Arrival

November 18, 2016

Arrival is one of those movies that depends almost completely on a twist surprise that comes in the last half hour or so. That makes writing about it without ruining the experience for anyone who hasn’t seen it particularly difficult. There are plenty of really great movies that are structured this way – Fight Club and The Sixth Sense are two that spring instantly to mind. There are also movies that are weakened by depending too heavily on that one surprise to hold up the entire film – The Village and The Forgotten are good examples. It’s too dismissive to write that Arrival is somewhere in between. If it is, it’s on the high side of that middle area, more intriguing than not. That engagement mostly comes from the beautiful and strange atmosphere director Denis Villeneuve creates for Arrival. His visuals are complemented exquisitely by composer Jóhann Jóhannsson’s dark, moody score.

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Star Trek Beyond

July 29, 2016

Star Trek fans did a lot of phaser clutching back in 2008 when director J.J. Abrams said he wanted to make his iteration of Trek more like Star Wars. “All my smart friends liked Star Trek,” Abrams said at the time. “I preferred a more visceral experience.” For Star Trek Beyond, Abrams handed the keys over to director Justin Lin, and he took a more hands-off approach as producer. Of the three Star Trek movies under the Abrams banner, Beyond is the one most like a visceral Star Wars adventure.

Lin is most famous for the four Fast and Furious films he directed, and his gifts for staging adrenaline pumping action sequences are on full display here. He also directed two episodes of the cult sitcom Community, so Lin knows how to handle ensembles and comedy as well. Amidst all the action is a script by Simon Pegg – who also plays Chief Engineer Scotty – and Doug Jung that honors the ideals and ethos of Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. The end result is a movie that focuses more on the wow factor than it needs to, but is still immensely enjoyable because of it.

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Ghostbusters (2016)

July 22, 2016

It’s times like these that I wonder if Roger Ebert ever faced the problem I’m having. Does that make it sound like I’m putting myself in the same ballpark as Roger Ebert? I’m not. I am to Roger Ebert what Caddyshack II is to Caddyshack. (As per review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the sequel currently stands at 4%(!) positive compared to the original’s 75% rating. So, yeah, that seems fair.) If anything, the higher rating isn’t high enough to properly gauge the late, great film critic’s skills. Still, did he ever review a remake of a movie he so beloved, and felt so close to, that he wasn’t sure if he could fairly assess the remake on its own merits? That was my worry going into the 2016 version of Ghostbusters.

If pop culture-obsessed children of the 1980s made a top ten list of movies that should be treated most like Lennie’s beloved rabbits in Of Mice and Men, the original Ghostbusters would be a heavy contender for number one. I turned five the summer it was released, and if you weren’t there, it’s impossible to overstate the absolute phenomenon that the movie was. A photo exists of my entire family wearing white shirts with the Ghostbusters logo emblazoned on the front, each of our names ironed onto the pocket. I vividly remember Ghostbusters being the very first VHS rental for my family’s freshly purchased VCR.

There’s a lot of history here is all I’m saying.

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Midnight Special

April 15, 2016

Midnight Special is many things. It’s a moody science fiction throw back in the vein of E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s an intense on-the-run movie which takes place over the space of a few frantic days. It shows the destructive force of religious cults, and the extreme measures true believers will go to in the name of their convictions. Ultimately, Midnight Special is a tightly wound tale of a father and mother who will do anything for their child, who is at the heart of it all.

Director Jeff Nichols’ first two films, Shotgun Stories and Take Shelter, are both meditations on American families in the process of breaking down. In the former, years of uneasy pressure between two sets of half-brothers in Arkansas come to a boil when the patriarch of the two clans suddenly dies. The latter examines a man in Ohio whose family must face the consequences of his slow descent into mental illness. So it’s no surprise that family is at the core of Nichols’ fourth and latest film, as well.

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10 Cloverfield Lane

April 1, 2016

Last week I wrote about Richard Linklater’s film Everybody Wants Some, his “spiritual sequel” to Dazed and Confused. 10 Cloverfield Lane could very easily be described similarly alongside its 2007 predecessor, the found footage monster movie Cloverfield. But producer J.J. Abrams has instead taken to calling the film a “blood relative” of the original, which he also produced. Think of the two Cloverfields as feature length, big budget anthology entries in a show like The Twilight Zone, or The Outer Limits. Their connective tissue is a sci-fi milieu, and a rich atmosphere that envelops you in dread.

The film’s official synopsis is, “Monsters come in many forms.” That is a supremely superb and succinct sketch – an excellent example of the Shakespearean proverb, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” The set up to the film, directed by Dan Trachtenberg, is equally simple. A young woman named Michelle survives a car crash and wakes up in her rescuer’s underground fallout shelter. The man, named Howard, tells Michelle that some invading force has poisoned the air, and that it’s not safe to go above ground for a year or two. Michelle and Howard aren’t alone, though. An acquaintance of Howard, a young man named Emmett, saw that the older man was acting strange, and convinced Howard to let him into the shelter before sealing it.

The next hour and a half plays out as an incredibly tense chamber drama. 10 Cloverfield Lane is a masterclass in paranoia filmmaking. Even though Emmett believes everything Howard says about the danger above ground – the older man claims he saw atomic-like blasts – Emmett didn’t actually witness anything himself. Complicating matters, Howard proves to be unstable at best, kind and fatherly but capable of exploding into bouts of rage when contradicted. So, Michelle isn’t sure who to trust or what to believe. In addition to Howard’s erratic behavior, Michelle can’t be totally sure he didn’t run her off the road in the first place. She also awoke in the concrete bunker with her leg chained to the wall. That early scene is evocative of a movie like Saw, and it succeeds in producing the uneasy feeling that at any moment the movie could shift into torture porn.

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Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

December 27, 2015

The biggest complaint from critics about J.J. Abrams’ 2011 sci-fi thriller Super 8 was that instead of being an homage to one of his heroes – Steven Spielberg, who produced the movie – it slipped into the territory of pastiche. Super 8 was so slavishly devoted to the house style of Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment that it simply became an imitation of it. Thinking about that movie now, it feels like it was the perfect test to make sure the most successful franchise in film history would be safe in Abrams’ hands. George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars universe, and Spielberg worked together on the Indiana Jones series after all, and both men came out of the same “film school brat” scene of the 1970s. Abrams’ reboot of the Star Trek series also proved he was capable of working on the galactic scale required for Star Wars.

Abrams’ The Force Awakens, the first Star Wars film without Lucas’ guiding hand as either director or producer, is a mixed bag when it comes to that question of homage vs. pastiche. The Force Awakens feels very much like a J.J. Abrams movie. His signature brand of sarcastic humor and penchant for diversionary sequences of action for action’s sake are both present. At the same time, it seems like Abrams was very aware that he was making A STAR WARS MOVIE. There are points when the movie is close to being crushed under the weight of wanting to live up to its predecessors. As a consequence, the story is overstuffed with plot. A large number of story elements borrow directly from Episodes IV and VI of the series. But ultimately Abrams made an exciting installment that included touches harkening back to the earlier films, putting a smile on this Star Wars fan’s face throughout the movie.

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The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2

December 4, 2015

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 can at times be as tedious as its title. The movie suffers from what can be described as Lord of the Rings Trilogy Ending Syndrome. After the dramatic climax is over, there are at least three separate dénouements, any of which could have served as a single ending on its own. Because the final book in the trilogy that this film franchise is based on was already split into two movies, the endless concluding is even more taxing than it might have been. It’s obvious money was the primary motivating factor. That’s a shocking revelation about Hollywood, I know. At the same time, Mockingjay, Part 2 is an effective action thriller that keeps things moving for most of its two hours and seventeen minutes.

The film picks up just moments after the events of Part 1, when Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is attacked by fellow Hunger Games survivor Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), who was just rescued from the clutches of the nefarious President Snow. The rebels discover that Snow (Donald Sutherland) used a combination of torture and brainwashing to program Peeta, making him believe that Katniss is evil and must be destroyed. While being held in the capital, Peeta was used as a weapon against the burgeoning rebellion by appearing in propaganda meant to convince the citizens of Panem that their totalitarian society must be upheld. Now Peeta is literally a weapon, sent to kill Katniss.

Just like Part 1, this movie deals with a couple important themes in interesting and thought-provoking ways. The use and purpose of propaganda, on both sides of a conflict, and the devastating effect of a constant state of war on those who have to live with it continue to be explored. The rebels, headed by President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), think they can deprogram Peeta. Naturally, Coin wants to use Peeta for her own propaganda purposes. When Katniss decides to head to the capital against orders, Coin sends Peeta to join her so video footage can show he has switched sides, giving a morale boost to her soldiers.

But can Peeta be trusted not to hurt Katniss? Ultimately a politician, Coin’s motives are questioned by those close to Katniss, since the Mockingjay could be seen as a threat to Coin’s power in the event of the rebels’ victory. It’s this kind of Machiavellian intrigue that makes Mockingjay, Part 2 thematically rich. Instead of an unquestionably virtuous leader, President Coin is a figure who might or might not be as duplicitous as the despot President Snow. This dynamic kept me guessing right up until the tense climax, when Katniss herself is forced to decide what’s best for the people of Panem.

Katniss is our true hero, so it’s her decision to make.

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The Martian

October 9, 2015

It’s a great feeling when a filmmaker capable of cinematic magic comes in from wandering the creative desert. Ridley Scott has had a rough go of it the past five years. In that time, the director helmed the debacle Exodus: Gods and Kings, the critically lambasted The Counselor, the made-for-TV movie The Vatican, and the disappointing Robin Hood. The uneven Prometheus was also released amidst that flurry but, as a return to the world he created in his classic Alien, is entertaining despite suffocating under the weight of its own mythology. The Martian is a return to form for Scott, almost matching his best work. All that’s missing here is the heavy tone that comes out of exploring themes like what it means to be human, as he did in Blade Runner. But that’s like faulting the stars in the sky because of the view from a light-polluted city. Scott did exactly what The Martian’s source material demands. He made a wildly fun, acerbically funny, exciting ride of a movie.

The film is based on the bestselling book of the same name by first time novelist Andy Weir. The author self-published The Martian in serial format for free on his own website before it exploded in popularity via Amazon Kindle. It’s essentially Robinson Crusoe on Mars, albeit far more scientifically accurate. Weir did painstaking research while writing the novel to ensure as much technical exactitude as possible. The Martian tells the story of astronaut Mark Watney, a botanist and mechanical engineer, who becomes stranded on the fourth planet from the sun when his fellow crew members are forced to abort their mission because of a harrowing sandstorm. The crew believes Watney was killed during the escape, and the scientist’s attempts to survive and to figure out how to contact NASA with no working communications equipment make up the crux of the story.

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Zardoz

September 4, 2015

Is Sean Connery dressed in a loincloth – ok, it’s essentially a diaper – for 99.9% of a movie all you really need? That was the one burning question I had as I prepared to experience the cult classic Zardoz for the first time, and when it was over, I had so many more. Is it ever a good idea for a studio to give a director carte blanche on their next project, no matter how successful their previous movie was? Did Connery make Zardoz to pay off a bet? Why is this movie so obsessed with genitals? The only definitive conclusion is this: I need more than Connery in an adult nappy for a whole movie. Thankfully, Zardoz offers enough in the way of bat-shit insane storytelling that I didn’t end up caring about its faults. There’s also the fact that Connery has one, and only one, costume change – into a wedding dress.

Director John Boorman was fresh off the huge success of Deliverance, his movie about four friends’ excruciating canoe trip in rural Georgia. Deliverance was the fifth highest grossing film of 1972 and it was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Picture. As a result, Boorman’s agent finagled a deal with 20th Century Fox in which one man from the studio had two hours to read the script for Zardoz, then he had to immediately give a yes or no on the project. (Boorman discussed the parameters of the deal in an interview this year with the now defunct website The Dissolve.) Fox was so excited to work with Boorman that their script reader gave the thumbs up after that single two-hour reading. And so, Zardoz was a go.

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Terminator Genisys

July 17, 2015

If you had asked me for my immediate reaction when I learned there was a new Terminator movie coming out, I would have rolled my eyes and asked why they were even bothering. This is a franchise that had more than worn out its welcome. The first two films in the series are classics. Director James Cameron built an exciting world and mythology in The Terminator, and then exceeded audience expectation in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, not an easy thing to do. When Cameron moved on to other creative endeavors, the property began to suffer.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines didn’t carry anywhere near the weight of its predecessors. The TV series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, was mostly uneven, but at times fairly entertaining. Then 2009’s Terminator Salvation, a completely forgettable mess directed by McG that was mind-numbingly boring. The franchise seemed to be sapped of all creative energy. So, when Terminator Genisys was announced, I wasn’t expecting much. They couldn’t even spell genesis right, for crying out loud! Imagine my surprise when, thirty minutes in, I turned to my partner and whispered, “I am REALLY into this!”

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Jurassic World

June 26, 2015

The park is finally open. Two decades ago, fictional bioengineering titan John Hammond tried to give the public a theme park with living, breathing dinosaurs as the main attraction. This “Jurassic Park” was a disaster in the world of the movie’s franchise, but Hammond’s successors have a new park up and running twenty years later. As you might expect, most of the action in Jurassic World comes from things going horribly, horribly wrong. Unfortunately for the movie, the storytelling mirrors the plot. An unwieldy, bloated structure keeps the film from gaining any type of forward momentum. Watching it gave me a whole new respect for the incredibly tight construction of the original Jurassic Park, a movie I already greatly admired.

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