The Martian

Released:  October 2^nd, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  20^th Century Fox

Starring:  Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Aksel Hennie

Directed by:  Ridley Scott

Written by:  Drew Goddard

Personal Bias Alert:  loved the book, likes the cast

7.5 of 10

            It must’ve been hard to decide on a release date for The Martian.  It staunchly doesn’t fit into traditional categories, proving far too light to be an awards season contender, too sciency to be a blockbuster, and too sprawling to be a thriller.  These oddities can be traced directly back to the book’s author, Andrew Weir, who first self-published the story chapter by chapter for free on his personal website.  Without the influence of editors or the publishing gristmill, Weir was free to craft the story as he pleased, and his chosen blend of hard science fiction with survival grind struck a chord with readers.  A legit publishing deal and a long stay on the New York Times bestseller list led to this most improbable situation:  a big-budget movie adaptation with an A-list cast and a legendary director.

            The story itself is a blend of the extraordinary and the mundane, following the world’s attempt to save an astronaut stranded on Mars.  It’s extraordinary to think of a man alone on an entire planet, while it’s mundane in the logistics and coordination.  This is a 100 million dollar movie that features a PR spokesperson, physics, chemistry, and potato farming.  It’s not edge-of-your-seat thrills, but for most of us, the endless strategy meetings and the small victories will hit closer to home than Ethan Hunt taking down mysterious international criminals.  Because of this familiarity, there’s moments in The Martian that hit you like an emotional sledgehammer, without warning making you realize how much you’ve connected with astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon).  This realism, a hallmark of hard science fiction, is the film’s greatest strength, and it’s something that audiences are clearly clamoring for.

            Coming in just behind this highlight is the extraordinary performance by Matt Damon.  He must pull off the smart, optimistically dark-humored astronaut with no one to play off of, not even a sentient computer like HAL or GERTY.  It’s hard to think of anyone besides Damon who could command the screen and make you care so deeply for a man without the manipulative trappings of a wife and kids left behind.  In fact, you only get a brief mention of his parents back home, and the connection you form with Watney is directly due to Damon’s vivacious performance.

            The rest of the star-studded cast breeze in and do their jobs, all of them correctly choosing to appear as average joes supporting the extraordinary Watney.  There’s almost no plot outside of the struggle to save the astronaut, which becomes both a strength and a weakness for the film.  The upside is that the story focuses on its strongest aspect:  the convoluted problems that must be worked through to even have a chance at saving him.  The downside is that there’s nothing to back that mystery up.  If, as many have, you’ve already read the book, then you’ll know all the solutions and problems that crop up along the way.  It’s still a pleasant ride to see it all play out, but without anything additional to sink your teeth into, the film feels a bit flat for long periods of time.  You’ll likely feel the same way if you attempt to watch the film multiple times, which will greatly affect the film’s staying power.

            Director Ridley Scott, who’s had lots of experience filming space movies, gives the film a solid if uninspired visual palette.  The rocky redness of Mars is occasionally beautiful, but in adhering to the book’s spirit of accuracy, the space stations were designed to look cleanly familiar.  As an offset to this occasional beauty, there’s also occasional stumbles on small things like the simulated weightlessness of space, evening out any high points and leaving Scott’s contributions rather unremarkable.  The visuals simply aren’t enough to demand rewatching, fitting in with the rest of the film’s one-off greatness.

            Most filmgoers will likely find The Martian to be a crowd-pleasing mystery populated by likable characters in an extraordinary setting.  They won’t catch on to the only other thing this film has to offer, which is a subtle love letter to space exploration and the wonders of science.  This element is much more prominent in the book, and as wonderful as it is that it remains here at all, its diminishment lessens the film as a whole.

Other Notes:

Ø  I’ve heard some pessimistic rumblings about the involvement of the Chinese space program.  This plot point is present in the book and serves to emphasize the cooperation that large scientific efforts encourage.  The fact that people don’t pick up on this proves how detrimental the downplayed pro-science stance becomes.

Ø  Drew Goddard was initially going to direct this.  I’m curious what his film would have looked like.

Ø  Spoiler alert:  Sean Bean doesn’t die.

Ø  That’s all I’ve got.  Now I need to go science the shit out of something.

Alien

Released:  June 22^nd, 1979

Rated:  R

Distributor:  20^th Century Fox

Starring:  Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto

Directed by:  Ridley Scott

Written by:  Dan O’Bannon

Personal Bias Alert:  saw Prometheus before seeing its predecessors, was hyped for a good horror flick

7 of 10

            Alien is one of those films that everyone knows, and its revered legacy sets up a new viewer to expect something great.  A legacy like that is something that very few films can actually live up to, and while Alien does prove to be a well-paced horror film, it’s muddled, throw-everything-at-the-wall style of writing holds it back from being anything too eye-opening.

            The plot is largely a mish-mash of points borrowed from other material, something writer Dan O’Bannon readily admits.  An isolated crew being attacked by an alien is straight out of the novella Who Goes There?, which served as the basis for the 1951 film The Thing from Another World and the 1982 and 2011 films The Thing.  O’Bannon transposed the novella’s premise onto a space ship and structured it to have a long, tense setup similar to Jaws.  None of these were bad ideas as the confined area the characters are smooshed into lends itself to pot-boiling.  A sense of foreboding hangs over every scene, even when only small things are going wrong.  Early on, the crew squabbles over incidentals and clearly isn’t functioning as a team, something that comes to haunt them once they begin getting picked off.  Director Ridley Scott and his editing team kept the story lean and mean, even before the alien’s appearance, with nary a comfortable scene in sight.

            The issues come when you try to examine anything beyond the basic premise.  Several characters are remarkably thin, with Veronica Cartwright’s Lambert being such a weak sniveler that I wanted someone to sacrifice her to the alien just to make her shut up.  Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley and Tom Skerritt’s Dallas have some nice texturing in regards to their leadership roles, but none of this is used to effectively enhance the horror.  Consider Jaws again.  One of the most affecting scenes doesn’t feature the shark at all but is a simple recounting of battle wounds that culminates in Quint’s terrifying account of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis.  Nothing of that sort can be found in Alien as much of the dialogue is perfunctory arguments that quickly dissipate once the alien gets serious.  This lack of character depth plays against its building tension, leaving the audience without much to care about when it comes to the individuals being killed.

            Much has been written about Alien’s gender politics and the enduring question of whether it’s anti- or pro- feminism.  My stance is that the confusion stems from the film’s own lack of stance in the first place.  As already noted, the primary writer admits that the story was inspired by several different works and that many of the phallic or seemingly pivotal scenes to either side of the feminist stance were spur of the moment ideas (the alien impregnation storyline was allegedly thought up in the middle of the night).  Weaver told Hero Complex just last year that she didn’t think Scott had “any great feminist sentiment” toward Ripley or the film as a whole.  In fact, despite Ripley being renowned as a feminist icon, there’s an unavoidably objectifying scene where she strips to her underwear and trounces around with part of her butt hanging out.  The mixed messages in Alien is likely due to the extensive rewrites that occurred during pre-production, muddling attempts to add sex to the mix that were never intended to have any political meaning.

            What’s essential to evaluate in Alien is its horror, which plays out in dripping, oozing glory.  Yes, it’s over the top with its blood and guts, which is a brand of horror that I’m anesthetized to (my job has me handling the stuff every day), but there’s still that excellent plot construction to keep you on the edge of your seat.

Other Notes:

Ø  I wasn’t a big fan of the cinematography here.  There was precursor found-footage stuff, excessive shaking, and manipulative camera angles that only worked to keep the alien obscured.

Ø  I think that cat was secretly homicidal.

Ø  Seriously though, the amount of phallic imagery was just ridiculous.

Ø  “This place gives me the creeps.”  What gives you the creeps, the half-translated alien warning or the octopus thing attached to your friend’s face?

Ø  Hero Complex’s interview with Sigourney Weaver can be found here:  http://herocomplex.latimes.com/movies/alien-at-35-sigourney-weaver-reflects-on-ridley-scotts-masterpiece/#/0

Exodus: Gods and Kings

Released:  December 12^th, 2014

Rated:  PG-13

Studio:  20^th Century Fox

Starring:  Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, John Turturro, Aaron Paul, Ben Mendelsohn, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley

Directed by:  Ridley Scott

Written by:  Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, Jeffrey Caine, Steven Zaillian

Personal Bias Alert:  likes epics, kind of a Ridley Scott fan

5.5 of 10

            Twenty-two films into Ridley Scott’s career, I think we’ve largely sussed out his strengths and weaknesses.  He handles massive scales and eye-popping visuals with the best of them, but if you’re more interested in subtle character development and unexpected plot twists, then he’s probably not your man.  Sure, he’s made a few movies that break that mold, but Exodus:  Gods and Kings is not among them.  For better or for worse, it’s a Ridley Scott movie through and through, and undoubtedly it’s not his best work.

            I think I understand why Scott made another entry in the Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt films.  There’s the obvious reasons, like it’s a tremendous story with a built-in audience that includes pretty much every member of the Abrahamic religions, but there’s several stories to choose from in that well (see this year’s Noah for another example).  No, I think it has more to do with the brotherly conflict that Scott chose to play up.  Remember, Ridley’s brother Tony killed himself two years ago, and I imagine that the loving but combative relationship between pseudo brothers Moses and Ramses would appeal to someone dealing with that kind of loss. 

            That the story takes place in a time when wonders like the pyramids were being built was just an added bonus.  Let’s face it, Scott seems to like making epics, and few societies can rival the scale that Egypt was operating in at the time.  After seeing his depiction of the Romans in Gladiator, it was hard not to get excited about what Scott would show us in Exodus.  Half-built pyramids with a massive labor force scrambling up their sides is awe-inspiring on the big screen, and then you get to see the ten plagues and the parting (and closing) of an entire sea.  Scott and his team knock all these visuals out of the park, making the spectacle factor the main reason people should go out and see this film in theaters.

            Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the only aspect of this film that exceeds average quality.  A bloated, two and a half hour runtime is sure to make everyone’s toes tap with boredom, especially during the long first act that spends a lot of time setting up very basic plot points.  It’s safe to assume that most people already know the nuts and bolts of this story, so you better be adding in some interesting flourishes to keep your audience sitting there that long, which Exodus resolutely fails to do.  To make it worse, this rendition is remarkably devoid feeling.  I mean, an entire slave force is freed in this movie, which should be an inspiring and emotional achievement.  Instead, the Israelites plod towards their homeland with the fatalistic energy most people bring on their trips to the dentist.  Even without taking into account the mood, the ending just doesn’t work.  It spends several minutes trailing off, I guess trying to wrap up arcs that were never really established in the first place, and then just fades to black.  It’s one of the worst endings I’ve seen all year.  It feels like someone in the editing room just shrugged and walked away because they were sick and tired of trying to pound this monstrosity into a story.

            The other unfortunate aspect of this film’s energy-sucking quality is that it takes all the performances down with it.  Granted, the characters aren’t particularly well-written in the first place, particularly the petulant Ramses and his barely present mother inexplicably played by Sigourney Weaver.  I can only speculate, but I’m guessing the role was edited down à la Eva Green’s Sibylla in Kingdom of Heaven, otherwise I have no clue why Weaver would sign on for a bit part.  Joel Edgerton lacks the power needed to pull off the god-king Ramses, but what really surprised me was how flat Christian Bale was as Moses.  This is the same guy who made velvet suits and a wicked comb over work in American Hustle, and here he’s floundering in a basic reluctant hero role.

            I know I’m bashing on the story pretty hard, but there was one aspect that I really appreciated.  The depiction of God and his relationship with Moses wasn’t clean.  This is the nasty God of the Old Testament, the kind that lets his chosen people live in slavery for 400 years and then gets huffy when he finally shows up and things don’t move along fast enough.  Moses calls him out on stuff like this, and even if the screenwriters don’t come up with very original responses, at least the questions are raised.

            All that being said, I can’t say I regret seeing Exodus:  Gods and Kings.  I wish it wasn’t so long, that the story was told with more verve, and the title wasn’t so clunky, but Ridley Scott’s so darn good at putting on a spectacle that you inevitably will get a thrill or two if you go see it on the big screen.  Just make it a matinee, preferably the cheapest ticket you can get.

Other Notes:

Ø  Is this movie setting itself up for a sequel?  They could call it Joshua:  We Finally Get There.

Ø  Moses’s privileged upbringing made him excellent at throwing rocks in a pot.

Ø  What’s up with all the horse killing?

Thelma and Louise

Released:  May 24^th, 1991

Rated:  R

Studio:  MGM

Starring:  Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, Brad Pitt

Directed by:  Ridley Scott

Written by:  Callie Khouri

Personal Bias Alert:  was familiar with the ending, generally enjoys Ridley Scott’s movies

7.5 of 10

            Boy did this film have a long gestation period.  Screenwriter Callie Khouri was hired in 1980, eleven years before the film’s release, a time period in which seemingly every actress in Hollywood was discussed for the two leads.  Directors and actors linked to the project were just as numerous, even for the small role that spring boarded Brad Pitt into hunky superstardom.  Eleven years is a long time, but it seems to have been well spent.

            Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis star as the titular duo, a pair of close friends just trying to get away for the weekend.  An unfortunate event at a bar puts the cops on their tales, and they flee across the southwest.  Trials and tribulations follow, but Thelma and Louise ultimately remains about two buddies going on a road trip.  From the beginning, Thelma stated that the trip was all about letting their hair down, and in that regard it’s a rousing success.

            The chemistry in buddy movies is just as important and just as treacherous as in romances, and it’s one of the places where the long search really paid off.  Sarandon and Davis are like real friends, comfortable wiling away the hours they spend together joking, bickering, or simply ignoring each other.  Perhaps what’s most realistic about them is that they aren’t anywhere near the same person.  Sarandon’s Louise is independent and world-wise while Davis’s Thelma is stifled and frustrated.  It’s understandable that Louise would be drawn to Thelma and vice versa.  Thelma needs someone like Louise to bring her out, and Louise likes having someone under her wing.  We’ve all seen this sort of friendship before.

            These distinct characteristics also makes for very different character arcs, with Thelma bursting out of her shell and Louise quieting down.  These inverse reactions to their circumstances is yet another indication of how different yet complimentary these two are.  Louise, with her more realistic outlook, seems to know in her gut where they’re headed, and Sarandon sells her character’s slow acceptance.  Davis gets to take a big, joyful bite out of her role, funneling much of the good-natured energy of film directly through her.  It’s another reminder of just how great Davis was and just how much audiences have lost with her precipitous fall from the spotlight.

            It’s also nice to see Ridley Scott stretch a bit to wrangle this film’s delicate tone.  Granted, there’s still plenty of explosions and action pieces here, but long portions of the film take place in Louise’s Thunderbird convertible, with the duo more interested in downing Wild Turkey than having a conversation.  This leaves lots of room for quiet character moments, something not often seen in Scott’s big action pieces, but he shows here that he has more range than one might expect.  Yeah, there’s some moments that seem a bit off, but I bought the ending, so something was certainly working.

            Khouri didn’t have expectations to worry about since Thelma and Louise was her first screenplay.  It’s an impressive debut, with good characters and nice thematic work, but there’s a few too many detours and coincidences for it to roll along smoothly.  I scoffed a bit when Pitt showed up the second time, a coincidence that would have been forgivable given the payoff, but a series of encounters with a cartoonishly misogynistic truck driver had me shaking my head.  It’s entirely out of character with the rest of the film, sticking out like an unnecessary sore thumb.  There’s a few other moments like this, but if you are able to disregard them the film can amble along rather pleasingly.

            I get why a lot of people latch on to Thelma and Louise.  Given the material, it’s astoundingly fun, full of comradery and jokes that soften the meat of the story.  Its missteps are there but forgivable, and you get to watch something rarely seen on film:  two women really letting their hair down.  Even if you’re not into that, there’s always that sweet Thunderbird to stare at.

            Other Notes:

Ø   Thelma is an epically bad judge of character.

Ø  Boy does that music date it

Ø  *shakes fist* Hans Zimmer again!

Ø  I want to be someone’s stormtrooper of love.