have been necessary to contextualize his genius.  Without that, the whole film feels played at the intensity of an emotional meltdown in “Spider-Man.”

But a lot of the film’s dullness is due to Zwick’s direction, which is so tasteful that it forgets to entertain or engage.  It’s hard to believe “Pawn Sacrifice” comes from the same man who directed great historical films like 1989’s “Glory” and 2006’s “Blood Diamond.”  This film just feels remarkably drained of any intensity, something it desperately needed in order to make a convincing case that the man and the event depicted are worthy of our time and attention.  C / 2stars


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REVIEW: The Second Mother

20 09 2015

The Second MotherAnna Muylaert got more than a great performance by casting Regina Casé as Val, the old-fashioned house maid to a wealthy Sāo Paolo family, in her drama “The Second Mother.”  She subverted an entire media personality as Casé holds a position in Brazilian culture similar to that of Oprah Winfrey in America.  But even for those international audiences unaware of the iconography Casé carries, the film still works marvelously.

Muylaert’s film functions as an insightful, incisive look at modern class dynamics on the strength of its script and the characters who populate it.  While countless film relegates household workers like Val to background characters, “The Second Mother” grants her protagonist status and a rich, complicated interior life.

After decades of care for her upper-class family – and essentially serving as the surrogate mother for their teenage son Fabinho – Val has grown quite comfortable in her role.  She has internalized the rules and divisions that govern the household, accepting the arrangements as practically natural.

That all changes, however, with the arrival of Val’s biological daughter, Jéssica (Camila Márdilao).  After years being raised by relatives, Jéssica seeks a stable place to live while she applies to college and ultimately decides the best option is to move in with her estranged mother.  The family matriarch Barbara insists Jéssica will be welcome in the house, even going out of her way to make sure the newest arrival feels welcome and comfortable.

But everyone gets a little more than they bargained for with Jéssica, who pushes the boundaries of acceptable behavior for the household help.  She resists acquiescing to the second-class citizen position to which Val resigns herself, acting as if she deserves equal access to the house in the same way as Fabinho.  To Val’s surprise, the family scarcely kicks up a fuss!

As Jéssica tramples the usual separations between classes and generations, “The Second Mother” exposes the divisions in society.  In doing so, Muylaert asks if they have any place in a system that supposedly fosters meritocracy and upward mobility.  Her exploration is both gripping to watch in the moment and fascinating to ponder after the film finishes.  B+ / 3stars


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REVIEW: Prisoners

19 09 2015

Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners” possesses a remarkable precision in nearly every aspect of its execution.  It is palpable in the mood, the performances, the script from Aaron Guzikowski, and especially the photography by Roger Deakins.  As the abduction of two children forces a father (Hugh Jackman) to extreme measures of extracting vengeance, the film patiently and methodically follows his descent into an inhumanity on par with his daughter’s abductor.

At times, Villeneuve’s realization of this unraveling feels so airtight that it comes across almost as stifling and constrictive.  Somehow, the film feels like it needs to breathe.  Yet on further inspection, that is not the case.  Villeneuve knows exactly how much oxygen “Prisoners” needs to survive and refuses to dole out any more of it than is necessary to give each scene a pulse.  This makes his film burn not only slowly but also consistently, illuminating the depravity of cruelty to children with its steadfast flame.

His exactitude directly counters the nature of the narrative, a complicated ethical story with neither an easy outlet for sympathy nor a character that lends his or herself to identification.  The closest figure offered for a connection is Jake Gyllenhaal’s Detective Loki, whose adherence to rationality and order makes him the most level-headed presence in “Prisoners.”  He retains a rather detached perspective on the case of the missing girls rather than allowing himself to succumb to the levels of hysteria from the grieving families.  If everyone else in the film yells, Loki speaks in a whisper.

In a way, that soft-spoken approach makes for the only major flaw of “Prisoners” that I could find.  The film’s audio mix is all over the board; the sound goes in and out, then up and down.  I watched it twice at home on two different television sets, but the problem persisted.  I often had to rewind and jack up the volume to catch a line of dialogue muttered under someone’s breath.  This sotto voce technique makes the film chillingly clinical – so make sure you can hear it in all of its complexities.  B+ / 3stars


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REVIEW: Peace Officer

18 09 2015

Peace OfficerIf you noticed your screening of “Straight Outta Compton” erupted in nervous laughter at the sight of a military-grade tank rolling down the streets of Los Angeles like it were Baghdad, then you need to add “Peace Officer” to your watchlist immediately.  Brad Barber and Scott Christopherson’s documentary tackles the troubling trend towards aggression in the American police state, surveying the human cost of their violence.

For an initial briefing for how this state of affairs came to be the norm, preface the film with John Oliver’s superb segment on police militarization.  But unlike Ferguson, an area that is majority minority, the rural Davis County, Utah, in “Peace Officer” appears primarily white.  Separated from racial rhetoric, the issue of police brutality comes into an even starker light as its own problem in need of instant remedy.

Officers should serve and protect a people, not occupy or terrorize them.  This simple distinction is the message of the film’s subject, Dub Lawrence.  He founded his county’s SWAT Team but now stops at nothing to see the unit held accountable for taking the life of his son-in-law, among others.  The case of that family members makes up the backbone of “Peace Officer,” but Barber and Christopherson make sure to include countless other stories of families brutalized by the police and forced to comply with whatever force they mete out.  Oh, and they also intercut with the tone-deaf responses given in interviews by local officials, who of course find it ludicrous to say the police has come to resemble the military.

Lawrence identifies the larger issue at play here as one of civil rights.  How can we have an equal society when the law’s permissiveness essentially allows one group can act essentially without risk of repercussion?  The question is one every American needs to ponder because the next victim could be someone you know – or you.

“Peace Officer” is hopefully the closest thing the United States could ever produce to an equivalent of “The Act of Killing,” Joshua Oppenheimer’s frightening documentary exposé on the effects of impunity in Indonesian society.  But if we continue on our current course, future films will make it look tame by comparison.  B+ / 3stars


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F.I.L.M. of the Week (September 17, 2015)

17 09 2015

The Edge of HeavenFatih Akin had a bit of a rough go with the film festival circuit the last time around with his Armenian genocide drama “The Cut,” which received nearly unanimous pans out of Venice.  To my surprise, the film managed to secure U.S. distribution (I had all but given up hope of ever seeing it).

So in honor of throwback Thursday, I’ll take the “F.I.L.M. of the Week” column back to a time when Akin had much more success appealing to the festival crowds.  In 2007, his nation-hopping drama “The Edge of Heaven” took two prizes at the Cannes Film Festival and established Akin as a major name in European cinema. The film has the scope of a Soderbergh or Iñárritu multinational drama but does not aim for a grand global statement.

Instead, “The Edge of Heaven” resonates on a human scale.  Though the film jumps from Turkey to Germany and then back, the thematic focus is not on the borders that divide people.  Rather, Akin looks at the forces that unite and bind us together against the odds.  For these characters, those would be an odd combination of coincidence, missed opportunities, bad timing, and – ultimately – grief.

In its multiple segments, connected to each other by a character who appeared in another episode, “The Edge of Heaven” portrays numerous tragedies and calamities that befall people both good and bad.  There’s the tragic story of the prostitute Yeter (Nursel Köse), who just wants to help her estranged daughter Ayten (Nurgül Yeşilçay) back in her native Turkey.  But little does she know that Ayten fled Istanbul as a political dissident and seeks a country to grant her asylum.  Her quest to find a safe space ultimately draws in Ayten’s good-hearted German girlfriend Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkovska) as well as another German, Alisan (Baki Davrak), who seeks to help her as a service to Yeter.

If the web of interlocked narratives seems confusing in my verbose plot summary, it will not feel that way experiencing the nuances of story and emotion built into Akin’s script.  His is the rare film among the so-called “hyperlink cinema” trend that is more concerned with developing characters than finding ways for their paths to cross.


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REVIEW: Everest

16 09 2015

EverestTowards the end of the lengthy expository section of “Everest,” journalist Jon Krakauer (Michael Kelly) asks the question on everyone’s mind: “Why Everest?”  The film recounts a harrowing climb under the tutelage of mountain guide Rob Hall (Jason Clarke), who leads a group that does not necessarily look a typical band of sport climbers.  Knowing what exactly motivates them to reach the planet’s highest peak is a reasonable thing for an audience to wonder.

In this one moment perfectly set up for characters to bare their souls – the writer makes for a reasonable excuse to pose such an inquiry – “Everest” pretty much whiffs.  When accomplished scripters William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy cannot deliver on an obvious occasion to answer what deeper meaning this mountain has, it cannot help but disappoint.

So, in the absence of a satisfactory answer to Krakauer’s question, I would like to pose it myself – albeit with slightly different punctuation and inflection.  Why, “Everest?”

Why, “Everest,” must you include a maudlin, manipulative score that tells us exactly how to feel when we should feel it?  Granted, at least they got Dario Marianelli, so it sounds pretty.  But as I watched the film, my mind often drifted to thinking about how much more intense and visceral the experience would be with the score for “Gravity.”  Such impressionistic sounds and frightening dissonances could make the environment seem dauntingly alien.  The music meant to represent climbing the world’s tallest mountain should not resemble the score for any old drama.

Why, “Everest,” must you stubbornly insist on just portraying things that happen to people?  As Hall’s group summits, they face treacherous weather conditions that put their lives in peril.  But the snowstorm is just a snowstorm.  The film lacks any sort of overarching structure of conflict, like man vs. nature or man vs. man, to imbue the challenges with deeper meaning in the mold of “127 Hours.”  The struggles remain in the realm of the personal, not tapping some greater sense of collective fear.  It’s danger without any sense of dread for the audience.
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REVIEW: Black Mass

15 09 2015

A movie like “Black Mass” is essentially the cinematic calendar whispering, “Winter is coming.”  It’s a gentle reminder that we are inching ever closer to a glut of prestige dramas filling screens across the country but that the best is still yet to come.  (Of course, if you read this in 2016, the last paragraph probably means nothing.)

Director Scott Cooper’s film works fine as a tiding over of sorts.  Most 2015 films so far that have provided this level of drama were low budget indies, and anything with this amount of violent bloodshed must have been a giant franchise flick.  “Black Mass,” made from a well-structured script by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth, boasts a thrilling experience packaged in some remarkable production values.  It all just feels so Scorsese lite.

And for the most part, that made for an entirely satisfactory evening at the movies.  I got a film that was perfectly good.  It just never approached greatness.

The marketing of “Black Mass” makes the film look like The Johnny Depp Show, and to a certain extent, it is.  Anyone who slithers around a film with such amphibian-like eyes and a Donald Trump combover just naturally draws attention, even when not playing a notorious gangster like James “Whitey” Bulger.  But, at heart, Bulger is just a boy from South Boston (“Southie”) trying to rule its biggest business – organized crime – by any means necessary.

That involves cutting a strange deal with a former childhood acquaintance, FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton).  According to Connolly, Southie is the only place where kids go from playing cops and robbers in the schoolyards to playing it on the streets, and he gets into Bulger’s racket just like some sort of game.  As a part of their deal, Bulger goes on the Bureau’s books as an informant yet essentially gets carte blanche to take out his competition.

Depp might get the more ostensibly interesting character to play, and he certainly plays up just how intimidating and downright creepy a figure Bulger truly was.  But its Edgerton who steals the show, essentially playing a Beantown rendition of Bradley Cooper’s Richie DiMaso from “American Hustle.”  Connolly is the inside man who gets played like a harp by a key asset meant to bring him professional glory.  What motivates him to continue helping Bulger even when the jig seems up proves the heaviest and most complex part of “Black Mass,” and it certainly kept weighing on me after the film ended.  B / 2halfstars


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REVIEW: Heaven Knows What

14 09 2015

Heaven Knows WhatJosh and Benny Safdie often draw comparisons to filmmakers like John Cassavetes for their sluggishly paced realism.  In their 2010 film “Daddy Longlegs,” I found this stylistic choice little more than a conceit.  Slow, ambling scenes tied together by little more than the whims of life were simply a method of communicating the frequent failures of a single father.

But in the Safdie brothers’ latest work, “Heaven Knows What,” that meandering quality feels integral to the experience.  The film follows Arielle Holmes as Harley, a fictionalized version of herself, as she experiences various challenges related to homelessness and drug addiction.  To have a conventional plot driven by goals and forward motion would feel disingenuous for a world populated by characters whose compulsions have them running in circles.

The movie pulses along as Harley does, from score to score, motivated by nothing little more than getting to the next high.  It makes for a unique window into a world rarely seen on screen with any sense of veracity.  “Heaven Knows What” allows us not only to stare the depravity of heroin addiction in the face on screen but also to experience the listlessness and danger that comes along with it.

Stripped of sensationalism, the Safdies endow the material with a scrappy, grimy tenacity.  Holmes’ story proves a natural match for their aesthetic sensibilities.  Hopefully they continue in this vein and reinvigorate the “social problem” drama for the better.  B+ / 3stars


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REVIEW: Breathe

13 09 2015

Breathe_1sht_final.indd“Breathe,” a film directed by international actress Mélanie Laurent (Shoshanna!), is located somewhere between the adolescent angst of “Fish Tank” and the exploratory joys of “Blue is the Warmest Color.”  It seems counterintuitive, but Laurent is not at her best when coaxing great performances out of her young actors.  Rather, her film succeeds most when she photographs them in silent anguish, isolated in large crowds of exuberant people.

Laurent charts an age-old teenage tale in “Breathe,” the journey from companionship to the moment when the waters of friendship begin to run green with envy.  The rather unremarkable Claire (Joséphine Japy) finds relief from the mundanity of home and school by hanging out with her class’ newest addition, wild child Sarah (Lou De Laâge).  While initially fast friends, their bond breaks slowly – then suddenly.

“Breathe” has its moments of intrigue and insight, particularly whenever one character finds it difficult to perform the action described in the title.  But overall, Laurent brings little new to a fairly familiar tale.  It’s worth supporting a film by a woman, about women, yet for everyone – just don’t expect to have it take your breath away.  C+ / 2stars


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REVIEW: Pasolini

12 09 2015

PasoliniNew York Film Festival, 2014

Admittedly, I know very little about Pier Paolo Pasolini, the Italian filmmaker played by Willem Dafoe in Abel Ferrara’s “Pasolini.”  I probably scrolled through the Wikipedia summary of him in the minutes before my screening began (which I only opted for because I had already seen my other option).  But a working knowledge of Pasolini is hardly necessary to get something out of the film.

A good portion of the film is fairly didactic, involving Pasolini giving an English-language interview about his art and craft that provides a baseline of details that can sustain interest throughout.  He talks about the death of narrative art and the right to scandalize, topics relevant in 2015 as they were in 1975.

As Pasolini talks through his upcoming projects, Ferrara visualizes them.  This aspect is significant because Pasolini never got to see them through himself.  The director was brutally beaten to death prior to shooting.  “Pasolini,” then, realizes that vision for the filmmaker.  The film does not just portray his life; Ferrara extends it.

But in order to keep the narrative going for those (like myself) who need something more than glances at a work that could have been, “Pasolini” follows its eponymous figure on the final day of his life in a manner similar to “Fruitvale Station.”  This not only helps Ferrara avoid hagiography but also allows a sense of tragedy to inform the proceedings.  While this two-pronged approach to depicting a major figure in Italian cinema is neither revolutionary nor particularly novel, it certainly manages to keep things interesting for a much wider audience.  B / 2halfstars


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REVIEW: Out of the Furnace

11 09 2015

Out of the FurnaceThe small town, blue-collar workers in Scott Cooper’s “Out of the Furnace” are disappearing both from America and from the silver screen.  They deserve better than what they get here, a gritty realism riddled with clichéd storytelling conventions.

Cooper covers a lot of that up with a great cast that turns in predictably solid, if not dazzling, performances.  The explosiveness of Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson, and Casey Affleck in one movie alone is a sight to see no matter what. But it should be a powder keg, not a few sparks flying.

The film should receive some credit for being one of few to tackle the home-front experiences of Iraq War veterans like Affleck’s Rodney Baze.  He’s completely volatile, a pugnacious time bomb who will detonate if he cannot pulverize someone with his fists.  But everyone else in the Pennsylvania Rust Belt town in “Out of the Furnace” who tries to either defuse him or encourage him just fails to light up the screen in any way, shape, or form.

For a film whose title refers to an object capable of generating high temperatures, “Out of the Furnace” packs remarkably little heat.  C / 2stars


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F.I.L.M. of the Week (September 10, 2015)

10 09 2015

A ProphetThe Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) gets underway today, and plenty of films vying for Oscar glory will be seen for the first time.  Other holdovers from Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, and Venice will also get a moment in the sun, a reintroduction for North American audiences.

One film of the latter variety is Jacques Audiard’s “Dheepan,” the controversial Palme D’Or winner at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.  Many people chalked up the film’s unexpected victory to its director simply being due for the prize after coming up short numerous times.  One such missed opportunity was back in 2009 when Audiard debuted “A Prophet.”

I first watched the film after it received a nomination for the Best Foreign Language Film award at the Oscars back in 2010 … and found myself quite underwhelmed.  For whatever reason, I just could not connect with it.  But once “Dheepan” took the big prize in Cannes, I felt obliged to give it another go.  The second time around, I was actually quite taken by the film.  I still think “Fish Tank” deserved the Palme D’Or, but “A Prophet” is certainly worth of my pick for the “F.I.L.M. of the Week.”

Audiard’s film is a patiently paced prison drama that goes for slow, longitudinal change rather than explosive incidents.  Think “The Shawshank Redemption,” but as an art film instead of something so commercial.  “A Prophet” follows Tahar Rahim’s Malik, a most curious double agent, as he games both sides of a Corsican/Muslim prison gang tussle.  He wants to make a big move one day in the future – even though that forces him to assume a subservient position for the ruthless, spineless Corsican ringleader (Niels Arestrup).

Audiard was smart to cast Rahim, a novice actor when he filmed “A Prophet.”  A well-versed thespian might have tried to slip hints towards a greater intellect humming beneath the surface of Malik.  Rahim, however, plays him as a rather ordinary man of no particular intelligence, just sort of making it up as he goes.  He’s playing the long game, not necessarily because he focuses on the ends but mostly because he cannot sufficiently navigate the present.

Malik’s rise to power, when watched in the right state of mind, makes for truly riveting cinema.  While it might not always be pulse-pounding action, the novel-like breadth of its narrative provides a rich experience for serious-minded movie lovers.


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REVIEW: The Visit

9 09 2015

The VisitM. Night Shyamalan might be moviegoers’ favorite punching bag, but for his latest outing as writer/director, he brought something to deflect the blow.

In “The Visit,” a found footage horror film, all action comes from the camera of teenaged Rebecca Jameson (Olivia DeJonge).  She’s an aspiring Albert Maysles who thinks she and her brother Tyler’s (Ed Oxenbould) upcoming trip to their grandparents’ rural Pennsylvania home might make a good subject.  Since their mother Paula (Kathryn Hahn) has been estranged from them for years, this visit will mark the first time they meet.

Don’t like a turn the movie takes?  Blame it on Rebecca, then.  It’s a pretty smart way for Shyamalan to avoid criticism.  And if moviegoers land one more punch on the battered director, it might be enough to push him into oblivion for good.

But “The Visit” looks like the first step toward the rehabilitation of his reputation.  The film demonstrates a rigor of style and storytelling not seen from Shyamalan since at least 2002’s “Signs.”  The limitations of his chosen narrative technique force him to exhibit more creativity and less bombast, both of which he does decently well here.

At times, the script feels a bit retrofitted for the found footage format; various scenes feel unnatural to film but unfortunately necessary to move the plot forward.  The scares are a bit on the conventional side, too.  Overall, though, “The Visit” proves a satisfying move in the right direction for a director once hailed as the heir to Spielberg.  He taps into anxieties about America’s growing gray population while also capturing something true about the current generation of teenagers and how the omnipresence of video guides their every action.  B / 2halfstars


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REVIEW: The Fifth Estate

8 09 2015

Ripping the story from the headlines seems to be the most compelling action in “The Fifth Estate,” a fictionalization of WikiLeaks’ history from director Bill Condon and writer Josh Singer.   The film feels irrelevant in the wake of Alex Gibney’s documentary “We Steal Secrets,” a more thrilling and intelligent treatment of these people and ideas that does not even have to resort to fictionalization or melodrama.

The film begins modestly (ha!) with a brief history of worldwide communications, from hieroglyphs to Guttenberg’s printing press all the way to the iPad newsstand.  Then, it proceeds to cut between the WikiLeaks team led by anarchist Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and the U.S. government’s response to their destabilizing revelations.

It might have been better off just focusing on its titular estate rather than including subplots involving the second (government) and fourth (press) estates; the tension between the old guard of reporting at institutions like The Guardian and the WikiLeaks “hacktivist” style of citizen journalism feels like a topic for an entirely different film.  Sure, this is an excuse to bring in an ensemble of supporting characters portrayed by talented actors like Laura Linney, Stanley Tucci, Anthony Mackie, Peter Capaldi, and David Thewlis, these accomplished thespians are unable to do much to elevate the material.

As Assange and Daniel Domscheit-Berg take steps to increase worldwide transparency, their tendency to think more about the information and less about the people leads to conflict.  Plenty of innocent people are taken as collateral damage by WikiLeaks, and their servers offer flimsy protection for the whistleblowers who dare to release sensitive information.  Assange’s personality gets in the way of the story he pushes – a worry that seems to inspire caution in the next major leaker, Edward Snowden, as shown in Laura Poitras’ documentary “Citizenfour.”

Condon uneasily balances Singer’s script that cannot decide whether to focus on who they are or what they did.  For the former, at least Cumberbatch nails Assange’s vocal cadences.  For the latter, though, “The Fifth Estate” cannot even turn one of the most important events of the decade into compelling cinema. Even with one of the newest tricks in the book, adding an M83 song for dramatic impact, the action falls flat.

When the film awkwardly acknowledges its own shortcomings in its odd finale, it feels almost like the creative team saying sorry.  Apology accepted, I guess?  C / 2stars


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REVIEW: Mistress America

7 09 2015

Mistress America posterThe lively creative partnership between writer/director Noah Baumbach and writer/star Greta Gerwig produced one perfectly pleasant piece of cinema in 2013’s “Frances Ha.”  That film appropriated the techniques of the French New Wave greats and applied their general vibe to an (un)happy-go-lucky New York twenty-something.

Their reteaming on “Mistress America” yields something both more ambitious and fulfilling.  Baumbach and Gerwig weave together elements from theatrical, literary, and cinematic antecedents to create one truly insightful comedic masterpiece.  The finished film is nothing short of “The Great Gatsby” for the Google generation.

New freshman Tracy Fishko (Lola Kirke) arrives to Barnard without a clue or many friends.  She aspires to write but cannot crack the top literary society nor connect with peers also in need of external validation.  The vastness of Manhattan nearly devours lonely Tracy, but before it can, she makes a last-ditch phone call to future stepsister Brooke Cardinas (Gerwig).

Brooke is like Tracy, a transplant in the city, but she seems to have found some way to fake it until she made it.  (Or, at least until she could pay some bills.)  On one wild night bopping across town, Tracy becomes fascinated with her future next of kin.  And given the way Gerwig plays Brooke, she would be be a fool not to get drawn into her larger-than-life personality.

Brooke is an odd hodgepodge of Williamsburg hipster, Silicon Valley self-help maxim spouter, and that newest breed of social media-crazed narcissism.  With her motormouth, she converses with her own train of thought first and others around her second.  Chief among her ramblings is rampant self-mythologizing to a disturbingly hilarious degree; perhaps Brooke fears that if her lips were to close, she might have to think through the words that come out of them.

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