This Is a Movie Review: The Space Between Us

February 3, 2017

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the-space-between-us

This review was originally published on News Cult in 2017.

Starring: Asa Butterfield, Britt Robertson, Gary Oldman, Carla Gugino, B.D. Wong

Director: Peter Chesolm

Running Time: 120 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Intense Re-Entry

Release Date: February 3, 2017

If an astronaut on her way to Mars turned out to have gotten pregnant just before departure, would your first thought be how mortified she must be of her irresponsibility? If you said yes, you might just be Gary Oldman in The Space Between Us. In the moment, that sentiment is a little disturbing and quite backwards. Eventually it becomes clear why Oldman – the man behind this Martian colonization effort – reacts this way, and it is somewhat reasonable but also still a little patronizing.

That lack of progressiveness also plagues Space’s vision of the future. Beyond the fact that travel to Mars is reasonably accessible, there is not much to distinguish this vision of Earth from the 2017 version. The only new technology appears to be the latest generation of tablets. To paraphrase Tom Servo: so… 30 years from now it’ll be 3 years from now? I guess that’s what you get when you hire the director of Hannah Montana: The Movie to try his hand at sci-fi. The Space Between Us is decidedly NOT the best of both worlds.

The dearth of futuristic imagination can partially be justified by the fact that Space mostly chooses to be a road trip film through the southwestern U.S. The deal here is that Asa Butterfield (Ender in Ender’s Game) is the Martian-born son of that pregnant astronaut, and he is visiting Earth for the first time after growing up for his first 16 years on the red planet. He is supposed to be held at NASA for observation to determine if his bones can handle the new atmosphere, but he is too in love to be contained by The Man.

So Butterfield and Britt Robertson (Hollywood’s current go-to for all-American gals) go on the run from Oldman and his team to discover the truth behind Butterfield’s origins and just to be free. There is actually a great germ of a story here about how love knows no bounds (and Butterfield plays the slightly alien fish-out-of-water quite naturally) but the implementation is rather plainly prosaic. Also, everyone is genuinely looking out for the best of our Martian child, and a major revelation that resolves every misunderstanding is held off unnaturally for the sake of driving conflict. But at least we know now how passionately Gary Oldman feels about going to Mars.

The Space Between Us is Recommended If You Like: Gary Oldman getting all worked up, Britt Robertson playing the girl next door, the Asa Butterfield Space Genre

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Space Colonies

This Is a Movie Review: I Am Not Your Negro

February 1, 2017

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i-am-not-your-negro

This review was originally published on News Cult in 2017.

Narrator: Samuel L. Jackson

Director: Raoul Peck

Running Time: 95 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for a Little More Explicitness Than the Title

Release Date: February 3, 2017 (Limited)

Nobody wants a documentary entitled I Am Not Your Negro to still be timeless in 2017, but here we are. The film is based on Remember This House, a manuscript by Harlem Renaissance writer James Baldwin that remained unfinished at the time of his death in 1987. Samuel L. Jackson narrates Baldwin’s words, because when you want a voice to expound upon the legacy and persistence of racism in America, Sam is your man.

With its mix of archival news footage, still photography, and other various media clips (old movies to represent the American myth, game shows to represent capitalism), I Am Not Your Negro is not your typical cinematic experience. It plays more like a museum exhibit with a visual component. But please do not let the edutainment implication that description might inspire scare you away. I just want to make sure you know what you are in for. This is a vibrant, exciting experience, different though it may be.

But I do not want to discount the educational value. The film places Baldwin squarely in the context of the civil rights movement. He was an important figure right alongside Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, but he seems to be shunted off to a different historical pocket, perhaps because of his status as an artist. I fear that tendency is a grave mistake, especially in today’s climate.

Finally, dear viewers, pay particular attention to the scenes from Baldwin’s appearance on a 1968 episode of The Dick Cavett Show. Yale philosophy professor Paul Weiss shows up to challenge Baldwin’s perspective, and the resulting rhetorical scuffle is a powerful display of the importance of listening and insisting that voices be heard and ideals be put into action.

I Am Not Your Negro is Recommended If You Like: Staying Woke, the Harlem Renaissance, the Dulcet Tones of Samuel L. Jackson

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Artist-Activists

This Is a Movie Review: Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

January 30, 2017

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Every Resident Evil movie starts legitimately promising but then inevitably descends into an opaque mess. The Final Chapter is no exception. It kicks off with a prologue that establishes “this is what it’s all about, this has always been what it’s all about.” And we’re cooking! But then Alice just goes off and fights monsters. Obviously the monster battles are going to happen no matter what, but it would be nice if they were better informed by the purpose of the story. And if that cannot happen, at least don’t make things so drab, especially considering how vibrant the color palette can be in the other sequels.

I give Resident Evil: The Final Chapter 2 Acrobatics out of 5 Roadblocks.

For more of my thoughts on the Resident Evil series, click here!

This Is a Movie Review: Lion

January 29, 2017

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lion-movie-sunny-pawar

Why did Lion not get a full wide release right from the get-go? It’s an insanely inspiring true-life story about the triumph of the human spirit and love knowing no geographical bounds. This is the sort of story that people want to see! When you tell me, “Saroo Brierley got lost as a boy on a train in India and couldn’t find his way home, but 20 years later, after being adopted by an Australian couple, he finds his way back with the help of Google Earth,” what do I say? Just point and shoot! Well, don’t just point and shoot. Throw in some cinematic style as well, as we’ve already been inspired plenty of times. Like maybe include some flashbacks and subjective POV shots to indicate that Saroo’s family continues to walk alongside him even as they are no longer physically there. Yeah, that’ll do.

I give Lion 1 Tear for Fear, and 19 Tears for Joy.

This Is a Movie Review: Fences

January 29, 2017

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Denzel Washington plays Troy Maxson and Viola Davis plays Rose Maxson in Fences from Paramount Pictures. Directed by Denzel Washington from a screenplay by August Wilson.

Every baseball stadium’s fence is unique. Some of them are harder to breach than others. I suppose we all put up different sorts of fences of varying difficulties in our own lives. Some of them are covered in ivy, sometimes we crash into them, sometimes we stand on top of them. If we break through them, no matter how we do it, and regardless of whether or not it is a good idea, it is usually at least somewhat painful.

Does it feel a little obtuse that this whole review is an extended baseball metaphor? Well that is pretty much the only way that garbageman/former Negro Leagues player Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington) talks, and it is indeed maddening.

I give Fences 78 out of 100 … well, Fences.

This Is a Movie Review: A Dog’s Purpose

January 26, 2017

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A DOG'S PURPOSE

This review was originally published on News Cult in January 2017.

Starring: Josh Gad, K.J. Apa, Britt Robertson, John Ortiz, Dennis Quaid, Peggy Lipton

Director: Lasse Hallström

Running Time: 100 Minutes

Rating: PG for a Few Moments That Make a Dog Whimper

Release Date: January 27, 2017

A Dog’s Purpose asks, “What is a dog’s purpose?” Before answering this question, it is important to note that A Dog’s Purpose presupposes that reincarnation (or at least canine reincarnation) is a fact of existence. If you have been a dog parent multiple times and ever believed that one of your more recent pups was somehow the same as one of your older ones, then this film has your back. This is the third in director Lasse Hallström’s dog trilogy (following 1985’s My Life as a Dog and 2009’s Hachi: A Dog’s Tale), so I feel confident in determining that he imbued that belief into every single frame.

The film seeks its meaning by tracking the lives of the dog (voiced by Josh Gad in each iteration) over approximately 50 years. The lifetimes that are traversed include an all-American football-slinging, farming sixties family; a seventies detective buddy story; a Jheri curled-style romance in the eighties and nineties; and a reunion narrative in the 2000’s, along with a few danger-filled detours along the way. The canine perspective remains endearing, with much humor mined from the dog growing into its new bodies, often switching genders (the breeds range from Red Retriever to German Shepherd, down to Corgi, concluding as a St. Bernard-Australian Shepherd mix).

But the quality of the film is only as strong as the quality of each of the human stories. The most prominent is also the most cliché-ridden. Ethan (K.J. Apa) is a wholesome high school quarterback with everything going his way until an accident derails his guarantee of an athletic scholarship. Rectify’s Luke Kirby does what he can in the mandatory drunk dad role, and Britt Robertson is a minor delight as Ethan’s best gal, but this whole segment is a slog due to painfully unimaginative writing.

Much more fun, and offbeat, are the two middle segments. John Ortiz is a natural as a ’70s detective in the K-9 unit. His pursuit of a divorced dad who has kidnapped his daughter is a weirdly engrossing mix of family friendly and urban grit. That is followed by a portion that is a bit like The Cosby Show, except with a lot more perms and a-ha.

A Dog’s Purpose is never so cloying that it ought to be resented. Yet its storytelling is all too often so surface-level that it does not matter how lovable dogs are. But it concludes nicely when it returns back to the farm, redeeming a story that had little going for it in the first place. Let’s put it this way: Dennis Quaid has a face and physique that were made for carrying bales of hay, and Peggy Lipton makes the case that all cinematic love stories should henceforth star 70-year-olds.

A Dog’s Purpose is Recommended If You Like: Dogs More Than You Like Good Storytelling, Pretending That Your Dog’s Internal Voice is That of Olaf from Frozen

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Games of Fetch

This Is a Movie Review: The Salesman

January 25, 2017

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the_salesman_2017_movie

This review was originally published on News Cult in January 2017.

Starring: Shahab Hosseini, Taraneh Alidoosti

Director: Asghar Farhadi

Running Time: 125 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Scars Both Physical and Emotional

Release Date: January 27, 2017 (Limited)

The Iranian film The Salesman (an Oscar nominee this year for Foreign Language Film) starts off as a sort of slice-of-life tale that is a bit of a bummer. Then its climax turns it into a major bummer – a life-altering journey through hell. Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) are a young couple whose move to a new house coincides with their work on a production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. It turns out that the former occupant of their new place may have been a prostitute, which they discover when a former client shows up and leaves Rana bruised and bloodied.

Following the attack, The Salesman is a study in the day-to-day of young artistic professionals in Iran (it does not feel too different than it often does in America or Europe), but with the dark cloud of post-traumatic stress hanging over. Rana is hardly able to bear any time alone, and the dramatic weight of the play is too much for her to get through. (I am uncertain why Death of a Salesman was chosen as the production. Any thematic connection to Emad and Rana’s story is rather oblique – not a criticism, just an observation.) The acting is pleasantly naturalistic, and there is a cute child performance, but it is an unpleasant watch that just glides along uneasily thanks to an otherwise peaceful existence being rocked by violence.

For the last act, The Salesman really leans into that unease, making the experience even more painful but also more rewarding. Emad has declined to go to the police, instead taking the investigation into his own hands. When the culprit turns out to be someone completely unexpected, a whole Pandora’s Box of moral conundrums spills open. There is no happy way for this to end, and writer/director Asghar Farhadi (A Separation, The Past) does not shy away from any of the devastating implications. The feeling you get after watching The Salesman is the definition of “shook.”

The Salesman is Recommended If You Like: Prisoners

Grade: 4 out of 5 Pleas for Forgiveness

This Is a Movie Review: Split

January 21, 2017

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split-james-mcavoy

Split is basically M. Night Shyamalan’s version of an X-Men movie. Kevin (James McAvoy), with his 23 personalities (X-23?), is like Legion crossed with Wolverine, and “the Beast” is about to emerge. And let’s throw some Professor X in for good measure, since McAvoy plays both after all. (BTW, Legion is Prof. X’s son.)

The last X-Men film, Apocalypse, was not that well-received, but I liked it a lot, and the similarities are instructive. Just as that mutant film was, for better or worse, unapologetically over-the-top, so is Split relentlessly blunt with its dialogue. Sometimes that means characters thuddingly explain exactly what is happening and exactly how they are feeling, and we say, “Nobody talks like that.” But then, that is also the appeal. Kevin talks and acts like nobody else, and that is what makes him so spellbinding.

There is a series of flashbacks from the childhood of the main kidnapping victim (Anya Taylor-Joy, always a wonder to behold), which is largely unnecessary. The point they make is demonstrated more subtly and just as effectively towards the end, but they are compelling and in keeping with the unsettling tone.

Yeah, there’s a twist (or two). There are hints that we should have seen all along, but also plenty of misdirection, so it works, beyond all odds and all sense.

And for my Early 2017 Oscar Wish List, I of course like McAvoy for Lead Actor, Mike Gioulakis for his expressionistic Cinematography, are opening and closing credits considered part of Production Design?, and Shyamalan himself for Supporting Actor in the best one-scene performance I have seen in some time.

I give Split 20 out of 24 Personalities.

This Is a Movie Review: Silence

January 15, 2017

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silence-issey-ogata

Does Silence need to drag on so portentously throughout its middle third? Probably, at least to achieve its goal of being as tortuous as what its protagonists undergo. Not exactly as torturous, obviously, but that is the tone it is going for. It may not be pleasant, but that is the goal. Perhaps it could have been both painful AND exciting if Liam Neeson had returned earlier. His scenes really get the film cooking. They are, after all, when Silence really grapples with its essential question of how best to sacrifice oneself to be a good Catholic, or a good leader, or a good person, and if those overlap.

I give Silence 20 Minutes out of 161 of Unexpected Humor.

This Is a Movie Review: The Bye Bye Man

January 12, 2017

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the-bye-bye-man-library

This review was originally published on News Cult in January 2017.

Starring: Douglas Smith, Cressida Bonas, Lucien Laviscount, Doug Jones, Carrie-Anne Moss

Director: Stacy Title

Running Time: 96 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Nearly R-Level Gore and Scares, Plus a Few Bare Butts

Release Date: January 13, 2017

They say that true character comes through in a crisis, and The Bye Bye Man interprets that maxim to mean that its characters should be as boring as possible when introduced. But once the titular demon creature ramps up his tactics to maximum frights, everyone suddenly becomes at least halfway interesting. But the first act is a textbook example from the School of Banal Horror Set-Ups.

Three University of Wisconsin students – Elliott (Douglas Smith), his girlfriend Sasha (Cressida Bonas), and best bud/third wheel John (Lucien Laviscount) – move into an off-campus house with some creepy old furniture together. They throw a housewarming party that is defined by bros calling each other “bro” and playing beer pong. Their distinct lack of any definable personalities persists, as creepy shadows start going bump in the night. In sum: I do not care what happens to these characters, and the blank slate of a villain does not entertain me.

Just as The Bye Bye Man is about to lose me completely, though, it finally shows its winning cinematic hand. Disorienting angles and warped set design bring you into the world of the title bogeyperson. The Bye Bye Man’s (Doug Jones) deadly tactic is a sort of mental virus spread by the utterance of his name. If you hear it, you are stuck in his grasp, suffering hallucinations that play on your most paranoid fears. The mind tricks are filled with several instances of sly humor, which is where the film most excels. The Bye Bye Man is more about the twisted laughs of manipulation than the soul-crushing weight of ominousness.

When I first heard of The Bye Bye Man, I though that its patently silly title would be a major liability. But it turns out to actually be its biggest strength. It is plainly ridiculous that anyone should be scared to say or hear something as goofily alliterative as “the Bye Bye Man.” And that is indeed how most of characters initially react, but that plays right into The B.B.M.’s trap. This flick is well worth seeing in a packed theater; every utterance of “the Bye Bye Man” is bound to simultaneously provoke genuine dread and exasperated laughs at its stupidity.

The Bye Bye Man is Recommended If You Like: The Final Destination series, the spider walk scene from The Exorcist, the original Evil Dead, Halloween

Grade: 3 out of 5 Demon Dogs

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