Star Wars: Skeleton Crew

The existential question plaguing Lucasfilm since the purchase by Disney has been “what is Star Wars?”  Founder George Lucas, of course, had a clear (if changing) answer to that which he was unafraid to pursue to the frequent consternation of the fanbase.  Disney’s need to appease that fanbase lead to much tortured soul searching as the initial plan of “give them copies of the movies they said they liked” quickly ran into inevitable diminishing returns.  What audiences want, in the long run, is always some familiarity to what came before but somehow made new and different to throw off the feeling of having seen everything before.  Continuation, not replication.

Achieving some success at that with The Mandalorian, making use of Original Trilogy era mise en scene but focusing on different types of characters than previously used, the company has cast about for more and more ways to do the same and come up mainly with unmade films and disparately received television series.  What they are trying to do is hard.  It requires a creator to be able to answer that first question – “what is Star Wars” – something so far only one person has ever been able to do.

After trying various remixes of the various existing Star Wars formulas, the newest brainstorm is steal some inspiration from The Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things, and mine the detritus of Star Wars close cousin: 1980s Spielbergian Kids Adventure.  For the aging 80s audience so much of modern Star Wars is aimed at, the two go together like peanut butter and jelly so it seems like a natural fit except for one being consigned to American suburbs and 10-year-olds and the other to space wizards and star ships.  Creator Jon Watts (Spider-Man: No Way Home) has shrugged his shoulders at the potential disparity and decided to just proceed with the mash up, giving us young Wim (Cabot-Conyers) and his best friend Neel (Smith) living their perfectly normal lives taking the bus to school, riding bikes through the woods, arguing with other kids and not always getting along with their parents.  If some of the kids weren’t aliens and the bikes weren’t hover bikes you might never know what it is supposed to be.  At least, until the kids discover an ancient spaceship buried behind their neighborhood and are suddenly transported away from their planet with no way to get back.

As much of a risk as it could seem to reduce the grand space opera to mere afterschool adventure, the initial conceit is easily disposed of as the children find themselves dealing with a cantankerous droid (Frost), wandering through a pirate space port and quickly discovering how dangerous their adventure is and how far from home they are.  A home they soon learn is considered a myth to the rest of the galaxy, a sort of Star Wars-ian El Dorado, which no one knows the location of and the only hope they have is a conniving con man (Law) with an agenda of his own.

Keeping a firm child’s eye view of the world, even as they venture into increasingly dangerous corners filled with life threatening dangers, Skeleton Crew is easily the most kid-oriented addition to the franchise since the old Ewok TV movies, gorging on a sort of boys (and girls) own adventure the original films never had but everyone seems to remember them having.  It stoutly refuses to be ponderous or self-important even when engaging with life-or-death struggles or the anguish of parental loss, a choice which keeps things breezy and easy to watch in the early going but may be a problem by the end.

It’s a difficult tonal needle to thread which Watts, working with a murderer’s row of episode directors including David Lowery (The Green Knight), The Daniels (Everything Everywhere All At Once) and Lee Isaac Chung (Minari), manages with aplomb, avoiding landmines as nimbly as Law refuses to answer any questions about himself and leaving plenty of places to go  – will the kids get home, will anyone else find their planet and why was it hidden in the first place?  And most importantly, will this be settled in one eight-episode season?

I for one hope it will and am eager to find out.  It may be too light for those to whom Star Wars is and has always been serious business.  That would be too bad.  It’s too early to say whether anyone has found an answer to that overarching question – “what is Star Wars?” – and there’s probably too much fidelity to what has come before and too little risk to try something new, but Skeleton Crew at least has its own identity and knows what that is which already puts it ahead of many of its brethren.

7.5 out of 10

Starring Jude Law, Ravi Cabot-Conyers, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Kyriana Kratter, Robert Timothy Smith, Tunde Adebimpe, Kerry Condon and Nick Frost. Created by Jon Watts.

Homestead

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the genre of apocalypse literature first appeared.  Perhaps H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine and its imaginings of some ecological collapse and the fall of civilization, or the later Shape of Things to Come which went further, suggesting a continual rise and fall of civilizations as befell ancient history.  Those stories tended to dwell on the depths of the fall and heights of the rise rather than the reality of the immediate aftermath of whatever started the downfall.  Certainly by the 60s, in the shadow of nuclear Armageddon, it quickly became a full-fledged genre, one which flourishes to this day as every generation seems to believe they are the last before the current system inevitably fails with signs of cracks everywhere.

It’s flourished long enough in fact that it has had time to grow and develop tropes of its own: the quick demise of communication systems, the off-screen loss of government and leadership structures, the focus on everyday people suddenly faced with other everyday people lapsing into barbarism for survival, the overall fragility of civilization.  To some degree history supports that view – we have now several iterations of dark ages to view trends from – and certainly plays into the natural pessimism of its target audience.  Fewer and farther between are the stories looking at the apocalypse as an opportunity for civilization to band together, to suggest the bonds of men are stronger than electrical and telephone cables nor that our systems will fail so quickly.  Ben Smallbone’s Homestead flies in the face of those hoary cliches, suggesting even in the darkest hours grace is not a weakness.

It starts out standard enough: a sudden nuclear explosion within Los Angeles throws the country into chaos and leaves many cut off without supplies or aid and little idea or hope when such things will be available.  Some of the individuals are prepared for just such a collapse, whether by training like former special forces soldier Jeff (Chase) who makes sure every family has go-bag ready for whatever might happen, or by inclination like rich rancher Ian (McDonough) who has spent considerable time and resources preparing his estate for the coming disaster he could never name but was certain was out there waiting like some predator.

Offering Jeff and his ex-special forces friends a place in the compound in exchange for guarding it from the unprepared he is certain will soon arrive, Ian delivers a short-lived moment of relief for all involved to take a breath and wonder what will happen next.  It doesn’t last long as Ian’s fears are soon realized when neighboring citizens without farmland or stores of their own come to beg for food at his gates, forcing Ian to put more and more of the security and control of the compound in Jeff’s increasingly paranoid hands.

From there it would be extremely easy for Homestead to follow in the bleak footsteps of its forebears, allowing miscommunication and fear to escalate into violence and recrimination and call it depth.  Smallbone and his writers consistently frustrate convention looking inwards, both to Ian’s recognition and refusal to take more violent steps, but also into the hands of his wife (Yellowstone’s Dawn Olivieri) who sees the walls between those within the compound and without as artificial, a barrier men have created out of fear and stuck out of different fears but which could be struck down at any moment if those on both sides have the courage to do so.

It’s a refreshing change of pace and view for a familiar genre, one which plays more into the drama of the people living within the compound’s walls (young couples finding romance in the apocalypse, the tragedy of having to stand armed guard over your neighbors) and never lets anyone out of feeling the connection to humanity even as terrible things happen.  And it does so without turning too much to preachiness, letting actions define actions rather than words.

Is it the start of a new type of post-apocalyptic fiction?  Probably not, people like their pessimism too much in fiction, but that’s for the best.  As it stands now, Homestead is unique.

7 out of 10

Starring Neal McDonough, Dawn Olivieri, Currie Graham, Bailey Chase, Jesse Hutch, Kevin Lawson and Kearran Giovanni. Directed by Ben Smallbone.

Bonhoeffer

One of the unspoken evils of the Nazi regime was the way it worked arm and arm with major organized religion (or at the least, with little to no resistance from same) towards its horrors. So much is made of its totalitarianism and related evils that it’s given an unforced pass for how supremely it corrupted religion along with every other organ of society.  By the same token it is also ignores how religious figures of the time organized resistance to Nazism, not through the active guerilla tactics of the France or other occupied countries, but through following the letters of Christian teacher that many of the highest levels of the church conveniently forgot about when the chips were down.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was at the forefront of that resistance.  A thoughtful and concerned theologian who disagreed with his superiors even in the early days of his scholarly life, he found much more specific disagreements with them when the Nazi’s rose to power and the people he had spent his life talking about God with suddenly began talking about the Fuhrer (at worst) or burying their heads in the sand hoping the storm would pass (at best).   Recognizing the requirement of his beliefs to do something, and the same requirement limiting what ‘something’ could be, Bonhoeffer quickly and vocally began preaching resistance to Nazi ideals and actions and pushing his colleagues to do the same through stating that the Church did need to be involved in the actions of the world particularly when they turned to evil.  Eventually those beliefs lead to actions and imprisonment and the branding of Bonhoeffer as an enemy of the state.  Refusing to give in, even after years in a concentration camp and looking directly upon the murderous horror of the Nazis, Bonhoeffer lives on now for not only his actions but his statements about what real religious belief requires of an individual within the living world.

Writer-director Todd Komarnicki (Sully) is less interested with the purely ecumenical nature of the real Bonhoeffer’s thought than he is with the man’s actions within the Abwehr, the German resistance movement.  A public figure who could move between nations early in Hitler’s reign and even during some years of the war – under the notion that it was better to have him out of the country than at home turning citizens against the regime – Bonhoeffer quickly took on a second role couriering information from the Abwehr to Allied nations and even between some cells of the resistance itself.

It’s undoubtedly the most dynamic period of his life and Komarnicki approaches it with a slick and studied studio presentation reminiscent of pre-war Hollywood’s real-time warnings on Hitler. Jonas Dassler is not Jimmy Stewart and this is not The Mortal Storm but the line of descent is there.  In the process, for as much time as it spends on Bonhoeffer’s early life and studies, they feel frequently disconnected from his war activities rather than informing and directing them.  The gentle theologizing of Komarnicki’s script for The Professor and the Madman is sorely missed in the tangle of Bonhoeffer’s real thought and his spiced-up activities during the war.  Without that strong connection, the interiority of the man himself can only be guessed at and the connections must be inferred if not outright created by the viewer in a vacuum from the film.

That being said, everyone is clear on the end result and marches there directly with purpose and skill, abetted by gorgeous photography from John Mathieson (Gladiator II) and a steady hand from Komarnicki.  Dassler himself encompasses Bonhoeffer’s firm belief and with a reality that doesn’t fall to reverence (but easily could have), creating something real within what is frequently a more produced play.

It misses the moment of interiority which Malick captured so well covering similar ground for A Hidden Life, but that doesn’t mean there is nothing of worth here.  Give up on the idea of spies or overwrought war film and grab onto the real words somewhat hidden within and Bonhoeffer has its own worthwhile truths to share.

6.5 out of 10

Starring Jonas Dassler, August Diehl, David Jonsson, Flula Borg and Clarke Peters. Directed by Todd Komarnicki.

Effigy: Poison and the City

Why do people do what they do?  Don’t expect anyone to ever tell you, or even be able to tell you, especially if they’re a serial killer and especially if they’re a serial killer in a movie.  The answer is both obvious and capricious because that’s what people are much of the time.  At best we can get some vague protestations of deeper desires which can’t or won’t be examined, perhaps with some esoteric symbolism thrown in to help the individual’s ego.  It’s a cover to hide the fact that they don’t know because we don’t know.  Introspection is ultimately a distraction in the face of human nature.

I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s certainly true about this particular flavor of genre fiction, even when gussied up in the trusses of period storytelling and the perfume of being based on a true story.  Specifically, the story of Gesche Gottfried (Anbeh), a wife and home maker in 19th century Germany who killed her parents and later children during the cholera epidemic of 1815. At first lauded for helping during the epidemic, she was later accused of poisoning her family leading her to flee and eventually begin killing again. Discovered and arrested, Gottfried had neither motive nor explanation for her accused crimes, which turns into a severe problem for newly arrived senatorial aide Cato Bohmer (Thiemann), one of the few female lawyers in the country, who must prove herself and her position by gathering the evidence to send Gottfried to the executioner.

It’s an old story, within Germany itself and the tropes of crime fiction, and one which has been covered regularly over the centuries including a television version by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Writer-director Udo Flohr stakes out his own track early on, turning it into a fable patriarchal and matriarchal conflict, the difficulties of woman staking their place in the world and the way the strain of that fight twists and changes its participants to the point they lose connection with the people around them: their parents, their children, strangers, and even other women going through similar struggles.  Yes, it removes some agency from Gottfried, casting her as a victim who doesn’t always know why she does what she does, but it also keeps itself somewhat vague to leave its rationales in the eye of the beholder.

That puts a lot onto the shoulders of its actresses, particularly Theimann who by process of elimination must take on the definition which Gottfried cannot.  She is a regular part of regular society and so both her motivations and actions can be regularly understood and empathized with.  Who hasn’t been held back by less qualified superiors or judged unfairly for attributes which weren’t theirs?  The complication creates (invents?) a new facet on the story without having to reckon with the more complex issue of Gottfried herself.  Why did she do the terrible things she did?  There is probably no answer, or nothing any more satisfying than she wanted to and didn’t care about her victims.

In its new takes and focus, Flohr’s work is in its way something new.  If Bohmer were revealed not to exist and were merely a hallucination of Gottfried as she tries to rationalize the choices she has made, it would be less inventive than what has been created, but invention is also the way art evolves.  Rather than stand on the shoulders of geniuses who have come before and completely repeated the lessons of the past, he’s set out to make something new and in that resolve he has succeeded.

7 out of 10.

Starring Suzan Anbeh, Elisa Thiemann, Christoph Gottschalch, Roland Jankowsky, Uwe Bohm and Marc Optiker. Directed by Udo Flohr.

Pratfall

A little bit of John Cassavetes and a little bit of Whit Stilman mixed into a heady New York stew, Alex Andre’s Pratfall feels like an artifact of 80s and 90s independent cinema escaped into the now.  A brief trip into a life, and back out again, Andre’s improv heavy style is light on detail and heavy on mood amid stolen moments and happy accidents which evoke the idea of a story rather than really delivering one. None of which matters, like the city it lives in, Pratfall is more of about vibes then content, intent on capturing a feeling rather than some structured narrative.  Moments of importance come and go, leading to a peak, but between Andre’s characters float and flitter from place to place looking for some anchor to stop them and simultaneously dreading the coming of that moment.  Like life, it’s between those peaks that life is lived.

They should be dreading it stopping, and so they never stop.  That desire seems external for visitor Joelle (Groussard), a tourist or a refugee – it’s never quite clear which – desperate to see the reality of New York (or at least to not return home) but hopelessly lost in it.  It’s far more internal for Eli (Burge), a potentially mentally ill man still grappling with a recent loss and seemingly without home or family, only a tenuous connection to local drug dealers and desire to keep moving. Perhaps if he moves fast enough he can keep ahead of the demons he continually argues with and which tempt him into bad decisions and hide the worse elements of life from him.  When the two meet it’s not so much sparks that fly as annoyance, disinterest and sudden need.

Pratfall itself isn’t even a series of episodes even though it is extremely episodic.  After Eli and Joelle miss each other a few times they finally find their paths entangled like a pair of particles passing in the night, yanked away from whatever their original path was and now on to something different.  What that different is, is largely whatever occurs to Eli at any given moment.  Speaking a mile a minute, trying to spin tenuous conversation starters or local topics into a coherent stream of thought, Eli leads his new companion into the depths of the city visiting coffee shops and art galleries while largely walking and talking in circles.  What they say is less important than the fact they try so hard not to say anything, not to engage with the reasons pushing them to behave the way they do, until inevitably some sort of truth slips out.

Instead its left to Andre’s camera (a one man band writing, directing, shooting and editing his film) to fill in the truth between the things they will not say.  Mostly he does so by staying out of the way, letting Burge and Groussard discover themselves even as they discover the city in gorgeous naturally lit film, letting the actors play with their scenes but never abandoning them. Through their all day / all night jaunt Andre’s lens ties them together, blending them into a unit to the point it is possible to forget how damaged they both are and how dangerous that could be. It hints and suggests.  Perhaps Eli is the way he is because of his ex-girlfriends drug-addicted death, perhaps it was an addiction he even introduced her to – we’ll never know and we don’t need to.

Is it all a joke?  Just a meaningless moment of noise and motion to distract us from misery around us?  Andre’s certainly suggests so as the momentary connection his characters find is immediately threatened by the random danger of life and even if it wasn’t, it was never more than temporary because that’s all life ever is.  Picking up the baton of classic independent film, Pratfall may not build on it to create something new but it’s a worthy addition to the canon.  Cassavetes would be proud.

8 out of 10.

Starring Joshua Burge, Chloe Groussard and Xavier Reyes. Directed by Alex Andre.

Gladiator II

A return to the gladiator arenas of ages past – that is 24 years ago when the first Gladiator premiered – Ridley Scott’s new sword and sandals epic appreciates the need to get more out of his premise if we’re getting dragged on another tour of ancient Rome while suffering under the inescapable rules of the sequel. Scott has always recognized the diminishing returns of repeating what has come before (for instance, the moribund Alien: Romulus) and has bravely, if not always successfully, attempted to chart a new course the handful of times he has returned to his old haunts. A lot can be said about Prometheus but it is definitely not like any other Alien film, something few others have managed.  He’s working from the back foot from the start on Gladiator II, however, precisely because it is called Gladiator II.  His options for charting a new path are lessened; he’s locked himself into providing more Gladiator, and that is precisely what Scott has done. 

Some 16 years after the general-turned-gladiator Maximus (Russell Crowe) sacrificed himself to restore something like honest government and care to the Roman Empire, the natural corruption of the empire in decline has taken hold once more.  Controlled once again by capricious rulers (Fred Hechinger and Stranger Thing’s Joseph Quinn) more concerned with feeding their appetites – particularly the blood of the Colosseum – than their people, the Roman state is in jeopardy of falling to permanent tyranny. And once again an ambitious slave owner (Washington), Macrinus, arrives with a gifted warrior touting a secret past (Mescal) whose quest for revenge Macrinus hopes to harness to force his way into the upper seats of power.

Gladiator II has its twists and turns – as much as it plays up its repetition of the originals plot, it delights in making very specific changes in reaction to that film – and if nothing else a bravura sense of scale only studio epics have ever managed (and only a handful of working directors can do as well), but also a studied refusal to ignore how much of the original it is repeating. It is, of course, about a Roman gladiator and feels duty bound to run through the colossal chaos of the previous film again.  Maybe there were options for it do something different with its premise, perhaps starting with a gladiator winning their freedom and making their way in the world … but that’s not the film Scott, et al. have made.  It is immediately and irrevocably tied to the plot of the original as it focuses on Lucius (played by Spencer Treat Clark in the original) grown to adulthood and forced by events to follow in Maximus’ footsteps and attempt to free Rome from its worse impulses.

Which doesn’t mean it doesn’t try to surprise, but it is also stuck by its history. Because Lucius was free and safe at the end of the first film, a reason must be made to force him to leave his home and his mother (Nielsen) behind, a traumatic event which has scarred the young man and left him angry and initially unwilling to save his homeland. He doesn’t even want to admit his own identity for the longest time, hiding behind the name ‘Aelius’ and refusing to accept his birthright as heir to the throne. Tortuous construct aside, it builds itself to some compelling drama, particularly when the focus of his vengeance (Pascal) turns out not to be a mustache twirling villain but in fact an honorable servant who genuinely wants to save the Roman citizens from their Emperors. If Lucius succeeds in his quest he will be dooming Rome rather than saving it – this is real drama!

But it can’t be the climax as obvious as that seems; at some point Lucius must follow in Maximus’ footsteps which means broader evils to fight. While the first Gladiator was more crowd pleaser than complex drama (That’s good! Crowd pleasers are good!), Gladiator II throws out all pretense of subtext: there is only text. Lucius, who was always stated as Maximus nephew with some hint of a clandestine, never acknowledged romance between General and Princess, is immediately and repeatedly outed as Lucius true father, just to make crystal clear the path Lucius must walk and the choices he will undoubtedly make. It also allows for regular mentions of moments and items from the first film, just to make sure anyone in the cheap seats missed it or is unclear who is doing what and why.

Mescal himself carries that burden effortlessly, showcasing his ability as a lead and taking hold of the film no matter how much Washington tries to walk off with it. And that’s saying something as almost every great scene is a Macrinus scene – a brilliant man surrounded by silly elites who can’t understand what he’s doing even when he tells it to their faces.  The set pieces similarly rise to the challenge, larger and grander than the first film – verging on the fantastical as the Colosseum is flooded and filled with sharks during a naval recreation – and the same eye which recreated Napoleon’s battle scenes last year has lost none of its skill.  Scott just knows how to make these things, better than almost anyone else.

None of that can hide quite how much of a copy of the original it is.  But it doesn’t have to, either. Not every sequel can be a wholesale reinvention of new ideas (it would be nice, but it’s just not practical), but when they look like this and feel like this they at least earn their keep.

7.5 out of 10

Starring Paul Mescal, Denzel Washingtonm Pedro Pascal, Connie Nielsen as Lucilla, Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger, Lior Raz, Derek Jacobi, Tim McInnerny and Alexander Karim. Directed by Ridley Scott.

Venom: The Last Dance

Filmmaking is a tough business.  Hundreds of films come out every year, released on many screens with strong marketing spends behind them and result in … nothing.  At best they are discovered years later on video and perhaps get a lucky chance to be revisited after being missed the first time around.  As William Goldman once said, “nobody knows nothing.”  It’s so uncertain no one plans on the sequel or the franchise, on getting to tell more stories with these characters or that world.  Hollywood history is littered with the corpses of those that did:  Universal’s ill-fated Dark Universe; Fox’s advertising for Eragon as ‘Book 1 of the Inheritance Cycle’ and on and on.  Throw everything in the film you’re making now, the conventional wisdom says, because there is no tomorrow.

So, what happens when the decision to make a sequel comes?  Sometimes you get a bolt of inspiration, some bold new idea that speaks to the key themes of the original without repetition or rehash.  Sometimes there is a logical next step for the main characters, the only thing logical for them to do.  And sometimes you just create random scenes which go nowhere but eat up screen time allowing for a technically feature length film to be attached to the appropriate numeral of the derivation to separate suckers from their money.  Sometimes you get Venom: The Last Dance. 

Just a year since disgraced investigative journalist Eddie Brock (Hardy) first encountered the psychopathic alien glob called Venom (also Hardy), he and his ‘partner’ have fled his San Francisco home to hide on the Mexican coast and decide what to do next with their lives.  Also, they momentarily got zapped to Spiderman’s universe and drank in a bar but that doesn’t matter.  Instead, what’s next is going on the run when they are targeted by the US military (scooping up symbionts for experimentation beneath Area 51) and strange tentacled monsters from across the galaxy.  Venom it turns out is the key to the release of an ancient galactic warlord (Serkis) who will sit on a throne and growl menacingly until someone or something takes care of his problems for him.

After scripting the first two Venom films, Kelly Marcel steps behind the camera to bring the clearest version of her vision for the character which mostly involves a lot of singing and physical comedy.  The reality is the Venom films have been on the back foot since the start, a character who was conceived entirely in opposition to another character which cannot be used or explained.  That leaves a giant gaping hole that can either be filled with new ideas building a fully realized character or can suck in everything around it like a black hole, crushing even the most interesting creations to a singular sludgy pebble.

Mostly it’s been the latter.

The various directors and co-writers who have worked on the series, and Hardy himself, have struggled to come up with a central thesis behind the character.  Initially Eddie was an investigative reporter trying to fix his ruined life and relationship until he suddenly has an alien voice in his head (and sometimes controlling his body) enticing him to increased moments of mania until they could find some way to co-exist in a startingly interesting performance (I picked it as one of the five best of 2018).  When its success demanded a sequel, the obvious question became ‘who are these characters and what do they want’ but few answers seemed to be available beyond ‘zany buddy comedy.’  They still struggle to find the equilibrium they need, despite working on it every single film and somehow always ending up back where they started … every … single … time.

The only real change has been a shift of focus, form Eddie’s personal concerns and desire to fix the injustices plaguing him, to Venom’s psychopathic wackiness and id-fueled search for instant gratification.  His larger-than-life personality makes him the point of everyone’s attention, within and without the film, without ever exploring or discovering anything about him.  Venom as we last see him is pretty much the same as Venom when we first meet him:  he doesn’t change or develop, he just is and that seems to be enough for everyone.  Eddie, on the other hand, diminishes continually, a victim of the extraterrestrial parasite attached to him, losing all his previous desires or needs to become a blank faced straight man who exists to suffer for Venoms various deeds.  Hardy stares out windows like a soldier back from ‘Nam but still in the foxhole, muttering to himself and clutching one lonely shoe.  There’s no telling what he even really wants except … maybe … to be rid of Venom. Maybe.  Or to just die.  He is not a person anymore; he is a Venom delivery system.

Which is the tale of the film itself.  Nothing is connected or attached in any sort of meaningful way; things happen because it has been decided they must happen in the manner of a five-year-old hurriedly explaining a dream they just woke up from before they forget it all.  One of the creatures hunting the pair leaps from a building in Mexico to the back of an airplane 30,000 feet over Nevada because it must to make the next fight happen.  Eddie and Venom find themselves in the back seat of a modern hippy family exposed to a sing-along of ‘Space Oddity’ so that Venom can sing it in a resistant Eddie’s head.  The pair invade a Las Vegas casino and partake in a song and dance number to Frank Sinatra standards because why not?  That seems to be Marcel’s answer to anything that happens in The Last Dance.  It’s a scene, it contributes to the run time, throw it in.

That’s about all Venom: The Last Dance has to offer: 90-100 minutes that sometimes have the title character in it.  Sometimes there are scientists studying symbionts; sometimes there are soldiers fighting them; sometimes there is an evil space warlord who has nothing to do with the story or is involved in the climax in any real way and could be removed from the film entirely.  A lot of the time it has Tom Hardy staring vacantly out to the horizon.  One can relate.

3 out of 10.

Starring Tom Hardy, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans, Stephen Graham, Peggy Lu, Clark Backo, Alanna Ubach and Andy Serkis. Directed by Kelly Marcel.

Escape from Extinction: Rewilding

It’s rare for a documentary to expand beyond its initial entry.  It’s not a inherent part of the form, which tends to be narrowly focused on specific incidents or events that can be described and analyzed in a singular session.  The handful which move beyond that - The Decline of Western Civilization, the UP series, Paradise Lost - tend to have picked subjects so vast and complicated no one film can contain all of its truths and contradictions, requiring either an extended original film which must be broken up into pieces to be fully consumed or, more often, a continued return to the subject as more and more facets of it are brought to life.  Such is Matthew Brady’s examination of increased animal extinction and how it might be thwarted.

Picking up the threads from his first examination of the subject, “Rewilding” is more specifically focused on new ideas in the field, specifically reintroducing animals to ecosystems similar to lost species -- keystone species -- to take the place of the old species and attempt to buttress regional biodiversity.  It’s a bold and still controversial idea within ecological circles and one going through various levels of discreet experimentation around the world in attempt to prove it as a viable strategy for sustaining our modern environment.

Flitting around the world, Brady and his cameras catch these attempts in their current iterations. Keeping his talking heads to a minimum, just enough to explain the history and hoped for outcomes of the idea but not enough to transform “Rewilding” into a dry recitation of facts and figures.  The natural world is Brady’s ultimate concern -- he makes no bones about where he comes down on the idea of rewilding and where he thinks you should, too -- and he makes sure to use it as his canvas as well.  Otters bound through local waters, big cats roam rainforests and jungles, fish and fowl dive through the water -- everywhere Brady says ‘look what we have, look at what we could lose.’

It's an effective message made doubly so by connecting itself to an attempt at solution (or at least part of one).  Too often advocacy documentary leaves itself at coverage of the events it is concerned with but only with the vaguest of hints at what can be done (if anything can) because solutions are hard and hard solutions are difficult to swallow.  The downside of that kind of doom and gloom is filling its audience with feelings of helplessness and futility.  Everything is terrible and nothing can be done.

Brady ably steps around that problem, focusing his viewpoint and his message as much as possible on what can be done by what has been done.  Yes, sustainability is a real and growing problem and so is extinction; no it’s not clear that current ideas will solve these difficult problems but they are something and if nothing else could point us in the direction we should be going.  As Brady’s camera tells us with every lush visage and flowing animal form there is life still out there and where there is life, there is hope.

6.5 out of 10

Narrated by Meryl Streep. Directed by Matthew R. Brady.

Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot

A dedicated approbation to the work of a local religious community trying to provide families for an epidemic of orphaned children, Sound of Hope is one of those elegies that means well and tries hard even if that means ignoring the rougher and less appealing portions of their story.  MacLuhan is turned on his head for these kinds of films:  the message is the medium, not the other way around.  It is the only thing that matters and all of life (never mind entertainment channels) will be bent to make it land as intended. It’s no accident this type of filmmaking, once so stringently identified with social programs and concerns -- the core of Stanley Kramer’s filmography - are now more theological even when social issues are the focus.  No one has understood the primacy of the message like organized religion, it’s only natural these two forces would come together, especially as mainstream Hollywood’s message focus has turned towards self-actualization.

None of which should tinge Sound of Hope’s core.  Reverend WC (Grosse) and Donna Martin (Nika King) have, after some struggle, found their community and their place in it ministering the rural community of Possum Trot, Texas.  Recognizing the difficulties the community faces through a surge of orphaned youth, the couple opens their home and church to multiple foster children despite the concerns of the local government and its warnings against the unexpected difficulty of what the Martin’s are attempting. Considering the general failure of said government to deal with the problem, and the children falling through the cracks as a result, the Martin’s go ahead with their experiment even as the run into the difficult childhood behaviors they were warned against.  More importantly their efforts, though worthwhile, are only enough to scratch the surface of the community youth problems and quickly enlist the entire community of Possum Trot to make certain no child goes without.

Like a lot of these kinds of films, Sound of Hope tries to balance itself between the reality of what the community is attempting (and even succeeding at) and the reality of the struggle it is trying to document. The attempt is in the name, it is a film after hope, which writer-director Weigel has reasoned means not drowning itself in misery even if there is victory at the end. The struggles of the Martins and the other families dealing with sudden children is reduced to some arguments, some tantrums, some veiled discussions … the bigger problems of drug abuse, sexual abuse and violence are pushed the edges. Its as if to dwell on how dark these stories could be would somehow diminish the message of love and acceptance at the film’s core and nothing must threaten that.   All is available to be sacrificed towards that goal.

That can include artistry as well … reducing the options for the performers to play off of and even the look of the film.  Sound of Hope mostly avoids that with a clean look that avoids the overt softness of Hallmark and heartfelt performances from Grosse and King. Some of that is the side effect of what is (or really, what is not) given to the child actors; extra weight is required from the adults to carry the drama of the film but Weigel also carries things with a steady hand.  Everyone moves effortlessly and unquestionably in one direction and to one end.  There may not be many risks, but that does not mean there are no rewards.

It can be cynical to say that level of unquestioning focus on message (and the sanding of edges which can result) ultimately robs a film of its power, but that does disservice to what Sound of Hope achieves.  It’s always tempting to judge a film, especially a message film, on what it’s not rather than what it is, envisioning a vague image of some superior drama which misses no chances and expands the medium. That can easily overlook the quality films which are focused on their own core idea and for good reason.  Is there untapped potential?  Yes, but isn’t that true of all of us?  Let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and Sound of Hope is ultimately to the good.

7 out of 10.

Starring Elizabeth Mitchell, Demetrius Grosse, Nika King, Joshua Weigel and Diaana Babnicova. Directed by Joshua Weigel.

Deadpool & Wolverine

The problem with all rebellions is that the successful ones are destined to become the thing they rebel against. They all promise differently, change to some ideal lacking in all drawbacks of real life, before inevitably taking on the same compromises as whatever came before and for the same reasons.  Some, realizing this, revert to permanent rebellion letting the revolution itself become the point rather than affecting any sort of change. Either way, the longer the rebellion goes on the more question becomes ‘what was the point of it?’

Which is a long way of saying ‘what was the point of Deadpool?’  At its initial release it was obvious: a satirical reflex to the ubiquity of the big-budget superhero film, overtly skewering the accepted tropes and childish overtures of the genre through insider references, creatively cartoonish violence and a gleeful willingness to push an adult rating as far as possible. Others, including Marvel itself, had attempted similar assaults on its own massive pop-culture footprint (co-opting the rebellion before it could gain ground) but none with the venom Deadpool. Taking advantage of its stars best attributes and an emotional heart which was never hurt by the lack of sentiment its central conceit required.  It was a foul breath of fresh air.

It was also incredibly successful which meant it had to continue and when a rebellion continues at some point it’s not a rebellion anymore.  With the a big budget and all the backing of its corporate owners the series has become no longer a reflex against a pop-culture juggernaut but just another part of it.  The answer to the question of ‘why?’ initially was “there wasn’t anything else like it.” Now that there is, the answer has morphed into “we need more of it?”  More quips, more cameos, more in-jokes, more extended diatribes with little external reason to exist beyond the fact that they do.  It’s the big budget superhero version of continued seasons of Family Guy, a repetitive shadow of its former self reduced to throwing a constant barrage of references at the screen and calling it progression.

Since using Cable’s time traveling device to bring his long time girlfriend Vanessa (Baccarin) back to life in Deadpool 2, the Merc With a Mouth has fallen into a serious funk, lacking in confidence of his own importance to the world and giving up his life as Deadpool as a result. With nothing to drive him he quickly loses Vanessa and his hopes of heroism, becoming a used car salesman with X-Force survivor Peter (Delaney) and just … living out his days. When he finds out those days are numbered because his universe is slowly dying due to the death of Wolverine (Jackman) in the future, Wade decides to put the red suit back on and find a Wolverine from some other part of the multiverse to come back and stabilize his.

The setup is a good deal more confusing than that, requiring characters to have knowledge of things which haven’t happened yet unmotivated exposition dumps explainable only by the need to get the movie going and ultimately not the problem with Deadpool & Wolverine. The problem is that no one understands how to make anything impact at an emotional level, leaving nothing but a collection of gags and references.  Wade has seemingly lost his emotional anchor through a lack of belief in himself or a desire to accomplish anything … how and why is left to our imagination because it doesn’t matter to the filmmakers.  What matters is to make sure that Wade and Vanessa are separated because he can only be conceived as questing for her to make himself whole and making bad jokes to cover up that pain.  Over three films he has not changed or grown at all (and in Deadpool meta fashion, very much the point of the third film) leaving a third film which in sequel fashion is just more of the same … but more so.

To be fair, no matter how much Deadpool & Wolverine claims it is about Wade salvaging his relationship with Vanessa by salvaging himself, it is not.  It is about Deadpool and Wolverine.  And an endless amount of references and cameos.  It is a film not about being a film, but only about being a delivery mechanism for quips and visual gags and ‘can you spot that’ references which are expected to be enough to maintain attention.  In Deadpool meta fashion, Deadpool’s movie has turned into a Deadpool.  That is not a good thing.  It's a stew no one has bothered to taste even as they throw more and more into it because it doesn’t matter what it tastes like, only what can be put into it.

Most of that doesn’t matter, either.  What matters is Deadpool and Wolverine.  Jackman has lost none of the gravitas or charisma that made him a perfect fit for the role and the role a star-making turn for him.  As expected, he make a perfect foil for Deadpool in his grumpy taciturness which has no time for Wilson’s constant silliness.  A Wolverine from a world where he was a failure who got the X-Men killed he is kidnapped by Wade to replace the dead Wolverine in Wade’s world.  Instead of saving his world, however, the pair of banished to the Void where the TVA sends variants from timelines set to be erased, now controlled by the powerful and malevolent twin sister of the X-Men’s Professor Xavier, one Cassandra Nova (Corrin).  With no way home except through Nova, Deadpool and Wolverine will have to put their differences aside and defeat her if they can.

It is the thinnest of narratives left to serve as a brittle exoskeleton whose only focus is to support having the two of them on camera together threatening each other.  When the two are allowed to argue and even better fight it growls to something like life, and it’s still funny … frequently despite itself.  But then it runs back into its need for references and quips, which often leave the rest of the cast looking on in a dull stupor like the hadn’t heard anything at all. 

It delivers exactly what it advertises.  Deadpool and Wolverine are in it and are in a lot of it doing many different things.  Deadpool does all the things he has done in the previous films without a whiff of change or growth, because now he has Wolverine to bounce off of.  It’s not enough, but it’s unlikely most will care.

4.5 out of 10

Starring Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin, Morena Baccarin, Rob Delaney, Leslie Uggams an Matthew Macfayden. Directed by Shawn Levy.

Sight

A well-meaning and well-made biography, Sight has the same problem most biopics have – finding a reason for its existence beyond the fact its events happened and never quite rising above being a recitation of them.  None of that takes away from the value of Ming Wang’s (Chen) accomplishments or experiences, but it doesn’t throw a potent spotlight on them either.

On paper he is a fantastically accomplished individual – a Chinese émigré who received both a medical degree from Harvard and a PhD in laser physics to focus on surgical treatment for blindness leading to the founding of his own blindness center.  He’s the kind of person who should serve as an example to others, and a biography make sense to accomplish exactly that.  But it’s still a dramatic artform in need of conflict and biography struggles with that at the best of time.

Cutting back and forth between Wang’s youth in communist China and his work in the early 2000’s on surgical cures for blindness, Sight seems like it should have that conflict built in. The son of doctors himself, Wang watched his friends and country struggle with a lack of resources and related violence before eventually leaving for the US when it became clear he couldn’t follow his goal of being a doctor there.  Pushing the trauma of his youth behind him middle-aged Wang is a driven surgeon with no personal life to speak of, whose closest friend is also his co-worker (Kinnear), he seldom questions what it is that drives him so.  When a young girl (Nathan) with a particularly difficult condition arrives at his institute, memories of his past begin to resurface in a way he can no longer ignore.

All of the struggle is right there and Sight approaches it but frequently dances away with only a light touch.  What Wang has done is under no doubt at any point, but despite looking directly at the ‘why’ it stops just short of true insight.  Clear and professional throughout, subtext remains keenly missing and the loss is deeply felt.  Why he wants to fix Kajal’s vision is no mystery – his rising guilt over the people left behind in China he was not able to help, including his parents and childhood friend, push him to fix every problem in front of him at the cost of any life of his own.  Not is asked is how he feels about his parents pushing towards being an eye-doctor in the first place, even into studying music as well.  All of the elements of his life are laid out for him without his opinion till it is unclear what he is doing is what he wants or what he has been told he wants.  Somewhere in there is the meat of a story but director Hyatt never quite gets there.

None of which should take away from what Sight has accomplished.  Wang’s story is tremendously inspiring, and Chen lives up to him even he is not given the most complexity to play.  He’s helped by sharing so much time with Kinnear who works hard to keep the spotlight on him and make his struggles feel like something by contrast.  If Wang is the ideal of what can be accomplished through sheer singlemindedness, Kinnear’s Bartnovsky is the the man Wang should perhaps be trying to emulate, balancing his work with a family life in a way Wang has never managed.  It’s through Kinnear, and Fionnula Flannigan’s Sister Marie, that humor and humanity is allowed to enter because Wang has never allowed himself the freedom to feel such.

That begins to change when he meets bartender Ruth (Mumba), a stranger to whom he can open up about his past pain in a way he can’t with the people closest to him.  Ruth herself recedes, a gateway to the past more than a participant in the present, but the payoff is some of the most enticing elements in Sight as Meng finally unburdens the tragedies of his past in China as a localized uprising tears friends and family members away from him and finally solidifies his decision to leave China and search for a future elsewhere no matter what obstacles appear in front him.  After surviving what he has, what is an indifferent education system, prejudiced educators, intractable disease, or the laws of physics?

Everyone involved knows exactly how to make this film and Sight flows, easily and without trouble. Sight is a smooth, easy going experience about a truly commendable figure surrounded by performers who know exactly what to do to get Wang’s story across.  The fact that there is another, even more interesting story, just below the surface and within the fingertip reach of the filmmakers is a little saddening but doesn’t reduce what Hyatt et al. have accomplished.  It could be a better story, but it’s still one that deserves to be told.

6.5 out of 10

Starring Terry Chen, Greg Kinnear, Jayden Zhang, Natasha Mumba, Fionnula Flanagan and Mia Swami Nathan. Directed by Andrew Hyatt.

A Quiet Place: Day One

A prime trope of horror films is that the people in them exist only to die.  Not in the existentialist sense that everyone is (although what a horror film that would make) but with a much more immediate requirement to produce the endorphin rush of survivors reflex as seeming innocents reach the peak of life’s inherent unfairness.  The teenagers who keep stumbling on Leatherface’s remote Texas ranch house aren’t individuals to be mourned or pitied.  They’re cogs within increasingly complex Rube Goldberg machines designed to end only one way.  As the enticement of horror over the years moved towards the ingenuity of “the kills” rather than the reality of “the deaths” its participants were inversely reduced.  Most became mild archetypes conveying brief, of-the-moment slang and maybe a singular trait so they could be identified and catalogued when their time came.  Some may be classified as ‘bad’ so their comeuppance could be correctly enjoyed. Others may be more deftly designed to increase the pathos when a real character connection was untimely severed, but the goal is always manipulation over definition.

One of the highlights of the first Quiet Place was the way the suspense and characters were designed to highlight one another rather than as a tool for easy affect. The central conceit of blind monsters attracted by sound who have decimated civilization takes a lot of work to believe in, but A Quiet Place made the pill go down smoother by focusing as much on the people it was happening to as the happening itself.  It was still a suspense movie first and foremost, but it was a suspense movie that built on empathy in place of the nihilism of wanting to see horrible things befall people. 

Rather than continue the story of the Abbott family, possibly in recognition of how difficult that would be without having to do more world-building than its concept can support, Day One flashes back — just as the title says — to the arrival of the monsters themselves.  Director Sarnoski, who delved into the hidden depravities of New York’s food culture in Pig, lobs asteroids at the city in a wail of post-9/11 disaster trauma.  Citizens are engulfed in smoke and debris, dust coating their faces in a strange camouflage as the series’ audiophiliac monsters grab victims from the shadows and lift them off into the air, leaving a handful of lone survivors to puzzle out if the world is ending or not.  Dying cancer patient Sam (N’yongo), recognizing that it is for her with or without ravenous monsters, and a New York suddenly devoid of traffic is the perfect opportunity to revisit her favorite pizza place in Harlem before the end.

More travelogue than monster movie, internal as much as external, Sarnoski ignores the macro view of what the creatures are doing and how the status quo of the first film came about to focus as minutely as possible on the singular.  A singular which comes and goes, like the creatures themselves, in flicks of sensory overload: the fear of the attack, the beffudlement of occasional government pronouncements from the sky and ensuing sounds of stampede, the pain of a recurring disease as pain medication suddenly becomes as impossible to acquire as the rarest earth metal, concern and despair for a service cat trapped like its master in circumstances it cannot comprehend and only react to. 

The monsters themselves, devoid of higher intelligence and acting only on instinct in a great slavering rush at any sound which attracts their attention, are nature’s dark side: a complete amorality to the lives and feelings it will destroy in the name of everyday survival. (How the government is not able to use this involuntary swarming to herd creatures too hard coded to keep from accidentally drowning themselves into an area where they could be disposed of is a question for another day). On the opposite end is Sam’s faithful service cat, Frodo, viewing one destructive scene after another with a calm equanimity that offers comfort and hope even in the face of absolute loss.  Like God looking after weary pilgrims, his appearance brings islands of safety and recollection while his sudden disappearance presages disaster.

One such pilgrim, Joseph Quinn’s Eric, is a young law student far from home, cut off from even the dying comforts of family and familiarity when monsters begin climbing the skyscrapers of Manhattan and the army bombs the city’s bridges to keep them from escaping. Found by Frodo after he escapes a water clogged subway tunnel he is brought to Sam to get both of them moving towards their necessary destinations – a return from their disaster caused disassociation with humanity and a return towards life. For Sam that means an acceptance of her disease and of all the parts of her past she has pushed away including memories of her pianist father, her writing as a poet and a general willingness to be around any living being besides Frodo.

In the process Sarnoski takes the time to dive back into the wilds of New York as an empty shell of itself, its various office buildings, theaters, libraries and churches recontextualized without people filling them up anymore. It’s an attraction of the post-apocalyptic genre no director can avoid since the Morlocks and Eloi danced through the ruins of old humanity in The Time Machine. Wes Ball’s Apes just attempted similar, for similar reasons, with a Los Angeles reclaimed by nature.  Sarnoski also takes the naturists eye on human cities, divorced from Nicholas Cage’s self-exiled hermit in Pig into a detached God’s eye view to roam unfettered and mostly judgment free over the pockmarked and burned buildings which are more often the sign of the creature’s presence than the creatures themselves.

Recognizing the difficulties the creature’s mere presence brings to maintaining belief in their own movie, Sarnoski leaves them in the background as much as possible; a constant, screeching source of menace more often than actual threat.  It heightens the moments they do arrive, honing in on the drumbeat of human feet as a crowd tries to reach rescue boats on the Hudson Bay or the sudden accidental crunch of a glass shard underfoot, and pushes the increasing absurdity of their existence into the background when they retreat.  For Sam and Eric it doesn’t matter how this is happening, only that it is. “Day One’s” refusal to look away from them is its greatest strength, transforming them from thin avatars into vessels of real empathy.  When they find themselves within sight of escaping boats on the river and a horde of creatures between them, the reward is no longer the expectation of their demise but the much more potent hope and fear of their survival.

It’s a bold choice to transform a monster film into a character study (a light one, but one nonetheless), a choice “Godzilla Minus One” showed the benefits of and Day One applies with surety. It may have been the only direction the film and the series could have gone without falling into the collapsing gravity of its own backstory. That risk is still out there – Day One may end up being a franchise high the series never reaches again – but for now it remains a singular success.

7.5/10

Starring Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff and Djimon Hounsou. Directed by Michael Sarnoski.

The Fall Guy

What is the point of the movies?  Is it just glossy entertainment for the masses, ignoring artistic substance in favor of momentary emotional appeal?  Is it real truth (or at least emotional truth) delivered inside a tasty outside but staying with us because of what it says about us?  Or is it both?  Even if it is, the sheer narcotic power of it seems to overcome any other positive aspect, not just for the endless individuals watching and writing about it, but the very people making them as well.  Caught in jobs that chew them up and spit them out, and ask them to take less for doing so, the magic of the movies is so powerful even the people caught in the worst of its travesties can’t help but come back for more.

Colt Seavers (Gosling) can’t.  After a terrible stunt gone wrong Seavers drops out of the business for good (he thinks) to focus on rehabbing himself and not being reminded of the thing he loved which almost killed him.  Whether that’s the movies or the lovely camera operator (Blunt) he likes to flirt with is a question he’s not ready to answer yet.  He’s so done with it all that the instant his old producer friend Gail (Waddingham) asks him for help he hops on a plane to Sydney to roll cars for Jody’s directorial debut.  [Nevermind how she jumped from camera operator to director in just 18 months].  After climbing out of the burning wreck of a car Cole discovers he’s not been brought down to help with stunts but to find the film’s missing star before the film is shut down for good.  And if he can rekindle his love affair with Jody and movie making, all the better.

There’s not much more to it than that.  An easy, breezy romantic adventure that makes some passing gestures at the language of film and how it works, and some pointed ones at the role (and appreciation) of stunts within the larger production world, but not much else.  Which is fine, Gosling and Blunt have such instant chemistry and charm that their scenes exist for them to be talking at each other and the fact that what they’re saying doesn’t matter … doesn’t matter.  In the same sense that Colt’s various run-ins with dangerous Australian bodyguards is less about moving any story along and move about giving him a reason to perform a live stunt sequence the old fashioned way, or that the film Jody is agonizing over for emotional truth is a silly cowboy future-western space epic (raising the question of why the fake movies in ‘making of’ films are usually terrible?) much of The Fall Guy is about the happening and not so much what’s going on under the hood.

Which is a strange situation considering how meta the film intends to be, going to great lengths to show how the gags in films are done or the reasons for films to be constructed the way they are.  As much as it reveals, it hides; it is a mystery after all.  Going and looking for the wayward Ryder (Taylor-Johnson), Colt instead finds a dead body in a tub of ice and a group of increasingly violent mercenary’s trying to track him down and dispose of him as well, shattering poor Colt’s concentration every time he tries to figure out what is happening to him and how to get Jody back.  They are, no matter how much The Fall Guy tries to jam them together, two extremely disparate throughlines which do not connect in any organic way and could have used a solid decision which is the focus of the film.

None of which is to say it is boring or unentertaining.  It is none of those things.  It’s also, except for the rare moments when Colt throws himself into a car to stop it or fights in the back over an overturned dumpster, rarely a Fall Guy movie, suffering through a split personality about what it wants to be.  The effort to reconcile these halves slows action down in the end and drags things out to diminishing returns.  What it is, is not that different than the weird sci-fi amalgam Metal Storm – something for which its makers have great affection but which ultimately its time has passed.

7/10

Starring Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Winston Duke, Hannah Waddingham, Ben Knight, Zara Michales, Adam Dunn, Teresa Palmer and Stephanie Hsu. Directed by David Leitch.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

Yes, there are times we go to the movies to see complex investigations of strange and compelling characters or themes opening up disturbing and unsettling ideas which we must spend time with and change us.  And then there are times when we just want to see a bunch of evildoers meet grizzly ends because they are evil and deserve it.  Which is to say, a Guy Ritchie film. Sure, sometimes he feints towards complexity by casting his lens through men (and women) of low moral character, suggesting his stories are those of the under-dwelling and the dark things they do to one another which we’re better off not knowing about.  But no.  The villains are plainly marked, even within the depths of criminality, and the ends they will come to are clearly and obviously sticky. 

And what better villains could there be, particularly for Ritchie, than Nazis?  That’s nothing we won’t put past them and no level of violence we won’t enjoy seeing our heroes visit on them.   Major Gus March-Phillipps (Cavill) and his hardy crew of saboteurs -- forerunners of the British SAS -- are going to try and find out if there is, alternatively shooting, garroting, stabbing, hatcheting, exploding and otherwise wiping German soldiers off the map in the early days of World War II.  Their goal is a harbor in Western Africa where the German U-Boat fleet is being supplied from.  With just a handful of soldiers, and no support from the British military, they are going to steal or destroy the German freighter guarded there and they will lie, cheat, steal and kill to get it done.

There is nothing unexpected about The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.  The story could be written out in full, with every conflict, climax or plot turn expected from the first commercial.  That’s a good thing.  Or at least, not a bad thing.  Nazis come along, they sneer and jeer, the heroes seem threatened and then just shrug and shoot them.  It is cathartic in the extreme, like a gentle rain storm at night while trying to sleep, just with more bloodshed.  At no point is there a question whether goals will be reached or if even a single member of the team will gain more than a splinter, no matter how skillfully Ritchie tries to feint.  Not only is it impossible to imagine anyone being lost, more and more characters are added in as March-Phillips requires more and more help despite mowing down all resistance in front of him with relative ease.  Why?  Shut up, that’s why.

The point of it is in the small moments, the interaction between March and the cool-headed M (Elwes) sending him out to cause trouble, the small discussions of the trouble they will get into, or how they will impress their partners.  The overarching story is set, immovable as a great stone.  That leaves only the edges to play with so that is where Ritchie spends his time – cataloguing the German commanders’ horrors or Marjorie Stewart’s attempts to distract him – rather than worrying about things like danger or true conflict.  Ritchie doesn’t want that and neither does his audience.

Which is fine.  Comfort food is not meant to be complex, it’s meant to be comforting and Ministry is certainly that from its first bomb to its last shooting.  A paean of English stiff upper-lippedness and underhanded criminality all put to a good cause.  There’s nothing unexpected or surprising nor does it even feign there ever would be.  It’s exactly what everyone expects and that’s all it needs to be.

6.5 out of 10

Starring Henry Cavill, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson, Henry Golding, Alex Pettyfer, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Babs Olusanmokun and Cary Elwes. Directed by Guy Ritchie.

The First Omen

Fast, brash and intermittently nonsensical, The First Omen – a straight-laced prequel to Richard Donner’s horror opus – plays like a gussied up version of Blumhouse’s Nun franchise, with more body horror and slightly less cheap theatrics. Not zero; co-writer/director Arkasha Stevenson is not above throwing an item suddenly from offscreen or messing with her soundtrack to keep the audience off balance. But there is definitely a stronger focus on slow-moving horror of lost control, comparing the willful abdication of self-ownership that becoming a nun seems to require with the physical reality of motherhood.  The view of child-bearing as transgressive and similar to a parasitic infestation isn’t new – Cronenberg has dallied with similar repeatedly – but Stevenson dares to take it to new, transgressive heights … until she remembers this is also an Omen film.

A prequel, in point of fact, picking up some two years before the beginning of the Richard Donner original.  Rather than focus on the hijinks of childish Anti-Christ Damien, it focuses on the orphanage in Rome where he was born, and the strange forces at work which made that day possible. Introducing a pre-consipiracy Father Brennan who has just begun to learn of strange forces at work within the Catholic church attempting to bring the Anti-Christ into the world in order to force a disenchanted populace back to the church.  At the center of the attempt are the nuns of an offbeat orphanage in Rome, recently joined by Sister Margaret Daino, a young woman raised her whole life in the church and preparing to take her vows.  Her confidence is shaken, not just by Brennan’s words of warning, but by increasingly strange visions and dreams she encounters as she stays at the orphanage.

Like a secret Satannic bishop running a cult inside of an active church, Stevenson has many masters appease.  On the one hand is her own particular point of view around what could be and is terrifying.  On the other is the need to service story beat’s for a nearly 40-year-old franchise which ended its run in the 1980s.  These don’t have to be two competing requirements, but it’s difficult for them not to be.  The more The First Omen gives play to the latter – bringing in Father Brennan, explaining the Mark of the Beast and the cults secret plan, sending Margaret to comb for files and evidence – the more interesting first idea wilts and dies.

It brings with it a need to hold the audiences hand and guide reactions which works directly against the horror the film is trying to generate.  The original Omen, coming in the wake of The Exorcist and a desire to capture that type of unsettling presence without the years of tropes attached to the genre to emulate, was crafted in the hands of a practiced Hollywood professional with no connection to the genre to be something cold and genuinely unnerving. It worked because of what it frequently didn’t do, adding power to the moments when it did do something.  More than 30 years later there is an understanding not just that certain soundscapes and choices in the soundtrack – of those choir cues and chanting – would get the audience to the right emotional beat, but that the film should use them no matter what.

What’s left is a film which frequently tries to identify itself, but only does so when it gets out of its own way.  When it does there are some gloriously disturbing moments that question what reality is for a large number of people.  But it will as quickly turn to another very heavy handed horror film which can’t trust it’s audience to be truly disturbed, it needs to remind that this is a ride with guard rails and a set path.  The time of The Omen has probably passed.

5 out of 10.

Starring Nell Tiger Free, Sonia Braga, Ralph Ineson, Bill Nighy, Tawfeek Barhom, Maria Caballero, Nicole Sorace, Ishtar Currie Wilson, Andrea Arcangeli and Charles Dance. Directed by Arkasha Stevenson.

Monkey Man

Simultaneously kinetic and thrilling, and long and drawn out, Dev Patel’s directorial debut Monkey Man is a study in contrasts, both succeeding wildly and falling short and frequently within the same scene.  Diving into the world of gratifying vengeance, Patel is an instantly accomplished action director and star, keeping his and our eye on his end goal no matter how dizzingly his camera and stuntmen move across the screen.  But he also wants to dwell on the grief and suffering which drove Bobby to such desperate ends, and the Hamlet-esque inability to decide how far he is really willing to go.  It’s a rubber band stretched tight, not so much in the manner of building tension as it is keeping either end from really moving.  Like the Monkey Man he is a director at odds with himself, attempting to appease multiple masters and getting lost within his own world.

But what a world it is!  A kaleidoscope of color, from the green earthiness of Bobby’s (Dev Patel) childhood to the neon-soaked excess of Mumbai, Monkey Man whirls through a miasma of sights and sounds.  Bobby straddles both of those worlds, fighting in a monkey mask at an underground mixture of mixed martial arts and professional wrestling to make a bare living, but also working at a swanky nightclub where the rich and powerful come to indulge every vice available. It’s all part of a long term plan to give him the skills and means to get near the corrupt police officer (Sikander Kher) who burned his village to the ground.  Like the Danish prince, when the time comes he’s not sure if he can pull the trigger despite the torment of constant flash backs to his youth.  Instead he finds himself chased through the streets and buildings of Mumbai fighting his way through hallways, bathrooms, the back of police cars – anything which might stop him from reaching Rana again.

That level of existential confusion makes a lot of sense in an extended character drama or tragedy where the fact of the indecision is the point.  In an action film its more of an irritant, an excuse to push off the promised conflagration and keep wheels spinning until the third act begins.  There’s not a build from the point of the initial offense; Bobby knows what happened to his parents – he watched it with his own eyes – and has spent an extended child- and adulthood hampered by the extended rage it has left in him.  Bits and pieces of it are related to us as he befriends the local drug dealer (Pitobash) and begins working his way into the confidence of the police captains associates, but not as attachment to some sort of great emotional breakthrough.  It is information withheld until the form says it is time to unload it.

The same reluctance to act makes it difficult for Bobby to communicate with the world around him.  He shares a few spare sentences with Alphonso the one-legged dealer or Sobhita Dhulipala’s indentured prostitute but not in any way that exposes his inner turmoil or what it means to him, only because it seems like what you would do.  Patel is a good enough actor to hint at deeper rivers running underneath and as flavor to larger goings on it could create just the right mix of character complexity and extended heroics.  But much of the time it is all that is going on and that makes the seams show.

It’s only after being severely beaten in his first attempt that Bobby returns to the jungle and makes connection with his spiritual namesake – the demigod Haruman – to stand against the empty preaching of the guru (Deshpande) who has been behind all of his trauma.  It’s only then that Monkey Man comes into its own, shorn of all confusion.  Once it stops faffing about and unleashes Patel on his adversaries, it’s easy to forgive a lot of the early time wasting.  As a debut, Monkey Man is often thrilling and shows real understanding of the genre and what it could do and never has.  If only he’d get to the point a little faster next time.

6.5 out of 10.

Starring Dev Patel, Sharlto Copley, Pitobash, Vipin Sharma, Sikander Kher, Sobhita Dhulipala, Ashwini Kalsekar, Adithi Kalkunte, Makarand Deshpande. Directed by Dev Patel.

Cabrini

Small in stature but big in heart and determined with a specific and heartfelt message, Cabrini is a classic studio biopic (albeit one not made by any studio) lionizing its subject and her accomplishments but also reminding us what is due each other as humans. Diving into the American past, Cabrini ruminates on how far we have and have not come from using racism and prejudice against vulnerable communities and what can be done to help. Rather than lecture to directly on the present, it keeps its focus on the past, recounting the events of Francesca Cabrini’s (Dell’Anna) life with complete sincerity and not a hint of irony or judgment.  It was what it was and that’s enough.

And what it was, was a lot.  A lifelong missionary with a dream of one day heading to Asia, Cabrini is instead sent by the Vatican to New York where Italian immigrants have been demonized and ignored and struggle daily with poverty, joblessness, disease, and starvation.  Diving headlong into the mess, and ignoring her own ill health, Cabrini works not just to bring food and medical attention to a population vilified by the community they live in, but to force that community to accept what is lying its feet.  Ignoring hesitancy by the local Archbishop, ignorance by the press and outright enmity by political and financial institutions, Cabrini refuses to buckle.  Instead, she drags reporters into the gutter to see with their own eyes how immigrants are living and threatens public shame on bankers and mayors to get policies changed.  She becomes a living testament to a refusal to quit.

Yes, it’s a hagiography, but technically she is a saint so at least it fits.  Director Alejandro Monteverde (Sound of Freedom) is not looking to make attacks against the system she was part of or find some controversy in her actions.  There is no Christopher Hitchens “actually Mother Teresa’s zealotry kept people in poverty” here.  Her story is held up as an example of how we should behave rather than how we do -- and not just to others, but for them.  Compassion and determination go hand in hand for Cabrini, which means that any conflicts or roadblocks must come from the outside, leaving the nun herself exemplary but flat, never once facing a moment of self-doubt or hesitation.  She’s an archetype, not a person.

Some of that is the nature of these kinds of film.  They often run the risk of becoming a litany of events rather than realizations of the interiority of a person, and Cabrini is no exception. As with the sister herself, the film has so much to do there is no time to sit and ruminate or reflect, it must hurry ever onward to the next obstacle and the next and the next.  Frequently it falls on the lead to fill in those gaps, suggesting certain levels of conflict and complexity that are absent in the text and Cabrini is no exception there either.  Dell’Anna does just that, inhabiting her fully and dragging the audience with her like members of Cabrini’s own flock; she’s magnetic in the role, both aloof and alive, giving and closed off, a person and an archetype.  Everything rests on her shoulders, but she is strong enough to carry the burden.

As many people have said, there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. Cabrini doesn’t do anything any similar biopic hasn’t done and done recently, but it doesn’t need to.  Monteverde is confident in his story and his star and he has every right to be. The real Cabrini, however much she may or may not have resembled this version, left her mark on prejudice and helplessness in a way we can all learn from today. This version of her life can’t help but hold some of that power, even if it doesn’t take many chances.

7 out of 10.

Starring Cristiana Dell’Anna, David Morse, Romana Maggiora Vergano, Federico Ialepi, Virginia Bocelli, Rolando Villazón, Giancarlo Giannini and John Lithgow. Directed by Alejandro Gómez Monteverde.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

Brash, loud, obnoxious and occasionally delivering what it promises, Godzilla x Kong – the fifth entry in Legendary Entertainments on going giant monster saga – throws every idea it has and then some into the blender but still struggles to create realistic stakes or characters to attach to.  The argument could be made that the monsters themselves are the foci everything should be circling around but aside from a few character beats they are as static and cliched as the humans they are supposed to be protecting Kong and his compatriots are a means to an end rather than the end itself.

And that end is destruction in some of the most cartoonishly absurd action set pieces ever committed to screen.  That’s a good thing.  At a certain point director Wingard simply stops bothering with the forms of narrative and gives over to totally to the ridiculous, trying to find just how far is too far.  Zero gravity monster battles?  Freeze dragons?  Pyramid battles and magic crystals?  It’s all here, and then some.

A few years after Godzilla and Kong’s titanic battle the two have retreated to their own independent realms; Godzilla to travel the world fighting other errant titans, and Kong to the subterranean Hollow Earth looking for any hint of his own kind to end his eternal loneliness.  When a rift opens in the cavern floor Kong abandons the Hollow Earth for the Hollower Earth, a larger prehistoric cavern filled with the missing Kong kind who had somehow been exiled centuries earlier when their leader, the Skar King, attempted to take over the surface world.  Faced with the mixed bag of getting what he wanted and finding it trying to kill him, Kong has no choice but to team up with his old foe the King of Monsters who has been gearing up for the titanic battle he can sense coming.  There is also a rock-n-roll giant monster vet, a mute psychic who can communicate with the monsters, a disgraced podcaster and a few more people who do not matter at all.

That’s not a criticism of Godzilla x Kong (well it is), just a statement of fact.  The early days of the series when the monsters might emerge from the shadows for just a few minutes while the cameras remain trained on the humans trying to navigate the chaos … those days are gone.  Gradually it has shifted, either to what it always had to be or what the producers at Legendary always wanted it to be … a Transformers-esque playground of destruction which uses its handful of human characters to relay necessary exposition and eat up the first hour of screen time because the visual effects budget won’t allow for 120 minutes of Kong and crew destroying things. 

It sounds nihilistic because in some ways it is nihilistic.  It is a literal boys’ toy room with children picking up their lizards and apes and smashing them into each other while making bang and crash sounds.  It seems like they’ve started with the idea of Kong riding Godzilla’s back to crash into evil Kong and evil Godzilla and left the rest to work itself out till they get there.  An argument can be made that’s all it needs to be, but that makes it all the more obvious what’s important in between as it sets up and sets up and sets up until Kong drops down a fissure and discovers his kin. 

As much as it goes through the forms of a narrative film – following Rebecca Hall’s Dr. Andrews as she tries to discover what is affecting her adopted daughter (Hottle) and making the decision to head down to Hollow Earth herself – it’s clear Kong is where the filmmaker’s hearts are at. He has real pathos in his loneliness and more when he discovers the only ones of his kind are giant dicks that he’s going to have to fight rather than love.  A full 30 minutes of the film is void of any spoken dialogue and yet as crystal clear in its character motivations as any action film ever made.  (And suggests George Lucas was right when he said dialogue was just soundtrack, not storytelling, in cinema).  Some of that is the simplicity of the characterizations themselves – Kong just has to re-enact any Eastwood western ever as he saunters into the layer of the bully to protect the child he has befriended.  Dialogue would cheapen it.

And it wouldn’t matter.  What matters is pink and purple skies and electric bugs and fights among the pyramids and giant monkey’s with robot arms.  Looking under the hood would be counter productive.  It just reminds you how much the human characters stand around saying why the monsters are doing what they’re doing – don’t ask how they know –  because no one has bothered to explain it (despite showcasing that they can do so), or how little use the film has for Godzilla.  He’s like a contractually mandated rock star, sleeping in his Italian apartment until it’s finally time to go on, doing his thing and then heading right back to sleep.

Like any piece of cotton candy, it evaporates and fades as soon as it touches the tongue.  There is a sensation, a memory of something wonderful but it existed to briefly to be significant.  It’s probably for the best; if the details were permanent it would be impossible to ignore how badly Godzilla x Kong has been slopped together.

5 out of 10.

Starring Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens, Kaylee Hottle, Alex Ferns, Fala Chen and Rachel House. Directed by Adam Wingard.

Ordinary Angels

Surface oriented and light weight, but with real humanity lurking with, Ordinary Angels takes the increasingly controversial stance that religious belief is all well and good but it’s ultimately up to human beings to look out for one another.  Keeping its heart on its sleeve and any proselytizing close to the vest, Jon Gunn’s is more of a character sketch giving Swank a chance at adult drama without any real cost or difficulty. It’s also completely willing to use real suffering as stage dressing for light drama but if Angels tells us anything it’s that sometimes you’ve got to bulldoze through inconvenient obstacles to get to the promised land.

Lost for years to the highs and lows of alcoholism, when hairdresser Sharon (Swank) finally gets on the wagon she is left with an addictive personality in search of a new focus to glom onto.  It practically walks into the room in the form of adorable children (Mitchell, Hughes) mourning their mother, helping their father (Ritchson) keep things together and caring for the youngest who has her own fatal disease which can only be cured with a full liver transplant.  Struck by their plight Sharon immediately barges into Ed’s life – despite his request for privacy – bringing plans for raising funds and organizing his community to cover Ed’s crushing medical debt.

A little bit of Erin Brokovich, a little bit of Sister Mary Benedict, Sharon is a force of nature and a fine performance for Swank to sink her teeth into.  Blissfully unaware, or apathetic to, how she affects those she comes into contact with, Sharon barges on intent only on her own goals and desires even when those are about helping someone else.  She refuses to take no for an answer from the stoic, conservative Ed – leaving Ritchson to mostly act with one syllable words – or the various organizations she bullies into helping.  The screenplay by Meg Tilly and Kelly Fremon Craig (last year’s excellent Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret) is focused squarely on her and they bring life to what could be just a vague outline.

It is somehow simultaneously delicate and obvious.  Ed’s troubles are real and so is Sharon’s concern.  Their plight is deserving of the measure of effort she goes to.  Even if Ed can’t and won’t see it, his mother (Travis) does.  It’s not an accident that Angels comes most alive when they take over, forcing everyone around them to do the right thing even though it’s difficult.  It’s also not an accident that the rationale’s for not doing the right thing are primarily internal leaving them unsaid and thus and unexamined (because it would be difficult to justify externally).

As the problems deepen, and Ed’s patience with Sharon’s meddling ways hit the breaking point, the retreat to alcohol raises its head again exposing her to the demons she has tried to run away from.  Not just her desire for escape but how her addictions drove her own son away and the realization that the children she is helping, as noble as it may be, are a replacement in lieu of acceptance of her own flaws and real change in her life.  Swank is empathetic and charming, partly because that’s what Sharon is by design, it keeps people from seeing something wrong with her, and partly because everything hangs on her shoulders.  She wears it well.

Ordinary Angels could be a hopelessly sentimental sop, easily brushed off as ‘Hallmark-lite’, but there really is more to it than that.  It ignores easy spiritual answers (in favor of easy physical ones) to remind how precious real gifts are.  Yes it has a religious core but that’s not what it’s about.  It’s about people helping people and that’s something that can always use celebrating.

Detained

Which is the hardest part of the long con: keeping everyone believing your lie, or remembering what was true in the first place?  Both Rebecca Kamen (Cornish) and co-writer/director Felipe Mucci have the same problem, stuck in dizzying web of deceit so labyrinthine they themselves may have forgotten what their original truth was.  Strong performances and committed actors make the most of a script which is more focused on twists and turns than internal logic despite being locked almost entirely in one location.  Who is conning who and what do they want?  Is it money?  A baby?  A confession.  We may never know.

We do know, probably, that Rebecca, arrested in conjunction with a hit and run, will do anything to avoid going to jail or even being arraigned including threats, bribery and murder of her own.  What seems like a routine bit of interrogation quickly turns on its head when convict gets their hands on a weapon and shoots one of the arresting officers (Bloodgood), offering Rebecca an opening for escape.  Has she gotten incredibly lucky, incredibly unlucky or is something more sinister at work?

Trapped room films need strong performers and strong characters, usually with clear backgrounds slowly unfurling as we delve into what has locked everyone up together.  (See for example, Branagh’s three recent Agatha Christie locked door adaptations, mysteries that exist to explain who its characters are and eventually the detective as well).  Con artist stories, on the other hand, try to guard and hide its characters as much as possible in order to preserve twists and turns and not always to the benefit of logic and coherence.  They are at direct odds with each other.  That constant tension both drives Detained forward and keeps trying to tear it apart.

If it didn’t have as good a cast as it does, Detained might fly to pieces under the strain.  As it is, Cornish holds sway bouncing with chaotic energy from victim to victor depending on the need of the scene and twists still needing to be revealed.  It is a high wire act and a testament that she balances it so well, but also says something about the story she’s been thrown into.  Bloodgood and Alonzo (a pair of not-cops on a time limit to extort money from her) play foil as much as they can but also have to balance their intentions with hidden motivations that warp and change like a chameleon.

Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.  The constraints of the single room, often an enhancement for character study, work against the confidence game.  Mucci works hard to keep the tension going with lots of ball juggling and twists and turns.  The more you let it wash over you without thinking it through the better it gets.  Like the faux-police station Rebecca finds herself in, too much attention exposes the cracks and flaws in the façade.  The game is to keep anyone from being able to think, before the time runs out.

Perhaps if it were more of a straightforward character drama as interrogation scene or a completely free-wheeling long con it could work better.  The pieces are all there for either version, but together they get in each other’s way.  A strong cast keeps it working, perhaps better than it should.  The next time out, with a more singular focus, could be something special.

6 out of 10. Starring Abbie Cornish, Laz Alonso, Moon Bloodgood, John Patrick Amedori and Justin H. Min. Directed by Felipe Mucci.