Thursday, March 7, 2024

#Movie #review #Dune Part 2

SPOILERS BELOW:

Director Denis Villeneuve's long-delayed (due to the Screen Actor's Guild strike), and long-awaited sequel to 2021's Dune, has already been widely praised as a masterpiece, and deservedly so. Epic, and not just for its nearly 3-hour run time, its a beautiful film, much of it being filmed in a vast desert.

The script is well written and actors Timotheé Chalamet as Paul Atreides, and Zendaya, his desert lover, Chani, return from Part 1, to fill the screen with youthful energy from the film's first moments, claiming it as their own. "Elvis" actor Austin Butler plays the nephew of Baron Harkonen, a worthy antagonist who also was well cast here, strutting with arrogance and hate on his family's dimly lit planet, where even fireworks appear black in the sky. 

Odd to see Christopher Walken as Galactic Emperor Shaddam IV, who seemed a bit sullen and detached here, but that suited his character.  Shaddam IV has watched from afar as the Atreides family became more and more powerful,  and he eventually acts by allowing their rivals on the desert planet Arrakis, the Harkonnens, to slaughter the Duke Atraides and his family, missing only the son,  Paul, who flees to the desert sands and comes to see himself as a messianic figure, and after discovering the emperor's role in his family's demise, a rival to the emperor,  himself, as Paul seemingly abandons his desert love for a strategic marriage alliance with the emperor's daughter, Irulan, played by Florence Pugh.

The films (two of three planned in a trilogy by the director) are based on books by Frank Herbert, who was a giant of the Golden Age of Science Fiction - the early 1950s thru the 1960s. His world-building skills were epic and detailed, peering thru the script here in details such as mentioning that the Atreides family had 90 "Atomics" hidden for generations in the mountains of the planet. 

The empire itself is thousands of years old, and yes,  the Herbert books influenced other works of science fiction such as Star Wars.

As one can tell, this is a lot to absorb, but seems lighter fare than the first part, which was just as long but was mostly background to the empire, the families and the Spice, which is mined from large Worm creatures that exist only on Arrakis, and somehow power or guide all spaceships in the Galaxy.

The sheer power of the story is evident mostly in its second half, as The young Atraides publicly proclaims himself Duke and leader of both his family and embraces prophesies that he will turn the planet into a green paradise.

His mother, Lady Jessica, (Rebecca Ferguson) widow of Duke Leto Atraides, has taken the position of leader of an all-female religion known as the Bene Gesserit order. She stokes talk of her son as a prophet, often to Paul's disdain and annoyance, before he, himself begins to believe his own propaganda and embraces the religious aspect of his mission.

The film needs every minute of its nearly three hours, filled with Herbert's commentary on political intrigue, rapacious corporate captitalism, religious fundamentalism, environmentalism, and more.

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

#Movie #Review The Beekeeper Delivers Action

 (Mild to Full Spoilers throughout)

In the Beekeeper,  directed by David Ayer and fairly tightly written by Kurt Wimmer, Jason Stratham is a literal beekeeper who is tending bee hives and making jars of honey for Phylicia. Rashad, a retired teacher from whom he has been renting a barn and has been a good friend for an unknown amount of time. 

He is also retired, but his quiet life is ripped apart when his friend is the victim of computer fraud and is tricked into giving the anonymous people on the phone all her savings and those of a charity she created and manages. Distraught, she kills herself. That's when Stratham's Adam Clay springs into action, vowing to find and punish thise responsible for the theft. 

He rather quickly finds the call center that was responsible for bilking his friend, burning it to the ground. Clearly, Clay has had some connections, and paramilitary training. We infer (but it's not explicit until an hour into the film) that he is retired from a secret government agency that watches over all levels of society.  

He doesn't stop there,  though. Beekeepers, even retired ones, are tanacious. Like bees from which his kind take their inspiration. 

But he's not alone. While he is seeking vengeance,  his friends daughter, FBI Agent Verona Parker (played by Emmy Raver-Lampman) seeks justice for her mother, and keeps Clay in line. Sonewhat.

Derek Danforth (Hunger Games actor Josh Hutcherson) is next in Clay's sights, since his family's company, Danforth Enterprises,  runs srveral call centers. We soon learn that it's a very well connected company indeed. 

Danforth is a drug-using pretty boy, protected by former CIA Director Wallace Westwyld,  played by veteran actor Jeremy Irons, who is paid by the family to keep Derek out of troustarsWhen he discovers the truth about Clay, ven he's terrified.

Clay continues rampaging, attacking a Boston call center and getting info about Derek's involvement.  He's undeterred, spelling out what's to come.  

But Parker, also on the trail, has alerted higher ups, including the Deputy FBI Director, who gives her the resources she needs, and meets with the President (Jemma Redgrave) who happens to be Derek's mother.

No more details, because it's about the end when you realize who she is and what may come.  But there are a couple of surprises and it looks like as sequel and actual Beekeeper franchise might be set up by the ending. Let's hope so.

Violent? Yes, in parts. Some flaws? Very few. Big actors doing great acting? Definitely.  See it if you enjoyed Stratham in the Transporter film, see this.  


Wednesday, January 24, 2024

#Movie #Review #I.S.S.: A Good, Not Great, Space Drama

I.S.S. is the best movie about the International Space Station of 2024. And the only one. So far. Obviously. 

That's not to say I didn't enjoy much of it. Many didn't, tho. It has only a 43% audiencer"fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes (As usual, 63% of critics were more forgiving and gave it a "fresh" rating)  Gravity (2012) is a tighter adventure story, big namestars, and a better script. 

This film is directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, whose documentary film Blackfish exposed and embarrassed Sea World's treatment of whales in captivity, got a 99% fresh rating by critics on the famous "Rotten" site.  Clearly, she does better with documentaries.

The film starts with a few on-screen paragraphs and establishing shots of the station itself, floating on the edge of space for over 20 years, inhabited in this film by American astronauts and Russian Cosmonauts. It's frequently had some from other nations as well, and it might have been better to have add a mix of Canadians, Germans and Japanese, as in real life. But maybe not. It would complicate what follows. 

The action opens with two new astronauts arriving at the station, joining three Russians and one American already on board.

 This, too is routine in real life. 

The new arrivals are greeted warmly by them, and the new astronaut (an American woman, one of two women and three Americans of a six-person crew) is shown the ropes of living on the station. Again, it looks and sounds authentic, based on video we've seen of the real thing.

The backgrounds the crew are maybe too fleshed out by the movie's half point, but despite some weak writing, the FX are really good for an allegedly low-budget film. Anyone who has seen pictures of the views from the actual ISS will recognize this accuracy, instantly. Weightlessness and the cramped quarters are also portrayed well throughout the film. 

Soon, despite assurances from veterans of the ISS that politics don't intrude on the station,  ostensibly devoted to science, both sides get messages that hostilities have broken out on Earth (verified by an American seeing what at first look like "volcanoes" out a station window. An American doing a spacewalk tells colleagues not to look out the windows on the ẁar- ravaged planet below.

Both sides are told in internet texts by their two governments to "Take control of the station. By any means necessary." Shortly afterwards,  communication is lost with earth, and power flickers.

The rest of the film is predictable, as a mini war erupts in space on the station. First with acts of sabotage, then murder, occurring. To the director's credit, it's not clear which, if any, of the six crew will survive, especially as the station begins to fall out of space - something all space agencies are planning to let happen in the next decade anyway, since it is cramped and outdated. 

In the meantime, it requires periodic  adjustments to keep it orbiting, 250 miles above the earth. For a while, it's uncertain if it will get one. Why it's important to "take control" of it, and what use it would have, remains unclear. A subplot of a crewman doing important, relevant research for a post-WWIII earth is a rare unbelievable note. 

It is good to know much of this science background before going to the theater, since I bet most Americans forgot we had a station and that we mostly share it with Russia.

The film ends showing which of the crew survive, but not going into "what's next" for the future of the crew, the ISS, or the earth itself, but following a clear nuclear exchange and bloodshed on the station itself, the future looks dim, indeed. 

All the crew dying or the station's destruction would have been a poignant ending. But it ends ambiguously.

Rated R for violence and some language. See it in the theater soon.  It will likely go to streaming quickly.

Thursday, December 29, 2022

#Movie #Review #Babylon is Plotless, Vulgar and Long


Director Damien Chazelle brings to the screen a three-hour and nine minute film depicting a pivotal and interesting time in movie history: the difficult transition from silent films to "talkies." 

The problem is that, despite a star studded cast, the film puts vulgar sensationalism above all else, including a complete lack of plot structure and emotional resonance. In what is clearly meant to be both a love letter and expose of 1920s Hollywood instead comes across as a vulgar, plotless jumble of scenes that don't fit together very well.

Brad Pitt is the fitional Jack Conrad, a wildly successful silent film actor whose career is in rapid decline. He takes a young Mexican man, Manny Torres, played well by Diego Calva, under his wing, and he moves quickly into the film industry, which is in its infancy in the early 1920s.

Conrad and Torres first meet at a wild, debauched Hollywood party in the mid 1920s. There, they both meet Nellie La Roy, played by Margot Robbie, who is a wanna-be actress who crashes the party and also quickly crashes into the movie industry. 

The party sets the tone for the film, featuring sexual debauchery and drug use. I always notice incongruities in period pieces, and the entire crowd at the party wiggling freestyle, like it's 2020, seemed completely out of place. Even the music seems like 1940s jazz, not music from the 1920s. Not once did a character dance the Charleston or the foxtrot. Instead Robbie's character performed over-sexualized dances that wouldn't be seen on dance floors for another 60 or 70 years. 

Later, when she miraculously is inserted into a movie set, she is told to dance, and does the same thing, causing one of the male actors in the scene to have an erection in full view of the director.

I had to stop myself at that point and think about the time period of the film, and she may be on more solid ground than I first realized, because this was before the Motion Picture Production code came into effect in 1934. 

Late 1920s films were quite a bit more sexualized and violent than later time periods, and the movie industry, fearing government regulation was on the way, implemented a voluntary code of conduct that govern the film industry into the late 1960s.

None of this, of course, is explained in this film, but it does touch on the terrible working conditions for extras, the rauchous parties (though it's hard to believe that what the director portrays here actually occurred) and the racism of early Hollywood faced by minorites. Though a Hispanic man, an Asian woman, and a black man seem to have easily entered the Hollywood system in this film. Perhaps too easily.

A good chunk of the film attempts to tell the story of the difficult transition from silent films to films with sound. Some actors, like Conrad and La Roy (whose thick New Jersey accent pegs her as "low class") don't make the transition. 

Jean Smart plays a savvy Hollywood gossip reporter who breaks the news to Conrad that his career is ending. Her soliloquy about Hollywood and the fact that those existing on film will live forever is one of the high points of the film. and succeeds in1 giving it some heart. 

But such high points have to compete with the raunchy humor of an elephant pooping on a man's head, Robbie's character barfing on a man's expensive rug, and a man being urinated on during the opening party scene. 

A scene in which Conrad and a colleague are ushed into an underground club of sorts by a gangster played by Tobey Maguire, features a would-be actor biting a rat in half could have been easily cut.

Because the director is trying to tell 10 stories at once, we hear about Sidney, a black jazz musician played by Jovan Adepo, whom Torres put in a movie of his own, but is quickly alienated by Hollywood when he, a somewhat light-skinned man, is told to put on black face in order to blend in with the other black musicians. This, like several other tales here, is only briefly mentioned as if they are SNL sketches.

Another character that flies into the film and quickly out again without much exposition is Lady Fay Zhu, played by Li Jun Li, a dialogue card designer for the silent films, who also checks the 2020s diversity box as a sultry lesbian caberet singer.

Chazelle wraps up this epically long film with a bizarre and oddly hurried ending that attempts to show the demise of the actors after Hollywood's transition to talkies. 

No spoilers here, but there are a few tragic ends in the film, just as there were tragedies in old Hollywood. 

The entirely predictable death of an actor, the death of a movie extra at the hands of another extra wielding actual weapons during a battle scene, an actor who overdoses at the opening party, and a sound technician on an early sound stage are all quickly touched on but aren't significant to the plot, because there basically is no plot here, to speak of.

The entire film could have been shortened by 45 minutes and still been understood, especially if the director had narrowed his focus to a single plot. Instead, he was so enamored with shocking his audience that he forgot to include one.

Thursday, December 22, 2022

#Movie #Review #ViolentNight Is Cartoonishly Violent Fun

A few weeks ago now, I saw Violent Night, a rather cartoonishly violent Christmas themed movie by director Tommy Wirkola.

It tells the unlikely tale of an elite team of mercenaries who break into a family compound on Christmas Eve, taking the wealthy family hostage inside. However, they aren't prepared for a surprise visitor: Santa Claus is on the grounds, and he's about to whip out the naughty list on the bad guys.

  • David Harbour plays a respectable and oddly believable Santa, who says he has been in the role of the jolly old elf apparently since the time of the Vikings, when he wielded a hammer, not a bag of toys. And he has a long memory when it comes to violence.
  • Actor/comedian John Leguizamo portays Scrooge, the leader of a violent gang attacking a wealthy family on Christmas Eve. And he does it with credibility. This film really is violent,  but it's not nasty. 
  • Beverly D'Angelo is well cast as Gertrude Lightstone, the family's matriarch, whom her children and grandchildren are desperate to impress, because they believe their inheritance relies on it. And it does. 
She is rude and mean to staff and family alike, and early on, we are not impressed with her attitude towards others. So when her basement vault is threatened by the invaders, who clearly have had an insider feeding them information, we are not sympathetic to her. Nor are we meant to have any sympathy for this wealthy family.

But her son's little girl, who believes in Santa, is very frightened by what's going on in the house on Christmas Eve, is a sympathetic character, and her hope that her two separated parents reunite as a couple after Christmas seems  delightfully naive, but offers a hopeful note. 

It should be mentioned, however that the "Violent" in "Violent Night" is not inaccurate, and this is not a film for little children, although clearly scenes battling the intruders were inspired by the '90s film Home Alone, and characters reference the film by name. The violence is all very over the top and cartoonish. But also some of it is quite graphic.

Once Santa and the little girl get together, they hatch a plan to attack the bad guys, who are confronted by Santa and are informed that they are, and have in the past, been on the "naughty list."

This leads to the interesting conclusion that the bad guys all come to believe that this is actually Santa Claus. But somehow, they don't turn over a new leaf with this epiphany.

This is overall and interesting little movie, but is not quite a replacement for It's A Wonderful Life. It's got violent, fantasy, and sweet elements,  not quite sure which kind of film this is,  but it all kind of works.

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

#Movie #Review #TriangleOfSadness

SOME SPOILERS

A film named "Triangle of Sadness" sounds like it would be a dreary affair, but it's often uproariously funny, thought provoking, and sometimes even gross and sickening. That's a lot for one movie, but director Ruben Ōstlund, delivers all of this in what's more like a three-act play, telling three distinct stories.

The first act consists of a couple, both runway models, Yaya, played by Charlbi Dean Kriek and Carl, played by Harris Dickinson, who are on a dinner date.  Kriek was a South African model who died before the film's release. She was 32. The cause of her death was not released. Dickinson is a 26-year-old English actor. 

I mention thier ages because neither one of them is "old" or even middle aged. And they are not wearing makeup in the film to make them look old.

But in a flashback, we see that Dickinson's character's career is in a downward spiral. He is told, foolishly, it seems, that he needs Botox in the space above his nose between his eyes, the supposed "triangle of sadness" because it's a bit wrinkly. 

While his career is already waning, her's is on the rise, and at dinner, there is an extended discussion over who will pick up the tab.The fact that her career is going well, and his is not, plays into the discussion, suggesting that she should probably pick up the tab. But, she reminds him that he promised he would pick up the tab "the next time" at a previous dinner date. 

If it sounds tedious, the director does not makes it quite engaging. One critic even suggested that the entire film should have been focused on their relationship. And, while both of them are featured in all three acts of the film, it moves along to other topics.

The next act consists of a cruise on a multi-million dollar yacht, populated by multi-millionaires, investors, and the two models we met in the first act. Yaya wanted to go on the cruise to pose as an influencer on social media, and build her credibility as one. He apparently went along as arm candy and to snap photos.

The interactions between the yacht's upper deck crew and the passengers are both interesting and thought-provoking. The director is clearly making a statement about wealth, power, and the service class. We do get glimpses of the lower deck crew, who are never allowed on upper decks and likely do not get a cut of the huge tips that the upper deck crew gets from passengers.

Some of the wealthy are portrayed positively, such as when a passenger insists that a crew member take a dip with her in the pool as her equal. When the egalitarian captain of the vessel (a Marxist, we learn later, played by a scruffy Woody Harrelson) hears of the passenger's request, he makes it mandatory that all upper deck crew members take the day off and jump in the pool.

The Captain's decision to hold the big dinner of the cruise the same day a huge storm is known to be headed their way proves to be a bad one when passengers are thrown to and fro on the boat, and become sick on the slimy dishes that are on the menu that evening. The scenes of passengers getting sick in the dining room, the hallways, and on the toilet, are both disgusting and humorous. Mostly disgusting, though.

The storm seems to bring out the inner Marxist of the drunk Captain, who, along with a former East European passenger who has since become a strong capitalist, take to the intercom system of the now sinking ship to have a hilarious debate about Marxism and read quotes from Marx and leading Capitalists.

The storm results in the ship being destroyed with only a few survivors reaching shore on an apparently deserted island, where the third and final act "The Island," takes place. The handful of survivors find their leader in the head of the janitorial staff on the yacht, a strong middle-aged woman, Abigail, played by Filipina actress Dolly de Leon. 

Abigail became the undisputed leader of the group because, she argues, she alone can hunt, fish, and start the fires needed to cook fish and other wildlife she catches, although Carl and a German millionaire passenger kill a wild donkey later on. Carl and Yaya have both survived, and Carl quickly takes Abigail as as an unlikely lover, joining her in the evenings in a large lifeboat that resembles a dumpster.

When Abigail goes on a walk across the island in search of water and other supplies, she finds something that ends the film. She takes Yaya with her, at the latter's insistence, and she plots to kill Yaya and take her out of contention, because she seems jealous of the relationship that Abigail and Carl have developed on the island.

The ending is ambiguous and is bound to be controversial, but what they find on the other side of the island is truly interesting, and changes their predicament, entirely.

Triangle of Sadness had its world premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival on May 5, where it received an eight-minute standing ovation and won the prestigious Palme d'Or "Gold Palm."


Wednesday, July 6, 2022

#Movie #Review: #Elvis

Elvis (2022) stars Austin Butler in the leading role of Presley, Oscar winner Tom Hanks as his mysterious, scheming manager, Colonel Tom Parker, and Australian actress Olivia DeJonge as wife Priscilla Presley. 

The film follows his rise to fame in the mid 1950s to his tragic end in 1977, but largely focuses on the tense and often explosive and complicated relationship between the king of rock 'n roll and his manager.

Told ostensibly from Parker's point of view in old age, the film by director Baz Luhrmann paints Parker as the villain, following the narrative of several books written about him since his death in 1997, exposing his financial abuse of the rock star - sadly, only the first of many such stories in the entertainment  industry.

The film makes quick work of the childhood of Elvis, shorthanding his twin influences of black jazz and religion by showing the boy eavesdropping on a carnival tent and then running to a Pentecostal religious revival tent, all on the same day on the same fairgrounds.

He's shown in later scenes as an adult hanging with well-known jazz musicians, including B.B.King, a major influence on his music.

Parker is portrayed as a carnival dweller who hears of Elvis's singing talents before he even knows he is a white singer, and not an African-American as he sounded to many.  Parker is shown witnessing the hypnotic effect Elvis had on women in his audience, even very early on in his performing career.

Which makes it curious that he would later demand that Elvis stop wiggling his hips during performances, ostensibly under blackmail from those who knew his sordid past (he had illegally emigrated to the United States from the Netherlands at the age of 20.) Hanks affects a Dutch accent throughout the film, in an Oscar-worthy performance by the veteran actor, who should get a best supporting actor nomination.

The entire "New Elvis" portion of the film is the least plausible. It seems to me that a promoter like Parker would surely understand what was causing the women to scream and shout and not try to squelch that magic, despite the real societal objections to the entertainer's hip gyrations, objections that were certainly historical.

The costumes and sets are lavish here, and costumes by Prada for both Elvis and Priscilla Presley add to the colorful atmosphere of the mid- '50s through the 1970s, including his somewhat tasteless and brash Vegas years.

Those Vegas years are among the most heart-wrenching of the entire film, because it's painfully aware to viewers where his career and life are headed. It is here where Parker looks the worst, selling out Elvis for unlimited poker chips to a casino.

The director's use of a few minutes of actual footage of Elvis at the end of his career and a historical verbal tribute from Pres. Jimmy Carter upon the star's death were moving, unexpected, and unique in film history.

Both Butler (who had a minor role in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) and Hanks both deserve Oscars for their performances, with Butler channeling the King's accent and mannerisms and even recreating Elvis's songs beautifully and Hanks performing his role as the shady Parker in a "fat suit" throughout the film (Butler only showing prosthetic-induced weight gain for a scene portraying the superstar's last performance in Vegas, just before his death.)

This film is well worth seeing in theaters, where the full impact of the music and costumes can be felt.