In the world of movies, any story can be told. It can be as simple as two people being together or as complex as an FBI investigation. At the end of the day, good things are presented in different ways.

“Grandma”

“Grandma” tells the simple story of Elle Reid, a poet who breaks up with her girlfriend after a long relationship. During her distraught phase, her 18-year-old granddaughter, Sage, stops by to announce that she is pregnant.

Naturally scared, Sage seeks an abortion, but does not have the funds for the procedure. The only appointment she could schedule was later that day. The rest of the film is a race against time to find the money.

Elle, played brilliantly Lily Tomlin, visits some old friends to ask for help. Without getting into spoilers, it must be said that the supporting characters really hold the film together. This is not just a film about a young adult getting an abortion. It runs deeper than that. The film is ultimately about Elle confronting the people she had wronged in the past and coming to terms with those issues.

One question is constantly asked to Elle: “Why did you come here?” It is a nice theme to play on and one that even simple films can make profound. “Grandma” was originally a Sundance Festival film, garnering enough praise to have Sony Pictures Classics release it in theaters. “Grandma” is a solid Sunday afternoon movie and that is all it needs to be.

“The Green Inferno”

“The Green Inferno” is completely different from “Grandma.” A group of college kids agree to travel to the Amazon rainforest in order to stop a construction corporation from tearing down the rainforest: A noble cause that goes completely bonkers.

Justine (Lorenza Izzo) becomes interested in an activist group led by another student, named Alejandro. Justine’s friend, Kaycee, worries about her travelling to the Amazon, so the two go to visit Justine’s father, who is an attorney for the United Nations. Justine sees it as an opportunity to bring exposure to that area and draw in attention from the U.N.

Once in the Amazon, the team forms a chain link with bulldozers and other equipment in protest. Justine, however, fails to lock her chain and she is held at gunpoint by the private police hired by construction workers. Though the event is captured on tape, the team is sent back to America.

The plane transporting them crashes, killing the pilots and a few other members. Eventually, a cannibalistic tribe captures the survivors, and the rest of the film is as you can imagine.

My problem with this film is that so much time is spent in this happy-go-lucky environment in New York, and then the film becomes extremely gory during the Amazon scenes.

It is almost culture shock. Taking a look at a film like “The Fellowship of the Ring,” with differing tones from the Hobbit scenes to the Mordor scenes — there is still that establishment of evil and brutality in the opening prologue. Another way to avoid this is to have a single tone throughout the film.

“Mad Max: Fury Road” opens up with a scene that has a lowered frame rate, showing the intensity of the actors in a fast-paced nature. You get a sense of what the movie is going to feel like. With “The Green Inferno,” however, the collection of cannibal scenes comes out of nowhere, to the point of it being comedic. For the film’s sake and considering its budget of only $6 million, the scenes of bodies being ripped apart are convincing. Fortunately, in a movie, prosthetics and rubber can look 99.9 percent like a body.

It is a throwback to splatter movies like “The Evil Dead” and Peter Jackson’s “Bad Taste,” where the interesting scenes are watching scenes of people being ripped apart and put in a convincingly terrifying way.

Though the terror felt flat for me, I am sure it will scare most audiences. That being said, I was glued to my seat, watching these characters try to escape the tribe.

During the credits, a special thanks goes out to the Peruvian tribe and their “beautiful home” that helped in the process of the filmmaking. Director Eli Roth explained that tribe had no concept of what a movie was.

The film crew set up a television and showed them clips from the movie “Cannibal Holocaust.” The tribe found it hilarious, and agreed to participate. Since many of the tribe members had never been in a movie, it is impressive to see them completely animated on camera, acting as if being cannibalistic is in their nature. 

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