Movie Review: Europa Report

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Movie Review: Europa Report

Europa Report
Directed by: Sebastián Cordero.
Written by: Philip Gelatt.
Starring: Christian Camargo (Dr. Daniel Luxembourg), Embeth Davidtz (Dr. Samantha Unger), Anamaria Marinca (Rosa Dasque), Michael Nyqvist (Andrei Blok), Daniel Wu (William Xu), Karolina Wydra (Dr. Katya Petrovna), Sharlto Copley (James Corrigan), Dan Fogler (Dr. Sokolov), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (Dr. Tarik Pamuk).

Science fiction movies so often forget about the science part of things that when a movie comes along that doesn’t, I really want to love it. And Europa Report takes the science part of science fiction very seriously – it has already been praised by many in the field as one of the most realistic space movies they have ever seen. But realistic doesn’t always mean the best. Europa Report is a good movie that I wanted to like more than I ultimately did.

The film is about a manned mission to Europa – one of the moons of Jupiter – which was long thought to essentially be a giant ball of ice. But then they discovered that under the surface ice is water. And water may mean life. So a crew is assembled and sent to explore Europa – they’re only supposed to take samples – both of the surface ice and after drilling – the water as well. But since this is a space mission in a movie, of course, nothing goes as planned.

What is refreshing about Europa Report is that you can actually believe pretty much everything you see in the movie. This isn’t a movie with giant monsters and action sequences that strain credibility – or that starts out as intelligent science fiction and devolves into action movie clichés. Everything that happens in Europa Report is restrained – and while many things go wrong – they all go believably wrong. You do not have to suspend your disbelief to enjoy Europa Report.

The film is also quite well made – yes, it’s another “found footage” film but because most of the film is shot through the security cameras around and outside the ship, you won’t get motion sickness from watching this movie. Some people seem deadest against found footage films, but as with anything else, they can be good if shot correctly – which Europa Report mainly is. It uses a framing device of scientists back on earth talking about the footage that has been recovered from the mission, which helps place in the film in a wider context.

The central question of Europa Report is also interesting – whether the individual lives of the crew matter at all compared to the huge scientific discovery they may make on Europa. What is more important? Individual lives or knowledge? The characters in the movie certainly have their own theories about this – and the movie does seem ultimately to come down on the side of knowledge, even if that makes the film a rather cold viewing experience (really, only one character seems to disagree – and even he doesn’t completely disagree).

What would have made Europa Report a better film is having the characters be more fully realized. In the movie, they are basically defined by their jobs –I struggle to remember just exactly what a few of the crewmembers actually looked like, or what their jobs were. Really only three make a lasting impression (and that could be because they are played by three actors I already knew). Sharlto Copley, from District 9, is very good as an engineer – and really the only person in the film who at all talks about his life outside of the mission – and when he makes his fateful decision, it hangs over the rest of the movie. Michael Nyqvist (from the original Swedish Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movies) is also quite good – he’s the one character who seems to value life over knowledge – not necessary his life. The best performance though is probably by Anamaria Marinca (from 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), who plays the pilot, and has to make the final heart wrenching decision in the movie.

As I said, I wanted to like Europa Report more than I ultimately did. It is a good movie – well shot, intelligent and thought provoking – and on that level it deserves a lot of praise. This is certainly more intelligent than most mainstream sci-fi movies would even attempt to be. But what is missing is the human element. Had Europa Report made its characters more three dimensional – if it had made me care about them more than it did – it could well have been one of the best movies of the year. As it stands, it’s a good movie – a must for fans of intelligent sci-fi – but not quite the film it could have been.

Movie Review: Gravity

Friday, October 4, 2013

Movie Review: Gravity

Gravity
Directed by: Alfonso Cuarón.
Written by: Alfonso Cuarón & Jonás Cuarón.
Starring: Sandra Bullock (Dr. Ryan Stone), George Clooney (Matt Kowalsky), Ed Harris (Mission Control), Paul Sharma (Shariff).

Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity is one the greatest technical achievements I have ever seen in a movie theater. The combination of breathtaking cinematography (in 3-D no less), special effects, art direction and sound design mean there is not a second of the film that isn’t a pure joy to behold. But the technical achievement – no matter how great it is – is only part of the reason why Gravity is one of the year’s must-see films. Sandra Bullock delivers her best performance to date in the lead role – where she is more often by herself than in a scene with another actor – and, with only a few bare facts about her character, she makes you care deeply about her. It is one thing to be visually blown away by a movie –it’s another to be visually blown away, and also care deeply for its central character.

The plot of the movie is exceedingly simple. Three astronauts are on a spacewalk to install a new piece of equipment on the Hubble telescope. This is Dr. Ryan Stone (Bullock) for first time in space, and she is the one who designed the equipment. By contrast Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney) has been in space so much, he’s approaching the all-time space walking record. Things are going okay, until the Russians (it’s nice to have them as the villains again) blow up one of their own satellites. This causes debris to fly through space, smashing other satellites, and creating more debris, to come hurtling at the astronauts, who do not have the time to get back to safety. Eventually, they become untethered and have to slowly make their way to safety. The problem – there may be nothing left for them to get to safely.

Cuaron has always been a gifted visual stylist. His modern adaptation of Great Expectations may not be a great movie, but is visually stunning – especially in its early scenes. His Y Tu Mama Tambien is a fascinating ménage a trois relationship drama that while low-key, is still well directed. And Children of Men is a dystopian masterpiece – that is at its best during the action sequences that Cuaron shoots with long takes with his endlessly roaming camera.

In Gravity, Cuaron takes his love of those long, unbroken takes to the extreme. His camera moves around the astronauts as they float through space, circling back towards them, and even sometimes through their helmet and back out again. It is dazzling to behold – and refreshing as most movies these days seem to think that in order to be exciting, they need to have rapid fire editing, with images cut up so much that they verge on incoherence, and use special effects for the sake of using special effects, and 3-D simply to milk a few extra dollars for the audience. By contrast, Cuaron uses these long takes – in conjunction with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, who he worked with on Children of Men, and has also worked with Terrence Malick on his last few films, so he knows how to do these long takes. Although the film was converted to 3-D after shooting, you wouldn’t know it – every shoot seems to have been designed for 3-D, and it never seems like a gimmick. The special effects are used to create visuals that feel real – space has never quite looked like this on film before. It joins the very short list of recent live action movies that actually benefit from 3-D (the list before Gravity perhaps only contains Avatar, Hugo and Life of Pi). This is pretty much a completely digital world that Cuaron and his team have crafted – and while that often annoys me (because when technology allows filmmakers to create anything they can imagine, they often goes overboard), here Cuaron uses it to disorient the audience in an effective way. In essence, he uses visual effects to have the audience float in space alongside his characters. The effect is stunning.

If it were just the technical elements in Gravity and nothing else, it would still demand to be seen on the biggest screen possible (I fear that the movie will lose a lot when viewed on a TV screen). But Bullock’s performance in the movie is also one of the best of the year. The film gives her a little backstory, that makes her instantly sympathetic, but her performance goes deeper than that. It is impossible not to relate to her on a human level – as a woman struggling to do whatever she can to survive. It’s a remarkably physical performance, and Bullock never oversells the emotion behind it, like she has done in the past.

In short, Gravity is nothing less than masterful in its every moment. While the story is simple, the ambition of the project is huge. That Cuaron attempted it should be commended – that he pulled it off is nothing short of remarkable.

Movie Review: Elysium

Friday, August 16, 2013

Movie Review: Elysium

Elysium
Directed by: Neill Blomkamp.
Written by: Neill Blomkamp.
Starring: Matt Damon (Max), Jodie Foster (Delacourt), Sharlto Copley (Kruger), Alice Braga (Frey), Diego Luna (Julio), Wagner Moura (Spider), William Fichtner (John Carlyle), Brandon Auret (Drake), Josh Blacker (Crowe), Emma Tremblay (Matilda), Jose Pablo Cantillo (Sandro).

Unlike particularly every other big blockbuster of this summer, Neil Blomkamp’s Elysium left me wanting more, not less. This is a more ambitious film than Blomkamp’s debut – District 9 – but doesn’t have the same overall impact of the previous film. The biggest reason for that is because Blomkamp has so many ideas that he wanted to get onscreen, and the run time of 109 minutes just isn’t quite enough to fit them all in. I wanted to spend more time in the dystopia of Los Angeles in 2154, more time in the utopia of the Elysium itself – the orbiting space station populated by the rich – and I wanted all of the characters to be a little more fleshed out. One of the things District 9 did so well is that it never let either its political allegory or the special effects get in the way of the very human story of its protagonist – something Elysium doesn’t quite manage. Still, in a summer that has had mostly disappointing or uninspired or simplistic blockbusters, Elysium joins Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim as my favorites of the season. And if I was left wanting a little more, it’s because Blomkamp’s film is that rare blockbuster that I feel could have sustained a more substantial running time.

The year is 2154. We are told that the world essentially collapsed late in the 21^st Century (why, the movie doesn’t say – which will bug some, but didn’t really bug me – could the movie have given a really satisfactory answer anyway? And why would the characters spend their time talking about something that happened decades ago anyway?). The rich (or 1% if you will) built a giant space station known as Elysium, where they continue their lives just as before. In what we see of Elysium, everything if golf course green and perfect. The rest of humanity is stuck on Earth – which, if what we see of L.A. in this movie is representative of the planet as whole, is about one step away of what Wall-E had to deal with. They work menial jobs to support the lifestyle of the Elysium residents, and are policed by robots. On Elysium, everyone has machines that will cure virtually every disease known to mankind – so they have become pretty more immortal. On Earth, healthcare is an even more hellish nightmare than it is now. And just to add another level of allegory to the movie, almost everyone in L.A. is Hispanic – and speak Spanish as much as English – whereas almost everyone on Elysium is white, and if they speak something other than English, it’s French.

The protagonist of the movie is Max – and the performance by Matt Damon is one of the film’s chief strengths. Because Blomkamp spends so much time on the plot mechanics, character development isn’t something he has much time for. Casting Damon is a stroke of genius, because he’s one of those actors audiences instantly identify with – you don’t have to spend time setting Matt Damon up as a good guy – we already known he is (Hitchcock often did the same thing with actors like Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant). He’s an orphan, who has spent time in jail for car theft – but is trying to turn his life around. He has a job in a factory building the very robots who abuse him – and its here where he has an accident that exposes him to radiation that will kill him in 5 days. Not wanting to die, he’s determined to get to Elysium to be cured. First though, he has the steal secrets directly from the head of his old boss (a slimily perfect William Fichtner) for a cyber punk coyote (Wagner Moura – delivering the movie’s best supporting performance) to pay for his passage. Oh – and he also runs into his childhood flame Frey (Alice Braga) who has a daughter with leukemia.

The movie will be written off by some as a liberal fantasy – and it’s easy to see why. The folks on Elysium are clearly the 1%, exploiting the earth bound 99% to make as much money as possible. When you add in the advanced healthcare they get, while the people below have next to nothing, and the implicit commentary about U.S. and Mexico, you do in fact have liberal’s nightmare – a worst case scenario of where everything is going if the conservatives get their way. The villains of the movie are represented by Jodie Foster’s Delacourt, Elysium’s defense minister, who would rather shoot down and kill Earth refugees trying to get to Elysium than capture and deport them – and justifies everything by talking about the “children”. Foster makes a strange vocal choice for Delacourt, which I would be annoyed with, except I often like it when actors make strange vocal choices with their characters for no other reason than to amuse themselves – and to help disguise an underwritten role, which Foster’s certainly is. The other bad guy is Kruger (District 9‘s Sharlto Copley), a “sleeper” agent on Earth, who is essentially an insane Minuteman, patrolling the border, and exterminating everything with extreme prejudice – but of course thinks that if everyone would just listen to him, things would be much, much better.

Looking back over what I’ve written so far, I seem to be harder on Elysium than my true feelings on the movie itself. There is no doubt that Elysium would have benefitted from either trimming down some of its political overtones to focus more on the details of the characters and the plot, or from a more expansive running time that would have allowed Blomkamp to more fully explore everything. Perhaps there is a longer cut of the film that we will get to see one day (I hope so). So while Elysium is far from a perfect film, there is also so much in the film to admire. Blomkamp once again proves himself to be a great visual director – the slums of Los Angeles is one of the most distinctive physical environments in any movie this year, and they are contrasted nicely with what we see of Elysium (even though I wanted to see more). There are a lot of nice touches – like the parole officer – that makes the world feel lived in. The special effects in the movie are excellent – and you never get the sense that Blomkamp is using them in place of his story, but to add to it. Blomkamp doesn’t feel the need to pump up the action – and at times, even takes a long view of the action (as in the shooting down of the ships trying to get to Elysium). While the movie does devolve into a typical action movie climax – it’s handled much better than most action movies, without an over reliance on rapid fire editing or shaky camera work to artificially goose the action. And while I may have wanted a little more character development in pretty much every character in the movie, I cannot find much fault in any of the performances – all the actors are quite good.

I mentioned Pacific Rim off the top of this review, and said that Del Toro’s film from July and Elysium are my two favorites in terms of the big budget blockbusters this summer. That’s true. Pacific Rim may destroy as much, or more, of the world as the rest of the blockbusters this summer, but also didn’t forget about the characters, and had visual flourishes worthy of Spielberg in top blockbuster mode (the little girl in particular is haunting). Elysium on the other hand is the one blockbuster this season that seems to have something more on its mind rather than just mindless destruction and special effects. Those can be entertaining – and often were in the big movies this summer – but it also gets tiring. Elysium at least attempts to do something more in the blockbuster format, and I admire the film for doing so. If I'm still a little disappointed in the film, it’s because District 9 proved how great Blomkamp can be – and Elysium is no District 9.

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964)

Friday, August 2, 2013

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964)

Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964)
Directed by: Byron Haskin.
Written by: John C. Higgins & Ib Melchior based on the novel by Daniel Defoe.
Starring: Paul Mantee (Cmdr. Christopher 'Kit' Draper), Victor Lundin (Friday), Adam West (Col. Dan McReady), The Wooley Monkey (Mona).

Robinson Crusoe on Mars is about as cheesy as you expect a movie with that title to be. It’s also a hell of a lot of fun, and at times genuinely moving. The film was directed by Byron Haskin, who directed on the great 1950s sci-fi films, The War of Worlds, and before that had been an F/X guru in the 1940s, and before that, had worked as a cinematographer stretching back to the silent era. The visual look of Robinson Crusoe on Mars, shot in California’s Death Valley, is eerie. Using the clear blue sky as a natural blue screen, Haskin makes Mars’ sky red and foreboding. Strangely, Daniel Defoe’s classic tale of a man trapped alone of the desert island makes an easy transition to Mars. This may not be a great film, but it’s an interesting one.

The film opens with Kit Draper (Paul Mantee) and his partner Dan McReady (Adam West), alongside their trusty monkey Mona, circling Mars in the hope of gathering information about it. But something goes wrong, and then have to eject in their pods while they let the ship orbit. Their plan is to rejoin their ship when they are out of danger. But they have to take separate ones down, and while Kit makes it, his crashes, so it won’t be of use later. McReady isn’t even that lucky. So Kit has to spend his time on Mars alone, with no one but Mona to keep him company. At first, he thinks his death is inevitable – it’s only a matter of time before he runs out of air, water and food. But eventually, he’ll figure out how to get what he needs to survive on Mars. Companionship is what he really needs though, and Mona simply isn’t enough. He starts to go a little mad – but is essentially rescued when he meets Friday (Victor Lundin), essentially a slave on Mars used for mining. His odd appearance, making him look like an Egyptian in the time of the Pharaohs, is off-putting at first, but Lundin wins you over. We never see the actual Martians who have enslaved them – just their ships, which look almost exactly like the ones in War of the Worlds, but move with a herky jerky motion that is distracting, but memorable. They can track Friday through the bracelets they have forced him to wear. But Kit is determined to not let them catch his new friend – and the three of them (including Mona, of course), try to outrun them.

I admit, when the movie started, I thought I was in trouble. The opening scenes, on the ship, are not very good – marred by the ham-fisted acting by West in particular. West redeems himself later, when he appears as a creepy apparition to Kit, but those first scenes were not good. Once we get to Mars however, the movie picks up. Mantee was a fairly young, inexperienced actor when he made this film, but he does a great job, with a difficult role. As we have seen time and again, it’s hard for an actor when he’s the only one on screen for an extended period of time – they have no one to act off of. Though Mona the Monkey is clearly a talented monkey actor, she isn’t much help. And just when things start to become a little dull, Friday comes in, and saves the final act.

The film isn’t great – it won’t live in my memory like The War of the Worlds does. But it is well made, visually appealing from start to finish, with many creative special effects and carried by Mantee’s performance. You most likely already know if you want to see a movie called Robinson Crusoe on Mars. If you do, you won’t be disappointed.

Movie Review: Pacific Rim

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Movie Review: Pacific Rim

Pacific Rim
Directed by: Guillermo del Toro.
Written by: Travis Beacham & Guillermo del Toro.
Starring: Charlie Hunnam (Raleigh Becket), Idris Elba (Stacker Pentecost), Rinko Kikuchi (Mako Mori), Charlie Day (Dr. Newton Geiszler), Burn Gorman (Gottlieb), Max Martini (Herc Hansen), Robert Kazinsky (Chuck Hansen), Clifton Collins Jr. (Ops Tendo Choi), Ron Perlman (Hannibal Chau), Diego Klattenhoff (Yancy Becket).

On the surface, Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim seems like any other summer blockbuster – full of explosions, special effects and pointless 3-D. And if that’s all you want from Pacific Rim it delivers the goods. The film was marketed almost as Transformers vs. Godzilla – and no one who walks into the theater expecting that will go away disappointed. The fight sequences between the giant robots – known as Jaegers and the reptilian or fish like monsters – known as Kaijis – are great. Unlike Michael Bay, del Toro doesn’t get lost in rapid fire editing, and movement for movement sake – you can always tell where everything is in relation to each other, as del Toro is a master of special relations in this film – something that seemingly few directors today are. But del Toro’s film is a little bit more than a typical blockbuster – at least this summer’s blockbusters. There is a human story that he never loses site of. And there are moments that truly tap into the audiences fear. While the film is effective at being a big, dumb action movie, it’s a little deeper than it first appears. It’s still not a great film – but in a summer that has largely left me wanting more from the blockbusters, it’s as good as we’re likely to get.

The plot is really quite simple. It’s 2020 and 7 years ago (or in 2013 – watch out!) a transport between dimensions was discovered deep in the Pacific ocean. Nothing humans have can enter this “rip”, and they cannot destroy it. But the Kaiji can get through – and they do, laying waste to coastal cities along the Pacific ocean. With humanity on the brink of collapse, countries put aside their differences and started the Jaeger program – essentially huge robots, that are piloted by two men, who are mentally connected with each other – and the robot. This was successful for years – but the Kaiji keep getting bigger, and the Jaeger’s are no longer enough to stop them. So politicians, as they always do, decide to abandon the Jaeger program and instead build huge walls (not coincidentally, del Toro is originally from Mexico – although surprisingly, he doesn’t really use these huge walls as a political point). The head of the Jaeger program, Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) doesn’t like being shut down – and he has a plan to once and for all end the war. But most of the Jaeger pilots have been killed, and he only has a few robots left. So he calls on Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam), who was once a Jaeger pilot, but was connected to his brother as he was killed by a Kaiji, and left the program, for one last go. He needs a new co-pilot however – and wouldn’t the adorable and brilliant Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), haunted by her own traumatic memories, be perfect. There are only three other teams left – one from China, one from Russia, and one from Australia, and together, they are going to shut down the portal. How? Two bickering geniuses Geiszler (Charlie Day) and Gottlieb (Burn Gorman) seem to have the answer.

I’m not going to try and argue that the movie is at all original – my anime obsessed wife was so incensed by the preview she texted me that they were just ripping off the old series Evangelion (she has a point), and of course del Toro borrows liberally from old monster movies – mainly out of Japan like Godzilla and his ilk. Giant monsters have been a staple of science fiction movies for decades now – although you don’t see them much anymore. But del Toro, a movie geek at heart, wanted to bring them back – bigger and better than ever before. And he does that.

Pacific Rim is large scale Hollywood filmmaking at its finest. The movie has all the action anyone could ever want – and it’s handled with skill – and the special effects are probably the best I have seen in a movie so far this year. I’m on record as not being a fan of 3-D (I avoid it when I can, which I couldn’t this time) – but I will say that while I didn’t see much of a point to the 3-D here – it didn’t really enhance anything, except in a few, quiet moments – it doesn’t really detract from the movie either. And with 3-D, that’s pretty much the best we can expect.

The movie snuck up on me though, to the point where I didn’t really realized how involved I was – how much I cared about the characters – until fairly late in the movie. True, Hunnam’s Becket is a kind of one-dimensional hero with a tortured past – but he plays it well. Day provides quite a bit of comic relief in his role – especially when paired with Ron Perelman who has a great moment that will remind some of Deep Blue Sea. Most of the rest of the cast does what is required of them, and little more. The two standouts however and Kikuchi and Elba. Kikuchi, who was marvelous in her Oscar nominated performance in Babel, and the best thing about The Brothers Bloom, creates a real character out of Mako – who could have easily just been the token cute girl they throw into the movie. Here backstory – told in the film’s best sequence, which is probably the best sequence in any blockbuster this year – truly is terrifying, even if you can see it coming before it gets there. More surprising however is Elba – who for much of the movie seems like a square jawed, one dimensional military man who screams a lot. But there is a real person underneath that, which Elba nails.

I’m not going to try and say that Pacific Rim is some sort of masterpiece – it isn’t. Like many blockbusters, it is hampered by studio demands, who get a large say in what goes into the movie they are spending a few hundred million making. But del Toro plays the game better than most – delivering a movie that the studio wants, while also making something that fits into his filmography. Del Toro is at his best in smaller scale movies – like The Devil’s Backbone or Pan’s Labyrinth – but when he steps in and makes a big budget, Hollywood film – like Blade II or the original Hellboy – he makes something wholly his own. Pacific Rim comes close to that as well. The film is fun and entertaining – big budget filmmaking on a grand scale – both in terms of its action and special effects, and the emotions of the movie. Out of all the big blockbusters so far this year, Pacific Rim may just be the best.

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: They Live (1988)

Friday, June 28, 2013

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: They Live (1988)

They Live (1988)
Directed by: John Carpenter.
Written by: John Carpenter based on the short story by Ray Nelson.
Starring: Roddy Piper (John Nada), Keith David (Frank Armitage), Meg Foster (Holly Thompson), George 'Buck' Flower (The Drifter), Peter Jason (Gilbert), Raymond St. Jacques (Street Preacher).

I have long been a fan of John Carpenter. Films like Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Halloween (1978), The Thing (1981), Escape from New York (1982) and even, dare I saw it, Ghosts of Mars (2001) are great throwbacks to the days of Howard Hawks. His films, like the work of Hawks, has largely been conservative or right leaning. Which makes his 1988 horror-satire They Live all the more confusing, as it is certainly a left leaning movie, even as it disguises itself with right wing tropes and clichés. They Live was a reaction to 8 years of Ronald Reagan as President, and (at that time) possibly four more years under Reagon’s VP George Bush. Carpenter, who maybe more conservative than most Hollywood filmmakers, was no fan of Reagan, and he compared his Presidency to fascism and wanted to show the hypocrisy in it. Perhaps that’s why They Live is often celebrated as one of Carpenter’s best films. But to me, the satire is rather tame and toothless, the movie confused, and weighed down by clichés and a central performance by a wrestler, who let’s face it, cannot act to save his life. They are some great moments in They Live. But the whole movie adds up to very little.

Homeless after being fired from his job, construction worker John Nada (Rowdy Roddy Piper) walks from Denver to L.A. looking for work. He finds it, working under the table on a construction site, but the job doesn’t pay well, so he ends up living in a shanty town that fellow worker Frank (Keith David) invites him along. Depite being homeless and unemployed John “still believes in America”, that if you work hard, you can make a success of yourself. But then he starts noticing some strange things going on in a church across the street. When he goes to investigate, he finds the constantly singing choir is just a recording. When the police invade the church – and then destroy the shanty town – John finds a box full of sunglasses, and puts a pair on. Immediately, his world changes. It goes from color to black and white. Ads no longer look the same and are now just single words or phrases that give their underlying message “Consume”, “Marry and Reproduce”, “Watch TV”, “Don’t Question Authority”, “Obey”, etc. More shockingly, some of the people he sees aren’t really people, but hideous, bug eyed aliens. It turns out that aliens have already taken over America, invisible to the naked eye. They want to make Earth into “their third world”, and all humans are either controlled by the messages in their TVs, or willing collaborators with the regime for financial payoff. The church was the headquarters of the only group committed to fighting the aliens.

I don’t know – maybe this all seemed radical back in 1988, but to me, it seems rather tame. Carpenter is obviously comparing the aliens to Reagan and his administration, who was trying to brainwash people into accepting whatever he put out there. And that’s a little bit of a stretch. But it could have easily worked. But I think Carpenter, so beholden to genres clichés, can never really get out of his own way. The film echoes Carpenter’s idol Hawks far too much – the endless fight scene between John and Frank before they can become friends, is a typical Hawks trait. As are the snappy, sexist one liners that Piper spews (which is supposed to be okay, I guess, because they’re directed at aliens posing as women, and not women themselves). Piper is essentially playing the role that Kurt Russell usually played for Carpenter. The difference is that Russell made it work, and Piper doesn’t. When he delivers the films most famous line - “I’ve come here to kick ass and chew bubble gum. And I’m all out of bubble gum” –Piper cannot make it work. It just sounds dumb.

There are still some great moments in They Live – as there are in any Carpenter film. The first is the sequence following Piper first putting on the sunglasses, which is a small tour de force for Carpenter behind the camera. The sequence that ends the film is full of some great, comedic moments as well. But these moments are few and far between.

Near the end of They Live, John Carpenter has two film critics on TV (obviously meant to be Siskel and Ebert) who are exposed as aliens and complaining about “filmmakers like George A. Romero and John Carpenter” who have gone too far. This shout out to Romero, as well as putting his name in the same sentence, is supposed to signal that Carpenter wanted to make a film like Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (or its sequels Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead), which combined social commentary with horror. The difference between what Romero achieved in those films (and later in Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead, and even in parts of the most recent, Survival of the Dead), is that while Romero is using the zombie genre to comment on things like racism, the demise of the American family, consumerism, the military industrial complex, capitalism and war, the satire is never pushed to the front of the movie like Carpenter has done with They Live. It’s both more subtle, yet more on target and incisive than Carpenter has pulled off with They Live. That’s why Romero is a master. And why Carpenter, as good as he can be, is a step or two behind him.

Movie Review: After Earth

Monday, June 3, 2013

Movie Review: After Earth

After Earth
Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan.
Written by: Gary Whitta and M. Night Shyamalan, story by Will Smith.
Starring: Jaden Smith (Kitai Raige), Will Smith (Cypher Raige), Sophie Okonedo (Faia Raige), Zoë Kravitz (Senshi Raige).

After Year is the first big movie of blockbuster season that is downright awful. I may have been mildly disappointed in Iron Man 3 and a little more than mildly disappointed in The Great Gatsby, but both films were at least entertaining to a certain degree. Although After Earth is significantly shorter than any of the other big movies of the last month, it feels a lot longer. The movie is deadly slow, ponderous, boring and at times downright goofy. It is a failure for all involved.

The movie stars Will Smith and his son Jaden as father and son (naturally). It is set 1,000 years after humanity had to evacuate Earth because their actions made it in uninhabitable for humans. Since then, they have found a new home, but apparently have been engaged in the longest war ever against the Ursa’s – an alien creature, that is pretty much another clone from the Alien franchise. These aliens are different however – they cannot see or hear – and track down humans by smelling their fear. That’s right – their fear.

Smith is Cypher Raige – a decorated General of the Rangers – the human Army who is tasked with protecting the rest of us and killing the Ursa’s. Jaden is Kitai Raige, his teenage son, still reeling from his failure as a child as he hid from the Ursa’s and watched one of them kill his big sister, Senshi. Cypher has never forgiven him for that (although, he was a child, and did what his sister told him to, and what the hell was he going to do?). Cypher, of course, is about to retire. He has one last training mission to go to – and decides to take Kitai along with him. Kitai has just failed to be promoted to Ranger, but his mother Faia (Sophie Okonedo) convinces Cypher the trip will be a chance to get to know his son.

If you’ve seen the previews – then you’ve seen the rest. A rocket crash kills everyone but Kitai and Cypher – although it leaves Cypher with two broken legs – unable to move from the downed ship. It has also destroyed their homing beacon, so no one will be able to find them. But there is another one – in the tail of the ship that crashed 100 KM away. Kitai needs to go and retrieve it or they’re both dead. Oh, and they crashed on earth, where now every animal can kill you and whose temperature fluctuates wildly (you would think that would kill the animals – but I guess not – perhaps Darwin could explain why if he was around).

The film has been directed by M. Night Shyamalan, once one of the most promising directors working, and now looking at his third horrible movie in a row (the other two being The Happening and The Last Airbender – others would say fifth in a row, but while I hated The Village, I did not hate Lady in the Water as many did). Here, although he co-wrote the screenplay, it is based on a story by Will Smith himself – who obviously hoped this would be a star making vehicle for his son Jaden. Jaden has shown he can be a pretty good young actor in films like The Pursuit of Happyness and The Karate Kid, but here he is thrown into the deep end, and simply does not have the charisma or acting chops to carry this film. I’m not going to be too hard on him though, since most child actors couldn’t do what is expected of Jaden Smith here. For much of the movie, he is by himself, in the middle of an extremely fake CGI world, dodging killer monkeys and a giant bird, and has no one to play off of. Carrying a movie without a screen partner is an incredibly difficult thing to do – most actors cannot do it, and we cannot really expect Smith to do it here. True, for most of the movie, he has his father in his ear telling him what to do – but it’s not the same thing as having a true scene partner. For his part, Smith Sr. gives his dullest performance I can imagine. I’ve never thought Smith was a terrific actor, but he’s always been a terrific movie star – using his undeniable charm and likability to full advantage (and it should be said, he did pretty much carry a movie by himself – I Am Legend. Here, he plays his character like it was written – an almost emotionless character, who doesn’t know, or even seem to want to know, his son. His is emotionless is many ways – making his name Cypher a far too on the nose description of his character – the same could be said for Smith Jr.’s name Kitai which is Japanese for Faith.

There are a few moments in After Earth where I sensed the talented Shyamalan behind the camera – a few subtle moments and camera moves that brought to mind his best work. But for the most part, this is another deadly dull movie for him. He is clearly a “director for hire” here, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but he seems to have lost most of his eye behind the camera. He seems disinterested. His screenplay is still full of the forced sentimentality and “profound” moments that are in reality quite shallow which has marred much of his work.

I could forgive After Earth many of its flaws if it weren’t for the biggest one – the film is deadly dull. It drags on from one scene to the next, and even in the action moments, fails to get the pulse of the audience racing. The movie just sits there on the screen. And I just sat there in the audience waiting for it to be over.

Movie Review: Dark Skies

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Movie Review: Dark Skies

Dark Skies
Directed by: Scott Stewart.
Written by: Scott Stewart.
Starring: Keri Russell (Lacy Barrett), Josh Hamilton (Daniel Barrett), Dakota Goyo (Jesse Barrett), Kadan Rockett (Sam Barrett), J.K. Simmons (Edwin Pollard), L.J. Benet (Kevin Ratner), Rich Hutchman (Mike Jessop), Myndy Crist (Karen Jessop), Annie Thurman (Shelly Jessop), Jake Brennan (Bobby Jessop), Ron Ostrow (Richard Klein).

When I reviewed the horror film Mama recently I said this: “The problem with Mama is pretty much from beginning to end, the audience knows what the big secret of the movie is going to be – and we just have to wait for the main character to catch up to us. So while Mama is much better made and acted than your run of the mill horror film, it’s just as brainless.” I quote this at length, because it fits pretty much perfectly to Dark Skies as well. You cannot name a movie Dark Skies and start the movie with a quote from Arthur C. Clarke and expect the audience NOT to guess your movie’s big surprise. Like Mama, Dark Skies is a very well made horror movie – but it doesn’t quite have the advantage of Jessica Chastain in the lead role. Keri Russell is fine – but nothing more.

The movie is about the Barrett family – a typical suburban family, who like everyone else is experiencing money problems. Lacy (Russell) is a real estate agent trying to make money on commissions, but doesn’t have the houses to do so, and Daniel (Josh Hamilton) has been out of work for a few months now. Soon though, they’ll wish money problems are all they’ll have. The Barrett’s have two sons – Jesse (Dakota Goyo), on the cusp of being a teenager, and all the confusion that comes along with that, and Sam (Kadan Rockett), a few years younger, who still thinks he sees the sandman – and blames him when he does things wrong. The Barrett’s think this is just a phase – if only that were true.

Of course, strange things start to happen – break-ins to their house, that aren’t really break-ins. Despite a new alarm system, and Daniel’s installation of Paranormal Activity like camera equipment, strange things keep happening – so Lacy, of course, hits the internet and, of course, comes back with a bunch of conspiracy theories that Daniel, of course, thinks are ridiculous but, of course, turn out to be all too true. You get the idea. And without Mulder and Scully to help them the Barrett’s are basically screwed.

Like Mama, the central problem with Dark Skies is that the movie holds no real surprises for the audience. From the opening moments, you know (or should) precisely where this movie is going – and spend the first hour (of a movie barely 90 minutes long) frustrated because the characters take so much more time than you did to figure it all out. Good horror movies need to provide you with a plausible alternate theory – something that makes you go back and forth in your mind trying to piece things together. But from the beginning, there is only one thing that could be causing the problem in Dark Skies.

The film was written and directed by Scott Stewart – and I guess it’s a step forward from his first two features – Legion (2009) and Priest (2011), two horror/action movies that inexplicably tried to turn Paul Bettany into an action hero (it didn’t work). Here, the action is less frantic, the characters more believable, the atmosphere creepier, and more believable. He shows more skill behind the camera this time than in the previous two films. But his screenplay is what ultimately undoes him – it’s hard to get too involved with a movie that depends so much on shocking the audience, when you figure out all the surprises before the characters do – and if there was ever movie that did not require one of those flashback montages that explain the twist, this would be that movie – but it’s there just the same.

Dark Skies certainly isn’t an awful movie. It is well made, and the performances are as good as can be expected given what they to work with – and I did quite enjoy J.K. Simmons in his one scene cameo is a crazy guy who isn’t so crazy after all. But it is a rather pointless one. You have to do something to scare the audience – and Dark Skies gives the game away before the first scene in the movie.

Movie Review: Stark Trek: Into Darkness

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Movie Review: Stark Trek: Into Darkness

Spoiler Warning: I’m not going to reveal overly much about the plot of Star Trek: Into Darkness – at least not more than any other movie – but I do know that many people complained about spoilers in critics reviews and even the IMDB page of this movie about revealing something they didn’t want to know. I’m going to assume that if you’re THAT much of a fan of Star Trek, than you saw it this weekend and if you are THAT adverse to spoilers, you wouldn’t be reading a review of the film anyway, but I thought I’d give a warning anyway. Read no further if you don’t want to know anything about the film.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Directed by: J.J. Abrams.
Written by: Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman & Damon Lindelof based on the TV Series created by Gene Roddenberry.
Starring: Chris Pine (Kirk), Zachary Quinto (Spock), Zoe Saldana (Uhura), Karl Urban (Bones), Simon Pegg (Scotty), John Cho (Sulu), Benedict Cumberbatch (Khan), Anton Yelchin (Chekov), Bruce Greenwood (Pike), Peter Weller (Marcus), Alice Eve (Carol).

Doing remakes or reboots of beloved franchises is almost never a good idea. If the filmmakers are too reverent of the source material, you essentially end up with something almost as silly and pointless as Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot Psycho remake, because you are adding nothing new. If you go the other way, and try hard to make it different, you run the risk of draining what was so special about the original in the first place. But for the second time, J.J. Abrams seems to have made a Star Trek that walks the very fine line between being too reverent and too different. I’m not a Trekkie in the least – one of my big cinematic blind spots is pretty much every Star Trek movie made before 2000. But I know enough about the characters and the franchise to know why it worked so well. In 2009, Abrams took on the monumental task of rebooting the franchise – finding a new Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Bones, Scott, Sulu, Chekov and the rest. The result was a highly enjoyable film that worked for everyone – not just Trekkies. I’m not sure if Into Darkness tops it – but it surely equals it. This time he takes an iconic storyline from the past, and makes it new.

The movie opens on a mission where once again Kirk (Chris Pine) doesn’t follow orders, but once again his not following orders actually works out better than if he had. Still, Star Fleet looks down on this sort of independence, and Kirk is called to the carpet for his actions – mainly because Spock told on him, not to be mean, but because Vulcans cannot lie. But even Star Fleet thinks Kirk could come in handy after two attacks by John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) – one of their own gone rogue. The second attack is at the heart of Star Fleet itself, and leaves Kirk’s mentor Pike dead. Vowing revenge, Kirk convinces Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) to let him take the Enterprise to go get Harrison – even though he’s hiding out on Kronos, the home planet of the Klingons, and doing so may cause a war. Marcus equips Kirk with experimental, long range torpedoes to get the job done. But once again, Kirk doesn’t quite follow orders.

Once again, the cast in the movie is excellent. Chris Pine’s Kirk and Zachary Quinto’s Spock have already established a relationship that feels real – Spock reins Kirk in when he’s going to go too far, and Kirk helps to humanize Spock – gets him to see things the way the rest of us do. They are the heart of the cast – and they are both just about perfect for their roles. The rest of the Enterprise cast are really just stock characters – and yet Karl Urban as Bones, John Cho as Sulu, Anton Yelchin as Chekov and especially Simon Pegg as Scotty are all entertaining in their roles. They are trying, with mixed results, to get Zoe Saldana’s Uhura to be a more major character – but as good as she is, she still gets shunted to the background.

The storyline – in particular the villain – are much stronger this time than they were in Abrams s first Star Trek movie. As entertaining as the first film was, I think we can all admit that Eric Bana’s villain left something to be desired. He was shunted to the background, as Abrams concentrated more on re-establishing the characters for a new generation than the story itself. This time, Cumberbatch has one of the best roles in the film as the bad guy – a heartless villain willing to sacrifice everything for what he wants.

As for Abrams as a director, he still has a little too much of a TV perspective for my taste behind the camera. His last film, Super 8, was his best as it was his only original one so far, and did a far better job of imitating his idol Steven Spielberg. With Star Trek: Into Darkness, he is back to the TV aesthetics of his first films – with perhaps a little too much Paul Greengrass style editing and shaky camera in the action sequences for my taste. Still though, the film mainly looks great – the special effects are well handled. I didn’t see the film in 3-D, because generally I don’t like 3-D for live action films (although, admittedly, Baz Luhrmann used it well in Gatsby, even if I was disappointed in the film).

We are just three weeks into Hollywood’s annual blockbuster season – and we’ll see many more BIG films over the next few months. Star Trek: Into Darkness is the first blockbuster this year that I can fully get behind. I enjoyed it far more than Iron Man 3 or The Great Gatsby. It’s a must for Trekkies and non-Trekkies alike.

Movie Review: Upside Down

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Movie Review: Upside Down

Upside Down
Directed by: Juan Solanas.
Written by: Juan Solanas.
Starring: Kirsten Dunst (Eden), Jim Sturgess (Adam), Timothy Spall (Bob Boruchowitz), Frank M. Ahearn (Flynn), James Kidnie (Lagavullan), Vincent Messina (Tommy), Holly O'Brien (Paula).

I almost admire writer/director Juan Solanas for making Upside Down. The movie is so unabashedly over the top in its visual stylistics, melodrama and romance, that you have to admit that at the very least Solanas went for broke on the movie – threw everything he had into it. I admire when a director tries to do something so boldly different than everyone else. There’s just one problem – Upside Down is an absolutely awful movie.

Upside Down takes place in a world where two planets co-exist – one on top of the other, but each with their own gravitational pull. What this means is that if you are one planet, the other planet appears to be upside down. Now, rather than occupy the vast majority of these two planets that do not intersect, everyone seems to live in the one place that they do intersect. You cannot move from one world to the other easily – some hocus pocus involving a weighted vest is required – and things from one world will eventually catch fire in the other world. And of course, the people on top are rich, and the people on the bottom are poor. And of course, one man from below – Adam (Jim Sturgess) will fall in love with one woman from above, Eden (Kirsten Dunst) – and their love will forever change everything.

As with most time travel movies, it’s probably best not to think too hard about the paradoxes and logical inconsistencies that this duel world brings up. The whole two worlds things make absolutely no sense – but then I think Solanas knew that (I hope he knew that), and was really just an excuse to have his cool visuals – and those visuals are cool, as long as you don’t think about them in the slightest (why for example, is EVERY floor of the skyscraper Adam and Eden work in have an upper and lower – that makes no sense, because then you would have people from above, actually below the people from below, but upside on a lower floor, and … - well, you can see why I told you not to think about this stuff). But having one set of people on top, talking to the people below – and especially when Adam decides to go rogue, and has to get from the bottom to the top. The visuals, of course, don’t make much sense – but hell, they look cool! To Solanas, I guess, that’s enough.

So the science fiction elements of the plot are a mess, and the characters are even more so. Poor Jim Sturgess seems to be stuck in one movie after another where he’s required to do little except making goo-goo eyes at a pretty actress – he’s very good at that (even under a bunch of CGI and makeup like in Cloud Atlas), but his sensitive routine is wearing thin for me. If it’s possible, Kirsten Dunst is given even less to do than Sturgess – especially since the movie gives her amnesia for much of its running time, so she’s asked to look confused for most of her role – and to be fair, she does look really confused (maybe she’s wondering about how the hell these two planets are stack upon each other like I was). The wonderful Timothy Spall at least seems to be having fun in his throwaway role as one of the good upper people – who befriends Adam. There are various bad guys – all executives of apparently the only corporation that exists in these worlds – and they scowl effectively, but leave no impression on you (do they even have names?)

I have a feeling that Solanas came up with the idea of his visual scheme – stacking one world on top of each other – and fell so in love with it, that he tried to build a story around it. And make no mistake, although the idea of these two worlds on top of each other makes no damned sense, the visuals in the movie are quite cool. But there is nothing else in the movie that isn’t completely and utterly ridiculous. I tried to go with the movie – tried to get on its overwrought wavelength, but just couldn’t. The movie goes for broke, and for that, I kind of admire Solanas for attempting to do what he does here. But in the end, other than the cool visuals, the movie doesn’t work at all. Please, move onto something else – and not the sequel the end of this movie seems to promise.

Movie Review: Oblivion

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Movie Review: Oblivion

Oblivion
Directed by:  Joseph Kosinski.
Written by: Joseph Kosinski and Karl Gajdusek and Michael Arndt based on the comic book by Kosinski and Arvid Nelson.
Starring: Tom Cruise (Jack), Morgan Freeman (Beech), Olga Kurylenko (Julia), Andrea Riseborough (Victoria), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Sykes), Melissa Leo (Sally), Zoe Bell (Kara).

I quite enjoyed Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion for the first two-thirds or even three quarters of its running time. This is a visually stunning sci-fi film more concerned with characters and ideas than action sequences – although it has a few great ones in it. No, the ideas are not particularly original – borrowing for films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix and Moon among many others, but at the same time I prefer a movie like this to something that uses a sci-fi concept just as an excuse to have a lot of things blow up. And it must be said that this is Tom Cruise’s best performance in years – and he’s more than ably supported by Olga Kurylenko and especially Andrea Riseborough. But the conclusion of Oblivion isn’t nearly as satisfying as the setup. It’s true that in movies like this, the answer to the question is rarely as satisfying as the questions themselves – and most audience members will probably be able to guess the “twist” from fairly early on in the movie (I did, and spent the rest of the movie hoping I’d be wrong).

The film takes place on Earth in the distant future. Aliens known as “Scavengers” attacked the earth, and in order to survive, humans had to use nuclear weapons – winning the war, but all but destroying the planet. On earth now are a few surviving “Scavs” – and two people with a base perched high above the ground. This is Jack (Cruise) and Victoria (Riseborough), whose job is basically drone repair. The rest of humanity has taken up residence on the largest moon of Saturn, and there is a giant space station known as the Tet floating above earth that gives them their orders. There are giant machines harvesting the earth’s water supply for the rest of humanity – and the Scavs are trying to stop them, which is why humans need military drones to take them out, and why Jack and Victoria need to be there. Victoria runs things from their home base, but Jack goes out daily in his cross between a plane and a helicopter to fix the drones that break down. He cannot travel too far on the ground, because they are surrounded by “radiation areas” that will cook him from the inside out.

A crash landing of a spacecraft changes everything. A Scavenger signal was sent off into space, and the result is a crash landing of a spacecraft that Jack races to investigate. Before he does though, the drones also race there, and kills all but one of the crew. This is Julia (Kurylenko) – who wouldn’t you know it – is the woman Jack has been dreaming about.

Cruise hasn’t been this good in a movie in years. While Victoria blindly accepts everything they are told by the Tet, and is counting down the days until their tour is over (they have just under two weeks to go), Cruise’s Jack is haunted by dreams and memories that he should not have. To protect the mission, both he and Victoria have had their memories wiped before coming to Earth, but Jack still has dreams about a woman he should not know or remember. He doesn’t really want to leave Earth, unlike Victoria, because to him, something makes it feels like home. He even has an idyllic little hideaway next to a stream with books and records from humanity’s past. Cruise is excellent as a man trying to piece everything together in his mind, even though his mind is not all there. The two women in the film are also excellent – Kurylenko as the personification of female perfection, and Riseborough as the cold, analytical woman who may well be haunted by her own memories, but will never admit it to Jack – and wishes she wasn’t. For much of the movie, it’s just these three characters – and the drones – that make up the entire cast.

The film was directed by Joseph Kosinski, who directed Tron Legacy a few years back. What the two films prove is that Kosinski is great at using special effects to maximum impact. The more special effects driven movies I see, the more I realize how utterly uniform they all are – how no matter who the director is, they all look the same. That is not true of Kosinski, who created a distinct world in Tron Legacy – building off a 30 year old movie – and does an even better job in Oblivion. This film has an original, and spectacular, visual look – and it uses special effects in support of its story, rather than in place of it. I’m growing increasingly weary of big, special effects driven movies, but I will look forward to whatever Kosinski does next.

The problem with the movie is the ending, which simply does not work as well as the rest of the movie. If the opening and middle parts of Oblivion were involving, if derivative of other, better movies, than the ending pretty much undoes that goodwill by taking the lazy way out – the path of least resistance if you will. Instead of doing something bold and original, the ending is simply uninspired.

That’s not enough for me to say that Oblivion is a bad movie – it isn’t, and I would suggest you see it on the biggest screen possible to fully soak in the terrific visuals. But it is enough for me to be slightly disappointed in the film. After a promising start, I was hoping for more out of the film.

Movie Review: Upstream Color

Monday, April 15, 2013

Movie Review: Upstream Color

Upstream Color
Directed by: Shane Carruth.
Written by: Shane Carruth.
Starring: Amy Seimetz (Kris), Shane Carruth (Jeff), Andrew Sensenig (The Sampler), Thiago Martins (Thief), Kathy Carruth (Orchid Mother), Meredith Burke (Orchid Daughter), Andreon Watson (Peter), Ashton Miramontes (Lucas), Myles McGee (Monty), Frank Mosley (Husband), Carolyn King (Wife).

I’m not sure you’ll see a more ambitious film this year than Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color – a brilliant –sci-fi/horror/love story hybrid that starts out really creepy and disturbing, and then just keeps getting creepier. The film is told in a style that resembles Terrence Malick, but with subject matter than recalls David Cronenberg. And if these directors seem at odds with each other to you, you’re right, but you also haven’t seen just what Shane Carruth has up his sleeve in Upstream Color. This is a movie that forces audiences to think and pay attention – and I’m sure it will inspire some Room 237 like craziness in its interpretations. The movie doesn’t spell everything out for you, but if you pay attention, you can put it all together. People who want a linear structure will be frustrated (like the people who sat behind in the movie, who seemed baffled). The best way to watch Upstream Color however isn’t to try and figure it out on a moment to moment basis, but to let it wash over you. Like I said, I think everything in the movie makes sense, once you have the whole picture, which you won’t get until the end of the movie. But watching the movie the first time through, you will undoubtedly be baffled at some moments – and that’s a good thing.

The movie opens with what we assume is some sort of botanist, tending to his flowers, who may well be diseased, as he scrapes a strange blue powder on them. He also gets some maggots from the soil around the plants, and tends to them – discarding some but not others. What he is up to is not immediately apparent – but eventually it comes together when he meets Kris (Amy Seimetz) in an alley, and in an extremely disturbing scene involving an oxygen mask, forces her to ingest one of those maggots. He then takes Kris back to her place, and seemingly has her under his control – making her give him all his money, and take out a home loan against her house to give him even more. Eventually, he leaves her alone, and she goes to another man when she realizes there is something beneath her skin that she cannot get out – and he extracts the worm from her in another extremely disturbing surgery scene – this one involving a pig. When she finally wakes up, she doesn’t really remember either man. But she has lost everything.

This is just the setup for the movie – much of it involving Kris’ relationship with Jeff (Carruth himself), who she meets on a commuter train. Although at first it appears like he has everything together, while she is falling apart, eventually we realize he is just as screwed up as she is. Their relationship is seen slowly progressing, and falling apart, and then healing itself, as they two grow increasingly paranoid – but with good reason. Sometimes paranoia is justified.

I won’t go any further into the plot, because you really should see how Carruth builds it from moment to moment in the film. Also, if I tried to explain it all, we’d be here all day, and it wouldn’t enhance anyone’s enjoyment of the film – even if they’ve already seen it. Does it all make sense? In the end, to me, it all does. I’m sure if I was interested, I could watch the film over and over, and dig into each and every scene, and put together they purposely fractured timeline that Carruth presents. But in a film like this – like Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko or David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. (or really, almost every other Lynch film) – I’m not really interested in doing that. The confusion in parts of Upstream Color is on purpose by Carruth – the film is ultimately about how these two people have to rebuild their identity after they have been ripped apart. They are confused, so shouldn’t we be as well? That is part of what makes the movie work so well. I don’t necessary view films like this as a puzzle that needs to be solved – that way leads to madness as shown in the recent Room 237. What matters is the whole of the movie, which no matter how you see everything interlocking, to me, makes perfect sense.

This is Carruth’s second movie, following his ultra-low budget time travel movie Primer (2004). That was one of the few time travel movies to actually take the question of time travel seriously, and think through the paradoxes it presents. Primer was a very good film, but Upstream Color is a great one. The film is just as brainy as Primer – a puzzle movie made for nerds like Carruth who has a degree in mathematics, and is more interested in science than spirituality – but it hits you harder on an emotional level as well. Part of this is undoubtedly because of the great performance by Amy Seimetz. In some ways, you could describe her story as a play on the old rape-revenge storyline of horror movies, except what happens to her is perhaps even more disturbing and traumatizing, and in the end, she may not quite get the satisfaction she thinks she does. Her performance is truly great – and anchors the film scene by scene on an emotional level. Carruth himself is quite good as Jeff, but he seems to know this is Seimetz’s movie, and certainly wrote the better role for her, which she seizes. An indie actress, along with an indie and director herself, Seimetz should become a star because of her work here, which is horrifying, layered, subtle and heartbreaking. I mentioned off the top that the film resembles the work of both David Cronenberg and Terrence Malick – and so it does – and yet this is no mere homage to those directors (and undoubtedly others). This is every inch a Carruth original – and along with Primer is the start of hopefully will be a great filmography.

I could go on and on about Upstream Color (who is The Sampler really for example? God?), but I think perhaps it’s best to end the review now before I give away too much. Upstream Color is certainly not for everyone – be prepared walking into the theater, because you are going to have to think, and you will be baffled at times, which to me, in a movie like this, is a supremely enjoyable experience, but to many if not most is simply frustrating. But if you get on Upstream Color’s wavelength – if you let it wash over you, and let yourself go with it, I think many will love it as much as I did. This is likely to be one of the best films of 2013.

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: Them! (1954)

Friday, March 22, 2013

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: Them! (1954)

Them! (1954)
Directed by: Gordon Douglas.
Written by: Ted Sherdeman and Russell S. Hughes based on the story by GeorgeWorthing Yates.
Starring: James Whitmore (Police Sgt. Ben Peterson), Edmund Gwenn (Dr. Harold Medford), Joan Weldon (Dr. Patricia 'Pat' Medford), James Arness (Robert Graham), Onslow Stevens (Brig. Gen. Robert O'Brien), Sean McClory (Maj. Kibbee), Chris Drake (Trooper Ed Blackburn).

By the 1950s, paranoia about nuclear bombs and their after effects had made its way to the movies. There was the 1953 film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (unseen by me) about a dinosaur awoken from under the sea by nuclear bombs that goes on a killing spree. And in 1954, the Japanese film Gojira (better known as Godzilla), the best of all the nuclear monster films, was made. In its original Japanese version, Gojira is a haunting, powerful film that deals directly with Japanese fears after the bombing of Hiroshimaand Nagasaki. By comparison, Them! released in America the same year, is rather tame, but it still taps into that same fear.

The movie opens with a little girl, obviously in shock, walking down the street. She is picked up by Sergeant Ben Peterson (James Whitmore), and his partner, who head up the seemingly abandoned road to investigate. They find the trailer the girl and her family were staying in, and it has been thoroughly destroyed, and her family has disappeared, but by what, no one knows. When they head further up the road, they find a small store, that has also been destroyed, and the owner left dead. The only clue is a strange track that no one can identify. That is until it is sent to Dr. Medford (Edmund Gwenn) and his daughter Pat (Joan Weldon), who think they have the answer – giant ants. And sure enough, when they look around in the desert, they do indeed find a colony of giant ants, and they are able to destroy them. The bad news is, the ants eggs have already hatched – and two queens have escaped. Because they can fly, there is no telling where they could have gone.

To a certain extent, Them! is just another cheesy sci-fi/horror film from the 1950s. You certainly have to accept the fact that the special effects are not as good as modern audiences are used to seeing, and that the film indulges in clichés of the “giant, mutated things that can kill you” genre. And yet, if you can get past all of that, Them! works remarkably well. It gets the paranoia about nuclear weapons just about right, teases us wonderfully with the reveal of the ants, and when the climax comes – set in the sewers of Los Angeles, it is genuinely suspenseful. Whenever someone does a movie like this now, they tend to try for camp value – like in Eight Legged Freaks. But to me, those movies never really work. They try too hard to wink at the audience, and prove how clever they are, and that tends to be a turn off for me. But a movie like Them! which plays it pretty straight, is much more effective.

I sometimes fear that movies like Them! no longer work for modern audiences, who have grown too cynical for a movie like this. Yes, it is cheesy and the special effects are not great by today’s standards (although they were pretty fantastic by 1954 standards), but if you can get by that, and look at the meat of the movie, then Them! is still creepily effective.