Z for Zachariah

Released:  August 28^th, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Roadside Attractions

Starring:  Chiwetel Ejiofor, Chris Pine, Margot Robbie

Directed by:  Craig Zobel

Written by:  Nissar Modi

Personal Bias Alert:  likes Zobel, can handle a slow pace

9 of 10

            What a wonderfully unusual little film.  A thriller with no action, a post-apocalypse with no explanation, and a faith with no judgement.  That’s only scratching the surface of this little gem from director Craig Zobel, whose previous film, Compliance, was another thriller that pushed people in all the right ways.  Zobel doesn’t make easy films, that’s for sure, but he does portray some of the smartest and most riveting dives into human nature, a man who seems to be part psychologist and part auteur.

            Z for Zachariah is about the tentative interactions between three strangers stranded in a protected valley after a nuclear event.  Survivors seem to have been few and far between immediately after the event and now are all but gone.  The girl, Ann (Margot Robbie), has lived in the valley her whole life and is startled by the appearance of Loomis (Chiwetel Ejiofor).  They are two quite different people, she a young preacher’s daughter and he an accomplished civil engineer, but they ban together all the same.  Eventually, Chris Pine’s Caleb enters the mix, and their carefully constructed life is thrown into disarray.

            That’s not to say that Caleb is a bad guy; Ann and Loomis are cautious with him, but they are cautious with each, as well.  Who the two men really are is what drives the narrative tension, and the literal inescapability of their situation keeps the question ever-present.  What would happen if even one of them shows a dark side could be devastating, the thought of which keeps all three survivors constantly on guard and in check.  The sort of complex, distinct personalities that each one of them brings to the table, along with the unspoken perils of their relationship, could only be pulled off by a team at the top of their game, and lightning was caught for Zachariah.  Zobel, as already mentioned, is a delicate director when it comes to molding such material, and writer Nissar Modi, with only her second produced screenplay, shows an incredible ear for minimal but loaded dialogue.  On the technical side, cinematographer Tim Orr captures their mountainous Eden with a cold beauty, and Heather McIntosh adds a prominent score that keeps the tension simmering.  Ejiofor and Pine knock it out of the park in roles that are very close to their usual type, but it’s Robbie who really pins the whole thing down.  What’s left of the world comes to revolve around Ann, and Robbie must make this fully-formed person a vessel for all the film’s conflicts.  That she manages this without making the audience turn on her is astounding, and it’s one of the best (and most complicated) performances by an actress this year.

            The film does take its time letting these dynamics play out, and the slow style will certainly turn off some.  But those who do like this sort of deep dive will find a rich social palette playing out before them, and the microcosm this little trio becomes delves into the good and the bad that society has to offer.  The ending is a slight disappointment, trailing off to a conclusion that seems too easy when compared to the rest of the film.  Still, the meaning of that last scene, like the earlier parts of the film, isn’t entirely clear.  Your own judgements will come into play, and a film that lays out so many aspects of humanity while still allowing you the space to react is a challenge well worth taking.

Other Notes:

Ø  It’s not all as serious as I make it seem.  There’s some majorly funny lines:  “Even at the end of the world she isn’t going to drink no damn cherry soda!”

Ø  I wouldn’t change a single thing before the last fifteen minutes.

Ø  This isn’t playing in a theater near me, so I caught it on demand.  I’ve watched it twice, and the film doesn’t fade on the second viewing.

No Escape

Released:  August 26^th, 2015

Rated:  R

Distributor:  The Weinstein Company

Starring:  Owen Wilson, Lake Bell, Sterling Jerins, Claire Geare, Pierce Brosnan

Directed by:  John Erick Dowdle

Written by:  John Erick Dowdle, Drew Dowdle

Personal Bias Alert:  likes thrillers, dislikes cheap tricks to evoke sympathy

7.8 of 10

            The harrowing thriller No Escape is bound to be divisive.  It’s a technically astounding, borderline xenophobic film, your enjoyment of which will depend entirely on how much you can stomach sustained fear and inadvertent racism.  The film would be easier to condemn if you could detect a whiff of actual social politics, but the unfortunate setting of an unnamed Asian country falling into a civil war seems to be little more than a simplistic surrounding for a narrowly focused action thriller.

            The film is only concerned with the survival of one American family, the Dwyers, led by Owen Wilson’s Jack and Lake Bell’s Annie.  The couple have two young daughters who’re old enough to run but young enough to make untimely demands like needing a bathroom.  Evoking sympathy for this group is almost as easy as a paint by the numbers kit, and while No Escape does tread into emotionally manipulative territory, Wilson and Bell always manage to yank it back to something resembling reality.  This film probably doesn’t deserve their talents, but it allows them to show off skills the two traditionally comedic actors haven’t flexed in some time.  They get down and dirty with the action, pulling off stunts and pitching the unending peril with great finesse, but it’s the quiet moments between the two, the exchanged glances and pantomimed plans, that really sell their concerns and desires.  Their world has been quickly whittled down to death or survival, and all they want is to get their family out intact.  The lengths they are forced to go to have a great effect on their relationship, and watching these subtle changes play out between two great actors elevates No Escape far above what was likely on the page.

            The script, written by brothers Drew and John Eric Dowdle, is an admittedly well-paced piece, if a bit too stuck in genre conventions.  The two previously made last year’s horror misfire As Above, So Below, a piece that took a great setting and fumbled the execution.  Their genre contributions fare much better here, coming up with a solid if uninspired cavalcade of set pieces for the Dwyers to survive.  The script is still clearly what holds the film back, though.  There’s too many half-hearted attempts at humor and one incredibly ridiculous action movie moment, but it’s that darn setting that’ll really have you twitching with discomfort.  The decision to put their family survival story in a foreign land and have them targeted simply for being American had to have been made early on, and while the brothers did write in a vague explanation for why the natives hate the Americans, it never feels like more than a half-baked write-off.  Now, if they had completely ignored this point or made every single native a violent revolutionary, then the film would’ve quickly turned into an undefendable piece.  As is, it feels like an unfortunate decision by two guys who didn’t understand the blowback such dismissive treatment would evoke.

            Luckily, this unfortunate decision is drowned out by the sustained action, which throws you from one horrifying situation to another.  You quickly form an emotional bond with the Dwyers, and watching them go through the wringer is an absorbing, tiring experience.  John Eric Dowdle finally shows a bit of pizazz in his direction of the various action scenes, alternatively presenting them with gritty realism and an immaculately smooth style.  Everything in these scenes from the choreography to the sound design is spot-on, with extra props going to editor Elliot Greenberg for putting it all in perfect little places. 

            No Escape does so much right, and yet one uncomfortably poor decision during development nearly derails the whole thing.  Whether the film has crossed that ever-shifting socio-political line is for you to decide, but at least watching it will challenge you to draw a line in the sand.  You might even enjoy the ride while you’re at it.

Other Notes:

Ø  Pierce Brosnan is sort of wasted.

Ø  The camerawork is rather shaky, but it was never too much for me.  Understand that I am also seemingly immune to motion sickness.

Ø  This film understands that it’s much more disturbing to watch a mother shielding her child’s eyes than to see all the mayhem around them.

Fresh

Released:  August 24^th, 1994

Rated:  R

Distributor:  Miramax

Starring:  Sean Nelson, Giancarlo Esposito, Samuel L. Jackson, N’Bushe Wright

Directed by:  Boaz Yakin

Written by:  Boaz Yakin

Personal Bias Alert:  likes surprises, likes Giancarlo Esposito

7.5 of 10

            Fresh startles from beginning to end.  It’s an unusual story with an unusual protagonist:  a 12-year-old kid from New York City who’s already knee-deep in the drug business, but he’s neither a thug nor an idiot.  In fact, he’s a rather shrewd boy, and it’s easy to imagine how he got to the film’s starting point.  There was certainly some surveying, an evaluation of his environment and the possible exits routes, and a decision to go with the most consistent path.  That drugs happen to be his ticket out isn’t his fault; American society doesn’t give a poor African-American kid many viable options, and he handles his chosen occupation with such professionalism that any business owner would be impressed, not least of all the local drug kingpins that employ him.  Perhaps it’s this trademark approach that landed him the nickname Fresh, or maybe it’s just his young face.  Either way, his bosses see a bright future for the boy, but he envisions an even brighter one for himself.

            Sean Nelson, who couldn’t have been much older than his character when filming, pulls off Fresh’s self-confident intelligence without making him precocious.  It’s a fine line, but an imperative one for the film to get right.  For Fresh to live the way he does, he must be seen as an adult amongst adults, not a child tagging along.  His friend Chuckie (Luis Lantigua) falls well short of this line, and the film reveals how badly things can go for a kid in this world.  No, this isn’t the kind of movie that flinches.  The darkness of Fresh’s environment is on full display, made all the more disturbing by its reality, its lack of exaggeration.  This was New York City in the early ‘90s, with the minorities clustered to the side and left to bear the brunt of the raging crack epidemic.  Fresh’s involvement in the business doesn’t mean he approves of using drugs for reasons that become starkly clear, and this dichotomy is what drives the film to its unexpected conclusion.

            Where the film does end up going isn’t for me to reveal; that’s something best left for you to experience.  It’s remarkable, looking back, how you don’t see it coming.  The foreshadowing is staring you in the face, but there’s this boy there, too, in nearly every frame.  His soft face lowers your expectations a bit, making the film’s unraveling all the more thrilling.  However, it’d be wrong to say that the ending entirely makes sense.  It’s strays a bit from the rest of the film’s gritty realness, employing movie moments to make the whole thing work, but that’s a forgivable sin when you factor in how far Fresh takes you.  There has to be some hope at the end of all this grimness, and the world wasn’t exactly set up to give him a way out.  A bit of fancy at the end, as long as it continues to hold its character’s responsible for their actions, can serve as a kind of pointed catharsis.  It gives us a place we would like to get to, but also emphasizes how far we still need to go to get there.

            This is an impressively smart film for Boaz Yakin’s first outing as writer and director, but there are several small failings that gnaw away at the film’s greatness.   Most notable are some dreadful performances by the young cast members, who’s forced line delivery and lack of presence sticks out when compared to the superbly executed scenes between Nelson and the adult cast (which includes the likes of Samuel L. Jackson and Giancarlo Esposito).  The bare-bones editing is another major sign of Yakin’s freshness, feeling more in line with television’s churned out simplicity than with film’s more stylish approach.  Other small technicalities build on this lack of flair, making the film slightly stilted in a way that doesn’t enhance the overall tone.  With the exception of the kid acting, these aren’t major concerns, but having several off-kilter elements does slowly add up to a less-than-perfect film.

            In spite of these problems, Fresh is still well worth seeking out.  It’s got a true sense of existing in the real world, where outcomes for even a smart kid like Fresh could take you in radically different directions, and the mystery of where it’s all going is a thrilling one to see play out.

Other Notes:

Ø  I must give an animal abuse warning for those who are sensitive to such things.

Ø  The music was mixed rather loud in the Netflix version I was watching.

Ø  Even in this age of antiheros, Fresh is probably one of the youngest ones you can find.

Sinister 2

Released:  August 21^st, 2015

Rated:  R

Distributor:  Focus Features

Starring:  James Ransone, Shannyn Sossamon, Robert Daniel Sloan, Dartanian Sloan

Directed by:  Ciarán Foy

Written by:  Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill

Personal Bias Alert:  haven’t seen Sinister, was the only person at my screening

1.5 of 10

            What do you do when a film makes $77 million on a $3 million budget?  Make a crappy sequel, of course!  The only surprise here is that it took three years for Blumhouse Productions to release Sinister 2 after churning out the second Purge movie in only a year and all three Insidious chapters in just four.  Small budget franchises are the studio’s bread and butter, and while you can’t fault them for their profitability, you can take them to task for their quality.  Even so, Blumhouse films normally have a respectable amount of trashy scares and cheap tricks, which makes Sinister 2’s utter ineptness all the more disappointing.

            As with its predecessor, Sinister 2 follows a twisted version of the boogeyman as he lures a child into his violent clutches.  This time he targets a mother and two sons who’re hiding from an abusive husband.  They’ve taken refuge in an abandoned home that is, of course, the location of a previous boogeyman murder, which draws the deputy from the first film in to investigate.  The mother and deputy’s lives mix, the jerk dad starts coming back around, yadda yadda yadda.  The plot of this film is clear from the beginning, made all the more clunky by exposition-filled dialogue that sputters from the actors’ mouths with all the realism of a poorly sewn mermaid baby.  The first film is allegedly rather surprising, and while this one does have one decent twist, everything else in it is so trite that any thrill that might’ve come from this lone offering is suffocated by the surrounding fog of stupidity.

Oh, and that’s not even the most remarkable failure this film has to offer.  What’s more surprising is its inability to build any sort of tension.  Not only is it entirely lacking in the sort of overarching story tension that propels a film to its climax, but also in the momentary tension you should feel before a jump scare.  Director Ciarán Foy has ruined the complaint that jump scares are easy music builds and camera holds, because he flubs them so often in Sinister 2 that you start to question if he was even trying for them at all.  But if these false starts were intentional, then you’re left wondering what the hell was supposed to be scary in the first two-thirds of this film.  The wooden ghost kids?  The unimaginative snuff films?  The god-awful framing?  To be honest, the film’s failures were the only things that had me cringing, particularly throughout a scene where two characters sit on a swing set and their faces are constantly obscured by the chains on the swings.  Perhaps this is just a failed stylistic choice, you ask?  There’s also the scene in the kitchen where the mother is in the exact middle of the frame, blatantly breaking the rule of thirds and making the composition annoyingly unbalanced.  None of these off-kilter shots do anything to build a sense of unease and seem to only be examples of awful filmmaking basics in an equally terrible film.

By the time Sinister 2 drags into its climax, you’ll be begging for these characters to get sliced and diced just so you get something for your money.  It’s another disappointment, though, as the antique-style camera footage (a tension-sucking gimmick the film insists on using) and lack of thought is more apt to leave you laughing than jumping.  Given how stupid the characters are, how vague the boogeyman’s is, and how little actually happens in the final scenes, it’s questionable whether writers Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill were really trying at all.  A more lame, slap-dash conclusion (and entire film) is difficult to find.  You won’t leave the theater happy after seeing Sinister 2.  Do yourself a favor.  Don’t buy the tickets in the first place.

Other Notes

Ø  I laughed out loud when they showed what previously happened in the house.

Ø  At one point a kid pees his pants out of fear, and it looks like a faucet was running from the bottom of his pants leg.  How did a stream of water supposedly make it all the way down his jeans without being absorbed by the fabric?

Ø  This film is rated R, which means they didn’t pull off a single moment of horror when they had however much gore, language, and crazy images at their disposal as they could imagine.  Everyone involved should be ashamed.

American Ultra

Released:  August 21^st, 2015

Rated:  R

Distributor:  Lionsgate

Starring:  Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Topher Grace, Connie Britton, Walton Goggins, John Leguizamo, Bill Pullman, Tony Hale

Directed by:  Nima Nourizadeh

Written by:  Max Landis

Personal Bias Alert:  likes genre mixing, likes the cast

7.9 of 10

            2015 is the year we find out if those guys that made Chronicle can convert their potential into long-term success.  We’ve already seen (or perhaps skipped) director Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four debacle, and now writer Max Landis is back for evaluation with American Ultra.  While it’s not hard to top Trank’s dismal follow-up, Landis very nearly hits a bullseye with this action-comedy-romance mashup, the difficulty of which proves that he’s no fleeting talent.

            Starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart as an unmotivated stoner couple, Eisenberg’s Mike instantly throws their lives into disarray when he’s activated into a stone cold killing machine.   Not that the mayhem’s entirely his fault; he is being targeted by the CIA, and his gentle nature means that death only swirls around when someone’s attacking him or Stewarts’ Phoebe.  Yes, it’s the old I-don’t-know-how-but-I’m-a-badass routine, but this bloodbath’s got a heart of gold in Mike and Phoebe’s very mature relationship.  While they are slackers, the life they’ve built together is wiser than it looks.  An early fight shows that they’re capable of handling problems with honest sensitivity, and the ensuing scenes allow them to navigate their disappointment with a complexity rarely given to couples twice their age in Hollywood.  These moments pay huge dividends once everything hits the fan, as Eisenberg and Stewart only have to exchange glances for us to be crushed by their desire to get out of this together.

            Obviously, Eisenberg and Stewart have great chemistry, but they’re just as adept at the action and the comedy.  Eisenberg excels at doing a mix of the roles we’ve seen him in before, but Stewart’s exasperated straight-man routine is the big surprise, managing to land all of the belly laughs thrown her way.  Stewart’s abilities are magnified the more she’s given to do, and she’s got a whopper of a role in Phoebe.  In comparison to these two, the rest of the characters do seem a bit flat, especially the cartoonish CIA agents played by Topher Grace and Walter Goggins.  Connie Briton, who appears as the one agent trying to help Mike, doesn’t get much more to work with than Grace or Goggins, but it’s so delightful to see Coach’s wife (sorry, that’s how I always think of her) totting around a big gun that her diminished role is forgiven.  That’s one of the little things that American Ultra gets right; it doesn’t shut its women out of the fights.  They may not be the strongest players on the field, but they step in whenever they can, refusing to be left on the sidelines of their own lives.

            And those fights are some of the bloodiest sequences I’ve seen all summer.  An array of weapons (and non-weapons) bash in skulls and draw blood using moves that are often left shockingly in frame.  The choreography does move quickly, though, giving the scenes a frantic energy that leaves you as energized and as confused as Mike is.  That makes it easy to go with the flow of what he’s being forced to do, but that flow isn’t always smooth.  The gore is overused, and there’s times during the middle section of the film that you’ll want the humor and the romance to assert itself more, but this quibble is a problem that comes with doing too much too well.

            Most films stick to one or two genres, too terrified or unsure of themselves to try for everything at once.  The difficulty in pulling off the mix makes this fear understandable, but these efforts have an upside, too.  If you get enough of it right, even a flawed mix like American Ultra will inspire adoration.

Other Notes:

Ø  There’s some really stylish pieces of action here.

Ø  Stick around through the first part of the credits.  You won’t be disappointed.

Ø  Max Landis actually has four films that should be coming out this year or next, including the Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy led Victor Frankenstein.

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle

Released:  July 30^th, 2004

Rated:  R

Distributor:  New Line Cinema

Starring:  John Cho, Kal Penn

Directed by:  Danny Leiner

Written by:  Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg

Personal Bias Alert:  not into stoner comedies, first saw the film in college

6.5 of 10

            Certain genres have an optimum viewing age, and stoner comedies are certainly one of the most distinct.  They play best for those in their teen and early twenties, preferably at night after some frivolous consumption and in a group.  You should be loose and paling around when you take in these delectable treats, and once you find the handful that your group likes, you should wear out their welcome until the laughs are ingrained in your brain.  That’s the kind of cultural impact that the best stoner comedies achieve, a fervent following from a very particular demographic, and that’s precisely what Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle managed to do.

            The premise of the movie is in the title, except the part where the young men’s hankering comes from smoking weed, but the entire movie is, in fact, about roommates Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) going to White Castle.  This proves to be a difficult task as apparently there weren’t many White Castles in New Jersey circa 2004 (I checked, there’s a bunch along their route now).  As is wont to happen in these movies, detours and hijinks ensue, elongating their meal-time side quest into an epic journey.  Minor characters are constantly popping in and out of the story (including a parody version of Neil Patrick Harris, who at the time hadn’t bounced back from Doogie Howser, M.D.), but the only two who stay around are Harold and Kumar, making their chemistry absolutely essential to the film’s success.  Writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg craft an odd couple that absolutely would hang out together, and Cho and Penn nail the characters to the film’s zany wall.  Its remarkable how there are no missteps between these two characters, always believably staying friends and following each other’s lead as their situation changes.  This bulletproof friendship is why the film connected with all the late-night groups, feeding off the goodwill such meandering nights instill.

            Unfortunately, what also accompanies these sorts of films is a gargantuan amount of gross-out humor, a brand that won’t work for everyone, myself included.  In fact, most of the humor in Harold and Kumar is hit and miss, with their long road trip taking them through numerous skit-like asides that might have you busting with laughter or groaning from boredom.  Your particular sense of humor will determine which bits are memorable, but the writers cram in so many to choose from that a few are bound to hit your funny bone.  You’re just as likely to find yourself drifting off, though, during which time you should grab some munchies for yourself and return once the humor comes back to your taste.  You won’t have missed anything important.

            There’s really only one intelligent thing that Harold and Kumar does, and it permeates the film from beginning to end.  It’s cognizant of the fact that, despite just wanting to toke up and get some burgers, Harold and Kumar will constantly be treated differently because of their Asian ethnicities.  This is mined for laughter, but always at the expense of the characters being racist.  Never does the film turn on these two men, and the characters’ nonchalant acceptance of these occurrences are a political statement in and of itself.  Eventually, both Harold and Kumar do acknowledge the role these perceptions have played in their lives, and each take small steps to combat them.  After all, they just want the American dream:  life, liberty, and the pursuit of a good high.

Other Notes:

Ø  The effects are atrocious, but I don’t think they really cared.

Ø  Could any of you tell that Freakshow was played by Law and Order:  SVU and Oz alum Christopher Meloni?  I sure as hell couldn’t.

Ø  This movie will live on in the history books as the first rated R film to be advertised on fast food containers (White Castle, of course).

Straight Outta Compton

Released:  August 14^th, 2015

Rated:  R

Distributor:  Universal Pictures

Starring:  O’Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Paul Giamatti, Neil Brown Jr., Aldis Hodge

Directed by:  F. Gary Gray

Written by:  Jonathan Herman, Andrea Berloff

Personal Bias Alert:  not familiar with the group’s music or its history

7.9 of 10

            Awards season is almost upon us, and it seems that Straight Outta Compton might serve as its unofficial kickoff.  It’s a film that’s touching a nerve among Americans, as its focus, the politically conscious rap group N.W.A., spoke openly about the tension between police and minorities that still persists to this day.  That frankness is retained in the film, and its frequent images of black men being manhandled by officers may sear itself into the minds of Oscar voters.  Then again, it’s a long time until that gold is handed out, and time may not be the kindest thing to this very traditional piece.

            For those like me who are a bit too young to remember N.W.A., it’s the group that first made Dr. Dre and Ice Cube stars and originated the phrase ‘f*** tha police’.  They came out of, you guessed it, Compton, California, so that’s where the film starts, just as the group is solidifying.  Seeing budding talents push for the art they love is a magnetic thing, that’s why it’s such an integral part of music biopics, and the added weight of the social politics surrounding N.W.A. only makes their fight more satisfying.  The circumstances of the group’s story, though, quickly turns into a hindrance for the screenwriters, as the ups and downs of N.W.A.’s career plays out at a rapid pace and leaves them chasing members of the group as they scatter in the wind of the 90’s rap scene.  It’s a scene I’m only faintly aware of, and Straight Outta Compton isn’t interested in slowing down to explain things to the uninitiated.  If you’re like me, you may get a bit lost in the mess of record labels (which definitely hinders the last line of the film), but the story sticks so closely to traditional biopic beats that you’ll always be able to find your way to the important takeaways.

            To the film’s benefit and detriment, several members of N.W.A. were intimately involved in the film’s development, serving as producers, spearheading the marketing, and bringing in a director who they’ve known since the mid 90’s.  That backing certainly helped get the biopic a healthy $28 million budget and attract a massive audience, but it also left the film scarred by missed opportunities.  This is a fluff piece when it comes to actually looking at these men, glossing over their personality faults and poor decisions in a way that leaves them a bit nondescript.  I know enough about the time period, particularly the label Dre ends up associating himself with, to know that seriously messed up stuff was going down.  While Straight Outta Compton does acknowledge these goings-on, it almost entirely leaves out how much Dre and the others were involved, showing them getting their hands dirty only when they were clearly in the right or when the instances are played off as fun.  A little more honesty about the actions they took during this time that they regret, like the violence against women that Dre admitted to in the current issue of Rolling Stone, could’ve taken this film into truly legendary territory.

            But as I said, their involvement does come with perks, a massive one being the involvement of cinematographer Matthew Libatique.  Libatique has long worked with Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan), and he brings the ability to make the grime and the success look equally beautiful.  That’s not to say that it feels unreal; in fact, the performance scenes are some of the most immersive you’ll see on the big screen, but it all looks so darn pleasing that it helps mask when the film skates around those pesky difficult issues it clearly doesn’t want to address.

            Other proven talents helped mold Straight Outta Compton into the slick, aware piece that it is, and the things N.W.A. stood for are, sadly, still incredibly relevant today.  But the film’s honesty about these issues only highlights the dishonesty that permeates the portraits of these men, making Straight Outta Compton another in a long line of enjoyably safe biopics.

Other Notes:

Ø  All the actors were good, but Jason Mitchell as Easy-E is the breakout force here.

Ø  The film is guilty of focusing on Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and Eazy-E while marginalizing Dj Yella and MC Ren.  Can you guess who did and didn’t get producing credits?

Ø  There’s a moment towards the end of this film when an unnamed character closes a door that is absolutely heartbreaking.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Released:  August 14^th, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Warner Bros.

Starring:  Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Debicki, Jared Harris, Hugh Grant

Directed by:  Guy Ritchie

Written by:  Guy Ritchie, Lionel Wigram

Personal Bias Alert:  knows nothing about the TV series, wasn’t into Sherlock Holmes

7.3 of 10

            Warner Brothers has given us quite an interesting lineup this year.  It’s shockingly devoid of surefire hits, the largest grosser of the year being American Sniper, which started its theatrical run in 2014.  San Andreas, the out-of-fashion disaster flick comes in second, with the reboot Mad Max:  Fury Road taking third.  To cap the summer season, the studio gives us one of its more bizarre investments, a reboot of the 50-year-old television show The Man from U.N.C.L.E.  Sure, it’s a spy film (which is very in this year), but the movie’s younger target audience is mostly unaware of the television series, and the film allegedly has moved far enough from its source material to turn off preexisting fans.  This certainly won’t be a huge hit for the studio, but the film’s good-time jauntiness should have the legs to carry it well past its $75 million price tag.

            Guy Ritchie, who previously turned Sherlock Holmes into a hit, helms this origin story, exploring how the multinational spy unit of the television series formed.  He keeps the ‘60s setting, which proves to be an excellent fit for his brand of funny, stylish action.  Everyone from the costume and set designers to the actors seems to have enjoyed basking in the slightly garish looks, which serve as an inescapable bit of flair that reminds you how unreal all this is.  And none of it is intended to be taken very seriously, as even the action is tuned low enough to let the whole thing slide down smooth.  After all this summer’s dour CGI punching, it’s a wonderful change of pace to watch a movie that just wants you to have some fun.

            Key to this fun is Henry Cavill, who stars as American agent Napoleon Solo.  He’s all slicked hair and cocky humor, making for a delightfully lively performance from our current Superman.  The character was written for someone to take a big bite out of, and while Cavill may not have been the most obvious choice, he turned out to be the perfect one.  Armie Hammer plays his Russian counterpart, who serves as more of a hulking straight man to Cavill’s overwhelming swagger, but he works the part well enough.  An always welcome Alicia Vikander rounds out the group as the young woman they’re using to flush out a nuclear bomb.  She’s often reduced to prancing around in vintage garb (there’s an entire scene about her wardrobe, in fact), but she gets to poke the boys often enough to stay relevant.  The rest of the cast hits their marks in what are essentially bit parts, chewing on the scenery when needed and exiting with dignity when our main trio asserts themselves.  What the film comes down to is Cavill, though, and he knocks this thing straight out of the park.

            Providing audiences with a throwback good time was obviously Ritchie’s main concern, as he left the plot remarkably light.  The airiness works, though, because it serves the tone so perfectly.  This was never intended to be Skyfall, but the setup provides enough opportunities for some well-designed action scenes.  Some are sillier than others, to the point that one is outright dismissed by one of the characters in the scene, and this de-emphasis may disappoint those accustomed to having the action be the focal point of their spy movies.  The humor is the true star here, and even if it gets in the way of an unsurprising plot, it’s delivered so perfectly that the film’s extraneous downfalls are easy to forgive.

            Such an easily enjoyable film should serve as excellent counter programing to this week’s other big release, Straight Outta Compton.  This material was never going to be an easy sell, but its good looks and scallywag appeal should help it find the laid-back audience it seems to be looking for.

Other Notes:

Ø  This would have been better if it was about 10-15 minutes shorter.

Ø  So you know Oscar Isaac’s weirdly awesome dance scene in Ex Machina?  Well, Alicia Vikander gets her own this time.

Ø  The end of the café scene is brilliant.

Ø  For some reason I thought Armie Hammer was British.

Tsotsi

Released:  March 31^st, 2006

Rated:  R

Distributor:  Miramax

Starring:  Presley Chweneyagae, Terry Pheto, Kenneth Nkosi, Mothusi Magano, Zenzo Ngqobe

Directed by:  Gavin Hood

Written by:  Gavin Hood

Personal Bias Alert:  not familiar with South African cinema

7.5 of 10

            Tsotsi, which loosely translates to ‘thug’, is a tough but beautiful film that thrives on exploring the dichotomy of having these two things inside a single entity.  The contrast is played up from the beginning, with the opening scene ending on a close-up of our main tsotsi’s hardened face, then cutting abruptly to a wide shot of the glowing evening sky as he leads his friends outside.  The area he’s leading them through isn’t exactly pretty; it’s a shanty town on the outskirts of Johannesburg, but the glistening sky that he descends from is enough to make even this hardscrabble place feel like somewhere you need to be.  That’s the trick of the entire film, really:  to take an unattractive thing and make it jarringly, inescapably beautiful.

            In the nine years since Tsotsi’s release, this arc has come to dominate certain portions of American pop culture (see nearly every prestige television show), but it’s a trope that still remains largely reserved for the middle-aged white man.  To apply this arc to a teenage South African is still rare, making it surprising just how far Tsotsi makes you travel.  The teen, who literally goes by Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae), is a right nasty guy at the beginning, who we follow through a crazy night that ends with him in a stolen car that still has a baby in the backseat.  Taking pity on the child, Tsotsi bags him up with the rest of the loot, adopting him without much thought.  This moment of empathy becomes a turning point for the young thug, who for the first time starts to see a life outside the abusive one he’s been dealt.

            In starting off so strongly, the film has to take the audience through some pretty big steps, which at times become too leading and overwrought.  Tsotsi is far from an even film, but it’s got an outstanding guide in Presley Chweneyagae.  He’s an honest to god movie star, the kind of actor you can’t take your eyes off of even when you’re marveling over what he’s accomplished.  The role of Tsotsi, like the film as a whole, is not an easy thing to pull off, but you’d never guess it by how easy he makes it look.  Complimenting him is Terry Pheto as the young mother that Tsotsi forces to become the baby’s wet nurse.  Their scenes, taking place almost exclusively in a small home, are easily the most evocative that the film has to offer.  Watching two actors at their level playing off each other, navigating the give-and-take of such transformative moments for their characters, is a pleasure that never gets old.  I just hope I get to watch these two give such great performances over and over again as I get old.

            Writer/director Gavin Hood, who’s struggled with his subsequent American releases (X-Men Origins:  Wolverine and Ender’s Game), seems more comfortable telling stories set in his native country of South Africa.  He certainly has an excellent eye when it comes to capturing his hometown of Johannesburg, often using the sprawling, flat nature of the city to capture the wealth and poverty that is pressed so closely together.  Both he and cinematographer Lance Gewer must’ve worked hard to avoid making Tsotsi and his home seem drab, instead meticulously capturing everything in the best light possible.  And I mean that literally; the lighting in this film is extraordinary.  Even in the dimness of Tsotsi’s shack, the surroundings get enough soft lighting to be clear and homey, even if the place is a mess.  These beautifully captured settings help take the edge off of the film’s early gruffness, and by the end serves to emphasize how far Tsotsi’s come.

            Tsotsi was a strong presence throughout the world during the 2006 awards season, being nominating and taking home several major prizes.  This is the first and only South African movie to win Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, and this widespread appeal is likely due not only to the strength of the film but the universality of its story.  Really, this tale of redemption could be set almost anywhere, but Hood chose to keep it at home, giving the rest of us a reminder that we all fight against and strive for such similar things.

Other Notes:

Ø  As a warning to those sensitive to animal abuse, there is one scene you’ll probably want to skip.

Ø  The film is based off a novel of the same name, the author of which was a Wells Scholar Professor at the college I went to.

Ø  There’s a lot of not-so-subtle AIDS banners throughout this film.

Fantastic Four

Released:  August 7^th, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Twentieth Century Fox

Starring:  Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell, Reg E. Cathey

Directed by:  Josh Trank

Written by:  Simon Kinberg, Jeremy Slater, Josh Trank

Personal Bias Alert:  haven’t seen any previous Fantastic Four movies, likes the cast

4 of 10

            It’s not often that this big of a film completely lacks a purpose.  Many things have to go wrong to get such a product (a wobbly script, a director failing to impart his vision, misguided studio intervention, etc.), and it’s bold of Fox to so brazenly try to pass Fantastic Four as a decent movie.  Then again, a big-budget superhero flick can’t be buried with a pushed release date and minimal marketing like Sony Pictures did with Aloha, this year’s other conglomeration of scenes that was allegedly a movie.  Of course, Fantastic Four isn’t as big of a mess as Aloha; the individual scenes do make sense, they just never really go anywhere.

            The truly frustrating thing about this film is how great we all hoped it would be.  The cast for the superheroes and villain is a delectable slate of youngish talent that’ve had integral parts in many massively successful film and television projects, and the writer/director (who’s younger than some of his cast) was coming off a small-budget flick that impressed critics and viewers alike.  But alas, young talent can be unstable, and while the cast holds up their end, Josh Trank dropped the ball in nearly every way.  There’s reports of poor behavior and squabbles with the studio, but the finished product shows flaws that can be traced directly back to his pre-production decisions.

            The storyline that Trank seemed to be going for is depressingly familiar, almost an exact rehash of what he did in Chronicle.  Some young people discover their power (here, it’s science), their powers build until they become abusive and start harming themselves and others, then one of them becomes a bad guy that must be stopped by the rest of the group.  The fun that set apart Chronicle, though, was the comradery between the boys and a well-plotted descent that drew from each character’s background.  Trank, who didn’t write the actual screenplay for Chronicle, fails to bring this plotting and character development to Fantastic Four, leaving us with a bigger but lesser film.

            What Trank does manage to get right, at least for a while, is the young characters’ naive enthusiasm.  To start Fantastic Four, the brilliant team works together to design and build an interdimensional teleporter.  There’s joy in these scenes, a sense of bonding, and even if this section does drags on too long and is hampered by poor dialogue, it’s still the section where the cast and the film shines the brightest.  Eventually, the group actually gets to the other planet, and that’s when the movie loses what little it had going for it.  It succumbs to Franklin Storm’s (Reg E. Cathy) moralistic grandstanding, and any sense of character, fun, or even narrative purpose is lost.  In fact, Cathy is so shrill in his terribly written speeches that his eventual fate made me cheer instead of sniffle, and that level of unintentional hatred is glaring evidence of just how bad this movie becomes.

            But hey, it’s a superhero movie, so at least there will be dizzying CGI action that sustains its clunky plot, right?  No, Trank doesn’t even give us that.  There’s only one small, poorly conceived, flabergastingly simple ‘battle’ in Fantastic Four, the failure of which seems to stem from Trank being unable to grasp the character’s new, superhuman powers.  Granted, several of the powers in this group are quite silly (one’s stretchy and another is literally a rock), but not only does Trank fail to come up with an interesting way to use these powers in a battle, he doesn’t even come up with a way to shoot them so that they look cool.  The Human Torch and Invisible Woman become distorted when they use their powers, losing all sense of facial and bodily expression.  They are reduced to blobs moving around onscreen, which Trank failed to realize and hence tried to sell a dramatic moment between Invisible Woman and Dr. Doom (whose stiff design is equally hampering) that ends up as one of the most emotionally inert moments on film in 2015.  As for everyone else, stretchy Mr. Fantastic just looks silly, and The Thing is never more than a side thought in the entire film.  Getting the superheroes right is key to any superhero flick, making Fantastic Four’s belly flop in this area one of its most glaring failures.

            All this being said, Fantastic Four isn’t quite as bad as everyone is saying it is.  It’s certainly not good, but its plot is coherent and the actors occasionally find some fun in the script.  My suggestion?  Keep the actors, but get a team that will make the script and visuals match their abilities.  Maybe then we’ll get a good Fantastic Four movie.

Other Notes (Ridiculous Superhero Version):

Ø  Why did Invisible Woman struggle so much with her powers while at the facility but seem to have incredible control once they started fighting?

Ø  Why did Dr. Doom run away from the world in the first place?  Is he just a jerk?

Ø  Where did the cloth for Dr. Doom’s hood thing come from?

Ø  Why is The Thing so powerful?  Rocks aren’t actually indestructible.

Other Notes (Regular Version):

Ø  Why did the boys not invite Sue when they went to the other dimension?  She helped build the teleporter too!

Ø  Like all good scientists, they immediately touched the thing they’ve never seen before.

Ø  Funny that this movie was made so that a company (Fox) could keep the rights to Fantastic Four when the movie rails against corporate meddling.

Ø  Boy was that ending line (or lack of line) gratingly obvious.