Monday, March 12, 2018

Lightning Round: Spectrum of Genre Intelligence



Tone, Audience, quality; We're running all the gamuts today.


While Disney’s unquestionably phenomenal business plan has led them to nearly monolithic success in the modern film industry, “A Wrinkle in Time” may unfortunately unveil a certain chink in the House of Mouse’s armor that its film producers seem a bit too keen on exposing repeatedly with little improvement.

Based on the 1962 novel of the same name, the film follows young Meg Murray (Stormy Reid), who sets out to find her missing father with the help of her school friend Calvin (Deric McCabe) and prodigious younger brother Charles Wallace (Levi Miller) with the help of intervening astral forces played by Mindy Kaling, Oprah Winfrey, and Reese Witherspoon.

Meg’s adventure leads her across the universe to different planets, each one helping her to grapple with the reality of living with her missing father on Earth and the strain that it has caused her family. Unfortunately the movie, for all of the resources and imagination that went into the visuals, manages to take the shape of an aesthetic masterwork only to have the tale itself unfold as an awkward audio book of a story displaced from its original setting.

That’s not to say that the whole thing is a loss; the performances, especially those of the children are all generally excellent, striking a balance between relatable caution and curiosity mixed with storybook sense of wonder appropriate for the material given that makes the sloppier moments of the film more palatable and moments of raw relatability and emotional complexity that make Ava DuVernay an acclaimed practitioner of her craft do occasionally pop up just long enough for you to imagine the masterful children’s fable with a light science fiction flavoring that this could have been.

Sadly watching said talent struggle with such a clunky screenplay, heavy on character exposition that could have been easily and effortlessly depicted rather than flatly spelled out comes across as the cinematic equivalent of hunting down the most prime cut of meat on the face of the planet that can be carved into the ultimate steak and cooked by Gordon Ramsey, only to ask him to char it black and drown it in A1 steak sauce.

“A Wrinkle in Time” is certainly a difficult source material to adapt given its high concept nature and reliance on emotional atmosphere and imagination to carry forward its story of space operatic battles of will between metaphysical concepts over the influence of entire plains of reality but it’s not quite impossible even if it would be a hard sell to a wide audience.

A key factor in making that work however relies on dedicating to a definitive interpretation of the material, which relies on establishing strong characters and a crisply laying out the rules that they will find themselves playing by, even if those rules defy that of reality as we know it.

That specific failure is painfully felt in the simultaneously rigid yet cringe inducingly messy first half, which not only wastes the opportunity to learn about these character’s more intimately through their actions but gets so caught up in expositing obvious on screen information that they fail to give the element of the aforementioned astral entities and the adventure that they represent any sufficient build up or foreshadowing while also failing to clearly define the rules of the adventure the children will be embarking on.

How is the reality warping Tesseract effect triggered? Is anybody capable of it? Is the threat of the “it” to earth purely metaphysical or does it have some sort of physical ramifications? And these questions don’t even touch on the lack of imagination put into the first planetary destination of the adventure which lacks in both anticipation and pay off regarding the whimsical nature of breaking the laws of physics the way they choose.

For all of “A Wrinkle in Time’s” positing about the importance of maintaining a sense of wonder, it completely fails to sell anything particularly wondrous.

Those failings become doubly frustrating in the second half of the film because it was so clearly reliant on that portion doing its job, yet despite falling mildly flat because of it, almost fires on all cylinders otherwise.

When Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace, confront “the it” head on, the movie finally begins to move in the direction of visionary storytelling that DuVernay was clearly hired for.

Mechanics of both plot and setting finally begin to synchronize while the metaphysical nature of the journey starts to raise some double meanings and implement symbolism culminating in a climax literalizing Meg’s internal conflict by physically manifesting itself via the movie’s nemesis that plays out in such a cheesy fashion that it would almost be laughable if it weren’t executed with such effective sincerity and carried by two kids that look to have promising careers if they keep this caliber of performance up.

It may have been intended to stand with Marvel Cinematic Universe entries, “Star Wars” movies, and live action animated remakes as the cinematic tent poles of Disney’s year but it ultimately follows the unfortunate trend of films like “John Carter,” “Tron: Legacy,” and “Tomorrowland” in assembling talented filmmakers with solid casts to ultimately shell out a generic product lacking in any character or personality that made the prospect of the film so tantalizing to begin with.

The strong finish does a lot to pick up the lost pieces from the starting gate but while nearly all of “A Wrinkle in Time’s” production crew managed to stay magnificently on point, the screenplay’s desperate need of another couple of passes for polish sink it from being the fresh cinematic hit that Disney was probably hoping for, even if the product that landed might make for a passable afternoon matinee for the kids.

4 out of 10




Director Alex Garland’s sophomore directorial outing, based on the 2014 science fiction novel by Jeff VanderMeer, sees five women exploring an environmental disaster area contaminated by some sort of extraterrestrial phenomenon shrouding the area within shimmering light.

With the radiation of the area shorting out most transmitters, the only information that the women have is that no previous expedition has returned alive, meaning they have no clue exactly what threats lie within, and its borders are beginning to expand, which means they’re on a ticking clock to categorize the phenomenon and figure out how to end it before it moves into more populated zones.

Similarly to Garland’s previous film, “Ex-Machina,” the premise of “Annihilation,” deceptively stock and simple, masks within symbolism a branching tale of humanity and will, this time touching upon themes of grief, psychological anguish , self loathing, and the nature of unwitting and willful self destruction, designed to play out across a landscape manifesting their flaws, fears, and traumas into physical allegories that they can rise above or succumb to.

The team members, portrayed by Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez, and Tuva Novotny, all face a multitude of personal problems that make their willingness to embark on what effectively feels like a suicide mission into the shimmering Dangerfield known as Area X feel all the more suspect.

Their problems, which can manifest in a multitude of unpleasant behaviors in high tension scenarios, ranging from fear to act to controlling by putting their teammates in harm’s way, to an acceptance of their danger hinting at apathy counterintuitive to actual survival, the surreal trials within Area X quickly become evident as determiners of whether or not they can rise above their problems rather than ignore them or run away from them.

The chemistry between the cast regularly rotates between healthy and potentially beneficial bonding to certain levels of toxic distrust both well founded and ill founded and they all do stupendous jobs capturing the neurosis that define exactly why they were willing to take such a dangerous job and the varying levels of regret that arise when their psychological hang ups rear their ugly heads.

Don’t let the promises of alien mutants and survivalism in a surreal eerie landscape of scientific terror dripping in a atmosphere akin to gothic horror fool you; “Annihilation” is a slow, reflective, character study in which the science fiction, horror, and action elements serve as a metaphorical and occasionally literal smokescreen for illustrating the negative effects of the human capacity’s willingness to face physical threats if it comes at the expense of grappling with the personal demons that need to be handled but won’t go down so easily.

Like the aforementioned “Ex-Machina,” this movie is a hard science fiction tale that tackles some fairly uncomfortable and introspective questions with an art house mindset so unapologetic about communicating massive swaths of its intent through visual language of cinematic flourishes that it can almost seem as though it’s occasionally daring you to call it pretentious.

The only real downside to the film is that its reach slightly exceeds its grasp. The bottle story aspect of Garland’s previous film helped to maintains a narrative that was tight, rich, intimate, and gripping from start to finish with a masterfully handled payoff.

While “Annihilation” tackles relatable themes in a bold and challenging manner, its open ended questioning and ambiguous conclusions round the final third of the movie into a product a bit more bloated and less elegant than what unfolded before it, especially when the twists start to pile up to little resolution.

There aren’t many other substantial flaws in this vein but for a movie to be such an ambitious and nigh perfect balancing act reliant on recursive elements from all three acts of the film to work in tandem with one another, having about 20 minutes of the movie that only really operates at half capacity, it goes a pretty long way.


Those flaws hold “Annihilation” back from the perfection it was within spitting distance of achieving and thusly does little to inspire over the favor of viewers that may find themselves bored or disappointed expecting something more pulpy than what’s ultimately been delivered. As it is however, well produced hard science fiction made earnestly for the art of cinematic storytelling rather than the almighty Hollywood dollar happens so rarely it can’t considered anything less than praiseworthy for being a good movie on top of an ambitious one.

8 Moments of Severe Introspection out of 10




This is a thing. It actually exists.

A few weeks ago I had lunch with a friend, lamenting to him how frivolous Hollywood can be with their money when “GeoStorm,” the feature length concept of a James Bond villain scheme, can get a fully funded for $100 million, only for him to jokingly respond to me “just wait for ‘Hurricane Heist.’”

When I asked him if that was a real thing, he coyly deflected and I brushed off the entire comment as an absurd joke only to be surprised with the reality of its existence and release upon going in to buy an unrelated ticket.

Even now, several days after having seen it and currently writing about it, I’m struggling to accept that it isn’t some sort of elaborate nostalgia driven punch line based on early 2000’s PC gaming shovelware just by looking at the goddamn poster.

The only thing sicker than knowing it exists is seeing actual talent go into it that shows.

“Hurricane Heist” is basically exactly what it says on the tin; a crew of professional criminals and treacherous federal agents team up to steal worn out bills to be shredded at a federal facility using the cover of an incoming hurricane to hide their tracks. Swept up amongst the chaos are federally employed storm chaser Will and supervising government agent Casey, who must now stop the robbers and free their government employed hostages across the landscape of the deserted town and escape it before the storm comes into full swing.

If that sounds like a grade A b-movie to you, not only are you correct but you already know whether you would be in the target audience for this kind of movie.

By all traditional definitions of the word, “Hurricane Heist” is not good. The characters are thin, the villains and motivation are mostly flat, and all of its components exist to serve as backdrop for any and all sense of spectacle provided by the storm itself. What is worthwhile about it despite that however, is a seeming sense of awareness that’s not only a stupid movie but dealing with stupid material, right from the opening scene in which a young Will watches his father die in a hurricane as he sees the clouds taking the ominous form of malevolent spirit-like skulls, starting his lifelong obsession with chasing an understanding of the natural disaster.

This whole movie’s production crew can be best summarized as “those people who are really good at what they do but always end up in crap.” Rob Cohen of “The Fast and The Furious” and “XXX” fame has demonstrated a regular understanding of what it takes to sell this kind of kitsch as an actual story but he even manages to maximize his underrated ability to direct actors as seen in his lesser known works such as “The Rat Pack.”

Toby Kebbell continues to be one of my favorite working actors that is having an unfortunate run of projects, milking what little he has for all of its worth and proving a compelling leading man when he wants to be and his chemistry with Maggie Grace, despite being solid, refreshingly doesn’t end in a forced romance as these things typically do.

Beyond that, the actual action choreography and general pace of the hour and a half long feature all functions rather creatively and moves along at a decent clip, despite the cartoonish nature of the storm’s depiction given the movie’s low budget. Honestly though, it’s just refreshing overall to see a disaster movie that utilizes the disaster for storytelling set pieces rather than CGI effects porn.

That having been said, “Hurricane Heist” may be a solid specimen of what it aims to be but what it is nevertheless is a B-move that won’t exactly be everybody’s cup of tea, existing only to satisfy base pleasures of entertainment for certain audiences.

In fact one of its most striking characteristics is how, after the first 5 minutes, you may find your mind wandering into the territory of thinking of how the film would probably be much better if it had half the budget and half the talent sunken into it, and dropped onto Netflix to be leisurely viewed on a lazy weekend afternoon. At least then, it would demonstrate almost satirical self awareness.

5 Scorpions Classics out of 10

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