Capsule Reviews: 'My Old Ass' & 'Never Let Go'

by Philip Price

My Old Ass

Photo: Amazon MGM Studios

“My Old Ass” is a movie about savoring people, experiences and the moments we share in and with them. From the bike riding to the rocking of a newborn baby and through to the emotional mountain top this movie reaches, everything about Megan Park's ode to time and understanding that it is the one thing we cannot make more of absolutely wrecked me. Some will call it mawkish, and others will say it is manipulative, but everything is done in such a sincere fashion it's hard to believe Park was attempting to do anything other than remind her own self of these realizations and hopefully help a few others do the same in the process.

It's a great premise that I'm sure has been attempted before yet it never squanders the execution in the ways I expected it to. Initially, as a father of young children, I found the film incredibly depressing so far as I'm now fully sympathizing with adults in movies more so than the bullheaded teen protagonists which I know to be 1000% true because Maisy Stella's Elliott begins the film feeling like her life is finally starting on her 18th birthday, days away from leaving for college, despite it coming to the end of this major chapter for her parents.

That “My Old Ass” makes the arc of Elliott's character realizing how good she has it, how fleeting this moment in time truly is, and that she should take advantage of certain connections while she still can not only made me appreciate the film from an old man perspective but made me fall in love with it in the same way you fall in love with the comfort of a warm blanket and hot bowl of chili after working or playing in the cold for too long. This immediately shot to the top of my "share with friends" list and likely will become one of my default views when I crash into bed after a long day and simply need something to soothe, console and ultimately cheer me up.

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Never Let Go

Photo: Lionsgate

Call it low expectations or lack thereof, but Alexandre Aja (“Crawl”) has crafted one of the more distressing, darkly psychological and all-around depressing movie-going experiences of my year in “Never Let Go.” The film manages to remain enticing through its escalating tension rather than get bogged down in its own misery.
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As something of an elaborate metaphor around how the restraints placed on our minds due to certain beliefs are stronger than the convictions they supply, this is pretty rattling. KC Coughlin and Ryan Grassby's screenplay goes one step further though, attempting to parse out what a belief system reflects of the believer, what it says about them individually, and even why certain people become susceptible to certain ways of thinking. Plagued by the context of today's world and in an election year no less, it was difficult for me to look past how certain characters - no matter the amount of evidence provided - were incapable of perceiving things differently from how they've been conditioned, almost groomed, to perceive them.

Not expecting a grand twist or the focus of the third act to rest on a surprise factor made this more enjoyable. I have no idea if that is part of general audience expectations going into this, but given the set-up, it feels like it might be. A twist for the sake of trying to make sense of this world and Halle Berry's character's point of view is not what the film is about though, it's about how Berry's character compiled her orientation in the first place and the harm she is doing to her children by passing it on despite genuinely believing she is saving them. Truly disturbing shit.

In addition, Aja's film is atmospheric as fuck. Shoutout to the production and set design teams, the set decorators (the curtains that look like snakeskin were a great touch), and the costume designers whose contributions all lend to this uncertainty that hangs over the film, trapping viewers in that space of never knowing what to believe is real and what is not.

Robin Coudert's score has some really cool elements as well.

And finally, just some stellar child performances from both Anthony B. Jenkins and Percy Daggs IV, who are both tasked with convincing us of their character perceptions in ways that could have easily been lost in translation from page to performance, but that these guys convey naturally and with such conviction in their presentations that we're truly torn between setting them free and trying to find the cons in letting them continue to believe.