5 Flights Up

This review may contain spoilers!

Welcome to the film that is basically an hour and a half of watching the Living Channel. I would give 5 Flights Up a 2.5/10.

This film was genuinely quite amusing in some places; there were lines or characters that were very quirky.

Diane Keaton, who played Ruth, embodied this worrisome older woman exceptionally well; I think her devotion to her dog's health was one of the best parts of her role in this film. Claire van der Boom, who played Young Ruth, was this ecstatic character who was so incredibly full of life; I think she played a role so closely to Keaton that it was uncanny. Korey Jackson, who played Young Alex, was quite a strong subtle performance; I like how he played up his character's nervous side and how he was the driving force behind some of the film's scenes that discussed racial issues.

However the best performance came from Morgan Freeman, who played Alex Carver. Freeman was fantastic when he was restless and unsure onscreen, he was constantly nervous about the prospect of selling his apartment and it really made the plot feel stronger. Furthermore he was a very entertaining and funny character to watch; he easily had some of the best lines in the film.

The plot for this film is really dull; there's no tension and no conflict that demands the audience's attention. As a result this was a hard film to sit through, it took forever in terms of pacing. But the worst part was that this film could have really focussed on it's racial themes but more often than not these were neglected in the story. The cinematography was so still and boring, it was exceptionally basic. The editing wasn't all that much better, with cutting being slow and dragging out the film's pace for longer. The music for this film was quite an uninteresting tone; there isn't anything memorable about it.

Cynthia Nixon, who played the Niece, was this absurdist character that really did not fit into the film at all; she just pushed to hard to be funny or more notable than she really was.